MMORPGs so unepic.

I agree with you to a point on this topic, I agree that alot of MMORPG's seem to just be about leveling and not about the RPG part, but I don't know if this is always the games fault (I haven't played WoW but I do play UO so I'll be using that as a base)

What I mean when I say its not really the games fault is that the players don't worry about Role Playing in these games, what they care about is winning, which is odd in its self because you can never "win" while playing a MMORPG. The thing with MMORPG is that players have all the control about what happens so the developers can right any story they want and they can add tons and tons of it into the game but a player doesn't need to worry about that, they can walk any direction they want, they can skip all the little things, or never go to the big things.

Because in the end the story of an RPG doesn't really matter, people can make there own story, and I think the problem is that most people don't make their own story, they just go out an farm items. This then makes other people think "Hey why does that guy have 20 of those and I have 1, I better go farm some of them so that I'm not losing"

Also you talked about the enemy doing things like attacking NPC's and stuff, the issue here is that your not the only one playing the game so this doesn't quite work, you shouldn't be able to get a story that someone else doesn't get because they happenned to be somewhere else when the boss killed that NPC in the corner of town.

Basically thats all I have to say, the Developers can place you in a setting but they don't really have control over your story. Thats where you have the control

What makes a game epic is that it has content specifically geared for a set universe with a set group of characters, and provides gameplay that will follow a dramatic arc.

MMORPG's generally lack that control. Players want customizability and freedom, and that requires a ton of content just to get right.

Not to mention the fact that MMORPGs are, well, massive. You're not the hero - well, you are the hero, but there are thousands of other heroes and they are all doing pretty much the same thing you're doing. How epic can that be? To boldly go where everyone else has gone before.

Oh, and World of Warcraft does do the boss drama stuff. Check out the bosses in the deadmines, fighting Mograine in the Scarlet Monastery, or pretty much all of Stratholme.

MMORPGs aren't about the NPCs. NPC boss battles aren't the main objectives and aren't what makes MMORPGs fun for me. It's the interaction with other people in an almost-real-life experience. I played Galaxies for a little over a year and the fun wasn't grinding out jedi or killing the biggest baddies in the game, it was actually the thing about MMOs that I hated the most...PvP. Now, I still don't like duels and everything, but with friends it is a whole other story.

I think the "epic" battles from traditional RPGs that you say are missing in MMOs (which I agree there should be more "antagonists" in MMOs to give a sense of unity to the game) are actually replaced by PvP. I say this because when you fight against other people (especially in galaxies with Rebels/Imperials) you are always constantly watching your back and looking over your shoulder for that "guy in the shadows". That person who busts into the cantina while you and your rebel friend are having a shot of jawa juice. PvP battles like this would happen anytime, anywhere. You would fight and die along with your friend, exchange battle taunts as you fought and chase down the cowards who ran during the heat of battle.

I can understand how these epic battles are missing with NPCs...MMORPG NPC are insanely stupid and uninteractive, especially when a supossedly "high profile" bounty hunter target simply says "you gonna die!" and proceeds to stand in one spot and shoot at you until either he or you return to the respawn queue.

So yea, Turt's right, the devs provide the stage and you as the player have to write the script and act it out as you go.

So anyway, There's my two cents. I'm off to class.

-Pigpen

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why do MMORPGs lack this today?

You can really only do boss battles once. If you get the same battle again, you will "know" it. In a 40-hour RPG, you can put in about 5 of those without too much work, especially if character advancement is paced through the game.

Meanwhile, many MMO players go through 40 hours of play in the first week. MMO make their money when people pay for months and months -- you just can't create the same kind of content and mechanics for 1,000 hours of gameplay.

That's probably also why all the raid-level encounters in games like EverQuest don't come until you leveled all the way up.

it would be cool if mmo were more imersive but there one basic problem
in most rpgs the events center around you but in a mmo not everyone can be the most important person in the universe

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Original post by hplus0603 Meanwhile, many MMO players go through 40 hours of play in the first week. MMO make their money when people pay for months and months -- you just can't create the same kind of content and mechanics for 1,000 hours of gameplay.

especillay if you have 1,000 players

the best i can think of is insted of all the players being heros have it so some players can be villans, can build a tower, summon some monster in it and terrise nearby villages

So would anyone be willing to say that the genre MMORPG is inherently false advertising? It'd almost be like calling Halo 2 a multi-player fighting game. Sure, there's fighting, but it's not "real" fighting like in Tekken.

MMORPGs have been around for years now, but is it too late to give the genre a better, more apt name? Already I've seen reviewers using the term "MMO" and dropping the RPG altogether.

Can a REAL MMORPG be made? If you forgot everything you know about UO, DAOC, WoW, etc gameplay and started from scratch, could something that really lives up to the genre of MMORPG be done?

That's a very strange point of view, Penance. The label Role Playing Game implies that it is a game in which you take on the role of another character—something that you surely have more room to do in a world with other humans than when limited by scripted events and dumb NPC's! Final Fantasy style games, for example, don't really offer much in the way of role playing at all. (That said, I am a great fan of games like FFVI and Chrono Trigger, and I have no interest in MMORPG's.)

I think i'm on Kaze with this one, and not all the players in WOW could be considered heroes (well, good ones anyway), there are two factions in WOW that the designers have specifically created to oppose each other.

I think the key to any story is the ability to have players become super villans. You know there is going to be power players no matter what, players who want nothing but the highest score and the most gear, so why not make the most powerful stuff evil? If only 1 or two players could obtain ultimate power then a band of players would obviously have to stop them, keeping track of these stories and creating an ingame "history" built by the players would be an excelent way of making a game epic, or at least more interesting because the designers are only setting up circumstances, the players are the ones making history.

Things like releasing the Uber-The-Enormous Demon to terrorize the gameworld, some monsterously huge creature the size of a map that players would have to try and stop. Or giving a power players some ultra powerful weapon/ability and letting him loose on other people. Or perhalps giving control of a hoard of undead or creatures so he can invade regions. ;D

Is part of the problem that combat is your only real sensible road to victory, and that usually everything else is (in contrast) boring?

In Star Wars, for instance, yes there were epic fights. But there were also epic conversations and epic decisions.

I'm not a huge MMO fan, so this may be irrelevant if the point of MMOs IS the fighting.

(EDIT: Like the idea of only one or two supervillains, btw. I'd love to see more spectator aspects where you could watch their story arc. Lots of data recording in that, though...)

I would think that the perfect MMORPG didnt only have questing and killing in it. It would also have a strategy portion, a farming portion, a merchant portion, etc. Such a game would be massive and is probably impossible, since its 3 or 4 well-developed games combined into 1. The reason is because, you have different people playing different games in the same world, the immersion would be much more real. It would probably also need a Live Action team, to install constant new quests, new battles with monsters, new recipes, new towns, etc. 'Wish' attempted to do something like this, and I thought it would also do well to add immersion.

Omega, this is encouraging. In thinking about how to make MMORPGs more "RPG" and less "hack and slash" centric, I eventually came to the conclusion that the game would have to be multiple genres combined into one. Cities would need to be built and made to thrive, there would have to be governments, intrigue, diabolical entities to drive the plot and create conflict.

Could it be that the future of MMO's will welcome players from all genres and styles? People who enjoy SimCity will have a role. People who enjoy mysteries and political intrigue will have a place. PvPers and people who enjoy fighting genres will have a place. It's an interesting concept, I think.

Miserable: also an interesting point of view. There seems to be a conflit between what being a "hero" really means. In a traditional RGP your character is pre-made and you simply guide them through the game, sometimes making decisions, but in the end you defeat evil and save the world. Along the way lots of stuff happens to your character, and you can relate to it and the story.

In an MMORPG you build your own character from scratch. In both, your character becomes more powerful as you play, but unfortunately the gameplay of MMORPGs doesn't encourage people to develop their character's personality and backstory or become immersed...it only encourages players to become powerful through the acquisition of items. An MMORPG player would never turn down a piece of equipment because they are good and the entity offering it is evil. They would always take the item because better items equate to "winning." In these games every character is essentially the same: all are motivated by greed and power. Players do not create and then take on the role of their characters, their characters necissarily take on the role of their real life counterparts.

To me, real RPGs are like reading a good book and "getting into" the protagonist. This almost never happens in MMORPGs.

Guildwars does what you want since the quests are all instanced the game plays more like a tradional single player rpg. Liek phantasy star online before it. No monthly fee is icing on the cake. even better yet is you can role play all you want while in town with other players, and in yoru party with other players.

Wish was the ultimate though. NPCs controled by "storytellers" that created quests on the fly for the players. You could actual hold a converstaion iwth an npc that was being role played by the ST and the best part was they were actually quite good. too bad it got canceled during beta.

Most MMORPGs have plenty of role playing (especially WoW with Roleplaying servers), ist that some users dont role play and power level. Its really the gamers fault not the developers no this respect. As for epic battles? Had plenty of those in WoW.

Seems like you enjoy the cutscene infested console rpg which is more adventure then role playing.


To cut to the chase, such immersion costs money. Mutable relms found this out and I think its why it was canceled. Amny gamers cant be bothered role playing, they just want to kill everythign in sight (a problem in some of the live evente iwth stupid players). Thus game devs have catered to those people since they have enough of a majority. face it role players enjoy the games that are out now AND non role players do as well. Though neither is fully satisfied, they still play.

Again go get guild wars, its exactly what you are looking for, if its storyline, "epic" battles, and scripted sequences.

Also try face of mankind, the player generate the content (ie missions/quests). its early beta, but allows ppl to role play quiet effectivly. Actually a great study of human society and social behavior that game is.

an update on my idea, im not sure this would help role playing but the best way to make the world more epic(and about the only cost effective one) is to make players into heroes, merchants and villains and pit them agents each other but more creatively than walking up to each other and attacking. The only real technical challenge to this is in most games the player reacts to changes in the world while in this setup the world would change according to the action of the players. Like I said in my last post a good example would to let a powerful player build a tower, summon monster to it and attack nearby town. Then the Npc’s will realize their being constantly attacked, they could try to fight back and look for adventures to fight the player villain and bingo, you have a player versus player quest dynamically generated. In addition to having an unlimited number of unique quests available you have a whole new angle of game play, for example human villains aren’t just going to sit in the final floor of their tower waiting to be killed, one they realize someone’s after them they will send some monster to set a trap for them.
The basic idea is that since the whole point of a MMO is to be with many players they should focus more on player/player combat, but more creative than just siting outside a town and killing everone who leaves

you definatly need to check out Face of Mankind. fomportal.com its currently in open beta. This is similar to what they are trying to do. high ranking players create quests which lower ranking players can accept and carry out. There is NO player vs npc at all. Pur eplayer vs player interaction. This includes the economy, production of goods, and mining of resources.

Problems: high ranking players are not always playing thus dont create enough quests for players. So some factions have mroe quests then others, furthermore quests are timed so that hey are convient for the creator, not the rest of the players. Being a european based game, the su players get the shaft due to time differences.

Time zones affect effectivness of player created quests. Players can move up in rank, but only players doing quests (currently i dont think the game even has that working yet). Since quests favor high ranking players mates, other players get nothing to do except be annoying.

The game becomes boring VERY VERY quickly when there are not standard quests to do. Player quests are fun and all, but a few genric quests are needed to players have something to do when the high ranking players are not doing anything. Plus the high ranking player will make quests HE thinks are fun, not the other players. Sure the every wants in while quest that is grand is great, but doing them all the time gets stale. even worse are the boring quests that have to be, and normally would be done by NPCs (ie patrol an area).

This of course may just be their implementation needs work. Systems like this are great if the players cooperate, unfortunatly until you get to open beta you wont realize how crappy what sounds so good on paper player quests can be.

Also your idea of NPCs fighting back, that requires great AI (costs money) or someone to run the NPCs (costs money). Furthermore ranking players on level is thrown out the window. Eventually everyone will become high level and the system falls apart. This is on area Face of Mankind shines. there is no levels at all. Combat is done via a FPS mode (like Necron before it) so that players never need to level up. Thus there only goal is to be the story, live the world, complete teh missions in hopes of eventually attaining the high ranking status (which of course could easily be controlled via in game elections and such if needed). Perma-death was even added if you dont make sure you buy clones or clone insurance.

Eventualy a company will get a new system with dynamic content that players help create. A time where not all the players can get to slay the dragon and save the princess, when your deeds get recorded into ingame news papers and libraries. When players can control the story with their actions. Wish almost made it, but the timing was bad (open beta when WoW AND EQ2 just got released? thats just asking to fail).

I had a long plug of my own game project that has elements of RPG, RTS, PvP with multiple mini-games inside (driving, melee fighting, hacking, gambling)..but I erased it.

Sufficed to say, the popular games of the future will incorporate multiple genres into the same game.

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Original post by PenanceWhy is it that most MMORPGs seem to lack an epic feel to them? In my mind, that's what makes RPGs great, is the sense of immersion.

I do agree that it is the sense of immersion that makes RPGs great, but an epic feel has nothing to do with immersion, per se. Personally, I'm sick and tired of games with an epic feel (as in the world is basically a big idyllic place and there are great, noble heroes to fight the evil, fiendish villains who try to make the world an unhappy place and the main character is so heroic that all level 10 or less commoners faint on sight; and then this paradise is so mystically infested with attack-on-sight fight-to-death creatures that you simply can't avoid). At times, an epic feel might create a very out-of-character situations.

Whenever a game starts to be too obviously "epic", I am no longer immersed. Then again, I could easily be immersed by a game that is overly mundane, without an epic feel, but rather the feel of exaggerated realism (or film noir). Something that is at the other edge of believability. Being able to carry seven suits of plate armor and fifteen long swords is not believable, but overly epic. Winning a fight by throwing sand into the foe's eyes and then backstabbing him with his own dagger is not epic, but rather convenient. And when was the last time you could actually run away from a boss fight and still be able to continue the game (aside from "random boss fights"; even in e.g. Diablo II you need to kill the main bosses at least once in order to advance)? Running away is not epic, yet as Sun Tzu said, "he will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight".

Being epic is a property of style. Immersion comes from within the player and thus doesn't imply an epic feel. Different styles immerse different people, and usually true immersion requires a lot from the imagination — ok, the boss didn't say anything. So what? Let your imagination fill in the rest. That being said, ...

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Things missing in WoW: 1) The bosses don't ever "talk" to you. There's no interaction. They are not antagonists, they're simply "mobs" you farm phat lewt from. You don't encounter a boss multiple times (they never get away, they never kill another NPC in front of your eyes, they never steal anything from you or destroy something valuable to you.) 2) There's rarely any special music to highlight the battle. This would go a LONG way to making the game feel more alive. 3) Timing, anticipation, backstory. You do a quest line, and sometimes the quests will be related in a meaninful way, but usually it just ends up with the NPC saying "Oh, by the way, this one guy did something naughty, go kill him!"

...these things could certainly increase the immersion of the game, but they don't need to be epic or pre-written (as in parts of a fixed plot). Then again, you implicitly imply that all bosses are inherently evil and ready to fight to death; how about if the boss dropped on his knees and started to beg for mercy?

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Original post by Miserable That's a very strange point of view, Penance. The label Role Playing Game implies that it is a game in which you take on the role of another character—something that you surely have more room to do in a world with other humans than when limited by scripted events and dumb NPC's! Final Fantasy style games, for example, don't really offer much in the way of role playing at all. (That said, I am a great fan of games like FFVI and Chrono Trigger, and I have no interest in MMORPG's.)

I agree with this point of view wholeheartedly.

Roleplaying is something the player does — as such, roleplaying requires that the player actually wants to roleplay. As a designer, you can directly affect the character, but only suggest to the player. If the game forces you to make certain choises (one of such enforcements is to start dictating what the character is supposed to be like), the player might eventually lose interest and immersion and will start to ruleplay (or rollplay) instead of roleplaying. When people ruleplay, they are more interested in the gameplay and game mechanics (which isn't bad by itself) than the actual game world itself.

The problem with games with a large amount of players (such as MMORPGs) is that not everybody wants to roleplay. Some people want to ruleplay, i.e. play the game for the great gameplay, for victory or points or whatever goal they have set for themselves, not the immersion itself. And as already stated plenty of times, immersion can't be forced. You can only encourage the player to explore the world and find out things. MMORPGs can be immersive, provided that the players really wanted to be immersed. Whether MMORPGs can be epic is no the point here, in my opinion.

Actually you could say that the term "Role Playing Game" is a bit of a misnomer, mostly because it is usually used as a synonym for "a game with a prewritten plot and some degree of character development and a battle system".

I think that if people truly do want epic style MMORPG's then the genre is going to have to push more in the direction of Neverwinter Nights, where players become GM's. This is what I am pushing for with my own project.

Granted, Neverwinter Nights is not particularly a MMORPG as it only caters for a small number of players (relatively), but I think it is definitely the way forward. No company could possibly hope to release as much content as could be created if the players were given the ability to do so. All we need then is a way to control the custom content and ensure that we don't get rogue GM's that make the game dull/annoying/etc and to ensure that the game has a certain level of continuity, all of which I believe can be catered for given a good game design.

I think the benefits far outweight the disadvantages. With a player GM you could allow for actions outside the capability of the engine by having the GM determine the outcome and tinker with the item properties/NPC's/terrain/etc to enact the outcome. GM's could also help create a rich and dynamic storyline, ensure the game is never the same, would not cost anything to maintain as the player GMs would be doing it for fun. I don't see how anything artificial could even come close to a human in control, so why don't developers focus on this method, perfecting and refining it and saving a lot of work in the long run, and possibly creating a much more flexible game along with it!

Well it makes sense to me at least! Any thoughts?

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Original post by Penance Already I've seen reviewers using the term "MMO" and dropping the RPG altogether.

You are aware that there are games that are Massively Multiplayer Online games but aren't (and do not attempt to be) Role Player Games?

I'd have to agree with others, that much of the problem is with the players themselves. Therefore, to create a true roleplaying game, it is logically the designers task to encourage roleplaying behavior from players, and to attempt to discourage behavior that may disrupt the roleplaying environment. Based on this conclusion, I have a few ideas:

Items:
Magical items in RPGs (especially those of the MMO variety) are too prolific, and are generally excessively powerful. Most of the items in the world should be mundane, or at best simply of good quality, leaving magical (or exceptionally crafted for that matter) items as a true rarity, and should also be quite difficult to aquire. Aquiring one shouldn't automatically make it easier for a player to gain others. This should lead to a number of results:
-Any given magical item is likely to be (or become) well known among a majority of players, as they are already trained by previous games to seek more powerful items. However, as these items are actually rare (and difficult to aquire), it is likely that players will track where certain items are, automatically creating a certain mythos surrounding certain items, and potentially the players who possess them.
-Due to rarity, player competition will be encouraged, as the best chance for a player to gain a powerful item will likely be to somehow aquire it from an existing player. Due to the difficulty of aquiring such an item in the first place, it should be ensured that combat with any player who possesses such an item will be difficult.
-Exploration of the world will be encouraged, in order to seek out powerful items, or perhaps even clues to the locations or means of gaining such items.

In addition, items shouldn't be the lone deciding factor in the outcome of combat as they are in many current titles, nor should they even be a particularly large factor. While they must give a tangible benefit, a player with a magical or exceptional item should not automatically be guaranteed to beat a player without. Also to this end, it would be potentially beneficial to include more powerful items that are not related to combat - perhaps items that boost non-combat related skills, grant entry to locations that cannot otherwise be entered, etc.

Following from the previous, large quests could be made centered around very mundane items - picture player reaction to the news that a certain tower contains a rare magical item. Now, consider that the key to this tower (an actual key item), was lost or hidden a long time ago. Clues could be given as to where this key could be aquired, and despite the key itself being a relatively useless item, you can bet there would be intense player rivalry to gain the key. Any player possessing such a key but yet to aquire the item it allows access to is likely to become a target for other players who want the item. Furthermore, if more complex quests are desired, perhaps the location of such a key could be found in a certain old text, which was last seen being carried to x-location by y-character (in this case, due to the complexity, the item luring on players should be a particularly good ones, and players should somehow be informed of this so that they will desire it).

Levelling:
While becoming more powerful, gaining additional abilities, etc seems to be an integral part of the RPG genre, most games probably take it too far. Players often find levelling to a reasonable level to be a boring an repetative task - why not start them at a higher level? Ensure that they can already deal with minor critters they would expect to be able to, such as rats, birds, small snakes, etc, rather than forcing players to fight these at thier lowest level before taking on greater threats.

Then, no player should be allowed to become a walking god - the game should be balanced so that brand new characters aren't so massively inferior to the existing ones. No matter how much training someone gets, and no matter how much experience they have, they are quite unlikely to be able to challenge an entire army alone and expect to win. Making use of this should once again force player interaction - to take on extreme threats (such as an army), can now be used to force players to work together, and players of all levels should be able to be of use in such situations. More advanced characters should still be just that - more advanced, but there is no need to make them insanely powerful (although perhaps with exceptions, as I will cover below). This also provides a mechanism to force players to come up with different tactics, as they may not be able to solve every situation simply by waiting until they are of sufficient level to tackle it.

It has been shown in many games, that any player made significantly more powerful than others is likely to use this against them. This could potentially allow an excellent method to set up certain players as supervillains, simply by somehow making them more powerful than possible for the majority of players. One potential mechanism for this could be a single use item (such as a potion), which imbues a player with this power. The potion could be portrayed as an evil concoction, explaining why the player suddenly turns nasty (as is near certain to happen). This allows for the inclusion of a rare and powerful item as discussed above, and also generates player interaction, and a classic good/evil quest involving player characters on both sides of the equation.

Hrm, I'm sure I had some other idea, but I seem to have lost them while typing all that out - in any case, perhaps my ideas could be of use to someone, or could stimulate good ideas for someone else, I think my post is quite long enough for now. [wink]

I really like your idea's of unique items there Kazgoroth. :D

It really promotes items and player-made plots with unique and rare items that actually have some meaning, such as the aforementioned powerful items being locked behind doors that require unique key's, or any number of plot elements. However there is a problem with this, as in any MMORPG, people may decide to "take an item to their grave" as it were. If a player has a key unique and rare item and just doesn't logon anymore, then for all intents and purposes the item is removed from the game. The possible solutions to this might be to re-introduce the key item into the game at a random location if the player is logged out to long, or to allow someone to 'steal' it while the player is offline.

As to the super villan aspect, why use a potion to make a player more powerful when you could use your afore-mentioned Rare and Unique Magical Artifacts? While these items are rare and offer some benefits, some truely rare artifacts (where talking 2 or 3 here tops) could allow the player to become extremely (unbalancingly so) powerful, such as Gods Smite Stick, or an Atomic Warhead, that would require a couple of players, or a group of players to challenge him and take the item from him. Such items could also have drawbacks to using/possessing them, such as in Shinobi with his mystical sword that had to be "Fed" lest it eat away his health. Certain items may even dissappear on their own for awhile, reappearing every full moon or so for people to take possession of. This would surely give some items a legendary reputation and mythos about them, with some of them droping from the game for awhile before reappearing to wreak havoc again.