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Why is it so hard??
Tanjin
Member Posts: 87
Why is it so hard for developers to make a great game.. maybe im the only person that feels this way.. but aren't mmorpg's suppose to be in the heart of role playing games.. based from pen and paper role playing? they dont seem to really grasp the concept in my opinion. I have yet to really play one that gives you a feeling of a real world.. a world that changes.. a world that has a deep story behind it. a world of creativity that you never know whats behind the next door. Is it really so hard to create this? honestly im not a programmer so I don't know.
Is it alot to ask to not be subjected to the same thing from every game.. where is the difference from everyone else in a world? no one has yet solved an issue completely.. camping.. yes instance zones have helped that but i dont think in a great way. it takes you away from the world of the game.. and still everything is about killing. why does everything in a game have to be about killing. dont get me wrong i love to hack and slash aswell.. but honestly if you went down to the store and on a whim killed the store clerk.. he wouldnt be there the next day would he? maybe his brother or cousin might be there.. but not him. I get tired of games where killing has no meaning other then grinding for experience.
There needs to be a game where it is a world unto itself.. it is a world that runs with or without you in it.. it evolves .. example : you are hiking in the forest and see a bunch of mindless deer.. you decide to kill them skin them.. sell their skins or make something from them.. sell the meat or eat it.. go on your merry way. Now.. unknown to you.. you just for no reason killed a small group of Orc's means for food.. they come across your act.. wel they dont care for what you did.. and attack the local village.. or steal their live stock.
you have just created something in the game that is a chain reaction.. just like in life.. everything you do in the world affects something else. this is something small but just an idea.
so i ask. why is it so hard to create a living breathing world? the AI games have today should easily be able to handle this
each game on each server would be a totally different experience if it was a world like this.. because no one would act the same on every server.. so changes would happen differently.. maybe on one server it leads to the destruction of a city.. and on another the acts of the players leads to the city becoming the biggest power in the world.
and is it so hard that if you kill something it is dead.. yes dead.. actually dead. its not coming back. this would allow you to make a world that doesnt make you have to or want to kill everything.
example: you come across a hermit .. you could talk to him or you could kill him.. or maybe he attacks you for something he has heard of your character doing previously.. either way you have a choice.. you kill him you get all his stuff .. his stuff no one else has his stuff.. its original.. and he is dead.. forever. or you can talk to him.. maybe he has a quest for you.. which leads to something better then what he has but by kiling him you would never find this out.
which brings me to my point about items.. where are the unique items in games? eventually in the MMO's of today everyone has the same items.. in this you would have unique items that only you have for defeating such and such a person.. you kill Sir Goliath you now have Sir Golith's weapon.. or whatever he has.. and no one else does because he is dead and never coming back..
to further go in depth about the hermit.. you just kill the hermit.. took his stuff.. you leave... this opens a whole window of things to happen.. perhaps something else comes along and takes up residence in the hermits place.. or it falls apart and goes to dust.. who knows.. its limitless to what can happen.. lets say you clear a cave of some monsters.. they are dead.. assuming you killed them all.. well now you have an empty cave.. you could theoretically take up residence there yourself.. you can leave... and maybe the next week you come back.. and something else has moved in.. and now you have the choice to kill those things too or maybe they are intelligent and you can talk to them.. the possibilities are endless .. peoples minds are so creative yet I have yet to see a game out there that utilizes even a fraction of the possibility of creativity and randomness..
I have so much more.. but this is just a simple part.. so i ask Why is it so hard?
Comments
Why should they? When people have proven they will pay in drove's for regurgitated crap clone's with a pretty new paint job?
Afterall why risk million's of investment money on a completely new concept, when you can invest those million's into a sure formula for success that people have proven they will purchase over and over?
Because with an ever changing world i think you would keep people playing longer .. most people get burned out on games because they get bored with the game. I believe this is due to nothing ever REALLY changes in games.
Can you imagine how much content you have to design, create and then implement into this game to keep up with the permanent death. Imagine the game has 1 million unique NPCs (thats already a pretty much technicaly impossible task to not only create, but maintain), imagine the game has 100,000 players, which is fairly low for a MMORPG, so now each player kills 10 NPCs and then what? it takes weeks, if not months to design a unique NPC, texture, behaviour, voice, animation... if you automate any part of the process, then that NPC is not unique anymore, they will look all the same with different colors, or sound the same with different voice, or they will look different but act the same. If you want uniqueness, you have to design EVERYTHING manualy, and thats tough and lengthy process.
Now, what you desire IS possible, but only if:
- we have computers with unlimited performance (10000x better/faster/powerfull then what we have right now);
- we have thousands of professional developers, and not monkeys sitting by the keyboard
I think thats pretty much it. THe biggest problem is computer power and development resources. If we have that, we can make a game you desire. But for now, we have to stick with respawnable mobs with reusable models, so many mobs look the same, except their color and name is different.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
I understand where your coming from but there are games out there that already utilize random characters with sort of decency IE: Sims they create children based on the mother and father then make something combined between the two.. now in essence.. you could take a week to have an NPC show up in the place of the other.. it doesnt have to be instant.. in fact better if its.. not.. my whole real thought is.. there needs to be some negative to killing NPC's for nothing other then grieving and loot and sport.. as far as creatures go.. you are going to have to have some spawning.. because they do it in real life anyways.. its called breeding hehe.. but they may not show up in the same place or same area as before.. if you get what i mean.. it needs a sort of living breathing eco system.. you kill the lion that eats the rabbits in the area.. you now have a large rabbit population and we all know thats not good.
I guess thats also a big problem with games today they only do it for the money.. thats why we are seeing way too many crappy looking games out there.. with pre EQ1 graphics even.. how sad. no one really cares about the games being made they only look at the money it could bring them.
The Sims example is not very good one becuase you are dealing with one character only. Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds thousands and in some cases MILLIONS of people play modern MORPGs. If you make NPCs unique, you need to customize a lot on their podels: head, eyes, nose, mouth, brows, neck, hands, feet, torso, legs... then there is clothing, gowns, hats, helms, earrings, necklaces, shirts, pants, boots...oh, and not to forget mustaches, beards, different haircuts, body markings, scars, piercings.
If you customize all of that, it becomes an object, each and every customizable part is an object, which you attach to the man body. Each object can have different values: color, texture, some other physical parameters.
So, lets say you only have 4 body parts to worry main body, hands, feet and head. Each part can have u pto 100 variations, meaning for each part you can have only 100 unique graphics, which isnt a lot. If you have 1000 helms, only 100 will have unique graphics, the others will look exactly like one of those 100. So, imagine you have 40-50 body parts that you can change graphicaly, and imagine you can have 1000 variations of each item. so thats what, 40000-50000 items to be stored in memory. And thats just data, you also have to load it and keep it in run time so that u dont load from disk when someone enters your screen with a graphic that wasnt loaded beforehand. You also have to design them, make them estheticaly pleasing and proper (ex: earring style #15 will go outside helm style #25 so it looks like a piece of earring is sticking out of the helm, which is not acceptable). You have to do a lot of stuff with that data, the more body parts and variations of each part are there, the more memory and computer power you need. So, most MMORPGs tradeoff some uniquness for the sheer amount - like, several differnt swords will look exactly the same, except with different color perhaps, or some mobs look the same except their name is different. You have to recycle objects or you will have a game where each NPC/item IS unique, but there are only 50-100 of each in total.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
Don't watch the big titles...big publishers only follow profit projections which basically = EQ/UO/AC clone.
Look to companies like Rapid Reality http://www.mmocenter.com Read the forums and other stuff, and you can see they are trying to do something different and unique with their games.
Also, look at Roma-Victor and other games by smaller companies. The graphics may not be on par with EQ2, but looks don't make the game.
Since you're a hardcore roleplayer you should either stick to PnP games or MUD. The reason they can't make a "living, breathing world" is because even an approximation of a fantasy world is to complex to be maintained even by a large staff of admin. On a high enough level, they can simulate the behavior of masses of people. Zoom in to the sims level and the individuals simulated, while having a great deal of depth in behavior, still appear to be robots to human players. On a small server with a few GM, Like most MUD, MUSH, and MOO servers, you can have a world that feels real because it's being directly run by actual staff. On some MUSHes, players can actually run storylines for one another. A live storyteller is exponentially better than a number crunching state machine (the MMORPG sever) any day.
May be if MMORPGs figured out a way to allow players to run their own Adventures in the setting and took the focus of the games off of killing.... Nah, that wouldn't work. Some players would just abuse the system to make uber characters and then raid "n00bs" all day.
I realise not every aspect of a game can be unique.. theres going to be alot of general items for instance and im ok with that.. but i just would like to see something where when you spend the time.. like on a long quest and get an item.. not everyone is going to have that item.
my friends and I also thought about where Jimmy_Scythe talks about players running adventures.. and we came up with some ideas.. players could submit quest ideas/adventures.. Admins look it over and can select some for people to run.. they can be run on another server that the creator doesnt know which server it will be on.. so they couldnt set it up to help themselves or their friends.. it could be done and it gives the players something to do.. also an idea no one has thought of i dont think is.. like in Everquest R.A. Salvatore played it for awhile.. dont know it he still does.. but if you got some writers to write up some quests and let them run the NPC doing the quest or adventure.. then at the end the people involved would get an item or items that were unique.. and signatured from the author.. it could bolster game sales.. and also if done well it could bolster writers sales aswell.. theres just so much out there games havent explored they seem to be in a rut right now.
Try creating a good game with your friends for the MMORPG.com community to play.
I think you will see why it's so hard.
What Tanjin and Jimmy_Scythe both wrote reminds me of two things:
*The Aurora Tools (NWN)
*The Saga of Ryzom + Ryzom Ring
The Aurora Tools were specifically designed for this kind of thing: create your own setting/world, populate it with mobs/npcs, code their behavior and dialogues, link all that, toss in some quests and shiny rewards, .... Then you just crawl into the position of a Gm, invite some friends over to a LAN or share your scenario/campaign with them.
The interaction is there, the special rewards are there and you could make this as hard or as easy as you wanted.
The Saga of ryzom recently launched Episode 2 (event kicks-off this weekend probably); that is actually just part of the game where the story evolves. Events will trigger new storyarchs, new objectives, new things to discover, ... etc. The beauty about it, as far as I understand it, is that certain things will only be available for a certain amount of time, dependant on what the playerbase does with what it is given. (quests apear, then disapear, tribes perish, as do the availability of rewards for these). And as such they will have an impact on the progression of the story.
Mind, this is if I understood it correctly how it will work.
Now, Ryzom Ring is the upcomming free expansion for the Saga of Ryzom; it will let you as a player create once more (like in the Aurora Tools) your own world, you own adventures. You make a map/ladscape, populate it with nastyness or traps for other players, place npcs, write out their dialogues, toss in quests, .... These scenarios will then be hosted (for a fee ofcourse I reckon) and become accesible ingame to other players. (I think it is also possible to not host it on their servers but by yourself, but then it won' t be accessible unless you' re online yourself)
How exactly they will counteract the possibility of cheating with this kind of thing I can' t really recall.
So these sort of things are already available to the public or being worked on; they just require some modification for one and/or more recognition.
As to the OT; on a large-scale MMO I' d say total interaction is indeed insane or hardly feasible.
ya i played NWN.. it was fun but what i meant was a mmo that is a world that runs all on its own. I was a gm on everquest when it was relatively new and we ran events.. thats kind of what im talking about. I just wouldnt want $ony to have a hold of any game ever again. they are all about the money and not the love of the game.
as to Windrunner.. I said earlier im not a programmer thats why i seriously asked.. why is it so hard. I dont know why it is.. to me not being a programmer I see many games that touch base on some of my ideas.. but they dont utilize them. thats why i seriously asked.. why because i seriously dont know.
THe part about NPCs being unique in looks is currently technicaly impossible. The part with dynamic and/or player run quests is... possible. The problem with this, however, is that MOST likely, player created quests would be generic quests. IE: go kill X mobs, bring back Y items. If player created quests would NOT be generic, then that suggests some kind of programming or scripting. And if you give access to regular players, then they can screw things up, find exploits or whathave you.
Sure, if everyone would be honest theyd make great quests and reawards. But unfortunately, a lot of people are not honest. So if they had total control over quest creation, theyd make secret quests with super high rewards for themselves or their friends. If they didnt have complete controll, then someone, admin or dev, would have to go through all of their quests and sort out bad ones from good ones, and thats extra time and resources. Its easier to concentrate admins/devs on designing quests from scratch, rather then listening to people. You can see this everywhere, I beta tested a lot of MMORPGs, and so far none of my content related suggestions were implemented - they simply dont want to waste time going through all the ideas people have. And I understand them, I worked as QA in a software dev. company for about a year and people come up with STUPIDEST suggestions! For one good idea there are 10 bad ones, and 50 moronic ones. Its just not cost effective. And thats the saddest part.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
I have alot of ideas too ...and a day job
so Iam trying to learn C++ (gonna save up for some courses)
then Iam gonna learn to use unreal script 2.5 (unreal tournement)
then me and 6 of my friends (all work buddys)
are just gonna try to get really good at US2.5 even if in 10 years it will look dull/old
a game with even 10,000 npcs (ones that talk go about there day like in shenmue)
maybe 10k mobs ....would be great if just for 100 people even ...we have alot of diff ideas but you get the basics ...if your not worryed about blowing everyones minds with graphics you could do alot + the idea is to entertain my self
Um... I've worked on mods for UT and I don't think that's really what you're after. You don't really need to know C/C++ (or C#) to use US, but it helps. The thing is, all the hardware level stuff is hard coded. There just isn't any way to alter UT's networking structure with Unreal Script. If you wanted to do that, you'd need the source and I don't have to tell you how much that would cost. You'd probably be better off paying $100 for the Torque engine and revamping the client and server networking code. I'd also like to suggest that you learn SQL since you can set up your world database in MySQL and save yourself the trouble of writing the database from scratch. You're server will basically just translate client requests into SQL commands and send acknowledgements for those commands. It's more complicated than that, but not by much.
oyalty-Bearing License - For retail console & PC products
A non-refundable, non-recoupable license fee is due on execution of the agreement. The cost is US $350,000 for one of the available Unreal Engine 2 platforms, plus US $50,000 for each additional platform. A royalty of 3% is due on all revenue from the game, calculated on the wholesale price of the product minus (for console SKUs) console manufacturer fees. In the case of massive-multiplayer online games, the royalty is also due on the additional forms of revenue including subscriptions and advertisements.
IMO they are gonna lower it when unreal 3 comes out ...and agian when unreal 4 comes
theres ither good free to try ones /torque/...that one from ryzom
TO: ORIGINAL POSTER
there IS a game of what you want. It's called life. Go kill a hermit, see what happens. Do it like the pilgrims coming to America did, kill all the buffalo (deer) and see how mad the indians (orcs) get. Think of life as an MMO, talk to random people, go out into the world, you'll find everything you're looking for there. And experience it first-hand! Not behind a computer screen. No matter how hard anyone tries, we can't imitate life. There IS no matrix. There is no metraverse (if you've ever read the book Snow Crash, which everyone here should deffinately do). You ask for something that already exists. Go out and enjoy.
I'm obviously not the only one that feels this way, but MMORPG -DO- eventually get boring. It's hard to decide just one particular game to center on, but if you can center on one game that interests you, you have good fortune. some of the best time takers (in my opinion) are the city of- games. If you get into one of them, i assure you that it will stick to you for a long time
Thy Name is Matthew Phillips.
I have come to be your worst nightmare.