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Has anyone here ever actually sat down and played Morrowind...if so why the hell can't they make a m
jackilojohn
Member Posts: 144
I know if you have played morrowind then you know the flaws in the game but there are so many things that would make mmorpg's so much better. Like.......
I know this is a long post and most won't read it but honestly doesn't everyone feel the same way that mmorpg's have become a soft/boring/crappy/unoriginal/ version of what they should be....
Why do we instantly need to know someones name when they run up to us? Does it have to be a big bright set up words that follow above their head. In morrowind you don't know someones name until you talk to them. Also, I don't think we need to know what MOBs names are.....I think we should be able to ask around and it would be interesting if npc's had some mob lore information. In morrowind if you wanted to learn about a creature you would have to ask someone that knew. We also don't need to know what every stat for every piece of weapon.armor someone has on. This is retarded...in real life if you didn't know about the lore behind a certain material or armour type you wouldn't know and that's that.
Another part of morrowind that was great.....in the center of the map was the evil dageth urr area and some creatures in that area were diseased. If one attacked you....you could then become diseased and it wouldn't go away EVER until you went to a shrine and was healed. Some diseases were so rare that you could only get rid of them through special means. This would just add more content to a game....if you have ever played morrowind there is so much attention to detail and so much content that you will never see and do everything that there is to be done.
In morrowind there was a system that let you create your own spells.....if you wanted to make a magic fire damage spell that ticked 1 damage for 500 seconds in a 15 meter range you could.......if you wanted it to do 100 fire damage for 9 seconds on touch instead of range.....you could.......this would make people so much different in game that again the content would be never ending.
One of the most fun things in morrowind was being able to be a thief....a real thief not this bull crap stuff you see in mmo's. You could walk into a traders workplace and take everything he had if you were sneaky and waiting until he wasn't looking. Of course this would have to be balanced in many ways to fit into a mmorpg....but I could figure it out and i'm not even a game developer(of course we all know devs aren't that brilliant they just know how to code)
Something that made morrowind feel so much more real and emmersive was the first person view....I mean who come up with the idea that watching your guy run around in a 3rd person mode would be fun/realistic at all.
The storyline in morrowind is wonderful.....there is an actual point to it....and there was a evil force that everyone was against.....but if you wanted to you could be just as evil and kill people for no reason...
If you could make take morrowind and have someone host a server for it....make the items/mobs/quest respawn......it would be more fun than any mmorpg on the market.....without any changes done to it....the land mass wouldn't be large enough for 1000's of players....but one server with the land mass between morrowind and the expansions i would say a few hundred could easily play and not be over crowded. This would be great because you would come to learn most of the people on your server.
The way pvp would be handled in morrowind would be cut throat/hardcore and I would love it. Anyone could attack anyone at anytime no matter there level. Of course you wouldn't know what level someone was because you can't tell by looking at them....of course the loot system would have to be altered because there is no bank. This is all do-able.
Morrowind also lets you apply yourself in many many ways....if you want to be a warriar type but still learn magic you can....there is no restrictions besides your race may not be that greta at magic....
I know this is a long post and most won't read it but honestly doesn't everyone feel the same way that mmorpg's have become a soft/boring/crappy/unoriginal/ version of what they should be....
Comments
The Millenium Lee
Take a game like Morrowind or Baldur's Gate or any of the great single-player RPGs. Now think about how it would be if it were a MMORPG. Yep, doesn't work. You can't just take a single-player game idea and convert it to a multiplayer game and expect it to work. The game itself has to be built with either single player or multiplayer in mind (or both) in order to succeed as an idea.
With that said, there's much that can be improved on in MMORPGs, some realistic (like more interesting and involved quests) and others not-so-realistic (like real-time twitch combat with over 200+ players, there's limits on current technology). However, the gaming industry as a whole is pretty stale right now. All people care about before the game comes out is graphics and after the game comes out everyone bitches about how the gameplay sucks.
I have to wonder why it couldn't work??? If morrowind were online why couldn't the game be made so that the quest were replayable for anyone that is a new player. I mean there are so many quest that you wouldn't even need missions.....I know just taking Morrowind and slapping multiplayer on it wouldn't work perfectly....but with a few changes...like item/mob/npc respawns why couldn't it work??? You didn't give any reasons...and besides if bethsoft was creating it to be online compatible it would rock.....and be just as good and in depth as morrowind is.
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Well dude i have played morrowind,and find your post has contradictions.First up morrowind had some good looks but gameplay i got bored fast and found balders gate a better game.I can't remember how many times i got stuck in glitches and ridiculous tight corridors of morrowind.You start your post pretty much wanting realism from the real world but contradict that while mentioning PvP later.
PvP is a joke and does NOT work.I have just been killed for the umpteenth time while afk in a safe zone.Every MMO is a massive sized world that takes a long time to navigate.Dying after a long haul gets real boring fast.There is absolutely no way to be careful either,as every new zone or town has a small entrance or gateway to enter.High level players can just sit there an be a nuissance to your game.Leaving a zone i just witnessed some jerk showing off to his GF,killing a total noob [approx lvl 5][he was at least lvl 30]and laughing about it.I mean its pretty sad when a total noob can't leave the town into a noob PVE area to level up.I find the whole PVP system to be totally unrealistic,as there is absolutely no way to protect yourself from high level players.It's only in more games now to cater to a wider public,therefore creating more sales.
One main problem with your post is that your comparing a rpg to a MMO.By not knowing stats on gear or not seeing names on players,merely adds to a boring game as far as im concerned.Most players look alike ,thats a fact,so that would be pretty dumb if i didn't know my own friend walking past him/her,because they had no name above there head.All this just makes for more npc chat wich always is a boring part of the game.after you have listened to the same NPC chat for the tenth time ,it gets pretty boring.Also remember that MMO's use an auction system in selling gear.So you really need to know what the gear stats are before you buy it.This way you could better balance your cash,knowing what to save for in the future.I wouldn't want to have to learn every single weapon in the game before i could feel safe buying one.
If you want LORE in a game ,EQ2 already has it.You get books and learn the lore of all the mobs.You can even roleplay and have to learn the different cultures language to get quests from them.
If you like thief,then FFXI does a great job with there's.The thief can HIDE on a enemy that uses sight and he has a special attack called SNEAK ATTACK.The thief also has flee ,wich is a short time speed increase.EQ2 also does a pretty good job with thief,allowing him to go stealth and having the ability at higher level to make his whole party stealth.
I don't think you have been playing the better games out there,as most games i know have both first person view and 3rd person,wichever you prefer.The camera view usually has several angels also to make the view to your liking.
You also mention having a warrior that can also learn magic.Well guess what ,this has also been done.Look no further than FFXI.It is a very tricky venture as to not disrupt game balance.FFXi does a very good job with it.
I go way back to the WIZARDRY/MIGHT N MAGIC/ULTIMA several other less known games like stonekeep and dungeon master.I found MORROWIND a nice looking game as i made my trek across the years,but i didn't really find the game to be that good.Navigating around with a npc got real annoying,as we were always getting stuck in castle towers and doorways.I thought to myself[did anyone even playtest this game?]because it happened quite alot.
Almost forgot about your spell making want.EQ2 has this in there crafting system.You can make a spell that has different damage,depending on what level you craft it.
You can't allow total flexibility in making spells without disrupting game balance,wich of course ruins a game.Imagine if you could make a spell that does DOT/DD/buffs/debuffs/heals and then makes your whole party invisible so that you could rinse and repeat[lmao]yep it would really unbalance the game.This is why you need to play a game that balances the spells for a challenging but fun experience.
Storyline..well this part is simple again.IN a rpg game that is meant to be finished the storyline is shorter and linear.MMo's really want the players to stay forever if they could,therefore the story has to be non linear and never ends.There is a flaw with this however,as the storyline gets to be so long and in depth i usually end up getting lost in it and forget where it was going[lmao].New quests are always added therefore branching the storyline off in once again another direction.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
He is correct graphics have little to do with server load. The most graphic games out are fps games and the server can be hosted on a cable connection. What causes server lag is packets dealing with random things cause by players....spell casting...looting..movement...such as that. I believe that most of the issues holding a game like this back can all be fixed by the right company with a very creative edge to them......"insteps bethesda" I also have to wonder about the huge companies that have hundreds of people working on one game....because has anyone looked at the screen shots for a game called project offset...good lord lol It is a small company that created not only the game but the engine to run the game which is obviously wonderful. I am becoming so very bored with gaming that it's about to make me stop playing.
First off you haven't really played morrowind...obviously because you mentioned you got bored fast...before you learned all the important things in the game.. Mentioning that not having names above peoples head and stats on weapons you didn't listen to what I had to say....If you are buying something this yes of course you should be able to see it's stats...as you can see stats in morrowind. What you can't do it walk up and inspect someone and see everything little detail about there charactor. Also, with graphics engines being so insanely powerful making a charactor that isn't like anyone else shouldn't be that hard...if the game supports it. There are all kinds of things you could do that would add more to mmorpgs. As for the lore in eq2....ok maybe it does have lore but it doesn't have everything else...it's just another damn mmorpg. What about thief in ffxi guess what all and I repeat...............friggin all rogue classes do what you mentioned...invis....backstab....lets name a few...eq2,wow,ffxi,ryl,dnl(which isn't released) I mean come on.
By the way I like how you believe you know oh so much about rpg/mmorpgs.....
The crafting system in eq2 is in no way shape or form like the spell creation system in morrowind...there are 4 different qualities for the recipes in eq2....in morrowind it's countless. You had all these different settings...which damage type fire.ice.posion. and so on, then you had area of effect you could make this anything between 1 and 15....then you had the min and max damage which you could make anywhere between 0-something like 500....of course no one could cast a spell that strong so dont' worry about over powering spells...you had to have the ability to do it. And how would this disrupt game balance if anyone and I repeat ANYONE can do it..... Does this mean it would be unbalanced for you because I'm smarter and can use creativity to come up with a better spell.....yea.....you sound like you want to keep mmorpg's simple (WoW like) because you don't get the depth part that I was talking about.
As for the first person mode you said that you can't be careful....that sounds kind of carebearish doesn't it. Seeing as how I play first person shooters all the time that I can tell when someone is near me...It's called listening and 3d audio. It works wonders. In call of duty you can tell where someone is simply by the sound of their foot steps.
So you got stuck in places alot because npc's actually have collision detection....Yea this is also more realistic. Am I saying that it was done perfectly in morrowind...no i'm not. I'm just saying that the level of quality content/creativity/attention to detail (you could walk into a room that had over 150 different items, everything from forks/plates/kitchen knives to plant life, weapons, lanterns, )everyone of them was able to be picked up/stole) I realise that would be a hard task to put that into a mmorpg....but it's not impossible. I could sit down and any thing that you said can't be done I can figure out a way to make it work.
As for pvp there is something in morrowind that I like alot. It is called laws...if you attack someone inside a city they get in trouble for it....either get killed by a guard or have to pay money to get out of it. Of course this is all relative and would have to be balanced. Make the laws very strict, make them so bad that people wouldn't want to pk all the damn time. It sounds like you sir. are a whiney little uncreative, unimaginative whimp. I usually hate flaming....but seeing as how the majority of the mmorpg community is bored with the game they are playing or any other game out at the moment, I feel we need something original, something grand, something perfect.....and keeping things how they are will not change that.
!33t pWn3d....
Morrowind is nearly perfect because you are the only protagonist in the game - the only hero. Now imagine the same game world with 5,000 heros in it - now you know why, I guess!
Ragosch
Dude lmao..you keep contradicting yourself.When you say all the games got those thief characteristics ,what exactly did you want from a thief?geesh.Something unrealistic?
You seem to be one of those players that really is not aware of what goes on around him in these games so ill spell it out for you.
Ever here of the internet?RMT?hacking?
These three things will allow every player in the game to have that spell you say will be all yours cus you are smarter and can create it [rflmao]
You say i want thegame simpler?lmao..dude i feel you are the one who wants this.You think you are gonna get that god awful spell creation that makes your whole game easier for you to dominate.Then you can come into the forums and say ya baby PVP is awesome i love it.spells and gear MUST be balanced ,the present system is what works until they can come up with a better idea.
As for collision,it takes alot smarter designer to handle collision than just stopping when running into a wall.Imagine being in a very crowded place surrounded by players and the collision won't allow you to move.That would be totally rediculous.This is why smart designers allow players to move right through other players,it's only common sense to see the problems otherwise.Unlike the real world where you could ask buddy to move so u can get through,there are tons of players in these games who just go AFK all day long.It would be possible to get stuck in between these players due to a lag shot.
I would have to agree on one thing you said...a perfect game would be nice.Who is that perfect for you or me?My idea is seeing the whole picture and the ramifications of each idea.My impression from you is that ,you just want any idea you like.Most of the ideas i see from all people are selfish ones that couldn't care less if they disrupt some other player who just wants to have some fun and relax.They like using terms like carebear/cookiecutter cus it suits there flaming needs,i'm just glad people like this are not designing these games.Well they would fail anyhow so no matter i guess.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Um, if you read the OP, you'd realize that a lot of the suggestions would not be affected at all by this. Here, I'll break it down into point form for you:
-not knowing who someone is until you've talked to them
-not knowing the names and lore of mobs unless you ask someone about them
-rare diseases and lots of content/attention to detail
-the ability to make your own spells (if you wanted to make a magic fire damage spell that ticked 1 damage for 500 seconds in a 15 meter range you could.......if you wanted it to do 100 fire damage for 9 seconds on touch instead of range.....you could) [of course, some choices would be prohibitively expensive to make or use, but that was part of the fun of making something useful]
-thieves actually being able to steal things
-1st person view
Obviously, if the actual game Morrowind was converted into an MMORPG, it'd require pretty massive changes if it were possible at all, but that's not the point.
One of the things that I like about Morrowind (and which bugs me about MMORPGs) is when you kill and loot some goblin or whatever, you can actually take the stuff you see it wearing... a lot of things might not be worth carrying back to sell, but there's the iron sword and battered shield you saw him wielding, plus his clothes and assorted junk. I really don't see why all MMORPGs can't do this, it just makes more sense. Of course, for bosses and such, there would be a good chance that when you loot, various items would be broken beyond repair, so that drops would be more reasonable.
I also preferred the weight-based system over the item slots in MMORPGs... in Morrowind, you can carry a sack full of magic rings as easily as that huge mace.
I know its not an MMORPG, but a few people at my mates brothers university fiddled with morrowind and a few other games (grand theft auto was one of them) so that they could play them online, I think they had about 20 people playing it. I didn't get to play it online unfortuantly, but they said it worked pretty well and was a lot of fun apart from all the lag, crashes and bugs they got. They managed to make it so you could fight eachother, but for some reason you never died when you got to low hp.
I think it would work as an MMORPG, someone said about you being the only hero in the world in the single player version and then there being hundreds of heros running around. This could be easily covered up, there are plenty of side quests and all they would need to do is change the main storyline so it wasn't based on one person. And call all the heroes "adventurers"
Since you seem to think Morrowind would make a good MMORPG, let's break down your post and see the fallacies in it, shall we?
I think this one is pretty self-explanatory. Take any MMORPG and remove the display of player names and force people to ask each other who they are. Watch the chaos ensue. Knowing a creature's name is for simplicity sake. Imagine trying to tell your friend what mob gives good experience. "It's the big bear near that tower." "Which one? I see a whole bunch?" "The one that's bigger than the rest." "You mean this one?" "Well, what's it called?" "I dunno, I just see a bunch of bears." As for weapon stats, in real life, holding a sword does not automatically make you smarter or faster so comparing it to real life is retarded. This is also for simplicity sake. Imagine another situation: "Hey, you wanna buy this sword?" "Well, what are its stats?" "I have no idea, it's just a sword I picked up." "Well, why should I buy it if I know nothing about it?" This isn't content, this is an annoyance. It might work good for a single player game but imagine having to go cure the disease every single time you passed through the area. Now imagine thousands of people doing the same thing. How would people be different? Once people find the optimal combination, everyone and their dog will be using it. There's your never-ending content, the number of people using the optimal build will be never-ending. Devs are smarter than you to know that this can't possibly be implemented and not be exploited in some way. You're not just talking about a few thieves here and there. Imagine THOUSANDS of thieves out there, ready to plunder and pillage at the first sign of treasure. Even if there were limitations placed on it, such as able to steal only every so often or risk getting caught, it's not enough. Eventually people will find workarounds or they just won't care about the risks. In real life, you get thrown into jail or you potentially die, a very big deterrent to becoming a thief. In a game, the punishment can only be as harsh as a temporary death or setback. LOL, I find it hilarious you even raised this point. Many MMORPGs have a first person view. Guess what people prefer to play in? You guessed it, 3rd person. Not only can you see your character's armor and equipment, it's also easier to survey your surroundings, see what your character is doing, etc... Kill people for no reason = PvP. An evil force that everyone is against doesn't work in a MMORPG when you know you can't ever get anywhere with it. "Oh, there's this evil force we're all fighting against, but since we can't beat it or else the game would end, we just don't care." This has nothing to do with your original point. You're just talking about what-if's now. Ever played Lineage 2? Because you just described it. Asheron's Call, Ultima Online, Saga of Ryzom, should I name more? This is one point that I can agree with, but I also say that the entire gaming industry as a whole has become quite stale, with gamers that care only for pretty graphics instead of actual, solid gameplay. It's become so bad that simple games such as Katamari Damacy and Geometry Wars become such smashing hits simply because everything else on the market is just more rehashes of the same idea presented years ago. Not that I'm saying the aforementioned games are bad by any means, it's just that if developers actually started caring more about gameplay than graphics, we'd have a lot more fun games instead of remake after remake after remake.In any case, trying to turn Morrowind, a game that's single player, into a MMORPG is a bad idea. If this isn't obvious to you already, just think about it this way: Imagine yourself playing Morrowind. Now, imagine that there are thousands of clones of yourself running around doing the things you do in Morrowind. Does that work for gameplay? I don't think so.
ranma, why would you make a list showing why my ideas wouldn't work when your proof is based on nothing but your opinion....I am not going back through everything you said and making another big long post. I can do it and show why they could work because as I said everything has ways you can work it out...everything. Game developers just haven't got the guts or the creativity to do it. If you believe that mmorpg's have become a crappy version of themselves then why the F U C K are you blasting me...someone that was making suggestions to change them. The idiocy of the world destroys me inside....lol (I don't think idiocy is even a word but it sounds like it should be)
I've never played Morrowind(keep meaning to sometime) but I've heard alot of people call it a single-player MMORPG.
I also don't think it's unfeasible to convert it's design over to a MMOG setting. The people who can't get their head around it are thinking the same way that Raph Koster and the brain trust at SOE did. Blizzard dared to think outside the box and try ideas that were considered taboo for MMOs and look where it got them.
My youtube MMO gaming channel
Where to begin...
For starters, MMOs are targeted mainly at a much older audience. This is due to the fact that an older audience (25-40) has more disposable income compared to a younger one (25 and under). Most companies would rather make a game that appeals to an older audience than a younger one, but ideally, as in WoW's case, they make a game that appeals to all age groups.
Bethesda Softworks is a very good company, but they aren't perfect. For starters, as you mentioned, they let their software out the door with bugs. Yes, they got fixed over time, and yes, they gave free add-on content, but still. I come from the old school, before the internet, when the software needed to be spot on and completely bug free, as you couldn't patch it up later.
Also, I've made this arguement before, but it still stands. When they made Morrowind, while it's based on their series of games, I think they were inspired by the sheer massiveness of an MMORPG. I think they figured that if companies can make games like that for thousands of simultaneous players, why not do it for a single player so it's just that more immersive.
Like it or not, Morrowind and Oblivion won't make good MMOs. People tend to think of all the great things in a game, and forget some of the bad things. That and the fact that having a thousand or more high polygon characters on the screen would make your rig cry and grind to a halt.
Camphor, some of the best things in Morrowind cannot be easily transferred into a MMORPG without seeing them being abused. This creation of own spells you mentioned for example. The creation of permanent magical items or magical potions is the same - really cool if you play the game for the first time and need to find out how it works - but once you know how it works (and you would know this pretty fast if it would be a MMORPG) it overpowers you totally.
Ever made potions while you had 20,000 intelligence and more?- The result are really long lasting and extremely powerful potions, which can be used to create even more powerful and longer lasting ones.
And once you have items with permanent flying, invisibility, water breathing and each heavy weighted, non-magical item enchanted with permanent feather, all weapons enchanted to spend life to you with each hit and ofcourse you use potions too which gave you some hundreds points each second.
All those nice Morrowind features are just good for the first or second time you play the game - now imagine this in a MMORPG, where players will abuse these features - it would be horrible.
Ragosch
I am so tired of explaining things to people that will not listen. Everything that you have said wouldn't work like the spell creation can work just fine. It's called balancing. If you don't grasp that mmorpg's are missing alot of things that can be seen in a game like morrowind then....I can't help you. The person that said mmorpg's target the older players....then why are they so much more simple. Why do they dumb them down so bad....
It would be easier to discuss this stuff if you started a post each week about a specific mmorpg feature you would like to talk about.
I've had this same discussion about Morrowind before. No, it wouldn't make a good mmorpg without major changes.
And if you want to know my opinion (you probably don't but you're going to get it anyway) I wasn't all that impressed with it as a single player game.
Without going into excessive detail I'll give you the main reason why it didn't impress me: it was too easy. Yes, that's right...too easy. You could pretty quickly make your charactar almost invincible in Morrowind. Not long after I started playing it I had more money than I knew what to do with. And before I even knew all the ins and outs of the game I had made an enchanted weapon that made me almost unkillable. It was a very nice ax that I stole off the shelf of a blacksmith shop and had enchanted with a spell that sucked the life out of anything I hit and transfered the hitpoints to me (hurt them, healed me).
And like I said, this was something I did just shortly after I started the game. Before I even really knew what I was doing. That's how easy the game was. So after I had my --I WIN--- weapon....what was left for me? Nothing much, I can tell you that. It's pretty damn boring being a god.
There were other things I didn't like about the game but that's the biggy. Just too damn easy.
But on a side note I will comment about 1st person and 3rd person view. I prefer 3rd person because 1st person in a computer game is too unrealistic. You heard me right, 1st person is too unrealistic. 3rd person isn't realistic either but all things considered it's more realistic than 1st person view. 3rd person gives you a more realistic awareness of your surrondings than 1st person does and that's a simple fact as far as I'm concerned.
People can argue the merits and flaws of the two views all they like but no one will ever convince me that 1st person view is more realistic than 3rd person....because it's not. When I'm walking around in real life I have an awareness of my surrondings that is much more comprable to 3rd person view in these games than it is to 1st person view in a game. No, my real life eyes aren't floating five feet behind my body...but I'm also not deaf and wearing a neck brace and blinders.
Again, I'm tired of telling people things and them not thinking about it. I mean if you think how current mmorpg's is perfect then so fucking be it. As for first person versus 3rd person...i'm flexible on that because with ranged weapons I would much rather have a realtime first person view but with melee it makes it difficult. As far as not knowing what's going on around you....I have said this once and i'll say it agian....it's called 3d audio....and a good set of headphones. In Morrowind I can use my 5.1 headset and hear a person walking and tell which direction they are relative to me instantly.....I can't expect mmorpg players to understand compeditive FPS playstyles....I'm not saying that all mmorpg gamers haven't played fps games also because alot have just like me. As for Morrowind being to easy...did you ever use any cheats...lol because without making your stats so unbelievable with cheats you can't really create things that are unstoppable. I killed the god vivec in that game but that was using a spell that damage him and gave me his health.....but at the same time I was pausing the game and refilling my health bar lol.
Oi. I typed a fairly long response but the website lost it. I was going to leave it be, but I guess I'm pulled in by the fact that jackilojohn is being aggressive and rude for no reason and then wondering why he's being flamed. So here goes.
Only a couple ideas from Morrowind translate well to MMOs, unfortunately. The diseased effects (which are sort of in there already) and the not knowing what a weapon could do at first (because even in Morrowind you eventually found out what it did, and you'd have to in any MMO with trading/selling--the reasons are obvious). both would be cool additions, i think, especially having to have some NPC ID weapons. would be a bit more fun.
Nameless mobs would never work because too many quests say "kill 10 young wolves for me." how do you know which ones are young, old, rabid, starving, etc? Heck in some cases, knowing the names of the animal and general directions still isn't enough (for example the hunter quests in Stranglethorn Vale in WoW....some of those animals were hard to find as is...without names, I would've spent weeks in the jungle killing tigers and hoping I was on the right track).
Nameless people would never work because graphics don't allow true originality and when you log onto an MMO with friends, you want to play that game, not hide and seek. It could work for NPCs (no name until you chat with them) but only in a game with not too many NPCs, and most people would rather have a world full of people with names revealed and not no named NPCs, but only 5 to a city. It comes down to the fun vs. realism factor. if you can incorporate both, great! but when it's one or the other, fun always wins--and rightfully so. (I just turn off the overhead things in WoW personally. I can mouse over to see if it's someone I know, and then I get to feel a bit more immersed).
Custom spells would work...for about 2 months. Then everyone would have figured out the best combos and we'd have cookie cutter spells that were obviously the best. I'd rather have a wide range of good spells to choose from than 100 abilities I could combine in spells, but knowing only a few combinations are worth it. Yes you might be able to balance this just right, but it would take far too much time...I'd rather have dev's spend time on content.
The ability to steal anything would never work. People would steal so often there would be nothing there to steal anymore. And if they made an item respawn rate high enough to support 10,000 players stealing things, it would lag servers and spawn a whole new generation of item farmers. If they set time limits on how often you could steal, it would ruin the whole reason you liked stealing anything, anytime. It just couldn't work in an MMO.
The other things you've mentioned (armored spellcasters, being able to chosoe any combo of skills, etc.) are already in many MMOs and are being implemented in others in development...I won't touch free for all PvP, that dumb debate has finally slowed down here and it's 2 months too late as is.
Now as far as people thinking MMOs are perfect, give me a break. If you've spent 2 seconds reading any post on this forum you'd know that to be untrue. What most people really want is the same thing you've been asking for (though you may not have realized it). People want to feel like their character is really affecting the world and changing it. Stealing things, making your own spells, building houses all those things show you changing the world in a way that sticks around longer than a respawn rate. I don't know if MMOs will ever pull it off, but kudos to them if they do.
And chill out, man. People are allowed to have an opinion that's different than yours. Don't take it so personally. It doesn't mean they aren't thinking about it, it just means they thought about it and disagreed.
I really didn't want to do this....I was hoping people would really think how could you make this or that work. Instead people just say not possible and go on thinking how they always do. If I sound aggressive it's just because I live with constant frustration from people that won't keep an open mind.
Nameless mobs would never work because too many quests say "kill 10 young wolves for me." how do you know which ones are young, old, rabid, starving, etc?
Well, this is kind of exactly my point if you would think into it a bit. Why should we have young wolves that look so much like a grown wolf that you can't tell them apart. This is a simple fix for an mmorpg. Make the creatures so distinct and varied that it's easy to tell them apart by site. Then you can have ingame drawing that npc's might have or descriptions. Some people will instantly say that would just be stupid...I don't want to learn all of that. I just have to go back to my original idea....mmorpg's are dumbed down. I learned what the different types of creatures were called and looked like in Morrowind so why can't you in a mmo. Maybe I didn't explain why I hate seeing names above everything. It just makes it look so fake. No matter what you can't actually become emmersed in a world were everything has a name above it's head......
"Nameless people would never work because graphics don't allow true originality and when you log onto an MMO with friends, you want to play that game, not hide and seek. It could work for NPCs (no name until you chat with them) but only in a game with not too many NPCs, and most people would rather have a world full of people with names revealed and not no named NPCs, but only 5 to a city."
--------Does graphics engines limit what can be done today? Go look at a game called project offset and tell me how limited things are. I'm not against being able to tell someones name but just having it floating above their head all the time is stupid. Maybe just make it so when you are looking at them a simple name comes up. Why do we need this big glowing circle around the person when we target them. This just makes the game that much more unrealistic and non emmersive. If anyone gets drawn into the mmorpg's on the market today....then they could probably watch a screensaver of fish swimming around and think they were about to die from a lack of oxygen. As for wanting to know who your friends are ok....I'll give you that after you add a friend you can see his name just fine. Would that work ?
Custom spells would work...for about 2 months. Then everyone would have figured out the best combos and we'd have cookie cutter spells that were obviously the best. I'd rather have a wide range of good spells to choose from than 100 abilities I could combine in spells, but knowing only a few combinations are worth it.
--------I don't think you look at this with an open mind at all. Imagine how far this can be taken. You can have all the different types of spells that mmorpg's have. Stuns, roots, speed reduction, dot's, direct damage, heal, healing dots, buffs, debuffs, constant effect, blindness, and all of these can vary in any way you choose to create them. So, your saying it would be better to have all these different spells just a set way....little to nothing you can do to change them than having all these different types of spells and everyone choose how they want to make them. With this system you might have someone that wants to create a spell that does less damage but does every type of damage....this way whatever the persons weakness is it will hit them for sure....maybe not as hard if they had concentrated on one damage type and got lucky enough to hit their weakness with it. I mean just think about all the different things you could do....and to say it couldn't be balanced well yes....it could be balanced with time and in the end it would be a much better system. Here is another example lets say you created your charactor to tank really really good but was kind of slow....with this spell creation style you could make a spell that slowed a player speed by 15% for 1 minute to lower him to your speed and give you the edge you needed if he tried to run. If you done this it would be all about who used there head enough to make a good combination and learn how to use it. As for everyone using the same spells this just wouldn't happen because the spells you can use is limited by the amount of magic you have and no one would have the same amount of magic because items/enchants/races/level/ would be affecting how much magicka you have. If you come back bashing this I will be so confused as to how you can't see that it would work just fine.
The ability to steal anything would never work. People would steal so often there would be nothing there to steal anymore.
-------- this is a simple one to fix. Make the theif classes just that. He is a thief and not that good at combat. If you want to be a thief then you have to give up alot of damage dealing and defense stats. Also, make it hard to take things and if anyone caught you doing it... this means any NPC that seens you do it then the punishment is harsh....adding risk and keeping people from just doing it at will. Also, if the devs were creative enough to think this out they would have this content nicely placed in the game and balance things out so that it works well and give the people a reason to be a thief. Here is another way you could keep people from taking things all the time. Thiefs can't carry alot at one time because they are trying to be stealthy and not carry large bags. If they try to conceal to many objects then guards will realise they are hiding something under their clothes and in comes the punishment I talked about. This would be so adjustable that it would allow devs to balance it out no matter what.
"Now as far as people thinking MMOs are perfect, give me a break. If you've spent 2 seconds reading any post on this forum you'd know that to be untrue. What most people really want is the same thing you've been asking for (though you may not have realized it). People want to feel like their character is really affecting the world and changing it. Stealing things, making your own spells, building houses all those things show you changing the world in a way that sticks around longer than a respawn rate.I don't know if MMOs will ever pull it off, but kudos to them if they do."
If I can come up with good ideas on how to put these aspects in mmorpg's then I hope to god the devs could. This isn't my job to be the think tank for game companies....I wish it was though because I seem to be decent at it. I really didn't want to take the time to write all of this out because I was hoping people could figure it out on their own. Sorry, for being so aggressive I suppose it's obvious that I was completely wrong.
Well, yeah, the Enchanting and Alchemy systems in Morrowind were obviously overpowered (much more so than the spell system), but the problems you mentioned could be fixed by stuff such as only letting natural intelligence, etc. contribute to making these items. For example, even weak early healing potions and items in Morrowind are overpowered since you can spam them...any decent MMORPG has some sort of timer or limit on potion use.
The spell creation in Morrowind wasn't too overpowered since it was expensive to create them, and the "default" spells you could buy from teachers were much cheaper and also more efficient (creating a spell to do the same damage over the same area as a fireball would cost more to buy in the first place, and use more mana to cast).
But the thing I liked the most - and which hasn't been commented on, from what I've read - is the loot system...
...when you kill and loot some goblin or whatever, you can actually take the stuff you see it wearing... a lot of things might not be worth carrying back to sell, but there's the iron sword and battered shield you saw him wielding, plus his clothes and assorted junk. I really don't see why all MMORPGs can't do this, it just makes more sense. Of course, for bosses and such, there would be a good chance that when you loot, various items would be broken beyond repair, so that drops would be more reasonable.
Interesting points. And again, don't assume I didn't think things out just because I don't agree with you.
Your idea for much different looking mobs is a valid one and would probably work well, I guess I was looking at that in a backwards sort of way. However it still stands to reason that in a world with no quests about killing specific mobs (morrowind) having no names works. In a game where specific mobs are named it would be much more difficult to pull off. I know it's easy to differentiate between young and old wolves, but what if you don't know what an Ixthar is or a Gorblolb? Descriptions can help, but only so much. It could work, but I think you'd have a lot of people who didn't like it at all--and the devs have to keep people happy or lose subscribers (just ask the new devs at SWG...) Still a good point that could work.
As to customization...you said --------I don't think you look at this with an open mind at all.
I don't think you understand the true problems in any customizeable game. I'll use Magic:The Gathering as an example. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's a game where you decide what cards (abilities/spell powers) you want to use and see if you can beat someone else. You put these cards together to build a deck and play against other people to see if you can beat them. Right now on the current tournament scene, there's maybe 5 deck designs that dominate. if you're not playing one of those 5 deck designs, forget it, you can't win. This game has (literally) thousands of options, and the game designers have been making the game for 12 years with one thought in mind: game balance. yet there are always a few certain deck designs that are just plain better than the rest despite years of balancing and thousands of options. And you somehow think a new MMO is going to be able to pull this off and not find the same results?
Like I said, given extraordinary amounts of time devoted strictly to balancing they MIGHT pull it off. but I'd rather have that time dedicated to content than fixing some Guild Wars style of combo spells...especially if I were a warrior (or other non-caster).
What would be cool would be to allow spell EFFECTS to be customizable. Then each catser could feel unique without throwing game balance to the wind. Want to be an ice wizard? then make your damage spells look like ice and your root spells look like being frozen, etc. rather be nature? Damage spells become wind or rocks and root becomes vines. Give a million option there and keep the rules balanced.
As far as the stealing goes, you still never addressed the lag problems that respawning loot would cause (not to mention having city guards show up to arrest a thief...ever been in a town during a raid? NPC guards make the whole affair unbelievably laggy for most people), nor the farmer issues that would arise by farmers making uber thieves, turning it into gold then selling it.
A better idea would allow the pickpocket ability to work on mobs and give you XP. then a thief could be a thief and it would rule. That would be easily workable and allow a thief to gain XP for doing what he's supposed to do (as opposed to being a variant of the DPS/Armor ratio).
EDIT: And hey, I'm not trying to bash your ideas. you asked why nobody has implemented these features and I'm trying to tell you. I can't believe dev's looked at Morrowind and it's success and went "pfft. Stupid game, pay no attention to it." They had to have their reasons.
As far as i see it, every gameplay option Morrowind offers, except for spell customization, is present in Ultima Online. It's just totally different graphics/interface, but things like stealing every bottle standing on a table or wearing whatever combination of armor there is, or going on a murdering rampage (leading to trouble with guards), it's all in UO.
Also, about Morrowind's story, and the freedom it always promised: the ending was the worst ever. No Freedom. No Choice. I thought Dagoth Ur was RIGHT. He was making everyone on the whole island into a "higher" being. His WAYS of doing it, with those vampires etc., might have not been the best ways, but those were desperate measures. I thought Vivec should be killed. ( well, i did kill him, after lying to him and getting Wraithguard. He betrayed Nerevar after all, so why not betray him back) Ironically, this lack of freedom, and the typecasting of "You Are Good. That Guy's Evil. All the Good Guys fight the Bad Guy." makes it even more similar to an MMO.