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MMORPG's how can, or can they, Add more RPG to these games?
Kjarl
Member Posts: 76
Seems like there are a lot of MMORGP's out there these days and more coming out all the time. Now in my oppinion most of these games seem pretty similar to each other. The Fantasy genre has EQ, EQ2, DAoC, Lineage, Lineage2, Horizons, Asherons Call, Asherons Call2, Shadowbane, on and on and on.
Dont get me wrong some of these are awsome in the detail of how each world looks but as far as game play goes its kinda simple. You either run quest/mission after quest after quest or you camp a spot that is on par with your level range untill you reach the next level range and then move and repeat.
Seems like all people really spend time doing these days is compairing EQ to EQ2 to WoW to Lineage2 to etc etc.
I remember when I first started playing DAoC, I was there for about 1.5 years almost everyday for hours each day. I remember logging into Midguard just to climb a snowcovered mountain in the middle of nowhere just to watch the sun come up, the graphics were amazing. Now I can hardly hold my attention on a game for more than a month or two before it seems like its just the same ole same ole everyday.
When I first heard of online roleplaying games I thought about all the years I had spent sitting with my friends around someones kitchen table playing endless campains of D&D or ShadowRun or Dark Conspiracy or G.U.R.P.S or Vampire or Werewolf or Cyber Punk or Chtulu or any of a few dozen other games.
There just isnt any real interaction. "Where can I find such and such NPC?" then to go to the NPC and there are maybe 2 choices that your limited to, only 1-2 ways to respond and then you're off on the next quest.
I remember an old MUD style game, Darkages.com not sure if its still around or not. The graphics were very cartoonish and game play was very bad because, well, it was before the age of MMOs. Anyways, it had a great politcal system and religious system. If you wanted political status you had to get people to vote for you, if you did a bad job you were voted out of office as easily as in. Priests actually held sermons and going to Mass service for your Patron god gave exp.
All this caused people to rely on one another more, kinda the way Star War Galaxies tried to make people interact more by putting in the player teaches player system.
I dont know how to even suggest a fix for this, how can you possably add in more interaction to these games without bogging down the servers to the point of over load?.?..
It would be nice if they turned the major things over to the players, such as law making and city building and so on but ShadowBane tried that and it didnt really last long.
Maybe in the furture there will be more of a Cross between the EQ style of MMO and NWN where people can make moduals for thier friends to play but still have a larger world to go to when the GM isnt on., Maybe a game where there is a Core World that is as active as EQ or WoW or EQ2 but where a GM can host a server and that adds a portal to a whole new region of the world under which they write the game.
This would allow for much more diversity in the games as each GM could create thier own city and surounding environments with adventure areas. The GM would decide the level range of his area and would be given the tools to populate it with level appropriate items and mobs. He could then tweek these to suit the story for that realm. The items would be no more powerfull or rare than those found in the Core World for characters of similar level but would have more story behind them.
I dont know, maybe I am just rambling at this point. I just wanted to see what others thought, what ideas others might have to bring Roleplay back to RPG games.
Everything in this thread is my oppinion or rambling muse, please do not hijack the thread with Flame Wars crap that causes it to be locked. I am interested in oppinions not to see how 4-5 of you can flame and bash each other again.
Please keep it constructive or share your own RPG experiances.
Comments
I think player generated content is the way of the future. If you check out what people are doing in SecondLife you will be amazed. I'm actually surprised that current MMORPG's don't seem to have leveraged their player's creativity. I think the first one that truly goes all the way with this concept will be immensly successful.
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It would never have a really broad appeal, however, beyond the programming and quasi-programming community, if they do it like Linden did it for SL. I agree that SL is very creative, but (1) the creation tool is really a simplified programming script, and as a non-programmer I do not find learning a programming script engaging, fun or fulfilling in my spare time, and I suspect most non-programmer game players would have a similar reaction to it and (2) there is no real "game" in SL -- it's more or less totally player content, with Linden providing a big sandbox. SL is really a virtual reality sandbox for people who like to mess around with programming scripts in a creative way, and that's great, but it's not really a RPG.
I think what the OP was referring to was rather a "game" type game that inserted more elements of the gameplay you traditionally find in PnP RPGs. I think the main obstacle to this is that the part of the online MMORPG community that is interested in the kind of play offered by PnP RPGs is very, very small, so in order for the idea to work, it would have to be in some kind of walled off, private area like a module as the OP suggests. An "RP server" is not sufficient, because even on the RP servers most people are not RPing. It needs to be an area not generally accessible that is only accessible to people who specifically come there to RP, and not for other reasons. UO's "private" server/emulators have done this in a number of cases (and it works because people are screened before they are admitted to play there), but most gaming companies are *not* going to support private emulators of their game, obviously. The way that can be done in game would be to follow the NWN model of having player-designed modules, but the bugbear there is that the design tools are hard to design well so that they can be both friendly to the non-programmer yet powerful enough to design interesting areas and campaigns. It would be an interesting idea if someone wanted to do it, but my suspicion is that because the PnP RP player element is such a small component of the total MMORPG player base, not much will be done in this direction.
The OP brought up the idea of dynamic content generation. In nearly all current MMOs the content is either a) static or b) generated by the devs/GMs on some regular schedule. Both are horrible ways to feed a "dynamic PST world".
I have thought about allowing players to generate content themselves. They work for free and there is no shortage of very talented people out there. The problem i see with player generated content is that you have to make the tools flexible enough to be useful, but not so flexible that the content they create doesn't break the "look and feel" of the world.
For example say we have a PST in a medevil setting. It wouldn't make anysense to allow players to create firearms (oh wait they did this in WoW didn't they?) or allow players to create the 7-11 scavenger hunt. Some would say just make a rule saying the content much fit within the story. The problem is there will always be people who break the rules. In the end it doesn't really solve the problem, all it does is trade in one problem (lack of dynamic content) with another (policing the content makers to ensure they stay within the story).
The solution lies in using the events in the world to create content. Some people are good at finding/making their own content in an MMO. Many more, however, want their hand held and for someone to "tell" them what to do. You could still have devs/GMs create "super" events on occasion like burning down a city or announcing that a new dungeon in the frost mountains was found. The bulk of the content however should be generated by what players already do in the world. Then again for that to happen an MMO would have to be built from the ground up as a dynamic world and sadly most MMOs are nothing more than window dressing.
I'm being intentially vague here.
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Player ran conent, plus more advanced AI for NPCs's will make this game genre rise to new levels. It's one of the reasons I'm concentrating in Intelligent Systems in college, cause I would like to delv into making MMO NPC's smarter and able to do more with players. Also I honestly belive that dynamic worlds seriously needs to be done away with. One of the things I hate most about today's MMO's is that quests being completed and actions done by players have no real effect on the world itself, just on the player base. We need to get a system that can create new quests and new things to do as time goes on instead of the same players doing the same crap as before that have no real impact in the world they play in. If someone could create a gameworld that has NPC's who act on their own, make their own decisions, and basically live in the game world independently, that would be all they would need to create a system that can generate quests based in current events, location, etc. that the players can partake in and whose outcome can have concequences on the world and actually leed to change. Through this, more in depth player ran conent could also be implemented as well.
That's just my view though...