Slashdot Mirror
What Makes Online Worlds Fun To Explore?
Thanks to IGN RPGVault for their roundtable discussion on building satisfying MMORPG worlds. Rick Priestley from the forthcoming Warhammer Online argues that "There's no point in having a huge world if it's empty. Better to have a smaller, well-realized one with plenty of activity and player density", going on to voice "concerns with the idea that you should give large areas of the gameplay over to the players - building houses, raising taxes, leveling cities and so on", lest "anarchy" ensue. However, Gordon Walton from Sony Online addresses "lack of [graphical] richness", arguing that the "...primary business challenge we face with art is that the costs for first-class art continue to rise faster than our market is expanding, and that MMOGs require tremendously more art assets than the vast majority of standalone games."
pixelated icons like /. has.
The sims huge appeal (among a certain group) is that you can create your own addons like clothes and furniture. So perhaps games that play online where others can actually see your creation they should allow for user created content as well.
Of course they are not going to want that. First time someone adds a topless piece of clothing all hell is going to break loose.
Guess they are just going to have to find a way to create a larger customer base. Here is a tip. Get rid of credit card only subscription. Large parts of the world don't have the widespread use of credit cards. A company like sony does however have local offices pretty much every in the world. Use them to also accept local bank transfers.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I am not entirely certain of this since I haven't played the game myself but I think the MMO "Second Life" allows for users to create in-game objects that are saved on the servers.
The graphics in this particular title are hideous, but with a developer stepping back to allow the users to create their own world, litterally, it might be pretty cool in the future.
Just food for thought.
I think a system where by the world is created somewhat on the fly as new areas are opened. You know a kind of procedural build. This way common assets can be used to create unique areas as players explore based on the surrouning world type. When these are discovered/created they can be saved to the world so other may follow. The other players should be able to add assets (within in reason) which will add to the richness of this world. They could then trade or sell these. You know like designing new models for houses and the like. Better stop now before I start drooling.
The ability to kill and maim without consequence.
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
It's just what humans do. I like how Frank Herbert describes it, in Dune, as the Atreides leave Caladan for Arrakis:Online worlds and adventure games in general simulate that, which is what makes them fun.
The Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series.
The high point was Dark Forces II. After that, the maps and textures started getting over used. You could tell either the creators were running out of juice (how many infinite drops/50 story fusion laser beams are we going to be subjected to?) or they started running short of money to pay the artists. (just finished Jedi Academy. The levels were a disgrace.)
I can imagine MMGs having difficulty with that.
SO why don't we come up with.. ooh this idea is good. I think I'm going to go make some money now.
That the idiot from Sony Online thinks that the key to a satifying online world is the graphics? He should have listened to the Warhammer guy, shut up and said, "Just say I agreed with everything he said."
Personally, what interests me about MMORPG games is interaction with other people. I would love for a GTA based massively multiplayer game. Heh I get a smile on my face just imagining some of the mischief I can get into. That's what I used to do with Quake. Play little games with other people's minds. It was always fun making the other guy go "Son of a bitch!"
It seems to me that anything you can do to create a game where the humans are allowed to be human puts it on the right track. Pity they took the flipoff button out in Quake 3.
"Derp de derp."
If Sony or anyone else wanted to sell me an online game they would need to nix the credit card requirement. I've got enough recurring charges on my card without a video game being tacked on top. Sell me the game with three months of online time attached to it. Give me another three months for every expansion I buy. Three months gives me enough time to play the game enough to decide if I like it or if I wasted my money. Instead of having me sign up with a credit card sell a little calling card like deal with X weeks of server time.
All the content in the world doesn't matter when a game needs a credit card to play. Credit card requirements exclude lots of students both in high school and college as well as people who simply don't want/need more credit card charges. Companies then wouldn't need to worry about content because there would be people online to interact with.
Once I'm playing the game my interest isn't too hard to keep. If you're running a fantasy game give players a couple languages or writing systems to learn. Provide clues to special items or abilities in these languages. It give the hard core players something to do and rewards them for it. Also give the players a highly interactive world. I want to see a game where any NPC I can talk to will give me a unique reaction depending on a number of different factors. Take dialog trees to the next level by adjusting the NPC's actions and demeanor to the results of the dialog. If you insult a member of an NPC clan or guild you should have some consequence any time you meet another of that group's members.
I'd also like to see games learn from the likes of Pokemon and Animal Crossing. Both of those games use real time clocks to change the world according to the time. When it is dark out different things happen than during the day. Events take place only on particular days. Putting this into an online game would be easy. Tie the game's calandar either to the real world one or its own. If its around Halloween give people spooky adventures, if its around Christmas give them philanthropic ones. Give players a reason to have their characters online and in particular areas at certain times. Characters can have different schedules based on any of their personal atributes. Mages might be called to a conclave or mage fair and fighters might be invited to a tournament. No new media needs to be made for these sorts of events, just NPC scripts and players shwoing up to participate.
Inside the game world give players something to do besides blindly adventure or talk to NPCs. Tournaments or contests where players can be rewarded for particular skills would be a pretty good idea. Again no media needs to be produced, only in-game scripting and characters are needed.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
So graphics are what make MMORPGs interesting? Nonsense. MUDs/MUSHes/MOOs have been running for years with little more than the classic text adventure console style and are _still_ hugely popular. Of course, being for the most part free to play might have an additional acctraction.
The whole point of the genre must be player-player interaction - if a world is so large and sparse that my character wanders in a wilderness for vast hours of gameplay, i'm not getting the experience i've paid for.
Adding player-built features is a great way to hike up the amount of player interaction, as is the simpler introduction of player killing ( even with the associated possibility of abuse ).
In summary, I'd rather enjoy a text-based adventure than be bored of looking at pretty pictures.
Your mouse has moved. Please wait while Windows restarts for the change to take effect.
So perhaps games that play online where others can actually see your creation they should allow for user created content as well.
Of course they are not going to want that. First time someone adds a topless piece of clothing all hell is going to break loose.
The other problem will be with people having to download all of that custom content, whether it's done from outside the game or inside (especially inside). No matter how much great work has been done on Quake, there is still a large percentage of the players that have never seen any of it.
As for credit-card based stuff, I think Sony has almost got this right. You can always buy game time at most of the stores that sell the games themselves, so as long as the stores accept your chosen method of payment, you're set. Of course, this still relies on the stores to carry the game cards, which is why I said 'almost'.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
I've discovered that the original Asheron's call was boring: because you didn't advance in abilities fast enough, the world didn't change, and there was incredible lag and errors. Same thing with the orginal Lineage. In both these examples, you spend your first 40 hours or so battling training level NPGs, dying a lot, and looting your old corpse. That just isn't fun.
Yet Diablo 2 and Phantasy Star Online kept me glued for hours. Mainly because of the quasi-random dungeons and puzzle placement, as well as the slim possibility of obtaining more rare items for use or trade. Then, when I beat the game single player, I lost interest in both, because the quests didn't change. It was all level building at that point.
So here's my criteria so far for a good MMORPG:
1) Fast level building early on, slow later, with a really high ceiling on levels, or no ceiling at all.
2) Randomly rare items that increase in ability as you advance in level
3) Somewhat random dungeons that seem familiar, but everything moves around each game
4) Fascinating single-player play, but more than 5 chapters, please! Perhaps some Chapter 6 random questing mode? I don't have all the answers.
5) Fascinating multi-player cooperative play. Some things should only be achievable as a group and cooperating.
6) Fascinating multi-player antagonistic play. Hacking and slashing at each other in PK mode is boring as crap and rather dumb. I suggest in addition of PK arena type play, also add competitions throughout the world: races, creature hunts, gambling, treasure hunts, target practice, or whatever is appropriate for the fantasy world.
7) You should never feel maxxed out nor finished with the quests! Especially if you're paying a monthly fee. With Diablo, it kinda made sense that you maxxed out, since you paid all your fees up front with the software purchase. Subscription services should live up to their name: periodic quests, periodic events, holidays, change of season, contests, etc. (not to mention software patches)
8) You should also have some level of permanent effect on the world. A plot of land where your hut is, for example.
Having the creators try to keep up with the voracious demand for content of hundreds of thousands of players is tough, though. It's not as easy to get away with "everyone goes through the same quests" as in a single player game, because the players are interacting and communicating more, and thus telling each other the quickest ways to get through everything. So ideally you would have more content the more players you got. But the creator-centric model doesn't scale so easily. You could try to hire twice as many level designers, artists, etc. if your user-base doubles, but it's tough to keep up if your game is successful, managing a large team gets increasingly tricky, etc.
Player-created content scales great. If your game goes from 10,000 players to 100,000, the demand for variety of content may be larger, but your number of potential creators has gone up by a factor of ten, so you're covered. The vast majority of the interesting content in Furcadia is user-created maps, art, and scripts for various quests, games, etc. And we have players that are still playing and highly interested and addicted since they started in 1996. Player created content IS a viable approach to making an MMORPG.
Furcadia - A free online game with user created content, DragonSpeak scripting, & more.
Gordon Walton Vice President and Executive Producer Sony Online Entertainment writes:
Licenses, so long as they are more world than character based, can help tremendously in giving you the flavor and character of the world you are building. At the same time, licenses can end up dramatically limiting your freedom to add flavor and richness to the world dependent on the relationship you have with the licensor.
Seeing how SOE has so many licensed MMORPGs I wonder which one he's talking about? =P
Experiencing an area that is very similar to one you have already experienced for the first time is a letdown, because it detracts from the player suspension of disbelief.
Having a living world (one with natural motion, an ecology and sensible physics) is also important for immersiveness.
Sensible physics apparently means:
Don't get me wrong. SWG is a cool game, but it has a long way to go to incorporate satisfying content to go with all of their fancy game structure. It will be quite a shame if they never live up to this, considering that they have a great framework in place to build content upon.
In the long run, I look forward to a game which has:
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
sorry to lazy to sign in but there is one game that is totally awesome for exploring a MMPOG world and it There www.there.com