Originally posted by strangewizard

Also, those MMORPGs that give you the option of first person, are normally a joke in comparison to the third person (as you stated). In order to do it right, the first person nature would need to be designed ideally, so that the game would function with this in mind (there are numerous FPS single-player games to illustrate this).

The reason a first person perspective cripples you isn't bad camera design.  Doing a first person camera perspective is actually substantially easier than third person, as you don't need to worry about objects blocking the camera.  There's simply no way to design a first person perspective that lets you see what's going on anywhere near as well as a third person perspective.  As you note, there have been many first person shooters, and none of them have figured out.  The only thing they can do to make the game playable for PVE is to make it a lot less challenging than they could if you had a clearer view of what was going on.

Originally posted by strangewizard

Originally posted by Quirhid

 

By directional based damage I mean that you'd swing with the left mouse button, and block or parry with the right mouse button. If you were moving forward with W, your strike would be an overhead swing, if you moved right with D, your strike would be a right-side string, if you moved left with A, your strike would be a left-side strike, and moving backwards with S, would be a bash of the weapon's handle.
 

So moving right with D and then holding left-click would begin the charge process for a right-side swing. A red bar would fill up (fast for small weapons, slow for large weapons) that would determine how damaging the weapon swing would be if it succesfully hit someone, but it would mean you'd be lifting your weapon without swinging it longer, thus there'd be times not to fully charge a weapon for a quicker hit.

Fully charging a weapon would do a mini-critical strike, and possibly disarm a target, but could still be parried. However, you couldn't just keep a weapon raised and charged, after a few seconds, the meter would decrease to empty, and you'd have to either swing or lower the weapon to charge it again, thus meaning you should lift your weapon at the proper time.

It is a very fluid system in practice. However an MMORPG could simply have left mouse click to swing, right click to block or parry, and having your keyboard to use various abilities, like disarm, kick, jumping dragon slash, etc, based on class.

What you describe sounds pretty much how it works in Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim and I didn't care for it much. The Mount & Blade/War of the Roses style where you actually "swing" your mouse to determine the direction of your slash/stab or block is a lot more intuitive for me.

And its in third person view.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by strangewizard

Also, those MMORPGs that give you the option of first person, are normally a joke in comparison to the third person (as you stated). In order to do it right, the first person nature would need to be designed ideally, so that the game would function with this in mind (there are numerous FPS single-player games to illustrate this).

The reason a first person perspective cripples you isn't bad camera design.  Doing a first person camera perspective is actually substantially easier than third person, as you don't need to worry about objects blocking the camera.  There's simply no way to design a first person perspective that lets you see what's going on anywhere near as well as a third person perspective.  As you note, there have been many first person shooters, and none of them have figured out.  The only thing they can do to make the game playable for PVE is to make it a lot less challenging than they could if you had a clearer view of what was going on.

I played Quake 2 with a FOW of 120*. It actually bothers me that newer games have set the FOW to 90. It has to be atleast 100 for me to feel comfortable.

(* field of view = 120 degrees)

Originally posted by strangewizard

Nothing would be greater than having a minimalist UI, surround sound (or headphones), and venturing deep underground to fight say a giant centipede with a group of people. For such a game to work, I'd also have collision with mobs and players, to prevent walking through them (and adding nudging to prevent people from blocking areas, yes there's no perfect solution to it, but nudging would work decently enough).

I've always enjoyed FPS games as the other poster said, but if you could have a huge world to explore from a first person perspective, it would really be incredible.

I'd disable third person entirely, and yes, you'd need situational awareness, but I think that would add to the fun.

I think the best way it could be implemented would be in a survival horror game. That way the first person perspective is directly adding something rather than taking something away. You have the scare of if those zombies (or whatever other creatures are terrorizing you) are right behind you.

Where as if you tried to take an existing game like WoW, GW2, etc and said "Ok, it is the same game, but you only get first person" people would hate it because you took something from them instead of adding something to the experience.

Originally posted by Quizzical

The reason a first person perspective cripples you isn't bad camera design.  Doing a first person camera perspective is actually substantially easier than third person, as you don't need to worry about objects blocking the camera.  There's simply no way to design a first person perspective that lets you see what's going on anywhere near as well as a third person perspective.  As you note, there have been many first person shooters, and none of them have figured out.  The only thing they can do to make the game playable for PVE is to make it a lot less challenging than they could if you had a clearer view of what was going on.

Depends on the PvE content.

Let's use a standard raid analogy. Say you are in a big dark cavern with a giant centipede raid boss. This centipede fights the players, and occasionally moves around the cavern, swiping anyone he catches in his path. Sometimes, rocks fall from the roof of the cave, and you must avoid them.

First off, all the player's eyes will be focused on the centipede, so you don't have to make the fight less challenging, but you can also have things happening from a different perspective (above you), by using clever markers (like a big shadow appearing around you as a rock is about to fall).

Thus it can be very hard to avoid the rocks, and the centipede when he moves. The fight is far more immersive, because again, first person is that way by nature, but the difficulty is the same as  a third person fight.

You just need to know ways of making it difficult with that camera setting.

Originally posted by kaiser3282

Thats exactly the kind of stuff i was referring to in my 1st post. How exactly are you "crippled"? Are you crippled IRL because you see things from 1st person view? No. You learn to pay attention to your surroundings and be more careful, as well as learning to listen for things going on around you.

I used to play a lot of FPS games, and I used to be able to post up in 1 spot and tell my team exactly where enemies were and how many of them there are in each position, and know exactly when to move in for the attack and catch them in the middle of reloading / swapping weapons / checking the other direction just from learning to listen to the sounds. It was something I also forced my clan to learn, and we held the highest rankings in several games for a long time because of such tactics. 1st person view didnt cripple us in the slightest. It simply made those who adjusted to the realism better at actual fighting, not good at hiding behind stuff and using 3rd person view to see everything that is going on which is completely unrealistic.

In real life, I have peripheral vision and directional hearing.  That gives me a much better view of what is going on in the world than you can get in any first person shooter.

Furthermore, in real life, I tend not to have a bunch of monsters surrounding me and trying to kill me, as sometimes happens in MMORPGs.  If I were in that situation in real life, then yeah, I would be rather crippled as compared to what I can do in a typical MMORPG.  Though not having real-life access to heavy-duty weapons and magic spells has something to do with that.

You're not arguing that you aren't crippled in first person shooters.  You're arguing that you can win in PVP because you're less crippled than your opponents.

Originally posted by strangewizard

Thus it can be very hard to avoid the rocks, and the centipede when he moves. The fight is far more immersive, because again, first person is that way by nature, but the difficulty is the same as  a third person fight.

You just need to know ways of making it difficult with that camera setting.

Perhaps you can calibrate the content to be playable with a first person perspective.  But give the player a third person perspective for exactly the same battle and it likely becomes trivial rather than challenging.

Originally posted by plutosams
The problem with first person view is that it actually shrinks the viewable space considerably compared to real life.  It is comparable to wearing goggles with side blinders.  Our eyes see a lot more than what is just ahead of us.  Third person, while overexaggerating actually gets closer to the the real life field of view...obviously adding a bit since you can see your character and a bit more to the sides than normal.  The only way first person would truly work for immersion is to have a headset with monitors covering all fields of vision.   Currently first person view is closer to running around looking through a video camera rather than through real vision fields. 

Peripheral vision is what you are refering to. However, this problem is easily fixed in FPS games by having directional sound. You don't need to see something to the right side of you, if you can hear it and turn to face it.

As long as creatures/players make enough noise (unless the stealth is part of their capacity), this issue isn't really present.

But if you want to get really technical, the best field of vision would be a virtual reality headset, as that would allow us to turn our heads behind our necks, something no FPS I know of really allows.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Perhaps you can calibrate the content to be playable with a first person perspective.  But give the player a third person perspective for exactly the same battle and it likely becomes trivial rather than challenging.

Ah, unless you add an active combat system, in which you have to actually aim your crossbow, fireball, or spear.

Then hitting a moving centipede in first person on the weak points becomes difficult, and you can't have good aiming with a third person game.

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Originally posted by strangewizard
The skill argument would still be mitigated as people who lacked good FPS skill could compete by having better gear, people with better FPS skill could beat people with better gear through sheer skill.

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To be honest, I am really confused by what you proposed there. Basically, I am reading "Give those with lesser skills better equipment to compete." and then read "But better skilled players could still beat those better equipped players through their better skills." How does giving players something that has no affect on their ability evening the playing field?

Originally posted by strangewizard

Originally posted by Quizzical

Perhaps you can calibrate the content to be playable with a first person perspective.  But give the player a third person perspective for exactly the same battle and it likely becomes trivial rather than challenging.

 

Ah, unless you add an active combat system, in which you have to actually aim your crossbow, fireball, or spear.

Then hitting a moving centipede in first person on the weak points becomes difficult, and you can't have good aiming with a third person game.

I actually liked Darkfall's system. It gave you the peripheral vision aspect (which I can't do without), forced the FPV for aiming. Add in some mirrors for viewing your appearance, and it's pretty good. Also add in head turning, better.

I'm perfectly fine with it. Furthermore the technology is getting to the point where such a concept is actually viable. However, for an RPG you need to consider the following:

- 1st person view tends to work best with certain types of gameplay, namely ranged / shooter / aim-heavy gameplay. It can work with melee combat, but it tends to feel more clunky / awkward than it does for ranged combat types.

- By being first person, you do get more immersed in the world, but actually less immersed in your character. This is because the looks of your character are no longer something you are really dealing with, at best you get a glimpse in the UI, but for the most part you never really get a sense of who your character is. This is because the 1st person experience interjects all experiences directly on to you.

Personally, if such a thing was to be tried, I'd love to see an approach similar to what Jedi Knight had. 1st person for ranged with a 3rd person switch for melee. It would not only help balance some of the inequalities between ranged & melee, but also prevent you from getting tunnel vision when doing melee combat. Plus, sometimes it's just cool to watch your character do badass things.

Originally posted by AlBQuirky

So... these people with "better skills" would be denied access to this better equipment? Equipment that they would have a much easier time getting? Good luck with that :)

 

To be honest, I am really confused by what you proposed there. Basically, I am reading "Give those with lesser skills better equipment to compete." and then read "But better skilled players could still beat those better equipped players through their better skills." How does giving players something that has no affect on their ability evening the playing field?

No, I mean that people who didn't have as much FPS skill could compete by spending more time to get better items. Whereas if you didn't have quite as good gear, you could bridge the gap with superior skill. However, yes, as you said, someone with lots of time and dedication to get the best gear, and having good FPS skills, would be doubly superior, indeed.

However, most the time, the people who are slower and not as good at FPS, are typically the better grinders, and people with less patience, typically have better reflexes. While this isn't always true, I've noticed it as a trend (take that for what you will).

But your argument doesn't just apply to this, it can apply to any competitive game. There are always going to be good and bad players, and someone will almost always be better and worse than you. This will happen no matter what the difficulty of the game is, be it time, knowledge, reflexes, etc.

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by strangewizard

Also, those MMORPGs that give you the option of first person, are normally a joke in comparison to the third person (as you stated). In order to do it right, the first person nature would need to be designed ideally, so that the game would function with this in mind (there are numerous FPS single-player games to illustrate this).

The reason a first person perspective cripples you isn't bad camera design.  Doing a first person camera perspective is actually substantially easier than third person, as you don't need to worry about objects blocking the camera.  There's simply no way to design a first person perspective that lets you see what's going on anywhere near as well as a third person perspective.  As you note, there have been many first person shooters, and none of them have figured out.  The only thing they can do to make the game playable for PVE is to make it a lot less challenging than they could if you had a clearer view of what was going on.

I played Quake 2 with a FOW of 120*. It actually bothers me that newer games have set the FOW to 90. It has to be atleast 100 for me to feel comfortable.

(* field of view = 120 degrees)

 were only a few years out (maybe 5-7) from widespread flexible oled screen technology so you might get your 120 degrees, and of course you could get it now with a 3 monitor setup.

Since we are discussing this, would it be possible to create such a MMORPG with no user interface? Like this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ihp5FHz6ABI

I'm curious, very curious.

EDIT: Aside from a chat menu, and possibly menus like backpacks that open up to deal with economy, but a very minimalistic or no-user interface type of system?

I don't think it has been done before in the context of MMORPGs.

Most MMORPGs have information overflowing onto the screen.

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Originally posted by strangewizard
But your argument doesn't just apply to this, it can apply to any competitive game. There are always going to be good and bad players, and someone will almost always be better and worse than you. This will happen no matter what the difficulty of the game is, be it time, knowledge, reflexes, etc.

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Now, look at the title of the thread. "MMORPG" is specifically mentioned. Now we've derailed into a "MMOFPS" discussion.

Originally posted by Amaranthar
Put a pair of goggles on and walk around for a while, then tell me how immersive it would be.

Originally posted by strangewizard

Most MMORPGs are designed in third person or a tactical birds eye view. What about a first person MMORPG? Personally, I never understood why they are not done in first person. First person games are the most immersive, and MMORPGs are the most immersive genre, so naturally, a first-person MMORPG would be very immersive, indeed.

What would you think of a MMORPG designed this way? It would show your character's weapons like a first person game, and likely also have real-time combat like an FPS, however, it would still be about leveling up, exploring, doing quests, etc, like an RPG

EverQuest was originally first person.

Darkfall is first person.

Vanguard has a first person mode where you can look down at your legs.

It exists, and its great, especially in Darkfall.