An MMO3DF (Massively Multiplayer Online 3D Fighter) could be interesting.

It would be like an MMORPG except you use a joystick and fighting-game moves and combos to fight instead of menues and hotbars!

...that was semi-sarcasm, but who knows, if done well it might actually work.

Originally posted by Calerxes

Originally posted by Cuathon

My progress is constantly stalled by restrictive licenses and poor integration and documentation of libraries. I can see why more people don't push forward to make multiplayer or massively multiplayer games. Holy crap is it a pain.

I yearn for my days with PHP. It was flawlessly integrated with css, html, javascript, jquery, and mysql.

C++ is a crazy all over the place shitfest.

To be fair, it has much more powerful capabilities. But god is it a pain.

 

Having an Idea is the easy part isn't it? Why not start a blog on the ups and downs on creating an MMO and maybe others might rethink their fantastic idea "that'll make millions" or "all this games needs is..." and they might understand the workings of a machine they so easily criticise.

You want me to write a blog on top of all the other work I have to do? You monster!!! At this rate i'll never finish! :P

If I ever finish I will certainly write a lot about how it went and the problems i encountered.

Although all the lazy idea people are on hero engine nowadays and so my decision to avoid a premade and thus limited engine and the experiences from that might not apply to many of them.

Originally posted by Cuathon

 

You want me to write a blog on top of all the other work I have to do? You monster!!! At this rate i'll never finish! :P

If I ever finish I will certainly write a lot about how it went and the problems i encountered.

Although all the lazy idea people are on hero engine nowadays and so my decision to avoid a premade and thus limited engine and the experiences from that might not apply to many of them.

You will probably never finish anyway.

Even if we don't talk about art assets, a typical MMO has multi-persons programming team that work years to get everythign done. That is on top of IT staff that maintain test servers and what-not. That is assuming there *is* a design to code.

You are still doing "research" in many of the elements of your game. And you are one-man. Even if your game is much smaller in scale, and make use of clever algorithms, we are still talking about 10s of man years of work.

How much time are you willing to spend on this endeavor?

Originally posted by FrostWyrm

An MMO3DF (Massively Multiplayer Online 3D Fighter) could be interesting.

It would be like an MMORPG except you use a joystick and fighting-game moves and combos to fight instead of menues and hotbars!

...that was semi-sarcasm, but who knows, if done well it might actually work.

Vindictus. It's okay for awhile, but like most games that try to blend into an mmorpg, the abnegation mechanics ruin the core gameplay.

What MMORPG's originally were have "evolved" (so the enlightened tell me) into games that most people enjoy. (well, most being everyone but me I guess)

I'm just a Bitter Vet ™ or so I'm told, who wears thick rose colored nostalgia glasses and that the better MMO's and the communties are simply figments of my aging imagination.

At the rate things are going, I'm probably going to have to return to EVE and play that for the rest of my life, because it will likely be the last great virtual world simulator left.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Cuathon

 

You want me to write a blog on top of all the other work I have to do? You monster!!! At this rate i'll never finish! :P

If I ever finish I will certainly write a lot about how it went and the problems i encountered.

Although all the lazy idea people are on hero engine nowadays and so my decision to avoid a premade and thus limited engine and the experiences from that might not apply to many of them.

You will probably never finish anyway.

Even if we don't talk about art assets, a typical MMO has multi-persons programming team that work years to get everythign done. That is on top of IT staff that maintain test servers and what-not. That is assuming there *is* a design to code.

You are still doing "research" in many of the elements of your game. And you are one-man. Even if your game is much smaller in scale, and make use of clever algorithms, we are still talking about 10s of man years of work.

How much time are you willing to spend on this endeavor?

Many major games entirely roll their own tools, which I am not. Also most themepark games spend most of their time on balancing and creating "content". I am letting math do that. I don't have to create my world piece by piece or worry about many other things.

In fact many games exist which are the product of one person but they generally have few serves and low advertising budgets.

I am currently working on the code for crafting and magic and such. The way I structure objects will have far reaching effects on how long it takes to make the game, how well it works, how much it aligns with my vision and so forth.

I think that gamers have to change before the games change.

Gamers have lost tolerance for things they don't like.

1)  PKers need targets.  The problem is, the majority doesn't like to be targets.  So they lobbied hard against open world PvP, the developers listened, and now the gankers have no more new games.

2)  Roleplayers need environments and tools to weave complex plots.  The problem is, the majority doesn't like complicated plots.  So they lobbied hard against wasting developer time of social aspects, the developers listened, and now the roleplayers have no more new games.

3)  Crafters and world builders need decay, markets, regional niches, good crafting systems, and patience.  The problem is, the majority doesn't like decay, doesn't like to spend time in markets, likes to get everything instantly without having to travel, would rather get to the action, and have no patience for an economy.  The developers listened, and as a result, nobody designs games that encourage crafting and complex systems anymore, and now the crafters and world builders have no more new games.

4)  The powergamers and powerguilds want big encounters.  The problem is, the majority isn't a part of a powerguild.  So they lobbied hard against powerguild content, the developers listened, and now the powergamers have no more new games.

So what do we have left?  In an attempt to not displease everybody, the new games don't really satisfy anybody, at least not the people who like MMOs for the things MMOs do well (PK, immersive roleplay, complex systems, achievement).

In the early days, you had to be a tolerant player, subjecting yourself to things you didn't particularly like in order to get the good stuff you liked.  But you were rewarded for this tolerance by getting the things you did like in a way no other game could match.  This was a genre that encouraged a diverse and cosmopolitan notion of fun, but when those who really didn't understand this genre came into the picture, this notion of fun got destroyed.

The downfall started with what I call "the great playstyle flame wars" that were waged between 2003 and 2005.  The wars generally started with threads that looked like this:

"It isn't right that I have to pay $15/mo to subject myself to (PK, roleplay foofoo, timesinks, decay, spawn camping, gated content, sticking a headset in my ear to get in a guild)."

And the piling-ons, pseudo-intellectual arguments, pleas for pathos, trolling defenders, and various insults meeting or exceeding Godwin's Law were heard from the plains of Trammel, to the heart of Coronet, to Paragon City, to Queynos, to Kalimdor, and many more places without end.  And the community managers, producers, designers and VCs shook with horror at what was unleashed, vowing never again to make a game which subjected anyone to anything even the slightest bit inconvenient.

They created games where players don't have to be tolerant of other playstyles, because they took out all the material that caters to different playstyles.  They created games where nobody ever has a reason to be offended at paying the publisher for things they don't like, but they did this by taking out or watering down all the material that caters to different playstyles.

Who can blame them?  It's the only thing they could have done for players who refuse to be tolerant of another's fun.

Originally posted by Beatnik59

I think that gamers have to change before the games change.

Gamers have lost tolerance for things they don't like.

1)  PKers need targets.  The problem is, the majority doesn't like to be targets.  So they lobbied hard against open world PvP, the developers listened, and now the gankers have no more new games.

2)  Roleplayers need environments and tools to weave complex plots.  The problem is, the majority doesn't like complicated plots.  So they lobbied hard against wasting developer time of social aspects, the developers listened, and now the roleplayers have no more new games.

3)  Crafters and world builders need decay, markets, regional niches, good crafting systems, and patience.  The problem is, the majority doesn't like decay, doesn't like to spend time in markets, likes to get everything instantly without having to travel, would rather get to the action, and have no patience for an economy.  The developers listened, and as a result, nobody designs games that encourage crafting and complex systems anymore, and now the crafters and world builders have no more new games.

4)  The powergamers and powerguilds want big encounters.  The problem is, the majority isn't a part of a powerguild.  So they lobbied hard against powerguild content, the developers listened, and now the powergamers have no more new games.

So what do we have left?  In an attempt to not displease everybody, the new games don't really satisfy anybody, at least not the people who like MMOs for the things MMOs do well (PK, immersive roleplay, complex systems, achievement).

In the early days, you had to be a tolerant player, subjecting yourself to things you didn't particularly like in order to get the good stuff you liked.  But you were rewarded for this tolerance by getting the things you did like in a way no other game could match.  This was a genre that encouraged a diverse and cosmopolitan notion of fun, but when those who really didn't understand this genre came into the picture, this notion of fun got destroyed.

The downfall started with what I call "the great playstyle flame wars" that were waged between 2003 and 2005.  The wars generally started with threads that looked like this:

"It isn't right that I have to pay $15/mo to subject myself to (PK, roleplay foofoo, timesinks, decay, spawn camping, gated content, sticking a headset in my ear to get in a guild)."

And the piling-ons, pseudo-intellectual arguments, pleas for pathos, trolling defenders, and various insults meeting or exceeding Godwin's Law were heard from the plains of Trammel, to the heart of Coronet, to Paragon City, to Queynos, to Kalimdor, and many more places without end.  And the community managers, producers, designers and VCs shook with horror at what was unleashed, vowing never again to make a game which subjected anyone to anything even the slightest bit inconvenient.

They created games where players don't have to be tolerant of other playstyles, because they took out all the material that caters to different playstyles.  They created games where nobody ever has a reason to be offended at paying the publisher for things they don't like, but they did this by taking out or watering down all the material that caters to different playstyles.

Who can blame them?  It's the only thing they could have done for players who refuse to be tolerant of another's fun.

Apt observations.

From a player's point of view, there is really no reason to tolerate anything in an entertainment product.

If being a target is no fun for me, damn right I am not going to play a game to be one. And if there is a game that does not require me to commit my life to it before i can have fun, damn right i am going to choose it over another that requires me hours and hours of camping.

I have no problem some dev creating games i do not enjoy BUT damn right i will never play/pay for games i don't find fun. The good news is there are plenty of GAMES, mmo or not, that i like. Diablo 3 will be an awesmoe gaming experience that will last at least a few months.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

 

Apt observations.

From a player's point of view, there is really no reason to tolerate anything in an entertainment product.

If being a target is no fun for me, damn right I am not going to play a game to be one. And if there is a game that does not require me to commit my life to it before i can have fun, damn right i am going to choose it over another that requires me hours and hours of camping.

I have no problem some dev creating games i do not enjoy BUT damn right i will never play/pay for games i don't find fun. The good news is there are plenty of GAMES, mmo or not, that i like. Diablo 3 will be an awesmoe gaming experience that will last at least a few months.

Fair point, and this is the reason why I expect this genre is going to move ever further away from the "massive multiplayer" aspect of MMOs.  Diablo 3 is a perfect example of games that have an "MMO-like" flavor, without being an MMO.

The only direction publishers can go to make the games more accessable at this point is to take out or water down all the remaining MMO elements: the persistant world, the guilds, the multiple users: make it a chatroom/lobby and put all the content in our own user created instances.  Because what Satre said is true: "Hell is other people," and the only way we can take away the remaining "Hell" is to take away the "other people": the ones we don't know, the ones we don't care to know, and the ones we don't like.

That way, nobody has to tolerate anything.

Because I agree that, as an entertainment product, nobody has to tolerate anything.  Unfortunately, however, we do need tolerance when playing with other people, because all people are different and they all have slightly different conceptions of what fun is.  What one person finds fun is not something another person finds fun.

That's something we forgot in the "great playstyle flame wars" in the latter half of the 2000s.  We kept on seeing things from our own points of view, but we never considered that the things we wanted to take away were fun for somebody, somewhere.

That's why the PKers fought like crazy against Trammel.  They were the easiest targets, the PKers, but they weren't the last ones.

The roleplayers were the next to go.  Games like EQ II had less roleplay tools, SWG refused to crack down on AFK entertaining, bots were rampant, and the encounters got so fast paced that everyone was forced to put a headset in their ears.

Then the world builders and crafters were the next to go, with the insta-travel, the lack of housing or politics, and the loot-based economies.  It's what the combat crowd majority wanted, and they got their way.

But even the twinks and powergamers were not immune, as the games started to scale back their encounters for the best loot, and started to cater to the casual player with a fat credit card limit and little sense with the RMT stuff.

And so, all we are left with in our games is a kind of cookie-cutter, boring virtual "tourist" type who has no personality, no passion, no sense of fun, and is rather uninteresting to game with for any extended length.

All the interesting people (the gankers, the roleplayers, the world builders, the community folks, the twinks, and the über) have been gone for half a decade, and for good reason.  They have no place to "live" anymore.  Their homes have been taken away and turned into tourist traps.

Originally posted by Beatnik59

Fair point, and this is the reason why I expect this genre is going to move ever further away from the "massive multiplayer" aspect of MMOs.  Diablo 3 is a perfect example of games that have an "MMO-like" flavor, without being an MMO.

The only direction publishers can go to make the games more accessable at this point is to take out or water down all the remaining MMO elements: the persistant world, the guilds, the multiple users: make it a chatroom/lobby and put all the content in our own user created instances.  Because what Satre said is true: "Hell is other people," and the only way we can take away the remaining "Hell" is to take away the "other people": the ones we don't know, the ones we don't care to know, and the ones we don't like.

That way, nobody has to tolerate anything.

Because I agree that, as an entertainment product, nobody has to tolerate anything.  Unfortunately, however, we do need tolerance when playing with other people, because all people are different and they all have slightly different conceptions of what fun is.  What one person finds fun is not something another person finds fun.

Couple of points.

I think in terms of dealing players interaction, controlled lobby matching is the way to go, in terms of assessibiliy. More lobbies, more instances, more battlegrounds. Diablo 3, and MMOs are certainly going down this direction. The issue is to make playing with others painless including a) no need to spend time to find group, b) no need to stay around for people you do not like, and c) less need to constrain our own behavior (like the new loot system in WOW take away the ability to ninja).

However, i think it is DIFFERENT in terms of interaction with the enviroment. There is no need to take away the open world. Devs only need to add a choice to SKIP long travel time (like what Blizz did). In this case, people who like to explore and walk around in the world still can, but those who hated the incovenient do not have to tolerate it.

More choices is good. The key is not to impose one's choice on another. The key is to control the interaction between players so that one does not have to tolerate much. Consensual pvp is the best example.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Beatnik59

Fair point, and this is the reason why I expect this genre is going to move ever further away from the "massive multiplayer" aspect of MMOs.  Diablo 3 is a perfect example of games that have an "MMO-like" flavor, without being an MMO.

The only direction publishers can go to make the games more accessable at this point is to take out or water down all the remaining MMO elements: the persistant world, the guilds, the multiple users: make it a chatroom/lobby and put all the content in our own user created instances.  Because what Satre said is true: "Hell is other people," and the only way we can take away the remaining "Hell" is to take away the "other people": the ones we don't know, the ones we don't care to know, and the ones we don't like.

That way, nobody has to tolerate anything.

Because I agree that, as an entertainment product, nobody has to tolerate anything.  Unfortunately, however, we do need tolerance when playing with other people, because all people are different and they all have slightly different conceptions of what fun is.  What one person finds fun is not something another person finds fun.

 

Couple of points.

I think in terms of dealing players interaction, controlled lobby matching is the way to go, in terms of assessibiliy. More lobbies, more instances, more battlegrounds. Diablo 3, and MMOs are certainly going down this direction. The issue is to make playing with others painless including a) no need to spend time to find group, b) no need to stay around for people you do not like, and c) less need to constrain our own behavior (like the new loot system in WOW take away the ability to ninja).

However, i think it is DIFFERENT in terms of interaction with the enviroment. There is no need to take away the open world. Devs only need to add a choice to SKIP long travel time (like what Blizz did). In this case, people who like to explore and walk around in the world still can, but those who hated the incovenient do not have to tolerate it.

More choices is good. The key is not to impose one's choice on another. The key is to control the interaction between players so that one does not have to tolerate much. Consensual pvp is the best example.

 

That doesn't work Narius. You cannot have fast travel while maintaining the experience of a world. Why would the devs spend money on the world when the majority only cares about the instances? You cannot give disparate groups optimal gameplay in the same game.

Originally posted by Cuathon

That doesn't work Narius. You cannot have fast travel while maintaining the experience of a world. Why would the devs spend money on the world when the majority only cares about the instances? You cannot give disparate groups optimal gameplay in the same game.

Fast travel and immersive world feel worked for UO. One is not mutually exclusive of the other. Even EVE Online has forms of limited fast travel.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Beatnik59

Fair point, and this is the reason why I expect this genre is going to move ever further away from the "massive multiplayer" aspect of MMOs.  Diablo 3 is a perfect example of games that have an "MMO-like" flavor, without being an MMO.

The only direction publishers can go to make the games more accessable at this point is to take out or water down all the remaining MMO elements: the persistant world, the guilds, the multiple users: make it a chatroom/lobby and put all the content in our own user created instances.  Because what Satre said is true: "Hell is other people," and the only way we can take away the remaining "Hell" is to take away the "other people": the ones we don't know, the ones we don't care to know, and the ones we don't like.

That way, nobody has to tolerate anything.

Because I agree that, as an entertainment product, nobody has to tolerate anything.  Unfortunately, however, we do need tolerance when playing with other people, because all people are different and they all have slightly different conceptions of what fun is.  What one person finds fun is not something another person finds fun.

 

Couple of points.

I think in terms of dealing players interaction, controlled lobby matching is the way to go, in terms of assessibiliy. More lobbies, more instances, more battlegrounds. Diablo 3, and MMOs are certainly going down this direction. The issue is to make playing with others painless including a) no need to spend time to find group, b) no need to stay around for people you do not like, and c) less need to constrain our own behavior (like the new loot system in WOW take away the ability to ninja).

However, i think it is DIFFERENT in terms of interaction with the enviroment. There is no need to take away the open world. Devs only need to add a choice to SKIP long travel time (like what Blizz did). In this case, people who like to explore and walk around in the world still can, but those who hated the incovenient do not have to tolerate it.

More choices is good. The key is not to impose one's choice on another. The key is to control the interaction between players so that one does not have to tolerate much. Consensual pvp is the best example.

 

This is the route that games have been taking for the better part of a decade, but I don't think that these "choices" make the games richer.

It seems to me that giving individuals, individually, the choice to omit certain things they don't like creates a game that has, collectively, less choices.

There's no way to play a villain if you can't rob and kill innocents.  Conversely, there's no way to play a hero if you can't save the innocents from the villain.  That's what we lose when we put PvP on reservations for the exclusive use of the twinked out and über.

And there's no way to be a sojourner on a long and dangerous journey, if there is no dangerous journey.  Just like there's no way to create a trading outpost in the middle of point A and point B, if there's an insta travel superhighway from A to B.

The reason we have such a hard time finding groups is that, simply, there are too many people clustered around hubs, group size is limited because of balance issues, and no good solo options like crafting or foraging.  That's what we get when we stress "convenience" and "choice" over authenticity.  Because if there's a choice to get goodies from the loot generator (and the loot generator is the only thing that provides any value besides the cash store), and everything else is optional, there's no reason to do anything but stand in line LFGing to get your loots from the loot generator.

As a result, everything becomes a stat-mash, because it's the only thing that players don't have the capacity to ignore.  At that point, one player is just as good as any other, and there's no reason why anyone ought to tolerate you over the two tanks just like you spamming LFG.

And really, the only point of today's MMO is to stand in lines LFGing, because everything else that players used to do (like roleplay, ganking, crafting, and travelling) have been made "optional," and therefore, unused, unsupported, and unappreciated.

Seriously, there's no point in developing large worlds, when even 50% of players just teleport from instance to instance (and the number is probably far higher).

Back in the early days, you could say that we had little choice on whether we could PvP or not.  But I see things differently.  In those days, I had the choice to be a villain, a hero, or an innocent bystandard.  I don't have that choice anymore.

I would rather play a great multiplayer rpg than a mediocre mmo any day of the week. I wish someone would bring back the greatness of multiplayer rpgs because the mmo genre is mostly full of hype and nothing else.

Originally posted by Cuathon

 

That doesn't work Narius. You cannot have fast travel while maintaining the experience of a world. Why would the devs spend money on the world when the majority only cares about the instances? You cannot give disparate groups optimal gameplay in the same game.

Why not?

WOW has it. You *can* fast travel. You can roam the world. Choices are good. Ditto for LOTRO.

Now the second argument (why dev should spend money on the world) has a good point. Thus, we have Diablo 3 which focuses on instanced dungeon crawl and do away with the world.

Originally posted by Mephster

I would rather play a great multiplayer rpg than a mediocre mmo any day of the week. I wish someone would bring back the greatness of multiplayer rpgs because the mmo genre is mostly full of hype and nothing else.

There are FEW good multiplayer RPGs. Thank god we are going to have Diablo 3 soon.

Originally posted by Beatnik59

And really, the only point of today's MMO is to stand in lines LFGing, because everything else that players used to do (like roleplay, ganking, crafting, and travelling) have been made "optional," and therefore, unused, unsupported, and unappreciated.

Seriously, there's no point in developing large worlds, when even 50% of players just teleport from instance to instance (and the number is probably far higher).

Back in the early days, you could say that we had little choice on whether we could PvP or not.  But I see things differently.  In those days, I had the choice to be a villain, a hero, or an innocent bystandard.  I don't have that choice anymore.

 

You talk as if there is only ONE playstyle in each game.

That is obviously false. In WOW, lots do LFD .. no deny about it. But plenty do mount runs, pet collection and world achievement.

Optioins, even those that are not very popular, are good.

Personally, i don't mind the large worlds go away. But there are those who do explorer achievements in WOW too. Are you saying because they are minority, they should be ignored?

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Cuathon

 

That doesn't work Narius. You cannot have fast travel while maintaining the experience of a world. Why would the devs spend money on the world when the majority only cares about the instances? You cannot give disparate groups optimal gameplay in the same game.

Why not?

WOW has it. You *can* fast travel. You can roam the world. Choices are good. Ditto for LOTRO.

Now the second argument (why dev should spend money on the world) has a good point. Thus, we have Diablo 3 which focuses on instanced dungeon crawl and do away with the world.

 

Dude. No. The arguments are not separate. Fast travel means focus on destinations means no world content.

You can have a world with fast travel, but if you do you are a moron wasting dev time and money because no one will use it.

Originally posted by Cuathon

 

Dude. No. The arguments are not separate. Fast travel means focus on destinations means no world content.

You can have a world with fast travel, but if you do you are a moron wasting dev time and money because no one will use it.

You are obviously wrong.

1) The most SUCCESSFUL dev is doing it.

2) Check the "explorer" achievement, there are people using it .. not a majority, but some.

You seems to argue that if a dev is catering to the needs of a minority of players, he is a "moron". Then i have to ask what YOU are wasting your life on, making a game few will play?

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Cuathon

 

That doesn't work Narius. You cannot have fast travel while maintaining the experience of a world. Why would the devs spend money on the world when the majority only cares about the instances? You cannot give disparate groups optimal gameplay in the same game.

Why not?

WOW has it. You *can* fast travel. You can roam the world. Choices are good. Ditto for LOTRO.

Now the second argument (why dev should spend money on the world) has a good point. Thus, we have Diablo 3 which focuses on instanced dungeon crawl and do away with the world.

 

No.

The "world" of Warcraft has long been dead. If you cannot see that, then you must be blind. Having the luxury of choice can a good thing, but in the case of WOW and fast travel, having the option has been devastating to the "world" aspect of the game.

Instances and worlds do not go hand in hand. Instances are like "The Nothing", they simply wipe out the world.