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Mini-Games
Kuzzle
Member Posts: 1,058
I was just wondering if there would be any mini-games in Hero's Journey. If well executed, they could provide a nice break from combat. I'll list some suggestions and explain them further.
Hunting: Maybe someone in a store told you they need, like, 4 little animals of some kind. They give you a bow(Or blowgun) and let you do a little hunting in the forest. You maybe have to find and shoot however many and collect them. Possibly in first person or something.
Gathering: Maybe the peorson at the apothecary sends you out to collect some herbs. You find particular ones and bring them back to the person.
Dice/Cards: A couple possible tavern games. Fairly self explanitory.
Marbles: You could control a marble and lead it through a maze or something.
Bounce & Glide: You play as a ball with retractable wings. You can do the traditional "Butt-Slam"s and could pull out your wings and glide for a short distance. You could roll around and jump when not gliding or bouncing, but you would need to glide and bouce to get through the levels.
Keep in mind, these are just some ideas I had. I don't think these are very good ideas, but they were just some examples of mini-games... Actually, the first two seem kind of like lame quests, but they'd hopefully be set up differently or something.
If any of you have ideas, feel free to post them. Thanks you.
Comments
I strongly second the call for mini-games. Almost every game's message board has a strong contingent of players who want this, but seldom are their prayers answered.
This puzzles me, because mini-games are a fantastic way to attract people to pubs and public squares to socialize and build community.
I would like to see:
In pubs:
Darts
Billiards
Some sort of card game
Some sort of puzzle game
Games of chance
And maybe an NPC fortune teller!
In public squares:
Tables with chess and checkers
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
As I stated in my Character Creation Article: "the character creation process is a like a mini-game that you can spend five minutes playing, or five hours playing."
Nelson K. Thachuk
Stratics Media Group
FINAL FANTASY XI Stratics
Badger hockey (herding badgers into goals)
There should be a traveling fair/circus in game that has all the classic old timey fair games. Things like hitting the bar to make the bell ring, Dunk booths (That'd be AWSOME), and other carnie brick-a-brack. That'd be fun.
For even more fun have the fair/circus be affected by who's in power. Have more nature if the nature faction is in control, more gears/steam punk stuff with the tech faction and more magical stuff when the magic faction is in control.
Sorry I forgot the name of the factions
--------------------------------------------
When you do something right people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
Daoc has something like that. Think WoW put one in eventually, too.
If you look at DR and GS4 you can see from their events calendars that there are groups of players that go around and do fair like events. There is a Troupe if I remember right, also.
Factions are the Kinnaes, Arcanum, Gearsmith
Sceonded? Thirded? Nthed?
Minigames, it seems to me, are one of the great unexplored opportunities for MMORPG developers. The "mini" part means the cost to design, develop, and test these features is relatively low. And the game aspect means that players will amuse themselves playing these games with each other, which extends the lifespan of the more expensive content you create (i.e., keeps people subscribed longer).
Maybe there's some obvious reason why more developers don't offer minigames, but it's not obvious to me....
Imagine a card collecting game set within a MMORPG. Not only can you play it against other people (perhaps with spectators, perhaps with betting), which can occupy people for hours as a competitive sport or social facilitator, you also satisfy the Explorers by offering different ways to find new cards (perhaps as loot drops, perhaps by solving puzzle quests, perhaps by being very observant while traveling). You even create a whole new set of goods to trade, stimulating the game economy.
And that's just one example of a minigame. A game that contained several/many of these in addition to the main content could, I believe, only help its subscription levels.
Everybody wins.
--Flatfingers
I too am a big fan of mini-games.
The desire to collect alll of the cards in Final Fantasy 8, kept me playing for much longer than the story did.
GSIV has Craps, Roulette, Slots, Darts, and Bowling to name a few.
A traveling carnival and/or casino could be lots of fun.
Cirakin
Helloooooo, Wanderers!
(Definitely looking forward to hearing more about the Wanderers, whether they wind up being carnie folk or not....)
--Flatfingers
I love mini-games too, though I can definitely see why they don't appear very often in MMOs. Regardless of size or complexity, mini-games still need to be functional, fun, and engaging. They require their own art assets, programming, QA testing, etc. They are, in fact, seperate games with their own rules. When you add a new zone or a new creature to a game world, you don't have to reinvent the wheel to do so; you might need some additional art, but the code, the framework, is already there. That just isn't the case with mini-games.
What happens when you approach mini-games as an afterthought? Take a look at gambling in SWG- perhaps the most boring set of mini-games ever conceived. Very bland little boxes with little or no interaction on the part of the player. Decide how much money to spend, then click a button. Repeat. The "card game" in DAoC is basically the same thing- pick four items from four lists and hope they match the computer's randomly drawn items. There's very little interaction, and absolutely no thinking involved in either game.
In order for a mini-game to be successful, it needs to be engaging. I realize I already said this, but I think it's important enough to mention again. MMOs are interactive entertainment, which is why most of us play them. A mini-game with minimal user interaction isn't going to entertain anybody. A game that can be won with a combination of strategy and chance, however, can keep you interested indefinetely. ArcoMage from "Might and Magic VII" is the perfect example. It was a fully formed, fully developed trading card game that was so popular, it was eventually released as its own stand-alone game. Pazaak in "Knights of the Old Republic" is another such game, though it rates a bit higher in frustration than fun. Even so, each of these games had cards that needed to be drawn, layouts that had to be designed, AIs that needed to be written, random number generators that had to be figured out, etc.
I think the best idea for mini-games would be to come at it from a different angle. Have a seperate team or teams work on them as expansions. Trading card games, in-game board games, whatever. If you have the expansion, you can play against other players who have the same expansions or against specific NPCs. As expansions, however, the games would get the development resources they'd need in order to actually provide some real entertainment value. Just a thought, anyway.
ooooo
I love the board game idea. I think it would be really cool if your character was your "piece" on the board.
HJ-Diviana
Hero's Journey GM
Hero's Journey Official Site
Hero's Hall
Absolutely! Imagine some board games as in-game themeparks. An original Elanthian version of Chutes and Ladders or Candyland (just examples), where each space on the board was a bit of cobblestoned path running through a twisted forest of trees, a winding hedge maze, or any of a thousand things. You could even have one set of game rules that was played on different "world boards," so you could travel from board to board, challenging the local players and seeing the different designs. Perhaps each board would even require a different strategy.
The possibilities are limitless, but I still think they're the sorts of things that will need their own dedicated staff to work up, and their own budgets for development. I'd be willing to pay $20-$25 for such an expansion, assuming that expansion was nothing but the one game (no extra races or dungeons or the stuff that's in more traditional expansions). I'd probably be willing to pay for several such expansions if each were as fully developed. After a few had been released, you could even package them as a set to get them back on the retailer's shelves.
The more I think about it, the more I like the idea. None of the games would have to have rewads that players would "need in order to be competitive," because the main reward would be fun. I've never played chess because I was going to get something tangible out of it, after all. Nobody would "have to" buy any expansion they didn't want to, but I think many would. Each would add a new activity to the world, and that's always a good thing.
Marbles would be fun too, I'm talking the marbles where you had the circle, and you had X amount of marbles and your opponent had X amount. Than you had one big marble that you flick off of your thumb and tried to knock your opponents marbles out of the circle. Find A rare marble off of a corpse in the middle of a forbidden forest. Enhance your marbles with Wyr!! (probably not lol) The board game idea is cool too. And like in KotoR, you could collect better cards and make your deck TEH UBER 1337 PWNAGE!
I just don't want to see a flood of pointless and lame mini-games, I'd rather have a few meaningful and fun ones.
Just my opinion though.
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