Originally posted by lizardbonesI would still not remove virtual worlds from the MMOs I've played. I might have ideas to improve the virtual worlds, or think that the MMOs should be single player games or something similar, but remove the virtual worlds themselves? No.
Some MMOs should be online MP games with lobbies, at least for me. Virtual world does not add much fun for me, in many of these games.
Well, I actually like virtual worlds, so it's not surprising that I would not want them to go away. That doesn't mean that I think virtual worlds just existing is enough. It has to be well thought out, even for someone like me who prefers a virtual world.
That is the thing. I have never encounter a pve virtual world that i find fun. However, there are plenty of instanced content that i do.
The virtual world is just a chore i have to live with if i want the fun instances.
When traveling is interesting and meaningful, it's not wasted time.
Travel is only interesting and meaningful the first or first couple of times.
It's the things that happen on the way from point A to B that make something fun or memorable or interesting.
There are no movies where someone gets in a car and rides without incident for 2 and a half hours to reach point X.
There are a plethora of movies where someone gets in a car and has all kinds of incidents for 2 and a half hours to reach point X.
Easy to see why.
But in a game, sometimes you just want to get from A to B as quick as possible without tripping over random adventures the whole way.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
MMO 101.
That .. is the point.
If incidents are fun, just skip the travel and go directly to the incidents.
It is very easy to click on the button that says 'traveling to dungeon A" ... and either you get there instantly, or drop into a random encounter saying "oh, 10 bandits stop you on the road, and now you have to deal with them".
No need for the actual travel, but capture the fun of the incidents when traveling. Many Sp games have this. MMO should have it too.
Playing an relatively open world mmorpg's before introduction of mass teleportation LFG tools and extremly zoned worlds was more interesting experience for me. So I would not talk in absolutes since they may not apply to everyone.
I don't deny that people like me are in miniority though.
If I say "people like gifts," does that mean I'm stating, absolutely, that all people like gifts? No, I'm merely pointing out that generally speaking people like gifts.
This easily applies to other obvious things like "people dislike having their time wasted."
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Well everything the OP is saying is true,that is just reason not to play those shallow games.There is no reason "challenge" or "Loot" has to be in an instance or a RAID,you can do every single thing in a game in the open world.
FFXI is maybe the ONLY game that gets it Yes it offers instance and dungeons/caves but it also has large fights in the open or as in Besieged inside the city.
It is just poor game designers that are making everything the same,copy the other guy just because.There is no reason for an instance period in a game,it definitely is not what RPG stands for,that is more like my private solo or coop game.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I find it curious people keep saying their time is wasted with travel, and accusing the travel alone as the reason.
Consider for a moment, that if a game world was designed to generate random encounters and use light narrative elements to generate one off procedural content while traveling, wouldn't that liven things up a bit?
Is your time still getting wasted if the quests being done have optional interactive elements stranded across the world you can happen upon to alter the conclusion?
Would it really be so bizarre to have a quest design that includes the element of exploration and travel as part of it? Global quests that act like a chain, leading players on a romp through the world?
Maybe there are large territory sections that you can run through and interact with to gain control of areas, contributing resources to a greater faction, freeing an otherwise unknown town from oppression, or otherwise.
Fact is a large amount of people are pez-feeders and play pez-feeders, the concept of an open world to them means space, and they haven't the foggiest sense design-wise how to use it.
EDIT: In short, the only reason traveling in a game world would be boring, is because it's a poorly done/static game.
Given most MMOs are themepark in style, it kind of figures that'd happen.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Yeah. If you notice, the movie does skip most of the boring traveling part, and go straight to the exciting bits. Don't ask me to walk 20 min before anything fun is happening.
Theres something that you dont seem to understand,those exciting bits would not happen if you go straight to Mt.Doom.
Those exciting parts does not happen when you sit in your city and use lfd tools.
You did not read carefully.
I did not say skip to Mt Doom. I said skipped to the interesting parts, which the movie did.
But the movie is a linear tale.
Going from encounter to encounter to encounter means you have no choice and are being led around by the nose.
The encounters come from choices thew fellowship made (was clear in the BOOKS- Not so sure about the movies) but there were decisions. Which path, who joins, etc- Even deciding to go see Tom Bombidile (not in the "movie") or Farmer maggot were part of the plot.
The "Journey" is where YOU make your choices (not have them fed to you) and the encounter is the result of those choices. Absent of the choices you just have encounters with no bearing on YOU. Nothing unique.
Choices in books and movies are planned plot written by a writer. Has nothing to do with audience choices.
And you are right .. "nothing unique" ... every single person watching the movie, or reading the book .. see the SAME choices playing out.
But the point is .. skip the boring traveling part. If encounter a spider monster is interesting ... skip to that. If you want some randomness .. put that in. Don't ask me to walk 20 min on repeatable landscape before seeing the spider, or whatever random interesting stuff.
But again, that's just an issue of preference. If it was up to me I would eliminate insta-ports for queued instances and still require players to hoof it to the dungeon entrances.
And i would not play a game that requires me to waste 20 min "hoofing" whenever i want to run a instanced.
Oh, why would you want to eliminate what other likes when it does not impact you? You can always hoof to the instance if you want to. Just don't expect me to do that.
Choices are good.
there is no sense in having to "hoof" for 20 minutes. but instances are a waste of space in MMOs, if that is the only thing you are going to do...or rather if instances is all you want, then it is a waste to spend time to bring the rest of the MMO world online at all.
the journey to a destination as a group, that is what make MMOs special for me, make it easy to reach a destination on your own, and it is a waste of time.
I find it curious people keep saying their time is wasted with travel, and accusing the travel alone as the reason.
Consider for a moment, that if a game world was designed to generate random encounters and use light narrative elements to generate one off procedural content while traveling, wouldn't that liven things up a bit?
Is your time still getting wasted if the quests being done have optional interactive elements stranded across the world you can happen upon to alter the conclusion?
Would it really be so bizarre to have a quest design that includes the element of exploration and travel as part of it? Global quests that act like a chain, leading players on a romp through the world?
Maybe there are large territory sections that you can run through and interact with to gain control of areas, contributing resources to a greater faction, freeing an otherwise unknown town from oppression, or otherwise.
Fact is a large amount of people are pez-feeders and play pez-feeders, the concept of an open world to them means space, and they haven't the foggiest sense design-wise how to use it.
EDIT: In short, the only reason traveling in a game world would be boring, is because it's a poorly done/static game.
Given most MMOs are themepark in style, it kind of figures that'd happen.
Totally isolated, that's a great solution. When I'm soloing if you turn my travel into gameplay then the game isn't wasting my time. Great!
But then comes the problem: I'm traveling because I want to join 5+ group members for a dungeon. So the more gameplay and longer you make my travel, the more they're forced to sit around waiting (and the only gameplay in MMOs worse than empty travel is being forced to completely AFK waiting for someone.)
So travel directly harms the grouping experience, if there isn't an option to instantly teleport to your group.
In a singleplayer game, you could have slow travel all you want, but in a MMO setting you need group teleports or players' time is going to be wasted.
I mean I guess you could make an even more convoluted solution by giving dynamic gameplay to the stationary players too, but at that point you've spent soooo much dev effort solving a problem which is instantly solved with a group teleport system.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I find it curious people keep saying their time is wasted with travel, and accusing the travel alone as the reason.
Consider for a moment, that if a game world was designed to generate random encounters and use light narrative elements to generate one off procedural content while traveling, wouldn't that liven things up a bit?
Is your time still getting wasted if the quests being done have optional interactive elements stranded across the world you can happen upon to alter the conclusion?
Would it really be so bizarre to have a quest design that includes the element of exploration and travel as part of it? Global quests that act like a chain, leading players on a romp through the world?
Maybe there are large territory sections that you can run through and interact with to gain control of areas, contributing resources to a greater faction, freeing an otherwise unknown town from oppression, or otherwise.
Fact is a large amount of people are pez-feeders and play pez-feeders, the concept of an open world to them means space, and they haven't the foggiest sense design-wise how to use it.
EDIT: In short, the only reason traveling in a game world would be boring, is because it's a poorly done/static game.
Given most MMOs are themepark in style, it kind of figures that'd happen.
Careful there. You just described what many people here would consider to be a themepark game. Quest chains that lead players from zone to zone are one of the things "old school" players seem to detest about WoW. It's not really open world to them if you feel it in with content.
I actually think WoW does a pretty good job of this. You have the option of using the fast travel systems in place, or manually humping it if you like. And actually, for raiding outside of Raid Finder, you have to travel the old fashioned way. Also, for anyone doing the challenge mode 5 man dungeons, they have to hump it as well.
I want to investigate and find things. I want to dungeon and get decent loot. I want to lay down on a cot in the woods, sleep, wake up and find the orc who rented me a room upstairs left me a key that leads to a chest in a mountain cave where within I find a rare poison blade. I want to EXPLORE.
What I do not want: To be a level one character that cannot enter a zone because it leads to a level thirty five area and I'll get my arse handed to me the second I pop.
What else I do not want: To get pvp ganked.
What else I do not want: To work really hard to improve my character's hunting skills only to watch all those numbers drop after a maintenance update because someone somewhere who has nothing to do with me convinced the game makers my class, NOT THEIRS, was overpowered.
Scenery is nice immersion. Miles of landscape. Hours of roaming thru grassy fields and over mountain ranges. No copy and paste rocks/trees PLZ. But yeah there needs to be a reason other than I like that kind of thing. A hidden clue, magic mushroom under a rock (only one of it's kind find it no where else), key to an ancient treasure, garden tool from a prehistoric race with strange letters that match other tools that solve a dungeon door entrance to a dragon's active lair, fairy foot print that leads to a locked zone, flock of birds that burst forth only in one spot that if you range kill and later cook you get amazing (not lame) stat boosts, crashed space ship that leads to another world that looks nothing like the game so far, or quicksand that sucks you down but instead of kills you dumps you in an underworld with violent angry white haired black skinned women dressed in gold chains who tie you up and only a sneaky deal with a male of their house gets you free, etc. Shiz, I would make a good mmo.
youre missing the point... immersive gameworlds REWARDS the player for exploration and traveling around with gameplay. If you have a world based on thematic immersion then youre filling the world with interesting events and encounters and lore elements waiting to be discovered... thats FUN. thats meaningful. thats entertaining.
but what entertains you, and bores us to tears - are gameworlds that are just filled with exp and leveling fodder. nothing interesting, just pacman pellets to be eaten and fill your time until max level. once at max level you just queue and instant teleport to the same dungeons or raids or farm areas... over and over and over. so basically what you call meaningful is repetitive content meant for currency grinds. so thats interesting to you.. not to many others.
and youre movie analogy is dumb. maybe youre expecting your MMO to interest you for only 2 hours... Immersion seeking players like ourselves hope for more. much more. Its the journey to us. Its killing the same dragon 1000909090 times to you. BIG DIFFERENCE.
What specific games are you describing though? Because early MMORPGs I tried definitely did not have any semblence of rewarding travel or exploration. Whereas with later MMORPGs they skipped over as much of the repetitive travel as possible (Guild War's "instant travel anywhere you've traveled to before" being my favorite and the ideal.)
Do most modern MMORPGs fall woefully short of WOW's mark when it comes to mob variety in quests and general quest variety? Absolutely. But early MMORPGs were even worse, rewarding an endless grind of the same mob types (who were about as varied as WAR and SWTOR's, which had nearly a complete lack of mob variety.)
Again, I'm just not clear on what ficticious game you're thinking of where travel was reliably entertaining. I don't think it exists, except in games where travel was the core activity of the game like Puzzle Pirates. And in Puzzle Pirates you teleported directly into your group's ship any always skipped past anything which wasn't densely interesting gameplay.
My movie analogy is perfectly suited to any form of entertainment, and all the more important to a game hoping to hold a player's interest for thousands of hours. If you waste the viewer's time they're going to do something else.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
See- THIS explains the complete difference in ideals as to what makes an mmoRPG.
You want to take the "quest" to destroy the ring. You want to follow the exact path as the fellowship (but only the "action" parts) and have the same experience as a million others before and after you.
I want to veer off the beaten path. Explore Mirkwood. maybe try to find the ruins of the necromancers strronghold.... Hell, maybe I want to "switch sides" and return the ring to it RIGHTFUL owner. Stab gandolf in the back- Or maybe just find the Goblin caves and spend my time exploring the labyrinth.
-Neither way is "right"- You like scripted content that is experienced in the same way for millions (or thousands) of others. I like "open" sandbox content where my adventure and story are unique... I want to discover a cave hardly anyone knows about and find what treasures await. others want the cave on a map with breadcrumbs to follow where no content is "hidden" and there is no reason to explore because to many- They just want action action action.
Which is why I cannot understand why some play RPG's.
But "fun" is in the eye of the beholder. If I want a good deep story I read BOOKs. If I want pretty colors and explosions and leet moves I watch a modern "action film"- I came to MMOs to have a virtual world to forge my desting ..MY DESTINY. Not a "destiny" which everyone else is experiencing as well since its scripted.
EDIT: I also understand why many want scripted content. it requires little imagination and creativity and just points you in the direction to go... It is far more polished and with less "down time". The "AStory" is far more epic (in an open Workld Sandbox we cannot all be the hero and save the world) but IMHO its far better in a single player game. I can be the "hero" who saves the World in a single player RPG since its "my personal experience and World"-
Wrong. Nothing about "never waste the player's time" implies linearity. It just implies you should let the player skip past non-gameplay. Skyrim can be played nonlinearly, yet it lets you skip past uneventful travel.
Modern MMORPGs are just as much videogame RPGs as early RPGs were. Maybe you're confusing videogame RPGs with tabletop RPGs? They're separate genres. Always have been. No worries, it's a common mistake (despite the two experiences being so substantially different.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Going from encounter to encounter to encounter means you have no choice and are being led around by the nose.
The encounters come from choices thew fellowship made (was clear in the BOOKS- Not so sure about the movies) but there were decisions. Which path, who joins, etc- Even deciding to go see Tom Bombidile (not in the "movie") or Farmer maggot were part of the plot.
The "Journey" is where YOU make your choices (not have them fed to you) and the encounter is the result of those choices. Absent of the choices you just have encounters with no bearing on YOU. Nothing unique.
EDIT: Again, this is fine if you want to experience the exact same path of the fellowship with zero input- But maybe you would like to try something different? A new strategy? Flying the Giant Eagle right into Mordor, perhaps? The BOOK or MOVIE is just a linear tale- I want choices and options or I will read the book and hear about what they" did.
You're missing the point again. The point is that only interesting things are shown. The point has nothing to do with who's making the choices or how many of them there are.
If someone's entertainment time isn't filled with interesting experiences, they will choose another form of entertainment because the other thing was just wasting their time.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It's a game with the ability to load into known locations as well as travel to the cities/towns via the carriages as a means to circumvent the traveling on foot aspect of the game.
However, you should be noting how they treat travel in Skyrim. They don't implement much of it themselves, but you should notice Skyrim actually uses one of the mechanics I mentioned, in that it tosses simple random encounters at you while you travel so that walking isn't simply the task of waddling across the world. Coupled with the way minor quests are seeded throughout the place, you are capable of getting plenty of novel experience from opting to travel that you will not experience by circumventing it.
It wasn't that well implemented in the core game, but browsing just the immersion section of the nexus mod site can give you a hint at the fact it's pretty scalable and absolves the case of 'uneventful travel'.
Coupling it with environment mods and you might actually end up just with a good sightseeing experience too.
So sure it's skippable, but it's only if one's taking the approach of culling the locations where events takes place that the lulls actually become an issue.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
You're missing the point again. The point is that only interesting things are shown. The point has nothing to do with who's making the choices or how many of them there are.
If someone's entertainment time isn't filled with interesting experiences, they will choose another form of entertainment because the other thing was just wasting their time.
This is rather the problem that I pointed out and failed to be addressed earlier.
If something is in the game and isn't interesting, why is it uninteresting and is there a solution to making it worthwhile?
Just cutting the parts that aren't good doesn't always absolve the reasons it wasn't good, it just makes for a smaller experience.
If there really was no merit to travel then MMOs would all be lobby games effectively. And honestly that's where most are at present. WoW relies on the group and porting mechanics a lot now, and Neverwinter is entirely about a hub world and bunch of instanced experiences.
Breaking game worlds down makes it easier to isolate a certain kind of user experience people can focus on. Doing so is a problem of it's own though in that it pairs down the merits the game ultimately is even capable of having. They all become one trick ponies more or less.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
If you want to be the most narrow minded gamer ever maybe. Some of us realize it's better to work for a porsche then to be content with a merry-go-round.
What's narrow minded about wanting my time not to be wasted?
Frodo still made a long journey on foot. He didn't teleport. But we only witnessed the interesting parts of that trip. Our time was not wasted as consumers of entertainment.
A game can be anything, so long as it doesn't waste players' time. That's not particularly close-minded. It can include just about any activity, provided that activity involves a substantial number of interesting choices along the way. Any significant pause in decision-making is just mindless downtime, and if it doesn't serve a direct purpose (like social hubs, which allow players to take a break between dense gameplay sections) should be eradicated, and certainly shouldn't be a required part of the game.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It's a game with the ability to load into known locations as well as travel to the cities/towns via the carriages as a means to circumvent the traveling on foot aspect of the game.
However, you should be noting how they treat travel in Skyrim. They don't implement much of it themselves, but you should notice Skyrim actually uses one of the mechanics I mentioned, in that it tosses simple random encounters at you while you travel so that walking isn't simply the task of waddling across the world. Coupled with the way minor quests are seeded throughout the place, you are capable of getting plenty of novel experience from opting to travel that you will not experience by circumventing it.
I've noted this several times.
If one only uses fast travel in skyrim then one misses quite a lot of what actually happens.
You dont' see the headless horsemen or the redguards stopping random redguard women to see if they are the woman they are looking for.
You dont' get the chance to release captured prisoners
You don't get much of the dragons or find places to explore/discover.
You don't get to follow that guy with the Ox and see what happens to him. Or find a wandering mercenary who "might" be persuaded to have you finish their quest.
You dont' get to see the imperials and stormcloaks battling it out. Or other random npc's battling.
You miss out on quests.
you basically miss out on most of the game.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Instant gratification players are the cesspool that keeps causing MMO's to fail. Unfortunately developers are just now starting to realize that MMO's were about being virtual worlds and thats why they succeeded and did so well back in the day. Some devs still have their heads up their asses, but some are starting to get the hint at least.
Hopefully EQNext and Star Citizen and games like it will really push the genre back to its roots.
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
Think it'll also be worth pondering other aspects of gameplay.
Notably, pacing.
This is closely tied to my last post comment on the scope of experiences a game is capable of offering. The more finite the game's experiences, the more you have to balance the frequency they are delivered lest you burn out the userbase.
This is an effect that's pronounced when the game world itself is contracted. If things aren't shuffled about and the action is interspersed with breaks you're going to find the attrition rate of your game to be kind of high.
A movie has a finite amount of time they hold you for. Within that time they have to define the entirety of their experience, so often it's a race against time to pack in all the detail and information you want. Even then, movies pace themselves between highs and lows of action and activity.
Take for example Pulp Fiction or more or less any Tarantino film. Those movies have a lot of action and activity, and even if it's not an action scene there's frequently something going on to keep the person involved in the progress of the film, right?
Wrong, actually. It's notable that Tarantino has a habit, especially when playing to the pulp side of things, for his characters to actually have a few pretty laid back moments where the characters are effectively just shootin' the shit with one another. Tarantino uses it as a means not only to break moments so that people can be setup for the next, but as a way to just prod about the characters a little bit without doing anything particularly deep.
It's something that helps these kinds of films. Even nonstop rollercoasters have the low points after the rise and fall of action to get people over into the next part.
It's necessary for most humans because it gives them time to breathe and time to process actions. If the game itself has the space and variety to let a player unwind, it's a boon to the game because it means that player isn't passing their bucks to someone else to be doing that.
As it relates to traveling. That's essentially the point of the moments between the action. The ability to say 'Ok I'm done with that for a while, lets take a break and do something else, what's the view from that hill look like?'.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
But again, that's just an issue of preference. If it was up to me I would eliminate insta-ports for queued instances and still require players to hoof it to the dungeon entrances.
And i would not play a game that requires me to waste 20 min "hoofing" whenever i want to run a instanced.
Oh, why would you want to eliminate what other likes when it does not impact you? You can always hoof to the instance if you want to. Just don't expect me to do that.
Choices are good.
there is no sense in having to "hoof" for 20 minutes. but instances are a waste of space in MMOs, if that is the only thing you are going to do...or rather if instances is all you want, then it is a waste to spend time to bring the rest of the MMO world online at all.
Absolutely. A lot of MMOs are much better game for me, if they take away the world, and replace it with a lobby. Many MMO cities (WOW, NWO,...) are used as nothing but lobby anyway.
This is rather the problem that I pointed out and failed to be addressed earlier.
If something is in the game and isn't interesting, why is it uninteresting and is there a solution to making it worthwhile?
Just cutting the parts that aren't good doesn't always absolve the reasons it wasn't good, it just makes for a smaller experience.
If there really was no merit to travel then MMOs would all be lobby games effectively. And honestly that's where most are at present. WoW relies on the group and porting mechanics a lot now, and Neverwinter is entirely about a hub world and bunch of instanced experiences.
Breaking game worlds down makes it easier to isolate a certain kind of user experience people can focus on. Doing so is a problem of it's own though in that it pairs down the merits the game ultimately is even capable of having. They all become one trick ponies more or less.
Well certainly if it's easy enough to create a bunch of gameplay to fill in that portion of the game that's a possibility. But just skipping that part of the game is also completely acceptable.
It would require a substantial and powerful (thus costly) system to dynamically create travel events that never became excessively repetitive, and it would still fail to solve the earlier "I'm just trying to meet up with my group mates at the dungeon" problem without the system also constantly serving them events too.
All of which achieves gameplay which is kinda only as good as just skipping straight to the content in the first place.
I mean I think there might be a take on this which works, but it feels like a "tons of extra effort just to achieve partiy" sort of thing.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Games are not movies. I don't need the game to pace me. If i need a break, i will turn the game off, get up and go get a sandwich.
And slow travel is not pacing, it is unavoidable boring bits that many players don't want. Otherwise, why would players use teleports at all?
Plus, in a movie, even the non-action parts are made (or tried to be made) interesting. Look at the Avengers. The bantering is as much fun as the action. The movie could not have made $1.5B if the film maker show nothing but Tony Stark traveling from point A to B in between fights.
Comments
That is the thing. I have never encounter a pve virtual world that i find fun. However, there are plenty of instanced content that i do.
The virtual world is just a chore i have to live with if i want the fun instances.
That .. is the point.
If incidents are fun, just skip the travel and go directly to the incidents.
It is very easy to click on the button that says 'traveling to dungeon A" ... and either you get there instantly, or drop into a random encounter saying "oh, 10 bandits stop you on the road, and now you have to deal with them".
No need for the actual travel, but capture the fun of the incidents when traveling. Many Sp games have this. MMO should have it too.
If I say "people like gifts," does that mean I'm stating, absolutely, that all people like gifts? No, I'm merely pointing out that generally speaking people like gifts.
This easily applies to other obvious things like "people dislike having their time wasted."
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Well everything the OP is saying is true,that is just reason not to play those shallow games.There is no reason "challenge" or "Loot" has to be in an instance or a RAID,you can do every single thing in a game in the open world.
FFXI is maybe the ONLY game that gets it Yes it offers instance and dungeons/caves but it also has large fights in the open or as in Besieged inside the city.
It is just poor game designers that are making everything the same,copy the other guy just because.There is no reason for an instance period in a game,it definitely is not what RPG stands for,that is more like my private solo or coop game.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I find it curious people keep saying their time is wasted with travel, and accusing the travel alone as the reason.
Consider for a moment, that if a game world was designed to generate random encounters and use light narrative elements to generate one off procedural content while traveling, wouldn't that liven things up a bit?
Is your time still getting wasted if the quests being done have optional interactive elements stranded across the world you can happen upon to alter the conclusion?
Would it really be so bizarre to have a quest design that includes the element of exploration and travel as part of it? Global quests that act like a chain, leading players on a romp through the world?
Maybe there are large territory sections that you can run through and interact with to gain control of areas, contributing resources to a greater faction, freeing an otherwise unknown town from oppression, or otherwise.
Fact is a large amount of people are pez-feeders and play pez-feeders, the concept of an open world to them means space, and they haven't the foggiest sense design-wise how to use it.
EDIT: In short, the only reason traveling in a game world would be boring, is because it's a poorly done/static game.
Given most MMOs are themepark in style, it kind of figures that'd happen.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
why do you play rpg games? lol
there is no sense in having to "hoof" for 20 minutes. but instances are a waste of space in MMOs, if that is the only thing you are going to do...or rather if instances is all you want, then it is a waste to spend time to bring the rest of the MMO world online at all.
the journey to a destination as a group, that is what make MMOs special for me, make it easy to reach a destination on your own, and it is a waste of time.
Totally isolated, that's a great solution. When I'm soloing if you turn my travel into gameplay then the game isn't wasting my time. Great!
But then comes the problem: I'm traveling because I want to join 5+ group members for a dungeon. So the more gameplay and longer you make my travel, the more they're forced to sit around waiting (and the only gameplay in MMOs worse than empty travel is being forced to completely AFK waiting for someone.)
So travel directly harms the grouping experience, if there isn't an option to instantly teleport to your group.
In a singleplayer game, you could have slow travel all you want, but in a MMO setting you need group teleports or players' time is going to be wasted.
I mean I guess you could make an even more convoluted solution by giving dynamic gameplay to the stationary players too, but at that point you've spent soooo much dev effort solving a problem which is instantly solved with a group teleport system.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Careful there. You just described what many people here would consider to be a themepark game. Quest chains that lead players from zone to zone are one of the things "old school" players seem to detest about WoW. It's not really open world to them if you feel it in with content.
I want to investigate and find things. I want to dungeon and get decent loot. I want to lay down on a cot in the woods, sleep, wake up and find the orc who rented me a room upstairs left me a key that leads to a chest in a mountain cave where within I find a rare poison blade. I want to EXPLORE.
What I do not want: To be a level one character that cannot enter a zone because it leads to a level thirty five area and I'll get my arse handed to me the second I pop.
What else I do not want: To get pvp ganked.
What else I do not want: To work really hard to improve my character's hunting skills only to watch all those numbers drop after a maintenance update because someone somewhere who has nothing to do with me convinced the game makers my class, NOT THEIRS, was overpowered.
Scenery is nice immersion. Miles of landscape. Hours of roaming thru grassy fields and over mountain ranges. No copy and paste rocks/trees PLZ. But yeah there needs to be a reason other than I like that kind of thing. A hidden clue, magic mushroom under a rock (only one of it's kind find it no where else), key to an ancient treasure, garden tool from a prehistoric race with strange letters that match other tools that solve a dungeon door entrance to a dragon's active lair, fairy foot print that leads to a locked zone, flock of birds that burst forth only in one spot that if you range kill and later cook you get amazing (not lame) stat boosts, crashed space ship that leads to another world that looks nothing like the game so far, or quicksand that sucks you down but instead of kills you dumps you in an underworld with violent angry white haired black skinned women dressed in gold chains who tie you up and only a sneaky deal with a male of their house gets you free, etc. Shiz, I would make a good mmo.
From our perspective, he did teleport around.
Neither book nor movie wastes time showing every single second of the journey -- only the interesting parts are seen.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
So are you now saying that traveling is the interesting part ?
So, did ESO have a successful launch? Yes, yes it did.By Ryan Getchell on April 02, 2014.
**On the radar: http://www.cyberpunk.net/ **
What specific games are you describing though? Because early MMORPGs I tried definitely did not have any semblence of rewarding travel or exploration. Whereas with later MMORPGs they skipped over as much of the repetitive travel as possible (Guild War's "instant travel anywhere you've traveled to before" being my favorite and the ideal.)
Do most modern MMORPGs fall woefully short of WOW's mark when it comes to mob variety in quests and general quest variety? Absolutely. But early MMORPGs were even worse, rewarding an endless grind of the same mob types (who were about as varied as WAR and SWTOR's, which had nearly a complete lack of mob variety.)
Again, I'm just not clear on what ficticious game you're thinking of where travel was reliably entertaining. I don't think it exists, except in games where travel was the core activity of the game like Puzzle Pirates. And in Puzzle Pirates you teleported directly into your group's ship any always skipped past anything which wasn't densely interesting gameplay.
My movie analogy is perfectly suited to any form of entertainment, and all the more important to a game hoping to hold a player's interest for thousands of hours. If you waste the viewer's time they're going to do something else.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Wrong. Nothing about "never waste the player's time" implies linearity. It just implies you should let the player skip past non-gameplay. Skyrim can be played nonlinearly, yet it lets you skip past uneventful travel.
Modern MMORPGs are just as much videogame RPGs as early RPGs were. Maybe you're confusing videogame RPGs with tabletop RPGs? They're separate genres. Always have been. No worries, it's a common mistake (despite the two experiences being so substantially different.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You're missing the point again. The point is that only interesting things are shown. The point has nothing to do with who's making the choices or how many of them there are.
If someone's entertainment time isn't filled with interesting experiences, they will choose another form of entertainment because the other thing was just wasting their time.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Skyrim is a good reference here.
It's a game with the ability to load into known locations as well as travel to the cities/towns via the carriages as a means to circumvent the traveling on foot aspect of the game.
However, you should be noting how they treat travel in Skyrim. They don't implement much of it themselves, but you should notice Skyrim actually uses one of the mechanics I mentioned, in that it tosses simple random encounters at you while you travel so that walking isn't simply the task of waddling across the world. Coupled with the way minor quests are seeded throughout the place, you are capable of getting plenty of novel experience from opting to travel that you will not experience by circumventing it.
It wasn't that well implemented in the core game, but browsing just the immersion section of the nexus mod site can give you a hint at the fact it's pretty scalable and absolves the case of 'uneventful travel'.
Coupling it with environment mods and you might actually end up just with a good sightseeing experience too.
So sure it's skippable, but it's only if one's taking the approach of culling the locations where events takes place that the lulls actually become an issue.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
This is rather the problem that I pointed out and failed to be addressed earlier.
If something is in the game and isn't interesting, why is it uninteresting and is there a solution to making it worthwhile?
Just cutting the parts that aren't good doesn't always absolve the reasons it wasn't good, it just makes for a smaller experience.
If there really was no merit to travel then MMOs would all be lobby games effectively. And honestly that's where most are at present. WoW relies on the group and porting mechanics a lot now, and Neverwinter is entirely about a hub world and bunch of instanced experiences.
Breaking game worlds down makes it easier to isolate a certain kind of user experience people can focus on. Doing so is a problem of it's own though in that it pairs down the merits the game ultimately is even capable of having. They all become one trick ponies more or less.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
What's narrow minded about wanting my time not to be wasted?
Frodo still made a long journey on foot. He didn't teleport. But we only witnessed the interesting parts of that trip. Our time was not wasted as consumers of entertainment.
A game can be anything, so long as it doesn't waste players' time. That's not particularly close-minded. It can include just about any activity, provided that activity involves a substantial number of interesting choices along the way. Any significant pause in decision-making is just mindless downtime, and if it doesn't serve a direct purpose (like social hubs, which allow players to take a break between dense gameplay sections) should be eradicated, and certainly shouldn't be a required part of the game.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I've noted this several times.
If one only uses fast travel in skyrim then one misses quite a lot of what actually happens.
You dont' see the headless horsemen or the redguards stopping random redguard women to see if they are the woman they are looking for.
You dont' get the chance to release captured prisoners
You don't get much of the dragons or find places to explore/discover.
You don't get to follow that guy with the Ox and see what happens to him. Or find a wandering mercenary who "might" be persuaded to have you finish their quest.
You dont' get to see the imperials and stormcloaks battling it out. Or other random npc's battling.
You miss out on quests.
you basically miss out on most of the game.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Instant gratification players are the cesspool that keeps causing MMO's to fail. Unfortunately developers are just now starting to realize that MMO's were about being virtual worlds and thats why they succeeded and did so well back in the day. Some devs still have their heads up their asses, but some are starting to get the hint at least.
Hopefully EQNext and Star Citizen and games like it will really push the genre back to its roots.
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
Think it'll also be worth pondering other aspects of gameplay.
Notably, pacing.
This is closely tied to my last post comment on the scope of experiences a game is capable of offering. The more finite the game's experiences, the more you have to balance the frequency they are delivered lest you burn out the userbase.
This is an effect that's pronounced when the game world itself is contracted. If things aren't shuffled about and the action is interspersed with breaks you're going to find the attrition rate of your game to be kind of high.
A movie has a finite amount of time they hold you for. Within that time they have to define the entirety of their experience, so often it's a race against time to pack in all the detail and information you want. Even then, movies pace themselves between highs and lows of action and activity.
Take for example Pulp Fiction or more or less any Tarantino film. Those movies have a lot of action and activity, and even if it's not an action scene there's frequently something going on to keep the person involved in the progress of the film, right?
Wrong, actually. It's notable that Tarantino has a habit, especially when playing to the pulp side of things, for his characters to actually have a few pretty laid back moments where the characters are effectively just shootin' the shit with one another. Tarantino uses it as a means not only to break moments so that people can be setup for the next, but as a way to just prod about the characters a little bit without doing anything particularly deep.
It's something that helps these kinds of films. Even nonstop rollercoasters have the low points after the rise and fall of action to get people over into the next part.
It's necessary for most humans because it gives them time to breathe and time to process actions. If the game itself has the space and variety to let a player unwind, it's a boon to the game because it means that player isn't passing their bucks to someone else to be doing that.
As it relates to traveling. That's essentially the point of the moments between the action. The ability to say 'Ok I'm done with that for a while, lets take a break and do something else, what's the view from that hill look like?'.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Absolutely. A lot of MMOs are much better game for me, if they take away the world, and replace it with a lobby. Many MMO cities (WOW, NWO,...) are used as nothing but lobby anyway.
Well certainly if it's easy enough to create a bunch of gameplay to fill in that portion of the game that's a possibility. But just skipping that part of the game is also completely acceptable.
It would require a substantial and powerful (thus costly) system to dynamically create travel events that never became excessively repetitive, and it would still fail to solve the earlier "I'm just trying to meet up with my group mates at the dungeon" problem without the system also constantly serving them events too.
All of which achieves gameplay which is kinda only as good as just skipping straight to the content in the first place.
I mean I think there might be a take on this which works, but it feels like a "tons of extra effort just to achieve partiy" sort of thing.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Games are not movies. I don't need the game to pace me. If i need a break, i will turn the game off, get up and go get a sandwich.
And slow travel is not pacing, it is unavoidable boring bits that many players don't want. Otherwise, why would players use teleports at all?
Plus, in a movie, even the non-action parts are made (or tried to be made) interesting. Look at the Avengers. The bantering is as much fun as the action. The movie could not have made $1.5B if the film maker show nothing but Tony Stark traveling from point A to B in between fights.