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MMO Parkour
astoria
Member UncommonPosts: 1,677
I was recently playing a non-MMO 'Brink' that had a feature I have long wished for in MMO movement and combat.
They call it S.M.A.R.T. movement, which is an overly fancy name for an admittedly nice graphical and physics system where your character can climb and otherwise traverse various terrain like a noob parkour 'free runner.'
In Brink, the abilities vary with body type, basically leaner guys can climb better than meat shields. I would think in an MMO the possibilities of varying it with your armor weight would also be strategic.
I was wondering if anyone knew why this was never done in MMOs (aside from super hero MMOs sort of).
People talk about loading screens being unimmersive...a little for me but...
I am constantly unimmersed in MMOs when my character can shoot fireballs out of his hand, but can't climb a little hill that I could, in real life, walk up while texting and probably jump on my skateboard.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
Comments
i would love to climb steep hills all day in an mmo, but i'd rather developers spend that budget on something a bit more fun.. like more content
Can't wholly disagree with that, but I'm not sure this doesn't create content. When I climbed up in a sneaky little hole near the ceiling and took out 5 guys in Brink before they figured out where to stand to be able to shoot me, that was content in a sense.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
More of content of the same? or some different things implemented in an mmorpg as the OP suggests..cause really..we r stuffed dude
One is content development (usually artists and scripters). The other is engine design. Spending labor/money on one is not necessarily taking money from the other.
More freedom of movement requires more QA -- more looking for ways to get stuck in the terrain and more testing to make sure gameplay elements aren't defeated by someone finding a shortcut. It's something I do when bored at other things -- see if I can get from zone X to zone Y by climbing/jumping/etc.
The QA (or the bug reports you get if you skimp on QA) probably costs more than the content/engine design resources spent to make it work in the first place.
I can also roleplay the tower in a chess game and shout "is that a peasant at the horizon I see? I will smash it I will! Oh damn I broke one of my merlons!". -- maji