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General: Why a Horror MMO Won't Work

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  • EcocesEcoces Member UncommonPosts: 879

    lol oh Coyote, your column always makes my day.

     

    the first part really sums up how I feel about the MMO genre as a whole and why I have spent so much time in Skyrim. because other people are a**hats and ruin the game. to the point that i would rather listen to guards saying "I took an arrow to the knee" than "omgbewbs" say chuck norris jokes.

     

     

  • TardcoreTardcore Member Posts: 2,325

    The sad thing about Coyote's column this week is that these exact same detractors apply to every type of MMO. Any spicy cool game setting is going to be sanitized, marginalized, and homogenized by the MMO making process into something about as palatable as distilled water and white bread. And further processed into sh*t by the huge wave of MMO lemmings we now get in every game who care about nothing but the end of the journey.

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    "Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "

  • AthcearAthcear Member Posts: 420

    I disagree about the point about perma-death.  I don't think that's really what's necessary.  In current games, you can expect to win most fights.  If you lose and die, it's because another mob patrolled into you, or you had lag, or something like that.  Perma death would happen to people mostly by accident.  How would you like to lose months of effort on a character because the client crashed in the middle of a fight?

    No, what would be much better for horror is simply substantially increased difficulty in combat.  Players should have to flee much more often.  Enemies that you expect to defeat aren't scary, no matter how bad the consequences for failing are, because you don't think those consequences are going to happen.  Enemies that will probably crush you, those are much more frightening to a player.

    Important facts:
    1. Free to Play games are poorly made.
    2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals.
    3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE.
    4. Community is more important than you think.

  • TheLizardbonesTheLizardbones Member CommonPosts: 10,910

    Good article. I would still try to play a Horror themed MMORPG if it wasn't obviously copied from Vampire Diaries or Twilight.

    Too many people could be managed by instancing zones...only 10 people per zone allowed, if there are more than 10 people, another instance spawns and that's where the new players go. Kind of like Champions Online - 1 world, 1 server, but a lot of instanced zones.

    Dumb names...well...if the world ended tomorrow, do you think the stupid people in your neighborhood would keep their own names, or would they come up with new, post-apocalyptic names to make themselves 'cooler'. How many people named 'Shadow' or 'Scar' would show up in the local trading post between zombie mobs? That's probably more realistic than we'd all like.

    As far as story goes, I think you could handle that the way that Star Wars does but to the nth degree - keep the player isolated in their story line so that they get that sense of isolation and the idea that they are there by themselves.

    It would probably still not be actual Horror though, not the way that single player Horror/Survival games are.

    I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.

  • GrayGhost79GrayGhost79 Member UncommonPosts: 4,775

    Originally posted by Athcear

    I disagree about the point about perma-death.  I don't think that's really what's necessary.  In current games, you can expect to win most fights.  If you lose and die, it's because another mob patrolled into you, or you had lag, or something like that.  Perma death would happen to people mostly by accident.  How would you like to lose months of effort on a character because the client crashed in the middle of a fight?

    No, what would be much better for horror is simply substantially increased difficulty in combat.  Players should have to flee much more often.  Enemies that you expect to defeat aren't scary, no matter how bad the consequences for failing are, because you don't think those consequences are going to happen.  Enemies that will probably crush you, those are much more frightening to a player.

    While I agree with there needs to be enemies that can crush you the problem with out perma death or some significant loss there is not much fear in trying anyways. I mean in MMO's you simply respawn, in many single player games you simply load a previous save. I know personally if there is an enemy that seems impossible to defeat I simply respawn and try again in different ways until I've exhausted all my possibilities solo. 

    Many do the same but then proceed to the next step...... zerg it. Throw as many bodies as you can at it until it dies. 

     

    There isn't much fear if there is nothing to lose. Sure it can be terrifying if that creature can kill you in 1 hit, but it simply doesn't mean much if you can just get back up. 

     

    Perma death for me is needed to get them to flee. 

     

  • nuttobnuttob Member Posts: 291

    There is Requiem already out there, and I think that's about as close as your going to get for a horror MMO.

  • warmaster670warmaster670 Member Posts: 1,384

    Originally posted by Ozmodan

    Completely disagree, your reasoning is flawed.  Just look at WOD, been selling games for a long time.  The secret world will be a success too.

    First time you really messed up Coyote.

    What WoD mmos are there that are selling exactly? or am i missing something since the article is about horror MMOs.

    Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling"
    Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.

  • s1fu71s1fu71 Member Posts: 220

    @ Coyote

    Bravo, sir. You've stated my feelings exactly.

    I grew up with the old, black and white, horror movies. Nosferatu, Bela Lugosi, the Wolf Man, etc...

    The first book reports I ever did in school were on classic horror novels.

    Seeing what passes for all that today....

    I absolutely agree with the article.

    It's not about fighting, it's about balance. It's not about enlightenment, it's about balance. It's not about balance.

  • HenchdwarfHenchdwarf Member UncommonPosts: 517

    This article was superficial and got everything dead wrong (hahhaha pun GET IT?)

     

    first,  notice all those scary movies that include vamps, werewolves, zombies AND ghosts..   yup, THERE'S  NONE.  this is so because different types of horror need to build different types of tension.

     

    second,  this article presupposes (God knows why, as this mistake seems to plague every mmo.com story about horror games)  that the bad guys MUST BE OPEN TO PLAYERS.  this is the wrong approach.  while it would be to the games advantage to include human player vs player, as a form of competition inthe face of rising tensions, the badguys must be inhuman, unfathomable computer generated killing machines.  they must be suicidal in their rush to kill the players.  this can come in varying degrees of subtley (they dont have to run into gun fire) but they must bring a single minded lust for the players death, that wont be replicated by allowing player zombies in a zombie game.

     

    third,  Horror isnt a style you can create with a coat of paint or a type of clothing!!  making a 17th century Dracula movie wont simply be scary because it includes the trappings and superficial setting as other traditional horror stories.  if you dont know how to handle your monster (letting players be evil incarnate, wont be very scary for them, and scary for none if all players can simply log into their werewolf charater and tear #$% up.)

     

    the point im hitting over the head with a hammer is the horror is all about setting tension, using build up, music/sounds, and frenetic activity that challenges the players sense of control.  i wish the writers at mmorpg.com would put some actual thought into this, and stop preventing any chance of an ACTUAL horror game from being produced.  like i said about, they focus on the most superficial concepts, as though zombie movies are scary based on the fact that zombies are wearing authentically ragged clothing. 

  • HenchdwarfHenchdwarf Member UncommonPosts: 517

    Originally posted by ArEf

    Easy way to fix all this:-

    Only allow the players to be humans. They get killed, they get killed for good.

    AI is endless swarms of zombies, massive zombie-horde summoning whatevers and creepy mofos who'll climb up walls and then eat your brains.

    Players are bastards who'll kill you and steal your stuff.

    Why is this so hard?

    this is the perfect idea for a zombie mmo.  it captures all the actual elements that are scary, challenging, and tense of about zombie horror. letting people be zombie just wouldnt be fun, and would be totally missing the point of the genre. 

     

    but no zombie players.

    unless someone wants to name all those zombie movies that focused on a single zombie ambling around and chasing people.

  • gaeanprayergaeanprayer Member UncommonPosts: 2,341

    I agree with you, but not for the reasons you say. I think horror as a genre, isn't really horror unless it's either scaring someone or blowing people away with gratuitous amounts of gore. This works in single-player games, because they eventually end.

     

    But could a horror MMO be made that keeps me constantly frightened, through months if not years of gameplay? Doubtful. People eventually adapt to the thing they're constantly fed, which is a lot of why people grow bored of just about any game given enough time. It'd stop being a horror MMO within a short amount of time, and then we'd just be left with zombie/vampire/whatever button mashing.

     

    As for people making comparisons to TSW and games like it, I don't know that I'd call those horror MMOs. There's nothing about it that's specifically "horror"; those same monsters designs in various iterations are found in all kinds of RPG. The only thing horrifying about TSW is the company that's making it. Requiem is a little closer to the mark, though. It's not in it for the scares, but it's definitely got huge amounts of gore, so that's probably as close as you'll get. I don't think you can scare people indefinitely, but I do think you can always find new and amusing ways to dismember your enemy. Good luck getting that past the game rating zealots, though.

    "Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."

  • SovrathSovrath Member LegendaryPosts: 31,892

    He says what I'm thinking...

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  • TheLizardbonesTheLizardbones Member CommonPosts: 10,910


    Originally posted by nuttob
    There is Requiem already out there, and I think that's about as close as your going to get for a horror MMO.

    That is not a horror mmo. That is a grinder painted with 'horror' visuals. If that's what World of Darkness ends up being (in about ten years) or what The Secret World turns into, it will doom any future horror mmo development.

    I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.

  • BlackraynBlackrayn Member Posts: 142

     I'm so not into man on man love, but damn Coyote I love you!

  • HenchdwarfHenchdwarf Member UncommonPosts: 517

    in order to deal with the endgame issue. this one is also a no brainer. simply put the game into monthly (or weekly etc depending on the feel the devs are going for) cycle. let it happen in somthing close to real time, where the begining of the story happens, people are thrown into disarray and scattered, and must find eachother and organize to survive. let there be several ke key events that happen, like a supply drop, or a dam exploding (perhaps these could be somewhat random) and the whole time, the zombie NPC's are increasing steadily, and being long distance aggro pulled towards the greatest number of humans near to them.

    this would create a race to build whatever survival station you and your clan wanted to build or use (you could board up a building, hide in the sewers, survive as a small nomadic band of zombie killers, or solo alone and try to gather items and hide)

    each cycle would end in a grande finally, which was extremly difficult to survive. whatever players die, suffer permadeath, but the ones that live get to persist with all their gear into the next cycle and begin again. with random city generator, this would have enormous replayability, as various clans fought over resources and space, and just plain warred with eachother as a zombie horde grew all around them.

    surviving characters shouldnt be able to be that powerful, as you dont want some killer elite taking over the game. perhaps a few weapons, and single plus 1 to a stat. enough to reward the player without creating unbeatable bulwarks. perhaps players that die become NPC zombies to add realism

     

  • LeetheLeethe Member UncommonPosts: 893

    Horror for me is the anticipation of suffering without any hope of relief. I can jump out of my chair for a bit but unless it's different everytime, it will become mundane.

    And as for WoD RP games...

    I played Vampire, Mage, Werewolf and even Trinity. The most pressing issue for most seemed to be getting their black makeup correct and being very witty. More like Metahuman 90210.

    There is NO miracle patch.

    95% of what you see in beta won't change by launch.

    Hope is not a stategy.
    ______________________________
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  • darkbladeddarkbladed Member Posts: 193

    Also you would see a werewolf in a pink tuxedo and orange hotpants called "mashed potatos".

     

    People would, sadly, ruin it.

  • TerranahTerranah Member UncommonPosts: 3,575

    Zombie appocalypse sandbox game.  It would rock!

     

    I don't care about not being scared in a horror  mmo because I don't scare easily after all these years of scary movies.  And monsters in bikinis or named IDIDURMOM would make me laugh.  Comic relief is always welcome, especially in the horror genre when you need a respite from the nail biting.

     

     

  • HenchdwarfHenchdwarf Member UncommonPosts: 517

    why dont people get that a monster faction would suck?  are werewolves going to craft? are zombies going to head over to the auction house?

    people imagin a stupid idea (monster player characters) and conclude that a horror mmo would suck. 

     

    subtract the bad idea and you end up with an amazing game.

  • chbautistchbautist Member Posts: 50

    I was thinking about PERMADEATH and maybe there is an alternative... We had back when I was a kid what we called "the circle of death" the mecanic was simple when yhou entered the game you were given an ID and a target ID which you didn't know who it was in RL (the game was similar to LARP) but it was your ennemy and sometimes you also were his but not always.

     

    at some point there were so many players that we had to "graduate" some of them to a highr circle, those who won would go up and those who lost would go down.

     

    I an horror MMORPG, this mechanic could look like: you succeed in your PvP task, you go up one ring, you fail you go down... by death 3 rings down or by conceding victory 1 ring down. Of course, the top players would boast having kept their characters in the upper rings for months while lesser players would keep trying.

     

    So your mission tonight could be: kill the zombie lord of town X... whils the zombie lord (a player) would have as an objective to obliterate the resistance in the school of the same town X using his minions... inside the school, another player could be tasked to protect the innocents hiding in the school with a success treshold. This is how players could group up or maybe you could piggyback on a friends task... the mechanic needs to be thought through but you could have hundreds of mission templates randomly distributed to players of the same circles of death.

     

    how to include PvE in this game... well, some tasks could be PvE, those would not make you climb up the ranks but give you the supplies you may need for PvP or you could set-up shop and sell the supplies to PvP players... do some crafting, I need to sit down with ArenaNet or Btehseda and brainstorm this whole thing with them.

     

    Anyone got their phone number?

  • DarkPonyDarkPony Member Posts: 5,566

    Great write up once again. <3

  • Loke666Loke666 Member EpicPosts: 21,441

    Originally posted by warmaster670

    Originally posted by Loke666

    It is true that most monsters all have turned into Casper, the wimpy ghost and wusses in makeup

    If all you look at is twighlight and other crap sure, stop watching garbage.

    The still gory stuff is just about insane serial killers and similar stuff. I don't think I seen a scary monster movie since "The thing".  Even Bruce Campbells funny but not cute movies are a thing of the past now.

    Don't bad mouth garbage, all the really great horror movies are garbage, but great gargabe. The problem is that all the stuff now is either pathetic Scy fy movies (don't ever see "Mouthman") or stuff for teenage girls.

    There was a time when people like Carpenter and Craven knew how to make nice and bloody movies, now we at best get Joss Whedon...

  • PagoasPagoas Member UncommonPosts: 120

    in all honesty, the steve jobs zombie would've made me lol if i had seen it in a horror mmo.

    image
  • EcocesEcoces Member UncommonPosts: 879

    I know this is not what the topic is about but since others are giving ideas of how it could work ill share mine

     

    players as only humans (not the zombies) skill based system.

    i think permadeath IS needed, it has to happen this way for players to actually fear going into a fight.

    resources need to be extremely rare, ammo, clean food and water should be hot commodities. ammo should be so rare that in most cases players would rather hide/run from zombies rather than blast them.

    food/water is needed to be consumed

    a dread system - you may be sitting behind your computer eating nachos loling at the zombie horde running your way ... but your character isn't. it should make your camera shake, throw your shooting off and other actions.

     

    basically overall is this game wouldn't be about leveling and grinding, it should be about surviving and more often then not getting resources without direct contact of the zombies.

  • KazuhiroKazuhiro Member UncommonPosts: 606

    An excellent article. But every problem can eventually be overcome with some effort, ok a hell of a lot of effort.

    Problem:

    Those morons with names like L33thaxor and crap like that.

    Solution:

    Random name generator for all players, giving everyone a unique first and last name that sounds like a human being's name. (Can be options based on your gender/race/nationality.) No player made names.

    Solved.

     

    Problem:

    Story/Atmosphere being lacking due to large numbers of asshats, or watered down due to too many people. (Aka respawning mobs, quests/missions with no notable impact.)

    Solution:

    Large scale instances. (Yes I know I used the evil word, let me explain.) I don't mean 1-24 man instances. I mean several hundred players instances over a very large area. Say for example you have this city that acts like a quest hub of sorts. A mission sends you out on a insatnced quest zone where the story involves that quest hub being partially destroyed. After the quest you return to a seperate instance of that same quest hub, but where half of it is actually destroyed, and you can never go back to the old one, giving you and anyone else that's done this mission a sense of progression and lasting effects, at least somewhat. Want a friend to help you but toof ar apart? They can still travel to other zones with you, just not the same hub.

    Not exactly solved I know, but it's a bit better, keep in mind this was just off the top of my head, I'm sure several developers with time on their hands can come up with better.

     

    Finnaly trying to give a real sense of danger/fear in a MMO is indeed impossible unless you limit the number of players to just a handful. There isn't a damn thing thats frightening about a zombie apocolypse where humans are all armed, trained, experienced, and utterly unafraid of death or pain. As well as numerically evenish to the zombies.

    Let's face it, if a real zombie apoclypse happened today, it would be over rather quickly with modern weapons/military.

    You want to make a horror MMO REALLY SCARY? add Permadeath, poof! Now it's scary. :P

    To find an intelligent person in a PUG is not that rare, but to find a PUG made up of "all" intelligent people is one of the rarest phenomenons in the known universe.

This discussion has been closed.