ou're right, the big games do a little bit of every thing, but it's usually done very poorly; what I'm trying to say is that in order for the big guys to do a little bit of every thing, and do it all really well, they're gonna have to spend a hell of a lot more $ to do all of it right....they're not spending enough to do it right. Like I said, MMOGs are truly a massive undertaking...and they should be treated as such.
While I understand the logic behind this, I also see the reality of it. What you're talking about it a project that will slowly snowball out of control and collapse under its' own wieght. I'm sure this will be attempted at some point. I can't tell you how glad I am that I won't be in charge of it.
I'm not talking about these kinds of people, they're no threat...I'm talking about the guys who go out and get a bunch of gullible investers and con them into financing their MMOG project...in most cases that's money right down the toilet!
You know, my first instinct was to attack the statement about indie developers being a "threat." But I found some more constructive things to talk about here.
While there are several indie MMO projects that have walked on the shoulders of big money, there are an equal number of developers that have made it totally on their own by setting realistic goals based on what they can actually accomplish with the resources they have. AWplanet, Dofus and Xenimus are all examples of indie MMORPGs that were made the old fashioned way, out of pocket.
If these MOGs have really pretty graphics, and deep, compelling game play (a Cyberpunk MOG if you please) then count me in!
I'm gonna segway into the graphics issue here. Most indie devs are programmers first, last and always. Most indie games have "programmer art" so they look like shit. The worst case scenario is when they make a fairly competent 3D engine and then use ugly ass Poser models for all of their characters. If you look at the earliest screenshots of Irth, you'll notice that that is exactly what they did. Beginning indie developers also usually fall into the trap of making their own engines and end up perpetually delayed to to "featur bloat." Having bump mapped, pixel shaded models wandering through environments with volumetric shadows and fog with elaborate static meshes everywhere may sound impressive on paper, but if the artwork sucks then it all goes for nothing. Of course, that doesn't mean that an indie crew can't do some pretty cool graphics. Check out Dawnspire to get an idea of how graphics shoulc be used in an indie game. The game should use the graphics, not sublimated by the graphics. Unreal Tournament 2007 looks fantastic, but I'm not looking forward to the slower gameplay that is obvious in the videos of it.
Another thing to keep in mind is the current flood of low cost comercial and open source 3D engines that are out there. A team could put together a pretty sharp looking game using TSE or Ogre 3D. Using TSE or Torque X, there's the possibility of making stuff for the XBox 360 and distributing through XBox Live. Just make sure you have a decent art staff. I'm a lone wolf, so all my stuff remains 2D or prerendered. You really don't want to see any of the 3D stuff I've done. No one wants to see "programmer art." Remember that always.
Most MMORPGs these days are set up so that, excepting Raids -- which a lot of games like GW and COH don't even really have -- you only game with 6-10 people at a time (in your group, usually in an instance). They're already breaking us up into smaller sections. So what is the point of there being 200,000 COH players if I spend 99% of my online time in an instance with 2-8 members of my guild? I could, in principle, obtain almost an identical experience by running a private COH server on my home computer and just giving out the address and passwords to my guild mates. Yes there are minor differences, but is it worth the massive development cost, effort, etc, to maintain servers, have CSR, etc, for those minor differences? In general, I don't think so.
So, you're right... MMOs are "mass market" games. And I do prefer smaller efforts (which is why my current favorite is Saga of Ryzom, which is about as small time as you can get and still be considered an MMORPG). When NWN2 comes out I will probably spend some time looking for good PW servers in that too... and I'll also be setting up private games to run DLed modules with my guild mates from other games. It's free... the quality is usually FAR higher... and the experience is more enjoyable in general.
The one really huge advantage MMORPGs have over private games like NWN or small PWs, is a massive community, and interdepenence of players on each other. You can have realistic economies and factional conflicts and the like. Unfortunately, these elements are the ones MMORPG developers most commonly neglect or implement in a slipshod fashion, and they also seem to be the ones players chafe the most at. That's why, for example, most of these elements were removed from SWG, and many of them are only offered in a cursory fashion in on other games. Without them, though, the difference between an MMORPG where you're just running private instanced missions, and an NWN module running on your desktop, is really just quality -- and in terms of sheer quality of experience I'd have to rate most of the good player-made amateur NWN modules a damn sight higher than MMOs.
I think developers of MMORPGs are not asking the critical question here: WHY should this game you are planning be an MMORPG rather than a LAN game for 10 players? If they can't answer that in a substantial way, and show many important game elements that require hundreds or thousands of other players rather than just a few others, then they should not be making an MMORPG... they should be making a LAN game like NWN.
WHY should this game you are planning be an MMORPG rather than a LAN game for 10 players? If they can't answer that in a substantial way, and show many important game elements that require hundreds or thousands of other players rather than just a few others, then they should not be making an MMORPG... they should be making a LAN game like NWN.
He gets it!!! Thank you. Thank you sir for summing my post up in just two sentences. This is exactly what I was driving at.
Just what the hell does WoW deliver that you couldn't get if it had been made as a LAN game? 40 man raids? Sorry, but NWN could host 90 people on a server and an average server hosts 64. Battlefields? Same thing.
How about EQ2? The only two games that I think really justifies being MMO is DAoC, due to the RvR aspect of the game, and Planetside. Most of the other MMORPGs could have done just as well, if not better, as regular MORPGs.
i played a 2d pvp anywhere mmo years ago that had about 2 or 3 servers everyone who played the game ran into eachother and killed eachother at least once, there was no "sell 2 b.o.h. 4 zadz" code speak or official economy, we all knew eachother by first name and all spoke the same language, the classes were totally uneven and the monsters and items were unknown, you could randomly stumble across some sword that kills everything in 1 hit and the entire server would unite against you
but it got popular for being free in some third world countries and the current server count is i think around 70, with hundreds of thousands of players, you can sign on and nobody will respond to your hellos for 5 hours and youre constantly spammed with jibberish and keylogger websites from bot programs, every quest and item has been mapped out on 100 fansites, the pvp has been regulated to safe zones and the classes have all been "balanced" in other words it became completely boring
In the main, I agree with you. I'm beta testing a game right now that has no reason for being an MMORPG, for just these reasons... there is no need to interact with 100+ other players to play the game in any realistic way, so why is it an MMORPG?
I think there are a few other games out right now that really do justify the MMO model. The Saga of Ryzom is one... not just because I happen to like it, but because it has a large, diverse, completely player-run economy. A lot of that could not be done on a LAN with 10 people.
I think, really, this is the test: If you turned it into a LAN game that only you and a small group of other people could play, how much of the game would you have to alter? For example, in COH, the answer is zero. All missions are instanced. Max group size is 8. There's really no need for there to be 1,000 other people on a server. You don't even know they're there, most of the time. I could play it on a LAN with friends and lose nothing. As a result, it really does not need to be an MMORPG, and probably should not have been designed as one.
Comments
poopypants wrote:
ou're right, the big games do a little bit of every thing, but it's usually done very poorly; what I'm trying to say is that in order for the big guys to do a little bit of every thing, and do it all really well, they're gonna have to spend a hell of a lot more $ to do all of it right....they're not spending enough to do it right. Like I said, MMOGs are truly a massive undertaking...and they should be treated as such.
While I understand the logic behind this, I also see the reality of it. What you're talking about it a project that will slowly snowball out of control and collapse under its' own wieght. I'm sure this will be attempted at some point. I can't tell you how glad I am that I won't be in charge of it.
I'm not talking about these kinds of people, they're no threat...I'm talking about the guys who go out and get a bunch of gullible investers and con them into financing their MMOG project...in most cases that's money right down the toilet!
You know, my first instinct was to attack the statement about indie developers being a "threat." But I found some more constructive things to talk about here.
While there are several indie MMO projects that have walked on the shoulders of big money, there are an equal number of developers that have made it totally on their own by setting realistic goals based on what they can actually accomplish with the resources they have. AWplanet, Dofus and Xenimus are all examples of indie MMORPGs that were made the old fashioned way, out of pocket.
If these MOGs have really pretty graphics, and deep, compelling game play (a Cyberpunk MOG if you please) then count me in!
I'm gonna segway into the graphics issue here. Most indie devs are programmers first, last and always. Most indie games have "programmer art" so they look like shit. The worst case scenario is when they make a fairly competent 3D engine and then use ugly ass Poser models for all of their characters. If you look at the earliest screenshots of Irth, you'll notice that that is exactly what they did. Beginning indie developers also usually fall into the trap of making their own engines and end up perpetually delayed to to "featur bloat." Having bump mapped, pixel shaded models wandering through environments with volumetric shadows and fog with elaborate static meshes everywhere may sound impressive on paper, but if the artwork sucks then it all goes for nothing. Of course, that doesn't mean that an indie crew can't do some pretty cool graphics. Check out Dawnspire to get an idea of how graphics shoulc be used in an indie game. The game should use the graphics, not sublimated by the graphics. Unreal Tournament 2007 looks fantastic, but I'm not looking forward to the slower gameplay that is obvious in the videos of it.
Another thing to keep in mind is the current flood of low cost comercial and open source 3D engines that are out there. A team could put together a pretty sharp looking game using TSE or Ogre 3D. Using TSE or Torque X, there's the possibility of making stuff for the XBox 360 and distributing through XBox Live. Just make sure you have a decent art staff. I'm a lone wolf, so all my stuff remains 2D or prerendered. You really don't want to see any of the 3D stuff I've done. No one wants to see "programmer art." Remember that always.
To the OP: I completely agree.
Most MMORPGs these days are set up so that, excepting Raids -- which a lot of games like GW and COH don't even really have -- you only game with 6-10 people at a time (in your group, usually in an instance). They're already breaking us up into smaller sections. So what is the point of there being 200,000 COH players if I spend 99% of my online time in an instance with 2-8 members of my guild? I could, in principle, obtain almost an identical experience by running a private COH server on my home computer and just giving out the address and passwords to my guild mates. Yes there are minor differences, but is it worth the massive development cost, effort, etc, to maintain servers, have CSR, etc, for those minor differences? In general, I don't think so.
So, you're right... MMOs are "mass market" games. And I do prefer smaller efforts (which is why my current favorite is Saga of Ryzom, which is about as small time as you can get and still be considered an MMORPG). When NWN2 comes out I will probably spend some time looking for good PW servers in that too... and I'll also be setting up private games to run DLed modules with my guild mates from other games. It's free... the quality is usually FAR higher... and the experience is more enjoyable in general.
The one really huge advantage MMORPGs have over private games like NWN or small PWs, is a massive community, and interdepenence of players on each other. You can have realistic economies and factional conflicts and the like. Unfortunately, these elements are the ones MMORPG developers most commonly neglect or implement in a slipshod fashion, and they also seem to be the ones players chafe the most at. That's why, for example, most of these elements were removed from SWG, and many of them are only offered in a cursory fashion in on other games. Without them, though, the difference between an MMORPG where you're just running private instanced missions, and an NWN module running on your desktop, is really just quality -- and in terms of sheer quality of experience I'd have to rate most of the good player-made amateur NWN modules a damn sight higher than MMOs.
I think developers of MMORPGs are not asking the critical question here: WHY should this game you are planning be an MMORPG rather than a LAN game for 10 players? If they can't answer that in a substantial way, and show many important game elements that require hundreds or thousands of other players rather than just a few others, then they should not be making an MMORPG... they should be making a LAN game like NWN.
C
Chessack wrote:
WHY should this game you are planning be an MMORPG rather than a LAN game for 10 players? If they can't answer that in a substantial way, and show many important game elements that require hundreds or thousands of other players rather than just a few others, then they should not be making an MMORPG... they should be making a LAN game like NWN.
He gets it!!! Thank you. Thank you sir for summing my post up in just two sentences. This is exactly what I was driving at.
Just what the hell does WoW deliver that you couldn't get if it had been made as a LAN game? 40 man raids? Sorry, but NWN could host 90 people on a server and an average server hosts 64. Battlefields? Same thing.
How about EQ2? The only two games that I think really justifies being MMO is DAoC, due to the RvR aspect of the game, and Planetside. Most of the other MMORPGs could have done just as well, if not better, as regular MORPGs.
And once again, thank you.
i agree
i played a 2d pvp anywhere mmo years ago that had about 2 or 3 servers everyone who played the game ran into eachother and killed eachother at least once, there was no "sell 2 b.o.h. 4 zadz" code speak or official economy, we all knew eachother by first name and all spoke the same language, the classes were totally uneven and the monsters and items were unknown, you could randomly stumble across some sword that kills everything in 1 hit and the entire server would unite against you
but it got popular for being free in some third world countries and the current server count is i think around 70, with hundreds of thousands of players, you can sign on and nobody will respond to your hellos for 5 hours and youre constantly spammed with jibberish and keylogger websites from bot programs, every quest and item has been mapped out on 100 fansites, the pvp has been regulated to safe zones and the classes have all been "balanced" in other words it became completely boring
In the main, I agree with you. I'm beta testing a game right now that has no reason for being an MMORPG, for just these reasons... there is no need to interact with 100+ other players to play the game in any realistic way, so why is it an MMORPG?
I think there are a few other games out right now that really do justify the MMO model. The Saga of Ryzom is one... not just because I happen to like it, but because it has a large, diverse, completely player-run economy. A lot of that could not be done on a LAN with 10 people.
I think, really, this is the test: If you turned it into a LAN game that only you and a small group of other people could play, how much of the game would you have to alter? For example, in COH, the answer is zero. All missions are instanced. Max group size is 8. There's really no need for there to be 1,000 other people on a server. You don't even know they're there, most of the time. I could play it on a LAN with friends and lose nothing. As a result, it really does not need to be an MMORPG, and probably should not have been designed as one.
C