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Are player driven action disappearing from mmo's?
FredomSekerZ
Member Posts: 1,156
Hi, i'm new around here and i wanted to make my first post asking everyone about something that i think is starting to happen in mmo's, mainly themeparks, nowadays. In todays themeparks, it seems that the actions that we can partake in are dev driven. The quests, the dungeons, story, pvp, etc. Why are they dev driven IMO? A quest tells you to do 3 tasks, kill robbers, fecth water, and talk to the npc. However, all these events are scripted and pre-determined. We only have the freedom to take the actions within the quest orders. Thse aren't wrong btw, but let me use some examples to elaborate.
The traditional mount. Has soon has we get it, we can ride it wherever and whenever we want. There's no bar or number to fill, or "ride for 1 minute". Or how about Archeage's gliders, it's the same concept.
How about being able to chop a tree, and use the wood to make a campfire anywhere. And maybe even having the possibility to use a fireball spells to light it up or just use normal sticks. Even something like climbing a tree. And of course, musical instruments, like in LOTRO.
Why do i personally view these has "player driven"? Because there's no set objective to take. In a scripted event like a story or quest, sure maybe we can take different "paths", but in the end, it's all set in stone.
Now imagine this: 2 players decide to take their mounts to the top of a mountain, make a campfire there, play some music and then climb to the edge of a tree in the high point and jump off from there, only to glide before hiting the ground. This is what i like to call player driven. There's no objective or goal expect for the one chosen by the people themselves. It's a simple story made by their own choice. The thing is, this has literally nothing to do with being a sandbox or themepark, since it's possible in both.
I simply fear that the worlds in mmo's are no longer interactive or have anything for us to do in them beyong the pre made goals. Which also makes it's impossible for us to make out stories or, even worse, have anything to bond the community over. What do you think?
Comments
I agree with you. I think many do. It strikes me as silly that in many modern games you have to be a certain class to start a campfire.
Ultima Online was the first major MMORPG. Anyone could start a campfire. It was even a separte skill and used to make a campsite that you could safely log out at (instantly after it was set, as opposed to your character still being there for about 30 seconds) out in the world.
But they were going to go farther, but it didn't make it in to the released game. They had code where they could attach something like <burn> to things like any item with "wood" in the name. And when fire touched that item, it could start on fire and burn. So had they got that into the game, you could do exactly what you said, plus more. You could have cast a fireball at a stack of wood and started a campfire. You could have also cast a fireball, or used a torch, on a "wooden door", and maybe start that on fire too.
There's obvious problems allowing that in a game, but not something that can't be overcome. For example, if someone starts your locked house door on fire, and it burnt to cinders, they could then enter your house, and they have destroyed your door barrier, and you might not log in for a few days to boot. But if it were a crime to "attack" your possessions (the house door), and if that crime came with a punishment that players don't want to face, then only those with a real purpose would do so. And if stealing is their purpose, if you can have defenses built into your house (armed watchmen of unknown number, magical wards) then they may have to face that punishment sooner than expected. And if killing those watchmen NPCs gives even greater criminal punishment, etc., etc. Overall, a great game could be made with features like this. IF players would accept the possibility of loss in their MMORPG. And I think there's a mass of gamers out there who would, in the right game.
Once upon a time....
Well, i'm not from the time of UO and i personally wasn't going to that level. After all, just has you say in your example, the more we take and interact with the world, the more dangerous it becomes, even for developers.
I was mostly refering to all kinds of items and objects to use just so we can make our own fun moments. Even fishing is one of them, but these kinds of activities seem to be dying nowadays, and mmorpg's are more about consuing content over and over and over again, until eventually nothing is left. And then, there's nothing for us to do between each other of our own free will, expect wait for more dev driven content.
Most MMO developers seem to have long since forgotten the concept of 'toy' in the pursuit of endless gamification.
Housing is an example of that. In UO, the housing had incredible diversity and when they built on it they made it even more of a creative outlet, allowing players to construct houses title by tile.Toy. Look at housing in most MMOs today and in order to even try to use the housing as anything other than an pointless empty room, the pieces to do anything are all rewards for other activities. The content for it is in the form of objectives and rewards. Game.
If today's MMO developers were tasked to create Minecraft's Creative Mode, their finished product would have been Survival Mode.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Except for graphics and FFA PVP (both of which are gamebreaking for many), UO seemed to do alot right....im really surprised more games didnt go down that road.
As a veteran of the player driven worlds of old, I have seen the same things repeat time and time again.
Greed, harrassment, intimidation, bullying, narcisism, and worse.
It's been my experience that in an online world where your real self is annonymous, and you are given freedom to negatively effect other players without real fear of repercussion, the altruistic among us are vastly, and I mean VASTLY out numbered by the stereotypical "PK" and/or "Griefer."
The genre as a whole obviously saw this too and saw it as a problem, and thus refined and created new systems and rules to prevent the bad apples from ruining the experience of others.
Have they gone too far in the direction of safety, security, and conflict-avoidance?
I believe so.
But that doesn't change the fact that the more power and control you give to the players, the more opportunity you give for players to take power and control from their fellows.
The evidence of the popularity of a less dog-eat-dog structure is readily apparent in the absolutely massive growth of the MMO playerbase once the 2nd generation titles came out.
Now, this is strictly in a player conflict kind of way, as more cooperative "PvE" sandbox type games are a lot more free of these worries (SWG for example.)
Long story short?
No player who feels like they are a second class citizen in the game world will continue to pay to play forever.
Hence we've seen a dramatic shift to focus on the individual, and yes, that often comes at the expense of the whole.
Badspock, i think you misunderstand me. I wasn't talking about players having the power to take others freedom away, because i personally agree. I like owpvp, politics, and all those systems, but it takes a really mature player base to make it work.
The examples i used, has i said in my original post, could be perfectly used in a pve themepark. Another example: I watched an interview from Gameinformer with one of the TESO devs and the interviewer talked about how he liked to just go around Skyrim catching butterflies. Now, it would take some rules and limits, but why not allow this in mmorpg's.
Why not make 50 specieas of butterfly, some common, some rare, and players can catch, collect and even trade with others. Is it really corny and cheesy? Hell yeah! But it's something that we can do in our own desire and doesn't have to be about getting exp and leveling up.
Has some have meantioned, devs have to follow the path that makes money and that's what they care about (duh), but i think that hadding some of these features could had to both the community and longivity of the game.
No, he was responding to the things I was getting into with stealing from players houses and burning their doors off (literally and figuratively). And he's right. Absolutely right.
But to add to BadSpocks point, as I was getting to with laws and penalties for crimes and all, I think these things could have been fixed. But instead, they chose to just start removing these problem issues instead of the added work and cost of fixing them.
But to your initial point, FSZ, yes I know you were just talking about the "toys", rather than as far as I took it. And that's not only possible but very worthy.
Many players love that stuff. Just like a kid in a sandbox, taking his Tonka truck and loading sand in it and dumping it over there. Only more variety, heh. Just screw around stuff. I'd also add that the adveturing part of the game world could use a lot more too. Not just chests to open, but portculouses, draw bridges, levers, spinning things and tossing things. Like playing Skyrim and shooting an arrow at a trap to spring it. It's more entertaining. I'd love for a world to be full of hidden things, surprizes, mysteries. Things that make you go "hrmm, I wonder what that's all about" and then start looking around.
Getting back to your point again, Ultima Online, because of it's design, players did a lot of things you don't see anymore. Campfire story telling, actually doing RL plays in game, chess tournaments, etc. If the game offers the toys, players will make use of them. Not all players do, but many do and many others don't but like the game world with other players who do (they generally like the diverse activities going on around them).
And the freedom to do these things. No restrictions by class or level, unless it really makes sense.
Once upon a time....
Because that's not a role playing game, that's the Sims ONline. Have you ever cut on a single player role playing game and had no adventure or quest to do. MMORPGs are suppose to be rpgs, just with more people. Asking an rpg maker to make a simulation game is like going to burgerking and asking for small pepperoni.
This seems to be a themepark vs sandbox comparison, for which there is a bigger thread already.
The reason why many MMO's are dev driven is a number of reasons:
- easier to do. When you control everything, it's easier to see how thinks work out. That's why Blizzard games are very restrictive, they like controlling everything, know what's going on, etc.; furthermore, players tend to suck and screw everything up. If you implement a PvP system, you have PKers and griefers everywhere. Real world PvP consequences do not convert to games very well at all (consider Xsyson with its permadeath and a respawn area). If you let people design something, you'll probably see penises soon enough, if not worse, all the way up to something breaking the law. Most things people do will be pretty lame. You need quality control and that is very difficult to implement.
- pretty much all sandboxes I played (or looked at) required ridiculous time investment at the appropriate points to progress in them or do anything interesting. You can build a campfire but you'll have to spend 2 hours collecting wood to build it and then someone will probably PK you while you're at it. In dev driven games, that doesn't really happen because you can instance the wood collection and protect the player. Thus, people with less time can walk around, do a quest, do some fishing, and feel like they're accomplishing something. I am not convinced that sandboxes are doomed to be time-consuming (in a bad way) but that's been the case so far.
As far as themeparks go, GW2 is trying to implement some of the things you're considering, but you must understand the amount of work that goes into making a world function while millions of players are in it. It's not just a matter of taking Skyrim and slapping the MMO title on it... there are considerations of security, balance, exploits, breaking, massive effect, etc.
New to the board here but this thread is why I joined so here is where I will make my first post.
I played UO a couple of months after release and it was my first mmorpg. I suppose since it was my first, is why most other games are compared to it for me. I tend to agree with both Amaranthar and BadSpock's responses but I always hold hope that a way to accomplish this will be found.
I always describe the PKing, Stealing, possible loss of items a "thrill" of the game. I've had my house looted, been PK'd, griefed you name it. We've all had to get up and walk away from the pc, but at the end of the day, it's a game and I either got back at them or died again trying and had fun doing it. I made plenty of friends that tore me a new one at first meeting and the other way around.
I miss it and sadly I don't think we will ever see those days again.
Just my .02
I never said to remove quests or any of the traditional content. And what i said actually makes adventure even better. Correct me if i'm wrong (has i said, i never played UO), but that game had so many possible player created elements and items that it was also a fantasy world simulator.
In fact, aren't mmorpg suppose to be virtual worlds for players to play together. Sandbox many times allow for player made cities, villages, events, etc, etc, etc. Sounds like a kind of simulator to me. Also, Skyrim is an SP rpg, but with the many mods now available, you can play like a fantasy sim.
Yeah, I don't know why posters will assume Sandbox games don't want all the adveture too. They call it a "sims" as if that's a bad thing, yet isn't even an avatar unning along in a woods a simulation? We just want more advanced simulation in our worlds of adventure. Just for fun, which is another word that's been confiscated to mean only hand crafted and controlled content, and forgets that just messing around with simulations can be loads of fun too.
Once upon a time....
That's not an RPG you say? Hmm, I think you're way..way off.
The fact Devs don't do the things OP mentioned is likely because they're lazy in all honesty. It obviously can be done (ArcheAge) and has been able to for a while. Devs just know it's easier to go into a room and say "Ok, let's make 300 quests" instead of actually trying to you know..build a world...or something.
Probably the same reason you don't see a ton of original IPs. Why bother when you can grab Star Wars or LOTRO and have all the shit right there? Yes, it sucks. I swear it's like music/gaming both took a huge hit right around 2000 and it's gone downhill since.
I don't play games to sit around camp fire and chat. I wouldn't care less about starting fires.
Games should focus on adventure and combat. If i want to chat, there is always the chat channel. You really don't need to waste time walking up a hill and start a fire. Plus, i can do that in real life, why would i want to do it in a GAME?
In a game, i want to feel powerful and do what i canNOT do in real life, like blasting up goblins with fireballs.
You can still blast goblins in the game with these features in. Why are you so intent that MMOs should not have other things that other players want?
Once upon a time....
I just want to chime in on the argument that having a sandboxy world would always lead to harassing, griefing etc. Obviously if you give people more freedom, some will missuse it. However there is nothing preventing a sandbox MMORPG to have rules.
Just like in RL where I have this freedom where I can decide on a multitude of activities like watch a movie, read a book, go to the beach, go to a pub or improve my work skills. This does not mean that I can go murder my neighbour and think there wont be any consequences for it.
So this could be the same in sandbox MMORPGs. Give players the freedom to do what they want, within reason, but if they do decide to do something which is not accepted, like murdering people without cause, there would be consequences for it. Many games introduced this and one of the harshest one was Lineage 2 where randomly killing people would give you a murder status and on death lead to exp and stat loss. I played that game for a while and even though it was FFA PvP I rarely got randomly killed by other players.
So having rules does not mean it is not a sandbox anymore. What makes it not a sandbox is when the majority of the content is scripted by developers rather than a world which the player interact with and with each other. UO was very much like the latter, so was Asheron's Call and even to some extent EQ, as you had quite alot of freedom in that game. It is all these post WoW MMOs which are much more linear and controlled which imo completely kills the immersion.
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Welcome then Seker, nice first post.
You're correct, they're dev-driven, for a reason: it's because many people buying and playing these games prefer it that way. Many people don't see these games as hobby anymore, they see it as some quick entertainment fix, and for those players the themepark formula is providing the quick entertainment fix.
That's the sort of games I play but I'm aware that that's not what the majority of the players wants. The majority seems to enjoy their themepark ride (at least for a few months), kill 10 rats and get their loot and a pat on the back for it. And then they buy the next themepark game, small wonder the studios and publishers provide for that.
I think you're right, hehe. Personally I have stopped playing themeparks ("on-rails") years ago. There's enough choice on the market to play games I like more. Sure, I'm missing all the AAA polish (doesn't matter much anyway), I may have to deal with some crappy mechanics and missing features sometimes and I'm missing all the games with huge hype-trains running amok in the forums. No big deal.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
I don't MIND if those features are in. I never said otherwise. I play WOW, don't i? You can start a camp fire in WOW.
However, unless a dev is blizz and has deep pocket, he probably would not have the resources to do the core combat well, *and* add these additional features.
I am just saying when i am evaulating a game, i would not care about these featuers. However, bad implementation (or omission) of core combat features will negatively impact my decision to buy.
Hmm .. i don't see why gaming is not a hobby if i play lots of games for a few weeks each.
Sematics aside, certainly few wants to stick with a single game for a long time. People seek variety. There are plenty of scientific literature backing that up.
Personally, i don't want a commitment to games. Something like Diablo 3 is ideal. Good fun for a while. If i want to, i can play it for a long time, but i do not HAVE to. WOW is moving in that direction too, with LFR and stuff. While WOW is a good game, i really hate the commitment that is need to raid. I have a life and it is only a game.
The answer should be obvious.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
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Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
I currently play Eve Online which from what I have seen is the only exception to this rule; player driven content and interaction is built into practically everything you do in that game. And as hardcore of an Eve fan as I am, even I need a break from that kind of intensity from time to time. But having been exposed to that kind of awesome content in Eve, I would like a "backup" MMO that has at least SOME of that kind of content since it adds a rich level of depth to the gameplay...but you've highlighted the exact issue. No one else is doing it, the player driven activity in other MMOs can only be found in the most superficial, unimportant tiny ways. I agree with what you've said; we need more of it baked in.
Where's the any key?
It seems people have this idea that if you play a sandbox game you can't just hop in and enjoy it for an hour or so.
Why is this? I know plenty of people that used to log in to simpley decorate their houses, organize their loot, fill up their potion kegs, etc and so on. If you don't have a ton of time to devote to a sandbox..not sure why it's a problem.. It seems people associate sandbox with the fact you must spend 8 hours a day on there to complete anything.
Not sure where this comes from. The problem is the GEAR DRIVEN MMOs that if you miss a week or two you tend to fall behind. This isn't really the case in a sandbox depending if they don't screw with items. Thats the main issue in my opinion.
There isn't many games that have actually made my sweat and get my adrenaline going like when I used to play UO.
People can also log in for an hour to do a dungeon run, or a quest if the game has them. UO added quests years ago. They were a little different in that the NPCs didn't have indicators over their heads, instead they'd shout out to you as you got close to them. That may not work well in a game without chat bubbles, I don't know.
My standard practice was to log in at my guild's headquarters and see who was there and if they wanted to do anything. If not, I'd go to the bank and look (teleporting), or I'd just head out to one of my favorite haunts and meet other players. Because it was a more social game, and lacked the zoning of a Themepark style, I usually knew many of the other players I'd run across. Heck, in UO, you got to know people, because you were always running across people who liked the same dungeons you did, or did the same sorts of things. Players also gravitated around cities of their choice, and knew the other players at the local bank or area hunting grounds. It was a different experience than today's "LFG" and people rarely saying a word to eachother.
It was also common procedure that players were always organizing events, whether as guilds or otherwise. Those had a time to meet, and things like dungeon runs might be held several times a week.
I will say though, that a AAA Sandbox does need to make dungeons better, with more changes and things happening to keep them fresh. This is a common problem in any sort of MMO, where things gets stagnant after a while.
Once upon a time....
Yeah, pretty much this. Gamers today have changed the market. Most of them are boring people, and hence, the market is catering to them.
I would say the entire community just needs patience for now.
My blog is a continuing story of what MMO's should be like.
Yes. Many of those like me from a time of pre-trammel UO are very aware of the way in which the market changed. Now the market consists of millions of mmo nomads that cant stomach more than a month or 2 of riding the same ferris-wheel and eating from the same soup-kitchen as we hit mobs that rain-down all the game-play entitlements in the world to us, without effort.
That is where we are at. However, millions are tired of this, though millions still want the welfare, which is why you'll find that themepark games are still very popular.
But the maturing mmo community that expects more aren't necessarily walking away quietly. Many, and really, many are not being quieted as they were before. Look at the more recent themepark mmo's over the last several years that have seen player-base subscription drops dramatically within a few months from launch. That kind of activity goes against the retention project-plan of many subscription-based mmorpgs. It becomes a matter of when they (the games) go free-to-play for many, or a matter of laying off studio employees and just running a skeleton crew to sustain the shallowness of the existing content for those that still appreciate it.
Not so much GW2, but as we watched WAR, AoC, and Aion, watch another more recent game like TOR. It has seen one of the absolute worst metacritic consumer scores in mmorpg history, ever.
Yes, the market needs patience, though it will be a long wait. There will need to be a change of the guard with more balanced attitudes than the ones at existing advertising sites that blow praise and high-passing grades for another themepark in a different dress or a more mature attitude in Lead Game Designers, unlike Daniel "Subs aren't declining" Erikson who fail to recognize what massively-multiplayer means.