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Storms/Natural Disasters/Weather in MMORPGs??
darkheart84
Member UncommonPosts: 84
I'm not just talking about the look of it. I am talking about stuff that can actually affect your gameplay, possibly hurt and kill you, or otherwise just make you modify what you wear and be on the constant lookout.
The idea itself of there actually being certain climate zones in the different parts of the game is a selling point to me. I believe I may have posted this on another thread, but can you imagine having to need a certain "warmth" stat up in the north? That not having this stat high enough would cause your health to lower at a certain rate in the particularly cold regions? Or otherwise debuff certain stats if you are in the cold with the wrong kind of armor. This would make players adapt, thus giving you more identity and an unseen level of immersion in the game.
Hurricanes on coastal regions, winter storms in the north, etc - all of this is something that would be amazing to experience in a game. Who knows what natural disasters developers could create with their imagination? Is this possible at all or just a gamer's dream? That they could create minor signs that only experienced players would notice, of an oncoming storm, would be simply beautiful.
SQ: Do you know any games/upcoming games that implement something of the like, supposing it is not impossibility?
Comments
If Everquest there were different climates and weather for different zones. None of this actually had an impact on the player though. The only effect would be that you couldn't see very well. Sometimes it would snow. Sometimes it would rain. It depended on where you were.
The only game I can recall the weather affecting you was a single player game called Baldur's Gate. Sometimes when there was a thunderstorm in the game the lightning would strike and damage characters wearing any type of metal armor.
Where I do think something like this could work is an MMO that focuses on being more world building than slaying monsters for loot. The traditional sandbox concept, which is one I'm not to fond of honestly, but this idea is ideal to it's core concepts. The type of game where a person realistically wouldn't be able to lug 8 sets of armor in their 6 different backpacks like they may in high fantasy.
Would the game give achievements for large underwear collections?
For a niche game, sure.
For a themepark game, no.
When I fish, for example, I don't want to be reminded of lugging a tacklebox to the shore at 5am on a very cold foggy arthritic morning, so cold the worms are flash frozen more than alive.
I also don't want the "danger" of 100000000001 water moccasins falling off of trees, ruining an otherwise RL horrible day at the pond.
Want that type of realism (like fishing during a lightning storm or gale), just visit your local fishing venues, instead!
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
I actually felt nice reading this. This is exactly what I am talking about - actually planning out things for where you are going and what you could possibly encounter. Perhaps I am still stuck with old ideals, such as planning out journeys and the like, rather than rushing to every bit of fun the game has to offer.
Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen is discussing doing something like this for climate and needing to wear different clothes for different parts of the world.
http://www.pcgamer.com/au/2014/01/22/brad-mcquaid-details-acclimatization-in-pantheon/
A game is suppose to be fun/scary/sad/everything.. unlike this cat I feel that yes games should have these effects making clothing and head gear more than just stats and pretty.. honestly I wish games would go back to old school ultima online when you could rob peoples houses .. kill anything anyone and loot everything off em... back in the day you could make a name for yourself..now its just a zerg blah of crap.. and crafting is a big HA. when raid items are better than all other items it makes blacksmithing pointless.. I remember the days when even a good black smith could make a name for himself .. anyway now I am just rambling on lol the point is I would love to see these effects in a game to make it harder. but sadly todays MMO players want quick easy loot with no real loss if they die..no skill needed really just stat gear.. sunshine and rainbows.
we will never see this in a game and if we do it will do nothing other than look pretty.
thee end.
k tks.
This reminds me of the old runescape days back when I was a teen as well...killing people and looting everything they had. It made you keep your edge in the wilderness, and there was great reward for those who ventured the dangers of it. I used to steal gems from people with the claim that I would "craft cut" them, then I would run off. Those were the days. That would not hold these days, people would call it griefing and something would be done about it, that or the game wouldn't have much appeal to many. Not anymore.
I suppose, in a way, it is the playerbase that has changed. People like to blame the developers, and say that every game these days sucks, but I think developers are just appealing to a different audience these days.
I'm always in favor of having the players adapt to any given new situation, but I would never want to force players to take cover from a weather for any lengthy period of time because it would be essentially a forced downtime (and forced downtimes suck).
I wouldn't want it to be unexpected and completely random either. Players would have to have some ways to anticipate or read into it so that they can prepare and adjust accordingly.
It is doable. Just not necessarily worth the effort.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
It would be great to have weather /disaster as part of the instance scripted gameplay.
the key is to make it fun, and not inconvenient.
Ryzom has a good weather system. It has 4 real seasons, and when it's winter, snow is on the ground. When it's spring flowers come out, etc. Herds of mobs migrate around based on the season, so a known safe place to dig for mats in spring may not be safe in the winter. And the mats may depend on the season too.
Ryzom also has a day night cycle, and rain. It may actually turn out that the special mat that you want to dig up is only available in the night, while it's raining, in winter.
That was 10 years ago.
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2024: 47 years on the Net.
Yes its an inconvenience . getting pked is an inconvenience. losing ur gear is an inconvenience. ur mount dies another big inconvenience . oh ur out minning and some ahole killed ur packing mule and took ur iron.. quit game...
don't get me wrong I can see where ur coming from but not all weather makes u hide in a house.. but lets say (again back in the day when a treasure map and chest was hard but well worth it if found) I found a map and was off on some island looking for a chest and a bolt of lighting hit a tree near me or the rain made it harder to get around.. I would love it as much as it is a big inconvenience I would try my best to get it and kill whoever was around it. making it worth that much more once u get it..
inconvenience is getting nerfed so you don't have to worry about any of these things.. so keep on playing ur wow and loving the fact that the hardest challenge in that game is the boring ass grind getting the gear to get into raids/pvp.. if you even can call it raiding/pvp I call it walmart on the first of the month.
Anticipating it, knowing the signs for it, is part of what I believe would make this a great addition to a game. What I pictured was people huddling up wherever they could, someone might be trapped with someone else in a cave, they could either use certain teleport magic or wait it out, or even brave the storm. That or huddled up in town, maybe honing their crafting skills or talking/getting to know others. It would help the community to make their own stories is what I thought. Communication, which is more than welcome in modern communities.
I also love the idea someone just stated from that game Ryzom, that certain rare materials would be leftover after certain storms.
I think the old guys win this one. lol
Glad that you got that off your chest?
My career in WoW is a whole 20 minutes long during its closed beta and my idea of a challenge is more than just a series of inconveniences or an extended grind.
Such presuming and rude reply tells much of where you come from. Some research, empathy and introspection might be in order in your case.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
its not just about the inconveniences . its the not knowing what is going to happen you don't log on and do the same thing over and over. and as for my research I have been playing games since ultima pagan I have played most mmos out today.. im not gunna fight with you this its just my personal opinion as an old school gamer.. its a fact the mmos today are dumbed down and made easy so people don't have to worry about any inconveniences.. you lose nothing. no one can harm you unless ur in a pvp zone. ur free to skip through fairy land all day.
and im not saying I wont play any of these games.. I enjoyed Age of Conan I liked the look of the game and the combat . and Im gunna give ESO a try on my xbox1 also archeage ..when it get here.. in the end im just an old school gamer looking for a game that I can enjoy as much as I use too back in the day.
Remember you have to step back and look at the whole picture, too.
Tunnel vision exists when creators don't pull back and see what has been designed, and see if it lost it's scope and appeal.
It's not fun lugging that tacklebox out on a cold morning (and they sure don't resemble grandpa's tiny tin one anymore!). People tolerated it because it was the only option. But if given a choice between that and a nicer virtual representation, they'll ditch those 5am mornings and fish in 100% 70 degree beautiful weather without all the nasty bugs and critters, too!
A thing I hated that Cata did in WoW was destroy the Auberdine fishing pier and introduced the new DirectX water effects. Although they were more realistic in some ways, the water no longer resembled true shore fishing, and how the light danced upon the water in ripples and very relaxing (Auberdine's shoreline was the epitome of that effect). Blizzard was so keen to push the effects out with a Shattering effect (e.g., just like violent weather suggested here), and lost the way of the very process by eliminating it, too.
When folks fish, it's the sum of the whole that's enjoyable -- nice weather, nice temperatures, calm breeze, the quietness (your fishing buddy isn't going to talk your ear off, either), and the tranquility of the experience (it's so relaxing it's like napping).
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
The possibility of the universe collapsing into a singularity is higher than the birth of a perfect MMORPG.
It's not something you'd really want to implement on top of an existing system, but if you made climate an actual feature of the gameplay I think it could be really neat. You'd obviously need an inventory management system that accommodated the different types of gear one could wear and so on, as well as possibly a flexible ability system that allowed the player to adapt to conditions.
Even so, it will always be a very niche thing. Most players that I've talked to over the years hate the idea of rewards/penalties based on the environment (climate and otherwise). But I believe there is a slice of the market that would enjoy it if you did it well.
In some respects Wurm Online has this. Rather it has weather and some of the weather when on a boat can make it really hard to sail.
I think the next step in MMOs is weather affecting game play as well as different creatures for day and night
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
I remember the Druid spell in EQ now. I had forgotten about that. I remember running high level Druids casting this spell and stopping the rain. People would shout in zone chat Thank you! Rain made it really hard to navigate through the zones. It reduced visibility quite a bit.
That sounds amazing, just to imagine what such a class would do for a game with this kind of weather, how it would interact with the different kind of storms. The possibilities are just too good to imagine.
I think it's lots of fun from a role playing point of view, but even if you weren't role playing you still appreciated the rain stopping lol. It would be nice to see features like that in games. The devs seem to not focus on those types of things these days. They seem to be almost entirely focus on creating lots of quests and PvP instances.