What makes an MMO?
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2009-11-15 09:48 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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The reason I brought up the "evolution vs. revolution" argument is because it's actually meaningful here. WoW is evolution. Nothing more. It's the same old set pieces designed in the same old way, but they have been cleaned up, made neat, presentable, easier to use and generally very polished. It's an old game in the new age, and it's something Blizzard are particularly good at. Take an old, tried, even trite design and make a very high-quality game out of it. It just goes to show that old concepts are not bad in and of themselves and good games can be made out of them. In fact, the mere existence and success of a game like Torchligh, which feels exactly like a game game from 15 years ago, proves that there's still more meat in the old concepts.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I think there's massive room for innovation in the gaming space in general and in the MMO space in particular. But I will say that even if you were given unlimited resources to make a game, there is still the valid game design rule of thumb that says don't reinvent the wheel. If you want to improve gaming, you can't leave the players themselves behind. There's something to be said for offering your players familiar touchstones so they do not need to start completely from scratch in terms of figuring out what your game is about.
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But by the same token, there is only so many times you can remake an old thing. I am SICK AND TIRED of watching Robinson Cruso movies, for instance, and I refuse to watch another remake of the three ghosts of Christmas. And just in the same way, I refuse to touch another "sword and sorcery" game again unless it provides something truly new and interesting. "More quests" or "a better dialogue system" or "500 new spells" doesn't cut it. A Devil May Cry combat system might cut it, though, or interjecting anachronistic elements, like aliens or time travel (an area where Hard to be a God could have been so successful, but utterly failed) could sell me. But I am DONE with Fantasy, and barring anything truly revolutionary, I'm just going to pass on any game that uses the genre.
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| I guess what I'm saying is that you should innovate somewhere, but its probably not a good thing to innovate everywhere. And whether CrimeCraft is a good game or a bad game, the fact that they start describing it in terms of reference points to other MMOs is not an intrinsicly bad thing. |
Personally, I don't see why games would need to innovate EVERYTHING, as that's both alienating and a gamble. But, and I have to be blunt here, the MMOs that have been coming out in recent years have taken the opposite approach and innovated NOTHING. I'm not interested in buying the same game all over again, and it's coming to the point where every MMO feels like a rehash of the same game. I really have no head for business, but I'm starting to feel like we're up for crash of interest some time in the future when MMO developers start making more and more formulaic, more and more low-quality games until something tanks so bad everyone else takes notice.
Trust me, I'm about as conservative as people come, but even I'm not going to buy game after game with different graphics over the exact same gameplay. Tweaks here and touches there aren't going to work.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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They're standard equipment if that's the kind of MMO you want to play. My question is actually meaningful, because what you describe as standard equipment is only standard equipment for one specific mould of MMOs that is, at this point, probably as old as I am. If we stuck to only standard equipment and nothing more, then FPS games like Half-Life or Call of Duty wouldn't exist, and we'd be playing Doom 12 or Heretic 5.|
Originally Posted by RemianenI
Sam, you're taking this to extremes. Those features you mention are the MMO equivalent of 'standard equipment'. It's like power steering in a car, people won't buy it if it doesn't have it. If you have no crafting, that kills a large part of the non-combat activities side of the equation. With no auction house (or similar mechanic), you miss out on the interactions that occur between players in a trade environment. An efficient mail system supports the trade aspect but it's not required (CoX doesn't have one). Those features were highlighted by CrimeCraft's devs because for people who know nothing about the game (which would be most of the prospective audience, honestly), that's one of the first questions they tend to ask. Many times, people assume that every MMO is going to have these "MMO standards" but not all of them actually do. But those features have become expected by the audience over the years because of their utility and usefulness. In the US (God, especially in New York City), if someone went to buy a car and the salesman said, "We only have manual transmission models", that salesman would choke on the dust of that prospective customer leaving.
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I don't think your comparison to cars is a good one, either. A few months ago, my brother offered to sell me a Mitsubishi Eclypse at a big discount. Now, I couldn't afford it, myself, but my whole family offered to pitch in and help. I ended up having to beat them back with a stick, because as good a car as that is (and it's AMAZING - I drive a 15-year-old Fiat Tipo
), it's just not the kind of car for me. First of all, I can't actually drive automatic gears (something about the car starting to roll as soon as you let off the break and learning to drive on a Lada), and secondly, it's just a car that's more flashy than practical. I don't want many extras, I just want something that's small, efficient and that drives.Or, to give you a more poignant example - cell phones. Every day I watch TV ads about all the new cell phones and about their however many megapixel cameras and huge hard drives and videos and MP3s and touch screens and blue tooth and Internet and... Ugh! All I ever get out of this ads is "This phone is very expensive because this costs extra and that costs extra and this costs a lot..." I want a mobile phone because I want a phone that is mobile. If I want a mobile computer, I have a laptop I can take with me. I don't even have a CD player or radio in my car (I think it got jacked before I got it), and I certainly don't need one in my phone. That, and the last time I took a photo was I think the spring of 2007, when I made, like 5. Prior to that, it's been probably 10 years since I've made meaningful photos.
Granted, that's just me, but that's how I see things.
And again, all you do is reaffirm the vicious circle that has had MMOs trapped in the 90s for 15 years now. Developers make things because the players expect them, and players expect things because the developers make them. A bank and a market is not something people expected of MMOs back in the days of EQ and Ultima. In fact, I'm not sure if those games even HAD them. But someone thought it was a good idea, added it to a game, and it became a staple. On the flip side, no-one today is going to advertise his game as "has long, boring spawn-camping and not much else," yet that was the order of the day back in the 90s. Obviously someone understood that may not have been a great idea, changed it, and people now expect instances and dungeons and quests. Well, Champions doesn't seem to have gotten the memo, but that's besides the point.
And the point here is that MMOs feel like they're stuck in a time warp. Nothing changes because no-one dares change anything, to the point where the actual settings and stories become irrelevant, as long as it's an MMO in the books and has "all that's in an MMO."
Suppose someone wanted to make a FPS game and described it as: "Well, it'll have all the FPS things. You have a gun, you have your sights and monsters come at you. Yeah, everything that's in a FPS." This immediately excludes game like Deus Ex, Battlefield 2142, Call of Duty 4, Mirror's Edge, Cryostasis, and that's just off the top of my head. The above explanation pretty much only includes the Doom -> Quake -> Serious Sam -> Gore -> Painkiller branch of FPS games, and completely ignores all others.
When I ask "What makes an MMO?" that is actually a meaningful question exactly BECAUSE the answer from so many game companies is "Duh! Like WoW, of Course!" And derivative work in large numbers is BAD for gamers in a big way.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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This I 100% agree with. And the rest of your post too.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
They're standard equipment if that's the kind of MMO you want to play. My question is actually meaningful, because what you describe as standard equipment is only standard equipment for one specific mould of MMOs that is, at this point, probably as old as I am. If we stuck to only standard equipment and nothing more, then FPS games like Half-Life or Call of Duty wouldn't exist, and we'd be playing Doom 12 or Heretic 5.
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Let me also say that even with COX I find I have some of these frustrations. Much less so than I have with some of the cookie cutter MMOs out there, but still, I find that there is a lot that this game is missing that should be present in a superhero game. A secret identity system, some kind of detective skillset, alternate ways to defeat your enemies using the environment. A lot of things weren't conceptualized for this game when it was being created simply because it was an MMO...and everyone knows what they should contain right?
Nearly all products reach a point where there are certain things expected from it if it is going to be 'mainstream' (and thus have the best chance of making money). This especially includes stories, and most genre works are at base a story.
In order to have an innovative MMO (or tv show, or comic book, or movie, etc), you basically have to have one main thing:
Money from a source that is more interested in seeing the project realized than in making a profit.
Once you have the money, you can hire talented 'type R' programmers and acclaimed artists and excellent writers and superaltive showrunners. Of course, you also have to make sure the people you have hired are on board to innovate as well. Then you get your project made and you are done. At that point, you have won, whether the project makes money for you or not.
Whether your project makes money or not at that point is up to the people. You may spark a wave of imitators of your own, or vanish into the mists of obscurity.
However, it is a slippery slope indeed once you start trying to draw in specific markets or demographics or dumb things down for an audience. I mean, you have this wonderful innovative, dynamic world with decisions and consequences...why not add a bank? And you could make so much money if the first few levels were easier. And you should add a monster that you can camp for those people who like that sort of thing, and...
MMOs are made of the same thing as most other things: money molecules.
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To crush your enemies on the field of battle, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women...
Oh wait, what question are we answering again?
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So is that NC Soft's new business model?
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Originally Posted by Moderator 08
To crush your enemies on the field of battle, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women...
Oh wait, what question are we answering again? |
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Funcom's MMO is that way -------------->
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Originally Posted by Moderator 08
To crush your enemies on the field of battle, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women...
Oh wait, what question are we answering again? |
@Golden Girl
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Originally Posted by Moderator 08
To crush your enemies on the field of battle, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women...
Oh wait, what question are we answering again? |
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Wait, we're getting in-game voice chat? |
Originally Posted by Moderator 08
To crush your enemies on the field of battle, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women...
Oh wait, what question are we answering again? |
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To a large extent, I have to agree. Making a game that's not like the others IS a gamble, which goes kind of against guaranteeing a stable return. By the same token, however, taking that gamble and scoring a hit can, and often does, bring significantly more profit than just bringing our a guaranteed-return mediocre title. As you said, sometimes you make it big and spawn not just a great game, but waves of copycats and lasting fame, as well.|
Originally Posted by Kitsune9tails
In order to have an innovative MMO (or tv show, or comic book, or movie, etc), you basically have to have one main thing:
Money from a source that is more interested in seeing the project realized than in making a profit. MMOs are made of the same thing as most other things: money molecules. |
But this isn't really so much what I hope for with a new game. I'd love to be able to play the next big thing before it becomes the next big thing, obviously, but my problem is actually the opposite. I don't need every new game to reinvent the wheel and blow my socks off, but it DOES bother me when a genre stagnates so much that every new game is pretty much a remake of every old game. At this point, I start wondering why I even bother to buy new games if they won't actually have anything new in them.
That's kind of the fine point at which I abandoned the Need for Speed series. The original was great, 2 was better, Hot Pursuit was amazing, but High Stakes was crap. Porche Unleashed was... Well, Porche, and Hot Pursuit 2 was too little, too late. Underground, the reinvention of the series is the only thing which stopped it from going down the drain, and it was a GREAT game, but then Underground 2 wasn't as good. Most Wanted is probably the pinnacle of the Need for Speed franchise, adding still more amazing innovation to the series, but it's only gone downhill from there. Pro Street was blah, Undercovere was utter crap as per EA's "conveyor belt game factory" practice in later years, and I haven't even felt like bothering with Shift. Why? It's a remake of Pro Street and Grand Turismo has had that covered for years. Basically, EA are killing their own franchise by flooding the market with uninspired, derivative, crappy games with no innovation and, worse still, without actually building on what the previous games had.
Outside of WoW, that's exactly what I see in MMOs these days. Stagnation, mediocrity, derivative work and complete and utter lack of imagination. Which is staggering, considering it has hit even MMOs outside the Fantasy genre. The Star Wars MMO looks promising, but to be honest, I expected Champions to be promising too, so my expectations are no longer as high. We're seeing more and more new MMOs being developed, and literally DOZENS of "free" to play MMOs shoved in our faces, yet new ideas seem at an all time low. Hordes of new games and barely a handful of new ideas between them is never good for a genre.
To end, I will admit that there are certain things crucial to an MMO in order for it to BE an MMO. However, a lot the things people put in that category aren't actually integral to an MMO at all, and to some extent aren't even needed but for people expecting them. I guess if we want to go back to the car analogy, which aspects of an MMO are the wheels, the chassis and the windshield, and which are the cupholder, the stereo and the seat warmer?
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Uhh... why should there be more when most people seem satisfied with just the bare necessities required to blow stuff up and beat it down alongside your friends?!
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
There has to be something more, right?
If you're looking for more, you'd first have to convince publishers that it's going to be worthwhile investing in making something more, and so far, the two companies that I see making headway in that direction are BioWare (SW:TOR) and Cryptic (STO). Hopefully those companies and the newer MMO's they will come out with, will return some long awaited (at least by me) RPG into the whole MMORPG formula.
If you want to know what I miss in current MMO's, I miss the whole story-telling we have when playing P&P RPG games. Sitting together, rolling a die and together, spinning a tale we can still laugh at years from now. Current MMO's are all too focused on simply killing stuff, and not many people even care why.
I believe that a Kheldian Gold Standard should be based on SO's, and for anything above that... there's Platinum!
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I think part of the issue is developers had to start focusing on pvp, customization, and other things that pulled them away from the RPG in MMORPG. If you notice the more common vernacular in use now is MMOs. Even you just did it above. |
Originally Posted by LordXenite
Uhh... why should there be more when most people seem satisfied with just the bare necessities required to blow stuff up and beat it down alongside your friends?!
If you're looking for more, you'd first have to convince publishers that it's going to be worthwhile investing in making something more, and so far, the two companies that I see making headway in that direction are BioWare (SW:TOR) and Cryptic (STO). Hopefully those companies and the newer MMO's they will come out with, will return some long awaited (at least by me) RPG into the whole MMORPG formula. If you want to know what I miss in current MMO's, I miss the whole story-telling we have when playing P&P RPG games. Sitting together, rolling a die and together, spinning a tale we can still laugh at years from now. Current MMO's are all too focused on simply killing stuff, and not many people even care why. |
It's the entire industry that has moved away from the RPG part, not just players.
Do I miss it? Well I didn't play the original UO so I don't know what it was like. I really don't think anything comes close the classic pen and paper rpgs of old, in terms of computerized translation. MUDs and early CRPGs like Baldur's Gate tired to capture it, but even they couldn't quite get it down. I don't remember rolling the dice all that much in Baldur's Gate II for PC.
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Well, players have to play the game the way the game has to played. In other words, as long as there's no Human Game Master behind the game, modifying it to include every scenario players wish to introduce, computer-based RPG's can only allow a very limited set of interactions. That I believe is the obstacle standing in the way of MMORPG's. If a game included code that would allow players to actually come up with gameplay options that were not originally included in the game's script (such as P&P gaming allowed), then we'd be looking at a whole different animal.
Originally Posted by Aura_Familia
It's the entire industry that has moved away from the RPG part, not just players.
I believe that a Kheldian Gold Standard should be based on SO's, and for anything above that... there's Platinum!
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Yep, pretty much.|
Originally Posted by LordXenite
Well, players have to play the game the way the game has to played. In other words, as long as there's no Human Game Master behind the game, modifying it to include every scenario players wish to introduce, computer-based RPG's can only allow a very limited set of interactions. That I believe is the obstacle standing in the way of MMORPG's. If a game included code that would allow players to actually come up with gameplay options that were not originally included in the game's script (such as P&P gaming allowed), then we'd be looking at a whole different animal.
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MA was the start of something like this. However, the way it works doesn't really allow one to do this on the fly, as to edit a mission or add more objectives to a mission, an author has to take the mission offline.
Back in Champions Online Alpha and pre-Alpha folks were asking for all kinds of GMing and role play options. Some of the ideas were not just realistic since their wasn't a live GM around.
I don't know if we are anywhere near the ability to GM in live MMO's yet. Once the developers come up with a way to do so, the MMOs can regain their MMORPG distinction.
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But you're saying that because someone describes a game first in conventional MMO terms in a marketing setting that automatically means it was designed that way, and that's not true.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
If the game is viewed as "XP with crafting and PvP, oh, and it has a bank," then that tells me this took precedence over the actual substance of the game.
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Imagine the most innovative MMO you can possibly conceive of. Now imagine a marketing person describing that game to the public. If he or she starts by saying "check out these cool innovative features" there would be absolutely no context for anyone to care. Because first you have to explain "innovative features of what."
To put it another way. If I was given unlimited resources and time to make the most innovative MMO I could conceive of, and I had access to state of the art technology to deploy it on, *I* would probably describe that game *first* in terms of all the elements of the game that were foundationally similar to other MMOs, and *then* contrast that with all of the new features the game had that were different (and hopefully superior) to current MMOs. I find it interesting that you'd have written me off in the first fifteen seconds of my description, especially because even knowing that, I wouldn't change the way I would describe my game.
For me, the best way to describe even an innovative game is to say "its a game like this, but with these advances." Without that point of reference, it would be hard to appreciate the improvements.
Maybe its less that you care about mentioning MMO foundational concepts, and more that its the specific ones the person mentioned that you don't like. That's a completely different issue.
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Well, I didn't exactly write CrimeCraft off over that comment in the first 30 seconds of the game. I made it up to about the half-way point in the video, at which point I realised there was very likely no substance behind big words and got tired of the shoddy presentation. If I have to be quite honest, I half-wrote-off the game just upon reading its title. If you thought Dungeon Siege was a blatant genre popularity grab (and MY GOD was it one), reading "CrimeCraft" just made my eyes roll out of my head.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
But you're saying that because someone describes a game first in conventional MMO terms in a marketing setting that automatically means it was designed that way, and that's not true.
To put it another way. If I was given unlimited resources and time to make the most innovative MMO I could conceive of, and I had access to state of the art technology to deploy it on, *I* would probably describe that game *first* in terms of all the elements of the game that were foundationally similar to other MMOs, and *then* contrast that with all of the new features the game had that were different (and hopefully superior) to current MMOs. I find it interesting that you'd have written me off in the first fifteen seconds of my description, especially because even knowing that, I wouldn't change the way I would describe my game. |
But you do make a good point. Just selling a game as... Well, that, doesn't necessarily mean that's ALL there is to it. But I came into the game with low expectations, and the actual gameplay had me scratching my head, so it's a combination of a lot of things. Probably more than I realise. Let me put it like this: I've seen the same bold words coming from EVERY MMO I've tried, and I've seen what they have to deliver. Namely, nothing at all. So it's not a game marketing itself as a paint-by-numbers MMO that bothers me (not entirely) so much as the fact that that seemed to be IT.
One thing I HATE in game development is this sort of backwards planning. "OK, we need an MMO, we need a market, we need a bank, we need PvP, we need crafting... OK, now what setting are we going to but it in?" I literally HATE EA for this. They stick random timesinks into their games both to sell them as quasi-RPGs and to fill up some space and pad out some game time without having to spend money on actually making quality products. And I've lost all faith in MMOs that are just that, just one more collection of market, mailbox, crafting tool and PvP with some setting randomly thrown together.
In fact, that extends beyond MMOs. I hate ANY GAME put together like this, and having seen a plethora of Russian copycat games, that can extend to any genre. Even the Oniblade I keep praising here and there is a "two button masher" copycat of a bunch of popular genres and has nothing to offer to anyone who has more than two braincells. But it has pretty lights and a girl in a thong, which tends to shut down large portions of my brain while I play it.
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| Maybe its less that you care about mentioning MMO foundational concepts, and more that its the specific ones the person mentioned that you don't like. That's a completely different issue. |
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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But did they do that with the example Sam gave here? Did the guy actually then go on to explain what was so great and innovative about this new MMO? Or did he just let it go at crafting, banks, PVP, leveling up?|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
To put it another way. If I was given unlimited resources and time to make the most innovative MMO I could conceive of, and I had access to state of the art technology to deploy it on, *I* would probably describe that game *first* in terms of all the elements of the game that were foundationally similar to other MMOs, and *then* contrast that with all of the new features the game had that were different (and hopefully superior) to current MMOs. I find it interesting that you'd have written me off in the first fifteen seconds of my description, especially because even knowing that, I wouldn't change the way I would describe my game.
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Watching the rest of the walkthrough left me pretty unimpressed. There was nothing remotely like what you're saying about contrasting the standard fare with the new and innovative. It was just another meh 3rd person shooting MMO. Maybe the guy was just a bad marketer...but I have my doubts.
In the end so many MMOs these days fall into the WoW clone abyss and fail to produce...its crazy. But they keep trying. AoC and WAR cost how much to produce? Did they deliver what they promised to their investors?
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I haven't seen an MMO. I've only seen MMORPGs. This is a game with a lot of players interacting with one another in an "online" world. FPS that only allow 100 or so players to interact have not reached the MMO(RPG) level.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
What makes an MMO? Is it the crafting, the loot, the economy, the XP and levels? Is it? Really? I mean, I know that for a lot of MMOs, that's what they essentially are - just a skin over that. But is that really all that it comes down to? Isn't there... Shouldn't there be more to an MMORPG? Again, this is not a leading question - I honestly don't have a good answer to it. But, just... Every time I see a new MMO being made, it's always advertised like the exact same game, but in a different setting. Literally. If you manage to miss any talk about the game's setting (like I skipped in my quote), it might as well be EverQuest or some such, right down to the terminology used.
There has to be something more, right? |
I've seen the arguments about how there can't be any RP in an MMO. I think they are completely faulty assumptions.
Regardless of what MMO(RPG) you play, you are playing in a world of one or more genre. They all have classes or powers that define you to be the character you are. They way a player operates a character also gives that character a personality and traits based on that players play style.
Each player is playing one (or more) characters in an MMORPG. Playing that character gives them the role to play as that character. No matter how for someone wants to go to say that they aren't role playing, they are playing a character in a game.
That is not to say that some people don't role-play better than others (this is determined by each players own viewpoint) or that some people set up rules that they think that people should role-play by or to use to determine what role-playing is.
To try to play character in a MMORPG and say that you are not RP'ing makes no sense. As soon as you enter a world as that avatar, you are role-playing that character even if you refuse to put an effort into the further customization (characterization) of that avatar.
The MMORPG typically is a model of civilization that has a layer of genre draped over it. Learning new skills, crafting, trading, etc. are all goals in normal life are what I think you are grasping at straws for. Those things that are missing from a game that are already in real-life. We usually can't have the powers, appearance, or behave in real life the way that we are able to behave in a game (not just MMORPG's but any game) The extra thing that we bring to the game is ourselves. It always has been. What really makes one game experience different from the next is our ability to shape the playing of the game by our interaction with the game - our role-playing. This can come from our sportsmanship, our benevolence, or our attitudes.
Alignments are an attempt to project sets of morals into games, but we know well that this only works if the players role-play toward that goal. You can't impose friendships in a game; they develop naturally. Supergroups/guilds/clans are a method of formulating this kind of situation, but many times they are turned into political power-mongering or drama-fests aimed at a chosen few instead of being cohesive communities designed to foster the play environment of fellow players for a mutually beneficial end.
Unfortunately, this is also true for real life.
"There really has to be something more to it, right?"
Luckily for us we play City of Heroes. It was designed as a super-hero game, but it really is far more than that. It is a comic book game and comic books have been made about virtually every genre imaginable.
I think that the naming of mechanics in a game is critical to the "feel" of the game...
...I'm too tired to go on and must end this rant here...
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I'm guessing that Planetside doesn't count? I'm just asking...I never actually played it...but I thought it was an MMOFPS.
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Originally Posted by The_Alt_oholic
I haven't seen an MMO. I've only seen MMORPGs. This is a game with a lot of players interacting with one another in an "online" world. FPS that only allow 100 or so players to interact have not reached the MMO(RPG) level.
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Well, first I'm going to take the simple explanation and use the acronym.
MMORPG
M - Massively: The game can support an extreme amount of players, many times going to over 1,000 players logged on at the same time, depending on the number of subscribers.
MO - Multi-player Online: While the game can be played solo, the real fun can be had by getting a bunch of friends together for play sessions, or even teaming up with total strangers for a single mission. The Online part is pretty self-explanatory.
RPG - Role Playing Game: An MMORPG game is unique in the fact that you actually feel like you're in the game, in a way. The customization abilities allow you to truly create a second version of you in the game world, and interact like you normally would in the given circumstances. Everything in the game is usually in character (aside from player interaction) and you generally get a good feel for the game you're playing.
Now, yes, MMO's usually include the thing you listed in the interview, character progression, crafting, banks and auction houses, but to me it's much more.
I think the whole concept of MMO's should be about the RPG part that everyone seems to leave out. How far does to game go to make you feel like you're actually in it? This is the reason RPG's are my favorite type of game, the immersion is so great that it's almost like visiting another world. Another important thing I consider is expansion. RPG's like Knights of the Old Republic have a practically infinite number of ways to play through the game, you could be good or evil, fight with ranged or melee weapons, wear light or heavy armor, and every choice you make affects you in a different way.
This is also true for Co*. The sky is the limit when creating your character, all the way from Arch-type, to powersets, to the certain powers used, and how they are slotted. There are so many ways to play the same exact character, but there are also enough options to make creating a whole new character easy and fun.
But most importantly, a MMORPG is all about teamwork, and playing with friends. Sure, you could go and solo all day long if you want to, and that's completely reasonable, but when you get together with a large group of friends, whether they be friends in real life or friends in the game, the adventures you share with your companions are what really makes the game truly worth-while. Sure, I could get a couple friends to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare with me, but the joy of playing with your own completely unique character and all of your friends original creations is what makes playing an MMO truly satisfying for me.
Sorry for writing a whole essay on What makes an MMO, but I think that these points are what really make an MMO stand out amongst other game genres. While you do have to pay a monthly fee, the game is bigger than any other game out there, and is infinite in expansion. You can reach the level cap and keep going from there to make your character the absolute best you can make it, or you can just hang out and do things with friends. So, all in all, it's really the Multi-player aspect and the sheer uniqueness of an MMO that makes it stand out from other games.
Arc ID: 348998 - Becoming a villain
Arc ID: 373341 - To Save a Hero
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Here's something to think about, Sam. |
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
One thing I HATE in game development is this sort of backwards planning. "OK, we need an MMO, we need a market, we need a bank, we need PvP, we need crafting... OK, now what setting are we going to but it in?" I literally HATE EA for this. They stick random timesinks into their games both to sell them as quasi-RPGs and to fill up some space and pad out some game time without having to spend money on actually making quality products. And I've lost all faith in MMOs that are just that, just one more collection of market, mailbox, crafting tool and PvP with some setting randomly thrown together.
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All the innovation you admire so much - you're not admiring the new ideas. You're admiring the ability of the dev team to make them "real", to put them before you to see and experience in a way close to how they thought them up.
Ideas are cheap. Ideas are a dime a dozen. The world is just lousy with ideas. You can walk to the drugstore and have ten new ideas by the time you get back.
Making them real is the hard part.
And a game that started with a lot of new ideas, with a team that can only make the old ones real, is no different from a game with no new ideas with a team that can only make the old ones real.
Sometimes "old" ideas are genuinely played out, but sometimes they've never been "done right"; nobody's found a good way to make them real -- yet. So a game with a bunch of old ideas that's well-crafted may actually be enjoyable when games with the old ideas never were.
The 'common MMO featureset' is what people know how to make real. Everything else is just spun sugar and fairy cake, for all that it can reliably be produced.
As for what an MMO is? A shared social space where players can explore/defeat the world/other players. Everything else is fungible.
Up with the overworld! Up with exploration! | Want a review of your arc?
My arcs: Dream Paper (ID: 1874) | Bricked Electronics (ID: 2180) | The Bravuran Jobs (ID: 5073) | Backwards Day (ID: 329000) | Operation Fair Trade (ID: 391172)
Man, this is a hell of a deep conversation.
For starters, I'm going to have to agree with Smash Zone- I couldn't have put those ideals into words better than he did two posts above.
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However, I really only think those thoughts when thinking about What Could Be. The current MMORPG genre still feels imperfect; incomplete.
I have many things to say on the subject, but I am guaranteed to forget some and fail to put many of the others into comprehensible words. So I'll just ramble away now.
Immersion is important. I feel a purely excellent MMORPG should really immerse the player in it. It's the perfect setting for it, right? A setting in which many, many people, each controlling a unique character - not just an avatar but a character - having the glorious adventures that only imagination and games can provide. And afterwards, they can talk and reminisce about how awesome an experience that was. It sounds absolutely divine, but is just.. not a part of this reality. It just doesn't happen like that. Something in the MMO genre is off-kilter, it must be!
A big part of the problem is the same one that plagues (yes, PLAGUES!) modern video games like minor head injuries plague a tall guy. Gameplay and Story Segregation. It's a big problem! People just aren't encouraged by the game to connect with their character in any way (apart from the controller/mouse/keyboard. I know you were thinking that, wise guy)- they've got to do that of their own accord, and even if they do, few games can possibly support that. I should go into some examples now.
Iji - A great example of a game with Gameplay+Story that actually felt connected. Simple and short (and not an MMO, sorry), but you actually feel a connection to your character, and things you do while playing do matter in the outcome. I feel it's a great step forward and any designer who cares about the story in their game should look at it and ponder the implications of having Cause and Effect beyond just object collision detection and dialogue trees.
Sort of relevant at this point- remember that there is a difference between a Sandbox game, a Simulation, and one that allows your actions to affect the game. It's subtle but it's true.
Facade - Sepeaking of dialogue trees, Facade (I don't know how to type a circonflex accent) is a game we studied in my game design class. No dialogue trees. You type things to say, you say them, they affect how the story changes. Again, short, because this sort of thing takes a million billion years to code, and coding and bugfixing is already the time-limiting factor in game creation. I think I'm officially off topic by now though.
Okay, how about Mabinogi? Yes, one of those FREE TO PLAY LULZ games that are a dime a dozen and you periodically see advertized on every website on the entire interweb. Well, back in its early days, it apparently was designed to be... I don't even know the words to be describing the concept, really. But I played it and it was... an immersive environment! I was shocked, really. The game really felt like it was something truly different.. I suppose the term I want is "encouraged the human element"- as vague and artsy-fartsy as that sounds.
But everything really immersed- I had a character, in a setting that made sense and felt right, and then found out that the developer who was responsible for making it like that was taken out back and shot for not putting in enough korean MMO grindy elements. Cause they abruptly faded away into nothingness, especially after actual-release. A pity indeed- it felt like everyone in the game, NPC's included, were actual characters interacting with each other (like characters are known to do). Even while going into dungeons to hunt down beasts that threatened the town (sounds familiar), it still felt more.. "human elemented" than anything I had previously encountered. *sigh* So close, but so far away.
Also- Harvest Moon - Remember the version of that game you liked? It is no amazing feat of game creation by any means, but I feel it did have one of those "humanoid elementals" that I think MMORPGs might be missing.
I think that one of the tidbits wrong with present MMORPG's (whatever they are) is the lack of a Persistent World. Which is pretty ******* funny when you think about how they all say they have persistent worlds.
Because you know what? A persistent world isn't one that remembers how long it's been since Mineral Node X has been tapped or waits Y hours for Epic Boss Man to respawn. It's one where what players do has an EFFECT on the world.
The unbelievably-long-running webcomic Sluggy Freelance commented on this a bit. The only thing in an MMO that you can really affect is the playerbase. Killing an NPC or doing their quest changes nothing. But interacting with another PLAYER does. Kill enough, and you gain the reputation of a brutal PKer. Help enough, and you gain the reputation of a wonderful, nice person.
If you rescue the king's lost son? He'll be captured by the same villain very shortly. If you rescue a noob in trouble? He'll be so very happy, and you've made a friend in the game. If you cast Earthquake a thousand times on a supposed faultline? Nothing happens at all. Maybe players think you're a malfunctioning macro-botter, but that's it.
One of the things missing, in fact, is CHANGE. Generally in video gaming, things in the game do not change until the game wants them to. You have no say in it. Linear storylines aren't bad! No, not at all! But this medium is capable of allowing choice and change and repercussions, and yet I can't think of any games that actually do it. "Allow bombing to happen? [Y/N]" doesn't freaking count.
You could argue that the Destructible Environments fad is a way of tying in gameplay and repercussion and such but you'd be so freaking wrong. Because I have yet to see a game where it actually mattered if you accidentally levelled half the city while doing your objective thing.
Speaking of repercussions, that is part of why so many people enjoyed the gameplay of Grand Theft Auto <insert subtitle>. It's not just that you can mug people and steal cars. It's that the game takes notice when you do. It certainly has no realistic or long-lasting repercussions- if you could cast Earthquake, the place would probably be healed in an hour... But still, it's something to consider, you know?
Speaking of repercussions, here's an easy one to implement: in standard JRPG's, what if characters got miffed when you never used SteveDave, or hoarded all your money and didn't buy enough Phoenix Downs, or always gave the best equipment to the main character? I mean, *I* implemented that sort of thing in a game I designed, and I bloody hate programming! Little things like that make a game SO MUCH more immersive. And getting back to MMORPGs again, I did say, I think, that immersion was missing. Even the littlest things can help. I know an adaptive persistent world is hard to create, but goddamnit it is possible!
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So there's something (or somethings) to think on. The whole post doesn't necessarily LOOK relevant, but if you've read through it all, I want you to chew it up, and keep in mind the stuff I brought up while you think about MMORPGs.
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Planetside did have a mechanism that locked a zone once it reached a certain amount of players. I forgot what the number was but it was in the hundreds not thousands. I think the reason for this is theoretically everyone in the zone could be fighting in the same base so there were some technical challenges.
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Originally Posted by Slashman
I'm guessing that Planetside doesn't count? I'm just asking...I never actually played it...but I thought it was an MMOFPS.
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Agua Man lvl 48 Water/Electric Blaster
"To die hating NCSoft for shutting down City of Heroes, that was Freedom."
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Hold down an alt key.|
Originally Posted by Chompie
Facade (I don't know how to type a circonflex accent)
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Press 0231 on your numpad.
Release the alt key.
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Presto!
Up with the overworld! Up with exploration! | Want a review of your arc?
My arcs: Dream Paper (ID: 1874) | Bricked Electronics (ID: 2180) | The Bravuran Jobs (ID: 5073) | Backwards Day (ID: 329000) | Operation Fair Trade (ID: 391172)
It's not simply about not starting from scratch. Even if your game deviates from the accepted MMO norm, if that deviation is something new and fun, then presenting it in the right way will encourage people to try it.
'The stuff that makes this game unique is pretty low key...so here's your checklist of usual MMO features. Mediocrity is our watchword.'