Slashdot Mirror
John Smedley On the Future of MMOGs
RosethornKB writes "John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment, wrote a letter about SOE's look to the future. In it, Smedley asks some questions about virtual children, skill based combat and player created content. KillerBetties.com posts a response to his questions. From the article: "What if you could have families in MMO's? Virtual Children... What if your characters could have children and pass on the family name...This is a very vague idea and I'm not sure if he words it that way on purpose or not. The concept of Virtual Children and passing on the family name isn't new. For example, upcoming Limitless Horizons MMO Mourning has had it in their design since the game first was announced. Their system is actually very interesting in theory."" Grimwell.com has commentary on SOE's recent activities.
Its tough to know what the future of MMOGs hold when you consider how little the genre has changed since the Everquest days. I mean, really, look at the gameplay elements of the first 3d games, Everquest and Asheron's Call 1...the games coming out today play almost the same exact way. In fact, you could almost consider games today a step back, since in AC1 you could at least dodge projectiles and spells if you wanted to.
I mean, yeah, sure, the games have gotten better, but mostly in terms of graphics. The core of these games is still about creating a character, running at mobs and hitting a bunch of icons on the interface to use different skills. Aside from the gameplay, the environment is still about the same. Quests are getting better, but they are still as simple as "Go here and kill this." with some little variation thrown in.
Another pet peeve of mine is character creation where you have to choose your characters skill set before you even get to play the game. I wish a game was open-ended where you could dabble in different areas as you went on, before deciding what to actually stick to. I want game rules like PvP that are determined by in-game repurcussions, not by hard-coded limits by the developers.
I guess I just see tons of this untapped potential for MMOGs that just isn't being realized. Everygame seems to tought its one big, new "feature" that is really just a mild improvement on what was done previously.
If we could combine this article with the genetic engineering article.... that would be stuff that matters :-)
I know we all have joked about "Evercrack", Everquest-Widows, etc... But at some point do these games become really harmful to the average person? I mean when you can start being able to have virtual families including virtual inheritance, we might be crossing the veritable rubicon of unhealthy gaming.
I've never even considered playing an MMORPG because I know I would become addicted in about 3 seconds. Maybe that's just me.
I'm a big tall mofo.
...when she walks out and leaves you she takes the kids, half your gold and the pet dragon, just like in real life?
Beep beep.
The slide to creepy began with the introduction of gender in MMORPG. 98% pasty white males in real-life to a roughly 50-50 mix in the game world... well, you do the math.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
after playing EQ for 4 years I have given up on any quality games from $ony. Their customer service does not exist and they do not listen to their players. It got to the point that it turned my off of all MMORPG's, good thing WoW came along.
As MMOG get bigger so does the average person, more they want to explore the virtual world the less of they'll want to explore of the real world, Eventually they won't even want to venture past the dreaded kitchen..
this is the only chance most of us /.'ers will have to HAVE children....
Pretty much. I mean he admits it at the beginning. This stuff is not new, and if you want to know if a feature is going to work or not, one of thousands of text-based games has probably implemented it in the past.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Hahahah, loser.
Here's a quick one for you: How many of you out there choose mages as your first character EVERY SINGLE TIME? Probably a lot of you.
You know what I'd like to see?
A MMORPG with a magic system that wasn't geared toward combat, or ease of use. Something so incredibly complicated that you have no idea what's going on. For once, I'd like to see the PLAYER learn magical theory. And the magical theory to be entirely player researched, and incomplete.
A magic system that lets YOU design spells, but all the knowledge you need to do so comes from experimental error. A magic system that KILLS you if you screw up badly enough.
Obviously, that would be one of the greatest challenges ever to create, but I'll tell you right now, I'd quit my job if I had one and play that 24/7.
Who's with me on that?
...I see two posible futures for the MMO(RP)G genre, each with distincively different results and social implications.
#1: One company emerges from the fray victorious, and becomes the Microsoft-esque supergiant of massively multiplayer online games. It happened with EA and the NFL, and I think that it could happen again with RPGs through the means of the merging of Blizzard-SOE along with few patents in just the right places. Thisscenario would open itself up to more global connectivity, with Japanese gamers playing alongside their American friends and the US no longer hating the French since they've got all the best healers and spellcasters (what? it coudl happen...).
#2: Gamers, fed up with big-name companies giving them lousy customer service and blase customer support, band together and create a variety of independent MMO(RP)Gs in a fashion similar to the Protestant Reformation breaking away from the Catholic Church and forming many splinter groups each with different and unique approaches to the same common issue. Already there's the assumption that if you like MMORPGS and live in Korea, you play Lineage II, and that if you live in the US you play EQ or WoW, and that if you live in Europe you play EQ and don't know what WoW is all about... this phenomenon could become even more regional in the days to come, with people in Virginia playing something different than those folks out on the West Coast and vice-versa... this scenario would lend itself more to isolationism and modular commnities with one area having nothing to do with the other, and each group of gamers living in their own seperate world.
Just the thoughts of an ex-EQ addict who's been monitoring the industry... and to all of my friends still hooked on EQ, I say: "Camp out right now and go for a walk... the Planes of Power will still be there when you get back, but you may have missed a million opportunitees in the real world". As much as I love online gaming, it's still no substitue for real world experiences; However, it's still ok as long as you balance playtime with human-to-human facetime.
Are MMORPGs really an piece of entertainment software or a financial enterprise and glorified chatroom.
When we trade characters in order to provide for our own financial well being in reality, or complain about having to 'go to work' and 'Grind EXP', is that game still a game? Virtual children? Virtual families? What happened to making games more fun, or more accessible?
We seriously need more bandwidth in these games. And if throwing more bandwidth isn't likely anytime soon we will need to develop better algortihms and design better systems for ensuring players have low latecny when encountering large amount of other netoworked players.
All too often when a player is near a large group of other players they are hit with a large lag spike making large scale PvP frustrating and frankly, not fun.
It is this single issue I believe these games need to address before moving onto anything else really.
We'll see how Blizzard tackles it with their battleround concept of making an instance out of a predetermined largescale PvP arena, but even if this works it needs to go further. We have to figure out how to make flash mobs of people interact like anything else without the high latency that is a characteristic of all these games.
Fraom DaOC, Shadowbane, WoW and the few other I have played or observed, it seems this is the one consistant plague they all have.
I offer no solutions as I haven't thought to hard on how to solve this problem and even if I did it's possible my ideas would be naive considering I don't have experiance designing or developing these types of systems. However, from a players viewpoint, I can assure you this is a problem.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
That everyone says MMORPG players have no life? How is playing an MMORPG different from playing Counterstrike or any other game, or doing anything else for that matter? Also, it's not like $15 per month is very expensive. If you think it is, try going to a movie some time. Depending on how much you play (I admit I'm rather addicted to WoW) it's a pretty cheap method of entertainment. That being said, I only play it because I have nothing better to do with my time.
I've checked different MMOGs out but one of the big reasons I've never played one is because I'm not a big fan of either fantasy or sci-fi.
Has anyone ever heard of a MMOG with a more "real" based environment? IMHO on the of best multiplayer online games has got to be BF1942 because of the sheer size of some of the maps and thus the strategy required to position ships, tanks, and airplanes to conquer a map. But imagine if they could create a MMOG of this? Imagine if western Europe was one big gaming environment?
A MMOG of BF1942 could also bring some much needed teamwork not often found on public multiplayer servers. Imagine if you started as a grunt and slowly had to gain experience in order to advance in rank and specialty? Instead of just running headlong into battle, you'd actually have to listen to your commanding officer.
Has anyone else considered this or has it ever been attempted? MMOG seem like they could be great fun, but I don't have any desire become a wizard and chase goblins.
The only way to win is to not play.
Ok Joshua.
For every "level" you get in one of these games, you will lose one in real life.
Damn, and I was really working twards level 255 at Java Programming and I just lost it for level 25 paladin at WoW. Oh well, at least I have my holy light spell to keep me happy.
Are MMORPGs really an piece of entertainment software or a financial enterprise and glorified chatroom.
A little bit of both. But consider than many people use Slashdot as a replacement for human contact, and use it as a chat room. MMORPGs just let you kill stuff when you get bored with chatting with someone.
You'll be modded flamebait, but you do have a point: this is the exact same reason i never liked MMORPGs. When a game becomes a mostly a chore, it's no longer fun. I work on a cybercafe and i see it all the time - people come and sit for hours to do a quest of some kind, not because they enjoy it, but because they have to. Maybe it gives a sense of accomplishment, i don't know.
I discussed it with a friend, and he boiled it down to those games being addictive, like in a drug. You just need your fix, it doesn't matter if it's fun or not. You just gotta grind another level, or get that strange item. Watching people sit in front of a computer clicking the mouse in the same spot for hours makes me wonder if he's right sometimes. I still don't know, honestly.
What if you could have families in MMO's? Virtual Children... What if your characters could have children and pass on the family name...This is a very vague idea and I'm not sure if he words it that way on purpose or not. The concept of Virtual Children and passing on the family name isn't new
I always thought it would be cool to have perma-death in MMO's but to be "Reborn" into another family. New players, or players who died would be "born into" a family of high level characters.
Medievia has a system where heroes can create children and either give the character to a newbie or play those children themselves. Upon heroing a child, the parent heroes stats are boosted.
In a MUD (multi-user dungeon, a text based mmorpg) called Achaea, this has already been done. Or at least marriage. And i've heard of virtual dates in EQ and WoW. The more life like the make virtual life, the cooler.
So would that make IGE branch into the Orphanarium business? Babies for sale?
You want new spleen? Cheap prices! We're IGE, quickly destroying everything good about MMORPGS.
It has got much less to do with bandwith available then it does with the processing power available on the server side. When a large group gathers in one area it drastically increases the server load. I think it has to do with the way the load balancing works. In AC1 I know it was because the load balancing was in vertical "strips" along the map. If there was more than the expected amount in one strip the whole strip could experience server-side lag. It really sucked when you were hunting on the same strip as old arwic or ayan baqur where tons of people gathered because sometimes you would get caught in the lag and die to monsters even though you were on the other side of the continent.
Who is Smedley trying to kid - the future of MMOs, at least in the short term, is to keep cloning EverQuest until it's no longer profitable or some independant does something better and gets the ball rolling in a different direction (my fingers are crossed for DDO).
...at least until someone realizes that there's a huge group of people that aren't twitch gamers, but are bored half to death by the current incarnation of MMOs, and makes something that might actually entertain them.
Look at the big-name MMOs for the past 5 years or so: EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online, Lineage, Lineage 2, Final Fantasy Online... every single one of them is, fundamentally, the same game. Sure, the Asian-market games tend to have a sadistic streak, but beyond that, they're all about grouping up, camping, pharming, looting, wash, rinse, repeat.
Their combat systems are downright shallow. Their characters are less characters and more like animated spreadsheets. They're about spending hundreds or thousands of hours killing progressively larger bats, rats, and snakes to attain the privelage to spend more time killing even larger bats, rats, and snakes.
There's no thought. Combat and gameplay is so mind-numbingly formulaic that there's nothing to get the adrenaline going, and there certainly isn't enough happening to engage the mind.
Why can't we have a MMO with a combat system like Jedi Academy? Why, when mecha fans are some of the most hardcore gamers on the planet, has there not been a mech sim MMO?
Like I said, I have high hopes for D&D Online, but I don't foresee MMOs radically changing any time soon. It's just going to be EverQuest: Again: And Again: And Yet Again.
I've never really throughly played an MMORPG so take that it consideration before reading. It seems to me though that a big problem with Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games is that a lot people don't notice "Role Playing" part of it. Most MMORPGs I've seen are way too heavily focused on virtual combat. There's so much potential for a "virtual world" It's so sad that most of is spent in the endless cycle of "Kill more shit to get better stuff to kill more shit..." Of course hack-n'-slash dungeon crawling can be fun, but you can play Diablo II if you want that. MMORPGs should have a hack-n-slash element but it should have more...
A merchant class in a game world should have very little to do with combat. He should be able to hire people to defend him. Moreover, his ability should be gained by knowing people(like a game with a sort of built in social networking mechainic) and things.
A dancer/entertain class should play like rhythm games such as DDR.
I could go on but you see my point...A world that has 80% of it's population wandering the lands killing various creatures is pretty boring if you ask me.
Yes it would be very complex to create a game that played very different based on all different classes. Yes it would be hard to set a complete game world with all these classes interacting with one another. But for the $10-15/Month people pay for MMORPGs I don't think that's too much ask. Especially when someone can pay a flat $30-50 for a copy of Diablo II and get a similar experience on BattleNet. Then again, I don't have much first hand experience about MMORPGs. I just know what I see...
-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
One possible approach to use here is the idea of dynasty. Namely, that all the characters of a player are somehow in the same family or perhaps interpreted as having some common guardian or godling (the player in question). Here I'm thinking of crude internal viewpoint rational for why the player plays several characters and has any interest at all in running their lives. For example, perhaps the player is a "guardian angel" type who "helps out" (ok, she/he plays) characters with a particular philosophical bent or is an ancestral spirit who helps out the family due to loyalty or some less noble reason.
If there were a game based on, for example, the Meiji period in Japanese history, then each player might run a family subunit which might belong to a noble faction (for example, emperial family, Shogun, or a samurai noble), zaibatsu (family operated conglomerates), yakuza or mere bandit group, secretive ninja clan, or perhaps a small, modest family just making ends meet on their own. Things like marriages and other pacts, political intrigue, and the slow march of progress over many decades would make the game very subtle compared to the usual fare. Individual characters would be expected to die, either of accident, disease, or old age. Tragedy happens.
But a well-played character would boost future characters run by the player. That is, some sort of karma system. Perhaps, karma could be calculated by who pays tribute at the shinto shrine of the unfortunate deceased? That also brings a whole new meaning to the idea of professional mourners, and I imagine there are other flaws in such a system apparent to most slashdotters. But it would fit the milieu.
Virtual families already exist in Second Life. For example my character has a virtual mother, and one friend who married ingame has modified her character to look pregnant. Another friend who married and later divorced ingame has adopted another player as her son, etc... And there is a field in character profiles for your partner, be it husband or wife or whatever-you-call-it.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Some guy wrote a game based on the Torque engine called Blockland. You are a little Lego man, and the entire purpose of the game is to build Lego buildings. I honestly think that that could be a revolution in MMORPGs, if you even want to call it that. How about letting the players build from the ground up?
The only description resembling a webpage that I've seen is on the Something Awful forums, but that site requires a subscription account. If you can access the thread publicly then I think it has a download link.
I've gotten into that argument before with someone. It does give them a sense of accomplishment, enough such that if another game doesn't require the same amount of time, it's "not as fun."
There are a lot of people out there who absolutely can't stand World of Warcraft because they see it as giving advancement too easily. It robs them of their sense of "I'm better than everyone else because I spent 5 days leveling my wizard and they've only spent a couple of hours."
Someone leveled to level 60 in WoW in the first week it was out. He literally played non-stop to be the first to 60. How pointless is that?
You can try and point out that this is destructive, that there are other, better uses for time, that wasting time doesn't make something challenging, but they don't care. The powergamers WANT a game to take a long time for advancement. It gives them more of a rush when they complete it. For them, killing twenty purple slimes really is more fun than killing ten.
WoW is an interesting experiment in trying to please both crowds at once. My bet is that it will fail, and will wind up catering to the powergamers at the high end and add new abilities and skills that are simply a long grind, just like every other MMORPG out there.
Maybe something to do with music can be a good idea.
You can have people writing music to convert wood to rocks, or rocks to wood, or to start fire, etc.. then combine everything.
LOOM whas very amusing. Why not again?
-Woof woof woof!
I'm playing World of Warcraft lately (lvl33 elven hunter), which is not that bad a way to spend gaming time, if you have some free time in your life to begin with. Fun stuff for the most part.
;)
But I wish there were even more creative (and epic) quests in the game. I want to be on some quest where I HAVE TO go to some holy fire pit or something, in just 1 place in the game world, in order to forge some insane weapon (with ingredients procured with difficulty already), I have to fight some big mothers on the way who yell all sorts of intimidating/funny taunts as we fight, I want to literally be yelling at the screen as i charge valiantly into battle with my compatriots, I want MORE and BETTER battle animations and more in-game taunts and emotes (WoW is already pretty great with these, but it just makes me want MORE), I want to be able to pat the ass of the guy who just saved mine like they do in football games, I want to be able to pat gnomes on the head affectionately (maybe give them the ability to kick me in the shin in order to keep things balanced), I want to be able to taunt by waving my crazy Steel Fishing Rod of Death around my head threateningly, I want to be able to hug people in-game, etc.
Actually, Blizzard, don't bother with these things, your fun game threatens my having-a-life enough as it is
Every game I've seen that adds non-combat opportunities are horribly abused. They are easily very easy to obtain like professions in WoW where everyone does something so no one can do something special. Or they are so dull that they're only used on an Alt to boost one's main character. They need to make these things engaging yet unique that you can play one as a main character, not just an alt, and at the same time not easily obtainable so that everyone and their mother can do it.
Is more player-created content, and I don't mean SWG's crafting system or any RPG's roleplay system.
What I'm looking for is an open-source 3D MMORPG. This way, content can be added easily because the system itself would be documented and open; one company wouldn't hold their subscribers "hostage". Someone hosting a game server could decide how much content to make available on their server, so you could run your own for, say, 20 users or (gasp) pay a commercial provider who is maintaining larger servers (and larger worlds) where thousands of users can play at once.
I know there are a few open source MMORPGs out there. A quick Google search turns up:
www.genecys.org
www.nevrax.org
eternalsun.info
www.planeshift.it
That also has a company that cares? Then you should try City of Heroes. It has the most character customization of any MMORPG I've played (WoW, EQ, DAOC, GW).
/petition it and I am normally contacted within 15 minutes. On a slow night it could be around 30 mins. Furthermore I have never had them unable to solve my probelm.
Pros:
-160 colors to choose from, with most clothing supporting a secondary color.
-Low downtime, with travel powers for getting around fast.
-No worthless classes
-High amount of character power customizability. Ex: I want to play an offensive mage. I then decide do I want to play one that's single target, AE, hybrid or is CC heavy? I can do all of that within the same class.
-Specilize in spells not spell lines. In most traditional MMORPGS you want to be good with fire you put points into fire. Want to be a healer put points into rejuvination/mending etc. In CoH you spec spells instead. This allows for more player differentation. Also since
all spells remain useful throughout the characters life you'll still be using your level 1 spells at level 50.
-Great customer service. If I have a probelm I
-Devs care. They constantly post on the official forums anwsering questions about the game and ask players their opinions about a certain class or powerset or power and then take it into consideration when making changes. Furthermore they don't hesitate to admit they were wrong and undo a change if it was over the top.
-Variaton among the same classes with same power sets. Ex: Dark Melee/Dark Armor light tank that is based upon pure damage. My friend's Dark Melee/Dark Armor light tank could be more crowd control focused. And the best part? Both are equally viable.
-Game events. There are numerous events that the Devs create. There was a Rularuu invasion, trick or treat on for halloween and a Winter Lord invasion around winter.
-Constant updates. You may be thinking so what? It's an MMORPG they are all updated. Not on the scale CoH is. About every 2months they come out with new issues that are a huge patch. They introduce new zones, mobs, zone events, pvp (To come), powersets (to come), crafting (to come), and classes.
-All characters can solo resonably well. The only class that currently has trouble soloing in the low levels are controllers (CC class) but they are being looked at. Note this does change in the mid-game.
-Limited grind, with fast leveling, involved missions, and treats along the way (capes, auras, titles etc.)
-Entertaining combat system. It's fast, rewards creative thinking (what if I take 3 mins to lay a mine field then draw that pesky mob on top of it that I otherwise couldn't kill?). Enemies are varied and have powers of their own that the use against you. It's not the standard hit auto-attack and wait. Plus you fight groups of villians making it more exciting/challenging.
Cons:
- No items. For some this is a + as it makes the came very casual friendly and gurantees there will never be a Loot expansion that could ruin the game (think ToA for Daoc)
- ATM nothing to do other than fight. Crafting should be added in 3-6 months.
-No end game. They are working on this with the soon to come addition of PvP and more raid content.
That's just skimming the surface though, if you're really interested go to www.cityofheroes.com the official CoH website for more info.
There are 11 types of people, those who know unary and those who don't.
Granted I'm still going to buy it, with no monthly subscription whats to lose? But it just doesn't seem to have an RPG / non-combat side to it that I am looking for in a game...
Basically what you are describing, complete with teamwork like you wouldn't believe (provided you bother... it isn't called team"work" for nothing, there is work involved), a much more realistic environment (ordnance interaction is not probability based, but rather directly calculated physics based on real-world armor and armament measurements) and a HUGE environment (by far the largest contiguous land space in any existing MMOG--all of WoW would fit into a small chunk of Belgium).
Where they fall down has been providing better tools for team organization and roles, but they are getting better. A new box release is scheduled for 2nd Quarter '05 and the North Africa theater should be out by early next year.
It's entirely skills based, too, which is a twist for a lot of traditional MMORPG players, but extremely refreshing... you can be a day one player, but if you know anything about marksmanship and basic infantry tactics (realistic, not bunny-hopping) you can go out and pwn 3-year veterans in your first five minutes. It's all about what you do and how you work together, not how long you've been playing and what drops you've camped.
No relation to Happy Monkey
Ive never like MMOGs much, partly because I want casual gaming, where I can appear and dissapear from a game without suffering for it. CounterStrike would be a good example, you have the same capabilities as every other player in the game, regardless of whether you have player for an hour, or five days straight.
I also don't like the idea of paying a subscription for my games. I want to buy the entire thing and have it right there in my hands. It's very unlikely that youll be able to play a MMOG in 25 years time if you dig out your old computer.
A lot of the fun comes from the number of players in the servers. Why dont developers just increase the server capacity of new first person shooters for instance? A 64 or 128 player fps which was designed to play well with that number of players would capture a lot of that. So called leveling up reminds me a lot of caring for your 'cyber-pet'!
Duhulk
What I would like to see, and the one thing I think EQ2 could, and should, have that is sorely lacking, is a more impressive presentation of story.
I don't mean NPCs that talk about events that happened a long time ago. I don't mean books I can find and read. I don't mean narratives in pure prose in game and on a webpage. I mean using the wondefully dynmaic scripting power in Everquest 2, and later games, as well as the dramatic power of voices, to present to us some truly stunning events. By the time i'm level 30 or 40, I want to feel as if the world has substantially changed in some significant way. History is great, but we need a narrative as well.
This doesn't have to be a physcial world change, though opening up "happy ending" instances of zones after performing objectives would be cool (Rivervale and Zek come to mind). Rather I'm talking about introducing us to some characters, having us interact with them, their personal storires, and the events on the world stage, on a more meaningful and emotional level. We spend more time with NPCs in MMORPG's than any other interactive medium out there. Great emotional responses could be evoked, far more than our empathy for characters in a film, single player game, or even a novel.
The presentation of these events is equally important. Spawning mobs on a boat to "simulate" an attack at sea is old hat . Also, all NPC's are standing up, and it just jerks you out of any suspention of disbelief to find royal NPCs always standing in front of their thrones. Emperor Fyst is suppose to be this slothful and lazy guy who is leading the deathfist orcs down this slovely road. He'd be sitting by gum . Like film, video games are a visual medium. It doesn't do well to tell us a story in prose. Show us, include us, let us be involved in these epic stories. Don't be afraid to let us get to know important NPC's like Antonia and Lucan on a more personal level, and don't wait 2 years to do it . Don't relate something cool that happened, let us witness it first hand.
I've got many more thoughts about this, but there's too many to relate here. Hopefully Gamanetwork will accept the article I proposed a few weeks ago in Gamasturta or Game Developer . Always happy to talk about stories in these wonderful games we all love so much.
---
Duhulk
Real world implications don't have to mean actual physical world changes taht affect anyone else.
I know in FFXI they showed it's possible to have an NPC running around screaming while something crazy began to happen, while to another player the NPC was just standing there as if nothing was going on. The server can tell one client one thing, and another something totally different. The world doesn't have to look the same to everyone. You can have subtle differences while still maininting the integrity of everyone being in the same world. This also solves the ugly problem of an NPC despawning to simulate it leaving the area, though that may leave another player who needs the NPC, even in the same group, out of luck. A mob doesn't have to be visiable to everyone. You've not yet seen the event where the "minion of doom" has caused XandY problems. So you can't see him in the area.
A good writer and event designer can make the player's perception of the world change substantially.
If you're steadfast against the world looking different to different people, here's something else to think about. The world may be exactly the same, in terms of physical presentation, after a player watches some event unfold, but that player's fundamental perception of the world may change. He now knows BLANK, and he can see the entire world in a new light. Don't just hire someone because they're gifted at novel writing. It's not the same thing. Find some people with screenwriting experience; that would be far more suitable I think. As I said before, computer games are a visual medium. They can have the depth of a novel, but need the visual finesse that comes with writing for f
Its not multiple items really, it can be summed up as a single downside: there is no game. Character creation is the only part of the game that is interesting at all. After that, its streamlined grind, they removed any and all distractions that might make you think there is more to the game than a big hamster wheel. Its just too bad that they spent so much time making such a good engine for a game, and didn't bother to make the game.
... Since I've been involved in the beta test for a while, but Sociolotron - http://www.sociolotron.com/ has both children and perma-death, though PK is off at the moment as part of the last phase of testing.
From my limited perspective, it seems like any other business cycle. The large companies maintain the status quo, attracting new people to the fold. Some of those new people will evolve into independent innovators, some of them become the large companies of the future.
I'm surprised noone mentioned EVE Online (http://eve-online.com) here - it's quite an open-ended, single-world, player-run economics game. Check it out, it's much better than Everquest clones, in my (limited) experience.
I agree that the designers construct these worlds for the purpose of treadmill running,
I find myself imagining a massively "multiplayer" treadmill where you see the people you're running with in orc/elf/dwarf skins running around a virtual world as you run on a read treadmill. It could be the next great fitness craze for geeks :)
What I want to know is if the "levelling treadmill" will continue to be acceptable by consumers and thus continue to be what is produces.
Oops, did I just let out the secret of the market and how it works?
Anyone seen wildwestsim.com? They claim to have the virtual children and family history aspects. The other noteworthy item is that they mix a character's attributes with your own twitch reflex skills to determine outcomes in the game like shootouts. Sounds fun.
There is a game that has been in development for the past several years that has procreation. It is called Atriarch (http://www.atriarch.com). In the game, when you die you stay dead unless you procreate (it is non sexual procreation but it is still procreation), if you create a spawn you get to keep from starting over entirely.
That's how I feel about Nethack ;)
At least The 'Hack is free, tho.
You propose something similar to 'rune magic' in ToME. It's too limited for what I'm driving at, but a step in the right direction.
I think I'm Pro abortion on this one
Nokia has the technology to launch a new style of game that hasn't been mentioned here or anywhere else as far as I can tell.
If Nokia added a geo positioning mech to it's hend held units something like the real world DnD could be developed. If the software were modifiable almost anything would become possible.
I live in New Orleans and know there are enough great places to let the game become partly online and partly reality based. In the French Quarter costumes wouldn't stick out. And the possibilities are endless. Spy v Spy v Spy, Tag, Capture the flag, Treasure Hunts, whatever.
And while I know costuming in New Orleans is somewhat di regur(sp) any city or area would do. Plus the local fans would be necessary for the implementation of the games to ensure a good mix. I already have a small secenario designed for the French Quarter that's part puzzle, part bar hop and part scavenger hunt.
Maybe it's time to thing outside the box ...er, I mean screen on this one.
"Where did this apple come from?"
--Alan Turing
That's all most of the MMO's out there really are.
I tried the SWG:JTL demo , and found the space combat rather fun, but didn't like the ground stuff at all. It would have been much better if the ground combat againts the mobs worked more like an FPS (ala Planetside).
The real killer for a lot of MMO's , at least as far as I'm concerned, is the turn based combat.