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Making MMORPG magic more like the magic we love from literature
Creslin321
Member Posts: 5,359
One of the problems I always have with magic in MMORPGs is that it rarely "feels" like the magic we see our favorite wizards use in fantasy novels and other media. In fantasy novels, wizards usually control the very fabric of reality. Magic is complex, dangerous, and always full of wonder.
But in MMORPGs, magic is almost always reduced to "spells" which have direct "effects." If you cast fireball it does X fire damage in Y area. If you cast flame wall, it creates a wall of fire that does X damage for Y seconds in Z area. These spells always have the same effect no matter where you use them and you really have no freedom regarding how you use magic. You just use the spells you are provided and that's it. The result is that you feel less like a wizard changing the fabric of reality, and more like a guy with a whole bunch of different "guns."
So how can we make a magic system more like the fantasy novels that many of us love? Here's my idea to do so...
First, create a world that is very much governed by physics. All areas would have ambient temperatures, and objects in the game would have realistic properties like boiling points, melting points, ignition points, weight, etc. etc. You would also have variables on PCs and NPCs that determine when they start damage damage from things like heat or cold (heat damage threshold of 150 degrees for example).
Second, create a magic system that has fairly simple effects that change or create physics effects instead of directly doing damage, healing, or whatever. For example, instead of spells that do fire damage, there would be spells that simply raise the temperature. Heat damage would be dealt to PCs or NPCs based on that character's heat damage threshold. For example, if the ambient temperature is 100 degrees and you raise it by 80 degrees with a spells, then humans in the area with a heat damage of 150 degrees would start to take damage.
So you may be asking, what's the point of this system? It seems like it does what a traditional magic system does but in a more complicated manner. Before you come to that conclusion though, think about these advantages...
1. With this system, ALL of the world will react to the magical effects you create. So if you raise the temperature by 300 degrees, trees and grass may start to ignite and burn. If you raise the temperature high enough, even the ground will melt and turn to magma. You could even use a force effect to then fling this magma around. It just makes magic much more complex.
2. Environmental factors will really play into how your magic effects play out. For example, if you are in an arctic region with an ambient temperature of -30 degrees, heat magic will be much less effective. Why? Because you have to raise the temperature much more to get to the point where it starts hurting things. In a tropical environment, you may only have to raise the temperature by 50 degrees to make a harmful effect. In an arctic environment, you may have to raise it by 200 degrees to make a harmful effect. So you really need to consider your environment when you think about what magical effects you will use.
3. The possibilities are really endless and allow for very easy expansion. The only magical effect I really mentioned is raising the temperature, but you can really have TONS of effects that react differently depending where you create them. Here's a few examples:
A life effect that would heal players and cause effects like grass and flowers springing up on the ground. It could also be used to cause overgrowth that would entangle people inside of it.
Force effects that cause objects to move or be restrained (rooted) based on their weight and strength. So it would be harder to move say a 500 pound rock then it would a sword. It would also be easier to restrain a weak wizard then it would a strong warrior.
What do you guys think of a system like this?
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Comments
I came to this topic from another similar topic that you replied.
I reaaaally like your idea! It reminds me of Fairy Tail (an anime/manga), where most characters are magicians (though not the most original powers). And I said remind me, not saying it's the same.
But I wonder how that physics would work with other classes, like sword or bow users. Will a windy map affect the range and accuraccy of my arrow?
Cool, glad that you liked the idea
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And yeah, physics could definitely be used to affect many aspects of the game like you say. In fact, you could even have a system where you could use magic to create a wind and throw arrows off course, or extend their range
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The idea behind this system is to accomplish goals as a "side effect" of what you actually did with your magic. You want to start a fire? Increase the ambient temperature around wood until it ignites. You want to fly? Create a gust of wind under your and try to control it.
I mean, I'm just spitballing...this is nothing concrete, but I think a system like this could be really interesting. It will make you have to think about using magic as a problem solving tool rather than just having pre-packaged effects.
I think that any game that uses this system will have to be primarily magic based, no real mundane only classes. The whole gimmick here is magic, who would want to be a dude with a sword when so much work went into the magic system?
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Brilliant idea.
But I don't think you would need to stop with magic. This concept would work really well with non-magical weapons.
Make size matter. Make size of characters and weapons have pros and cons.
Also make races with strong and differing elemental resistances (more like in super hero genres e.g. Hellboy is fire-resistant).
To run with your force suggestion, make armor have real weight. A bigger character could have heavier armor but that would make it harder for them to dodge and make them slower to run and slower to attack. A smaller character or one in lighter armor would be faster, do more damage per second, but not be able to take as much.
Make weapons have real weight. Your giant sword does a lot of damage, is good for beating on a tank, but misses a twitchy ranger half the time.
Like makes rock, paper, scissors into:
rock, fire, water, steel, speed, defense, resistance, range, and your crucial ingredient terrain.
"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
I've always wondered how a tiny-loli could beat, in physical damage, a huge beefed up guy (maybe I've been playing too much generic games). It's not about making the game's physics like in RL, but making them more believeable (is that a word? sorry for my English).
The challenge lies in taking all of the things you're talking about and applying them when thousands of people are playing the game at the same time on the same server. You can't have thousands of people playing at the same time and give them all the ability to change the entire world around them, and reality itself. It would create total chaos in the game world.
Your ideas would be great for a single player or stand-alone co-op multiplayer game, but as an MMO? No. You can't make every person have the ability to literally change the game world around them.
While something like this has always appealed to me, Molten Core comes to mind. If you were a fire mage, you were worthless in motlen core ... and taking it further, a fire mage under what you propose would make Ragnaros stronger. Basically wow had this early on .. though not to the extent you discuss, but regardless, it didn't work for them.
Maybe with a mechanic like rift's class switching and/or dual specs it is more viable, but as many other posters are quick to point out .. who is going to take that risk?
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Having magic that interact with the enviroment is a good idea.
Another idea that would be fun is to use something similar to the p&p game mage, where you you have 12 "spheres" (or at least some of those 12) that fuels your spells but also can be mixed without a spell to create an effect depending on the situation.
But the problem with both those ideas is that they demand a lot of the programmers.
Your enviroment system could be used even further. You could let it effect the character if she have wrong clothes for the current enviroment. Wearing full plate in very hot or very cold temperatures is dangerous, the usual skimpy female "armor" would affect you badly in cold areas and so on.
I like the idea of temperature and weather mattering both for magic and melee.
I won't even begin to try and understand what goes into designing these MMO's, but all these different physics in a game world that supports thousands of players sounds pretty damn difficult to program, lol
They had some of these working features implemented into EQ II while it was still in beta... For example there were trees you could fireball and cause them to alight and crash down upon a path to block persuing enemies! There was also a demonstration of a lightning spell used on some mobs immersed in shallow water frying the intended target and damaging the rest of what was in the water. Either this was too hard to transition into reality or more probably the success of CoH and WoW impacted the design direction of the game towards a more casual experience. I'll try to find a link but have been unsuccessful before looking for this particular dev video =/.
Agreed, it is not something an indie game would get to work.
If you had a programmer like Jeff Strain you could pull it off, but you need one of the masters. I could see Rockstar or Bethesda pull it off...
This is nice and all, but like other posters have stated, entirely unrealistic to program. Lets at least get to the point where we can have something resembling a true destructible environment in MMOs before we start thinking about temperatures and melting points.
I'd also love to see some real ragdoll physics in MMOs but this is another pipe dream that would require devs to actually put in effort optimizing their engines and start targeting players with modern PCs.
The problem for me is 99% of the "magic" we think about in the MMORPGs now are from one or two of the 12 "spheres" (or I remember 5? either way). Magic is only ever used to deal dmg, heal dmg, enhance dmg, or reduce dmg... notice a trend? It bothers me that lots of interesting magic that is in literature, and PnP games has no place in MMORPGs. Something small like a light spell has become useless, illusion magic is all but forgotten... it's all been dumbed down to dmg dmg dmg.
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
Everything seems impossible until someone does it
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But anyway, I am a programmer, not a game programmer but I'm familiar with the concepts they would use to design a game. Having a physics model like I describe would be complex, but I don't think it would be impossible.
Most programmers used what is called Object Oriented programming nowadays. What this means is that every "object" in the game, whether it be a tree, a character, or a square of dirt has properties that describe it and things that it can do (methods).
For example, a tree may have properties like:
Height, weight, ignition point, density, model, etc.
And it may have methods like:
sway, ignite, fall, etc.
Objects can also react to programmer-defined events like:
Temperature change, collision detected, etc.
So to make a that would detect when a tree ignites based on a temperature change, you would have something like the following code fire whenever the temperature changes:
if (current_temp >= ignition_point) this.ignite();
It's a simple example...but hopefully it shows that this stuff isn't impossible.
I think that many of the physics things would be easier to implement then something that may seem easy to implement but isn't, like collision detection.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
It's easier to balance a game, I suppose, when everything resembling complexity in ability usage is reduced to standard healer/tank/DPS templates. Who needs things like Haste or Charm (you know, those spells we've been using in single player games since Baldur's Gate) when you can have players do nothing but mash fireballs?
Yea it's not too bad as long as it was designed that way from the start. Look at minecraft and the amazing job done with the interactions of fire, wood, lava, water etc. Of course you also see the low quality graphics which help, but its programmed in java so its tough to tell how much of an actual performance impact would be to have this type of physics in a HQ MMO.
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
This is one of the problems I have with current MMORPGs. Everyone views them as a "game" first and foremost. Things like making an intriguing virtual world or making wizards feel like wizards always take a back seat to balance and accessibility.
At some point, some developer really needs to say:
"We're going to make a game where players will actually FEEL like they are living in a fantasy world. Where wizards can do fantastic magic, thieves actually steal things, and combat isn't the end all be all of your existence. We'll try to make the game as balanced as we can, but you know what? If we have to sacrifice some balance to add a really awesome feature then we'll do it."
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Yeah it would the game engine would definitely have to be programmed with these physics from the start. There would be no adding them later. As for the graphics, I think they are more an issue of labor than performance. Rendering a tree burning isn't a horrible hit, but Minecraft doesn't have a huge art team behind them to make animations for every little physical reaction.
I think that if a physics system were programmed well and limited it could work. IMO the biggest performance hit you get will be with all of the "checks" that constantly go on. Like every object in the vicinity will have to check if it ignites when the temperature changes etc. But if you program the game engine so that it is "smart" enough to only do the checks when they are absolutely necessary I think it could work.
Also java is a notoriously inefficient language
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Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
After reading OP TP, i must say i like the idea, in theory. Reality is current available game engines cant support this feature yet (for MMO). The closest thing i can think of is "cry engine" or the one farcry 1 uses (i have very limited knowledge about this matter).
For your idea to work it requires an evolving and changing world. Weather effects, zone properties, the works. Probably in a few years will see it materlise. Nice idea though.
Setting trees on fire wouldn't be particularly difficult, at least from a technical standpoint. On the other hand, doing things like turning ground into magma is not particularly feasible with our current graphics technology. Games today currently use polygons to represent objects and landscapes, and morphing polygon models on the fly is an enormously processor intensive task that certainly would not scale well to MMOs. On the other hand if a future MMO was made using a voxel engine we may see something resembling true destructible environments.
Just cheat and fake it
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Divide the ground into squares or hexes. When the temperature of a given square of ground reaches its melting point, it runs the "turn to magma" animation and is now treated as a liquid so that it can be flung, you can sink in it, etc.
After a short amount of time it would just revert back to what it was before.
You really only have to deliver the "illusion" of physics. You don't have to exactly model things like they happen in reality.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Yeah tell you the truth, I don't think it's very feasible for current MMORPGs. Not just for technical reasons, but for practical reasons as well. MMORPGs are such huge investments and even the most traditional MMORPG can be very complicated to implement. Since this idea is a pretty radical paradigm shift, I don't think investors would want to invest in it since it's risky.
But I think it's definitely feasible for a single player game, and then if said single player game was successful, it could find its way to an MMORPG.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Overall, this idea has some merit. But, there are some issues that I can see.
Physics doesn't cover all 'magic'. Pure physics covers the four basic (alchemical) elements - fire, water, ice and air. What about the forces of life? Magicians frequently have the ability to alter another's perceptions via illusion, sensory alteration, or forced behavior (charm / fear effects). Also, how do these other magic 'forms' interact with each other? Do Charm and Fear effects support each other when cast on a single target? Can illusions interact with the physical game-world? What about pure utilitarian magic, like finding the direction to the nearest village or purifying water to drink?
Magic is rare. In most novels I read, wizards are scarce. There just aren't many wizards in the world. How does the game restrict mages? How will any game restrict just any random player from rolling up a wizard? For magic to be 'believable', it needs to be difficult, not just another 'weapons technology', as is seen in most of the current MMORPGs.
Magic is difficult. Again, what is the cost to the wizard to create these powerful effects? Mana pools that replenish automatically just make magic too simplistic. Does the wizard have to prepare spells in advance? Does the wizard have to spend time (in-game) collecting components or meditating to recover their mystic energies? Maybe their magic is 'dark' and they have to injure themselves or friends to gain a spark of energy. The point is that current games make magic abilities too frequent and too easy to achieve; nothing like most fantasy stories I've read.
Magic is situational. Most every wizard appearing in a story seems to have the 'game-changer' spell at the right time. A hoard of orcs is charging, and the wizard summons the image of a dragon to scare them off. How do players reenact this level of fictional heroics on a whim? The character's (and therefore the player's) imagination determines the form the magic takes. (This is similar to Green Lantern's ring -- it is driven by thoughts). What if the player wants a demon instead of a dragon? Or a wave of flames surging against the enemy? Or an enormous bowl of caustic oatmeal? The game physics would need to allow the player to adapt the effects of magic to the situation.
Magic has to be subordinate to and dependent on the health system. This is purely a gaming abstraction issue, not as much about literary considerations. How magic (and other special effects like disease and posion) interacts with the character's body depends a lot on how the character's health is related in game. If health is determined by the traditional HP systems, positive magical effects need to manipulate these values. If effects such as wounds, disease or posion apply penalties to actions, players will want magical ways to remove these penalties faster than a normal healing rate. The abstraction of the body's capacity to absorb punishment (including untreated recovery, treated recovery) needs to be balanced with magical recovery methods.
Magic is a peculiar force. Either it is rare (in most literary cases), or omnipresent (the current MMO condition). Balancing the effect and force of magic is a delicate operation, and most current games have only attempted to abstract these elements in the D&D tradition -- spells have fixed effects and fixed costs (mana and/or components) and restricttive casting (levels).
I'd love to see something along the lines you suggest, but I think the additional manpower necessary to create a non-traditional magic system will take a very dedicated and financially stable company.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Oh I also forgot to mention, has anyone played Magicka? I highly recommend it. You combine elements on the fly to "weave" spells together. Makes spellcasting a real skill requiring memorization and muscle memory bordering on the Street-fighter-esque move memorization. They did a decent job of making the elements ineract too, like if you use a water spell on a target electric spells will start doing more damage and fire spells will remove the water effect. Likewise fire will ignite and can be removed with water, life magic hurts undead etc. etc. Check it out
Shameless youtube video plug (I made the video, but I have no stake in Magicka)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiS2TPA16mE
I would love to see that sort of "magic" in MMOs.
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
Divide the ground into squares or hexes. When the temperature of a given square of ground reaches its melting point, it runs the "turn to magma" animation and is now treated as a liquid so that it can be flung, you can sink in it, etc.
After a short amount of time it would just revert back to what it was before.
You really only have to deliver the "illusion" of physics. You don't have to exactly model things like they happen in reality.
That's still pretty difficult to render, especially when you're dealing with a lot of player characters on massive environments. Minecraft managed it because the game looks like it could run on a Super Nintendo. People want bleeding edge graphics these days and are very unlikely to sacrifice realism for one environmental gimmick.
Because that's what they are.
Again-- because they're games. What good is it to make a wizard "feel like a wizard" if the rest of the game doesn't work? At the end of the day, you can make a world interesting from a lore perspective, or offer unique environments or whatever, but if the game doesn't work or your mechanics are next to impossible to balance, you will fail.
MMORPGs, by design, are set for thousands of players to be able to play on the same server at the same time and be able to have an enjoyable experience. Fully destructible environments, realistic physics, allowing the player to change the reality of the game world, etc. -- these things work best in stand-alone single player or co-op multiplayer games. When you're talking about thousands of players in your game at the same time, you can't have all of them directly changing or impacting the world around them at large. That's a recipe for disaster and chaos.
That's a nice sentiment, but the chance of any major developer saying those things is pretty much nil. The scale and expense of developing an MMO prevents it, just by design.