Slow travel and fast travel are used in games for specific reasons.
If the game design uses things like territorial control, resource control, exploration, economics of trade or many other things that fast travel invalidates then having fast travel is not a good thing to have.
Fast travel is used when travelling between locations offers no additional game play, where economics require nothing more then a glorified central hub, where exploration is meaningless, where players have no influence over a 'world' and usually because a game is on rails and a long progression of whacking moles for shiny rewards. And of course for convenience to avoid parts of the game that are boring or just to get to the juicy parts of the game.
Some games need slow travel to work.
Some games need fast travel to work.
Some people play games that require fast travel to work.
Some players play games that require slow travel to work.
At the end of the day though, having either fast travel in ALL games or slow travel in ALL games is poor design if you do not consider how either method of travel will affect the greater game design.
No, that's wrong:
It's been explained several times how territory control, resource control, and economics of trade do not require the player themselves to endure slow travel.
As a result travel isn't offering additional gameplay, and so by your own admission fast travel should be used.
The remaining mechanic you mention is exploration. With fast travel you must explore someplace first to fast travel to that location. So fast travel doesn't invalidate exploration or cause it to be "meaningless".
If you're unwilling to read the thread or think through the problem yourself, I'm willing to do that for you by repeating the details. Just let me know.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Also, you can mix it up a bit. In P&P roleplaying the DM tend to skip the boring parts of traveling and focus on the interesting and dangerous stuff. A MMO could easily allow fast traveling in the safer areas but not in the unexplored wilderness. Or it could allow you to fast travel to an area you already been to in the last day or week.
The whole thing is that traveling can be very fun or incredible boring. Skip the boring parts and add more content to the fun.
I'm not sure you understand how often fast travel is used in tabletop RPGs.
How common was it that your DM forced you to manually move every single square when you were in City A and told them you wanted to travel to City B?
Probably never.
That's fast travel!
They didn't have you manually move every single square of the map. Instead, they said, "Okay it takes 9 days to reach City B." Or they rolled the dice and said, "3 days into travel you're encamped in the forest and awakened by a noise..."
That's all fast travel. No DM worth playing with made you step through every single square of travel. Instead, they skipped to the interesting events.
"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 been explained several times how territory control, resource control, and economics of trade do not require the player themselves to endure slow travel.
As a result travel isn't offering additional gameplay, and so by your own admission fast travel should be used.
The remaining mechanic you mention is exploration. With fast travel you must explore someplace first to fast travel to that location. So fast travel doesn't invalidate exploration or cause it to be "meaningless".
If you're unwilling to read the thread or think through the problem yourself, I'm willing to do that for you by repeating the details. Just let me know.
1. Repeating something doesn't make it true.
And I disagree, taking my line from how strategy games use time and distance to get a player to make strategic choices. Fast travel means you don't have to think through resource allocation in terms of players and their position on the map.
If a defender can fast travel between points of contention then you cannot do things like fake an attack to draw out the enemy from a stronghold to defend the wrong target of the attack. You cannot strategically position forces to create a blockade if the enemy can fast travel behind.
The list of how fast travel invalidates strategic gameplay in an MMO is extensive.
And moving resources where predicting market trends relies entirely on there not being an instant move to the market is destroyed if you can simply sell something anywhere no mater where the resource comes from. The entire premise of the commodities market relies on predicting the market value of a particular product in a particular market at a given time.
2. See point 1 and 3. If you start off with a faulty premise every other argument will automatically fail.
3. Only if you have a static, non changing map does opening fast points as part of exploration work. If the world was not static between point A and point B then exploration would always be better then fast travel. Fast travel indicates a static, non changing, boring world otherwise no one would want fast travel.
And I disagree, taking my line from how strategy games use time and distance to get a player to make strategic choices. Fast travel means you don't have to think through resource allocation in terms of players and their position on the map.
If a defender can fast travel between points of contention then you cannot do things like fake an attack to draw out the enemy from a stronghold to defend the wrong target of the attack. You cannot strategically position forces to create a blockade if the enemy can fast travel behind.
The list of how fast travel invalidates strategic gameplay in an MMO is extensive.
And moving resources where predicting market trends relies entirely on there not being an instant move to the market is destroyed if you can simply sell something anywhere no mater where the resource comes from. The entire premise of the commodities market relies on predicting the market value of a particular product in a particular market at a given time.
2. See point 1 and 3. If you start off with a faulty premise every other argument will automatically fail.
3. Only if you have a static, non changing map does opening fast points as part of exploration work. If the world was not static between point A and point B then exploration would always be better then fast travel. Fast travel indicates a static, non changing, boring world otherwise no one would want fast travel.
What are you talking about?
Strategy games are the proof that players themselves don't need to be the ones enduring slow travel!
In an RTS game you're making a nonstop series of decisions in real-time. While it takes time for units to carry out your orders, that in no way slows your personal rate of decisions because you yourself can fast-travel (via the minimap) to any location to perform even more decisions.
In a TBS you're making a nonstop series of decisions too. You make decisions for your civilization/race, hit next turn, and you're almost immediately making decisions again the next turn. So in both types of strategy games you can fast travel (minimap teleport to any location) but they work because your ability to affect the world is limited by many smaller agents that you command (who cannot fast travel.)
MMORPGs are very different, since you're personally shackled with enduring slow travel and it involves almost no decisions (and those decisions are shallow.)
Street Fighter V understands that it's a game about one character. It has strategic decisions (character selection and playstyle) and tactical decisions (normal/special abilities). It has feints and mind-games but they take the appropriate scale of a one-character game: my character attacks low several times in a row, and just when it seems like that's the only thing I'm going to do I leap in with a throw while they've frozen up blocking low.
This knowledge leaves two possibilities for MMORPGs:
Option 1: MMORPGs can embrace the fact that they're about one character, and have the strategy and tactics take shape within that one character. As with Street Fighter V, combat (or whatever actions the game has) would be deep enough that the game would provide a rich tapestry of decision-making (both tactical and strategic). This requires either fast travel, or travel gameplay vastly deeper than what we see in MMORPGs currently.
Option 2: MMORPGs could try to be more like strategy games, with distributed player agency. This means most or all of your ability to interact with the world comes from Followers of your main character who enact your commands but cannot fast travel. Meanwhile your main character could still fast travel, just as you can zip across a minimap in a strategy game.
Either option keeps the focus on gameplay, and avoids having a substantial portion of the game feel like a waste of time.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I would also add that it's hard to say a forest is dark and foreboding if you can fast travel to it, from it, and around it like a walk in the park.
One other issue is that if people can fast travel they will all be going to the same points in the world in most cases as they are directed there. If people are forced into exploring they will happen on different various places.
Of course you can. Put a forest level together, drop the player into ... dark & foreboding instantly. No slow travel needed.
If you don't like seeing too many players at the same point, just instanced the world, and drop a small number into each.
Better yet, each player has their own, dynamic world, and they can invite (or happen randomly) others to join them.
I think that's exactly how to trivialize a dark and foreboding forest.
As I said if you can avoid an area or quickly travel out of it by clicking on a faster travel point then it's no longer a dangerous place to worry about on your journey through the world. It's and optional place to go that you can avoid. When I played EQ I had to choose to go through Beholder's Maze and Runneye or Highpass Hold on my way to Freeport. Both were maze like areas with nasty monsters. It made the journey perilous until high level.
It is trivial to make the encounter unavoidable.
You click on fast travel to point B ... randomly, with no player control, you are dropped into a dark forest and you have to finish an encounter before fast travel is active again.
So no walking around .. and still get the fun encounter that cannot be avoided. Simple.
3. Only if you have a static, non changing map does opening fast points as part of exploration work. If the world was not static between point A and point B then exploration would always be better then fast travel. Fast travel indicates a static, non changing, boring world otherwise no one would want fast travel.
nah ... "not static" does not mean fun.
If you going from point A to B is full of non-stop fun .. sure. If you may as well make that a linear level.
Surely you can drop random monsters and call it "non static" .. but then, it is no different than fighting trash in an instance dungeon, and I would not call that "travel".
Strategy games are the proof that players themselves don't need to be the ones enduring slow travel!
In an RTS game you're making a nonstop series of decisions in real-time. While it takes time for units to carry out your orders, that in no way slows your personal rate of decisions because you yourself can fast-travel (via the minimap) to any location to perform even more decisions.
In a TBS you're making a nonstop series of decisions too. You make decisions for your civilization/race, hit next turn, and you're almost immediately making decisions again the next turn. So in both types of strategy games you can fast travel (minimap teleport to any location) but they work because your ability to affect the world is limited by many smaller agents that you command (who cannot fast travel.)
I used Strategy games to make the point easier to understand because you didn't seem to understand the MMO implecations
MMORPGs are very different, since you're personally shackled with enduring slow travel and it involves almost no decisions (and those decisions are shallow.)
Street Fighter V understands that it's a game about one character. It has strategic decisions (character selection and playstyle) and tactical decisions (normal/special abilities). It has feints and mind-games but they take the appropriate scale of a one-character game: my character attacks low several times in a row, and just when it seems like that's the only thing I'm going to do I leap in with a throw while they've frozen up blocking low.
This knowledge leaves two possibilities for MMORPGs:
Option 1: MMORPGs can embrace the fact that they're about one character, and have the strategy and tactics take shape within that one character. As with Street Fighter V, combat (or whatever actions the game has) would be deep enough that the game would provide a rich tapestry of decision-making (both tactical and strategic). This requires either fast travel, or travel gameplay vastly deeper than what we see in MMORPGs currently.
Option 2: MMORPGs could try to be more like strategy games, with distributed player agency. This means most or all of your ability to interact with the world comes from Followers of your main character who enact your commands but cannot fast travel. Meanwhile your main character could still fast travel, just as you can zip across a minimap in a strategy game.
Either option keeps the focus on gameplay, and avoids having a substantial portion of the game feel like a waste of time.
So....
The enemy are attacking 2 castles. My character can choose to defend castle A or castle B.
With fast travel I go to castle A, realize it is safe and fast travel to castle B to defend it.
Without fast travel I go to castle A, realize it is safe and also realize castle B is under attack and I do not have the time to defend it because I have to take the time to travel there. You also might run the risk of being ambushed on the way as it would be an obvious route to take.
One of those situations invalidates strategy and weighted choices, the other does not.
I cannot help you if you fail to understand that point even after trying to use strategy games to make it perfectly obvious why fast travel is not suitable in certain types of game.
The enemy are attacking 2 castles. My character can choose to defend castle A or castle B.
With fast travel I go to castle A, realize it is safe and fast travel to castle B to defend it.
Without fast travel I go to castle A, realize it is safe and also realize castle B is under attack and I do not have the time to defend it because I have to take the time to travel there. You also might run the risk of being ambushed on the way as it would be an obvious route to take.
One of those situations invalidates strategy and weighted choices, the other does not.
Instanced the game, problem solved.
No one says when you fast travel, time does not past in the game. It is only fast FOR YOU. This is like "sleeping" in a game like Fallout 4 .. you click a button, and you wake up 8 hours later .. instantly.
In your case, if you click fast travel to castle A, B's battle can be advanced hours in game time. In fact, that kind of things happened all the time in linear single player games. You choose A then you cannot do B.
You just need to adapt it to a MMO .. the easiest way is you have your own world, and other players can join your world.
I would also add that it's hard to say a forest is dark and foreboding if you can fast travel to it, from it, and around it like a walk in the park.
One other issue is that if people can fast travel they will all be going to the same points in the world in most cases as they are directed there. If people are forced into exploring they will happen on different various places.
Of course you can. Put a forest level together, drop the player into ... dark & foreboding instantly. No slow travel needed.
If you don't like seeing too many players at the same point, just instanced the world, and drop a small number into each.
Better yet, each player has their own, dynamic world, and they can invite (or happen randomly) others to join them.
I think that's exactly how to trivialize a dark and foreboding forest.
As I said if you can avoid an area or quickly travel out of it by clicking on a faster travel point then it's no longer a dangerous place to worry about on your journey through the world. It's and optional place to go that you can avoid. When I played EQ I had to choose to go through Beholder's Maze and Runneye or Highpass Hold on my way to Freeport. Both were maze like areas with nasty monsters. It made the journey perilous until high level.
It is trivial to make the encounter unavoidable.
You click on fast travel to point B ... randomly, with no player control, you are dropped into a dark forest and you have to finish an encounter before fast travel is active again.
So no walking around .. and still get the fun encounter that cannot be avoided. Simple.
That is not the same thing as one gives you a long journey and the other is still just skipping over it. All you have to beat is one encounter. Part of the challenge is just finding your way safely through the maze like areas. Even if you do it once it can be tricky if designed right.
No one says when you fast travel, time does not past in the game. It is only fast FOR YOU. This is like "sleeping" in a game like Fallout 4 .. you click a button, and you wake up 8 hours later .. instantly.
I will bite just this once because I am curious just how you are going to make time stop but...
Explain how it works in a multiplayer game. More precisely, while the 8 hours has instantly skipped for my character does that mean I cannot act for 8 hours till the rest of the thousands of players catch up to my time?
I think you just don't get how multiplayer works. Or as usual you are playing dumb because you want to annoy people having a reasonable discussion.
Let's stop this altogether that you can fast travel to any tactically significant place or that you can fast travel at any time to any place. It is not possible in any game. No one suggests that. That would be stupid. So just stop right there. Its a strawman argument.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
The enemy are attacking 2 castles. My character can choose to defend castle A or castle B.
With fast travel I go to castle A, realize it is safe and fast travel to castle B to defend it.
Without fast travel I go to castle A, realize it is safe and also realize castle B is under attack and I do not have the time to defend it because I have to take the time to travel there. You also might run the risk of being ambushed on the way as it would be an obvious route to take.
One of those situations invalidates strategy and weighted choices, the other does not.
I cannot help you if you fail to understand that point even after trying to use strategy games to make it perfectly obvious why fast travel is not suitable in certain types of game.
'One design of game does NOT fits all'.
You seem to be assuming those are the only types of strategy.
Meanwhile in game like Battlefield, multiple objectives ("castles") across a map are frequently being contested. Spending 10 seconds to check the wrong objective (Point A) and then traveling a brief 15 seconds to the right objective (Point is enough time for you to have lost Point B.
So just because you're very eager to ignore the variety of ways games offer the exact same depth* without excessive slow travel doesn't mean that's the only way to do it. As we've seen from both PVP in FPS, RTS, and TBS games, you just don't need excessive slow travel to have deep tactics and strategy.
(*Actually the depth in these example games is deeper than the depth of MMORPG world PVP by a longshot. Not only do you spend much more of your time in a shallow activity in world PVP (slow travel), but you have even bigger factors like population imbalances which make it extremely unlikely that combat will be deep in the first place.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The enemy are attacking 2 castles. My character can choose to defend castle A or castle B.
With fast travel I go to castle A, realize it is safe and fast travel to castle B to defend it.
Without fast travel I go to castle A, realize it is safe and also realize castle B is under attack and I do not have the time to defend it because I have to take the time to travel there. You also might run the risk of being ambushed on the way as it would be an obvious route to take.
One of those situations invalidates strategy and weighted choices, the other does not.
I cannot help you if you fail to understand that point even after trying to use strategy games to make it perfectly obvious why fast travel is not suitable in certain types of game.
'One design of game does NOT fits all'.
You seem to be assuming those are the only types of strategy.
Meanwhile in game like Battlefield, multiple objectives ("castles") across a map are frequently being contested. Spending 10 seconds to check the wrong objective (Point A) and then traveling a brief 15 seconds to the right objective (Point is enough time for you to have lost Point B.
Just wanted to note a few things.
For one, travel in games like Battlefield tends to take longer than 15 seconds. If all you're talking about are the small scale maps where they can't even fit the vehicles into the environment in order to make that 15 second claim, then you are already running into the next issue that the game has intentionally cut complexity and depth by removing the vehicles and other aspects of the game in order to deliver that more concentrated fast-pace experience.
If you're talking about a full/scale conquest map in Battlefield, hoofing it between locations can take a good amount of time. "Fast travel" as provided by vehicles and such is balanced in that game with the increased likelihood of being spotted and attacked, leading to additional depth of it's own.
An additional mistake you made previously with the RTS mechanics is the supposed "nonstop series of decisions in real-time". Most everything you can do in an RTS takes considerably more time than takes for you to press a button. Queuing units to build, tech to research, soldiers to move, etc.You can pan about a map clicking like a rabid squirrel all ya want in an RTS, that's not gonna make those timers move any faster.
Even in the advent of micromanaging a game you are going to spend a good amount of time on the mundane non-optional tasks to simply accrue your forces in order to get to the parts where you make any sort of meaningful decision. The frequency with which RTS' turn into waiting games as you watch your resources tick back and forth is one of their most prevalent features.
Also worth noting that the games that semantically show the most depth on the RTS or strategy as a global genre are in fact the turn based games or the slower paced titles like Age of Empires 2 where you spend quite a bit of time on scouting, research, and fortification while building your armies rather than any kind of constant action. If you dare to contrast the likes of an RTS like Starcraft to the likes of a TBS such as Civilization, you'll find quite a leap in depth of choice as the Civ titles offer a much more layered set of choices that a fast paced game would simply never be able to reasonably handle.
For another correction, you presented a false dichotomy in the options you presented as a solution. This can be proven as easily as stating a third option.
Option 3: Players control a single avatar and interact through that character directly, and the game builds it's gameplay to capitalize on that element by investing in features that allows that player to interact with a world that is sufficiently populated with meaningful activities and consequences. Give the activities players participate in more depth through seeded events, territories that can change in threat or value, a fluid ecosystem (IE NPC goods change in value over time, creatures migrate, NPC bandits respond to common trade routes/conflicts, etc) in which the characters can interact to gain greater rewards.
Perhaps the single largest mistake you continue to make is treating the genre and the platform upon which it is designed as if it were the same for every game. MMOs fundamentally are established on a client-server model that allows for unique gameplay through it's persistence, scale, and the complexity of the server coordinating everything. Taking an entire genre and removing every novel feature to emulate other types of games is certainly a solution for avoiding any learning problems a developer might have, but it does not deliver a better experience for the genre itself.
An instanced game where the most you ever interact with people is in small crowds for dungeons and the entire user experience is fast traveling/warping to the next dungeon? You might as well drop the pretense and use a peer to peer model and let the players host their own matches again.
"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
No one says when you fast travel, time does not past in the game. It is only fast FOR YOU. This is like "sleeping" in a game like Fallout 4 .. you click a button, and you wake up 8 hours later .. instantly.
I will bite just this once because I am curious just how you are going to make time stop but...
Explain how it works in a multiplayer game. More precisely, while the 8 hours has instantly skipped for my character does that mean I cannot act for 8 hours till the rest of the thousands of players catch up to my time?
Very simple. Think Borderland 2, or Diablo 3 .. ONE player .. say A is the "owner" of the world. When he skips time, you skip time with him.
It is his world. Other players are just guests. So he click a button ... you world time advances by 8 hours.
I don't think you grasp the difference between a instanced world, and a persistent world. The trick is forget about persistency, and use one player as the anchor.
Very simple. Think Borderland 2, or Diablo 3 .. ONE player .. say A is the "owner" of the world. When he skips time, you skip time with him.
It is his world. Other players are just guests. So he click a button ... you world time advances by 8 hours.
I don't think you grasp the difference between a instanced world, and a persistent world. The trick is forget about persistency, and use one player as the anchor.
Yes yes, the best way to fix MMOS is to make them not MMOs.
Because that makes sense....
"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
Yes yes, the best way to fix MMOS is to make them not MMOs.
Because that makes sense....
yeh ... if the core of MMOs are flawed ... make something else .. and may be reused the label. No one says MMOs need to survive.
BTW, MMOs like World of Tank is fine. Just those old style MMORPGs are losing popularity. So just make hybrids, or non-MMOs. Let websites debate if they should be call MMOs or not.
Very simple. Think Borderland 2, or Diablo 3 .. ONE player .. say A is the "owner" of the world. When he skips time, you skip time with him.
It is his world. Other players are just guests. So he click a button ... you world time advances by 8 hours.
I don't think you grasp the difference between a instanced world, and a persistent world. The trick is forget about persistency, and use one player as the anchor.
Yes yes, the best way to fix MMOS is to make them not MMOs.
Because that makes sense....
He is serious....and that is the problem with him.
He is serious....and that is the problem with him.
Why is it a problem? No one says everything should cheer on traditional MMORPGs to continue?
In fact, i am here precisely because old traditional MMORPGs are changing into something different. You may not want to call those games MMOs ... but they are better games for me, and others. And what to call them .. is just semantics.
Very simple. Think Borderland 2, or Diablo 3 .. ONE player .. say A is the "owner" of the world. When he skips time, you skip time with him.
It is his world. Other players are just guests. So he click a button ... you world time advances by 8 hours.
I don't think you grasp the difference between a instanced world, and a persistent world. The trick is forget about persistency, and use one player as the anchor.
Yes yes, the best way to fix MMOS is to make them not MMOs.
Because that makes sense....
He is serious....and that is the problem with him.
He is a board warrior for the "NotMMO", "Instances is the New World", "You'll eat what we give you and you'll like it, buster" genre.
Well it's not like instances and stuff are bad. Problem is Nariu suggests taking it to the point where there is no distinction between an "MMO" and a traditional multiplayer game you'd play like Neverwinter Nights.
The problem then being, it's not an MMO and the whole point is moot. If we want a smaller scale multiplayer game with no persistence or otherwise then we'll play games like Borderlands, Neverwinter Nights, Grim Dawn, etc because they already exist. You don't need to adapt an entirely different genre into it, that's entirely redundant.
MMOs are like simulator games and otherwise, they are a niche. Trying to force them into a type of game that does not suit or capitalize on the framework is just nonsense.
"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
Well it's not like instances and stuff are bad. Problem is Nariu suggests taking it to the point where there is no distinction between an "MMO" and a traditional multiplayer game you'd play like Neverwinter Nights.
The problem then being, it's not an MMO and the whole point is moot. If we want a smaller scale multiplayer game with no persistence or otherwise then we'll play games like Borderlands, Neverwinter Nights, Grim Dawn, etc because they already exist. You don't need to adapt an entirely different genre into it, that's entirely redundant.
MMOs are like simulator games and otherwise, they are a niche. Trying to force them into a type of game that does not suit or capitalize on the framework is just nonsense.
Its not nonsense. Its smart. If your innovation or the popular demand takes you out of the framework of MMORPGs then so be it. The objective is to make a game fun. You should do everything you can to make the game more fun.
Making good games is hard enough as it is. You don't need to handicap yourself.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Its not nonsense. Its smart. If your innovation or the popular demand takes you out of the framework of MMORPGs then so be it. The objective is to make a game fun. You should do everything you can to make the game more fun.
Making good games is hard enough as it is. You don't need to handicap yourself.
If you want to slap an MMO label on a lobby game that's your preogative. Don't go bullshitting me and expect me to approve.
The argument that you just chose to support is that of Nariu's where he suggested turning them all into titles like "world of tanks", "borderlands 2", or "diablo 3". Like I said previously, they can be certainly fine games, in their own genre. To make a game that has no relation to MMOs and call it one, though, is simply nonsense.
So you can claim it's not nonsensical to call apples oranges if you wish. I'm not going to pretend such an opinion is smart or informed.
The objective of a developer certainly should be to make a game fun. Then why, pray tell, do we have such variety ad farming and plane simulators, the penultimate mob grinders such as D3, the likes of Dragon's Dogma, or the "hard" and "unforgiving" titles like the dark souls series?
Because "fun" is sought out in many aspects of gameplay. To label a single component "un-fun" and completely disregard all the value and gameplay that is and can be built around it to generate entertainment is not a rational choice. It is the opinion of someone that sees only either their idea of fun, or are incapable of thinking beyond the design that they have been taught to believe in.
The point here is to stop interjecting preferences and opinion before the actual potentials of the given game elements and genre. It's already been explained and proven that time and travel are integral components to a wide variety of games on a rather fundamental level. Removing them and reducing their role to the minimum in order to focus on "action" is ultimately to the detriment of many forms of game depth (as pointed out in the example of turn based strategies like Civ versus real time like Starcraft).
If maximizing fun is really your interest, then take a step back and ask the question of "What can we take advantage of and evolve in these systems?" rather than "This is underdeveloped, lets make something else and just slap a label on it."
Post edited by Deivos on
"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 can feel free to try and convince me that calling a game like Borderlands with a peer to peer model and 1/4 the user experience being loading screens as they load their way through every encounter is sensible to call an MMO. That's gonna be a rather difficult task though.
If you, axe, and nariu want to take the MMO genre and not make or play MMOs, then I'm sorry but I have to ask why you are even looking at the genre. Why are you not simply playing the ARPG, MOBA, FPS, Lobby games, etc that are already exactly what you are saying MMO's need to apparently become?
You don't buy a pie and then complain that it's not cake-like when you could have simply gotten a cake. You don't buy a motorcycle and complain it doesn't have four wheels. If you want something and it already exists, the most rational course of action is to obtain that, not get something completely different and "fix" it until it's entirely different. Nonsense is the most applicable word there is for the circumstance.
Dismissing game mechanics outright because they have flaws does nothing to grow any game genre. The smart person looks to offer something novel, interesting, and subsequently meaningful by tinkering with things, looking for new potentials, and coming up with new ways to capitalize on what's available. Abandoning progress to fall back on wedging squares into round holes is an act of those who lack quality design skills.
"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
Well it's not like instances and stuff are bad. Problem is Nariu suggests taking it to the point where there is no distinction between an "MMO" and a traditional multiplayer game you'd play like Neverwinter Nights.
The problem then being, it's not an MMO and the whole point is moot. If we want a smaller scale multiplayer game with no persistence or otherwise then we'll play games like Borderlands, Neverwinter Nights, Grim Dawn, etc because they already exist. You don't need to adapt an entirely different genre into it, that's entirely redundant.
MMOs are like simulator games and otherwise, they are a niche. Trying to force them into a type of game that does not suit or capitalize on the framework is just nonsense.
Its not nonsense. Its smart. If your innovation or the popular demand takes you out of the framework of MMORPGs then so be it. The objective is to make a game fun. You should do everything you can to make the game more fun.
Making good games is hard enough as it is. You don't need to handicap yourself.
It's about as smart as making a motorcycle 5000 pounds with 5 doors cabin... just make a truck and not an abomination of ideas of another product. If you're not using the framework why have the framework?
Well it's not like instances and stuff are bad. Problem is Nariu suggests taking it to the point where there is no distinction between an "MMO" and a traditional multiplayer game you'd play like Neverwinter Nights.
The problem then being, it's not an MMO and the whole point is moot. If we want a smaller scale multiplayer game with no persistence or otherwise then we'll play games like Borderlands, Neverwinter Nights, Grim Dawn, etc because they already exist. You don't need to adapt an entirely different genre into it, that's entirely redundant.
MMOs are like simulator games and otherwise, they are a niche. Trying to force them into a type of game that does not suit or capitalize on the framework is just nonsense.
Its not nonsense. Its smart. If your innovation or the popular demand takes you out of the framework of MMORPGs then so be it. The objective is to make a game fun. You should do everything you can to make the game more fun.
Making good games is hard enough as it is. You don't need to handicap yourself.
It's about as smart as making a motorcycle 5000 pounds with 5 doors cabin... just make a truck and not an abomination of ideas of another product. If you're not using the framework why have the framework?
Puzzling why this is even a discussion at all; should be pretty straight forward and common sense.
The land of the modern gamer is quite the spectacle to behold.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Comments
- It's been explained several times how territory control, resource control, and economics of trade do not require the player themselves to endure slow travel.
- As a result travel isn't offering additional gameplay, and so by your own admission fast travel should be used.
- The remaining mechanic you mention is exploration. With fast travel you must explore someplace first to fast travel to that location. So fast travel doesn't invalidate exploration or cause it to be "meaningless".
If you're unwilling to read the thread or think through the problem yourself, I'm willing to do that for you by repeating the details. Just let me know."What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I'm not sure you understand how often fast travel is used in tabletop RPGs.
- How common was it that your DM forced you to manually move every single square when you were in City A and told them you wanted to travel to City B?
Probably never.That's fast travel!
They didn't have you manually move every single square of the map. Instead, they said, "Okay it takes 9 days to reach City B." Or they rolled the dice and said, "3 days into travel you're encamped in the forest and awakened by a noise..."
That's all fast travel. No DM worth playing with made you step through every single square of travel. Instead, they skipped to the interesting events.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
And I disagree, taking my line from how strategy games use time and distance to get a player to make strategic choices. Fast travel means you don't have to think through resource allocation in terms of players and their position on the map.
If a defender can fast travel between points of contention then you cannot do things like fake an attack to draw out the enemy from a stronghold to defend the wrong target of the attack. You cannot strategically position forces to create a blockade if the enemy can fast travel behind.
The list of how fast travel invalidates strategic gameplay in an MMO is extensive.
And moving resources where predicting market trends relies entirely on there not being an instant move to the market is destroyed if you can simply sell something anywhere no mater where the resource comes from. The entire premise of the commodities market relies on predicting the market value of a particular product in a particular market at a given time.
2. See point 1 and 3. If you start off with a faulty premise every other argument will automatically fail.
3. Only if you have a static, non changing map does opening fast points as part of exploration work. If the world was not static between point A and point B then exploration would always be better then fast travel. Fast travel indicates a static, non changing, boring world otherwise no one would want fast travel.
Strategy games are the proof that players themselves don't need to be the ones enduring slow travel!
In an RTS game you're making a nonstop series of decisions in real-time. While it takes time for units to carry out your orders, that in no way slows your personal rate of decisions because you yourself can fast-travel (via the minimap) to any location to perform even more decisions.
In a TBS you're making a nonstop series of decisions too. You make decisions for your civilization/race, hit next turn, and you're almost immediately making decisions again the next turn. So in both types of strategy games you can fast travel (minimap teleport to any location) but they work because your ability to affect the world is limited by many smaller agents that you command (who cannot fast travel.)
MMORPGs are very different, since you're personally shackled with enduring slow travel and it involves almost no decisions (and those decisions are shallow.)
Street Fighter V understands that it's a game about one character. It has strategic decisions (character selection and playstyle) and tactical decisions (normal/special abilities). It has feints and mind-games but they take the appropriate scale of a one-character game: my character attacks low several times in a row, and just when it seems like that's the only thing I'm going to do I leap in with a throw while they've frozen up blocking low.
This knowledge leaves two possibilities for MMORPGs:
- Option 1: MMORPGs can embrace the fact that they're about one character, and have the strategy and tactics take shape within that one character. As with Street Fighter V, combat (or whatever actions the game has) would be deep enough that the game would provide a rich tapestry of decision-making (both tactical and strategic). This requires either fast travel, or travel gameplay vastly deeper than what we see in MMORPGs currently.
- Option 2: MMORPGs could try to be more like strategy games, with distributed player agency. This means most or all of your ability to interact with the world comes from Followers of your main character who enact your commands but cannot fast travel. Meanwhile your main character could still fast travel, just as you can zip across a minimap in a strategy game.
Either option keeps the focus on gameplay, and avoids having a substantial portion of the game feel like a waste of time."What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You click on fast travel to point B ... randomly, with no player control, you are dropped into a dark forest and you have to finish an encounter before fast travel is active again.
So no walking around .. and still get the fun encounter that cannot be avoided. Simple.
nah ... "not static" does not mean fun.
If you going from point A to B is full of non-stop fun .. sure. If you may as well make that a linear level.
Surely you can drop random monsters and call it "non static" .. but then, it is no different than fighting trash in an instance dungeon, and I would not call that "travel".
The enemy are attacking 2 castles.
My character can choose to defend castle A or castle B.
With fast travel I go to castle A, realize it is safe and fast travel to castle B to defend it.
Without fast travel I go to castle A, realize it is safe and also realize castle B is under attack and I do not have the time to defend it because I have to take the time to travel there. You also might run the risk of being ambushed on the way as it would be an obvious route to take.
One of those situations invalidates strategy and weighted choices, the other does not.
I cannot help you if you fail to understand that point even after trying to use strategy games to make it perfectly obvious why fast travel is not suitable in certain types of game.
'One design of game does NOT fits all'.
No one says when you fast travel, time does not past in the game. It is only fast FOR YOU. This is like "sleeping" in a game like Fallout 4 .. you click a button, and you wake up 8 hours later .. instantly.
In your case, if you click fast travel to castle A, B's battle can be advanced hours in game time. In fact, that kind of things happened all the time in linear single player games. You choose A then you cannot do B.
You just need to adapt it to a MMO .. the easiest way is you have your own world, and other players can join your world.
Explain how it works in a multiplayer game. More precisely, while the 8 hours has instantly skipped for my character does that mean I cannot act for 8 hours till the rest of the thousands of players catch up to my time?
I think you just don't get how multiplayer works. Or as usual you are playing dumb because you want to annoy people having a reasonable discussion.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Meanwhile in game like Battlefield, multiple objectives ("castles") across a map are frequently being contested. Spending 10 seconds to check the wrong objective (Point A) and then traveling a brief 15 seconds to the right objective (Point
So just because you're very eager to ignore the variety of ways games offer the exact same depth* without excessive slow travel doesn't mean that's the only way to do it. As we've seen from both PVP in FPS, RTS, and TBS games, you just don't need excessive slow travel to have deep tactics and strategy.
(*Actually the depth in these example games is deeper than the depth of MMORPG world PVP by a longshot. Not only do you spend much more of your time in a shallow activity in world PVP (slow travel), but you have even bigger factors like population imbalances which make it extremely unlikely that combat will be deep in the first place.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
For one, travel in games like Battlefield tends to take longer than 15 seconds. If all you're talking about are the small scale maps where they can't even fit the vehicles into the environment in order to make that 15 second claim, then you are already running into the next issue that the game has intentionally cut complexity and depth by removing the vehicles and other aspects of the game in order to deliver that more concentrated fast-pace experience.
If you're talking about a full/scale conquest map in Battlefield, hoofing it between locations can take a good amount of time. "Fast travel" as provided by vehicles and such is balanced in that game with the increased likelihood of being spotted and attacked, leading to additional depth of it's own.
An additional mistake you made previously with the RTS mechanics is the supposed "nonstop series of decisions in real-time". Most everything you can do in an RTS takes considerably more time than takes for you to press a button. Queuing units to build, tech to research, soldiers to move, etc.You can pan about a map clicking like a rabid squirrel all ya want in an RTS, that's not gonna make those timers move any faster.
Even in the advent of micromanaging a game you are going to spend a good amount of time on the mundane non-optional tasks to simply accrue your forces in order to get to the parts where you make any sort of meaningful decision. The frequency with which RTS' turn into waiting games as you watch your resources tick back and forth is one of their most prevalent features.
Also worth noting that the games that semantically show the most depth on the RTS or strategy as a global genre are in fact the turn based games or the slower paced titles like Age of Empires 2 where you spend quite a bit of time on scouting, research, and fortification while building your armies rather than any kind of constant action. If you dare to contrast the likes of an RTS like Starcraft to the likes of a TBS such as Civilization, you'll find quite a leap in depth of choice as the Civ titles offer a much more layered set of choices that a fast paced game would simply never be able to reasonably handle.
For another correction, you presented a false dichotomy in the options you presented as a solution. This can be proven as easily as stating a third option.
Option 3: Players control a single avatar and interact through that character directly, and the game builds it's gameplay to capitalize on that element by investing in features that allows that player to interact with a world that is sufficiently populated with meaningful activities and consequences. Give the activities players participate in more depth through seeded events, territories that can change in threat or value, a fluid ecosystem (IE NPC goods change in value over time, creatures migrate, NPC bandits respond to common trade routes/conflicts, etc) in which the characters can interact to gain greater rewards.
Perhaps the single largest mistake you continue to make is treating the genre and the platform upon which it is designed as if it were the same for every game. MMOs fundamentally are established on a client-server model that allows for unique gameplay through it's persistence, scale, and the complexity of the server coordinating everything. Taking an entire genre and removing every novel feature to emulate other types of games is certainly a solution for avoiding any learning problems a developer might have, but it does not deliver a better experience for the genre itself.
An instanced game where the most you ever interact with people is in small crowds for dungeons and the entire user experience is fast traveling/warping to the next dungeon? You might as well drop the pretense and use a peer to peer model and let the players host their own matches again.
"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
It is his world. Other players are just guests. So he click a button ... you world time advances by 8 hours.
I don't think you grasp the difference between a instanced world, and a persistent world. The trick is forget about persistency, and use one player as the anchor.
Yes yes, the best way to fix MMOS is to make them not MMOs.
Because that makes sense....
"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
BTW, MMOs like World of Tank is fine. Just those old style MMORPGs are losing popularity. So just make hybrids, or non-MMOs. Let websites debate if they should be call MMOs or not.
In fact, i am here precisely because old traditional MMORPGs are changing into something different. You may not want to call those games MMOs ... but they are better games for me, and others. And what to call them .. is just semantics.
[mod edit]
Once upon a time....
The problem then being, it's not an MMO and the whole point is moot. If we want a smaller scale multiplayer game with no persistence or otherwise then we'll play games like Borderlands, Neverwinter Nights, Grim Dawn, etc because they already exist. You don't need to adapt an entirely different genre into it, that's entirely redundant.
MMOs are like simulator games and otherwise, they are a niche. Trying to force them into a type of game that does not suit or capitalize on the framework is just nonsense.
"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
Making good games is hard enough as it is. You don't need to handicap yourself.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
The argument that you just chose to support is that of Nariu's where he suggested turning them all into titles like "world of tanks", "borderlands 2", or "diablo 3". Like I said previously, they can be certainly fine games, in their own genre. To make a game that has no relation to MMOs and call it one, though, is simply nonsense.
So you can claim it's not nonsensical to call apples oranges if you wish. I'm not going to pretend such an opinion is smart or informed.
The objective of a developer certainly should be to make a game fun. Then why, pray tell, do we have such variety ad farming and plane simulators, the penultimate mob grinders such as D3, the likes of Dragon's Dogma, or the "hard" and "unforgiving" titles like the dark souls series?
Because "fun" is sought out in many aspects of gameplay. To label a single component "un-fun" and completely disregard all the value and gameplay that is and can be built around it to generate entertainment is not a rational choice. It is the opinion of someone that sees only either their idea of fun, or are incapable of thinking beyond the design that they have been taught to believe in.
The point here is to stop interjecting preferences and opinion before the actual potentials of the given game elements and genre. It's already been explained and proven that time and travel are integral components to a wide variety of games on a rather fundamental level. Removing them and reducing their role to the minimum in order to focus on "action" is ultimately to the detriment of many forms of game depth (as pointed out in the example of turn based strategies like Civ versus real time like Starcraft).
If maximizing fun is really your interest, then take a step back and ask the question of "What can we take advantage of and evolve in these systems?" rather than "This is underdeveloped, lets make something else and just slap a label on it."
"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, axe, and nariu want to take the MMO genre and not make or play MMOs, then I'm sorry but I have to ask why you are even looking at the genre. Why are you not simply playing the ARPG, MOBA, FPS, Lobby games, etc that are already exactly what you are saying MMO's need to apparently become?
You don't buy a pie and then complain that it's not cake-like when you could have simply gotten a cake. You don't buy a motorcycle and complain it doesn't have four wheels. If you want something and it already exists, the most rational course of action is to obtain that, not get something completely different and "fix" it until it's entirely different. Nonsense is the most applicable word there is for the circumstance.
Dismissing game mechanics outright because they have flaws does nothing to grow any game genre. The smart person looks to offer something novel, interesting, and subsequently meaningful by tinkering with things, looking for new potentials, and coming up with new ways to capitalize on what's available. Abandoning progress to fall back on wedging squares into round holes is an act of those who lack quality design skills.
"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
The land of the modern gamer is quite the spectacle to behold.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb