Still, who knows how they are designing it. Like I have said in previous posts, "story" can be more about "what has happened" and "what is going on now" without handing a script to players and telling them "you must do this and in this order." If they build story and leave the future open, this could be very cool....
Yeah, but he said they want the story to matter to the players. How do you do that? There are two ways. You either have the story directly impact player characters individually or you have the story impact the world in which they play.
We know what the individual approach leads to.
But with the world approach also, if it's going to cause changes which really matter then they have to have it planned out ahead of time. The code has to be in place so that when the switch is thrown things will happen. --The war between the forces of light and darkness rages untill ultimately darkness prevails--. Ok, but then the code has to be in place so that the next day the sun will fall out of the sky and demons walk the Earth. It has to be planned out ahead of time. It would certainly be more cool than the individual approach where I take my turn at saving the princess and nothing really changes but there would still have to be pre-determined outcomes. At best maybe there could be a few different possible outcomes.
One big problem with the world approach is that people might end up feeling left out. "Oh crap, I didn't play the day the sun fell and I missed it." Or, "Dang it, I didn't get to be a part of the big culminating battle when those guys killed the White Wizard-Defender of All That is Good and Decent and now the Sun has already fallen and our demons are walking the Earth and I hardly got to be a part of it at all."
Another question about that bigger world approach is how do you have everyone participate. What is it that they do on a day to day basis which tips the scales one way or the other? Do they just go out and kill stuff? Does each little quest tip the scales a tiny bit one way or the other? With that approach you could get really big and really cool events and changes to the world but you still have the problem of how do you engross players in the day to day gameplay.
I'm starting to ramble...
Anyway, the point is that if there is going to be a story that matters to the players it really does have to be planned out ahead of time. The only way to avoid that would be to make a very sandboxy game in which the players themselves shape the world and there probably isn't even any point in going into that discussion.
No, I think you are dead on right about this. It may be, just like the old nostalgia argument, that the illusion given by a storyline really works best with newer gamers. The epic thread of "rescue the princess, defeat the lich king" is dry. Heck, Tolkien himself, were he alive, would have his hands full making it fresh.
A storyline game will never feel like a world. Now, not to say there cannot be epic events in the making (i.e., a war brewing). But the days of the trite staple fantasy story line are over in gaming, I think, and best left to books and movies.
Still, who knows how they are designing it. Like I have said in previous posts, "story" can be more about "what has happened" and "what is going on now" without handing a script to players and telling them "you must do this and in this order." If they build story and leave the future open, this could be very cool. If they pre-plan the future and do this in an obvious manner (like WOLTK), this will wear thin very quickly.
Agreed. Story is meaningless unless I can make my own adventures. This is not necessarily "sandbox" but certainly has elements of it. Now within the context of my own adventures however- there needs to be rich lore, meaningful story, rules, and conditions. It can be debated endlessly how or even if this can be accomplished. If your own "story" ends up having no impact on either yourself or the world around you, then its just another on-rails game- which can be fun for a while sure, but it's not in any way going to evolve the MMO genre in a positive direction.
Agreed. Story is meaningless unless I can make my own adventures. This is not necessarily "sandbox" but certainly has elements of it. Now within the context of my own adventures however- there needs to be rich lore, meaningful story, rules, and conditions. It can be debated endlessly how or even if this can be accomplished. If your own "story" ends up having no impact on either yourself or the world around you, then its just another on-rails game- which can be fun for a while sure, but it's not in any way going to evolve the MMO genre in a positive direction.
Agreed. Story is meaningless unless I can make my own adventures. This is not necessarily "sandbox" but certainly has elements of it. Now within the context of my own adventures however- there needs to be rich lore, meaningful story, rules, and conditions. It can be debated endlessly how or even if this can be accomplished. If your own "story" ends up having no impact on either yourself or the world around you, then its just another on-rails game- which can be fun for a while sure, but it's not in any way going to evolve the MMO genre in a positive direction.
Agreed
In the context of an MMO story you have two possibilities. You can forge you own adventure story or you are a citizen of a community with a story and you are playing your part.
The problem with an MMO and forging you own story is that usually msot stuff is canned and it becomes hollow. Usually you have no real or obvious impact either.
The idea of being a citizen of some side where you do your part has worked better to some extent, but it again falls into the problem of a static world where nothing changes. How many times will you get a bunch of people together to kill the same dragon before there is no real "story to it".
One thing I like about Champions Online is for the single person story development it gives you a Nemesis at level 25 with personalized minions and villain and personalized missions (although they are semi-canned) and in addtion various NPC citizens walked up to you and mention various stuff you have done in the past like thanking you for defeating some boss by name. However while this is cool and a step in the right direction it is still hollow because I can go right back into Doctor Destructors factory and its all right there again.
In the end MMORPGs have mostly been Groundhog Day. We all know this. It is easier and somewhat possible to create somewhat tailored individual story. But ass soon as it starts interacting with a static world that has no permanence in its accomplishments it will still seem hollow story-wise.
When we shift to the broader context of being a citizen in a community. You would need to run events. Things like an invasion of a city. Again Champions Online did this for it early-start event. But there was no "real" story, because the city was exactly the same an hour later. What you need is to have the outcome of that event directly affect the city, if you lose the city gets hurt badly and the next stage is the players need to repair it. Perhpas at this stage of the technology the reapired city will look exactly the same as the original. Ideally it change over time, but even that step adds a story where people can talk about that month where the city messed up and what Guild X or Guild Y did to help out.
Warhammer had/has an interesting concept of ranks for the capital where various stuff became avaialable once it was ranked up. Unfortunately we had little idea what this was. But it was a cool start of an idea where that faction was involved in the state of its world. It also added some incentive to not allow the city to be sieged.
In some sense the idea of being a citizen of the community and having events and such with permanent or semi-permanent consequnces (ie. multiple states that palyer interactions can shift things from one to the other) is much easier. An individual story must be rather well crafted and tailored. The borader context is more difficult simply because making a static world is simpler and easier but from a story point of view you can paint with much broader brushes and let the players write most of the story themselves.
I played EQ, WoW, Vanguard, Aion, all games with supposidly extensive lore. I didn't read any of it, because I didn't understand most of it.
I'm not braindead, it's just that I never felt interested enough to read the lore, and the game didn't provide me with more than a small glimpse and a very confusing backdrop.
I don't want the games to hold my hand like a story, I want to be free to roam in a sandbox more, but I want the story to be understandable and easy to begin with. I don't play MMO to read a novel, when it looks like a novel I tend to ignore it all together.
Still, who knows how they are designing it. Like I have said in previous posts, "story" can be more about "what has happened" and "what is going on now" without handing a script to players and telling them "you must do this and in this order." If they build story and leave the future open, this could be very cool....
Yeah, but he said they want the story to matter to the players. How do you do that? There are two ways. You either have the story directly impact player characters individually or you have the story impact the world in which they play.
We know what the individual approach leads to.
But with the world approach also, if it's going to cause changes which really matter then they have to have it planned out ahead of time. The code has to be in place so that when the switch is thrown things will happen. --The war between the forces of light and darkness rages untill ultimately darkness prevails--. Ok, but then the code has to be in place so that the next day the sun will fall out of the sky and demons walk the Earth. It has to be planned out ahead of time. It would certainly be more cool than the individual approach where I take my turn at saving the princess and nothing really changes but there would still have to be pre-determined outcomes. At best maybe there could be a few different possible outcomes.
One big problem with the world approach is that people might end up feeling left out. "Oh crap, I didn't play the day the sun fell and I missed it." Or, "Dang it, I didn't get to be a part of the big culminating battle when those guys killed the White Wizard-Defender of All That is Good and Decent and now the Sun has already fallen and our demons are walking the Earth and I hardly got to be a part of it at all."
Another question about that bigger world approach is how do you have everyone participate. What is it that they do on a day to day basis which tips the scales one way or the other? Do they just go out and kill stuff? Does each little quest tip the scales a tiny bit one way or the other? With that approach you could get really big and really cool events and changes to the world but you still have the problem of how do you engross players in the day to day gameplay.
I'm starting to ramble...
Anyway, the point is that if there is going to be a story that matters to the players it really does have to be planned out ahead of time. The only way to avoid that would be to make a very sandboxy game in which the players themselves shape the world and there probably isn't even any point in going into that discussion.
People use the criticism you used here quite often. But I would like to say this is because developers have focues on SINGULAR events.
They should instead have a series of events that form a sort of choose your own adventure for the server. Some parts are quick. You might miss the invasaion or the natural disaster that destroyed your factions city or your guilds keep. Then what is next? Give up? Settle a new place? Rebuild? These are all options and they can take a long time while also evoking a sense of participation and mattering in the borader context of the history of that server or guild.
Yes you can miss the singular event sure, but that is part of the drama. The real problem is when you miss that event and then its back to ho hum Groundhog Day lets run this place for the 134th time.
Let's take an example where the event is not warfare, but rather a natural disaster. Something you cannot stop. Perhaps a hurricane/typhoon of some sort. If you are logged on for the, I dunno let's say 12 hours, that it happens you will not be able to prevent a force of nature, but you could perhaps save some people or participate in an evacuation. A day later you log in and now you are performing different activies, searching for people and fighting off hostile NPC that think your city-state is now vulnerable. This could be a week long process. Or perhaps difference pahse with different states for the city, each taking a week to get back.
Let us say that all of these things contribute to the future state of your city. If no one does anything, you have no captial and must refound one somehwere else involving a lot of hardship for your side. If people save enough citizens, but don't fight the hostile you can rebuild but you face a full blown invasion. If you save people and fight off the hostiles you rebuild easier and faster.
In this way there is no singular event people miss. Everyone has a stake and can participate in some useful way as they long in. The even itself is not a Yes/No sort of thing. It is layered and has multiple consequnces. And most importantly the conseqences cascade off into other things, it is never the end. You all completely fuck up and don't do shit for a month. Your city-state is forced to migrate to some other site and pull together and build an entirely new city or perhaps you will simply be nomads. Its not really that hard even. Simply have 3 or 4 designated "city instantiation sites" with some canned city bits that start up and get added on later in phases. People's contribution nearby contributes to its "settledness" and after some amount of time it reaches rank 2 and after the next server maintenence a new ring of the city appears.
Then the next calamity appears, perhaps this time its a siege of your city. It lasts a week. During this time there are various aspects of the seige. To get into the city you must sneak in. Various geurilla tactics and sorties out the gate are done to make the besieging force less powerful. Quest to get food and water and other provisions occur throughout the week. And perhapd the event culminates in a final day long battle that is well publicized on a popular time frame. Do poorly in the week long activities and the other stuff and you get creamed, do well and you have a much better chance of winning the final battle with healthy troops and good morale and the advantage of you defense still being strong.
People use the criticism you used here quite often. But I would like to say this is because developers have focues on SINGULAR events.
They should instead have a series of events that form a sort of choose your own adventure for the server. Some parts are quick. You might miss the invasaion or the natural disaster that destroyed your factions city or your guilds keep. Then what is next? Give up? Settle a new place? Rebuild? These are all options and they can take a long time while also evoking a sense of participation and mattering in the borader context of the history of that server or guild.
Yes you can miss the singular event sure, but that is part of the drama. The real problem is when you miss that event and then its back to ho hum Groundhog Day lets run this place for the 134th time.
Let's take an example where the event is not warfare, but rather a natural disaster. Something you cannot stop. Perhaps a hurricane/typhoon of some sort. If you are logged on for the, I dunno let's say 12 hours, that it happens you will not be able to prevent a force of nature, but you could perhaps save some people or participate in an evacuation. A day later you log in and now you are performing different activies, searching for people and fighting off hostile NPC that think your city-state is now vulnerable. This could be a week long process. Or perhaps difference pahse with different states for the city, each taking a week to get back.
Let us say that all of these things contribute to the future state of your city. If no one does anything, you have no captial and must refound one somehwere else involving a lot of hardship for your side. If people save enough citizens, but don't fight the hostile you can rebuild but you face a full blown invasion. If you save people and fight off the hostiles you rebuild easier and faster.
In this way there is no singular event people miss. Everyone has a stake and can participate in some useful way as they long in. The even itself is not a Yes/No sort of thing. It is layered and has multiple consequnces. And most importantly the conseqences cascade off into other things, it is never the end. You all completely fuck up and don't do shit for a month. Your city-state is forced to migrate to some other site and pull together and build an entirely new city or perhaps you will simply be nomads. Its not really that hard even. Simply have 3 or 4 designated "city instantiation sites" with some canned city bits that start up and get added on later in phases. People's contribution nearby contributes to its "settledness" and after some amount of time it reaches rank 2 and after the next server maintenence a new ring of the city appears.
Then the next calamity appears, perhaps this time its a siege of your city. It lasts a week. During this time there are various aspects of the seige. To get into the city you must sneak in. Various geurilla tactics and sorties out the gate are done to make the besieging force less powerful. Quest to get food and water and other provisions occur throughout the week. And perhapd the event culminates in a final day long battle that is well publicized on a popular time frame. Do poorly in the week long activities and the other stuff and you get creamed, do well and you have a much better chance of winning the final battle with healthy troops and good morale and the advantage of you defense still being strong.
Yes, that's all good, but like you yourself said it's much simpler to build a static world. I'm not advocating static world you understand, just agreeing that's it's much simpler. What you are talking about is very ambitious, especially if there is enough variety to it so that it's not just a short, repeating loop. Because if it did loop back to the begining state every few weeks people would start getting that groundhog day feeling.
But even so, there is still that question of day to day gameplay. Honestly I think it would be easier to dream up and plan out these big events than it is to create day to day gameplay which is satisfying. So in your example you have players saving people after a typhoon, ok, but you have to ask, "is this fun for players to do?" You also have them fighting off hostile NPCs. Alright, but at what point does that lead to people screaming about mob grinding? Or maybe you have a series of quests which are triggered by the storm so that people contribute by running those quest and then you have people like me bitching about quest grinding. Heh, sometimes I thank God I'm not actually a game developer.
Boss mobs get tired of groups taking a pass at them. If enough (some randomzied value) failed attempts are made, then the boss aggros and carries the fight to a nearby down, carrying vengeance to any players in its path.
Ex. Groups keep hassling Smaug the Red Dragon. After some randomized number of failed attempts (say 8) to take Smaug down, Smaug spreads his wings and flies down to an inhabitated town or noob area.
Meanwhile, Bob the 1st level warrior and Jan the 3rd level Mage are logging on the hunt beetles together and to knock out some low level quests. Bob stares in terror as Jan suddenly taking 10,000 points of fire damage from Smaug the dragon, who has suddenly appeared out of nowhere. High level players are more saavy and get out of the way, but Bob the 1st level warrior and other new players of low level toons are mowed down by Smaug, who eventually leaves with a half dozen NPC buildings smouldering in his wake.
Stuff like this would be very cool. Would keep the environment alive and keep players on their toes.
Stuff like that is very cool to everyone BUT Bob the warrior and Jan the mage, who are paying the same $$ for a kick ass fun time as the other folks:)
Yes, but you would know more than anyone, that with no real risk or possibility of sting of defeat, there is no true sense of victory. Like playing a sports game where both teams on the field are guaranteed a win.
It might suck to lose a ballgame, but it must feel so much the sweeter to win, partially in light of the pain that was avoided in not losing. (I can only speak of non-professional games in that regard, but you would know about the pro stuff.)
I've been smacked down in EQ before, lost a bubble of experience, once or twice even cancelled in nerd rage. But I was back on the next day playing, more excited than before. Like the PVP'ers in other kinds of games slam the keyboard when they're pwned, but end up back playing soon again for the rush. Different people have different tolerances for defeat, but there are lots of folks who are losing their tolerance for freely-handed victories (i.e., some veteran WOW players). The "challenge" in MMO gaming has got to come back.
But, like you said, you have chosen your market direction and are three years into development. We will have to see what you have cooking.
Random death because some uncaring guild decided to poke the dragon too many times doesn't sound like that much fun. (Losing is the least fun part of playing any game, but without losing there is no thrill to winning. What is really unfun is seeing lobotomized mobs that pass by you as if you were in another instance.) This is in reference to the dragon running around an rampaging random newbs in a zone far, far away. They will have no clue, and in a game like EQ, have enough problems just getting started. Random orc pawn (or the rare centurian) or skele with a low delay dagger rampaging around was fun. Those are entertaining. Some random ass ran around and made everything dualwield FS daggers? OMG raid bosses, but at least there was a reward for it. The random overly buff monster that can be overcome though community (or extra effort by group/solo)effort is exciting. Random death with no ability to retaliate is silly. Challenging content is not an issue for me. I led raids against the sand giants before there were people high enough level to single group them.
Maybe that dragon should go and poke guild members that didn't attend the raid or other high "ranking" people. However, this really only sounds entertaining if it is an EQ type setup where zerging the boss or another guild moving in and taking down the target is possible. Plus, harsh death penalty required.
Bringing back random newb stomp npcs might be fun but they really only worked in EQ, to me, because it was possible to kill them with minimal loses through coordinated zerging since levels and equipment were not overly important (aside from non-necro casters). They were like the bully on the street that you knew could be taken down if everyone would simply cooperate. These might not work in todays era due to these games and their tactics no longer being new.
And no, I hated spectre trains, 30 min long dvinn rampages, ghoul lord trains, random goober touching the wrong wall bringing down the entire house karnor's trains. (Well, different strokes, but I always had a laugh watching a train. I pulled one on the Karnor's exit once, you know how they had informal agreed upon traffic; go in this exit, please leave only at that exit. Well, I pulled it in reverse where there were a bunch of folks, mostly mages who had just exited and were sitting down getting back mana. Many were probably AFK. Well, I pulled the train, then zoned in, went invis as a rogue, then zoned out and saw three of four these mages standing and casting spells, trying to control the situation. I laughed because I could imagine folks scrambling back to their keyboards, knocking over soda or chips just to get their character back into action.)Different people like different things, that is for sure. I don't desire to train people, but I had fun stomping trains. I had group capable of busting most Karnor's trains. Stomps a few ghoul lord trains in lower guk. We had good times because of the trains despite our hatred of them. But this was only because we could actually do something about the thing we hated. Like I said after, I don't care either way. However, I do feel that the psychoticness of Dvinn and the ease of training in Karnor's was over the top. The main things above were just trains that I felt were over the top. Do you even remember the early days of Dvinn trains (especially when he had his dagger) and the zone being completely unusable for thirty minutes to an hour because there was noone high enough to handle the train with Dvinn in it? This could have been solved by simply fixing his return path. Dvinn killing people when trained fine, Dvinn rampaging around the zone all day because one person poked there head in his room is way over the top.
I'd rather have helped retrieve the bodies and res people than deal with the lame concept of training. Though equally hate hard leashed mobs. Things like this do not make or break the game for me. I will put up with either assuming the game as a whole is entertaining. (Then, not to be patronizing, games more like WOW or Free Realms (in their league of challenge, not the kiddy-ish ness of Free Realms) might be more down your ally. Just as there are hardcore PVP players, there is the other end of the spectrum (carebears? and not disrespectfully) that prefer relaxed predictable cooperative gameplay. No problem with that. The gameplay I am describing, with trains and such, is probably somewhere in between; maybe a harsh PVE or hardcore PVE type of playstyle that is just a notch or two down from PVP itself.)Really? I am simply amazed. Like, I said. I have no problem with the ability of players to asshats. I have no problem with trains (aside from the rediculous over the top trains due to bad game design) and challenges not resulting from my or my groups errors. But the game as a whole had better be worth it. WoW is not worth it. EQ was good times and a good community. Faceroll gameplay is no fun (poor EQ warriors). If the game was challenging as a whole, I'd reconsider.Also, there is no commity in a game like wow. Everything breaks down in cliches and soloers that do not interact with each other.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.
People use the criticism you used here quite often. But I would like to say this is because developers have focues on SINGULAR events.
They should instead have a series of events that form a sort of choose your own adventure for the server. Some parts are quick. You might miss the invasaion or the natural disaster that destroyed your factions city or your guilds keep. Then what is next? Give up? Settle a new place? Rebuild? These are all options and they can take a long time while also evoking a sense of participation and mattering in the borader context of the history of that server or guild.
Yes you can miss the singular event sure, but that is part of the drama. The real problem is when you miss that event and then its back to ho hum Groundhog Day lets run this place for the 134th time.
Let's take an example where the event is not warfare, but rather a natural disaster. Something you cannot stop. Perhaps a hurricane/typhoon of some sort. If you are logged on for the, I dunno let's say 12 hours, that it happens you will not be able to prevent a force of nature, but you could perhaps save some people or participate in an evacuation. A day later you log in and now you are performing different activies, searching for people and fighting off hostile NPC that think your city-state is now vulnerable. This could be a week long process. Or perhaps difference pahse with different states for the city, each taking a week to get back.
Let us say that all of these things contribute to the future state of your city. If no one does anything, you have no captial and must refound one somehwere else involving a lot of hardship for your side. If people save enough citizens, but don't fight the hostile you can rebuild but you face a full blown invasion. If you save people and fight off the hostiles you rebuild easier and faster.
In this way there is no singular event people miss. Everyone has a stake and can participate in some useful way as they long in. The even itself is not a Yes/No sort of thing. It is layered and has multiple consequnces. And most importantly the conseqences cascade off into other things, it is never the end. You all completely fuck up and don't do shit for a month. Your city-state is forced to migrate to some other site and pull together and build an entirely new city or perhaps you will simply be nomads. Its not really that hard even. Simply have 3 or 4 designated "city instantiation sites" with some canned city bits that start up and get added on later in phases. People's contribution nearby contributes to its "settledness" and after some amount of time it reaches rank 2 and after the next server maintenence a new ring of the city appears.
Then the next calamity appears, perhaps this time its a siege of your city. It lasts a week. During this time there are various aspects of the seige. To get into the city you must sneak in. Various geurilla tactics and sorties out the gate are done to make the besieging force less powerful. Quest to get food and water and other provisions occur throughout the week. And perhapd the event culminates in a final day long battle that is well publicized on a popular time frame. Do poorly in the week long activities and the other stuff and you get creamed, do well and you have a much better chance of winning the final battle with healthy troops and good morale and the advantage of you defense still being strong.
Yes, that's all good, but like you yourself said it's much simpler to build a static world. I'm not advocating static world you understand, just agreeing that's it's much simpler. What you are talking about is very ambitious, especially if there is enough variety to it so that it's not just a short, repeating loop. Because if it did loop back to the begining state every few weeks people would start getting that groundhog day feeling.
But even so, there is still that question of day to day gameplay. Honestly I think it would be easier to dream up and plan out these big events than it is to create day to day gameplay which is satisfying. So in your example you have players saving people after a typhoon, ok, but you have to ask, "is this fun for players to do?" You also have them fighting off hostile NPCs. Alright, but at what point does that lead to people screaming about mob grinding? Or maybe you have a series of quests which are triggered by the storm so that people contribute by running those quest and then you have people like me bitching about quest grinding. Heh, sometimes I thank God I'm not actually a game developer.
It doesn't have to be fun, we can just beat them until they comply.
Asheron's Call had the players getting involved in the story in an interesting way. But because of the way the game was set up the dev team kind of cheated a server out of their personalized story though. Basically one of the monthly updates allowed for people to raid these dungeons and kill crystal creatures for phat lewts and xp, if they wanted to ignore the lore suggesting that the crystals were actually a prison holding a bad dude. They of course wanted to ignore the lore because d00d phat lewts! and because nobody reads lore. Except on one server. They mounted a 24/7 defense of the last crystal from attacking players and were successful. The devs had to pilot powerful characters to take the defenders down, and also enlisted some powerful players to help. They needed the crystal destroyed so next patch they could move on with the same story on all servers. Still, it was pretty awesome.
Ultimately in MMOs I'm of the opinion the story needs to be more in the hands of the players than it is currently. And it should be more of a passive "story", where the world is lush and detailed with lore, locales, cultures, etc... that simply interacting with it and with other players is the meat and potatoes of your story. Having a story forced onto you makes no sense to me. These are games, not movies or books. Games need to be less direct in story telling. Games need to become their own art form. Games that try to be movies are just a crappy version of movies.
Anyway, yeah, what the @#$! is 38 Studios, and also Zenimax Online for that matter, working on dagnabbit. I want to see. Argh.
Asheron's Call had the players getting involved in the story in an interesting way. But because of the way the game was set up the dev team kind of cheated a server out of their personalized story though. Basically one of the monthly updates allowed for people to raid these dungeons and kill crystal creatures for phat lewts and xp, if they wanted to ignore the lore suggesting that the crystals were actually a prison holding a bad dude. They of course wanted to ignore the lore because d00d phat lewts! and because nobody reads lore. Except on one server. They mounted a 24/7 defense of the last crystal from attacking players and were successful. The devs had to pilot powerful characters to take the defenders down, and also enlisted some powerful players to help. They needed the crystal destroyed so next patch they could move on with the same story on all servers. Still, it was pretty awesome.
Ultimately in MMOs I'm of the opinion the story needs to be more in the hands of the players than it is currently. And it should be more of a passive "story", where the world is lush and detailed with lore, locales, cultures, etc... that simply interacting with it and with other players is the meat and potatoes of your story. Having a story forced onto you makes no sense to me.These are games, not movies or books. EXACTLY Games need to be less direct in story telling. Games need to become their own art form. Games that try to be movies are just a crappy version of movies.
Anyway, yeah, what the @#$! is 38 Studios, and also Zenimax Online for that matter, working on dagnabbit. I want to see. Argh.
The thing I think many devs forget is that in MMORPGs (and all games, really) the story doesn't have to be told, so much as experienced. Too many games now try to force-feed the players a story or lore through scripts and linear in-game events or more often just a ton of reading. But it's just information. Information alone doesn't make one feel involved in the story.
Oddly enough, despite being weak on 'story' in many ways, EQ was the game where I felt it the most. From the beginning choosing dieties (and it felt important!), to the end and getting to kill those dieties, I felt like I was IN the story. I didn't need to be the hero, as it felt right-enough to just feel as if I was a meaningful, active participant in the world. When you logged into Neriak as a Dark Elf noob for the first time, you weren't 'told' a story, but you felt as if a story had begun, like you were IN the adventure. And let me tell you, spending weeks getting enough faction to bank in the wood-elf city was one of the most connected feelings I've ever felt in a game. Wood elfs hated me, I knew they hated orcs, so I slaughtered orcs until they loved me... very basic stuff and didn't involve any fancy events or scripts, but I sure felt a part of a world that felt very meaningful and alive, and thus was making my own story.
That's one of the things missing in games these days. They can have all the cut-scenes and lore that tells you who you are, who the bad guys are, etc... but that doesn't mean the players will feel it. In WoW I was told these things, but never felt them. In EQ, when you made a character, you FELT that you were that race, you felt a part of the world, a sense of belonging. EQ was ironically the kind of game/feeling where pretty much everyone was a role player, to some extent, because everyone felt they had a role and place in the world. You had true connections to other players of your race.
And yes, a lot of the feelings of belong and connectedness came from the struggles in the game. Adventures were had because you HAD to have them to survive. Think about that. The game didn't have a ton of intricate quests (nothing wrong with that if done right). You simply had to band together and fight and scrap and learn to survive, and the game felt alive because of it, the game felt epic.
Now? Blah. Some games do okay, I guess. Vanguard wasn't too bad (despite being broke to hell). You felt a sense of kinship with your race and the lore/quests were good though you'd drown in text fast. It was just so desolate and starting areas so isolated, removed from higher levels and things that mattered, that sense of belonging was lonely and didn't translate into anything worthwhile.
Most games, like WoW, try to infuse the game with story and lore, but it always felt contrived like someone was trying to tell me lore and how I should be feeling and reacting to the world. As a writer, I can tell you, this is the last way to get someone on your side and get them actually feeling what you want them to feel. Don't tell me these things, make me feel them, and you'll hook me for a long time.
Anyhow. I guess the point is that a game can have a ton of lore, events, scripts, quests... but that won't assure the players FEEL any of it in any meaningful way. And if they don't FEEL a connection to the game, then it will always just be a game they're playing, not an adventure they're having or a story they're a part of.
Oh, and I want to add that I find it sad that many games designed to be epic like mmorpgs hire for a lot of things, but rarely have 'writers' on their staff. And it's a shame how many game devs who were programmers or animators have to fill in as writers of lore or quests (and from what I've heard often openly admitted to being in over their heads and admitting the work in those areas wasn't as good as it could be). I'm sure many were good and capable, but with the huge budgets these days I think more epic games would benefit from having titles such as 'writer' in their credits. I mean, if everyone could write well, then it wouldn't be so effing hard to become a successful writer, and let me tell you it's hard!
In EQ, when you made a character, you FELT that you were that race, you felt a part of the world, a sense of belonging.
Yes indeed.
In my own experience, the most important reason for the immersion in EQ was the 1st person view.
Of course EQ has 3rd person view, but the camera controls in 3rd person view were quite awkward and not easy to use (at least for me).
Of course later games (like WoW, LotRo etc.) also have 1st person view, but in these games the 1st person view is more difficult to handle (it is more difficult to target your enemies, plus you cannot see whether you are autoattacking).
In games with encouraged 1st person view you really feel like "this is me living in the world", rather than watching some "character" of yours running around.
To be honest the combat I am just blown away with right now is Mercury's. Obviously a completely different platform and game but I'm as excited to see the reaction to that as anything we've done so far.
Mercury is definitely a game I will be trying. I also think it's great marketing to develop and release a single-player game built within the same IP as the MMO. I think I read that it's FPS combat with different swing motions and block options. Oblivion really only had one option -- hack away and block. If Mercury gives you options like swing left, swing right, stab, etc, etc... that's awesome.
To be honest the combat I am just blown away with right now is Mercury's. Obviously a completely different platform and game but I'm as excited to see the reaction to that as anything we've done so far.
Mercury is definitely a game I will be trying. I also think it's great marketing to develop and release a single-player game built within the same IP as the MMO. I think I read that it's FPS combat with different swing motions and block options. Oblivion really only had one option -- hack away and block. If Mercury gives you options like swing left, swing right, stab, etc, etc... that's awesome.
Unless Mercury flops deader than a wet fish, then it's just going to sour the IP. IMO, it's actually pretty risky (to Copernicus). Now personally I think the chances of that are probably low, especially since BHG is a great studio and Rolston is on the team creating a game with the IP and artistic direction of RA and MacFarlane. Still, 38 has to know its got to be a risk; it'll either be brilliant or the a huge mistake.
I'm a quest guy, always have been. Love to raid in a less than hardcore 24x7 get the best gear fashion. It's just not something that makes me want to play. I love great quests, awesome worlds and the feeling of exploring a fantasy world.
That being said I honestly can't tell you much about any MMO story or lore beyond surface details of anything since EQ.
Why? IMO because it NEVER MATTERED to me. It NEVER affected my character or had my character effect 'it'.
That's one of our goals. In WoW you log out of Org on Monday, back in on Tuesday and what's changed? Players in the world, period.
Why would I care about story and lore and heroes and villains if they don't affect me, and I don't affect them?
To be honest the combat I am just blown away with right now is Mercury's. Obviously a completely different platform and game but I'm as excited to see the reaction to that as anything we've done so far.
Mercury is definitely a game I will be trying. I also think it's great marketing to develop and release a single-player game built within the same IP as the MMO. I think I read that it's FPS combat with different swing motions and block options. Oblivion really only had one option -- hack away and block. If Mercury gives you options like swing left, swing right, stab, etc, etc... that's awesome.
Unless Mercury flops deader than a wet fish, then it's just going to sour the IP. IMO, it's actually pretty risky (to Copernicus). Now personally I think the chances of that are probably low, especially since BHG is a great studio and Rolston is on the team creating a game with the IP and artistic direction of RA and MacFarlane. Still, 38 has to know its got to be a risk; it'll either be brilliant or the a huge mistake.
No doubt about it, definitely risky. The single player RPG was ALWAYS a part of the product ecosystem, but for the first few years that was something to come after the MMO. The acquisition of BHG obviously changed that and ya, we are relying on the Baltimore Studio to deliver a 90+ kick butt RPG set in the world of Copernicus for single player RPG fans, and hopefully to persuade them we can make great games and at the same time introducc Copernicus, the world, story, lore, etc. in hopes it will create cross over in those that haven't before. As well as helping deliver this HUGE world with a HUGE history and Heroes, villains friends and cool stuff in something other than quest text, cut scenes and dialogue boxes...
We were at E3, met with MMORPG too. You'll be hearing from us at some point soon, as in this year soon.
Hope the game is as good as your fastball. It's very cool t hat you came to respond on the site yourself, thanks for that. Can't say I'm a big fan of yours, though, considering I'm a big Yankee fan living in New York. Hopefully I'm a fan of your game though.
Very Much appreciate your enthusiasm for this game Curt and spending the time in this thread... My interest in 38 studios has just been reignited and I cant wait for the games.
Knowing that your a gamer at heart is what gets me the most, your not just some exec looking at profit margins but I believe your company is the one that may just bring us out of this MMO Drought! I have gone back to play Baldurs Gate 1! god damn it! Yes thats how bad it is...
Hopefully you get your IP chain out the door before blizzard released their next giant!
To be honest the combat I am just blown away with right now is Mercury's. Obviously a completely different platform and game but I'm as excited to see the reaction to that as anything we've done so far.
Mercury is definitely a game I will be trying. I also think it's great marketing to develop and release a single-player game built within the same IP as the MMO. I think I read that it's FPS combat with different swing motions and block options. Oblivion really only had one option -- hack away and block. If Mercury gives you options like swing left, swing right, stab, etc, etc... that's awesome.
Unless Mercury flops deader than a wet fish, then it's just going to sour the IP. IMO, it's actually pretty risky (to Copernicus). Now personally I think the chances of that are probably low, especially since BHG is a great studio and Rolston is on the team creating a game with the IP and artistic direction of RA and MacFarlane. Still, 38 has to know its got to be a risk; it'll either be brilliant or the a huge mistake.
No doubt about it, definitely risky. The single player RPG was ALWAYS a part of the product ecosystem, but for the first few years that was something to come after the MMO. The acquisition of BHG obviously changed that and ya, we are relying on the Baltimore Studio to deliver a 90+ kick butt RPG set in the world of Copernicus for single player RPG fans, and hopefully to persuade them we can make great games and at the same time introducc Copernicus, the world, story, lore, etc. in hopes it will create cross over in those that haven't before. As well as helping deliver this HUGE world with a HUGE history and Heroes, villains friends and cool stuff in something other than quest text, cut scenes and dialogue boxes...
Are you big on character-customization? Skills, appearance, race, etc? I've always felt the one thing missing from MMO games was the element of differentiation. Randomness. We don't ALL have the potential to have 100 strength, 100 intelligence, etc, etc... Or in a Star Wars-like universe only a very few of us are going to have "force-like" gifts... I know you could be alienating some by putting random limitations on their character's maximum attributes but it would add a level of uniqueness not seen in the genre.
My character attribute generator may allow for a max of 82 intelligence, 94 strength, and 102 dexterity, of which I could then spend skill points on to maximize...
I think one thing missing from MMO games that should be somewhat prevalent is character uniqueness. We simply should not all have the same innate potential and allocation.
Are you big on character-customization? Skills, appearance, race, etc? I've always felt the one thing missing from MMO games was the element of differentiation. Randomness. We don't ALL have the potential to have 100 strength, 100 intelligence, etc, etc... Or in a Star Wars-like universe only a very few of us are going to have "force-like" gifts... I know you could be alienating some by putting random limitations on their character's maximum attributes but it would add a level of uniqueness not seen in the genre.
My character attribute generator may allow for a max of 82 intelligence, 94 strength, and 102 dexterity, of which I could then spend skill points on to maximize...
I think one thing missing from MMO games that should be somewhat prevalent is character uniqueness. We simply should not all have the same innate potential and allocation.
Am I understanding you correctly? Are you suggesting randomized stats for characters? If that's what you are saying then how would you prevent people from simply re-rolling untill they get the perfect stats they want?
It's not a new concept in gaming, it's been done before. You would have a randomizer during the character-creation process that would create attribute levels for your character. Once you got one you liked you would move on to the next phase in the creation process.
It would add a level of realism and uniqueness from the start to the experience. If done in correlation with a dynamic storyline like Mr. Schilling has been discussing it would create a very different element not currently seen in MMO gaming. Of course, the system would have to be done intelligently and creatively.
I'm a quest guy, always have been. Love to raid in a less than hardcore 24x7 get the best gear fashion. It's just not something that makes me want to play. I love great quests, awesome worlds and the feeling of exploring a fantasy world.
That being said I honestly can't tell you much about any MMO story or lore beyond surface details of anything since EQ.
Why? IMO because it NEVER MATTERED to me. It NEVER affected my character or had my character effect 'it'.
That's one of our goals. In WoW you log out of Org on Monday, back in on Tuesday and what's changed? Players in the world, period.
Why would I care about story and lore and heroes and villains if they don't affect me, and I don't affect them?
What if they did? More importantly what if I did?
ugh Mr. Shilling i would love for you to be my boss, i've already sent you guys my resume and demo reel.
i think im just goin to have to save up a bunch of money do an unpaid internship and live out of my car if thats what it takes.
It's not a new concept in gaming, it's been done before. You would have a randomizer during the character-creation process that would create attribute levels for your character. Once you got one you liked you would move on to the next phase in the creation process.
Ok, but if you're going to let people re-roll untill they get what they want wouldn't it be simpler to just give everyone a fixed number of points to assign in whatever way they want and save them all that re-rolling? Maybe I'm missing something about your idea but it seems like it would end up the same either way.
Well the pain of re-rolling could be avoided if you have a randomizer set in character customization. Maybe I'm in the minority, maybe not, but I think that as MMO games continue to evolve and become more "realistic" having a truly unique character is something that a lot of gamers would desire. It would be nice to see race REALLY MATTER. It would be nice to not to have to see everyone playing as the same build, it would be nice to see the genre advance itself.
The last five years have been a rinse-repeat of essentially crap title after crap title.
Comments
Yeah, but he said they want the story to matter to the players. How do you do that? There are two ways. You either have the story directly impact player characters individually or you have the story impact the world in which they play.
We know what the individual approach leads to.
But with the world approach also, if it's going to cause changes which really matter then they have to have it planned out ahead of time. The code has to be in place so that when the switch is thrown things will happen. --The war between the forces of light and darkness rages untill ultimately darkness prevails--. Ok, but then the code has to be in place so that the next day the sun will fall out of the sky and demons walk the Earth. It has to be planned out ahead of time. It would certainly be more cool than the individual approach where I take my turn at saving the princess and nothing really changes but there would still have to be pre-determined outcomes. At best maybe there could be a few different possible outcomes.
One big problem with the world approach is that people might end up feeling left out. "Oh crap, I didn't play the day the sun fell and I missed it." Or, "Dang it, I didn't get to be a part of the big culminating battle when those guys killed the White Wizard-Defender of All That is Good and Decent and now the Sun has already fallen and our demons are walking the Earth and I hardly got to be a part of it at all."
Another question about that bigger world approach is how do you have everyone participate. What is it that they do on a day to day basis which tips the scales one way or the other? Do they just go out and kill stuff? Does each little quest tip the scales a tiny bit one way or the other? With that approach you could get really big and really cool events and changes to the world but you still have the problem of how do you engross players in the day to day gameplay.
I'm starting to ramble...
Anyway, the point is that if there is going to be a story that matters to the players it really does have to be planned out ahead of time. The only way to avoid that would be to make a very sandboxy game in which the players themselves shape the world and there probably isn't even any point in going into that discussion.
Agreed. Story is meaningless unless I can make my own adventures. This is not necessarily "sandbox" but certainly has elements of it. Now within the context of my own adventures however- there needs to be rich lore, meaningful story, rules, and conditions. It can be debated endlessly how or even if this can be accomplished. If your own "story" ends up having no impact on either yourself or the world around you, then its just another on-rails game- which can be fun for a while sure, but it's not in any way going to evolve the MMO genre in a positive direction.
Agreed
Curt Schilling
Chairman, Founder, 38 Studios
Geek
In the context of an MMO story you have two possibilities. You can forge you own adventure story or you are a citizen of a community with a story and you are playing your part.
The problem with an MMO and forging you own story is that usually msot stuff is canned and it becomes hollow. Usually you have no real or obvious impact either.
The idea of being a citizen of some side where you do your part has worked better to some extent, but it again falls into the problem of a static world where nothing changes. How many times will you get a bunch of people together to kill the same dragon before there is no real "story to it".
One thing I like about Champions Online is for the single person story development it gives you a Nemesis at level 25 with personalized minions and villain and personalized missions (although they are semi-canned) and in addtion various NPC citizens walked up to you and mention various stuff you have done in the past like thanking you for defeating some boss by name. However while this is cool and a step in the right direction it is still hollow because I can go right back into Doctor Destructors factory and its all right there again.
In the end MMORPGs have mostly been Groundhog Day. We all know this. It is easier and somewhat possible to create somewhat tailored individual story. But ass soon as it starts interacting with a static world that has no permanence in its accomplishments it will still seem hollow story-wise.
When we shift to the broader context of being a citizen in a community. You would need to run events. Things like an invasion of a city. Again Champions Online did this for it early-start event. But there was no "real" story, because the city was exactly the same an hour later. What you need is to have the outcome of that event directly affect the city, if you lose the city gets hurt badly and the next stage is the players need to repair it. Perhpas at this stage of the technology the reapired city will look exactly the same as the original. Ideally it change over time, but even that step adds a story where people can talk about that month where the city messed up and what Guild X or Guild Y did to help out.
Warhammer had/has an interesting concept of ranks for the capital where various stuff became avaialable once it was ranked up. Unfortunately we had little idea what this was. But it was a cool start of an idea where that faction was involved in the state of its world. It also added some incentive to not allow the city to be sieged.
In some sense the idea of being a citizen of the community and having events and such with permanent or semi-permanent consequnces (ie. multiple states that palyer interactions can shift things from one to the other) is much easier. An individual story must be rather well crafted and tailored. The borader context is more difficult simply because making a static world is simpler and easier but from a story point of view you can paint with much broader brushes and let the players write most of the story themselves.
I played EQ, WoW, Vanguard, Aion, all games with supposidly extensive lore. I didn't read any of it, because I didn't understand most of it.
I'm not braindead, it's just that I never felt interested enough to read the lore, and the game didn't provide me with more than a small glimpse and a very confusing backdrop.
I don't want the games to hold my hand like a story, I want to be free to roam in a sandbox more, but I want the story to be understandable and easy to begin with. I don't play MMO to read a novel, when it looks like a novel I tend to ignore it all together.
People use the criticism you used here quite often. But I would like to say this is because developers have focues on SINGULAR events.
They should instead have a series of events that form a sort of choose your own adventure for the server. Some parts are quick. You might miss the invasaion or the natural disaster that destroyed your factions city or your guilds keep. Then what is next? Give up? Settle a new place? Rebuild? These are all options and they can take a long time while also evoking a sense of participation and mattering in the borader context of the history of that server or guild.
Yes you can miss the singular event sure, but that is part of the drama. The real problem is when you miss that event and then its back to ho hum Groundhog Day lets run this place for the 134th time.
Let's take an example where the event is not warfare, but rather a natural disaster. Something you cannot stop. Perhaps a hurricane/typhoon of some sort. If you are logged on for the, I dunno let's say 12 hours, that it happens you will not be able to prevent a force of nature, but you could perhaps save some people or participate in an evacuation. A day later you log in and now you are performing different activies, searching for people and fighting off hostile NPC that think your city-state is now vulnerable. This could be a week long process. Or perhaps difference pahse with different states for the city, each taking a week to get back.
Let us say that all of these things contribute to the future state of your city. If no one does anything, you have no captial and must refound one somehwere else involving a lot of hardship for your side. If people save enough citizens, but don't fight the hostile you can rebuild but you face a full blown invasion. If you save people and fight off the hostiles you rebuild easier and faster.
In this way there is no singular event people miss. Everyone has a stake and can participate in some useful way as they long in. The even itself is not a Yes/No sort of thing. It is layered and has multiple consequnces. And most importantly the conseqences cascade off into other things, it is never the end. You all completely fuck up and don't do shit for a month. Your city-state is forced to migrate to some other site and pull together and build an entirely new city or perhaps you will simply be nomads. Its not really that hard even. Simply have 3 or 4 designated "city instantiation sites" with some canned city bits that start up and get added on later in phases. People's contribution nearby contributes to its "settledness" and after some amount of time it reaches rank 2 and after the next server maintenence a new ring of the city appears.
Then the next calamity appears, perhaps this time its a siege of your city. It lasts a week. During this time there are various aspects of the seige. To get into the city you must sneak in. Various geurilla tactics and sorties out the gate are done to make the besieging force less powerful. Quest to get food and water and other provisions occur throughout the week. And perhapd the event culminates in a final day long battle that is well publicized on a popular time frame. Do poorly in the week long activities and the other stuff and you get creamed, do well and you have a much better chance of winning the final battle with healthy troops and good morale and the advantage of you defense still being strong.
Yes, that's all good, but like you yourself said it's much simpler to build a static world. I'm not advocating static world you understand, just agreeing that's it's much simpler. What you are talking about is very ambitious, especially if there is enough variety to it so that it's not just a short, repeating loop. Because if it did loop back to the begining state every few weeks people would start getting that groundhog day feeling.
But even so, there is still that question of day to day gameplay. Honestly I think it would be easier to dream up and plan out these big events than it is to create day to day gameplay which is satisfying. So in your example you have players saving people after a typhoon, ok, but you have to ask, "is this fun for players to do?" You also have them fighting off hostile NPCs. Alright, but at what point does that lead to people screaming about mob grinding? Or maybe you have a series of quests which are triggered by the storm so that people contribute by running those quest and then you have people like me bitching about quest grinding. Heh, sometimes I thank God I'm not actually a game developer.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.
It doesn't have to be fun, we can just beat them until they comply.
Asheron's Call had the players getting involved in the story in an interesting way. But because of the way the game was set up the dev team kind of cheated a server out of their personalized story though. Basically one of the monthly updates allowed for people to raid these dungeons and kill crystal creatures for phat lewts and xp, if they wanted to ignore the lore suggesting that the crystals were actually a prison holding a bad dude. They of course wanted to ignore the lore because d00d phat lewts! and because nobody reads lore. Except on one server. They mounted a 24/7 defense of the last crystal from attacking players and were successful. The devs had to pilot powerful characters to take the defenders down, and also enlisted some powerful players to help. They needed the crystal destroyed so next patch they could move on with the same story on all servers. Still, it was pretty awesome.
Ultimately in MMOs I'm of the opinion the story needs to be more in the hands of the players than it is currently. And it should be more of a passive "story", where the world is lush and detailed with lore, locales, cultures, etc... that simply interacting with it and with other players is the meat and potatoes of your story. Having a story forced onto you makes no sense to me. These are games, not movies or books. Games need to be less direct in story telling. Games need to become their own art form. Games that try to be movies are just a crappy version of movies.
Anyway, yeah, what the @#$! is 38 Studios, and also Zenimax Online for that matter, working on dagnabbit. I want to see. Argh.
The thing I think many devs forget is that in MMORPGs (and all games, really) the story doesn't have to be told, so much as experienced. Too many games now try to force-feed the players a story or lore through scripts and linear in-game events or more often just a ton of reading. But it's just information. Information alone doesn't make one feel involved in the story.
Oddly enough, despite being weak on 'story' in many ways, EQ was the game where I felt it the most. From the beginning choosing dieties (and it felt important!), to the end and getting to kill those dieties, I felt like I was IN the story. I didn't need to be the hero, as it felt right-enough to just feel as if I was a meaningful, active participant in the world. When you logged into Neriak as a Dark Elf noob for the first time, you weren't 'told' a story, but you felt as if a story had begun, like you were IN the adventure. And let me tell you, spending weeks getting enough faction to bank in the wood-elf city was one of the most connected feelings I've ever felt in a game. Wood elfs hated me, I knew they hated orcs, so I slaughtered orcs until they loved me... very basic stuff and didn't involve any fancy events or scripts, but I sure felt a part of a world that felt very meaningful and alive, and thus was making my own story.
That's one of the things missing in games these days. They can have all the cut-scenes and lore that tells you who you are, who the bad guys are, etc... but that doesn't mean the players will feel it. In WoW I was told these things, but never felt them. In EQ, when you made a character, you FELT that you were that race, you felt a part of the world, a sense of belonging. EQ was ironically the kind of game/feeling where pretty much everyone was a role player, to some extent, because everyone felt they had a role and place in the world. You had true connections to other players of your race.
And yes, a lot of the feelings of belong and connectedness came from the struggles in the game. Adventures were had because you HAD to have them to survive. Think about that. The game didn't have a ton of intricate quests (nothing wrong with that if done right). You simply had to band together and fight and scrap and learn to survive, and the game felt alive because of it, the game felt epic.
Now? Blah. Some games do okay, I guess. Vanguard wasn't too bad (despite being broke to hell). You felt a sense of kinship with your race and the lore/quests were good though you'd drown in text fast. It was just so desolate and starting areas so isolated, removed from higher levels and things that mattered, that sense of belonging was lonely and didn't translate into anything worthwhile.
Most games, like WoW, try to infuse the game with story and lore, but it always felt contrived like someone was trying to tell me lore and how I should be feeling and reacting to the world. As a writer, I can tell you, this is the last way to get someone on your side and get them actually feeling what you want them to feel. Don't tell me these things, make me feel them, and you'll hook me for a long time.
Anyhow. I guess the point is that a game can have a ton of lore, events, scripts, quests... but that won't assure the players FEEL any of it in any meaningful way. And if they don't FEEL a connection to the game, then it will always just be a game they're playing, not an adventure they're having or a story they're a part of.
Oh, and I want to add that I find it sad that many games designed to be epic like mmorpgs hire for a lot of things, but rarely have 'writers' on their staff. And it's a shame how many game devs who were programmers or animators have to fill in as writers of lore or quests (and from what I've heard often openly admitted to being in over their heads and admitting the work in those areas wasn't as good as it could be). I'm sure many were good and capable, but with the huge budgets these days I think more epic games would benefit from having titles such as 'writer' in their credits. I mean, if everyone could write well, then it wouldn't be so effing hard to become a successful writer, and let me tell you it's hard!
According to a Facebook quiz, I'm a genius.
Yes indeed.
In my own experience, the most important reason for the immersion in EQ was the 1st person view.
Of course EQ has 3rd person view, but the camera controls in 3rd person view were quite awkward and not easy to use (at least for me).
Of course later games (like WoW, LotRo etc.) also have 1st person view, but in these games the 1st person view is more difficult to handle (it is more difficult to target your enemies, plus you cannot see whether you are autoattacking).
In games with encouraged 1st person view you really feel like "this is me living in the world", rather than watching some "character" of yours running around.
Mercury is definitely a game I will be trying. I also think it's great marketing to develop and release a single-player game built within the same IP as the MMO. I think I read that it's FPS combat with different swing motions and block options. Oblivion really only had one option -- hack away and block. If Mercury gives you options like swing left, swing right, stab, etc, etc... that's awesome.
Tecmo Bowl.
Unless Mercury flops deader than a wet fish, then it's just going to sour the IP. IMO, it's actually pretty risky (to Copernicus). Now personally I think the chances of that are probably low, especially since BHG is a great studio and Rolston is on the team creating a game with the IP and artistic direction of RA and MacFarlane. Still, 38 has to know its got to be a risk; it'll either be brilliant or the a huge mistake.
I'm a quest guy, always have been. Love to raid in a less than hardcore 24x7 get the best gear fashion. It's just not something that makes me want to play. I love great quests, awesome worlds and the feeling of exploring a fantasy world.
That being said I honestly can't tell you much about any MMO story or lore beyond surface details of anything since EQ.
Why? IMO because it NEVER MATTERED to me. It NEVER affected my character or had my character effect 'it'.
That's one of our goals. In WoW you log out of Org on Monday, back in on Tuesday and what's changed? Players in the world, period.
Why would I care about story and lore and heroes and villains if they don't affect me, and I don't affect them?
What if they did? More importantly what if I did?
Curt Schilling
Chairman, Founder, 38 Studios
Geek
No doubt about it, definitely risky. The single player RPG was ALWAYS a part of the product ecosystem, but for the first few years that was something to come after the MMO. The acquisition of BHG obviously changed that and ya, we are relying on the Baltimore Studio to deliver a 90+ kick butt RPG set in the world of Copernicus for single player RPG fans, and hopefully to persuade them we can make great games and at the same time introducc Copernicus, the world, story, lore, etc. in hopes it will create cross over in those that haven't before. As well as helping deliver this HUGE world with a HUGE history and Heroes, villains friends and cool stuff in something other than quest text, cut scenes and dialogue boxes...
Curt Schilling
Chairman, Founder, 38 Studios
Geek
Hope the game is as good as your fastball. It's very cool t hat you came to respond on the site yourself, thanks for that. Can't say I'm a big fan of yours, though, considering I'm a big Yankee fan living in New York. Hopefully I'm a fan of your game though.
Very Much appreciate your enthusiasm for this game Curt and spending the time in this thread... My interest in 38 studios has just been reignited and I cant wait for the games.
Knowing that your a gamer at heart is what gets me the most, your not just some exec looking at profit margins but I believe your company is the one that may just bring us out of this MMO Drought! I have gone back to play Baldurs Gate 1! god damn it! Yes thats how bad it is...
Hopefully you get your IP chain out the door before blizzard released their next giant!
Good luck anyways I eagerly await.
Are you big on character-customization? Skills, appearance, race, etc? I've always felt the one thing missing from MMO games was the element of differentiation. Randomness. We don't ALL have the potential to have 100 strength, 100 intelligence, etc, etc... Or in a Star Wars-like universe only a very few of us are going to have "force-like" gifts... I know you could be alienating some by putting random limitations on their character's maximum attributes but it would add a level of uniqueness not seen in the genre.
My character attribute generator may allow for a max of 82 intelligence, 94 strength, and 102 dexterity, of which I could then spend skill points on to maximize...
I think one thing missing from MMO games that should be somewhat prevalent is character uniqueness. We simply should not all have the same innate potential and allocation.
Tecmo Bowl.
Am I understanding you correctly? Are you suggesting randomized stats for characters? If that's what you are saying then how would you prevent people from simply re-rolling untill they get the perfect stats they want?
It's not a new concept in gaming, it's been done before. You would have a randomizer during the character-creation process that would create attribute levels for your character. Once you got one you liked you would move on to the next phase in the creation process.
It would add a level of realism and uniqueness from the start to the experience. If done in correlation with a dynamic storyline like Mr. Schilling has been discussing it would create a very different element not currently seen in MMO gaming. Of course, the system would have to be done intelligently and creatively.
Tecmo Bowl.
ugh Mr. Shilling i would love for you to be my boss, i've already sent you guys my resume and demo reel.
i think im just goin to have to save up a bunch of money do an unpaid internship and live out of my car if thats what it takes.
Ok, but if you're going to let people re-roll untill they get what they want wouldn't it be simpler to just give everyone a fixed number of points to assign in whatever way they want and save them all that re-rolling? Maybe I'm missing something about your idea but it seems like it would end up the same either way.
Well the pain of re-rolling could be avoided if you have a randomizer set in character customization. Maybe I'm in the minority, maybe not, but I think that as MMO games continue to evolve and become more "realistic" having a truly unique character is something that a lot of gamers would desire. It would be nice to see race REALLY MATTER. It would be nice to not to have to see everyone playing as the same build, it would be nice to see the genre advance itself.
The last five years have been a rinse-repeat of essentially crap title after crap title.
Tecmo Bowl.