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Persistent wold VS Mission based
Jimmy_Scythe
Member CommonPosts: 3,586
Time to open a can of worms on a split that I think is about to develope. Let me start with a little semantic grounding. MMO does not mean that the world of the game has to be persistent. It just means that alot of people can be on one server at the same time. An example of this would be something like the servers in the .Hack series where players would meet and buy items before running of to randomly generated dungeons.
Having established this, which is better? I personally don't like persistent worlds because they're more like movie lots than actual living and breathing universes. Part of what makes a univers believable is the ability to change the landscape itself and you can't do that in most persistent world based games. Also, much of the conflict of the real world is derived from the fact that resources are limited and people die and don't come back. In most persistent world games, resources are infinite with a variable set on item drops to produce rarity and death is just a minor annoyance.
Mission based however, throws the whole pretense of being an "alternate universe" out the window in order to be an actual game. I also feel that Mission based is closer to pen and paper RPGs in that smaller groups of people can play out a story that allows them to be the exclusive heros of a game rather than just another bunch of yahoos out to level as high as they can go. And finally, mission based games can move at a pace that is more like a single player RPG i.e. very little grind.
These are MY OPINIONS and are NOT SUBJECT TO CHANGE. I am however interested in hearing some other people's take on this upcoming issue in order to see which way the wind is blowing.
Comments
hmmm your the mission based system.
Try out www.fomportal.com
Its pretty much excatlly what you are talking about.
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Face of Mankind
www.fomportal.com
Best game EVER.
Even though its not out and I havent played it
Nuffsaid
i can only speak from experiences with eve-online, and there the persistant world is the game - if you mine too much the ores disappear (some alliances have taken to cultivating roid fields), alliance space changes week-to-week, PvP hotspots appear on the map.
As for the whole group-based rpg aspect, its for me a case of different people liking different things. Some people try to solo everything, others find it easy to group, some dont have enough free time to find groups to join. They seem to me to be sort of half online as there is not that much seperating them from games like secret of mana or tales of symphonia (multiplayer rpg's).
Stuff like finite resources and 'meaningful death' while in my opinion desirable, are not fun for some people - and its these people that tend to form the majority of MMORPG subs. Finite resources favour beta testers and 'day-one'ers' and create barriers to entry for new players. 'Meaningful death' means that a lot of time 'invested' in the game gets lost, and people without much free time find this annoying (especially in PvP games where they cant avoid PvP).
having said all this, im planning on playing Guild Wars, so i'll have experience of group based ORPG's (
) soon(tm).
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PvE in general is pretty lame, if you think long and hard about it. You are spending your time beating a severely gimped AI that would lose to a well trained monkey. Best not to think too long and hard why you are wasting time playing games in general actually...
I agree that meaningful death can be a pain for people who can't avoid PvP. It was actually one of the main things that turned me off L2. I wanted to play the game, but it was kind of difficult cuz I was always getting ganked while looking for quests. But, if you move away from the persistant world sure you get away from the death issue in some respects, but I also think a lot is taken away from a game if everything is instanced.
Oh, and I just thought of something here as well. I think a lot of issues arise because people want to have an effect on the story of the game without having other peoples actions effect them. I think in some ways this is why companies are going with the somewhat isolationist track of instanced zones and missions.
But again, in some cases these instanced zones are great, but if over done they kill community...
- "Solo is, will always be, the main market. A MMORPG that succeed with little or no solo appeal is doing great considering they are ignoring the main player base.''
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
and therein lies the two sides to MMORPG's - some want story-based online RPG's, others want alternative reality worlds (where the player creates the story). Neither is 'better' than the other, and they can crossover, but a MMORPG developer has to pick which 'side' they are on.
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PvE in general is pretty lame, if you think long and hard about it. You are spending your time beating a severely gimped AI that would lose to a well trained monkey. Best not to think too long and hard why you are wasting time playing games in general actually...
Meh, give the world a back story, give it a future "goal" and then leave everything else for the player to decide with little exception.
Wish looks like it will be one of the best MMO's out there that "combines both types". Someone of higher skill than someone else isn't infitismally more powerful than someone without as much skill...the mobs are actually "intelligent".....quests are one shot thing, you go out to kill a dragon, whoever gets it first gets it, and everyone else is SoL....this is a persistant MMO that is truly defined by the players.....
Also perma-death is in and of itself completely stupid. I don't want to lose a character i have put months into (and lots of money also) anything when all it takes is ONE internet hiccup to get me perma-killed. Some systems seem like it will be done right...a perma-death after X hours in game or after specific events and the next character in the bloodline starts slightly advanced....(see mourning)
Well... They both have pros and cons as someone has said. They both are good and well rounded basis for mmorpgs. Misson based is quite tiresome and persistent is just great to a further extent. I think now that devlopers are having a mixture of them both which is a good move, because we get a taste of both making gameplay that more enjoyable.
mmmmhmm... dis sho am good stuff.
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I must not fear, fear is the mind killer.
Fear is the little death that leads to obliteration, I must permit fear to pass over me and through me.
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I must not fear, fear is the mind killer.
Fear is the little death that leads to obliteration, I must permit fear to pass over me and through me.
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