Synopsis: Player characters can possess special senses that permit them to see the game environment in a way that is not based on visible light. Examples are given to illustrate the idea.
Fantasy MMOs usually just present a fantasy environment as someone walking off the street would see it. There are trees, rocks, grass, buildings, etc. To be able to see a 3D environment in great detail in real time is pretty amazing stuff, given where we were just a couple decades ago, but games have the opportunity to go beyond that. Fantasy MMOs already show things that we don't see in real life, such as sparkling and glowing effects on various and sundry things. Magic. There is also the obligatory translucent character ability. Stealth.
It occurred to me years ago that games have an interesting opportunity to make a game out of what a player can see through a character's eyes. Suppose warriors could see other characters in terms of their fighting skill. One orc looks pretty much the same as another, but a warrior would be able to sort out that this orc is more skilled than that orc. Or a warrior can appraise an object as a potential weapon. That chair would make a 40-or-so-DPS mace. Or consider a mage who is trying to locate items of magic in a room. Surely a mage should be able to sense which had magical abilities and which did not.
The knee-jerk implementation that I'm sure we'd see from a game would be that the player would click on an orc to see the numbers associated with its fighting ability, or click on an item in a room to see the numbers associated with its properties. That is, unfortunately, a result of network bandwidth problems. A player can only ask for only so much information from the server.
Suppose that wasn't a problem. What if a mage character could alter its vision to see the world in magical terms? The entire world would turn translucent, except for objects that were magical. They would remain rather opaque, perhaps glowing in different colors to indicate what sort of magical potential they held.
The same treatment applies to the warrior. If the player asks for it, the warrior character's senses can be enabled to instantly appraise the 30 orcs in the enemy group. That one is bright with skill and the rest are pretty dim.
The player isn't obligated to click on everything in sight. He simply says that he wants to know what's significant around him and he sees it. I know that I'd love to get that from a fantasy MMO when I was trying to figure out what objects are going to give me some kind of useful behavior.
And sure enough, Blizzard is savvy to this treatment. When I went back to World of Warcraft after a long hiatus, I noticed that they had added sparklies to objects that were pertinent to a quest. The game called the player's attention to the object because (in theory) the character was looking for it.
But I'm actually looking for something rather more visually dramatic. Again, Blizzard has the best implementation that I've seen. When your character dies, it is dropped off back at the nearest graveyard. What does the world look like? It's different. It's the world as seen through the eyes of a dead guy. You can't see anything living until you get near your body, but you can see dead people. This is precisely the sort of visual alteration that I'm talking about.
Suppose you had Thief Vision. The world turns ghostly white, but small objects with great wealth associated with them sparkled and drew your attention.
Suppose you had Priest Vision. The world turns ghostly white, but the alignment of characters relative to your priestly order is indicated in sparkles and glows. You can spot a dirty, rotten paladin who is opposed to your wonderful and marvelous black arts order.
Those who have always wanted to wear something small to indicate their membership in an organization could have that. Use Organization Vision to spot people wearing your organization ring, pin or brooch. Or to spot someone in an enemy organization. Or someone that you're trying to meet.
How about the archer who is playing an MMO that relies on player skill to place bow shots? He's going to need some kind of vision to give him accurate distances to targets, wind conditions, perhaps even some other factors. He gets all that by dropping into Archer Vision. The quality of that vision could be made dependent on the specialization of the character, making the player's success a combination of his own skills and his character's.
This vision system places emphasis on the character skills, or class, or profession. Whatever specialization a character has, it would gain the appropriate visions. If the character can have greater and lesser degrees of specialization, then the vision that is gained can vary in accuracy, quality, etc.
This is all just an adaptation of real world physics. Not all energies are in the visible spectrum of light, and being able to see in other parts of the spectrum can grant a significant edge to the viewer. Think about seeing in the infrared. Military night vision and seeing through fog. Or seeing in the ultraviolet. This is all about sensors. It seems more naturally part of a science fiction MMO, except that the visuals are far more entertaining in a fantasy MMO. Space is mostly empty, while a fantasy setting is quite rich. There's lots of potential information to collect.
That is, of course, the great problem: how to get all that information about all those objects and characters in the field of view from the server to the client. It can be done in basic ways today, and I'm sure a sufficiently clever engineer will figure out how to adapt many cross-sections of world data to this technique.
I, for one, would very much enjoy being able to see a bit more information about the world that is specific to the role I've chosen for my character. That additional information could make my membership in a group all the more valuable.
User Comments
JB: I think it isn't the amount of packets sent between the server and client that is prohibiting what you've described. Each item in a given game already has a set of properties that the server sends to the client. The item is then displayed on the player's screen according to these attributes. I don't think it would be much more bandwith intensive to implement your ideas.
WoW has something very similar to your musings already in place, 'ghost-mode'. As I'm sure all former or current WoW players know, when you die, you appear as a ghost at the nearest graveyard. In ghost-form, the game-world changes dramatically. Everything is displayed in a foggy, grayish-blue hue and you can only see other ghosts, only players and NPCs near your corpse are visible to you in ghost form(To prevent corpse-camping, I assume.). Nightelves even have a special ability which affects their ghost-form. Instead of a shadowy ghost of their character, Nightelves appear as a wisp, an orb-like spirit which is able to move faster than normal ghosts.
Seeing as this is already implemented into the game, I think it is entirely possible to add similar, class-specific abilities.
Awesome Idea. I love it!, really.
Oh, and I second the awesome idea bit, got a bit carried away with examining how your ideas could be implemented, and forgot to agree with you. =)
Hrothmund: "I think it isn't the amount of packets sent between the server and client that is prohibiting what you've described. Each item in a given game already has a set of properties that the server sends to the client."
The server won't send all properties about all objects to the client, so each time a player enables one of its character's vision changes, the server will have to collect and send the information that contributes to that vision change. There could be dozens of vision changes possible, and sending all that information would both be a network load as well as a hacker's jackpot.
And you may want to reread the ninth paragraph of the article :)
I'm glad that you both like the idea.
JB: Ah I missed that paragraph completely, probably while scrolling down.
Anyway, how I think WoW works is it send the id tag of the item, and then the information is processed on the client side. I think at least that most dynamic objects work like this within the game.
I really like the idea, kinda as a "while you press shift", switch sight.
JB you have the gift I would say. I always said you think outside-the-box. Awesome, awesome writeup. Well written and very solid, well thought out ideas
I once thought up on allowing players to see auras and critical spots where you can do optimal damage to targets (FPS setting tho). Anyway, my idea was a lot more limited then this one. Good job
"The server won't send all properties about all objects to the client, so each time a player enables one of its character's vision changes, the server will have to collect and send the information that contributes to that vision change."
I've done some multiplayer programming here and there. Somethings wll not require extra replication (packets sent to client). Somethings possibly might- like Wind Conditions and other dynamic variables
The rule is this- static data will not require replication. Dynamic data that changes on the server will need to be sent to the client
vajuras: "JB you have the gift I would say."
Thanks, vaj, that's kind of you to say.
And thanks for the comments on programming. I've been doing a bit of programming myself as I've been a software engineer for a while now. You're right about the distinction between static and dynamic information. For the sorts of things that I'm thinking of, character vision would be very much about seeing state that was dynamic.
Consider the simple case of the thief. Whether or not he can see an expensive ring is dependent on whether or not the owner has the ring on a finger. That is highly dynamic state. As are factions, the wearing of identifying marks and a whole host of other bits and pieces of information in the game that visions would display.
How about hunter vision that shows animal tracks? Massive data nightmare, but a very neat feature.
Never posted on these forums before, but I love this idea so much I feel an overpowering urge to say so.
Btw the idea of a hunter class seeing tracks and trails was quite a popular idea on the LotRO forums way back before beta. I don't remember what was said in any detail but perhaps if the hunter could focus on specific tracks rather than on anything that had recently passed that way, the data nightmare might be more manageable....Dunno, I know nothing about programming.
Jonc: "Btw the idea of a hunter class seeing tracks and trails was quite a popular idea on the LotRO forums way back before beta. I don't remember what was said in any detail but perhaps if the hunter could focus on specific tracks rather than on anything that had recently passed that way, the data nightmare might be more manageable....Dunno, I know nothing about programming."
The data nightmare is an issue of what the server must remember. If I can track bears and you can track deer, then the server still has to be able to remember the tracks of both animals even if we never decide to go hunting again. Also, if we both can hunt all animals, and I can follow tracks that are only 20 minutes old, but you can follow tracks that are 2 days old, then all tracks must be held for 2 days in case you decide to go hunting. It's simply much more data than a server holds onto today.
I have my own design solutions to all this, but this isn't the place to discuss them.
And welcome to the blogs.
Everquest 2 had this for Rangers/Scouts. On my ranger I could see the footsteps for animals and track'em. Or maybe what it did was draw a path to the target I was tracking (not footsteps)
I think the only hack you could do is draw footsteps like how EQ2 did it whereas it shows you a path to a 'current' target. This way all the client gotta do is 'connect the dots', tracing through the path nodes to the prey. Bot AI already knows the navigation network. So anyway, shouldnt require anything much server-side.
We just gotta fake out the gamers, make them feel like we did something hard heh
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