Profile: Kez95
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• • Ok, 2 months played and $30 spent. My thoughts.

  • Originally posted by Felyza
    

    The game was very fun for the first month, was dragging by month 2, and now that I'm about to hit the 3 month mark, I'm shopping for a new time-waster.

    This was my finding also.  Actually, this has been my finding on 4 out of every 5 MMORPGs I have played.  The exceptions being those that weren't fun even for a month.

     

  • Posted: 4/15/08 3:19 PM
    Voyage Century
• • The Next Great MMO that will Revolutionize the Industry

  • The problem with quality MMORPGs is content, specifically lack thereof.  The next-gen MMORPG will have incredibly powerful, fun, easy to use tools that will allow its customers to create and model mobs, dungeons, item, trees, shrubs, etc., and upload them to the world.  The balancing would be done by the developers but a constant flow of new content would be neverending. 

    For example, a talented artist could fully render in 3D a creature and upload it with the tools provided.  The community could vote on its quality and the best ones would get in the game.  That person would receive 2 months free play time, get to name the mob, and possibly other rewards.  The devs role would be to put attributes to that mob (strong, resistent to fire, level 30-31, social, drop table, etc.) and  place it in the world.

    Other people could make dungeons, outdoor areas, towers, whatever, using the powerful tools.  Others could create and upload audio, both music and sound effects.  This is how I envision future, successful MMORPGs because people, like me at least, aren't going to grind garbage and pay for it any longer.

     

  • Posted: 4/09/08 6:35 PM
    General Discussion
• • Dynamic Game Worlds...

  • The most important dynamic type of gameplay that I'd like to see is this: I just finished a quest and I'm running back to the questgiver in a town or village.  I find out as I approach that the town is being ransacked by some evil mobs, and as I go to the questgiver find out that he's dead and/or on his dieing breath with some new quest and it's all completely random due to the attack.  The town is literally falling apart and parts of buildings are flying around and I'm trying to get the heck outta town and avoid / kill the mobs / save the quest giver's family, etc.  Other players are running around going "what the heck is going on?", a true feeling of dynamic curiousity mixed with panic.

    In the following weeks the townspeople start visibly rebuilding and there are new quests to help them, etc.  This would require a huge amount of content coding and is why I've never seen it done very often if ever.

    A few weeks later the town is rebuilt but now there's some evil mayor who is in control and more quests to do for the townsfolk and/or the mayor.  You could get a quest and be the first person to poison the mayor secretly and change the town forever, or he catches you and you can never get back in the city because the guards know you and kill on sight.

    A few weeks later a grand dragon flies by and fries half the town, etc.  You get the idea.  Random events that change the landscape, NPCs, and quests in ways that even a newbie would go "whoa what the heck is going on here" while a bunch of veterans show up and do fun, challenging stuff also.  Massive NPCs would be focused on players and the town guards their level so newbies wouldn't get slaughtered at every event and have no fun.

    On one server, the town you grew up in would be completely in ruins while on another would be just fine, and on another, infested with demons that just don't seem to go away.

  • Posted: 4/07/08 10:38 PM
    Developers Corner
• • Empire building MMORPG

  • I love the concept of player run cities with walls, gates, trainers and shops.  The problem that  I saw in Shadowbane is that you'd put a lot of time into building up your city with your friends and then some huge guild would just destroy it all. So in terms of membership, and making money off your MMORPG, if your entire guild just lost everything but the gear on their back, you can bet that some people, maybe even a ton of them would just quit, losing you lots of customers.

    Also, those battles in Shadowbane were fun but massively laggy, so your engine would need to handle 500 people at once and so far, I don't know of any game that can do that well at all in one single battle.

    Maybe if someone took your city you'd still keep it, but pay heavy taxes to the conqueror or something similar.  At some point, they could rebel and force the conquerors to fight now or lose their hold.  Also, the bigger a guild gets conquering others, the more random NPC attacks it would have, giving the conquered places a chance to rebel while the huge guild is busy with the sudden infestation of a thousand demons rampaging it's main castle, etc. 

    There would need to be many mechanisms to help balance the game or the big guild who has a stranglehold on the best resources will ruin the game for most.  Spying, scouting, diplomacy, trading, and secret attacks would need to play a major part and a lot of people really enjoy doing that instead of just grinding mobs.

  • Posted: 4/07/08 10:18 PM
    Developers Corner
• • way of doing combat in an mmorppg - Thunderhead's idea

  • I like the concept, they are fun ideas, but the problems as I see them are

    (1) Lag, if you are trying to react to what your opponent is doing, only the most lag free people will play the game, others will just die constantly and quit.  The way to solve this is to have slower animations that have more of a window to react to.  This too however would cause a lot of people to quit because combat is too slow or "it's all just about countering my enemy" or "it's just dumb luck, you chose left and I chose block middle."

    (2) Movement.  Remember in PvP people don't just stand there, they are moving all around holding down their forward key and tapping strafe, left, right, jumping, turning, controlling the camera, etc.  So if they are holding down at least one key and have their fingers ready to move other directions, it's not easy for most people to then try and hit one of 6 or 8 other keys for a specific area to attack.  The solution to this would be a complex mouse or joystick that had many buttons set up nicely for this kind of game, but most computer users don't want to go buy more stuff.  So if you could make the left mouse button do one kind of attack (or left side), and the right do another (right side), then have some toggle key for high/low and parry/attack it might be ok but pretty limited due to controlling movement / targeting / camera / specific attack areas / specialized skills all at once.

  • Posted: 4/07/08 10:00 PM
    Developers Corner