The failure of the MMORPG.

pkpkpk · July 2021

The acronym MMORPG stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, or in other words an online role-playing game that the masses will play. Hum, masses, role-playing, not exactly the most natural combination, at least if we are speaking of role-playing of the 'Wizard's Crown' variety. However two years before Everquest was made, Final Fantasy VII, that game with the $40 million development budget, had sold a million copies within four months in North America. So maybe the masses were ready for an online role-playing game. But what they were to receive, in the form of Everquest, that erstwhile exemplar of the MMORPG that later games would doggedly follow, was to appal all sense of reason and propriety; it was not a role-playing game at all, and never aspired to be. And it would forever consign (in some inexplicable and inscrutable way) all future games to the same lot, and so condemn the MMORPG to essential nothingness. Like a Deer Hunter, an MMORPG became a place for common folk unabashedly to vent their violent tendecies on harmless creatures all in the name of fun. Although a good reminder of the danger of looking different from others, I must remind myself in this assessment that it hinges on the assumption that the average Everquest player, if set loose in his home town (in Everquest, mind you!) and given free reign to, would not cut down every person living there, though they looked exactly like him; in any case this might at least raise a few more hackles than the apparently wildly popular game of killing passive 'bats', 'rats', 'beetles' and even the 'living dead' (yes apparently the living dead are passive too, if they happen to be within a few hundred yards of the city (and yes this can happen in broad daylight)) However in a rather 'bold' move (-cough- -cough-) some evil cities actually had aggressive creatures near them, death to which would involve, after a few second wait, teleportation to a few feet away with all ones health and items. Nothing ventured, nothing gained? Only after level 5 in Everquest, where one would 'venture' a small amount of 'experience', which apparently means something substantial (not in any role-playing sense certainly, essentially there is no risk whatsoever in the game, at least till one has hacked down a million living things and vaguely risks loss of his 'weapons and armor' (apparently not a means to an end, but the end itself) if he should not be able to recover his fully stocked body (gnolls, &c. are too high minded to loot mere corporeal goods, preferring instead the cereberal satisfaction of vanquishment of their foes))

Anyway against this utterly lunatic backdrop one has to descry how a role-playing game could ever be fashioned, and I am afraid to say one never was: Everquest and all of its successors, and all MMORPGs of which there is any living trace, are not role-playing games. They are appaling bloodbaths with no purpose whatsoever. So much for the promise of online role-playing. Unfortunately these games are all that exists of graphical online role-playing, and so while the intelligent gamer might balk at the graphical excesses of Everquest involved in its $3 million budget--an oversized world that takes too long to cross, that requries hundreds of people to populate it and that distances one from the other greatly, he will find nothing else older or more artistic out there: truly these are 'massively multiplayer' games and nothing but; the description is not for show.

So where did these games go wrong? Why is starting in a field and killing anything that moves not role-playing? Well I can explain how an actual online role-playing game would work, but I cannot say where these games went wrong, since I see no proof that they ever meant to do right. Right is not effortless, it has nothing to do with the latest whizbang graphics, and in a game that is almost monomaniacly protective of incompetent people, it would involve a complete paradigm shift from protective to selective. However (rather mundanely) one makes the obvious observation that a company earns money based on how many subscribers it has, not that this is any kind of justification. And the thought that only one kind of game can exist in this 'market' is desperate if anything. In any case I dredged up this video of Lineage 2 Classic Gameplay in case anyone cares. This is every MMORPG in a nutshell.

. A picture worth a thousand words? Not really, but might be good for nostalgia, laughs or as a cure for the incredulity that games as I described not only exist, but do so without exception under the denomination of 'MMORPG'.

So now the final question, how does one make a real online role-playing game? Well I've hardly ever thought about it, but a solution was not hard to conceive. Essentially (as the first 100 or so RPGs made show) an RPG is a quest (whether that be strictly financial or more elaborate) that one or more people undertake to perform that usually (but not always) involves some danger from living things. This can easily be accomplished in an MMORPG, but there is one new variable that was not in (most) earlier traditional RPGs (non MUDs): other individuals or parties competing for the same quest. Where they were, say The Black Onyx from 1983, they were often not shown in actual contention or mutual pursuit of the quest. In a game with a large population, this could conceivably become a problem. Solution: the world needs to be realistic. Not everyone can be an 'adventurer', many players need to do trades. And adventuring has one drawback: you can die. No, not appear three feet away ready to headlong at that motionless 'gremlin' again. Die. And as to other players that become a nuisance, they are no different from the 'gremlins'. People need to cooperate. Really it's all been done before; it's called life. MMORPGs have without exception flaunted every rule of life, from the need to eat, to the risk of death, making them without exception nothing but a pitiful sham. All you can do is what you see above. And there is no point to any of it. And yet the upshot is, kids eats these things like candy. They'll play it for 10 hours a day (or they would, before it became even more a model of the world). Succesful capitalism, pitiful posterity.

pkpkpk · July 2021

And speaking of the world, capitalism, etc. I suppose in some way the 'world' (if one would call it that) of MMORPGs could be said to be something like a modern interpretation of the medieval world. I don't know whether it's the women swinging halbreds around with one hand as they slice and dice through a horde of goblins or what, just a hunch I have. The company (Sony, Microsoft, EA, Activision, etc.) is the oppressive police force with surveillance cameras that prevents any action that does not conform with aggregate emotional consensus (largely determined by those same halbred wielding warriors, when they're not busy playing for the other team, as they see fit), etc. etc. etc. Of course crime is not simply highly unlikely to succeed as today, it's completely impossible! This sees its full fruition perhaps in Everquest (where the police state is yet incomplete) where player disputes are handled through heated 'tells' and emotional expressions of indignation in /OOC before appeal to a third party, not much unlike the modern 'law suit'. Ah good ol' fashioned medieval life, eh? Well at least we can still 'kill monsters', right? Alas stripped of every shred of natural law and probability, and fitted with retroactive 'welfare' and 'humanitarian' laws, we find that we cannot even have a reason to exist in this world but as a pointless person killing pointless 'monsters' for pointless 'experience'. And such are MMORPGs--pointless games, but they sure were fun in our 20s. I guess modern school works in the same way--indoctrinating ideas into our heads when we are most vulnerable. Still it would be nice if there were one of these games that was not a steaming pile of dung. Anyone have any examples?

Kyleran · July 2021

Walls of text crit for 47854 pts of damage.

Play EVE, nothing like EQ or most any other theme park style game cut from similar cloth.

There are others as well.

Problem is, many gamers have only ever gone down a single path so they just don't know.

Sovrath · July 2021

pkpkpk said:

cares. This is every MMORPG in a nutshell. . A picture worth a thousand words? Not really, but might be good for nostalgia, laughs or as a cure for the incredulity that games as I described not only exist, but do so without exception under the denomination of 'MMORPG'.

It's probably important to note that is a much newer incarnation of Lineage 2.

When Lineage 2 came out it was more about the interaction with other people. Sure you would grind to level but you would "mostly" do so in groups or at least solo with the threat of someone coming and taking your grinding area.

Wars were had over such spaces.

So the video you show really isn't complete as there are no players there. It's an Orc on Talking island just grinding mobs alone. The original scenario would be that orc would not be an orc as talking island was for humans and there would be many and high-level players would go there to pk them all the time.

They would then ask for help, for any high-level player to come and help them. Or people from their clan would stand there to help.

Point is, the game was about player interaction.

For my taste that's exactly what I want an MMORPG to be. While I really liked the whole quest idea that World of Warcraft implemented (and even said on the Lineage 2 forums that we needed more storied reasons to send us to "grind") that turned out horrible as now all people were doing was clicking through the storied bits, going out to collect/kil 3 or 4 or something and then come back for a reward. Rinse repeat.

So you're not doing much other than playing the skinner box.

Otherwise, I didn't read your forum post as it's very difficult to read without paragraphs. Just wanted to comment on your example.

Utinni · July 2021

2021 and people still whining about what MMORPG means. This was cringe 10 years ago.

pkpkpk · July 2021

Kyleran said:

Walls of text crit for 47854 pts of damage.

Play EVE, nothing like EQ or most any other theme park style game cut from similar cloth.

There are others as well.

Problem is, many gamers have only ever gone down a single path so they just don't know.

What are the others? I'm curious. As far as I know all the 2-D games from the '90s (which actually tried interesting things) were abandoned. I'm aware there are games like Darkfall, but the mindset of these games is light years away from traditional game design. Is there an actual MMORPG in existence where the players can die? If not I would tend to infer (understatement of the year here) that MMORPGs can never achieve anything good, since they outright reject natural law as a part of their so-called 'world'. And once you do that then you immediately encounter problems like 1) everyone is an adventurer, 2) massive overcrowding, 3) frivolous violence, 4) mass disrespect, 5) unqualified people at high levels, and many more. I don't think my original assertion is so easily dismissed as you have done. If we start from the principle that every extant MMORPG from 1999 on had at least a $1 million development budget and we see that not a single one of them even considered a world where people die as a possibility, it might be time to give my original post greater consideration.

eoloe · July 2021

IMHO, the problem had its origin with tabletop D&D. Not really the game itself, but the way it was played. You had basically two types of players:

- the ones who were ready to invest themselves in the theatrical experience that a tabletop RPG can possibly provide and were helped by a talented GM able to create interesting long-term stories in which players had real choices. Some other GMs were also so great at improvising/preping that they could offer a mix between stories and a sandboxed world. For these players, a great night was when the role interpretations, the choices made, and when the atmosphere created by the GM were at their peak.

- the other type of players were more strategists/optimizers only interested by how many hexes they could go in each turn, which combinations of abilities was the best for any given situation, and the rewards obtained. They were planning carefully their progression and did not care about roleplaying nor the GM descriptions besides the essential facts. For these players, a great night was when the team or one of its member had the most ingenious creative idea on how to solve a dangerous situation!

Each time I went to a tabletop RPG convention, I mainly met the second type of players. They wanted levels, they wanted loot, they wanted a tactical role in group (not understanding that Role stands for Roleplay not tactical class). They are at the origin of the infamous DOOR-MONSTER-TREASURE loop that plagued tabletop RPGs for years up to the quite recent Pathfinder.

Grasping its addictive power, video games translated this DOOR-MONSTER-TREASURE loop into something more suitable:

some of them removed the DOOR!

And here you go, now you have games that are basically just a slaughter-fest! Kill a monster, get XP, get loot, spend points in a skill tree or whatever new ability. Now do it again.

Nowadays, it seems that survival games offer better worlds and mechanics to roleplay in than MMORPGs that are just looters/grinders paradises.

eoloe · July 2021

tzervo said:

eoloe said:

IMHO, the problem had its origin with tabletop D&D. Not really the game itself, but the way it was played. You had basically two types of players:

- the ones who were ready to invest themselves in the theatrical experience that a tabletop RPG can possibly provide and helped by a talented GM able to create interesting long-term stories in which players had real choices. Some other GM were also so great at improvising/preping that they could offer a mix between stories and a sandboxed world. For these players, a great night was when the role interpretations, the choices made, and when the atmosphere created by the GM was at its peak.

- the other type of player were more strategists/optimizers only interested by how many hexes they could go in each turn, what combinations of abilities was the best for any given situation, and the rewards obtained. They were planning carefully their progression and did not care about roleplaying nor the GM descriptions besides the essential facts. For these players, a great night was when the team or one of its member had the mot ingenious creative idea on how to solve a dangerous situation!

Each I went to a tabletop RPG convention, I met mainly the second type of players. They wanted levels, they wanted loot, they wanted a tactical role in group (not understanding that Role stands for Roleplay not tactical class). They are at the origin of the DOOR-MONSTER-TREASURE loop that plagued tabletop RPGs for years up to the quite recent Pathfinder.

Grasping its addictive power, video games translated this DOOR-MONSTER-TREASURE loop into something more suitable: some of them removed the DOOR!
And here you go, now you have games that are basically just slaughter-fest! Kill a monster, get XP, get loot, spend points in a skill tree or whatever new ability. Now do it again.

Nowadays, it seems that survival games offer better worlds and mechanics to roleplay in than MMORPGs that are just looters/grinders paradises.

And ain't it great!!

As someone who played and enjoyed tabletop RPGs as a kid, I am glad that MMORPG's are more "rigorous" and objective-oriented. I can fire up a game like EVE or Albion or Foxhole and I do not have to "roleplay" or pretend I am a fighter or trader or pirate or crafter or diplomat or miner. I am actually one - within the scope and rules of that game.

Of course! But the two games you cited (I don't know Foxhole) are not themeparks (which were my target). Indeed, in a sandboxed world, you can just BE what you want. Which is also why I highlighted survival games.

Scot · July 2021

eoloe said:

IMHO, the problem had its origin with tabletop D&D. Not really the game itself, but the way it was played. You had basically two types of players:

- the ones who were ready to invest themselves in the theatrical experience that a tabletop RPG can possibly provide and were helped by a talented GM able to create interesting long-term stories in which players had real choices. Some other GMs were also so great at improvising/preping that they could offer a mix between stories and a sandboxed world. For these players, a great night was when the role interpretations, the choices made, and when the atmosphere created by the GM were at their peak.

- the other type of players were more strategists/optimizers only interested by how many hexes they could go in each turn, which combinations of abilities was the best for any given situation, and the rewards obtained. They were planning carefully their progression and did not care about roleplaying nor the GM descriptions besides the essential facts. For these players, a great night was when the team or one of its member had the most ingenious creative idea on how to solve a dangerous situation!

Each time I went to a tabletop RPG convention, I mainly met the second type of players. They wanted levels, they wanted loot, they wanted a tactical role in group (not understanding that Role stands for Roleplay not tactical class). They are at the origin of the infamous DOOR-MONSTER-TREASURE loop that plagued tabletop RPGs for years up to the quite recent Pathfinder.

Grasping its addictive power, video games translated this DOOR-MONSTER-TREASURE loop into something more suitable:

some of them removed the DOOR!

And here you go, now you have games that are basically just a slaughter-fest! Kill a monster, get XP, get loot, spend points in a skill tree or whatever new ability. Now do it again.

Nowadays, it seems that survival games offer better worlds and mechanics to roleplay in than MMORPGs that are just looters/grinders paradises.

Roleplaying had a military strategy game background, you could find the military gamers with their miniature figures at every early roleplaying convention I went to. So it is only natural you had "strategy" players. The "theatrical" came in later and it has been more or less a happy marriage ever since. All role-players have both these sides in them but in video games it is far easier to cater to the strategy side. The theatrical is somewhat catered for by solo player adventure games (what that used to mean, not what it means now), traditional RPG's or modern narrative games with choices. But aside from narrative games these are all built on the core of a game that has the "strategy" side at its core.

Following on from that and addressing the original post of Pkpkpk, roleplaying cannot be done properly in a multiplayer game. MMORPG's would need to have an artificial intelligence powerful enough to be the games master for every player and group. MMORPG's can tell a story, do combat well, put players into the same space, they are not bad for what are called "immersion role-players" who have a solo experience. But they do not do roleplaying akin to table-top well at all. That's where roleplaying guilds come in, they are the roleplaying experience in MMORPG's and MMOs have relied on them from the very beginning.

Of course todays MMOs are even further away from the original conception of roleplaying. It was Everquest which had racial languages for example, what I think of as 'roleplaying tools' where already dying out when we entered the WoW era of MMORPG's.

cameltosis · July 2021

I'm not really sure what the OP was talking about, even for me that was too much text!

From the various replies in this thread, I assume this is about how the OPs view of what "real" roleplaying is all about is not being delivered in the mmorpg market. I can certainly understand the frustration - the mmorpg market certainly isn't delivering games that I want to play either - but I do take issue with the general feeling about a lack of roleplaying in mmorpgs.

Just off the top of my head, the various different types of roleplaying I have seen and participated in over the last 18 years:

1) Combat Roleplaying

Tank, healer, damage dealer, buffer, debuffer, crowd-control, off-tank etc. Just about all MMORPGs include combat roles, usually only the trinity but some do a better job and offer more diverse roles to play.

The games where this type of roleplaying is well implemented are the games where each role gives you a very different experience of the game. Playing a tank, where it's my job to get in the enemies face and then sit back while the rest of the team do their job is a very different experience to, say, playing a buffer whose job it is to monitor their friends and subtley manipulate the fight in their favour.

2) Economic Roleplaying.

Again, nearly all MMORPGs include crafting, nearly all include selling. So, you can be a blacksmith, or an apothecary. You can be an investor or a trader. In a few, you can be a shopkeeper. For most of us, we're just customers.

3) Personality Roleplaying

This is a relatively recent addition to MMORPGs and isn't very good yet. I'm talking about things like lightside / darkside choices in SWTOR, where you get to decide (through in-game mechanics, not just ur imagination) what sort of personality your character has.

Are you good or evil? Are you selfish or charitable? Are you an idealist or a pragmatist?

I don't think this type of roleplaying is suited to mmos, but it works well in games like The Witcher (where this is the only type of roleplaying available).

4) Social Roleplaying

This is roleplaying directly with other real people, using whatever mechanics the game provides. This includes things like guild leader / officer / member, but also includes all the cool stuff you can do with emotes and whatever other roleplaying tools the devs have given you.

I would guess this is the type of roleplaying the OP is looking for. But, he must not be looking that hard, as it exists in every MMORPG. It's probably a lesser used form of roleplay as it tends to be more based on imagination and isn't rewarded by the game, so player uptake is usually small.

However, weirdly, this is the type of roleplaying I see most often in PvP. I have found it very common to see players (including myself) really taking ownership of their character's social role and acting it out really well. It may not be wholey in character and certainly wouldn't live up to the stereotypical image or a geeky roleplayer, but I've seen soooo many people make suicidal charges.....because thats what their character would do......or fight to the death defending a keep instead of saving themselves.....because thats what their social responsibility is telling them to do.

I'm sure you could all think of other types of roleplaying that you've seen implemented in games, not to mention all of the crazy things you've all invented in games even if it wasn't supported by any mechanics.

pkpkpk · July 2021

tzervo said:

pkpkpk said:
Is there an actual MMORPG in existence where the players can die?
...
And once you do that then you immediately encounter problems like 1) everyone is an adventurer, 2) massive overcrowding, 3) frivolous violence, 4) mass disrespect, 5) unqualified people at high levels, and many more.

Haven and Hearth. Also some MMORPGs with hardcore/permadeath rulesets (DDO hardcore servers iirc, also others). Niche though. Not many are willing to risk weeks or months of progress on a mistake or, worse, a network failure.

You don't need to have permadeath to avoid YOLO and frivolous behaviours. It's not a "black or white" thing, it is a scale that depends on the loss incurred on failure. In EVE and Albion for example people constantly need to evaluate what they risk losing (in terms of ships, gear, modules etc).

Thanks for the suggestion of Haven and Hearth. It looks quite good. I wouldn't have thought a graphical online RPG would have that. Even on text MUDs this is almost exclusive to RPI MUDs (with a character approval process), and only a few of those exist, and they all have low populations.

I've played DDO before. Never knew there was a 'permadeath' server. But I wouldn't for a minute say this does not follow the Everquest model. Interesting that they threw players this 'bone', but the ability to die in an RPG should not actually be a notable thing. Knowing a game was founded on the players having eternal life turns me away pretty fast.

In regard to your last point, how does one roleplay if there is no 'death'? If an orc decapitates me, or another player kills me, I die. Frankly one begins to feel a little defensive in such a discussion. The question it seems to me should not be, why should an RPG have death, but why should an RPG not have death? The burden is on them to answer that. The fact that 99.999% of RPGs do not was the genesis of this rather mocking and humorous thread. But you have shown me the 00.0001% that does not, and I will indeed read much about it and watch many videos.

pkpkpk · July 2021

Scot:

Following on from that and addressing the original post of Pkpkpk, roleplaying cannot be done properly in a multiplayer game. MMORPG's would need to have an artificial intelligence powerful enough to be the games master for every player and group. MMORPG's can tell a story, do combat well, put players into the same space, they are not bad for what are called "immersion role-players" who have a solo experience. But they do not do roleplaying akin to table-top well at all. That's where roleplaying guilds come in, they are the roleplaying experience in MMORPG's and MMOs have relied on them from the very beginning.

Of course todays MMOs are even further away from the original conception of roleplaying. It was Everquest which had racial languages for example, what I think of as 'roleplaying tools' where already dying out when we entered the WoW era of MMORPG's.

Don't have time for a lot of banter, but yes role-playing can be done in an online game, and it was in fact perfected 8 years before EQ on Armageddon MUD. A modern graphical example is Second Life (in 3-D no less). There is no better 3-D game for role-playing than this, and in fact there may not be any other 3-D game for role-playing than this (so I understand your assertion, albeit false).

Tiller · July 2021

Kyleran said:

Walls of text crit for 47854 pts of damage.

Play EVE, nothing like EQ or most any other theme park style game cut from similar cloth.

There are others as well.

Problem is, many gamers have only ever gone down a single path so they just don't know.

I was going to post the same thing after reading all that; but I scrolled down after and sure as sh*** someone else said it already.

Op no one is being mean, just break your damn text up to make it easier or us old folks to read and process what you are saying.

Ungood · July 2021

cameltosis said:

I'm not really sure what the OP was talking about, even for me that was too much text!

From the various replies in this thread, I assume this is about how the OPs view of what "real" roleplaying is all about is not being delivered in the mmorpg market. I can certainly understand the frustration - the mmorpg market certainly isn't delivering games that I want to play either - but I do take issue with the general feeling about a lack of roleplaying in mmorpgs.

Just off the top of my head, the various different types of roleplaying I have seen and participated in over the last 18 years:

1) Combat Roleplaying
Tank, healer, damage dealer, buffer, debuffer, crowd-control, off-tank etc. Just about all MMORPGs include combat roles, usually only the trinity but some do a better job and offer more diverse roles to play.

The games where this type of roleplaying is well implemented are the games where each role gives you a very different experience of the game. Playing a tank, where it's my job to get in the enemies face and then sit back while the rest of the team do their job is a very different experience to, say, playing a buffer whose job it is to monitor their friends and subtley manipulate the fight in their favour.

2) Economic Roleplaying.
Again, nearly all MMORPGs include crafting, nearly all include selling. So, you can be a blacksmith, or an apothecary. You can be an investor or a trader. In a few, you can be a shopkeeper. For most of us, we're just customers.

3) Personality Roleplaying
This is a relatively recent addition to MMORPGs and isn't very good yet. I'm talking about things like lightside / darkside choices in SWTOR, where you get to decide (through in-game mechanics, not just ur imagination) what sort of personality your character has.

Are you good or evil? Are you selfish or charitable? Are you an idealist or a pragmatist?

I don't think this type of roleplaying is suited to mmos, but it works well in games like The Witcher (where this is the only type of roleplaying available).

4) Social Roleplaying
This is roleplaying directly with other real people, using whatever mechanics the game provides. This includes things like guild leader / officer / member, but also includes all the cool stuff you can do with emotes and whatever other roleplaying tools the devs have given you.

I would guess this is the type of roleplaying the OP is looking for. But, he must not be looking that hard, as it exists in every MMORPG. It's probably a lesser used form of roleplay as it tends to be more based on imagination and isn't rewarded by the game, so player uptake is usually small.

However, weirdly, this is the type of roleplaying I see most often in PvP. I have found it very common to see players (including myself) really taking ownership of their character's social role and acting it out really well. It may not be wholey in character and certainly wouldn't live up to the stereotypical image or a geeky roleplayer, but I've seen soooo many people make suicidal charges.....because thats what their character would do......or fight to the death defending a keep instead of saving themselves.....because thats what their social responsibility is telling them to do.

I'm sure you could all think of other types of roleplaying that you've seen implemented in games, not to mention all of the crazy things you've all invented in games even if it wasn't supported by any mechanics.

Thank you very much for this, I read the OP, and, for the life of me, I really could not figure out what their point was.. this recap was very informative!

AAAMEOW · July 2021

I'm playing a game where all you do is throwing balls at monster and try to catch it. I think the game made 2 billion dollar last year. It's pokemon go by the way.

The only thing matters is there are people playing it. It doesn't matter how a game should "theoretically" be designed.

Wizardry · July 2021

First of all,sometimes the html code fails here on this site,i have witnessed it many times.
IMO there was nothign wrong with EQ for that time because everything in life has to start somewhere and hopefully evolve.Yes we can look back on old titles and complain but we need to be fair and allow studios to grow and make better mmorpgs over time.

I have stated many times that EQ1 was a great start for the genre,maybe not he very first but close enough for mainstream gamers.Also imo FXI surpassed it many ways so also imo THAT EQ1 should be dead and no longer referenced.

So in comes EQ2 and Wow both identical and both catered to the younger crowd of new household DSL gamers.Hand holding built right into the games and in case of EQ2 some improvements but in case of Wow ZERO improvements on the genre,case in point guild halls and housing.

Excuses no longer cut it,these studios have the technology and know how to make a true AAA mmorpg but refuse to and to be honest they don't need to be if gamers are willing to keep supporting half assed.

eoloe · July 2021

Scot said:

eoloe said:

IMHO, the problem had its origin with tabletop D&D. Not really the game itself, but the way it was played. You had basically two types of players:

- the ones who were ready to invest themselves in the theatrical experience that a tabletop RPG can possibly provide and were helped by a talented GM able to create interesting long-term stories in which players had real choices. Some other GMs were also so great at improvising/preping that they could offer a mix between stories and a sandboxed world. For these players, a great night was when the role interpretations, the choices made, and when the atmosphere created by the GM were at their peak.

- the other type of players were more strategists/optimizers only interested by how many hexes they could go in each turn, which combinations of abilities was the best for any given situation, and the rewards obtained. They were planning carefully their progression and did not care about roleplaying nor the GM descriptions besides the essential facts. For these players, a great night was when the team or one of its member had the most ingenious creative idea on how to solve a dangerous situation!

Each time I went to a tabletop RPG convention, I mainly met the second type of players. They wanted levels, they wanted loot, they wanted a tactical role in group (not understanding that Role stands for Roleplay not tactical class). They are at the origin of the infamous DOOR-MONSTER-TREASURE loop that plagued tabletop RPGs for years up to the quite recent Pathfinder.

Grasping its addictive power, video games translated this DOOR-MONSTER-TREASURE loop into something more suitable:

some of them removed the DOOR!

And here you go, now you have games that are basically just a slaughter-fest! Kill a monster, get XP, get loot, spend points in a skill tree or whatever new ability. Now do it again.

Nowadays, it seems that survival games offer better worlds and mechanics to roleplay in than MMORPGs that are just looters/grinders paradises.

Roleplaying had a military strategy game background, you could find the military gamers with their miniature figures at every early roleplaying convention I went to. So it is only natural you had "strategy" players. The "theatrical" came in later and it has been more or less a happy marriage ever since. All role-players have both these sides in them but in video games it is far easier to cater to the strategy side. The theatrical is somewhat catered for by solo player adventure games (what that used to mean, not what it means now), traditional RPG's or modern narrative games with choices. But aside from narrative games these are all built on the core of a game that has the "strategy" side at its core.

Following on from that and addressing the original post of Pkpkpk, roleplaying cannot be done properly in a multiplayer game. MMORPG's would need to have an artificial intelligence powerful enough to be the games master for every player and group. MMORPG's can tell a story, do combat well, put players into the same space, they are not bad for what are called "immersion role-players" who have a solo experience. But they do not do roleplaying akin to table-top well at all. That's where roleplaying guilds come in, they are the roleplaying experience in MMORPG's and MMOs have relied on them from the very beginning.

Of course todays MMOs are even further away from the original conception of roleplaying. It was Everquest which had racial languages for example, what I think of as 'roleplaying tools' where already dying out when we entered the WoW era of MMORPG's.

I entirely agree. I myself played a lot of D2 and currently play BDO, which is probably one of the most hypnotic-flashy-mindless grindfest there is. So to go back on topic, I am also a virtual mass murderer! The quest says "kill 4000 X" and I go armed with incredible powers massacre the poor victims that asked for nothing. They are just hanging there. I come, and by the minute the casualty counter climbs up. At the end, I feel no remorse, grab my reward and feel happy.

However, sometimes, I also feel MMORPGs missed the mark and could have offered way more. To conclude, I think this is what the OP expressed. I also think that it is a valid discussion that should not be simply dismissed.

Interestingly, the games in which I feel the more immersed are the ones with a lot of freedom/sandbox elements. Skyrim is a world where I come back on a yearly basis.

MMOExposed · July 2021

You FFAFL mmo folks killed MMORPGs

GatsuZerk · July 2021

Did this guy just say Lineage 2 is every MMO in a nut shell?

What?

There's absolutely nothing like Lineage 2.

Sometimes I wonder what fantasy land some of you people live in?

Scot · July 2021

GatsuZerk said:

Did this guy just say Lineage 2 is every MMO in a nut shell?

What?

There's absolutely nothing like Lineage 2.

Sometimes I wonder what fantasy land some of you people live in?

"So do I", he said as he pondered today's posts sitting in the Prancing Pony.

Po_gg · July 2021

Scot said:

"So do I", he said as he pondered today's posts sitting in the Prancing Pony.

And what a fine establishment that is!

Large pints, comfy beds...

Scot · July 2021

pkpkpk said:

Scot:

Following on from that and addressing the original post of Pkpkpk, roleplaying cannot be done properly in a multiplayer game. MMORPG's would need to have an artificial intelligence powerful enough to be the games master for every player and group. MMORPG's can tell a story, do combat well, put players into the same space, they are not bad for what are called "immersion role-players" who have a solo experience. But they do not do roleplaying akin to table-top well at all. That's where roleplaying guilds come in, they are the roleplaying experience in MMORPG's and MMOs have relied on them from the very beginning.

Of course todays MMOs are even further away from the original conception of roleplaying. It was Everquest which had racial languages for example, what I think of as 'roleplaying tools' where already dying out when we entered the WoW era of MMORPG's.

Don't have time for a lot of banter, but yes role-playing can be done in an online game, and it was in fact perfected 8 years before EQ on Armageddon MUD. A modern graphical example is Second Life (in 3-D no less). There is no better 3-D game for role-playing than this, and in fact there may not be any other 3-D game for role-playing than this (so I understand your assertion, albeit false).

I think this really depends on what you mean by roleplaying, coming from a table top background roleplaying must include banter. If you are not talking much that's "immersion roleplaying". But I agree the MUDs did it better, I was there Amber being my first.

I think the graphics pulls us away from roleplaying, you mentioned SL, well there you can fine tune the graphics to what you want so you can make graphics cater to roleplaying. Having played SL I realise it had questing but thought that was not very developed, that said I last played about ten years ago? Most of the roleplaying was in RP groups, I was part of the Vampire and Werewolf one for example.

Neanderthal · July 2021

I'll just comment on the need for player characters to be able to actually die (aka perma-death) mentioned by the OP. In any game with character progression over time people would simply not tolerate perma-death. You die and lose all of your stuff, all of your levels, all of your skill gains and start over with nothing. No way. Nobody (or very few people) would play that game. That's just reality.

I've thought about ways a game could have a sort of "soft" perma-death but it all comes down to minimizing the loss of progression to make it more acceptable to people. Move the focus away from character progression and perma-death would be more likely to work but that leads into a whole other discussion.

Think about this, the OP was mocking EQ for it's lack of consequences when a PC dies but a lot of people feel that the death penalty was to extreme in EQ. Most (all?) games since EQ have had less severe death penalties. I'm one of the nuts who thinks death should at least have a sting in these games but I seem to be very much in the minority.

Scot · July 2021

Neanderthal said:

I'll just comment on the need for player characters to be able to actually die (aka perma-death) mentioned by the OP. In any game with character progression over time people would simply not tolerate perma-death. You die and lose all of your stuff, all of your levels, all of your skill gains and start over with nothing. No way. Nobody (or very few people) would play that game. That's just reality.

I've thought about ways a game could have a sort of "soft" perma-death but it all comes down to minimizing the loss of progression to make it more acceptable to people. Move the focus away from character progression and perma-death would be more likely to work but that leads into a whole other discussion.

Think about this, the OP was mocking EQ for it's lack of consequences when a PC dies but a lot of people feel that the death penalty was to extreme in EQ. Most (all?) games since EQ have had less severe death penalties. I'm one of the nuts who thinks death should at least have a sting in these games but I seem to be very much in the minority.

It is a matter of balance, perma-death is too harsh, near enough zero penalty is too low, my preference is a debuff that grows the more you die and can only be removed by spending time in a something like a tavern.

Theocritus · July 2021

"Also imo FXI surpassed it many ways so also imo THAT EQ1 should be dead and no longer referenced."

I tried FFXI a few years after I had been playing EQ1....I was very unimpressed with it and FFXIV later.....THe community was awful...I had heard many bragging how great it was, but when I tried it they were not helpful at all and many were condescending and rude. I guess we each find our own little niche in these games.

Kyleran · July 2021

Theocritus said:

"Also imo FXI surpassed it many ways so also imo THAT EQ1 should be dead and no longer referenced."

I tried FFXI a few years after I had been playing EQ1....I was very unimpressed with it and FFXIV later.....THe community was awful...I had heard many bragging how great it was, but when I tried it they were not helpful at all and many were condescending and rude. I guess we each find our own little niche in these games.

Err, think of who you are replying to and it all will make sense, yes?

Cheers.

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The failure of the MMORPG.

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Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV

Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV