You say it needs to collapse and rebirth, but what exactly can it rebirth to? At this point it's a case of been there and done that and there really isn't anything else they can do to improve. We already have fantastic stories and great combat, what else can they do?
We play MMO's and RPG's to immerse ourselves in those worlds but they can only go so far just as comics can. Until they give us the visuals we all conjure up in our minds when reading books they really are ata road block.
O_o
Let's see... bigger worlds, dynamic content, skill-based combat (no target, like TERA except TERA botched it), bigger battles, etc.
The big one out of that short list is dynamic content. Right now nothing really changes because the next guy has to be able to do it. But what if when you killed a boss, it stayed dead?
The first company to do a proper dynamic MMOG where everything you do changes the world permanently will be rolling so deep in subscribers it'll suffocate and die (in a good way).
I disagree about combat as well. Current combat is fun, but is nothing compared to what it could be. I'll create a quick combat system to go with the dynamic MMOG idea:
Let's say you have 10,000 "abilities" at your disposal. Each of these abilities do nothing by themselves, but can be combined to create spells. Each ability also has a power slider to designate how big of an effect it is. The bigger the effect, the more "resource" it costs. Example with 100 mana total and 5 mana per second regen:
Combine 1H Weapon Strike (Quick) with Slow Run Speed (10%) = 2 mana
Combine 1H Weapon Strike (Quick) with Slow Run Speed (50%) = 30 mana
Combine 1H Weapon Strike (Quick) with Slow Run Speed (10%) and Penetrate Magic Shield (100%) = 3 mana against no shield, 12 mana against a magic shield
That does look complicated, but things like that can be fixed with a good interface. The point is, we have a long way to go past our current combat, which is based on mashing generic abilities. Putting the RPG back in MMORPG has nothing to do with story or immersion; it has to do with people actually creating their own characters. I think that's a good direction to head toward for the long haul.
The problem with the industry/genre collapsing, is it will leave a power gap. Guess what will fill that power gap... another WoW. If it collapses, it needs to collapse just right, else we'll just repeat the cycle and it will have been all for nothing. Honestly though, I don't think it needs to collapse; people just need to stop pre-ordering games. As was said earlier in the thread, the companies make back all their investment via the pre-orders alone, so what's the point of making a good MMOG if there's no risk?
All the "real change" gets ignored because people say "but that's not an MMORPG" to anything that's different.
(Disregarding the hardcore minority who says that even the MMORPGs aren't MMORPGs.)
Examples? I'm not interrogating you; just curious.
A lot of the time I find that "real change" is done in the wrong way, and though it's a good direction to head in, people jump in and say it's awful despite how awesome it would be if it were done correctly.
@grawss - I have to laugh (in a good way) I was just thinking of a very similar combat method (in regards to magic anyways) before I even posted this thread today. I think that it would make for more stradegy. If you combined a few abilities to create a fireball and charged it up till all your mana was depleted and sent a ball of fire the size of texas at an enemy, sure you blew have the landscape away and killed the enemies but what if more came in and you had no more mana. That kind of thinking anyways. Of course you would have to make mana potions and such a comodity if you wanted players to actually think about how to utilize there mana in the best way possible.
But thats just a prime example of how combat can change. Its an idea at least, and not a bad one at that. Meanwhile developers are funded in the MILLIONS of dollars to put out crap, and it just sucks. Capitalism makes me a sad face. I really do like all the back and forth that this thread has generated though, its good for us to talk about the future of gaming and what needs change. What is good and is bad. We ARE gaming. Just like the government is nothing without people to govern so is the same with video games. Sadly again though is that nobody will use there right to boycott or refuse a product because its too scary a thought. "OMG what will I do with out my MMO's? Im scared of the sun!" :P I gots jokes lol But seriously good job to everyone who has contributed to this thread and keep it up!
Also @grawss, for someone who likes sandbox mmos (generally speaking) you have a lot of good insight and ideas. So do most of you guys really. I wish that I could find a group of folks willing to work on a game, even if it was just for shits and giggles and never went anywhere. Look at the game Hawken and Vindictus, the ladder is not MMO but a team of 9 are making that game and it looks damn good. The unreal engine is free to use and develop with and its friggin AAA dev tools. If a team really devoted the same amount of time they devoted to playing games in general, but to developing one in stead then thats a damn good start. But just a thought. I dabble in Unreal, Maya, and Zbrush im sure lots of folks do but think they need to go to school to make games
In my opinion MMO's will change when the core engines diversify. For example, since CryEngine and UE added destructible terrain, games are starting to experiment with it. Technological hurdles like lag, physics and resource requirements of a voxellated terrain may dictate hardware advancement before we see anything ground breaking.
I just thought I would start a thread of my own, regardless of how many other threads might try to tackle similar topics.
I want to discuss the kind of changes MMORPGs should make. Where does the player community want to see them go? We already know the current formula that, to be honest, is just OLD and boring as all hell. Game mechanics within MMO's havent changed in years. In small ways maybe, but nothing has really changed the 'face' of MMO's. Its still the same ugly face we all know and love, but desperatly want to inject with botox.
So I know that this whole DYNAMIC EVENT thing is something new to the genre, or is at least being adopted by some big titles. To me though its not much. I have played RIFT for about 2 months and while I did enjoy the random events, thats all they were. Random events. The events had no weight to them. They were simply random and scripted, and really irritating once you played through the same scripted event twice, maybe three times or more a day, even a week. To me thats not dynamic at all. To me thats repetative and lacking in originality.
I know that its a change in the right direction though, and for that I am thankful. Guildwars 2, imho, is upping the anty with thier version of the DYNAMIC EVENT system. They claim that if the centuars attack said villiage and the players do not succesfully defend it then the centaurs will kill all the townsfolk and lay claim to the village. They will even fortify it and expand taking over other nearby locales until someone does something about it. That all sounds really cool and a step forward with this event system but I ask this: If we the players, push the attacking force back after they have destroyed a village or 2 and fortified them all centaur like, once we defeat them will all the townsfolk magically appear again? And to that extent will they be the same exact NPC's that died at the hands of the centaurs? Will the villages instantly look like they did before they were sieged? Or did they change to begin with?
Another thing that hasnt been changed in seemingly forever is the very stagnant and extremely un-interactive form of combat in MMO's. Sure there are a few that have dynamic combat, but how dynamic is it truthfully? The same system of point, click, wait for ability to recharge, click again, press 3 for fireball, wait, click again, chew fingernails, click again, bash head against keyboard simply to give my head a workout, is getting tiresome and boring. Playing a game that way for hours on end really makes me feel like im wasting away in my computer chair. Why not some combat that really gets your adrenaline pumping? The ability to slash my sword around in realtime. I want to dodge enemy attacks and parry them. I want to cast magic at a tree branch and have it fall on top of my enemy, or toss a bottle of oil on the ground beneath there feet then set it on fire. Combat needs to be dynamic and diverse. Make me defeat my enemies in ways I never would have thought of. Maybe my enemy is a level 20 orc warchief and im only lvl 12, but through my skills with blade and magic, and my ACTUAL intelligence I am able to defeat him, narrowly escaping death through some means of strategy and endurance.
Story!!! I love doing quests. I like to feel like im the local hero and I can help out the people. But why? The quests in current MMO's are equally as stagnant as DYNAMIC EVENTS and COMBAT. Go kill 10 kobolds, gather 13 blossoms of this flower, blah blah blah. Even if i kill 10 kobolds what happens? Nothing. I get my loot and exp and head to the next robot quest giver. I want quests with meaning.
I want to be sent on a quest to find a local womans missing child only to find that shes being held captive by a renegade band of thieves and fight my way into there base of operations and heroically rescue the child, bring her back to her mother and recieve my reward only to find out that her mother had sold her to these thieves and when shes caught by me she fights back and I am forced to kill her leaving her child parentless (dads dead I guess lol). After that I have the choice to take her under my wing if im feeling compasionate or she gets sent to the orphanage. I want quests with plots and twists and turns. I want to be made sad, happy, or angry at the characters in the game. I never FEEL in MMO's. No sense of urgency, pain, anger, sadness, overwhelming joy.
Graphics are so far behind in MMO's as well. I realize that WoW is a style more fitting to its RTS roots and thats fine. Simply put though, the average computer can handle xbox 360 and ps3 level graphics. You can spend the same money it costs for a console system and upgrade your video card and outperform consoles. Why are the graphics in MMO's so outdated? Furthermore im tired of MMO's taking on such a cartoon look? Im not 15 yrs old, and while a lot of players are teenagers, im sure a good chunk would agree with me that catroon is yesteryear.
I would like to see an MMO' utilize some newage graphics. Unreal 3 on DX11. Something that will make our jaws drop. I do not want an MMO that tries to look like real life, but something close to it, something gritty and believeable, with characters that are equally as beliveable, and a story that is simply EPIC in scope, that unfolds with style and grabs you from the moment the game begins and wont let go till the end.
Maybe im asking for too much? Maybe this wont happen for YEARS to come, but I think that if we as the players raise our expectations then we will start seeing what we want in our games rather than the crap we get fed in our computer desk high chairs. Anyways, this is simply my opinion and nothing more. If you share my vision then great lets discuss it. If you dont agree and you hate my guts, then go on and tell me about it i got all day. Either way start talkin people. Thanks
-Stealth
The genre is adapting (has been since 2004) to its audience. Ever see the movie "Idiocracy?" - that should answer your question. Eventually we will have an mmorpg where all you do is kick someone in the privates, over and over again.
LMAO yes I have seen that movie and point taken. Somehow I have more faith in the world than whoever wrote that movie but this is why we are talking about this stuff, because if nobody talks about it and we just sit idly by whilst getting shafted by the companies we are handing our money too then this might as well BE that movie. Those people sitting in there executive chairs bouncing pencils by the erasers all day are just laughing at how we continue to buy there product. At least I like to think they are. I dont play MMOS anymore. I took a 3 or 4 year break from WoW then tried rift for a month and dropped it as well. But I really see potential in the genre and know it can recover from this dulldrum. But we need to be heard. Word of mouth is to this day one of the fastest ways information travels. ONE of them dont start telling me im retarded asking if i have ever heard of TV or INTERNET cuase I will simply laugh at your comprehention skills :P to all
Let's see... bigger worlds, dynamic content, skill-based combat (no target, like TERA except TERA botched it), bigger battles, etc.
The big one out of that short list is dynamic content. Right now nothing really changes because the next guy has to be able to do it. But what if when you killed a boss, it stayed dead?
The first company to do a proper dynamic MMOG where everything you do changes the world permanently will be rolling so deep in subscribers it'll suffocate and die (in a good way).
I disagree about combat as well. Current combat is fun, but is nothing compared to what it could be. I'll create a quick combat system to go with the dynamic MMOG idea:
Let's say you have 10,000 "abilities" at your disposal. Each of these abilities do nothing by themselves, but can be combined to create spells. Each ability also has a power slider to designate how big of an effect it is. The bigger the effect, the more "resource" it costs. Example with 100 mana total and 5 mana per second regen:
Combine 1H Weapon Strike (Quick) with Slow Run Speed (10%) = 2 mana
Combine 1H Weapon Strike (Quick) with Slow Run Speed (50%) = 30 mana
Combine 1H Weapon Strike (Quick) with Slow Run Speed (10%) and Penetrate Magic Shield (100%) = 3 mana against no shield, 12 mana against a magic shield
That does look complicated, but things like that can be fixed with a good interface. The point is, we have a long way to go past our current combat, which is based on mashing generic abilities. Putting the RPG back in MMORPG has nothing to do with story or immersion; it has to do with people actually creating their own characters. I think that's a good direction to head toward for the long haul.
The problem with the industry/genre collapsing, is it will leave a power gap. Guess what will fill that power gap... another WoW. If it collapses, it needs to collapse just right, else we'll just repeat the cycle and it will have been all for nothing. Honestly though, I don't think it needs to collapse; people just need to stop pre-ordering games. As was said earlier in the thread, the companies make back all their investment via the pre-orders alone, so what's the point of making a good MMOG if there's no risk?
I agree that the combat mechanics needs to be improved, but I fear that your player created attacks just wont work. I hate to balance something like that.
I would instead focus on other things. I would let all attacks have 2 values instead, an offensive value and one defensive. When you attack someone your damage is determined by your offensive value and their defensive unless you hit them in the back (no defensive value, no shield). Everybody doing nothing will be considered in a defensive stance. Add that in some cases certain attacks are more effective against certain others and more vulnerable to some.
That means that you can't just press random keys, you also need to second guess and outmanuever your oponent. You can go full offensive and finnish the fight fast but that means you will leave yourself open or you can fight slowly but safer.
There are other possibilities of course including a kind of rock scissors paper, but combat should needs to take account what both you and your opponent does, and attack from behind needs to matter more. standing still in the same point should also be bad.
Weapons and armors could also be better implemented in MMOs (but I wont bore you with a long post about it).
MMO are not going to change, the day it actually change it's going to be called something else.
That is dumb. The 3 first MMOs were Meridian 59, The realm and Ultima online. While the first 2 were somewhat similar the third was very different.
I never met anyone saying Eve isn't a MMO. Genres are pretty wide.
Genres change. FPS games are very different since Counter strike to give you a good example.
Of course genres can split into 2. After Dune the strategy games genre split into RTS and turned based strategy games. That might happen with MMOs as well.
If MMOs don't change but will be exactly like they are now the genre will be close to dead in 10 years, nothing lasts forever and computer games needs to change and adapt to survive. If you don't believe me download a C-64 emulator and some games, they are very different from modern games.
I think it will change when mmo will begin to incorporate a wilder audience, obviously internet audience. Both time when the 1r mmo became popular with Uo, and the Wow boom, both time it was due to a, internet growth. Mmo today have a quiet larger potential if they open up to the overall internet gaming community, and not just the sword and magic pewpew fest mmorpg are based on. I think both Blizzard and Richard Garriot work each on their own on this kind of project, those guys aren't the master minds of the mmo for nothing.
Mmo need to stop being a combat mechanism served on a multiplayer platform, and it will make his next step ahead. They need to be a lot more than that to grab those scattered audiences through the net. Can they be made technically speaking? i don't know, those guys probably knows better, but i don't see why it couldn't. It would need an other level of work on those mmo for sure, and when i see how companies literally struggle to be able to serve the basics i'm not very confident. But i definitely think this is where the future lye.
I agree MMOs have gotten into a rut of the same ole stuff. But some of these things have technical reasons.
Action-oriented combat as in true projectiles is tougher on the servers and network than RPG style combat is. It's more difficult to accomplish cost-effectively. Which is why most of the games that do use action-oriented combat fake it. The one thing that should be noted though is that every action-oriented MMO to date has either been a failure or a disappointment. Perhaps its because they tried to walk that line and it just didn't work. Perhaps its because that type of combat tires and burns players out more quickly. Or perhaps it's that many of the players are middle-aged with kids and don't have the desire to play those types of games. Obviously there are many gamers who do. But every single MMO that comes out if you follow the comments on them you see tons of complaints that it's traditional combat, yet when action based games come out, gamers do not support them, for whatever reason.
With regards to graphics, MMOs will always be behind single player games. For one, many MMO fans are again those middle-aged with kids types, and many of them are using dated or budget computers. But there's more to it than that. Single player or smaller multiplayer games allow for easier optimization for many reasons.
For one they can precalculate a lot of things that MMOs can not if they want to keep a solid day/night cycle. Baked lighting is used in most single player games as its extremely cheap to render, and it allows for better looking lighting and shadows. It doesn't work well with a moving sun though because all of the baked shadows will remain permanently in one place.
In a single player game or a first person shooter, you have good control over the numbers of textures or objects in a scene. A typical monster is going to be a single mesh with one material for the texture and either transparency or maybe ambient occlusion or displacement, and a second texture with the normal and specular map. This data can easily be instanced and rendered quickly with batch rendering. Contrast that to player models in an MMO. You may have a player made up of 10 different parts, each using different textures on different players. Texture switching is one of the slower operations, and not only must you keep swapping these textures, but you also have many different models being represented by characters, much higher texture memory usage, and are unable to instance the data.
Beyond the character or NPC models, you then have the unknown quantities. In a single player game you can go crazy on polygon counts of monsters because you have exact control over how many will be in a scene. You know there will be one player, and however many mobs you have in a scene. You can easily target a certain count and balance things around it. In a multiplayer game such as an FPS you have less control but you still will seldom have more than a few players rendering on the screen at any given time. In an MMO you could get a raid, or a group in an area at any given time. Suddenly the area that normally has one or two players in it, has 50 players in close proximity, all of them with texture and part variations. As a result MMO developers have to balance for the worst case scenarios, or deal with terrible performance in those situations.
Thats very interesting. I feel a bit stupid that I never thought of it from that stand point. Bummer too because i know that the graphics situation isnt going to improve for another 7-10 years, and even when it does it will be 7 years behind the cutting edge. This really sucks because from from where im standing now, i dont see anything getting better anytime soon. IMHO of course. Im not going to bag on anyone who wants to continue playing whatever it is they are playing, but I will buy Guild Wars 2 simply because i wont be subscribing to anything, but no company is getting any of my dollars every month for a game sub until something is released that is truly new and innovative. I guess I will have to get cozy with some of my old single player RPGs lol
Although I wonder what it would be like to have a more or less single player RPG such as Skyrim, and add multiplayer to it with servers. Similar to how FPS does it. Join a server with anywhere from 10-64 players and just do your thing like you would in single player only every so often you run into another player who is also roaming around. Not quite MMO but it would be sort of the game i am asking for on a much smaller scale. Maybe the mod community can come up with something like this once its released. Who knows. Thanks everyone for all your great insights, it really brought a lot of things to light for me and I believe I got the answers i was seeking ;-)
If I was a medium-big Dev with money enugh I would create an MMO where players could change the terrain.
But the thing is, even without big Devs, small groups can start a Minecraft MMO-life server. We've seen that Heroes server with 120 players, and Minecrat is not even out yet, and there is'nt an SDK yet.
Any game that's so different that it qualifies as REAL change will earn a new Acronym anyway.
"I'm playing that new MMOPRAGUTVUS that just came out this month."
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
The changes we are seeing to mmorpg's are real just not REALLY interesting to you which is the difference. And it should be reflected in your post. The mmorpg genre is still a growing industry so the insinuation constantly made by visitors to this site are a bit short sighted in assuming that a portion of the very loud player base that frequents this corner somehow represent the whole of the genre. I guess I can certainly sympathize with those out there unable to find a game they can enjoy but the need to tear down other players and developers who don't cater to your particular desires doesn't help the cause at all.
When developers are allowed to think out of the box.
"For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed: And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!" ~Lord George Gordon Byron
The changes we are seeing to mmorpg's are real just not REALLY interesting to you which is the difference. And it should be reflected in your post. The mmorpg genre is still a growing industry so the insinuation constantly made by visitors to this site are a bit short sighted in assuming that a portion of the very loud player base that frequents this corner somehow represent the whole of the genre. I guess I can certainly sympathize with those out there unable to find a game they can enjoy but the need to tear down other players and developers who don't cater to your particular desires doesn't help the cause at all.
I have repeatedly stated that most of what I write is my opinion, wether people share that opinion or not is irrelevant and that this discussion is open to anyone who would like to add there 2 cents. Read my post again or better yet here is my closing statement:
"Anyways, this is simply my opinion and nothing more. If you share my vision then great lets discuss it. If you dont agree and you hate my guts, then go on and tell me about it i got all day. Either way start talkin people. Thanks"
So no offense raistlinm, i agree with you that my views dont reflect everyones views, but those who see it the same as me have the right to be heard just as you do. Im not tearing down other players or developers. WoW and its predecesors will continue to do just fine regardless of my opinions, and the same goes for players. If my opinions make a player from any of the MMO games angry because they feel vehemently that my post is a direct attack on them, well sorry i offended you but it doesnt change my opinion. Go back to playing your game, im not stopping ya.
Also I have been playing MMO's since MUD was the only option, so dont assume I am a fresh face to the scene. I have played many games over the years and im just calling as "I" see it. Which of course is my right. So please dont be angry because "I" posted this. You may feel strongly about people who just rage about there hatred for games that dont suit there taste but im not raging, i have been discussing the topic with fellow gamers and garnishing knowlege and others opinions. Roger?
Any game that's so different that it qualifies as REAL change will earn a new Acronym anyway.
"I'm playing that new MMOPRAGUTVUS that just came out this month."
Eve is very different from the games before it and is still counted as a MMORPG.
Nah, change is when a game feels different from the rest and you actually needs to learn a new way of playing it.
The lack of change for now means that you could learn MMOs by playing the 15 year old Meridian 59 and still move right to the new game Rift without changing strategy that much, combat is more or less still the same.
sorry loke666 since eve is a pretty open game no one has a role they have to take just a role they might want to take so since it skill based i cant agree with your judgement
Eve is very different from the games before it and is still counted as a MMORPG.
But the MMOFPS aren't, or the CORPs, or the MOBAs?
The point is, if you're really dreaming of something markedly different from "standard" MMO game play, you're going to earn yourself a new acronym. :shrug:
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
i still want to argue against this since in eve you build who you are compared to picked a class and acting that class out in eve if you want t specialize destroyers you can even if its not to your advatange. just being that pirate that works in that range actually works in that range in limited range, ie balancing itself. also if you want to be the other guys in eve that run around in cruisers/ big ships you can and probab;y will so that.
Eve is very different from the games before it and is still counted as a MMORPG.
But the MMOFPS aren't, or the CORPs, or the MOBAs?
The point is, if you're really dreaming of something markedly different from "standard" MMO game play, you're going to earn yourself a new acronym. :shrug:
Yes and no. The term MMO was really coined by Lord British for UO, it wasn't exactly the first MMO, Meridian 59 and the Realm are a year older but since they also are counted as MMOs the term is rather broad.
CORPGs and MOBAs (the last term is really new BTW) are not MMOs since they don't have an open world. You can't randomly run into other players. So no real Massive in them.
MMOFPS on the other hand is not RPGs. They are just FPS games in a open world and belong to the FPS genre.
Single player RPGs are pretty wide in mechanics, compare Bethesdas Elder scrolls serie to Biowares Baldurs gate games. Take any kind of RPG game and add an open world and more than 128 players on a persistant server and you get a MMORPG.
MMORPGs don't need stuff like levels since not all RPGs have them. They don't need the holy triad either. You can innovate a lot, or transfer pen and paper RPg mechanics that never been in a computer game before and it still will be a MMORPG.
Eve is very different from the games before it and is still counted as a MMORPG.
But the MMOFPS aren't, or the CORPs, or the MOBAs?
The point is, if you're really dreaming of something markedly different from "standard" MMO game play, you're going to earn yourself a new acronym. :shrug:
I agree here. But I think that a full on change of acronym wont occur until there is a definate genre split in relation to the kind of game I was shooting for with my OP. I mean MMOFPS is still fledgeling really, or I think. I dont know much about them as the only MMOFPS i ever played was Planetside but then it wasnt all THAT massive at the time. Also i think you have to define what a 'role' is. Is it a class that is predetermined by the developers oh which you must choose between? Or is it simply whatever your role is inside of your play style?
If, and im sure there are games with this, you had a game that didnt have a class system to choose from but rather you chose to develop whatever skills you decided to specialize in and could mix and match say stereotypical healer/fighter type skills then your not a "class" but you still have a role. So are you saying that in your opinion Jack, if there are no predetermined classes then it doesnt qualify as an rpg? I can see your point but I would have to argue with you on that classification. My opinion is an rpg is a game that lets you 'play' your roll (shape who you become without limitation) OR 'choose' your role (pick from a predetermined set of roles). You still have a role to play either way.
Comments
O_o
Let's see... bigger worlds, dynamic content, skill-based combat (no target, like TERA except TERA botched it), bigger battles, etc.
The big one out of that short list is dynamic content. Right now nothing really changes because the next guy has to be able to do it. But what if when you killed a boss, it stayed dead?
The first company to do a proper dynamic MMOG where everything you do changes the world permanently will be rolling so deep in subscribers it'll suffocate and die (in a good way).
I disagree about combat as well. Current combat is fun, but is nothing compared to what it could be. I'll create a quick combat system to go with the dynamic MMOG idea:
Let's say you have 10,000 "abilities" at your disposal. Each of these abilities do nothing by themselves, but can be combined to create spells. Each ability also has a power slider to designate how big of an effect it is. The bigger the effect, the more "resource" it costs. Example with 100 mana total and 5 mana per second regen:
Combine 1H Weapon Strike (Quick) with Slow Run Speed (10%) = 2 mana
Combine 1H Weapon Strike (Quick) with Slow Run Speed (50%) = 30 mana
Combine 1H Weapon Strike (Quick) with Slow Run Speed (10%) and Penetrate Magic Shield (100%) = 3 mana against no shield, 12 mana against a magic shield
That does look complicated, but things like that can be fixed with a good interface. The point is, we have a long way to go past our current combat, which is based on mashing generic abilities. Putting the RPG back in MMORPG has nothing to do with story or immersion; it has to do with people actually creating their own characters. I think that's a good direction to head toward for the long haul.
The problem with the industry/genre collapsing, is it will leave a power gap. Guess what will fill that power gap... another WoW. If it collapses, it needs to collapse just right, else we'll just repeat the cycle and it will have been all for nothing. Honestly though, I don't think it needs to collapse; people just need to stop pre-ordering games. As was said earlier in the thread, the companies make back all their investment via the pre-orders alone, so what's the point of making a good MMOG if there's no risk?
Sarcasm is not a crime!
Examples? I'm not interrogating you; just curious.
A lot of the time I find that "real change" is done in the wrong way, and though it's a good direction to head in, people jump in and say it's awful despite how awesome it would be if it were done correctly.
Sarcasm is not a crime!
@grawss - I have to laugh (in a good way) I was just thinking of a very similar combat method (in regards to magic anyways) before I even posted this thread today. I think that it would make for more stradegy. If you combined a few abilities to create a fireball and charged it up till all your mana was depleted and sent a ball of fire the size of texas at an enemy, sure you blew have the landscape away and killed the enemies but what if more came in and you had no more mana. That kind of thinking anyways. Of course you would have to make mana potions and such a comodity if you wanted players to actually think about how to utilize there mana in the best way possible.
But thats just a prime example of how combat can change. Its an idea at least, and not a bad one at that. Meanwhile developers are funded in the MILLIONS of dollars to put out crap, and it just sucks. Capitalism makes me a sad face. I really do like all the back and forth that this thread has generated though, its good for us to talk about the future of gaming and what needs change. What is good and is bad. We ARE gaming. Just like the government is nothing without people to govern so is the same with video games. Sadly again though is that nobody will use there right to boycott or refuse a product because its too scary a thought. "OMG what will I do with out my MMO's? Im scared of the sun!" :P I gots jokes lol But seriously good job to everyone who has contributed to this thread and keep it up!
Also @grawss, for someone who likes sandbox mmos (generally speaking) you have a lot of good insight and ideas. So do most of you guys really. I wish that I could find a group of folks willing to work on a game, even if it was just for shits and giggles and never went anywhere. Look at the game Hawken and Vindictus, the ladder is not MMO but a team of 9 are making that game and it looks damn good. The unreal engine is free to use and develop with and its friggin AAA dev tools. If a team really devoted the same amount of time they devoted to playing games in general, but to developing one in stead then thats a damn good start. But just a thought. I dabble in Unreal, Maya, and Zbrush im sure lots of folks do but think they need to go to school to make games
MMO are not going to change, the day it actually change it's going to be called something else.
heres a crazy number crunch:
Theres 1,381,499 members of MMORPG.com, if every member stopped subscribing to an MMO (using a $15/mo sub) for one month, said MMO loses $20,722,485!!
20 million!!!
Stop playing for 6 months and you up to $124,334,910
friggin LOOK at that number its damn rediculous!
In my opinion MMO's will change when the core engines diversify. For example, since CryEngine and UE added destructible terrain, games are starting to experiment with it. Technological hurdles like lag, physics and resource requirements of a voxellated terrain may dictate hardware advancement before we see anything ground breaking.
The genre is adapting (has been since 2004) to its audience. Ever see the movie "Idiocracy?" - that should answer your question. Eventually we will have an mmorpg where all you do is kick someone in the privates, over and over again.
LMAO yes I have seen that movie and point taken. Somehow I have more faith in the world than whoever wrote that movie but this is why we are talking about this stuff, because if nobody talks about it and we just sit idly by whilst getting shafted by the companies we are handing our money too then this might as well BE that movie. Those people sitting in there executive chairs bouncing pencils by the erasers all day are just laughing at how we continue to buy there product. At least I like to think they are. I dont play MMOS anymore. I took a 3 or 4 year break from WoW then tried rift for a month and dropped it as well. But I really see potential in the genre and know it can recover from this dulldrum. But we need to be heard. Word of mouth is to this day one of the fastest ways information travels. ONE of them dont start telling me im retarded asking if i have ever heard of TV or INTERNET cuase I will simply laugh at your comprehention skills :P
to all
I agree that the combat mechanics needs to be improved, but I fear that your player created attacks just wont work. I hate to balance something like that.
I would instead focus on other things. I would let all attacks have 2 values instead, an offensive value and one defensive. When you attack someone your damage is determined by your offensive value and their defensive unless you hit them in the back (no defensive value, no shield). Everybody doing nothing will be considered in a defensive stance. Add that in some cases certain attacks are more effective against certain others and more vulnerable to some.
That means that you can't just press random keys, you also need to second guess and outmanuever your oponent. You can go full offensive and finnish the fight fast but that means you will leave yourself open or you can fight slowly but safer.
There are other possibilities of course including a kind of rock scissors paper, but combat should needs to take account what both you and your opponent does, and attack from behind needs to matter more. standing still in the same point should also be bad.
Weapons and armors could also be better implemented in MMOs (but I wont bore you with a long post about it).
That is dumb. The 3 first MMOs were Meridian 59, The realm and Ultima online. While the first 2 were somewhat similar the third was very different.
I never met anyone saying Eve isn't a MMO. Genres are pretty wide.
Genres change. FPS games are very different since Counter strike to give you a good example.
Of course genres can split into 2. After Dune the strategy games genre split into RTS and turned based strategy games. That might happen with MMOs as well.
If MMOs don't change but will be exactly like they are now the genre will be close to dead in 10 years, nothing lasts forever and computer games needs to change and adapt to survive. If you don't believe me download a C-64 emulator and some games, they are very different from modern games.
I think it will change when mmo will begin to incorporate a wilder audience, obviously internet audience. Both time when the 1r mmo became popular with Uo, and the Wow boom, both time it was due to a, internet growth. Mmo today have a quiet larger potential if they open up to the overall internet gaming community, and not just the sword and magic pewpew fest mmorpg are based on. I think both Blizzard and Richard Garriot work each on their own on this kind of project, those guys aren't the master minds of the mmo for nothing.
Mmo need to stop being a combat mechanism served on a multiplayer platform, and it will make his next step ahead. They need to be a lot more than that to grab those scattered audiences through the net. Can they be made technically speaking? i don't know, those guys probably knows better, but i don't see why it couldn't. It would need an other level of work on those mmo for sure, and when i see how companies literally struggle to be able to serve the basics i'm not very confident. But i definitely think this is where the future lye.
I agree MMOs have gotten into a rut of the same ole stuff. But some of these things have technical reasons.
Action-oriented combat as in true projectiles is tougher on the servers and network than RPG style combat is. It's more difficult to accomplish cost-effectively. Which is why most of the games that do use action-oriented combat fake it. The one thing that should be noted though is that every action-oriented MMO to date has either been a failure or a disappointment. Perhaps its because they tried to walk that line and it just didn't work. Perhaps its because that type of combat tires and burns players out more quickly. Or perhaps it's that many of the players are middle-aged with kids and don't have the desire to play those types of games. Obviously there are many gamers who do. But every single MMO that comes out if you follow the comments on them you see tons of complaints that it's traditional combat, yet when action based games come out, gamers do not support them, for whatever reason.
With regards to graphics, MMOs will always be behind single player games. For one, many MMO fans are again those middle-aged with kids types, and many of them are using dated or budget computers. But there's more to it than that. Single player or smaller multiplayer games allow for easier optimization for many reasons.
For one they can precalculate a lot of things that MMOs can not if they want to keep a solid day/night cycle. Baked lighting is used in most single player games as its extremely cheap to render, and it allows for better looking lighting and shadows. It doesn't work well with a moving sun though because all of the baked shadows will remain permanently in one place.
In a single player game or a first person shooter, you have good control over the numbers of textures or objects in a scene. A typical monster is going to be a single mesh with one material for the texture and either transparency or maybe ambient occlusion or displacement, and a second texture with the normal and specular map. This data can easily be instanced and rendered quickly with batch rendering. Contrast that to player models in an MMO. You may have a player made up of 10 different parts, each using different textures on different players. Texture switching is one of the slower operations, and not only must you keep swapping these textures, but you also have many different models being represented by characters, much higher texture memory usage, and are unable to instance the data.
Beyond the character or NPC models, you then have the unknown quantities. In a single player game you can go crazy on polygon counts of monsters because you have exact control over how many will be in a scene. You know there will be one player, and however many mobs you have in a scene. You can easily target a certain count and balance things around it. In a multiplayer game such as an FPS you have less control but you still will seldom have more than a few players rendering on the screen at any given time. In an MMO you could get a raid, or a group in an area at any given time. Suddenly the area that normally has one or two players in it, has 50 players in close proximity, all of them with texture and part variations. As a result MMO developers have to balance for the worst case scenarios, or deal with terrible performance in those situations.
https://www.therepopulation.com - Sci Fi Sandbox.
Thats very interesting. I feel a bit stupid that I never thought of it from that stand point. Bummer too because i know that the graphics situation isnt going to improve for another 7-10 years, and even when it does it will be 7 years behind the cutting edge. This really sucks because from from where im standing now, i dont see anything getting better anytime soon. IMHO of course. Im not going to bag on anyone who wants to continue playing whatever it is they are playing, but I will buy Guild Wars 2 simply because i wont be subscribing to anything, but no company is getting any of my dollars every month for a game sub until something is released that is truly new and innovative. I guess I will have to get cozy with some of my old single player RPGs lol
Although I wonder what it would be like to have a more or less single player RPG such as Skyrim, and add multiplayer to it with servers. Similar to how FPS does it. Join a server with anywhere from 10-64 players and just do your thing like you would in single player only every so often you run into another player who is also roaming around. Not quite MMO but it would be sort of the game i am asking for on a much smaller scale. Maybe the mod community can come up with something like this once its released. Who knows. Thanks everyone for all your great insights, it really brought a lot of things to light for me and I believe I got the answers i was seeking ;-)
It's happening right now. It's called Minecraft.
If I was a medium-big Dev with money enugh I would create an MMO where players could change the terrain.
But the thing is, even without big Devs, small groups can start a Minecraft MMO-life server. We've seen that Heroes server with 120 players, and Minecrat is not even out yet, and there is'nt an SDK yet.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
Any game that's so different that it qualifies as REAL change will earn a new Acronym anyway.
"I'm playing that new MMOPRAGUTVUS that just came out this month."
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
The changes we are seeing to mmorpg's are real just not REALLY interesting to you which is the difference. And it should be reflected in your post. The mmorpg genre is still a growing industry so the insinuation constantly made by visitors to this site are a bit short sighted in assuming that a portion of the very loud player base that frequents this corner somehow represent the whole of the genre. I guess I can certainly sympathize with those out there unable to find a game they can enjoy but the need to tear down other players and developers who don't cater to your particular desires doesn't help the cause at all.
The very day that GW2 launches, the MMO world will never be the same again.
When developers are allowed to think out of the box.
"For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed:
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!"
~Lord George Gordon Byron
I have repeatedly stated that most of what I write is my opinion, wether people share that opinion or not is irrelevant and that this discussion is open to anyone who would like to add there 2 cents. Read my post again or better yet here is my closing statement:
"Anyways, this is simply my opinion and nothing more. If you share my vision then great lets discuss it. If you dont agree and you hate my guts, then go on and tell me about it i got all day. Either way start talkin people. Thanks"
So no offense raistlinm, i agree with you that my views dont reflect everyones views, but those who see it the same as me have the right to be heard just as you do. Im not tearing down other players or developers. WoW and its predecesors will continue to do just fine regardless of my opinions, and the same goes for players. If my opinions make a player from any of the MMO games angry because they feel vehemently that my post is a direct attack on them, well sorry i offended you but it doesnt change my opinion. Go back to playing your game, im not stopping ya.
Also I have been playing MMO's since MUD was the only option, so dont assume I am a fresh face to the scene. I have played many games over the years and im just calling as "I" see it. Which of course is my right. So please dont be angry because "I" posted this. You may feel strongly about people who just rage about there hatred for games that dont suit there taste but im not raging, i have been discussing the topic with fellow gamers and garnishing knowlege and others opinions. Roger?
Eve is very different from the games before it and is still counted as a MMORPG.
Nah, change is when a game feels different from the rest and you actually needs to learn a new way of playing it.
The lack of change for now means that you could learn MMOs by playing the 15 year old Meridian 59 and still move right to the new game Rift without changing strategy that much, combat is more or less still the same.
sorry loke666 since eve is a pretty open game no one has a role they have to take just a role they might want to take so since it skill based i cant agree with your judgement
But the MMOFPS aren't, or the CORPs, or the MOBAs?
The point is, if you're really dreaming of something markedly different from "standard" MMO game play, you're going to earn yourself a new acronym. :shrug:
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
i still want to argue against this since in eve you build who you are compared to picked a class and acting that class out in eve if you want t specialize destroyers you can even if its not to your advatange. just being that pirate that works in that range actually works in that range in limited range, ie balancing itself. also if you want to be the other guys in eve that run around in cruisers/ big ships you can and probab;y will so that.
Yes and no. The term MMO was really coined by Lord British for UO, it wasn't exactly the first MMO, Meridian 59 and the Realm are a year older but since they also are counted as MMOs the term is rather broad.
CORPGs and MOBAs (the last term is really new BTW) are not MMOs since they don't have an open world. You can't randomly run into other players. So no real Massive in them.
MMOFPS on the other hand is not RPGs. They are just FPS games in a open world and belong to the FPS genre.
Single player RPGs are pretty wide in mechanics, compare Bethesdas Elder scrolls serie to Biowares Baldurs gate games. Take any kind of RPG game and add an open world and more than 128 players on a persistant server and you get a MMORPG.
MMORPGs don't need stuff like levels since not all RPGs have them. They don't need the holy triad either. You can innovate a lot, or transfer pen and paper RPg mechanics that never been in a computer game before and it still will be a MMORPG.
I agree here. But I think that a full on change of acronym wont occur until there is a definate genre split in relation to the kind of game I was shooting for with my OP. I mean MMOFPS is still fledgeling really, or I think. I dont know much about them as the only MMOFPS i ever played was Planetside but then it wasnt all THAT massive at the time. Also i think you have to define what a 'role' is. Is it a class that is predetermined by the developers oh which you must choose between? Or is it simply whatever your role is inside of your play style?
If, and im sure there are games with this, you had a game that didnt have a class system to choose from but rather you chose to develop whatever skills you decided to specialize in and could mix and match say stereotypical healer/fighter type skills then your not a "class" but you still have a role. So are you saying that in your opinion Jack, if there are no predetermined classes then it doesnt qualify as an rpg? I can see your point but I would have to argue with you on that classification. My opinion is an rpg is a game that lets you 'play' your roll (shape who you become without limitation) OR 'choose' your role (pick from a predetermined set of roles). You still have a role to play either way.