A little anecdote from Lord British himself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4xfrVUj_c0&t=18m14s

One of the aspects of combat that I think its missing, are the consequences.

For example, after a fight, a character might acquire a permanent injury.

Miss a limb, lose a function, a sense, partial movement, scars. Reasonable consequences from combat.

Right now this whole abstraction of life through a health bar or a number has to go. Its used in all MMORPGs and nobody thought about it. Its bad for the immersion of it.

The same way as the whole "dieing" and "respawning" suspension of disbelief without consequences.

No material consequences, no chronological consequences, no espiritual consequences, no social consequences.

For all possible effects, it basically didnt happen. The fight and the death didnt took place. There was no risk involved. Nothing...

I think this is one of the things nobody is noticing when designing a MMORPG.

Originally posted by Interesting

One of the aspects of combat that I think its missing, are the consequences.

 

For example, after a fight, a character might acquire a permanent injury.

Miss a limb, lose a function, a sense, partial movement, scars. Reasonable consequences from combat.

 

 

 

Vanguard had that in beta, SWG had that before the NGE. You had to go to healers in cantinas and stuff to get the injuries removed. This created professions for non fighting players. They just ran bars to heal people. Or clinics.

@ Interesting

Not trying to be a killjoy or debbie downer but this topic has been talked about countless times on these forums. At least once a year.

More to your post, others have mentioned ATITD, but also if you look at games like Ryzom, Wurm and SWG before the NGE you will see systems that do not "require" combat that provided fulfilling gameplay. That's one of the big reasons you see so many want to see SWG's crafting system make it into another game. And in a round about way we will one The Repopulation launches.

Gaute Godager stated that Funcom's focus when launching Age of Conan was "Combat, Combat, Combat". Despite much outcry from folks like myself they stuck to those guns. They launched a game and much like every other themepark game of recent times within a year after launch they only had a fraction of the subscribers they started with. Ironically, a year or three after that they started to implement the non-cmbat creafting features we had begged for prior to launch. By then, though, most of us were gone and not looking back.

Combat is NOT king.

www.hellokittyonline.com

Heres one and the 2nd one is

 www.furcadia.com/

Originally posted by Garvon3

Originally posted by Interesting

One of the aspects of combat that I think its missing, are the consequences.

 

For example, after a fight, a character might acquire a permanent injury.

Miss a limb, lose a function, a sense, partial movement, scars. Reasonable consequences from combat.

 

 

 

Vanguard had that in beta, SWG had that before the NGE. You had to go to healers in cantinas and stuff to get the injuries removed. This created professions for non fighting players. They just ran bars to heal people. Or clinics.

Yup. I was one. Doctor/Combat Medic. Most fun I have ever had in an MMO, ever.

As has been pointed out by others, A Tale in the Desert has no combat at all.  What it does have is most of the crafting mechanics ever devised.  And the most creatively outlandish scandals you've ever seen.  You might think hardcore PVP crafting is an oxymoron, until someone gets perma-banned.

Uncharted Waters Online does have combat, but isn't primarily about combat.  Actually, it isn't primarily about any particular activity.

Puzzle Pirates has perhaps a heavier emphasis on combat, but I didn't do that much fighting in the several months that I played it.

I've played RuneScape sometimes for months without wearing my armor even once. There is a LOT of non-combat activity in that game, ones which can make you a very wealthy player. ATITD is an absolutely non-combat game but personally I found it boring after like 3 months. RuneScape was way more fun, still trying to find a game which can replace it (looking at you, ArchAge ! )

Quests which are in fact real quests. Meaning not go to X to kill Y mobs but rather to achieve things. That could include killing stuff but could also include many other things. Like rally others, use diplomacy to broker an agreement, to get something built (or destroyed). There are alot of things you can have as a quest which does not neccessarily include killing.

But have no killing at all, could become somewhat boring. Like watching a fantasy movie and no one getting slayed, or a sci-fi flick with no ships being destroyed. Would be kind of boring.

But I agree, current state of activities in MMORPGs is kind of brainless killing sprees.

I have thought about this. A lot actually. I mostly came to the conclusion that the present situation is a collision of developer habit and the expression of human competition. The fact is that most of the games I played from a very early age were forms of simulated combat of some kind (for reasons I won't get into I can accept that this is more to do with my state of mind. My state of mind is far from rare though). 

Hide and seek - stalk and kill

US football - warlord v warlord ground based conflict with air options. 

Mahjong, checkers - area denial

Chess - global geo-politics

I could go on but I think you see what I'm getting at. While not an exhaustive list one common feature is that these games in their nominal state require another opponent to play against. This is where I think that we really hit the problem in that it's much easier to fashion a "non-violent" game for the one than for the many. I say it with quotes because we need to look at the so-called violence in video games.

If all you do is gather and craft in a game, all well and good. Add a few other players and you can all gather together...Unless the gathering nodes despawn on use. Then I'm trying to gather faster than you and vice versa. This is a bit of a downer really so here's an idea: Let's fill the game world with dangerous beasts as to limit the population of gatherers in a given area. Hmm still a problem? Well then let's ad level gates to the nodes so you have to reach a tier to use it. While we're at it let's add levels to combat as well so only the best players can get the best nodes. The issue is not the violence that will result. It's the limited quantity of crafting nodes that spawns the competition. Video game violence is no more violence than playing with lego is being an engineer. It's just a mechanic to mask the competion between you and you fellow players. Think  PvP with surrogates. 

You could easily make a game without violence but it would be very difficult to make a game with no competion. If you simply wish to eliminate the simulated aggression and gore you will need to address players desire to compete. If you can engineer a world with no player/player competition, you may still be able to have violence but for story reasons rather than simply kill 400,000 rats. This may seem like splitting hairs but players can tell the difference. There are games, mmos included, with no violence and no player competition so it can be done. It just may not be as populare as the games with competition.

Originally posted by Garvon3

A little anecdote from Lord British himself.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4xfrVUj_c0&t=18m14s

Just bumping this before I sign out for a bit. Everyone interested in what we found so great about old MMOs, and those that wonder why there aren't more non combat stuff in MMOs.. watch! The highlighted bit, or the whole thing.

Been playing Sims 2 for years.  Wish after designing house, donning custom assassin's creed garb, and petting pink-n-blue polka dot doggie I could go out and KILL MONSTERS.  But, alas, after satisfying my CuStOm DeSiGnInG → needz ← I must go online to an mmo to satisfy my bloodlust. 

Imagine if the game makers thought to COMBINE THE TWO.

To answer your question, nothing worthy remains after the killing and that is just wrong.

Deep Crafting and exploration would be a nice activity. you would be hard pressed to find that such a game would be nothing more then niche at best.

Humans love violence, indeed when ever talk of killing babys and such would come up in Wow geenral the excitement of players would ignite. not once did i ever see anyone call them sick or evil.

And it would go on for hours. it was like a serial killer convention all just logged on. much more scary seeing the replies then fighting arthas or whatever blizzard thought was evil.

So it strange but could be done. in the end you would have to be super creative but it could be done.

it's my personal feeling that all of humanity is inherently cruel for the sake of being cruel or sadistic pleasure.

Anyways would love to see other options.

you're left with farmville, 2nd life piece of crap.

Human beings love violence it is a fact of nature, even if we don't want to admit it sometimes.

Look at how we devide our history, 1st world war history, 2nd world war history, vietnam war, the golf war, etc.

Seems as if that is the single most important history points for humanity, why should our games be any different ?

Originally posted by Garvon3

A little anecdote from Lord British himself.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4xfrVUj_c0&t=18m14s

Thanks for that link. That was an interesting interview I hadn't seen before. The fishing story was very cool. However...

IMHO, MMOs are just another form of entertainment that bear a lot of resemblance to books and movies (animated ones especially.) The main difference is that we get to be part of the story and change it (albeit temporarily.)

In fiction and movies there are many subjects that appeal to many different people. Some seem to appeal to a large number of people and those types of books and movies are produced often and in large quantities. There are other books and movies--quite often better ones--that appeal to a much smaller number of people and those are made less often and in smaller quantities.

But the one thing 99.9% of them have in common is that they depict a world or situation that is more interesting than the typical everyday RL of most people.

When I get home from work, sit down with a book, watch TV or play a computer game, I don't want to simulate in any way shape or form those things I do in my RL. I want to read watch and play about unusual situations that are not normally part of my life: adventure, epic fights between good and evil, etc. is what I want in that alternate reality.

I have never been an MMO fisherman and, frankly, I have a hard time understanding those who are. Applying the same logic I use in stating why I like to do the dungeon crawling and monster slaying I enjoy to them, leads me to the conclusion that those must be people who in their daily lives are secret agents, Navy Seals and detectives who just want a place where they can fish when they relax in an MMO

I don't know if last nights events at the Batman premiere in some way motivated the OP to start this thread. If it was its completely understandable as the normal healthy reaction to those types of incidents is to recoil away from all violence, My thoughts and sympathy are with all those poor people who were subjected to that horror...

However, I suspect that the vast majority of us will continue to crave fantastic conflict in our entertainment just like we always have.

I don't want to play a game where there is no fighting, where fighting isn't the main focus, maybe there is a market for it, but it interest me not at all. I had thought I liked sandboxes, but after really understanding what people mean I don't. I don't want to craft for hours, build a house, own a lot and cut the trees myself, I don't want to open a tavern or black smith's shop. I want to go out in the world and kill things and take their stuff, given the opportunity i'd like to do that to players, I'd like this experience to be only very lightly guided or not guided at all. I don't even want quest per say. I want there to be lore. Like if I camp these ruins maybe as I do so I uncover the history of the place what happened to it, etc.  Maybe I want a themepark with no rails??

Some of the same mental systems kick in during virtual combat that kick in during real combat so it's easier to make virtual combat exciting than making virtual cooking or crafting exciting.

If you're going to bypass player combat, then I think you'd need to focus heavily on gathering, crafting and resource management. You could even have combat that the player doesn't directly control, similar to RTS games. A focus on players interacting with each other would (I think) be necessary. Some combination of trading or group building/crafting would go a long way towards keeping people interested.

Originally posted by Leethe

I have thought about this. A lot actually. I mostly came to the conclusion that the present situation is a collision of developer habit and the expression of human competition. The fact is that most of the games I played from a very early age were forms of simulated combat of some kind (for reasons I won't get into I can accept that this is more to do with my state of mind. My state of mind is far from rare though). 

Hide and seek - stalk and kill

US football - warlord v warlord ground based conflict with air options. 

Mahjong, checkers - area denial

Chess - global geo-politics

I could go on but I think you see what I'm getting at. While not an exhaustive list one common feature is that these games in their nominal state require another opponent to play against. This is where I think that we really hit the problem in that it's much easier to fashion a "non-violent" game for the one than for the many. I say it with quotes because we need to look at the so-called violence in video games.

If all you do is gather and craft in a game, all well and good. Add a few other players and you can all gather together...Unless the gathering nodes despawn on use. Then I'm trying to gather faster than you and vice versa. This is a bit of a downer really so here's an idea: Let's fill the game world with dangerous beasts as to limit the population of gatherers in a given area. Hmm still a problem? Well then let's ad level gates to the nodes so you have to reach a tier to use it. While we're at it let's add levels to combat as well so only the best players can get the best nodes. The issue is not the violence that will result. It's the limited quantity of crafting nodes that spawns the competition. Video game violence is no more violence than playing with lego is being an engineer. It's just a mechanic to mask the competion between you and you fellow players. Think  PvP with surrogates. 

You could easily make a game without violence but it would be very difficult to make a game with no competion. If you simply wish to eliminate the simulated aggression and gore you will need to address players desire to compete. If you can engineer a world with no player/player competition, you may still be able to have violence but for story reasons rather than simply kill 400,000 rats. This may seem like splitting hairs but players can tell the difference. There are games, mmos included, with no violence and no player competition so it can be done. It just may not be as populare as the games with competition.

Thanks for the repply. If this topíc was a religious question in disguise, would you realize what you just answered?

Originally posted by lizardbones

Some of the same mental systems kick in during virtual combat that kick in during real combat so it's easier to make virtual combat exciting than making virtual cooking or crafting exciting.

If you're going to bypass player combat, then I think you'd need to focus heavily on gathering, crafting and resource management. You could even have combat that the player doesn't directly control, similar to RTS games. A focus on players interacting with each other would (I think) be necessary. Some combination of trading or group building/crafting would go a long way towards keeping people interested.

Google/Windows financed this http://www.khanacademy.org/ to make "Learning Exciting".  You bet they did spent a lot of money to "design" this. Its basically a non combat MMORPG with strong competition design. Only problem is that they will monopolize the truth on most controverse topics. So it leads to no violence...

"Killing" in MMOs, well...

i believe its not about "killing" so much itself, rarely ever hear someone say "i want to kill people/mosters/whatever!", but i want to "fight people/mosters/whatever!" 

Imo it boils down to the action, to want your character to do something cool and entertaining. 

Although i personally believe, that a MMO where even combat and fighting itself is only a sidenote can be done, i would love companys to start and take some small steps to make combat better and take the mass murderer/genocide feel out of it. (More or less depending on the actual game and setting of course)

For example by making combat more meaningful, with consequences, or just have the character stun/intoxicate (just thinking of Batman AA/AC here because i am playing right now, action packed, but with a bodycount of next to zero) enemys more often, or by having the player fight less but harder enemys.