Hearts gone out of it...

[friznit]

http://nerfnow.com/comic/450

Saw this, agreed totally, then read his comment and agreed with that too including the bit about how the occasional game still captures the magic.

What does it for you? Which games do you genuinely still lose yourself in and don't find yourself 5 hours in wishing they'd implemented an in game spreadsheet app?

For me I have to say it's currently ArmA2, which is still going strong as a coop milsim almost 10 years after I started playing Operation Flashpoint. The Witcher did it for me too, as despite everything about it screaming "I'm an RPG! Level Me!", I still got hooked up in the story enough to finish it, which is a rare achievement.

[Dog Pants]

Quite right, it's sad but true. I vowed that with Cataclysm I'd play it slow and take in the quest lines and scenery. Then ended up skipping the quest dialogue and blasting through the zones. I think it's a feature of the quest mechanic. It's not a huge problem as long as the actual interactive part of the quest is interesting, but if devs want to add a story element they need to change the way you progress.

[spoodie]

That's something like how I feel about MMORPGs, especially WoW.

I was thinking about the future of MMO(RPG)s after I tried out WoW again recently. Given its polish and popularity I can't see any game, using the same model, being able to knock it off its pedestal. But perhaps the model is a dead-end and WoW will be overtaken by an MMO that's entirely new. A new game based on the idea of a Massively Multiplayer Online (with or without the RPG) game, without just making something like WoW, etc. Although it's hard to imagine anything else when you start to think about the practicalities of making an MMO world work. Fortunately it's not up to me as I'm not a developer.

How would your perfect MMO work?

[Dog Pants]

Crikey. I've already rambled on quite a bit about this in some other thread, but I think in order to keep an MMO fresh you need a constant flow of new content. The best way I can think of to supply this is to have the players create it. Eve already does that to some extent, but I was thinking more along the lines of what City of Heroes was trying to do. In fact the general idea for an MMO world I consider to be an interesting and viable option is to have both - player driven empires, similar to Eve's Alliances, controlling large areas of the game via PvP. Inside these areas the people who want to do PvE content can do their thing, creating revenue for the PvPers who control the area. This way the PvP players would need to encourage the PvE players into their areas in order to generate income. Having a built in set of mod tools to allow players to create missions or quests would enable the empires, PvP and PvE, to create content. The better the mission you make, the more people will play it, and the more revenue your empire generates. Simple mechanics like procedurally generating the rewards for missions based on their difficulty would mostly prevent people exploiting it to give you an uber-weapon for killing a rat.

[buzzmong]

I agree, but not just on the MMONG side of things.

This year, outside of Minecraft's charm and addictiveness, and Bacons mulitplayer medal/weapon gathering, games have been pretty poor in terms of drawing me in and keeping interest.

Even games like NV I'm kinda going "meh" with after a while.

[Joose]

But perhaps the model is a dead-end and WoW will be overtaken by an MMO that's entirely new. A new game based on the idea of a Massively Multiplayer Online (with or without the RPG) game, without just making something like WoW, etc. Although it's hard to imagine anything else when you start to think about the practicalities of making an MMO world work. Fortunately it's not up to me as I'm not a developer.

How would your perfect MMO work?

Well, for a start, I think the devs need to mentally detach the acronym "MMO" from the current standard RPG model, and remember that it is actually an acronym, and not a word. Massively Multiplayer Online. In other words, All you need for something to be an MMO is for it to have a large scope, with lots of people all playing the same game at the same time. Just because its an MMO doesn't mean it automatically has to tick *all* the crafting, level progression, PvE/PvP, and all-the-other-things-we-take-for-granted boxes. Some ideas, totally pulled out of my ass without much thinking about:

Massively Multiplayer Civ style game. Probably easier to set in space rather than on a planet, just for scale.

Massively Multiplayer Minecraft.

Massively Multiplayer Puzzle game. I have no idea how this would work, but somehow I still find the idea attractive.

I'm not saying that *they* would work, but I think that's the direction that someone needs to start thinking in. When you boil away shiny graphics and silly stories, all current MMOs are basically: Do thing to get better at doing thing. Thing gets harder at roughly the same rate you get better. Its a treadmill for the brain.

[FatherJack]

For me there's a fine line between understanding what works best in a given in-game situation and understanding how the game's mechanics work thus best exploiting them.

Partly it seems that some of it is the player allowing themself to stop believing in the game, taking a step back and almost begin playing themselves playing a game, recognising that they're not fighting monsters anymore, but twiddling knobs to make something else fight monsters.

Partly, too - it's how the game's designed. With WoW with typically a third-person view and common death without much penalty it's easy to see how you'd become disconnected from your character, but it goes deeper than that. The whole levelling, achievement or gearing system is why you're actually doing what you're doing, finding out what happens in the story or exploring takes rather a back seat, as it's a breadcrumb trail which lasts so long and progresses so infrequently that you often lose sight of it.

It's certainly easier to keep your mind on the wider story arc in a singleplayer game, where you're the only one affecting the world, and world-changing quests are certainly harder to implement in an MMO. I think the close phasing in the last two WoW expansions, whereupon you enter a new, sometimes dramatically-changed instance of the world every few quests have made the story more of a focus, but sadly they also take away a lot of what makes the game an MMO, chiefly: doing quests with your mates.

For some, the questing is entirely mechanical and just a means to an end, that end being to raid with their guild. Perhaps then, in a group of humans, players could start once again feeling a connection with their character? It doesn't seem that way, once the suspension of disbelief has been shattered, it all seems to be about the numbers - and even if you're made it that far without that min-max mindset, there's always someone only too eager to smash the illusion of a fantastic mythical world by telling you your gear is not optimal and that you should look at a spreadsheet to rectify this.

[Dog Pants]

It's odd, I feel a connection with Soncho as a character despite me not really paying attention to the quest storylines. I felt betrayed when I heard what was going to happen to Cairn, and to an extent the Horde, in Cataclysm. I'm sure that's part due to the fact I've had the character for years, part tribalism for the Horde (one letter away from horse, folks), and part my own overactive imagination. The acid test for me is if I could play Soncho in a tabletop game and give him a recognisable personality.

[Dog Pants]

Reading PCG this morning has just reminded me of something that is similar to what I suggested back up there - Dust514. That's the online shooter that would be running in parallel to Eve, fighting over planets while being sponsored by real Eve corps. It's touted at the moment as console only, but it's such a great idea that I don't mind - I'd never play it in that form, but the fact CCP have even suggested the idea makes me happy. In the article I read there was no denial of a PC version, which is nice because I'd love to play it. However, as discussed in another thread recently, letting PC and console gamers loose on the same shooter would likely lead to disaster. Still, either way if Dist514 can make a success of it (and with the backing of Eve's financial income and time to tweak and evolve like an MMO does there's no reason it shouldn't), then hopefully other similar ideas will follow.

[friznit]

It's an ambitious concept. The old cynic in says it won't work, partly due to the nature of Eve players who will find every way possible to exploit the system until tis hopelessly broken but also due to the transitory nature of console FPS titles (Master Chef notwithstanding).

However, even a moderate success will hopefully encourage others to look at integrating different levels of gaming into the same sphere of influence (struggling for words to describe what I have in mind). For example, the multiplayer part of the upcoming Shogun 2: Total War (or Total War: Shogun 2 I think it is now) looks very interesting. One global strategic commander setting overall goals, lots of randoms playing the individual battles to achieve those goals in a given time period.

[Dog Pants]

Ah yes the S:TW2 clan system. That did grab my attention, and I was never even any good at the Total War games.

[FatherJack]

The concept of one player deciding on a course of action, or setting a goal and many others then implementing the plan has been worked into a number of titles, but always within the same game.

The problem in the same game, like in Battlefield 2 is that either everyone wants a go as commander, everyone thinks the commander sucks or some people are too nervous to ever have a go at commanding.

Games like World of Warcraft sit at the other end of the scale, with its recent addition of guild "points". Everyone works towards the next guild level, but there's nothing in the way of planning or direction.

Having an entirely separate game where the points are accrued is an interesting idea. The game would ideally be entertaining enough that people would want to play it regardless of whether they were working for a specific commander or clan, and without the commander in the same game players wouldn't feel they were an idiot or too bossy.

While it could work well with clans or communities like ours, the danger would be in allowing mega-groups to control everything like they do in Eve. Perhaps the commander's actions could be limited to a series of small skirmishes with defined limits on numbers. Additionally players participating in the battles could vote on the effectiveness of their commander's strategy, either to form a leaderboard or merely to favour playing through another of that commander's battles in future games.

[Dog Pants]

The leaderboard thing has reminded me about something I considered while thinking about Dust. Player rep, based on how good you are, and how good you are at team work and following orders. Would you hire a merc whose stats showed them to never pay any attention at all to what you asked them to do? It would be more relevant in a game where there was a commander (which I doubt Dust will have), but I like the idea.

[Dog Pants]

I fact, that post has reminded me of something Anery and I came up with. How come an MMO can't channel some of the huge profits they (the successful ones) make into having directed NPC led factions. From a Warcraft perspective it would be like having Thrall actualy roaming the world played by an employee. They have GMs, so why not? Players would be more likely to want to choose between half a dozen leaders with a personality than half a dosen sides that have a different colour. The PvP guild/clan/corp leaders could even hold conference with these faction leaders to plan strategy. This is similar to how Eve does it (and Eve is player driven, more impressively), but in that case feels a little standoffish with no real relations between factions other than NBKI. To someone who played on the bottom rungs of an alliance years ago, at least.

[buzzmong]

The leaderboard thing has reminded me about something I considered while thinking about Dust. Player rep, based on how good you are, and how good you are at team work and following orders. Would you hire a merc whose stats showed them to never pay any attention at all to what you asked them to do? It would be more relevant in a game where there was a commander (which I doubt Dust will have), but I like the idea.

The problem with Player Rep is seen in real world examples on both forums that show post counts or on Ebay and the like.

Essentially new people get marginalised and have bigger barriers to overcome.

[FatherJack]

The problem with Player Rep is seen in real world examples on both forums that show post counts or on Ebay and the like.

Essentially new people get marginalised and have bigger barriers to overcome.

Not if everyone started at say..6.9 on a scale of 1 to 10. Then only nob-ends that always nicked the helicopter, etc would have low scores. But they'd probably just make new characters all the time and still be pricks.