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Is this the best that it gets?
Akimitsu18
Member Posts: 17
Hello, this is my first post. Before I go any further, I'd like to point out that, while I do know a bit about computers, I'm not super knowledgeable in the intricacies of MMO networking, so I'd appreciate any insight, or help in fixing any misconceptions I might have.
Now, to put my question simply; Are modern MMO games right now representative of the best effort current technology allows, or current developers are capable of on a realistic scale? I've been playing MMO games for a while now, since Asheron's Call, and I have to say that it really doesn't seem as though these games are progessing at the same pace as other games. In fact, aside from modest improvements in graphics, nothing seems to be changing at all.
I'm personally getting really tired of holding RMB to look around, or having to utilize hotkeys in order to fight opponents. I'm especially tired of cooldowns, unreasonable level requirements and other arbitrary limitations put in to funnel all the players into a narrow space. Years ago, I had the impression that this sort of gameplay stemmed from the need to sacrifice "real" gameplay mechanics in favor of good network communications between servers and players. But now, when I can download 1.36 GB in 20 minutes, I have to wonder why the gameplay hardly changes.
I know there are MMOs out there that utilize different methods of playing the game that I would find more appealing, but I've noticed that all of those games usually wind up doing poorly.
So, if anyone knows about the network intricacies of MMOs, and why things are this way, I would really love to be enlightened. I look forward to the day when we can play games as immersive as single player titles, like Oblivion or Far Cry 2.
Comments
Gameplay-wise I guess it's still inviable to get more realistic, while bandwidth may have greatly increased over the last decade, latency is still something that creates a very tough barrier, a MMO with such detailed gameplay needs very low latencies and this is very hard to achieve on a centralized server with thousands of players online or thousands of kilometers of distance.
I think a big reason for that is World of Warcraft.
World of Warcraft became so popular that it basicly relaunched the genre. This means that a lot of people have only recently been introduced to traditional mmorpg gameplay and they aren't tired of it yet.
With that said, I do think a lot more different kind of MMORPGs are comming. Games like DC Universe Online, The Agency and TERA Online among many others are now going for a more "Action" mmorpg. Final Fantasy XIV is said to have no levels, it will be interesting to see what will come of that.
I think we will see a lot of new kinds of MMOs released over the next 3 years or so.
If there wasn't a big trade off for having a few thousand people all playing together, every game would do it.
Old school MMORPG players used to respect this. There is a graphic trade off, a real time aiming trade off, and until BioWare a story trade off.
All the network stuff going isn't just magically there, there has to be trades offs somewhere, or first person shooters would have way more that 30ish people in an online match.
There are still technology limits and intentional limits derived from greed.
First of all, how much you can download is not indicative of the technology stack that is required to run an MMO with high graphics. This is because a server doesn't just communicate with you but thousands of others in real time. It doesn't matter how fast your connection is, all "pipes" have to eventually narrow down and combine into a few to get back to the central server. You only need bandwidth for your computer, the server needs bandwidth for everyone.
Second, companies are only going to publish the technology that makes them the most money. Intel sells as many units of i7 CPUs as possible to get their R&D money back, plus as much profit as possible...all of this before they release the i8, so that the i8 doesn't eat away at i7 sales. MMOs are forced into the this same strategy because of the high cost and high risk. These things cost multi-millions to make and they aren't able to chance that kind of cash on the hopes that everyone will like it (ever wonder why car companies seem to produce similar body styles each year?).
The technology can still be stretched, but there's always a limit. It's possible to do real-time combat and aiming over net, it's possible to do brillian graphics, it's possible to do massive battles, it's possible to do huge open and dynamic world, and it's possible to do thousands of diffirent armors for characters to wear.
But it's not possible to do everything. And it's a huge attempt to do even some of the things. While a typical single player game might offer something like 50 hours of content, an MMO should offer more than a thousands hours of content. It's enormous project, and those studios trying to stretch the limits of technology often don't have the resources or aren't ready to spend the time to pull it off.
There are already some games with real-time aiming. Even if it's shut down now I'd say Tabula Rasa was one exaple where it worked. I think we'll just have to wait a couple of years and some developr is going to make a really good game with combat as good as in single player game, yet still massive battles. The technology really isn't the limit even if it's hard to do, we've already seen quite massive battles in multiplayer fps games and those do work.
Tabula Rasa didn't have real-time aiming. All it did was lock the mouse cursor at the center of the screen, and require that the player be holding still, and holding the cursor on his enemy in order to shoot, depending on the weapon. I guess that's not really that different from real time aiming, in how it seems to the player. For what it's worth, that game had a fun control scheme.
Since people are responding, I suppose I'll pose a few follow up questions to help me better understand.
So, technological limitations are one of the main contributors to the trade-offs in gameplay for MMOs. This being the case, as the internet connections get faster, shouldn't companies be getting better and faster servers? Should not, then, the MMOs be more complex and faster? I see no real changes in gameplay since the likes of EQ and Asheron's Call, is this observation inaccurate?
Would it impact the network performance of MMO "A" to have more complex animations, models, textures, lighting or shadows than MMO "B"? If so, why? Are there complex graphics calculations being passed over the network, or something like that?
Again, thanks for all the info peoples.
I think you need to type client/server model in google
Think like an engineer: Why would you ever want to send graphical calculations or any other locally processed data to the server and vice versa? Graphics have nothing to do with network latency.
Take for example Eve: It is quite good looking but the game engine is very limited. There is no Newtonian flight or other cool features like knockback. It minimizes the data being sent and received. Games that have more advanced movement/physics such as FPS games or flight sims etc. would require more traffic between the client and the server. In these games minimal latency is very crucial to the gaming experience. Nobody wants to be killed in a glorious spectacle of a frustrating slideshow. Hence these games usually have smaller servers but even these games suffer from "lag" when the server is even few hundred kilometers away.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Wel if you truly look at singleplayer games that have multiplayer feature's, do you see them having multiplayer feature's where hunderds of people can play simultaneously together on one server. That alone would already have answered your question.
We are still far away from Farcry 2 graphics to see in a MMORPG, but we already surpased Oblivion for some time as sorry at the time the game looked great, but today it surely looks pretty dated, that is when comparing it to the latest singleplayer games.
Also I have a pretty good internet connection, where I am able to download 3gb in 15 min, but that does not mean everyone has that type of speed, of course it helps having great speeds, but we need to understand that this is a genre played by many and not everyone has acces to speeds like that, so there needs to be some sort of sacrifice placed into these games to reaqch a large audience.
Do we want a farcry graphic like MMORPG, visually of course, but if we are honost we know that would not do any good in the long run, back in the day most of us gamers knew and respected if we needed to upgrade, buy new systems or parts to be able to buy and play the newest games, we are still here but we are a minority compared to the majority that is into games and expects to play everything ever released. We also knew that we did not upgrade our system for one game, today's gen. of players for some reason thinks they need to upgrade their system to play one game, I mean we all have seen the topics "I am not gonna upgrade to play this game", where normaly a gamer understands he or she isn't just upgrading for one game but is preparing him/herself for the future of games. OF course even us who upgrade might run into issue's, but I feel long time gamers have a better understanding towards it.
Looking that up on google was actually rather informative. Thanks.
Now, as for Eve Online, I see what you mean there, too. But I suppose I must admit to that being a sort of bait question, because this is leading me to a conclusion: The capabilities of client/server systems haven't improved since the era of Asheron's Call. I know that's not true.
What I'm trying to say is that it seems to me that the only thing that's changed about MMOs at all is cosmetic. They all operate in exactly the same way, as if my bandwidth between my PC and LotRO isn't accomplishing any more than my PC with Asheron's Call did years ago. I suppose it's possible that they're now using smaller servers, or that there are just that many more players playing LotRO than there were in AC so we're all getting the same/equivalent bandwidth, or something. Am I anywhere close to what's going on?
Edit: Reklaw, I'm afraid you seem to have misinterpreted somethings I've said. I hope you don't get the impression I'm expecting we have any capabilities or anything right now. I'm simply asking why MMOs haven't seem to progress in their capabilities beyond simple visuals. Also, do they represent the best effort that we can do, not just in bandwidth or speed; but also in immersiveness and depth of gameplay?
Half of my original post was about game mechanics, and not networks or servers or bandwidth at all. I'll recap: Why is there an apparent stagnation in the progress of the gameplay mechanics seen in the majority of MMOs? All of these upcoming games, and the majority of MMOs for most of the time they've been around have always played almost exactly the same way. And those that are changed, only alter secondary or supporting gameplay features, nothing primary.
Planetside was an MMOFPS. So it was an MMO with FPS gameplay (manual aiming.) Any argument that manual aim can't be done in MMOs is thus wrong. (Arguments of whether it should be done might be valid though.)
Why shouldn't it be done? Well it doesn't make sense for all games.
Lock Target + Use Abilities is a system used in games because players get it. It's simple to understand, easy to use, and the developers can flexibly let players do all sorts of crazy things.
It's part of how RPGs try to downplay the importance of twitch skill by design. They're games intended to make players feel like heroes, regardless of how physically adept you are at manipulating the controls. Of course the better MMORPGs have learned its still important to make a deep game, and so they end up requiring tactical and strategic skilll (the other types of skill, apart from twitch skill.)
Due to the nature of how MMORPGs are designed, and how content is built for them, they will always be behind singleplayer games in terms of quality. This is because you only get a finite amount of dev resources for a project, so naturally a game that focuses every effort on crafting a tight singleplayer experience will provide superior gameplay to an MMORPG which has to spread itself over a great many more systems.
But being years behind singleplayer games doesn't mean things aren't improving. MMORPGs are finally beginning to use linked animations (one character performing an animation that ties it closely with another character.) This will allow a much higher fidelity of combat visuals.
In current games you can play an attack animation and it doesn't matter if your axe swing is 3 feet short of the target: the combat calculation still processes and you can land damage.
In future games, you will always see the axe strike the target because your animation will interface directly with their hit reaction animation. If the opponent parries, you'll actually see him deflect your weapon with his (rather than the current generic parry animation that doesn't really connect with anything.)
By the sound of it, SW:TOR will use this tech. Also the asian MMORPG that released a trailer a few months back showed one fighter kneeling atop the other's chest and pummeling with punches. Also WOW already has a rudimentary version of this tech (chars being held by bosses in their jaw or fist.)
It's hardly new tech. Street Fighter 2's throws are essentially the same tech (and I'm sure there are even earlier examples.) But like I said, MMORPGs have split their dev resources to implementing a lot of other systems so
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Modern MMOs are not representative of the best effort current technology. They are just representative of what can be done with the usually available budget for development. Content-driven MMOs have to deliver a huge amount of quests, animations, landscape, models, textures etc. Most of the budget is used for that content and not really for technological innovation. Another important aspect is the targeted customer group. MMOs are made to be playable by as many customers as possible. Farcry2 graphics? No way. High-end local computing? No way. Massive realtime and exact data processing? No way. There is no point developing an MMO for the top 10% of PC-systems out there, especially without knowing what a top PC will look like after development.
If the MMO budget was increased a lot, if high-risk was a non-issue, if customer numbers were irrelevant and if the goal was to go to the limits of the technological possible then we would see something truly different from todays games. I personally believe that a FPS in a huge and dynamic world with Farcry graphics, insane AIs and fancy synchronisation tricks is possible. Its just that noone has the money or will to develop it.
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Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Thanks for the replies everyone. This has been rather helpful, if disturbing.
The conclusion I'm being lead to here, it seems, is that there is not now, nor will there be (any time soon) an MMO that I'll actually enjoy in the same way that I enjoy other games, and not due to "regular" games being technologically more advanced than MMOs. The only reason I play an MMOs now is because my brother plays, and it's fun to play games with my brother. Most of the time, though, I just talk about how nearly every single thing we encounter could be much better.
Now, I suppose a question for your opinions: Are MMO representing what you would most enjoy playing? I ask this, because... well, as the old saying goes: "You can't please everyone," and MMOs are ideally attempting to accomplish just that.
Do you happen to know next week's lotto numbers?
EVE indeed has got Newtonian physics(bumping for the win!), it has nothing to do with network traffic. In fact that would be unaffected.
The physics in EVE is set the way it is due deeper game mechanics.
While I am not very sure what you are asking, here is 'your' issue I believe.
Because there is no progression.
It works similar to evolution on biological level - by random occurence of mutation.
Sometimes a game developer introduce something new and creative and if it is well timed and other required factors are met, the game is successfull and other developers copy it, giving live to new genre or mechanics and changing game market forver.
Note:
EVE Online is something very unique and unlike anything on the market. The most of the sandbox style game that was ever relesed.
I think perhaps the teck doesn't advance as fast as it could because not everyone can keep up with the best PC all the time. Keeping the graphics a bit outdated means more people can play. As for the connection speed...well sure, you can d/l a couple gigs in 20 mins...but not everyone has this kinda speed available to them. So making the reqirements too high, will also limit your customers. If few can play the game without lag...then that means fewer customers.
As for the gameplay itself...I hope that it is not the best it gets. That would mean it is all downhill from here. So far the past few years have already been a downhill slide for MMOs. AC,EQ, SWG-Pre NGE, UO-pre AoS all had way more to offer in gameplay options than todays crop does.
I have gotten past the idea of wanting to see better graphics to think there is improvement if the graphics are decent. Now I am much more concerned with gameplay. But all I see is level grinding to the next best gear games in the near future.
mm this question is random and vague in mmo world there are so many need that you count it like that ,exemple
some want maplestory style mmo other mabinogi ,other wow ,other eve .
mmo is very vast you will have to precise your question
if we go on the broad view right now technology limit a lot of stuf that gamer have been asking for years
like in wow say you went to wintergrasp before it wasnt limited you had 5 to 15 second lag spiike because of techno limit of right now same for graphic the bandwith or whatever guru want to call it isnt there
next year i believe we ll be having a new techno from microsoft (yes i know them again)it will allow instead of 50 vs 50 player like now more like 1000 vs 1000
but untill then game maker are having a hard time making mmo massive like its suppose to be
ask athene from live.worldofathene.com
he did an event on the 15 ,we were 4000 trying to make an event happen it just didnt happen ho i bet if we asked wow they would probably say anything but the truth the server just cant do massive
even if wow is called massive multiplayer online the fact is all game out there are just multiplayer online maybe they ll get massive but for now they arent
so any idea that either involve lot of people or high quality graphic is bound to fail if you add the massive equation .
As a side note , concerning single player games with multiplayer modes with players slots not reaching the hundreds , I think it is more due to the crappy hardware that run most servers (im thinking fps , you will never see a rts with 50v50 players ) server hosters use the cheapest parts that can barely run the game fluid at max players (say 32) , but you can run a server with 128 slots or more with normal performance if you had a serious cpu and ram on it and not the garbage leased by server hosting companies , and you need the bandwith aswell obviously .
What I mean is that this is more inadequate hardware than coding limitations , and you could totally make a mmo with twitch fps combat as long as your server architecture is up to the task , but EVE is the only mmo I know of which actually innovate in this matter
EVE already got 1000+ men battles :-P
What, in your opinion, makes a game like Oblivion more immersive than a game like LoTRO or WoW?
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im to lazy too use grammar or punctuation good
oh didn t know that gd about eve ty for input.so might like another poster said here server from most game are subpar
must be niceeing 500 vs500 ship galactic battle
They are not sub-par, just different architecture - code and hardware wise.
EVE use one huge server cluster with node type data processing. There are 20k-45k people online every day in one persistent world!
Since I'm not yet sure how to quote multiple people, or review posts while I'm writing my reply, I'll go from memory. Forgive me if I'm a bit short.
Lotto numbers? I'm not predicting the future, I'm simply trying my best to understand the apparent trends in the MMO gaming industry. For all the supposed advances that every game brags about, I keep seeing more of the same.
My problem is this. When the likes of Asheron's Call and Everquest were around, I wasn't impressed with the way they played. Nothing to do with needing fancy graphics, or bandwidth intensive interactions. I accepted them, and they were fun for a while. I took this gameplay environment as a necessity due to the staggeringly slow speed of dialup. Then came iteration after iteration of high-speed internet, and the always increasing technology in computers, and MMOs stayed the same. So, what I thought was a necessity because of poorly performing PCs and internet, is still today the staple of MMO gaming. So, I started this thread to determine if it's simply that technology hasn't advanced as much as I imagined and thus can't allow "better" experiences, or if it's a decision on the part of the Developers or producers.
I've noticed the way the gaming industry works. New ideas aren't introduced unless the developer is convinced it's going to lose money without it. WoW's popular, we should copy it instead of trying to make something new. In evolution, random mutations are happening constantly, in every generation of every creature that's born, and the ones that live long enough to reproduce pass on that mutation, thus allowing change to gradually take place.
I'm not argumentative by nature. I don't seek to belittle anyone's opinion, but I would have to disagree on Eve being a unique enough game to warrant the description "unique," indicating that it's one of it's primary qualities. Yes, I'll admit that it did a great many things right. Its economy is very interesting, to say the least, though I won't comment on how "fun" it is. I also think outfitting your ship had (read: Had) the capability of being fun, at some point during the drawing process. However, each ship has a clearly defined role, and the system has been designed in such a way that, in order to compete with other players, there are only a fraction of possible combinations that are of any use at all.
But despite the cool features that are added, they still serve to do one thing: support the AC/WoW clone system of gameplay that Eve still uses. You still click on an enemy to target him, execute hotkeys in simple patterns, respond to relatively simple status effects and changes, and wait for the lifebar on your opponent to disappear first. Oh, and you set up a bearing and speed, or set up an orbit around your opponent. The game is actually less interactive than WoW. If they would have copied WoW more closely, and allowed you to control your heading and speed with keyboard/mouse (adjusted for the fact that you can move up and down instead of jump), the game would have been better, I think.
Talismen, I think you might be most like-minded person to reply yet. However, my internet connection is run of the mill. I have Comcast's most basic broadband plan. Before that, I had a slower mobile broadband card, before that I had a 768k connection in italy, earlier a T1, and earlier: dialup. AC performed the same on dialup back then as LotRO does now, and LotRO performs the same now, as it did what I used my connection in italy on American servers. And honestly, how many people use dialup? I don't mean to make assumptions on the numbers here, but I must for sake of argument. I would be surprised if the majority of us weren't on broadband capable enough to run a significantly more network intensive MMO.
This, when taken as evidence, leads me to believe that MMOs today (when compared to a decade ago), require comparitively less equivalent network resources to run for both client and server, per player, as expressed by operating cost. It also leads me to believe that developers are merely making the "same old" game, at the cheapest price possible, putting in the least effort possible, designing it to work on the least bandwidth possible so that they can load their servers with paying subscribers and rake in the money. All this, while never truly intent upon making a good game that they could take pride in.
Edit: There are posts above mine which weren't there when I started typing. I'll include my replies here.
For me, I believe a game is made more immersive as you take steps to make the game seem more literal. I also think allowing the player to feel creative helps the overall fun factor. For instance: I loathe progress bars that require me to sit there and wait. Especially if I'm making 50 planks of treated wood, and each one takes 5 seconds. Or mining in LotRO. Why not replace that with a minigame? I think minigames are invaluable, especially if you blend them into the core gameplay.
I'll give an example. Walk up to a rock, equip your pick. Then, have the player look at the rock, click on it to swing at said rock, and the point of impact is where the mouse cursor was. The strategy will be in where to hit the rock. Certain parts of it will be more receptive to the strikes of the pick, and will yield greater returns each time. These rocks can be randomly generated in their shape, or made in many shapes by the developers during the game's creation.
That took only the amount of time it took to type that at a reasonable clip. It wouldn't require significant sacrifices, if any, in the name of bandwidth, it wouldn't require twitch gameplay from the players who don't enjoy it, and it would allows players to feel creative, and give them something to actually learn.
I have gained the opinion that "fun" is a combination of creativity, and learning. I gained this opinion after reading several game development articles written by several developers, and watching a TON of game developer seminars and conferences. Anyways, if you give a player the ability to be creative, and to learn how to adapt to a situation as opposed to funneling every player into a narrow tube and saying "this is what you're allowed to do." This isn't about sandbox or themepark, because currently both genres of MMO funnel players.
Interesting post and in my opinion pretty much on target. There are many here that know more about the MMO genre than I but I would say that as long as this "business model" continues to be profitable it will not change much. Like the old Lays potato chip commercial said, "munch all you want, we'll make more".