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Is it truly hard to make a GOOD game?
MajesticFool
Member Posts: 12
This is a question for the professionals [if there are any on this site] and fans:
It seems every time I discuss how I think games should be improved [usually concerning RPGs and recently MMORPGs]--- in terms of the world and how if it's developed open enough [to support any character activity within their skill range = chop tree, build house, sell house, destroy house, etc with other prperty] initially, the quests, professions/jobs, politics, etc, happens naturally---the usual resonse is "that's too hard to program" or "we don't havethe technology yet".
Is this really the case? Does it take more code or processing power to do what i described?
thanks for your time,
Majestic
I like good games.
Comments
It's hard to make a decent MMORPG. It costs a lot of cash, time, manpower, and determination. However, the jump from decent to "good" MMORPG is relatively quite small. They just need some smart thinking, some good PR/CS, and some original ideas.
_____________________________________
"Io rido, e rider mio non passa dentro;
Io ardo, e l'arsion mia non par di fore."
-Machiavelli
so it's not too hard to program or a lackof technology but more so a lack of good ideas and/or execution?
what a shame.
I like good games.
If Dana/Lepidus sees his thread, I'm sure he can add some very useful comments, hopefully not violating any NDA he has with Mutable Realms...... he was involved with the highly anticipated game Wish, which got cancelled days after it went public beta. The reason, more or less was that the technology couldn't scale up the way it needed to when under a full player load. There was a lot of computing power needed evidently for the backend to manage all the 'renewable' resources, etc.
Basically, developers are gamers too. They know what they like and usually what a lot of people like. But the fact remains that not everyone likes the same things. Take any game feature, you have as many people who love it as hate it. Instancing, has it's good points, and it's bad points. PvP, some people live for it, others never do it. So you can't please everyone. That is hurdle number one. Hurdle number 2 is that the technology isn't there for a lot of things we want to see in a game. With all the damage/changes we want to do in the game world, there is a lot of ramifications for that, hardware wise, bandwidth wise, persistant story wise, the list goes on. Takes a lot more database power to store, retrieve, change, add, remove, etc, all on the fly, on demand. The fact that there are thousands of people in the game makes it difficult to permenantly alter the game world.
Let's say you have a quest to kill Mighty Joe at the Goblin HQ which is a small village. You and your pals go and slay the creature, and just for the hell of it, you pillage and burn down the entire town. Now you've just killed the quest for the rest of the players. You can make an instance and do this, as in Guild Wars, but instances aren't persistant by their very nature.
There are a lot of very fine lines that need dealing with in regards to persistant worlds and massively multiplayer games. If I rob the bank, then blow it up, now no one can get their cash or loot, thus unhappy players, next we have griefers goin after people who do that, then we have retaliation for that, and it gets like the flamewars in a forum, only it's messing with people's fun in the game.
That's why it's an interesting time right now. We have a lot more choices to choose from, tons more games are being developed, new things tried, old things being copied, then eventually discarded, who knows where it will all lead. Games like Roma Victor are trying to be historically accurate, and more real to life, time will tell if that's what people want. I'm sure some will, as sure as some people prefer their games to be LESS real. People have to work to exist, they usually don't want to work in a game, games are for fun, and if it's too much work or too little fun, move along to something else.......
Yes, it is truly hard to make a good game.
Do you honestly thing all those gaming companies out there who do not make a "good game" did so on purpose?
What if instead of preset quests [like this] that would just respawn again, you had naturally occurig quests, completely unique?
Example: say an orc tribe is expanding somewhere along your city's boundry lines and because of this some rough housing of scouts is going on. Well either the city allowd this or the hero has to go get rid of the orcs [either by payment or volunteer, of course you could also help the orcs instead]. If the orcs are killed off, they don't respawn back there, theyre dead. Of course other orcs could pull the same tricks [which i doubt they would do unless there was something of value to them], but basically that "quest" is done.
Example: long ago a wizard had a valuable or powerful item that he didn't trust o he security of a bank. So he finds a remote cave and tames a drgn to guard the entrance. the wizard has snce left the game. but guess what? The item is still there nd so is he dragon. rumor spreads. Quest.
And there are so many possibilities, all unique. And you could still have developer ade quests, but they don't respawn or restart and it might affect something else [the need for dragon's blood in a potion].
Why can't this work?
I like good games.
*looks around*
Apparently it is.
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MMOs Retired From: Earth and Beyond, Project Entropia, There, A Tale in the Desert, Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, City of Heroes/Villains.
MMOs Currently (worth) Playing: None.
MMO hopefuls: Age of Conan.
For some reason you keep on ignoring all the responses to your threads. These games have already been done in the MMORPG market. No single game has it all, but there are games that have 50%, (Runescape is one example) and even 90% (SWG is one example. AO is another example.) of everything you talk about.
If you have 25 million lying around, then make your own mmorpg putting in every single thing you mention.
It takes M o n e y. 100 thousand minimum (cost to make Runescape). 25 million to make a major, new, modern MMORPG. (cost of EQ2, SWG... etc...) People do have the programming knowledge to do the code. When computer games first came out in the 1970's, and 1980's, anyone could save up their money and make a game. The game DEVs theirselves (like Lord British) used their own money to invest in their own games.
In present times, no game DEV has enough of their own money to invest in making their own game. Enter the suits and ties and moneymen. The moneymen could care less about computer games, they are investors intrested only in the bottom line. Unfortunatly it is the moneymen who are the bosses of the game DEVs. The moneymen call the shots. They tell the game DEVs to not waste time with "putting in chopping trees, building houses, " etc.. etc... they want the game out as soon as possible and bringing in money, money, money. They are intrested only in the short term, not the long term.
How am I ignoring all of the responses? I'm tryng to undertand the hurdles of making good games.
Why some developers don't strive for innovation and some who do [Peter Molyneux] don't make good on their claims.
Anyway . . .
I realize games cost millions. Not all games are funded by money-hungry "moneymen" otherwise wewould have no advancement.
Please don't reply anymore if you're going to coninue to be rude or condesending.
I like good games.
No it is not hard to make a good game ... HOWEVER
It is almost impossible to make a game that everyone thinks is a good game. IMO
Witty saying to amuse you goes here.
OMG yes it is hard to make a good game spending over a year on gameplay and combat system and then u gotta do all the graphics these days the only good ones are from those measly companies that have millions to waste and then they make the games suck and i have tried to make an MMO with my and my friends we were gonna take the idea of Diablo and bring it into a more 3rd and 1st Person enviroment but sadly we could never get support and only got done with 1 zone
In response to unique quests ....
If you're player base is small.. a couple hundred at most... this is very feasable.... But as you grow into the thousands and tens of thousands.... of people playing a game... It's just a tad difficult for a GM to come up with a Quest at suitable level, area, reward for each and every person in the game....
You might say that Many people can do a quest together... and that may be true.... But even if everyone got into groups that would still be thousands of groups to provide quests for... of suitable level and difficulty and area, and suitable reward..... There just wouldn't be enough staff to provide this thing..... and Having the computer come up with random quests still eventually brings around Repetition.... And keep in mind... You have to continually spout out low level quests because player bases are usually mostly lower lvl just out of common sense..... so In order to keep your game successfull you have to concentrate on the majority of the poeple......
The tast is possible, but the manpower neccessary is daunting... It's just a whole lot easier for quests to respawn... rather than individualize the quests.... because you wouldn't want people to gain an advantage because of how their GM rewarded them ... or a Disadvantage because the GM didn't like them.....
What's your Wu Name?
Donovan --> Wu Name = Violent Knight
Methane47 --> Wu Name = Thunderous Leader
"Some people call me the walking plank, 'cuz any where you go... Death is right behind you.."
<i>ME<i>
This was my thinking exactly but i wasn't sure whether or not these guys would have wanted to hear that...
Yes having Fully Destructable is Great.... But like Tannayr said.... The task is just too daunting... Having models for every stage of growth and destruction and animations that go between the two... Applying a physics structure to every tree or building giving it weight and other properties... and also Determining the Condition of Every object... for every lapse in time..... You can say that this can be handled client side but that would just return a form of a world that is highly instanced.... And multidimensional.... Because of The loss of information during transfers and what not....
You can say that it will be handled server side... But let me give you an example of the problem
Eg: I am in a room... with X number of rats (These rats will symbolize properties that change in the world of the room) Each time one of those rats moves I have to record it's movement...... now the rats move once at the least 20 times every second.... and at most... 1 time per minute.... But I am Blind so the only way to check if they moved is to feel for them..... That is server side... ... But after that i have to pass on that information to the people that are outside the room... so everytime i gather information about a rat of a batch of rats I have to run to the door to pass this information on......
Really bad example... But it's roughly simulates what happens.... although time has to be scaled down quite a bit...
What's your Wu Name?
Donovan --> Wu Name = Violent Knight
Methane47 --> Wu Name = Thunderous Leader
"Some people call me the walking plank, 'cuz any where you go... Death is right behind you.."
<i>ME<i>
yea, putting too much stuff on the client just breaks the view point that you're all in the same world. Like weather for example. if weather were totally taken care of on the client, one person may be in a sandstorm and for another next to him it's raining, etc. especially breaks the immersion if the person finds out that everyone isn't experiencing the same thing. like player A, Man, I can barely see when it's night time. Player B is confused because it's a partly clouded day...
A game i've seen take the "technically impossible" scape boat the most was MxO in development. testers asked that in the random missions, they'd stop putting file cabinets in bedrooms, because that's just silly. technically impossible... WHAT?! it all comes down to how innovative and powerful the gaming engine is.
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-Anarchyart
All you friggin suburban white kid wannabe poobutts that are in love with G-Unit are sad and pathetic. Find your own identity
I think the best way to get an understanding of this is to go out and make a game. Use the Torque engine from www.garagegames.com. If you just use the base engine (free) you can make missions etc with script, it only costs money if you want the full source code.
Make something simple, like a single zone where you can cut down trees, build a house and kill monsters. Thats it, no classes or complex things like that. You don't even need to do the art, use what the engine comes with.
I think you will be blown away by the amount of time and effort it takes just to do something that simple.
the biggest problems lie in 4 things...
inexperienced, insincere, uninsightful, and unimaginative developers.
[quote]Originally posted by Tannayr
You say you want to chop down trees, i'm guessing you also want eq2ish graphics and you want some realism.[/b][/quote]
Let's start by kicking that notion to the curb. WoW does not look at all like EQ2 and it seems to be doing fine(understatement). Graphically it's at least one generation behind the curve. Guild Wars is a bit more graphically intensive than WoW but still not on the same plane as EQ2 or the upcoming Vanguard. Here again, GW seems to be doing fine without all that cutting edge glitter.
So now at least developers/publishers know that they don't have to hire a mo cap team from Hollywood or spend resources on trying to render pseudo-photorealistic environments in order to field a bestselling game.
My youtube MMO gaming channel
Personally, I think the designer is the most important issue to game designings.
Recently I played a lot of MMORPGs, while I found that...most of them are not better than DiabloII.. I don't know why companies make rubbish out and earn money..and some players stick to those rubbish games...
Here is a passage from internet, maybe it is helpful to those designers:
MMORPGS are everywhere. Dark Age Of Camelot, Everquest, Anarchy Online,Starwars Galaxies, etc etc et al. And theyre all pretty similar. Similar in that none of them even come close to the ideal of what a real MMORPG could be. Its as if they all strive to become a true online world, rich in detail and game play, but then due to either money or time constraints, they fail, falling back on old tried-and-true formulae, regressing to the same old thing as every other mmorpg. Below is a list, certainly not the first of its kind, but probably the most well-thought out, of aspects that a true mmorpg should contain. Some already existing games have one or two of them, but most do not.
We urge the creators of future mmorpgs to read this list and to integrate as many of them as possible. In this way, we the consumers of these products have some say in our own enjoyment.
1. A 100% player-driven economy. NO npcs, except for possibly quest npcs, though only on a very limited basis.
2. A Dynamic landscape. The lands that the game takes place in MUST BE ABLE TO CHANGE EASILY. Trees must be able to be cut down, rocks must be able to be moved, and the landscape must be able to display damage. (from say, dragon fire or cannon shot)
3. The land must follow real-world physics and cycles, and must be affected by them. When it rains, rivers and lakes rise. It becomes more difficult to walk on bare land, as it becomes slippery and muddy. When it snows, the rivers and lakes freeze (or CAN freeze) allowing characters to walk on their surfaces. After rain, fog must form above bodies of water, limiting visibility. Lightning must be able to strike tries and tall buildings, as well as characters (though the chance can be obviously low).
4. Day, Night, Seasons, and other special conditions must have a real impact on characters. In the winter, characters without adequate clothing must slow down and eventually freeze, unless they find a heat source quickly. Rain must lower visibility, as must nightfall. If it rains blood and meteors, characters must be able to be damaged by falling debris.
5. Players must be able to have an effect on the game world. Players must be able to construct buildings anywhere they please, provided they have adequate materials and time, and the ground is reasonably flat, and they have the required skills to do so. Players must be able to chop down trees, haul lumber, and process minerals, etc etc.
6. Trees and other living features of the world must grow back over time. The rate that they return is variable, depending on how real the world needs to be. Obviously deforestation is a real problem, but in a fantasy world, perhaps they can be helped to grow with magic, or other means.
7. Players must be able to form governments and rule themselves. This means that at first, sheer anarchy will rule the world, until reasonable players form powerful guilds and leagues, and begin protecting others, forming a more civilized society. Players with similar views of morality will of course band together naturally, and form the beginnings of good and evil governments. Eventually they will elect officials, or simply claim the right to rule. They will send out tax collectors, to fund the kingdom from the people who are protected by it. None of this must be hard coded into the game. Sheer human personality will make it possible, provided that the game allow such things to occur.
8. Players must be able to kill each other without game-engine based rules to protect weaker players. Modern society was ruled by the stronger person for years. A game will have to undergo this period also. Weaker players will be forced to either live on their own, and try to hide from the stronger players, or join more powerful guilds and governments, and remain under their protection until they are strong enough to venture out on their own.
9. All skills, abilities, classes, and races must be completely balanced. Without this obvious step in place, a dominant race/class group will immerge based on broken game rules.
10. There must not be any random item drops from slain creatures, unless it is reasonable to assume that the creature would possess such a thing. Receiving a sword from a giant wasp threatens the immersion of the game, but finding a rusted sword on an orc is not unbelievable. However, creatures and players must be able to be skinned, field dressed, and cooked.
11. Artifact items must be completely unique. Only one instance of each may exist in the game world at any time. Rare items must be rare. Perhaps there are 2-5 instances of a rare item for every 1000 players.
12. No item gained from any creature can be more powerful than the more powerful player created items, except for artifacts and rare items.
13. Combat must be real time. A push the button and watch your character engage the enemy combat system may be required to keep dialup users in sync with the rest of the game world, but it is not realistic. Skill SHOULD play a role in combat, especially against other players. Like any good FPS game, weapons would need to have a short delay after each firing based on size and weight and magical bonuses.
14. Characters must not be able to walk through other characters, trees, shrubs, rocks, or any other object large enough to reasonably halt an average adult.
15. Ranged weapons must be able to be fired at will at any place within range of the character using the weapon. A target should not be required to fire the weapon. Likewise, melee characters must be able to swing at any time, at any space within the range of their weapons.
16. Characters must eat. Not eating must cause weakness after several meals are skipped. Likewise, characters must sleep. Going without sleep for some time must cause fatigue.
17. Death must be permanent. Perhaps lower level characters could be able to respawn, until an average level.
18. A creature or other player that is able to deal damage to another player must be worth experience to that player. Any creature or player not able to damage another player may be worth no experience.
19. Buildings must be able to be destroyed. Castle walls must crumble, gates and doors must be able to be bludgeoned inward.
20. Except for an obvious magical field, the landscape should hold no boundaries, provided that a character has the required skills to climb or swim, etc. A vast ocean could be unswimable, but boats should exist, crewed by players with the appropriate skills. (and built by other players with the appropriate skills!) A magical field should only be a boundary as a placeholder for further expansion as the game grows.
21. When a creature is created with items that can be looted from its corpse, the creature uses those items in combat. If there is a possibility of getting a magic sword off an orc, and an orc is spawned that carries one, then that orc should USE that magic sword in combat.
22. (From Doom) There must be a player-based resurrection system in place. (for instance, cleric or healer players can resurrect dead players) This helps the permanent death situation.
23. (From Doom) Once dead, any player can loot your corpse, taking whatever items they wish. This is how artifacts get redistributed
24. (From Doom) Reasonably Intelligent creatures should be able to loot your body and use whatever weapons and items they find.
25. (From Evil Tim) Creatures that are assumed to be intelligent should use tactics in combat. And yes, something a little more in depth than the bring a friend dynamics of the currentcrop of mmorpgs.
26. (From Jynx) Realistic Vehicles: Spaceships, speeders, and steeds shouldnt just be a quick way to get from point to point. A horse that only follows a pre-programmed path is a waste of good glue. Players should be able to control the movement of their vehicles, as well as fight from within or atop them.
27. (From Jynx) Disguises: Some players could benefit from being able to disguise their faces and names with an appropriate skill or spell. Disguised players might infiltrate the enemy as spies, assassins, and saboteurs or they could just dodge that bounty on their heads for a while. Maybe they could even get a shave and a haircut.
28. (From Jynx) Fire should burn flammable things. Wooden walls are flammable. So are forests. So are people. On the same note, putting out fires should be possible if suitable actions are taken.
29. (From Jynx) The use of basic items should not be restricted to trained-only characters if it doesnt make sense. Just because you dont have any points in the Shield skill doesnt mean you cant figure out how to hold one up in front of you in a fight.
29. (From Jynx) Multiple crafters and builders should be able to help each other make items and structures. Speed and/or quality of the craft could benefit.
29. (From Jynx) Terrain, objects, and other characters should provide cover against physical attacks to some degree. Closed doors ought to block javelins, for instance. On a similar note, some attacks like magic or lasers might just go straight through. Other attacks like arrow volleys could simply arc over the wall to hit their targets.
30. (From Derik Wilson) There should be some sort of natural disasters that canoccasionally occur. Volcanos, hail, meteors, earthquakes, etc, that would ruin someones day or damage the land and cities.
Sorry for my double post..don't know how to delete.
thanks for all the replies.
I like good games.