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A game with a purpose?
VengeSunsoar
Member EpicPosts: 6,601
Ok I have been playing MMO's since Kunark EQ and actually had a lot of fun with it but for the last couple of years I have been bored to death with games?
What is the point? And don't say entertainment, they are all supposed to entertain. I'm talking about what is the purpose of the game, what do i do with my character. Why do I level? Is it just to get to the next level, or the next sword, to fight a bigger guy to get to the next level or the next sword to fight a bigger guy... No thanks. That no longer interests me.
I enjoy fighting and crafting.
Right now I'm playing horizons and it is not bad. I play a dragon. But my reason for playing is because I had a goal, at 50 I could fly. At lvl 100 I can become ancient and fly faster, and become bigger. Not much of a point, but still some end goal. When I reach that point if I have nothing to look forward to i will cancel.
So what other games out there have a goal, a purpose, some reason for leveling (and no pvp is not a reason for me, rather what is the reason for me to pvp).
Any ideas for games. I hope I am making myself clear but it seems a tad grey hehe.
Venge Sunsoar
Comments
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
To play Video Games.
That one was easy! Next question!
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
I think the purpose of the mmo is social and competition aspects. Only a few have been trying to work on this.
Any game? Most single-player games have a very different sort of purpose. Even single-player RPGs, where yeah, there's levelling, but progressing through the environment and story is much more important. Getting xp and equipment is like a side-effect.
I'd love to see MMORPGs find a way to move in that direction. Purpose which is more about the rest of the gameworld, and less about our individual characters. Problematic, of course, but just takes some innovation, I think.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
You do have a good point, and i really think the next game thats gonna reach WoW's succes is going to be one that is inovative in this department: Something else to motivate you while playing except virtual uber stuff that becomes available with the levels.
Really have no clue what this could be right bow, but hey, i guess thats why I ain't a game designer/producer/whatever
http://titanfocus.info - news, predictions and place for discussions about Blizzard's upcoming next-gen MMO.
king arthur (to just take a fantasy legend as an example) didn't build camelot and retire. there was always some new enemy, some new trouble in the land.
hercules, depending on if you're reading the myths or the host of stories written about him, went on one glorious hunt/battle to another, time and time and time again.
super heroes, take the xmen for example. they've been all over the universe, to other universes, have interactions with people from other times, and just always something new and different.
then you have a LOT of today's games -- hey, let's go do this raid for the 5 bazillionth time so jojo and lulu can hopefully get their last two purps today.
but there are many games out there that don't subscribe to the thinking that attracts 12-15 year olds.
horizons. you picked a game with excellent crafting. both dragons and bipeds have a world of options when it comes to crafting in this game.
eve. this is one you either love or hate. but the thing about it -- there's no fanbois. the people that love it recognize and point out what they perceive as flaws in the game. you won't find a lot of immature brats in this one. what you WILL find is a lot of thinking and a game that requires you to join a corporation (guild); but on the flip side, that guild can make changes that effect the game world.
shadowbane. despite what some idiot keeps posting, it's not shutting down. players create cities and players fight to control cities. you have definite goals in this game, whether it's to fight back the godless hordes (you could be in a temple/religious guild) or to conquer more and more land and try to hold it, building an empire as it were.
ryzom. everyone's gear is crafted. mobs drop things that make *sense*, like you kill it and harvest off it and you get eyeballs, claws, fur, no mighty laser gun of exploding death duct-taped to it's innards though. with these resources (and ones you dig up/harvest from the land), you make your weapons, armor, et cetera. another great game with no classes. their skill system isn't totally unique, but it's something most games don't try.
uo. the granddaddy of crafting mmorpgs. graphics are a bit dated even with their 2d and 3d modes. customizable housing. boating that lets you take fishing, pirating and exploring to a whole new level. play on the pvp portion of a shard if you want no-holds-barred pvp. taming has a variety of options matched only by the CH from swg.
if you haven't tried coh/cov yet, you could try those. no crafting, bases are retarded to make unless you have a super group of 50+ people. BUT, you can easily join a large super group, they don't have the elitist attitudes of mega-guilds in games with uber raiding. so while you're giving the game a go, you can easily see what a fully equipped super base feels like. you might love it. especially if i7 ever comes out and the heroes/villains in the comics are there as npcs fighting in the high level pvp zone with/against you. the more ground your side (hero or villain) conquers in this new pvp zone, the more npcs of your side will join the fight (like statesman and lord recluse type npcs).
there's a lot of other games out there as well. some games (like eve and shadowbane), it would pay you to find a guild to join before playing the game as it just makes your gaming life sooooooo much easier.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
The problem with an MMORPG with a PURPOSE, as such, is that once you achieve the PURPOSE, you're done. Bye now. The MMORPG would rather you stayed and kept paying subscription fees.
Chris Mattern
i agree with this, but i think the problem is on the focus of the game devs.
cox proves that it's possible to come out with completely new powers/abilities for most any character type you have in the game about every three months (hopefully will be back to the three month thing after i7 comes out). they also add a new mob or three and a new zone every issue. their problem is that missions have no variety and half the mobs are exactly alike other than their tshirt colors.
then you have something like wow, who's focus is on raids. they've shown they can add a new raid dungeon about every three months (with new and different mobs). so take the variety of mobs and put them into COX...
pre-cu swg has what could arguably be right about the best darned skill system out there. you could learn/unlearn everything. entertainers, plethora of crafter types, all sorts of combat and utility professions, just insane how much one toon could do over it's lifetime. throw this into the mix.
then you have to ask yourself things like- pvp or pve; instances or not; one big world or multiple servers...
how about you have a 30 day window (which you can abort at any time pretty much) in which you can't engage in pvp. but, you also have a skill cap to keep you from maxing out skills until you've left this *new* status. a month is a lot of time to get to know a game and see if you like it or not.
items decay. you can repair, but they'll still decay a little even with a good repair.
if you die, you can be looted by npcs/mobs and players. but have it be like AC (what dude described about their looting was pretty cool).
ok, now you have equipment that's going to need to be replaced by crafters.
make it one huge server (maybe sacrifice a little in the graphics area to make it NOT a lagfest). have major cities populated with powerful npcs. these are your safe zones. have all the raw mats be avaiable on the outskirts of these cities (but still in the safe zones) BUT, not the high end/rare mats.
player housing and player cities are a must. likewise outposts and strongholds need to be able to be taken and held by different factions of players.
a lot of games are real close to doing things like this. but they won't. they'll try to mimic whatever game seems to be making the most money, because OBVIOUSLY those are the games that people will be very loyal to and play for years and years.
except, that if that game is like all the other games... why would you stay with any of them for very long?
bleh, i think a lot of stuff is coming up soon. ryzom's customizable "modules", horizons is working on stuff like that, shadowbane is still going strong, eve's population loves it to death - huge mega corps with thousands of folks, conducting business as usual in space, even uo has it's own flavor still, with a lot of the above.
just please, leave the people attracted to the things that wow offers, IN wow, please.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
I disagree. There is a big difference to having a purpose for the game and finishing that purpose. Again I'll take Horizons (simply because it is what I am playing now). When the game first released what caught my eye aside from the dragons was the purpose. There is a war, the bad guys are going to come and kill you, kill your friends, destroy your town. You have to defend it and fight them back. Good premise. ok ok it was horribly done, and now there really is no war at all. But something like that, something you are supposed to try and achieve, the impossible fight. A reason to level and craft.
Actually I would even settle for todays games where the quests are really really really long, lots of little quests, but a big purpose which could take months to achieve. Then you are done, and doing the next one. This would satisfy the sense of purpose. EQ had epic quests, HZ has adult and ancient right of passage for dragons, really long annoying, irritating full of purpose and story and lore quests. Doing them you feel like you are contributing something, making a difference. You aren't and everyone knows you aren't but you feel like it.
Take Final Fantasy games, really several really long quests like that and put them in an MMO. No dont' say FFXI I found that game very disapointing. I was finally going to get a game with a real goal, and then it wasn't hehe. But quests like in the FF series. Expansions would just have more of them, so both the players and devs win. Players keep playing, and devs keep making money. Venge Sunsoar
Right, except for one thing: Shadowbane still going strong?? Where have you been? I was there from the beginning.
Anyway, the key is not to make a game that's like everything else, the key is to make a game that the players can make their own (whatever each of them want) and protect one player type from taking advantage of another. The lore is what should make the games different. It should mean something more than window dressing. The devs certainly act like it is, but once you get into the game, invariably it's "Whe don't do THAT here."
I'm very much against shards, safe zones and classes, because they limit the players options. Give the players the ability to build towns, to attract the player crafters, the NPC crafters too, do defend it and make it safe. They know better than the devs what sorts of places need to be protected. Then you wont need safe zones. Give the players the freedom to make whatever charater type they can dream up instead of forcing them to chose a skillset before they've even started the game, forcing you to make all these additional rules to change classes or reverse your skill prgression (like Shadowbane had to). Make the game huge instead of having a whole bunch of shards. A huge game means that by necessity, players will segregate themselves. Those that prefer each others company will group together but they aren't prohibited from moving to a new location. If the game becomes popular and you run out of room (particularly for housing) then add new land. This way, you don't have to juggle rule sets for individual shards, and/or make sure that if you add to one, you have to add to all of them. Once the game is in retail, concetrate on fixing bugs and adding content. A good game engine to start with means you don't have to "fix" a gymped character class or balance one you mistakenly made uber.
A game doesn't have to be wildly popular to make money. A wildly popular game is scary, because it makes the creators a slave to the community. They have to do what's going to keep them in the same tax brackett. That's what happened to SWG. I sort of understand why they did what they did, but come on.. They weren't in danger of going bankrupt. They could lose money on SWG and still keep the game running. What I want is a medium sized game company that has modest ambitions, just wants to do a tad more than break even but has principles it wont compromise on, and I want players that have a little bit of responsibility that goes along with their desire for entertainment and aren't above a little compromise to help out everyone.
Yeah.. I know... when pigs fly.
Heh. Some of you finally clued into why MMOs are so disposable every few years, why people keep wandering from one to the next. There's just a script you follow, and then you're done. Maybe you get lucky and get a new script every few months to a year, but it's all still a script.
Back in the day, before all this MMORPG crap, some of the old text-based games had more active staff. See, because it was all relatively simple in design, people running a MUD or whatever could do all kinds of crazy stuff. Start up fresh wars/battles, introduce new content that wasn't just "go to A, beat B, take C, return". There were actually people who would dream up these crazy events, and actually implement them!
I know that seems just so far-fetched, but it is true. Sadly, because the majority of the MMO community prefers mindless repetition over innovative progress, few if any MMOs to date have really, really been that dynamic. Just scripts. Easier to write in advance, test, debug, and slap into the game.
Sometimes, the first-gen MMOs would try. EQ and UO were fairly famous for occasionally having staff log in as major NPCs, and take control of them for a while. I hear even AC had occasional world-spanning events that came and went, under the domain of those running a given server.
But now, you are just a cart on a track. If you stay on the track, you get bigger numbers on your screen, see? You don't really have to work that hard; if something isn't pathetically obvious, other players or online guides will hold your hand and ensure that you make it through everything okay. You'll barely have to play the game at all!
Me, I'd kill someone in front of their own mother to get a MMORPG that gave players the most control over their environment (within reason; UO proved that if you let players do anything, they'll do the worst things imaginable), with staff hired for only one purpose: to plan and carry-out special events, that are not just scripts everyone can follow to "win", but are actual dynamic situations that require the players to act accordingly. Maybe have staff that occasionally played a given NPC leader and went to war with another leader, allowing each faction a chance to rally to the call of their king/warchief/whatever.
Yes, it is a tall order. You'd think with all the money in the MMO industry, someone would still be able to fill it. You'd think that, but you'd be guilty of wishful thinking.
But hey, if I'm gonna dream for the impossible, might as well go for the really gratifying fantasies...
I'm not sure players today would go for that, but I'd think it was way cool. They used to pull that crap in DGate and I loved it. It wasn't an instanced quest or an announced event. They just woke up one day and said "Let's do this." It was totally unfair and in that particular instance I died in the first wave of undead that attacked. But it totally rocked, and I wanted more.
That's what is missing from DDO, from all mmogs. I had this impossible hope that they were bringing real DMing back with all their talk about DDO being as much like the PNP D&D as they could get. I suppose they were only talking about canned modules. Very dissapointing.
I actually remember hearing a bit about DGate, back-when, and I was never even into MUD or anything until a few years ago when friends were doing it.
Dude, it would be no end of cool if the WOW devs finally said, "F*** it. I'm done with raid instances. Let the raid noobs cry more if they finish them and that's all they get. Everyone get logged on. Bob, get Thrall, and start going on and on about how all those elves in Ashevale have been a thorn in your side for too long, and start marching there on foot. Sandy, get Tyrande, and when you see stuff in chat about Thrall actually attacking Ashenvale, go ape-shit and call for all the night elves to rally to the defense, and head on down yourself. The rest of you divide up between the two and get some generals out there to create some objectives and get the players doing different things. Ya'll be sure to reward them accordingly; maybe some consumables and enough money for repairs and such, maybe a really good blue item if you see someone do something really awesome. Spawn whatever and however many mobs seem appropriate."
If that started happening once every week or two, I'd fire up my account and send flowers, candy, and cards to every Blizzard employee involved in doing it. It would be as if gods had smiled upon us and blessed us. I would be happy in my pants.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
HEAR THAT?? ANY DEVS LISTENING??? PAY DOUBLE..YOU HEARD RIGHT!
Keeps and relics? Not good enough.
I want it to be possible for a single player to conquer the whole game-world. Damned difficult... No harder than that, but possible. I want the character development to take a LONG time, enough time so it will be YEARS before anyone is capable of traveling to the Black Forest that no one can survive in(there should be a real reason it's got that reputation). The rest of the game has to be interesting enough that anyone who wants to become THE best at anything will have to demonstrate UNUSUAL determination.
If all it take to beat up the town guard is to become a master warrior, then the town guard isn't going to protect the city for long. You should always be afraid of the town guard or they're not doing their jobs right. The problem is that the game structures are usually designed under the assumption that everyone is just a citizen of whatever nation they are in, but the character development system is structured so that very quickly, the players become great warriors, wizards, clerics, etc. In essense everyone is a hero and no one is normal anymore. That's fine, but you have to make it make sense.
Personally, I wouldn't mind it if it took more effort to make your character stand out against the backdrop of monsters and NPCs. If there is a game out there that has tons of stuff for the players to do, it probably isn't enough. Double it and that probably isn't enough either. Try writing a book. Now try writing a book with multiple endings based on what choices the reader makes. Now write that kind of book where the reader can be any of the characters in the book. Now write one of those that is a compelling epic on the scope of Lord of the Rings. It's a monnumental task, but that's the kind of talent and determination the devs have to show for these things if they're ever going to make one that really works and goes the distance. Instead, they get as far as writing a short story where you can be maybe half the characters in the book, and only the important ones.