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Interactive Worlds with consequences is impossible in MMO
Lucioon
Member UncommonPosts: 819
After playing for 2 weeks and getting to level 45 with my Main Vanguard Trooper. I find it weird that no one has mentioned anything about the choices that makes the same quests different. I have played other alts, one Jedi warrior, and another Jedi consular. One I choose to be Light sided, another all the Dark side choices available. Each provides me with different feelings and actually made the quests different because My characters was played differently.
I understand the argument that no Choices are permanent, or have vast impacts on the World as a Whole. But How can a MMO have any consequences that have an impact on the World. What would you feel if you log out at a Republic base one day, and log back in the next and found that you are dead because the world you were just in got blew up by the Imperials.
And all those quests that you were about to turn in are now all failed, because you were too tired to turn them in at 3 am last night.
Its not your fault that you had to go to sleep, and that the Imperials attack when you were sleeping, while everyone else was awake. Its an MMO, when you log out, it doesn't mean everyone else logs out too.
If you actually follow the quests and make your choices, you will realize that your choices affects the dialogue options others gives you. You might get an extra fight, or extra loot based on your choices. Its subtle but there is no other way.
Because what if you choose to blow up this town, and others choose to save it, who will see what now, how can you see a town destoryed, but everyone else sees the town if they choosen to save it.
There can never be Permanent World impact changes, unless everyone gets a vote. Like a global poll, when the population are given a choice, and everyone votes on what is gonna happen, then you will see global server impacts.
This game is fun for me At the Moment, I am enjoying my journey, its the only game that I can level another Alt, and not feeling like I have done it before. I also have a smuggler, and althought its in the same beginning planet, I an finding that I am playing it vastly different than when I was playing my trooper. Cause My trooper is a Republic first kind of guy, and my Smuggler is more money the better.
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
Comments
You act as if world dynamism is completely binary (on or off).
Like, you either have a world that is completely static and nothing ever changes, or you have a world that is completely dynamic and ANYTHING can change so that there is no feeling of consistency.
This isn't the way it works. In fact, the games that are often praised as having very dynamic worlds are still fairly static. Just look at UO, you could put houses/castles down...but that was pretty much all you could do to actually change the landscape of the world. The rest of the dynamism was captured in interplayer relationships, i.e. politics, wars, guilds, open-world PvP etc.
Then look at Darkfall (this isn't an endorsement btw), the "dynamism" of this game largely consists of just interplayer relationships and territorial control of a few pre-determined guild cities.
These games are hardly dynamic to the point where it becomes a problem. They are just dynamic enough to make the world feel alive.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
WoW accomplished some degree of this with phasing.
I think phasing is hugely flawed, but it did allow them to have the same people standing in the same place and looking at two different things
http://f.cl.ly/items/3n15423i0G2i111y3c2b/computer.gif
I Understand your explanation and have enjoy many Open Sand Boxed MMO's that offers changes that is both Political with Guild Castles and Sieges, but because I am posting this in Star Wars TOR general Discussion, I went into this game knowing that its not a Sand Box, but rather a Theme Park game. That offers small subtle changes to the Dialogues to act as if my actions matters. That atleast I can level different alts doing the same exact things but with different perspectives based on my character and how I play them.
Back to my Topic, a True Interactive world that persists in PVE and PVP can not occur, because there are too many variables.
Everyone levels at different speeds, and joins the game at different periods of time. What you will end up with is everyone from year 1 is in this world instance, and everyone that joins the game from year 2 to year 3 in this instance, and everyone else in another instance all in the same server. Because everyone is progressing at different speeds, you are then limiting your population to experience the same story that you are offering others.
It can only happen in a Single Player game because your choice and only your choice matters. Regardless of whether or not you left the game 1 year ago, or last night, only your actions have any affect in the game, not millions of choices occuring at different seconds of each minute.
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
What I think you are conceptualizing in your head definitely cannot occur in an MMORPG
. Because I think you're talking about some crazy MMORPG where the world constantly evolved based on what the majority of players are doing.
But that does not mean that everything has to be static. Just look at the dynamic events that GW2 is trying to do. They are both a bit dynamic and static. They are dynamic in that the outcome of the events (determined by players) has a persistent effect on the world. But they are static in that they will almost always return to their "start state" at some point and be repeated.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
No it's not impossible just very hard in a themepark game. Archeage will easily provide an interactive world with consequences but that gives the players all the tools and freedom they need to do it themselves.
I would also say, that of course a permanent and dynamic world is doable. Both technicall in terms of developing it, and also from a gameplay perspective.
Don't want to stress the themepark vs. sandbox topic again and again, but well, in a themepark, especially with a strong story emphasis, it is harder to do, because in essence, you are more moving in sort of your own bubble.
In a more free-roaming type of gameplay, where the game actually provides you with tools to change the world and encourages to do so (be it via terraforming, via persistant castle-sieges and ownerhsip etc.), you can easily do so.
I think a very fine balance has to be found here between giving alot of freedom to the players, to change the world in many aspects, but still keeping some kind of control and supervision over it, so that a small minority might not ruin the experience of others on purpose...
Funny thing is in SWTOR there are no consequences to your actions other than gear. The world doesn't change like it does in WoW, it's actually quite weird doing a story quest and you run right back through and it is all the same as before.
well, for this you would really need phasing... which is technically not sooo easy to do I would think, and its also a further seperation from the "rest of the world" ... which is in my opinion against the core of a massive-multiplayer-game...
bollocks
It'd be awesome? That's the kind of MMO I'm waiting for.
The dangling quests could easily be fixed by having some of the quest NPCs 'escape' to other outposts. Some quests can even change because of this, for example, one of the quest NPCs gets captured by an Imperial Starship and you have to rescue him to turn in the quest (better rewards for the extra effort too).
Players could band together to push back the imperials and 'rebuild' the outpost, which would put the original NPCs back in their places.
Phasing in SWTOR would have gone a long way in helping immerse a player. I think if Bioware had done this, atleast in some of the areas where something like this would be noticable, it would give the player a sense of accomplishment.
I actually agree.
I feel like the fact that this game is an MMORPG hurts it more than helps it. Phasing pushes it closer to being a CORPG, which is good in my book. IMO, SWTOR should try to emphasize its strengths like story and VO, and not cripple them for its weaknesses like open-world PvP, world dynamism etc.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Thing is - that subscription or even freemium model with "optional" subscription is not justified in player's eyes for CORPG.
Overall more and more titles beign pumped out as MMO's is cause of a simple fact that you can put subscritpion and / or cash shop in it.
Single player or "normal" multiplayer games almost never have those.
Your thoughts, my good sir, have crossed my mind as well
.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Instead they have DLC...
dynamisim only works in games that are player content driven, like EVE. I do not mind that it doesnt work in themepark MMOs, which are more about gradual progression of your character through various challenges. Both methods are ok.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
By not allowing the World to change as drastically as that. Smaller things, a town run over and occupied, so you'd 'wake up' in the middle of the ransacking, with imperial troopers asking everyone for papers, and valuables, that sort of thing. I guess.
"I feel like the fact that this game is an MMORPG hurts it more than helps it "
It most certainly is my issue with it. I feel like EA/Bioware made a single player RPG with some co-op, multiplayer features and is charging people MMO fees for it. It is, IMO unethical. But, hey, if people are willing to play along, more power to them.
The notion that change within an MMO(RPG) has to be permanent is not actually the case in any one that I've played. It's important to give players freedom to mold and shape the world in which their characters reside, but severe and drastic change is something that must take extreme and signifant effort by a large majority of the player base. However, even with that, permanent change is something that I don't think players should have the opportunity to empart, at least for very important things.
The socio-political (conflict) area is where players have the most opportunity to inflict change though their actions. For instance if a certain player group (i.e., guild) takes control of a certain area and they are aligned to a certain faction. The npcs and other associated environment variables would change to those of the faction the player group was aligned with. Or with a different mechanic, the player group could impose total control of the area in which they control, setting up tolls to enter thier area, creating fees for mining rights, and etc.
However, with these two examples, one major point remains. Another player group could, if strong enough and given that they had the will to do so, take the area from the player group which currently posseses it. So, while change is most likely frequent, it is never permanent. This by defenition is a virtual world, wherein players shape what happens.
With this scenario, the game is not centered around you, an individual player (regardless of how long you've been playing or any other factor), but just as it is in the real world, events brought about through the actions of multiple individuals (perhaps working together) progress through a timeline to impart change. Just because events happened before you were born, doesn't reduce their impact on the world, or reduce their significance in the course of your life.
Honestly, I think your trying to look at change from a very narrow viewpoint, most likely how change would work in a themepark. Honestly though, change in a themepark can't really happen, because they are so dependent on each individual's personal story, and as you say if a village is destroyed, then how would that work. The village has to remain, otherwise players have added significant change to the world by destroying that village.
A bit off-topic.
I still don't understand why no other game has tried to improve what Horizons did back in the day.
In Horizons they use to have server wide events that changed the world and every player could join in it.
They required crafting, combat etc. By completing these you unlocked new races and other stuff.
One of my best pve memories...
Because casual players would complain that they missex X Event or Y Item because they weren't playing when the event was going on.
I have been attacked due to choices I have made then given a choice from the attackers to scare or let live. I have also gotten a title specifically due to the choice I made while others do not have the title, and I am only lvl 32. I mean seeing that level of integration at such an early level I can only imagine what will happen as I hit max level. The game is pretty impressive.
No-one have made an intercatice world with consequences that works..
But noone made a fusion reactor either, that does not mean it is impossible, just that no-one made it yet.
Impossible is a rather final word.
This is so far from impossible you just need to think out of the box.
Think of American Idol. ( yes I know )
So many of the tasks are simple in MMOs. Now SWTOR has given simple tasks yet with options that you an approach said task one way or the other.
If you consider each choice a vote, to do one thing or the other, you could wrap a story around that inertia.
If enough poeple make certain choices in the first instance ( on a side ) then the other sides choices change and thus instance changes ( not necessarily the instance structure or even the bosses, but the order they come in and such ).
It is really not that hard to do something simple and I would not expect any game to do too much with this, but something is pretty damn good.
Another option is factions... why are factions fixed ? In any MMO you encounter said factions in the game, why not have those factions sway to one side or the other given the actions of the other side ( and vise versa ).
Here is an example:
Faction oogabooga is mining an area a resource that both the emipre and republic want. If enough folks on one side aid oogabooga then oogabooga becomes part of said side.. and the quests for the other side then become about killing that faction, or trying to sway that faction back...
Then the faction that is now friendly to the oogabooga can gain something ( resources ) or additional quests or something, with special rewards.
They key is the quests would have to move around ( and they could actually be the same but just how they originate would change based on the state of the world ).
Now before someone says something about population balance you can certainly rationalize the numbers based on population so population doesn't just win outright.
This is exactly what they should have done