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The Flaw of MMORPG's
Korax101
Member Posts: 2
The Flaw of MMORPGs
Many moons ago I stepped foot in a game that transported me to another world, the game was called EverQuest (or better known as EverCrack). I become hooked to this game, and for while I enjoyed playing them but then over time I felt as though some thing were missing and couldnt put my figure on it. Ever MMORPG Ive played has been the same thing, I enjoy it but in the long run find that it lacks some thing and yet I couldnt put my finger on it.
I final came to WoW and started playing it and I enjoyed it for while but in the end I found my self thinking the same thing I have though about all MMORPG, that its missing some thing. Then I started thinking about my AD&D days when I was a kid and the fun I had in playing them. I though back to those days and how much fun I had playing Pen and Paper and more importantly the why.
What made D&D fun was several things, one was just hanging out with friends and having an adventure and not knowing what was going to happen. The things the DM would throw at use that made use stop and think about what we were doing. We had to make chooses for good or bad but chooses non-the less. Every situation we came across would require different solutions and not all of those situations required use to fight. This is what made Pen and Paper fun. This had become the thing that MMORPG had been lacking.
The MMORPG Industry as been around sense the mid 90s and yet here we are almost ten years later and what has changed. The graphics have changed but the game play is still the same thing. To sum it all up all one does is level through grinding or questing, craft, and farm for loot. Its the same thing over and over in every single MMORPG, one after another. Not one of them breaks away and trys to bridge the gape between Pen and Paper RPG and MMO.
Where are the puzzles that have to be solved where are the mysteries that have to be solved? Where is the adventure of going out and being taken completely by surprised? Where are the choices that have to be made that effect not only the player but the game as well? Where are the situations that arise that force a player to pay attention to every thing about his character sheet and inventory to come up with a way out of that given situation? These are things that MMO games lack and could be put in to the MMO games.
The whole point of the games is for them to evolve and change, to improve upon it self, not become stagnate as MMO games have become. This way game's become better and better as the years go by. I remember playing Zork way back in the day. All it was, was an adventure based Text game. Now look at games and how much they have leaped in that amount of time. Yet how much progress has been made to MMO in past ten years, not much, not nearly as much as it should have.
The reason for this is quite simple, every single MMO game company out their wants to do what EQ did. They follow in EQs footsteps creating a game that becomes more about the loot and farming because this is what made EQ big. Yes, they have made leveling easier and questing more user friendly some games more then others but in the end they still continue to do what EQ did.
EQ was great back in the day it made a leap forward in the concept of RPG in way that had never been seen before. Yet instead of pushing forward and trying to bridge the gap between PnP RPGs and MMOs they continued making a game that became about grinding, looting and farming. This is not what RPG is about.
RPG stands for role-playing game, hence role-playing. This means to take a character and to create a personality around that character and based upon that personality it defines how you will go about making choices. Now the players are in control of their character personality, however its up to the game developers to put in the tools that allow players to interact with that world. Based on there characters personality, which thus effects the player and as well as the world and events going on around them. This is the essence of role-playing, if you do not have these things then you do not have a role-playing game.
Any one who is ever played an MMO game has heard of players who are dubbed Power-gamers, these are players who study the game and the world and learn how to beat it by understanding the rules which govern that world. What does this mean it means that a player goes to some where in game and studies a certain type of mob and figures out the laws that govern that mob in what it does and does not do and then turns that in to his or her advantage. This is not role-playing this is beating the system by learning how the game breaks down so that you can beat most things. Yes even these players have limits but these players move through the game faster know the ends and outs and how to work the game to there advantage. Yet were is the random unpredictability, such as sitting in a camp and pulling and several times you pull mobs by them selves but then all of a sudden the mobs all aggro when you pull that one mob. This to is the essence of role-playing, random things happening that catches you off guard. Yet power-gamers do not have this problem because they know how to be the developers rules (for the most part. There are mobs even they cant beat on there own.) that have been laid down in to the game.
Looting in MMORPG is in my opinion the driving force of these games for when a player hits the level cap what else is there to do but go after gear. It sets up for Uber guilds and players. It creates camping and farming. It sets up for players to sell on places like ebay and yahoo Auctions, which does nothing but destroy the in game economy. This to is not what RPG is about. In D&D yes you get good gear but how well you do is not defined by what type of gear you have but by how well you think and are able to problem solve. In fact thats the best way to explain PnP games, problem solving.
MMORPG should think in terms of adventure, a world in which the player has an effect on him self and world in which he is playing in, some times a very small, small effect or some times a very large effect but an effect non-less. A world built on the concept of choices both revolving around combat and non-combat. A world in which players can continue to play a character that has reached the level cap and have some thing to do, that it doesnt have to be all about rewards, leveling or high end gear. In fact if you give those players quest that change and give them choices and have great story lines they would stick with there characters for long, long time. Sticking in high-end gear Uber loot or expanding on the level cap isnt a permanent solution its a Temporary one, cause at some point players will become bored and leave. However if the world is constantly changing based on players actions leading to big events. A world were any thing can happen, a world were they have story lines but those story lines change based on there choices, then players might stick around for long, long periods of time and in greater numbers.
Now Im gone finish this off with my final words and Im sorry for dragging it on but I had to speak up because Im tired of the way MMO currently work. Its time for developers to realize that EQ is the thing of the past. There are players out there who love role-playing and grew upon PnP games. That the ability to bridge the gap between PnP and MMO is possible (maybe not easy but nothing great in life comes easy, but possible.) if they would only set out to do it. Yes you might fail and no one will play it but then again if you succeed then you will have a hit on your hands.
Now in all honesty I dont think that this will ever happen. I dont think any of these developers or I should say the money backers have clue one of what Rping is. They want a quick game that will make them loads of money and as long as the teaming mass continue to follow these games thats all they care about. I know the developers arent the ones to blame because all they do is do what there told to do.
Yet because I know MMOs will always be this way I will never step foot in one again. There just not worth the time or effort. I hope I am wrong and some day I will see a game live up to the term RPG.
Comments
here is the biggest problem, PnP has a HUMAN behind it, which can be unpredictable. While MMO's have computers, which need to be programmed, and that makes it predictable. to be able to provide that "surprise" in an mmo, you would need to have a human commanding the system(gm), to be able to manipulate at will, and quickly. and since there tend to be large amounts of players playing at one time(usually hundreds to thousands) you would need a lot of humans behind the computer manipulating it at will, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. which would mean they would have to spend more for the ppl to work, which in turn would make them increase the price of the game, and/or the subscription price. and with a high subscription price, ppl wouldn't buy or play the game, thusly making all their efforts in vain. yes, you could have players control everything(player gm's), but then you run into a problem, players are humans(unpredictable), and at that, un-paid humans that pay to play the game(extremely unpredictable). which could cause those ppl an urge to do things that will ruin the game entirely(possibly create a ton of money/uber gear etc.. for their playing characters, thusly ruining the game economy. or having a problem with another player, so they do nothing but send the biggest baddest mob on them constantly, preventing that player from enjoying the game.) which could possibly make everyone quit playing that game. ending in them stopping the service, and making all their efforts in vain. the only way they could solve that problem, is by giving the computer true artificial intelligence(it would think for itself, therefore learn things by itself without programming), which, as far as i know, cannot be done yet(wouldn't be all that surprised if it can, and the gov't is hiding it from the public), not to mention is kinda scary.
basically, the major key here is numbers. PnP has whole lot less players, therefore one person can manage it all.
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The pen is mightier than the sword, and authority is mightier than the pen, but the sword is mightier than authority.
If you can't beat 'em, hold 'em off 'till you come up with a better plan.
It's not very hard to code in differences. Even randomness. But, more time must be spent on developing the world. An MMO world should be one in which the player is not needed for it to function in a believable way. One in which NPCs have full lives and mobs are not just statics standing in one place their whole lives.
The problem isn't that it's not possible; it's that it is risky. For the same reason people powergrind on a specific "easy" camp, game producers churn out the same exact games: less risk, more reward.
The only way to stop it is to stop buying the garbage they spit out. WoW, EQ2, GW, CoH = All garbage. Steps back in the MMORPG industry.
nethervoid - Est. '97
[UO|EQ|SB|SWG|PS|HZ|EVE|NWN|WoW|VG|DF|AQW|DN|SWTOR|Dofus|SotA|BDO|AO|NW|LA] - Currently Playing EQ1
20k+ subs YouTube Gaming channel
It amuses me greatly how much some people seem to think roleplaying requires everyone else, including the developers, to act in an exacting and specific manner.
Roleplaying can be done regardless of the environment. All it takes is your imagination and a way to incorporate that imagination into your surroundings. You don't need everyone else to act in accordance to your views...which is an impossibility regardless of how righteous it may be.
There are many on these forums that feel like you do Korax. There is definitely a problem with the current state of the MMO market. The Realm Online, Meridian 59, and UO heralded in the "modern" concept of graphical, realtime, persistent state worlds starting in dec 1996. Since then graphics have improved many-fold, but the gameplay is getting worse: increasing use of instancing, weaker PvP (or none at all), and MMO makers cashing in on the virtual<->real item/cash trade. The trends in MMOs are great if you only need pretty graphics, but horrible if you are looking for great gameplay.
A bulk of the problem lies in the consolidation of the game market. The traditional retail distribution channel is increasingly becoming an "old boys club". This trend is getting worse not better. Currently the game market has three players: developers, publishers, and retailers. Unfortunately for the creative people (the devs) who come up with great games they are not the ones in the driver's seat; the retailers and especially the publishers control the distribution network. This coupled with rapidly rising development costs (i spoke to an ex mythica programmer recently and he said their budget was 25 million USD -- and jessica mulligan recent said costs are approaching 30 million for MMO projects for AAA titles) makes all this increasingly out of the reach of the indie developer. This is in addition to the recurring costs of servers, bandwidth, customer support, GMs, etc making MMO development the most difficult/expensive of all video games. It's come down to a system of broke college students who love games and have great ideas vs. the boardroom execs in three-piece suits who couldn't tell you what a murloc is. Unfortunately the guys in the suits are the ones increasingly making the decisions. No wonder the current MMOs suck so much.
The big companies are swalling up the smaller ones, and publishers have a strong lock on the retail distribution channel at the moment. Big companies have lots of cash which on the surface might lead one to believe that MMOs should improve. The problem is that the bigger the company, the more risk adverse they become. This is the root cause for the inbreeding and lack of creativity of new MMOs. Don't hold your breath waiting for one of these bigwigs to break the mold and save the industry. They won't. The revolution (not evolution) in MMOs will come from an indie company. Most of them fail before they make it to market (wish was very close), but a few will make it and will be sufficiently different and successful that the big companies will be forced to follow suit. The key is they will only follow, they won't lead. It's the indies who will lead the way.
PD
www.TheChippedDagger.com My 90-day 2D Java MMORPG project
They that can give up essential liberty for temporary safetey deserve neither. -- Ben Franklin
If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. -- Milton Berle
I really agree with this! Roleplaying can be done in any game. I know if I waited around for a developer or a GM to set up a roleplay event or act on some RP my friends and I did I would be so bored!
They're so slow and even though we may not really be able to "burn a building down" or something like that, it really is all about being with a bunch of people who like to make their characters grow and learn! I think too if everyone acted just like you wanted them to react when you roleplay it would be pretty dull. Half the fun is reacting to the unexpected stuff that comes up because someone says or does something you didnt think of ahead of time. 
Carebear
*WoW = Level 60 Priest*
*EQ2 = Level 25 Druid*
Good post Pin but I would disagree with your first observations on instancing and such. Instancing is actually one of the more enjoyable elements of an MMORPG for me personally and I believe everyone for a very universal reason. Its "me" time, or at least group time where that group isn't a server of a few thousand wandering around aimlessly.
How many times have we heard "I'd like this MMO more if I was the only one in it!" Brings back individuality.
I see better quality content in NWN servers run by volunteers than in MMOGs. And in fact, I'd probably just play NWN if it were not for RSI issues that their mouse centric interface exacerbates for me.
But several others hit on the core problem - the lack of flexibility in software compared to a human DM.
One thing that interested me about Horizons was the idea of assigning a worldmaster to each game world and that each world master would have a RTC-style console to control their minions (the "mobs") in game. Unfortunately, that's manpower and you have to pay for manpower (plus Horizons had so many other issues that it didn't pan out). Likewise, WISH considered lots of human in-game staff to spark and drive dynamic content but they closed their doors, probably after looking at the financials and figuring they could not make their game float economically.
I really believe that the next advances in the genre will have to come with more human interaction and that's going to cost subscribers money. Most are unwilling to pay that though so it's going to start as a niche market thus none of the big studios will want to touch it.
Interesting innovation (as opposed to the crap that Smedley is pushing out at SOE as "innovation") is going to have to come from smaller studios or someone content with making a more niche title the first time through. They can still make money but they are not going to get rich like SOE did or Blizzard is doing.
The adventure is in the journey itself.
/agree
I'm speechless. THAT is insight, people!
Also, you can forgo human DMing with good AI. I don't mean the lame stuff we have seen, I mean true AI. As a automation developer, I can tell you that AI could do everything needed if they would spend time on the code. Course time = money, so we are back to random indie devs who don't really have the resources to devote their (and their staff's) entire lives to. They spend but they have no revenue. Not many people can keep that kind of budget up for long without having a regular paying job, which would then mean they don't have enough time to build the game. The current start to market window isn't long enough to facilitate that kind of dev environment.
nethervoid - Est. '97
[UO|EQ|SB|SWG|PS|HZ|EVE|NWN|WoW|VG|DF|AQW|DN|SWTOR|Dofus|SotA|BDO|AO|NW|LA] - Currently Playing EQ1
20k+ subs YouTube Gaming channel
In my opinion the biggest flaw in mmorpg's is the leveling system that is designed to make players lose interest. As you level up the more total experience points needed turns the game into total level grind, making the game seem longer for reward. I think the mobs should be more challenging as your level goes higher , 'and like Korax was saying, less predictable but keeping experience points rather constant.
Tell me how a developer creates "a game that actually has roleplaying". Roleplaying is the interaction between people in an imaginative manner, so how does a game have that? I can understand providing tools, but nearly all MMOGs on the market do that in spades.
To the OP: Take a look at Hero's Journey when it comes out.
Simutronics has long been dedicated to active in-game events, GMs playing characters in-game, and puzzles in their MUDs. I hope sincerely that the same will be the case in their graphics-based MMO.
I'd go so far as to say that the second generation of MMOs has passed. I think we are firmly headed in to the third generation with Guild Wars. Just for the record, I can't quite say if I would consider WoW and EQII second or third generation. I would tend to side with second generation, but at its pinnacle.
If you hate instancing, I hate to say this, but prepared for an avalanche of games with it. Guild Wars was the opening salvo.
Ok first off let me explain a few things about the concept of Roleplay. In my opinion there are two forms of role-play. There is Role-Play when you take on the personality of a character and interact with other people based on that personality, in short you speak through your character. Now the second form of role-play is when you are on a quest and on that quest you get choices for good or evil, based on the nature of your character it defines your choices. This also includes how you will react from one thing to another.
Now yes it's very easy for a player to step in to a MMO and to create a personality around there Avatar. Yet the is no function of good and evil, there are no choices that are made along the way while working on quest. To me these are an important to the nature of role-playing.
Look at EQ and look at WoW whats the difference between the to other then its looks better and plays slightly different and its easier to level. You still get Farming just like EQ, the whole game is pretty much about Loot. The quest are really no different then EQ other then the rewards being a lot better. Then there is the fact that when you get to level 60 whats left for you to do, nothing because there is nothing beyond leveling and Loot.
WoW has great lore behind it the best ive seen yet in a MMO game however that lore stops right when the game starts (in terms of period of time in Azeroth). Were is the chance for new lore and for players to be the ones to decided the fate of the world. All these things are possible but its all about the money, greed thats what its about. Not one company gives a damn about making a great MMO that will keep players hooked for years. They want to draw players in suck them dry and then move on to next game.
There is not one MMO ive followed that in past 10 years that has even made a worth while game that would be worth playing for years. There all the same thing over and over. If you have played EQ then you have played them all.
This is not one, this is THE ONE. Been with RL friends and enjoying the game.
What did the current MMORPG you play did to keep your friends who have differents gameplays style in game? Nada? They screw them? Why do you even bother playing the game? It may give you what you want, for yourself alone, but it is screwing the majority of yours friends who all left, some nicely, some bitter, about their game experience. If a game cant retain my raiders friends, my tradeskillers friends, my soloers friends, then I dont see why I will bother with the game much longer...a game need to be inclusive, not exclusive. The mediocrity hiding behind the flawed: cant please all argument dont hold water.
If you lose ANY of my RL friend, my interest decrease accordingly...I dont like them been left out. If you lose to many of them, you cant hope to keep me for that long...I am playing alone in CoH...they all left...CoH cant hope to keep me forever...grouping with my friends outmatch all the rest in the game...sorry...and only 1 is a raider, only 1 is a tradeskiller...that is a challenge, to interest, all of us, to play more and more...
Yet, some companies try to enforce grouping...nothing good come from enforced grouping...nothing. Group uberness been awarded only in groups is not enforcing, since solo uberness could be achieve solo...it make great sense. But removing solo options is not going to make groups betters, in fact it throw peoples outside the game, and some of those that remain are angry and should not be grouping for the greater good of the game.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
First of all, outside of utterly agreeing with you, in all honestly my eyes lit up with joy that someone else understood my problem of them.
Secondly, I think the other question is, what can we do as players to rectify this?
This is where things become impossible, for very understandable reasons.
While it is technically possible to create a game where the actions of a select few players could impact the world as a whole, this means risking the alienation of everyone else. How would you feel if you logged on one night after working for 80 hours straight over the last month with your guild and friends to find everythign you'd been working on was wiped out because of an unrelated event caused by another group of players? You may be tempted to say you would love this, because this would mean you could participate in these changes, but you are forgetting the massive logistics involved in this and also completely ignoring the psyche of human nature.
Simply from a logistics point of view, this is a nightmare. Quests that are partially completed, locations where people logged out, NPCs that are vital to one aspect of a gameworld or another, and other purely physical and logistical issues would have to be balanced in any change you make. Wipe out a city and what happens to the people that logged out last night? Are quests that are partially completed just voided? What about the numerous storylines and lore that are built around certain NPCs that may be removed or otherwise modified by events? You can come up with examples to justify these changes, but you must consider the hundreds and thousands of variations of these changes that will have meaningful impact to every player playing the game. People who have their quests wiped out because some guild decided to grief an event are not going to be happy...ask EverQuest players who were farming Sleeper's Tomb back in the Velious era when a guild killed the sleeper. It causes some major frustrations, because content is now no longer available to the masses.
Which brings us to the second point, which is the human nature aspect. Change is difficult for everyone, and painful for most. When one person to make a choice and deals with its consequences there is room for understanding, but when one person makes a choice that has consequences for others who are completely unrelated and ignorant of the choice or the person making the choice there is very little room for understanding. If you log into the game to play in your favorite haunts, or visit a location you heard about but have never seen, or simply attempt a victory where yesterday there was failure...and that location is now irreversibly removed because someone else decided to alter it, there is very little room for understanding.
You must compound these issues a hundred-fold to understand why this becomse a nightmarish impossibility in MMOGs. The events that transpire in a game that directly involve even a few hundred people are events witnessed by a tiny fraction of a game's population. The broader the impact, the greater the risk for bruising the expectations of your playerbase, and that's a dangerous game to play. You might thrill the participants, and excite the true believers, but you will upset the majority of the populace and downright abuse a fair portion of people who are directly and negatively affected by something they had no chance or opportunity to participate in. Is this a sound business model for a game that caters to tens or hundreds of thousands of players? No, it is not.
The entire premise is immediately ridiculous when you consider what it is you are requesting of a MMOG when you want to "change the world with your actions." If you presume to be a hero, how can you explain a world where there are more "heroes" than there are "civilians"? Nearly every one of these games has exponentially fewer civilian NPCs than they have players who are supposedly an archtypical hero (regardless of genre). The pretext of the idea is immediately at fault, because you are truly no different from any one of your other players, and all of the players constitute the majority of the population outside of fauna and hostile NPCs. In other words, you are all grunts...so where do you come to expect you would be in a position to alter the grand landscape of the world when you are little more than a peon?
I do fault most MMOGs on the market today for having very little evolutionary vision to apply to their games, and I see this as being primarily a logistical issue. Stability, balance, availability of content, and diversity of experience are exceptionally important elements that require a huge amount of attention and time...developing overarching storylines that have actual implications and ramifications in the gameworld itself threaten nearly all of those elements. I would love to see kingdoms in fluctuation, systems in chaos, migrations of armies or packs of mobs, and other grand events...but I do not want to see a world where UberGuildX can take away 90% of my content by simply being the first to kill the King of the Underworld, or any other such scheme.
You are looking for a RPG MMO, and even though many are called it, not many actually deserve it.
Single Player RPG's have the lowest sales ratings of all genres of video games, do you guys really think all the ppl playing MMORPG's do it because they like RPG's and want to play with ppl?
No, most do it because of the grind, sad but true. They play just to get that little improvement or level all the time. Nothing RP about it.
I agree and disagree.
I have played every kind of RPing game out there from PnP to text based to old scool SSI games. With that said what we all want isn't possible and its not the fault of the game developers. There are a select few of us out there in the world that would love a game where it would be encouraged to become your character ingame, to develope quirks and catch phrases that are unique to your character but thats not ever going to happen and the ones to blame are the players.
I played EQ for 5 years and when I started out it was common to hear people speaking in-character but as the game grew and became more popular the demographic of the game changed and it was no longer a game of former D&D gamers still longing for those PnP days spent in the wee hours in your friends basement. It became a game full of trendy gamers who thought roleplaying was stupid and would laugh at or mock you if you were to RP in front of them. So as the years went on it became less and less common for people to even pretend and all to common to see people speaking in l33t speak.
MMO games have changed but we are to blame. We all lost sight of the "playing" of the game and became focused on the "goal". The gear became for important then the adventure and the coin became for important then the company you keep to earn it. All the old school MMO gamers I have spoken to and there are alot of them, they all say the same things "remember when we used to camp crushbone?" , "I loved XPing in OT" or "I used to love going to Fungus Grove" they never mention the end game it's always the newbie to mid-lvl game that they miss. They never talk about when they first got there epic 2.0 or getting flagged for time they talk about the first time they looted a PGT or got a langsaxe its always some cheap crappy weapon or armor like leather or banded. The kinds of armor the new players have never worn and most have even heard of.
The other thing I think we all have to come to terms with is EQ was a new kind of game back then and its impossible to relive the first time you expierience something. All MMORPG's will not live up to EQ because we have played that kind of game before and if your like me you played it to death.
just my thoughts, nothing to burn me at the stake over
Kettlepot