Random (M)MORPG thoughts

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I could play a cat but would prefer to be an actual cat. Or more like this:


Instead of this:

I remember when Everquest Next was announced, and the lion paladin character looked kinda cool.

[rusty_shackleford]

I remember when Everquest Next was announced, and the lion paladin character looked kinda cool.

Wasn't that the one with the overly cartoon pixar style characters??

[rusty_shackleford]

This looks terrible!

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Yeah the face doesn't look anywhere near as ferocious as it could be, but at least it's better than the human model. And he ran around on all fours in the trailers.

[LemonDemonGirl]

I could play a cat but would prefer to be an actual cat. Or more like this:


Instead of this:

Have you played GW2?

[anvi]

I could play a cat but would prefer to be an actual cat. Or more like this:


Instead of this:

Have you played GW2?

Yep Only for a month or two but it was interesting.

[logincrash]

I remember making a Charr and trying to name him Shoshon the Elegant, but it was already taken, lol.

[Kalarion]

re: EQ, I have no idea why people seem to hate luclin so much. It's probably my favorite EQ expansion.

You get to be a cat and go to the moon! There's jungles on the moon!
How do people hate that??

I don't hate it and I said so in chat, I just think it showed the start of EQ's true decline.

It has really cool, involved quests. Factions are interwoven into gameplay well. There's lots of nifty **** to discover. Drops (both group and raid) started to have decent quality, you didn't have to raid NToV to get decent gear anymore. Some of the dungeons were cool and mind-bending (Ssra's elevator system, the illusionary bridge over The Deep, Shadow Haven being basically Freeport++ etc). Beastlord was a sweet new class. AAs get introduced.

On the other hand, most dungeons start to show signs of streamlining, culminating in Akheva Ruins being a square - a literal square - of corridors with rooms at the corners, and Vex Thal being an absolute abomination, a perfectly symmetrical snorefest of a "dungeon". Mobs begin to really ramp up the hp bloat. The focus starts to intensify on massive, 72-man raids. The writing itself deteriorates badly (even though the content and ideas are pretty cool).

Anyways I liked Luclin back when I was playing through it way back when, and I liked it for the most part this time through on THJ. But there's no arguing there's a clear drop in quality in some areas vs, say, Kunark.

[rusty_shackleford]

I just think it showed the start of EQ's true decline.

EQ is basically all incline until GoD hits, what are you talking about??

[anvi]

Here's another random thought I had after playing EQ.

There could be an MMO where chat is made a key part of the game. Currently all players can talk to anyone anywhere anytime and talk to the whole world etc. EQ is setup to have different types of chat. /Say is only heard in a small area around your character. /Shout is heard in the entire zone. But there is a group chat which magically lets people chat anywhere they are.

So my thought was that maybe some game could do this in a realistic way. Disable guild chat and group chats and regional chats. You can only hear characters nearby or shouts. There could be a guild hall where people plan things and everyone can chat together. But then when you go out into the wilderness there is no guild chat and no group chat. Just /say and /shout. And if someone is out of range of then they don't hear the /say. And if you /shout you also let enemies know where you are.

Make it more immersive like a single player RPG without all the chat spam you get constantly in MMOs. And make communication and planning matter more. Groups could chat with /say but if someone goes off to pull then they are not contactable while they are away. I would have no /tells or /whispers either.

I'd also have quests and things as missives on notice boards in the town square. Not NPCs standing around with an icon over their heads.

p.s. And yea a lot of people would bypass it by using TeamSpeak or whatever because they are pussies.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

So my thought was that maybe some game could do this in a realistic way. Disable guild chat and group chats and regional chats

I think there has to at the minimum be some sort of chat with infinite range that people can use to talk to people on the side of the world (it's the only way raiders in different cities are going to find out that each other exists and then begin organizing a group, or even to find out that there is a city they should be congregating at), and ofcourse a guild chat with unlimited range. If you don't provide these ingame, then people are going to go outside of the game and set up discords, and what you don't want is for people to be going to out of game forums that are easily captured and controlled and prone to evaporating just for basic functionality.

[rusty_shackleford]

All that will happen is you made discord mandatory

[Norfleet]

I think there has to at the minimum be some sort of chat with infinite range that people can use to talk to people on the side of the world (it's the only way raiders in different cities are going to find out that each other exists and then begin organizing a group, or even to find out that there is a city they should be congregating at), and ofcourse a guild chat with unlimited range. If you don't provide these ingame, then people are going to go outside of the game and set up discords, and what you don't want is for people to be going to out of game forums that are easily captured and controlled and prone to evaporating just for basic functionality.

The flipside of NOT having a chat system is that you're not stuck with the load of dealing with people whining about mean language. No chat = no need for moderation = no whining about censorship or inadequate moderation.

There is probably an optimal balance point somewhere, where you build the game as a functional chat client capable of interfacing with common chat systems, but do not yourself actually provide a chat.

[anvi]

All that will happen is you made discord mandatory

Maybe the only option is to put voice in the game and then limit it based on range like I was saying. Either that or people need to make better single player RPGs and I can avoid MMOs!

[Norfleet]

Maybe the only option is to put voice in the game and then limit it based on range like I was saying. Either that or people need to make better single player RPGs and I can avoid MMOs!

Ugh, no. I don't want to hear random people physically speak. That's just vile.

[Tweed]

Here's another random thought I had after playing EQ.

There could be an MMO where chat is made a key part of the game. Currently all players can talk to anyone anywhere anytime and talk to the whole world etc. EQ is setup to have different types of chat. /Say is only heard in a small area around your character. /Shout is heard in the entire zone. But there is a group chat which magically lets people chat anywhere they are.

So my thought was that maybe some game could do this in a realistic way. Disable guild chat and group chats and regional chats. You can only hear characters nearby or shouts. There could be a guild hall where people plan things and everyone can chat together. But then when you go out into the wilderness there is no guild chat and no group chat. Just /say and /shout. And if someone is out of range of then they don't hear the /say. And if you /shout you also let enemies know where you are.

Make it more immersive like a single player RPG without all the chat spam you get constantly in MMOs. And make communication and planning matter more. Groups could chat with /say but if someone goes off to pull then they are not contactable while they are away. I would have no /tells or /whispers either.

I'd also have quests and things as missives on notice boards in the town square. Not NPCs standing around with an icon over their heads.

p.s. And yea a lot of people would bypass it by using TeamSpeak or whatever because they are pussies.

UO used crystals of communication for this. I used them with my brother when we played so we could stay in contact no matter where we were. It was easier than having to tab out to check ICQ.

[rusty_shackleford]

Any attempt to limit communication will just result in players using an external communication tool, there's no way to work around this.

[Tweed]

Any attempt to limit communication will just result in players using an external communication tool, there's no way to work around this.

It only worked back when it was a pain to alt-tab out and we didn't have widescreens or multi-monitor setups.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

All that will happen is you made discord mandatory

Maybe the only option is to put voice in the game and then limit it based on range like I was saying. Either that or people need to make better single player RPGs and I can avoid MMOs!

Integrated voice chat seems like a good idea to me. I remember when I played Star Citizen that sometimes I would hear people talking using the ingame voice chat, and I did not have to join a discord or anything previously in order to hear their voice. Same with team based multiplayer shooters, though in all cases it seems that the people who usually use voice are either teens or in their 20s. I do not recall having heard any older people use ingame voice chats, only sequestered away in raid PUG or raid guild voice chats.

[Oyster Sauce]

WoW Classic had UI elements for in-game voice chat but I've never seen it used. Couldn't figure it out even when I wanted to set it up for a joke.

[rusty_shackleford]

WoW Classic had UI elements for in-game voice chat but I've never seen it used. Couldn't figure it out even when I wanted to set it up for a joke.

It was added in a TBC patch, never once saw a single person use it. Think it might have been removed at some point?

[anvi]

Another thing I wanted to see in MMOs is for mobs to not be blind and dumb. Like currently they are oblivious to you unless you get within 20 feet or so, then suddenly they spot you and attack. Like all mobs are extremely short sighted. I always thought that made sense for some animals, like it was saying I wont attack you if you don't get too close... But with most creatures they should be spotting you miles away and reacting.

I'd like a game where animals (lions and ****) can track your scent from miles away. And bandits can spot you from a lookout in the far distance. They might decide to send a squad to get you which then travels a long way to intercept. Goblins or something living in a forest shoot arrows at you before you even spot them. You need to go from tree to tree to avoid being turned into a porcupine.

One does not simply go to a fortress and start picking off guards. Any cities or fortresses with guards should have lookouts and the whole place comes for you if you get within visual range.

The tech would need to improve for that though. But only because gaming is ******** now. In 1999 I pictured this happening within 5-10 years. It probably would have too if it wasn't for the marxists. Although I'm an EQ fanboy now, at the time I was annoyed at its limitations and the devs lack of giving a **** about any of it. They just wanted to copy paste what it already did. So at the time I had my fingers crossed for any new MMO. I was rooting for DAOC, Dark & Light, Horizons, Shadowbane, etc.

[Tadeusz]

The tech would need to improve for that though.

I think it's possible to do with some programming so the tech shouldn't be that important. I think it would be impractical to implement this on a mass scale but maybe for some special places it could work.

[Stack of Turtles]

Another thing I wanted to see in MMOs is for mobs to not be blind and dumb. Like currently they are oblivious to you unless you get within 20 feet or so, then suddenly they spot you and attack. Like all mobs are extremely short sighted. I always thought that made sense for some animals, like it was saying I wont attack you if you don't get too close... But with most creatures they should be spotting you miles away and reacting.

I'd like a game where animals (lions and ****) can track your scent from miles away. And bandits can spot you from a lookout in the far distance. They might decide to send a squad to get you which then travels a long way to intercept. Goblins or something living in a forest shoot arrows at you before you even spot them. You need to go from tree to tree to avoid being turned into a porcupine.

One does not simply go to a fortress and start picking off guards. Any cities or fortresses with guards should have lookouts and the whole place comes for you if you get within visual range.

The tech would need to improve for that though. But only because gaming is ******** now. In 1999 I pictured this happening within 5-10 years. It probably would have too if it wasn't for the marxists. Although I'm an EQ fanboy now, at the time I was annoyed at its limitations and the devs lack of giving a **** about any of it. They just wanted to copy paste what it already did. So at the time I had my fingers crossed for any new MMO. I was rooting for DAOC, Dark & Light, Horizons, Shadowbane, etc.

MMOs constantly outscale every technological innovation. Back in 1999 when you pictured that happening within 5-10 years, EverQuest was lucky to have in the tens of thousands of players worldwide. It was a big deal when Ultima Online broke the 100k mark. By 2005, World of Warcraft had over a million. Now ten million is merely normal. It would never make financial sense for an MMO to choose NOT to scale, but with millions of players, having more than a mere handful capable of interacting in realtime with any given player at a time is not even on the furthest technological horizons, at least not at a reasonable MMO price point.

[Norfleet]

MMOs constantly outscale every technological innovation. Back in 1999 when you pictured that happening within 5-10 years, EverQuest was lucky to have in the tens of thousands of players worldwide. It was a big deal when Ultima Online broke the 100k mark. By 2005, World of Warcraft had over a million. Now ten million is merely normal.

Those numbers are fake and gay, though. They don't have "10 million players". Those numbers are consistently exaggerated by orders of magnitude. Case in point: A certain ****** dead MMO used to claim it had "millions" of players. But any reasonable estimate of how many players there ACTUALLY are would indicate there's maybe a few thousand, TOPS, just going by the most generous values for "instance cap * number of zone instances". If you had actually put a few million players on the server, the server would meltdown, causing the number of players to instantly drop to zero. We know this because even a few HUNDRED extra players is enough to melt the servers.

The only way they achieve these kinds of "numbers" is by counting every "player" who ever touched the server as a player, regardless of if they have long since quit, or if they're really the same person, given that 99% of players ragequit during the tutorial.

[Stack of Turtles]

MMOs constantly outscale every technological innovation. Back in 1999 when you pictured that happening within 5-10 years, EverQuest was lucky to have in the tens of thousands of players worldwide. It was a big deal when Ultima Online broke the 100k mark. By 2005, World of Warcraft had over a million. Now ten million is merely normal.

Those numbers are fake and gay, though. They don't have "10 million players". Those numbers are consistently exaggerated by orders of magnitude. Case in point: A certain ****** dead MMO used to claim it had "millions" of players. But any reasonable estimate of how many players there ACTUALLY are would indicate there's maybe a few thousand, TOPS, just going by the most generous values for "instance cap * number of zone instances". If you had actually put a few million players on the server, the server would meltdown, causing the number of players to instantly drop to zero. We know this because even a few HUNDRED extra players is enough to melt the servers.

The only way they achieve these kinds of "numbers" is by counting every "player" who ever touched the server as a player, regardless of if they have long since quit, or if they're really the same person, given that 99% of players ragequit during the tutorial.

That's true, but it was always like that. I probably should have used max concurrent users, but that's a bit harder to find. The point is still implicit in your own post: the servers can barely manage the number of players they have now, and adding the extra computation for long-distance mobs will only make it much worse.

[Xenich]

Another thing I wanted to see in MMOs is for mobs to not be blind and dumb. Like currently they are oblivious to you unless you get within 20 feet or so, then suddenly they spot you and attack. Like all mobs are extremely short sighted. I always thought that made sense for some animals, like it was saying I wont attack you if you don't get too close... But with most creatures they should be spotting you miles away and reacting.

I'd like a game where animals (lions and ****) can track your scent from miles away. And bandits can spot you from a lookout in the far distance. They might decide to send a squad to get you which then travels a long way to intercept. Goblins or something living in a forest shoot arrows at you before you even spot them. You need to go from tree to tree to avoid being turned into a porcupine.

One does not simply go to a fortress and start picking off guards. Any cities or fortresses with guards should have lookouts and the whole place comes for you if you get within visual range.

The tech would need to improve for that though. But only because gaming is ******** now. In 1999 I pictured this happening within 5-10 years. It probably would have too if it wasn't for the marxists. Although I'm an EQ fanboy now, at the time I was annoyed at its limitations and the devs lack of giving a **** about any of it. They just wanted to copy paste what it already did. So at the time I had my fingers crossed for any new MMO. I was rooting for DAOC, Dark & Light, Horizons, Shadowbane, etc.

Some of this is a practical aspect of "game" vs "realism". I think with each step towards "realism", it compounds the complexity of the game itself which is why some things are a matter of "suspended disbelief" in order to retain a practical means for game play.

I am not saying such concepts can't exist in a game, but each layer you add compounds the complexity of it. I think it is why some concepts of this nature are often introduced as "niche" elements of play in some games and much of the game centers around it. Think games like Thief which focus on specifically stealth and all the elements that pertain to that approach to realism and that is a very old game for its time.

This is also something that companies should have been developing into systems cumulatively over the years, building more and more layers on their engines, expanding and refining their features over the evolution of their designs. I think that could have been the case, but it seems that companies over the decades decided it was best to start from scratch constantly with new releases. It always annoyed me to see "new" games from the same company that while having better graphics, or some new feature were completely lacking the previous features and capabilities of their older games. It was like they just started over and didn't learn anything from their previous titles.

I see this a lot in the UIs of games, even in MMOs where an old MMO will have years of experienced developing interface features that work, that become standards, etc... then on top of that mods that improved them and so on only to release a new MMO that is missing all of that which was learned in the past.

It is like each new title in the industry is acting like this is their first game and it is the first in its genre.

[Norfleet]

adding the extra computation for long-distance mobs will only make it much worse.

Nah, because "long-distance" isn't real. "Distance" ain't nothing but a number. Computers don't pay higher costs to compute using larger numbers vs. smaller ones. Back in the old MU* days, we had mobs capable of reacting to players at distances measurable in AUs. What actually matters is entity density. Most games have unrealistic entity density. In the real world, for instance, there might be one bear per 20-50 square kilometers. That means the entireity of Skyrim would contain like ONE bear. So a player would, realistically, have to search the entireity of Skyrim to find that one bear. So instead, there's an unrealistically large number of bears for the players to fight, and eventually this tempo-spatial compression hits the point where it runs into the visual draw distance and the player can thus SEE the other bear which should, realistically, be like 5 kilometers away. If bears had their realistic, uncompressed reaction distances, every bear in the zone would immediately react to the player, and if the bears reacted realistically, they would promptly all LEAVE, because bears don't pick fights with people if they can avoid it. In a game, this would mean the player aggros every bear in the "woods", which is really more like a small grove. Which would be pretty comical, but also, unbearable.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Another thing I wanted to see in MMOs is for mobs to not be blind and dumb. Like currently they are oblivious to you unless you get within 20 feet or so, then suddenly they spot you and attack. Like all mobs are extremely short sighted. I always thought that made sense for some animals, like it was saying I wont attack you if you don't get too close... But with most creatures they should be spotting you miles away and reacting.

This is a general videogame issue. Few games have deer run away from you or packs of wolves running through territory, let alone creatures looking for water sources to drink from, etc.

One thing I liked about Spore was how if you got near a creature, it might begin growling at you, and if you got closer then it would attack. But other creatures would just be curious if you walked into their nest.

[Stack of Turtles]

adding the extra computation for long-distance mobs will only make it much worse.

Nah, because "long-distance" isn't real. "Distance" ain't nothing but a number. Computers don't pay higher costs to compute using larger numbers vs. smaller ones. Back in the old MU* days, we had mobs capable of reacting to players at distances measurable in AUs. What actually matters is entity density. Most games have unrealistic entity density. In the real world, for instance, there might be one bear per 20-50 square kilometers. That means the entireity of Skyrim would contain like ONE bear. So a player would, realistically, have to search the entireity of Skyrim to find that one bear. So instead, there's an unrealistically large number of bears for the players to fight, and eventually this tempo-spatial compression hits the point where it runs into the visual draw distance and the player can thus SEE the other bear which should, realistically, be like 5 kilometers away. If bears had their realistic, uncompressed reaction distances, every bear in the zone would immediately react to the player, and if the bears reacted realistically, they would promptly all LEAVE, because bears don't pick fights with people if they can avoid it. In a game, this would mean the player aggros every bear in the "woods", which is really more like a small grove. Which would be pretty comical, but also, unbearable.

Distance matters in a modern 3D game, as I suspect you realize perfectly well, for a variety of reasons, perhaps most importantly pathing costs, which are actually brutal to calculate between two or more dynamic positions. Then there's the issue that, regardless of the actual density of enemies, the number of entities that have to be tracked goes as the square of the distance - cube if they can be in the air or sea! - and this adds up quickly at the typical density of a real MMO. While it's true that all games I've seen have incredibly unrealistically small scales and correspondingly high density, I don't think that's solveable. I'd probably enjoy playing a game with realistic distances, but most people wouldn't pay for it, and I don't pay for things to begin with anyway.