Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
It makes no logical sense! Why is it here?!
Nerf09
Member CommonPosts: 2,953
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZODzdqVptUs
Next time you're playing your typical MMORPG ask yourself this question.
-There are NPC's milling about in a particular area, they never leave the area. It makes no logical sense! Why is it here?!
-There is a Tower over there, with NPC's in it milling about you're suppose to kill for quest, they never leave the area. It makes no logical sense! Why is it here?!
-There is a bridge going from this bump of land to another bump of land. It makes no logical sense! Why is it here?!
-There is a quest giver over yonder. It makes no logical sense! Why is it here?!
I'm afraid MMORPG's have never left the Donkey Kong Era.
Comments
Actually, if you take a look at the oldschool MMOs like the original EQ or Ultima Online, the worlds made sense. Of course, the reason for this was because the game worlds were designed first, and then the content was built around the world. In modern MMOs, the content is made first, and then the world is composed of a mishmash of whereever the content happens to fall in the level progression scheme of things.
Basically developers don't seem to care about creating a virtual world so much as using it as using the game world as nothing more than a backdrop for hack ad slash level treadmill grind.
In SWG or UO, there were player shops with vendors selling goods in places with high player traffic. That's why they were there.
In games where players have no control over anything other then the grind-progression, there are vendors in the most illogical places. Why are they there?
Player convenience.
To developers today it doesn't matter if it makes absolutely no sense that the equivilant of an entire town market is camped outside of a dungeon. They just want to dump the NPCs there so that player's don't bitch that things are too far away and that they have to travel 'too far' to restock or repair.
Personally I don't agree with this design philosophy, but it's where games are going. Catering to the more casual players through convenience so they have minimal downtime for their mindless hack and slash grinding. All the while ignoring any sense of making the game world feel like an actual world.
Is it logical to expect the game to make sense however?
I wonder.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
Which isn't a bad thing for the casual player, the problem is a lack of choices for those who are not casual players. I look at myself as more of a casual player these days, but I'm not sure if that's because of what's on offer or simply due to my lifestyle changes from 2001 to now. If a game comes out that really grabs me, things might be different as I might actually make time to spend more time in a game, that however remains to be seen.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
well yes it is logical unless of course that game world is built on some sort of ilogical theme..."world of random!!"
but otherwise yer it needs to make sense massive massive failing the last few years mmorpgs has been there worlds..they just seem dead...un-real unlived in and boring...
Aion was a huge example of this..there videos made the world look alive and full of wonder..where as in fact is was dull and lact luster with even a void of creatures...
game like aoc and lotro did a much better job making the game feel alive...birds flying from tree to tree butterflys going from flower to flower...animals reacting to nighttime...
its all the little things that make a world come alive...add random illlogical crap in everywhere and the world become increasingly fake.
rift has this problem for me...kinda fun to play but its not fun to explore in..kinda boring...really...and once i hit 50 nd got decent gear i was bored..the world doesnt suck you in at all..
and since we are on the subjct i need to bring up citys! citys in mmorpgs have gotten worse and worse and worse.
why do you devs think we want 10km of running between a few sparse venders through a giant city made for giants! we hate running for no reason and yet you make the bloody citys only content running..you run here you run there theres no logical point to the city being there,to the city being built like it os or even the npc's being in there...
devs need to take a look at real citys..every bit of space is used there not giant sprawling things with huge open spaces everywhere and a shop at each end.
i know they want us to be able to use the camera inside building but fuc cant they just make the roofs go invicble when enetering id be happyier with that then the stupid buildings for giants.
epic example of this was FFXIV worst city designs ive ever seen in a game....
running aint content remove illogical citys!!
that city why is it there?!!
Depends on the game and the target audience.
I don't know many people who would want to play a game marketed as a flight simulator, that did a piss poor job of being realistic.
The same goes for MMOs. Some people want to play an MMO that focuses on being a virtual world to immerse player better, rather than purely about hopping from quest to quest as fast as possible with little downtime.
As Malickie said, it's not necessarily a bad thing for the people who enjoy convenient gameplay where the focus is on the action and not the game world. But there are a good deal of gamers who do value being immersed in a virtual world who simply don't have much of any options for that anymore.
Not if you're playing Donkey Kong or Gary's Mod.
Yeah I think Rift and WAR had the same issue where, once you went off the rails, there wasn't much there. I remember I thought I would just explore in Rift once, but it became painfully obvious to me that I was wasting my time because all those spiders I was running into were for a quest I hadn't received yet.
WoW has this issue as well to an extent, but the world in WoW definitely just feels more fleshed out.
As for cities...
I don't like big barren city wastelands either, but I also don't like the new theme of just having one big city per faction and that's it. I LOVED the cities in Everquest. They had a cool unique city for nearly every race. It really helped to give the race an identity of its own. IMO, no game has had better cities than Everquest.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
There are sadly too many illogical things in currents MMORPG. Just one example: Vendors.
_ They are open 24h/7h. What are they : robots ?
_ They will happily buy you everything. Why a high-quality cloth vendor would buy my murloc's eyes i looted in the marsh ?
_ They all have the same prices. You can be in the biggest city in the world or in a crappy 2-houses town lost in the middle of nowhere, the glass of milk will always cost 5 silver 30 copper. Communism propaganda ?
_ With some exceptions, they have unlimited stocks.
etc. etc.
I don't have problem with casual play, as i'm a casual player myself (ie: i want to explore and enjoy the virtual world, not grind like crazy to be in the first guild who kills the last boss in heroic mode). But i've got the feeling that this kind of problem is caused by the infamous hack 'n slash syndrome.
The hack 'n slash syndrome is imho what dev want to slowly impose us and what players don't want but have no choice anyhow. That's it: instead of a true virtual world, with logical content and actions (i'm not talking in term of difficulty) they want us to play Diablo. A really good game don't get me wrong, but nothing like what a should be MMORPG.
In World of Warcraft for example:
_ Level as fast as you can. Don't mind the quest text.
_ Press the random dungeon/battleground button. Wait. Rince & Repeat.
Where is the RPG in that ? Where is the massive action ? I play this game for 2 years now and the only time i see more than 10 people around me are in Stormwind/Oggrimar because people are waiting for their dungeon or raid to start.
I could go on but the point is that most MMORPG are just hack 'n slash with some online options.
I know why companies are doing this: it's easy. Every x months you just add one dungeon and some gear with +X stats. People get burned and new players always raise to take their place. But why not just be honest and stop calling it an MMORPG then ? And even better: why not releazed that a true, living and logical world would *glue* players to it. They will love it and never want to log off, because they would be no end to it and they will enjoy every aspect of it, not just the "lets grind to kill the last boss first".
You should play Shenmue. It will make you feel better.
I want mmo's to having living, breathing worlds. This means that...
- NPC's have behaviors. Human npcs would sleep about 6 out of the 24 hours of the day. This doesn't mean that all humans everywhere have to sleep at the same time, but if you roll into town one night at 1am, you shouldn't expect more than 1 or 2 vendors out of 10+ to be open. Or maybe there is a night vendor which is only ran at night by the local skooma addict who only sleeps 1 hour a day, during the day. Or the restaurant owner during the day time doubles as a bar tender at night, etc.
- All npc's have homes, places to eat, sleep, drink, restaurants in cities, etc. You can't just barge into every house and room everyone and rummage through npcs' private property. I mean you can, but it would piss them off in a way that causes their dialogue and future relations with you to change (until they forget about you, if they forget about you). You have to knock on their doors, see if they answer, and then can talk to them. Except them to be upset if you knock at 3 in the morning. Of course, if you really need to sell though, then go ahead and knock and see if he'll buy your stuff in the middle of the night.
- Player characters never really log out of the game. The player can log out, but the character itself should do whatever it needs to do to stay alive at that point, such as building a little camp site, eating, drinking, sleeping, etc. If you log back into the game, your character may be a mile away from where you logged out. He probably had to go #2 behind the bushes over there.
- NPCs and PCs have reputations. If you murder a sole npc out in the wild, like some traveling circusman, and no one witnesses it, and you don't leave any trace that it was you, then there should be no harm to your reputation. But if you walk into the bank, steal from them, then stab the bank teller on the way out, you will probably be on many city's most wanted list for a long time.
Etc.
What about a game where cities/NPCs were actually controlled like a huge RTS game, tasking NPCs to go from node to node, harvesting, shopping ,crafting etc. Then their presence and movements would have an actual meaning to the gameworld.
The NPCs are milling because it gives more life to the game without having to program perfect AI.
The enemy NPCs stay there for gameplay purposes. Since they don't have perfect AI, they have no other objectives, so they have no reason to leave.
Maybe that bridge use to go over a rive that went between those two bumbs, but the river dried out.
Usually that quest giver is in an area where he needs your help. Would it be better if he was 10 cities away so you had to run across the world to do a small task?
Overall, I point at the AI. If they could perfect AI, we'd have a living, breathing world with reasonable tasks and everything would make more sense, not complete sense because the world doesn't make sense 99% of the time.
The enemy NPCs stay there for gameplay purposes. Since they don't have perfect AI, they have no other objectives, so they have no reason to leave.
Maybe that bridge use to go over a rive that went between those two bumbs, but the river dried out.
Usually that quest giver is in an area where he needs your help. Would it be better if he was 10 cities away so you had to run across the world to do a small task?
Overall, I point at the AI. If they could perfect AI, we'd have a living, breathing world with reasonable tasks and everything would make more sense, not complete sense because the world doesn't make sense 99% of the time.
Why do people think developers can't create more intelligent or intelligent seeming AI? They can. It's just not worth it. For every person who wants an intelligent shop keeper or an intelligent mob, there are a hundred or a thousand who wouldn't notice either way. They just want to empty their bags. Not to mention the resources the intelligent AI system times 3,234 separate mobs and npcs are now taking up.
To put it another way, you're not going to have a deer that takes more resources to control than a modern Raid Boss so that players can kill it one time...only to bi**h about it on the forums forever because they had to chase it over the mountain (since it was intelligent enough to just run away).
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Well the games that actually implemented worlds that "made sense" don't seem to do that well compared to the game that just shift you from one slot machine to the next.
If people really cared about this Ryzom would be super successful.
I think level design is one of the least explored / well developed areas of MMORPG design.
The designers have to build a world first and then make content fit within it. Mish mashing one attraction next to another; doesn't even make a good themepark really.
I should know too. I played the crap out of Roller Coaster tycoon.
/agree
Most everything now has turned into Diablo, only more massive. Hack-n-slash can be fun, but I don't fall in love with it. Example of a new game, Eden Eternal. Some people love it and some hate it. I think it's great for a F2P, but it is very very diablo-esque...more so than other games. I still have fun with it, but I might play an hour or two once a week and I'm done. Games like WoW and Rift do a better job at masking the diablo hack-n-slash, but in the end that's all your doing.
Good point, Mr Poirot.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
sounds a lot like the area i live in..
i see people milling about doing nothing, hanging out in 7/11's, driving around the area with no destination in mind..
why are they there??? It is not logical!
All these games cater to the new generation of desensitized, ADD infested, illiterate gamers that can't even form coherent or gramatically correct sentences. It's sad but true.
Says you. Slurpee / Wrapped Sausage Roll runs are epic.
Maybe I'm spoiled by LotRO, but it's been some time since I've played a game where the geography or NPC locations didn't make sense. In most cases, it's explained through the quest notes throughout the chain.
Maybe there are crappy Korean grinders that are that way. I don't play them.
I too would like to see more activity from NPC's; different behaviors day and night, for one. Dissapointing that the townsfolk in Bree don't retire to the Pony when night hits...
Good point on LotRO in general. But why is that lone band of half-orcs all just standing in the Lone Lands staring at one another?
It makes on logical sense!
Actually games do make sense, there IS logic and design behind the posistioning. but only from a commercial perspective, think about it more along the lines supermarkets and how they use different tricks to make you buy more stuff. However in MMO design its about getting you play more, that quest will be just close enough for you to do it while still taking a substantial amount of time (quest rewards also come into play here) now if that means the lions or rats you have to kill are on a road, in a volcano, on an airship that doesnt matter.
That NPC will never leave the tower because your not gonna design to have an NPC in a unique posistion, with unique quest dialog justification for the menial task your being sent to do. Because your not the only customer who will go through that "content".
Why is it here?!
To soak up your time.