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MMORPGs are being designed like the first failed Matrix (the perfectly balanced world)
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Member UncommonPosts: 972
MMORPGs are being designed like the first failed Matrix (the perfectly balanced world).
Remember the movie Matrix?
It was about humans being harvested by machines for energy and kept with their conscience connected to a virtual reality simulation called Matrix.
At a certain point in the movie, one of the antagonists reveals that the machines designed the Matrix in different ways and they even made it so there was no pain, no suffering, no famine, no wars, it was a perfect world and even though the humans started to break out of the immersion as if not accepting such reality.
Then he goes on babling about why the humans were like that and how the actual Matrix ended up being a copy of the real world and the problems with humans waking human severelly dropped, except for Neo and... well thats not the point.
The point is, Im making an analogy to what I consider:
The panoptic model of tight control used in core design decisions to prevent the "human factor" for the sake of balance;
MMORPGs are about the "human factor" causing effect, yet,
The developers have been removing the players ability to cause effect on the game world and others avatars living on it sistematically for years now. Each new game enforces more linearity then its predecessor.
The experience we are offered in todays MMORPGs, in this era of design decisions, is becoming each day more linear and coletive, pointless, without ability to cause effect on the world and others on it.
They are trying to create a world where everyone is a hero, yet, noone is. because they are eliminating the "human factor", People in real life are different, and real life is completelly unbalanced, but in real life we have free will, we cause effect through our individual "human factor", what makes us unique and special.
In MMORPGs they are treating the "human factor", our freedom and choices as if it was a "leak" to the "balance".
People all over the world, every day, for a while now, are expressing their insatisfaction with MMORPGs becoming bland, generic, pointless, offering no freedom to the players, everything being a linear grind threadmill, extreme focus on combat, follow a scripted path type of experience. People are forced to experience the world the way the developer intended them too, step by step, from the first quest/area to the last one, like a industry production line in Chaplins "Modern Times".
Unlike the living breathing world, ever changing, ever evolving, persistant virtual world of the original concept of MMORPGs. Its like we are de-evolving the genre for the sake of this perfectly balanced ilusion, like the first Matrix.
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Comments
MMO's will never be an accurate representation of IRL. Nor should they be. If I wanted that I'd go outside. Long live me being a spaceship.
Jam is sticky.
This is sticky ground. Why? Because while we want our games to be realistic, we play games to escape reality.
You're right, to an extent. Games have been getting more linear, and developers try to reward everyone equally. Why? Because no one wants to feel left out when they're playing a game; something they do to relax and have fun. If someone was so unequal that they were always met with frustration and disappointment, they would probably stop playing that game. On the other hand, it might inspire them to work hard and overcome their obstacles. It depends on the person; however, developers know that the majority, which is all that matters when you want to make the most money, would not approve.
I understand how you linked the idea of the Matrix, but the Matrix is a false reality that was forced upon humans. Given a choice, most people wouldn't enter the Matrix if it was an accurate reflection of 1999. Why? Because it wouldn't be anything different than their real lives. As for the first Matrix failing because it was "too perfect"... that's just reinforcing the idea that we are ruled by sin, so we would not accept a world without it.
I think there's a balance, somewhere. Games like EVE seem to come close, and perhaps, as more sandboxes are released, they will strike a harmony with themepark elements and give us a good game. No perfect game, though; that's impossible.
They were intended to be virtual worlds encompassing multiple aspects of real life.
Instead of the combat focused linear scripted games that try to feed and proffit on the popularity of the MMORPG label nowadays.
Yeh I loved how SWG Pre CU was designed because it was designed for the world and not for the players. I mean WoW now is ruining the world to make EVERYONE happy and they've gotten rid of travel times and all that now so the game feels like Diablo more than a world.
Hate it when they make changes to make it easier for players while ruining the world feeling.
I began to realize this awhile back:
MMORPGs are NOT virtual worlds. they are simply games built in 3D based on the same formula that was used in the original asteroids game.
I began to realize this awhile back:
MMORPGs are NOT virtual worlds. they are simply games built in 3D based on the same formula that was used in the original asteroids game.
/gasp! Nooooo......
I think what we need is a mmo world that will change due to our actions. Maybe a little at a time, and if the majority makes the same decisions, say taking a fort, we should really see the landscape change due to that, and when the enemy wakes up and log in, they will see our camps just outside their city...
RIP Orc Choppa
I disagree that games are getting more linear. Using Wow as a measuring stick, most games released after it are less linear. They have more PvP and sandbox-ish elements in general. Plus, we're starting to see more sandboxes releasing or in development: Darkfall, Fallen Earth(?), Mortal Online, Earthrise, etc.
Linear is easy cash. Even if they "fail", they profit.
A true next gen persistant world would take much work, high levels of tech and very skilled programming. Devs simply don't have the balls to invest the work when they can just throw out some garbage.
Look at SWTOR
They didn't even make their own engine for the game. It's not even a new engine. It's Heroes Journey. Sad when bioware makes such incredible single player games, they would just outsource for their MMO's whole graphic engine. Seems like they spent more time on voice acting and fluff.
Why compaired to other genre are MMO's made to such poor quality standards?
Well I think the developers of WOW an their epigones see it this way:
One needs to take care, that everyone is going to see all the content no matter how bad at playing the game or how solitary or whatever he is. Because content that the players do not see is wasted money.
And the way to do that is to limit the player’s ability to do anything that is not intended. The player only gets so much freedom that it just keeps interesting.
Because more freedom always means:
- more ways for the player to get on the wrong track
- more ways that the player is annoyed by other players
- more ways that anything unintended could occur that could harm the game experience.
The majority of people are idiots, given the chance they will be compelled to be a nuisance, they just can't help themselves.
Give them a destructible environment ? - The world will be empty in a week...
Player housing ? - The whole world is filled with garbage...
Unrestricted pvp ? - Spawncamping...
Skill based progression ? - Macro like there's no tomorrow...
Player vendors ? - Spam galore...
Uploadable pictures ? - Porn...
Emotes ? - Teabagging...
Droppable items ? - Swastika in a children's game...
By giving them any kind of tools to be creative in the end all you're doing is providing them will a blank sheet they can draw a dick on...
- Shijeer
I don't think that all are designed that way, but, in my opinion, you've pretty much described the majority of them.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Boils down to "world grit". Gritty worlds like Matrix, early Star Wars, Bladerunner, and Mad Max are popular. Clean worlds like Star Wars Episode One are boring and rejected.
WOW is sufficiently dirty, with it's imperfect characters (hellscream's kid and the new alliance king are both shallow jerks, basically
) Doesn't win any awards for grit, but it manages to avoid feeling "clean".
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I don't think that all are designed that way, but, in my opinion, you've pretty much described the majority of them.
I agree not every game was designed this way. Some of the 2D were actually trying to break the mold.
There are hundreds of reasons people play MMORPGs, its much more complex than just "games". Escaping reality is just one of them, not a significant % either.
I play MMORPGs because of auto induced cognifive competition state that exist in MMORPGs and its complexity, extremelly hard to find in real life.
You said "devs are making it more linear and streamlined/balanced because people playing those games dont want to be left out". Its a wrong assumption that doesnt hold truth.
Here, you are talking about an old recurring concept, we call it the "Everyone is a hero" design.
MMORPGs dont mix with it. Its an utopian attempt, like the "everything balanced" one.
In a "everyone is a hero" game, the effect ends up being the opposite. NOONE IS.
You can only be a hero in a multiplayer game when others arent. Being unique, different, special gets its meaning from a comparative standpoint. Its the notion and existance of the OTHER, that forms the identity of myself.
When you make everyone experience exactly the same scripted linear path, the same procedurally generated quests, facing the same enemies... it defeats the purpose. It become pointless exactly because everyone else does it.
I could go and adress 80% of your repply, but thats enough for now. I just need to bump the thread.
Just to point out an obvious: this thread could prove too complicated for 90% of the people on this forum.
I agree with both Shijeer and the OP. Give the players too much freedom, they will undoubtedly ruin the game environment. Take that mentality and expand on it, MMORPGs become Matrixes where the human factor has less and less impact.
Nice metaphorical writing, OP.
Its hard to make it easy to understand without changing too much... I should try harder anyway...
Well the concept works quite well when you're talking about the thematic grit of a world. You can draw parallels from multiple films which succeeded (Bladerunner/Matrix) and failed (SW:Episode One) to be gritty.
It's when you try to translate it to fit the interaction of a game world that things feel like a stretch. Especially when the concept itself flies in the face of existing knowledge of what makes games fun.
I assert that this concept of grit being important is important primarily in how the world is presented to players, rather than how players interact with it.
So it describes a MMORPG about a fantasy kingdom where NPCs are perfect - the king is just and kind, the knights are perfect defenders of justice, and it's always sunny out. This causes the world to be less interesting. Partly because it doesn't match up with the imperfections we've come to expect (from living in an imperfect world,) and partly because when things are so cut and dry (the king will always make the right choice) they are less dramatic and interesting.
This perfect kingdom can be made interesting in at least a couple main ways: either an evil kingdom can exist to provide the conflict, or the king (and kingdom) can be made imperfect which provides some internal conflict. Now the king is somewhat corrupt, and some effort is required to figure out if he's truly doing things out of a good heart or if there's some corrupt motive at play. Or perhaps you have a Dragon Age betrayal of the king by one of his commanders. Regardless of the method, you now have dramatic conflict within the story.
But you'll notice my example is an NPC Kingdom. It was uninteresting when it was simple, and interesting when conflict was introduced. Player freedom never entered into it.
Similarly, the concept itself directly applies to films like Bladerunner, Mad Max, and the Matrix itself. Grit makes these worlds interesting. But we're talking about movies here, which are completely linear experiences with zero viewer interaction. Which to me indicates that the concept itself is completely separate from the amount of player freedom in a game.
What matters is balanced, dramatic conflict. Merely introducing a villain into the Perfect Kingdom isn't enough. The villain has to be visualized as a true threat to the kingdom. If the villain is vanquished in the first 10 minutes of the movie, dramatic conflict will have failed to be achieved. (if there's a better narrative/film term for "balanced dramatic conflict", please speak up.)
For games balanced dramatic conflict is just as important, but can take many forms. Faction-based PVP or a PVE questline with a villain are both examples, and neither of these really speaks to exactly how much freedom players have. In fact, it's like Shijeer said: the more freedom players have, the more apt they are to ruin the experience.
If players have freedom to make their own Perfect Kingdom, they can potentially grow it to the point where villains are "killed in the first 10 minutes of the movie." This reduces the amount of dramatic conflict in the game.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Idiots use guns and knives to rob people. Ban guns and knives.
no, WoW's developers, split the gameplay two ways, so both Casual and Hard Core players can both play and have fun, in the same world.
But isn't that the point? If that's how people are why do you feel we need to censor this?
Idiots use guns and knives to rob people. Ban guns and knives.
U dont ban the guns/knives. U either give everyone guns and knives(so that even idiots know they will surely die for this stupidity) or make it so u have nothing they could want. ban money ROFL!!
I agree with Shijeer, it been proven in so many games.
Most of these would be fixed with the addition of live moderation and participation by the company running the game. They can be involved in a number of ways - player towns getting too trashed? Moderator sends in the NPC army to defend the lands. Catch someone botting? Live GM is there to investigate and ban them outright. Fallen Earth has shown how it can be nice to have permenant and visible GMs. Aion has shown that uploadable pictures can be moderated without too much drama - it's also shown how a perm GM is highly desired in spamland, given the outcry of many players.
If a company was to design their game around the idea that an employee will be around to pull a few strings with the intention of getting more mileage out of the content I think they could put together a fun and viably profitable game.
Currently Playing: The Game
As bad as it sounds I agree with the quoted poster. I like PvP and to a slightly lesser extent PvE. Sandbox or Themepark don't matter much to me either, my only requirement is that I find the game fun. So I get to see both sides of the fence. Any game that allows even the slightest bit of freedom, and you'll see most if not all of the things mentioned in the quoted post. Anybody that played Shadowbane can tell you how bad it got. Everyone preaches about freedom in games, but look what happens when you give it to them.
In War - Victory.
In Peace - Vigilance.
In Death - Sacrifice.
I agree with much the OP said, in that I think the older MMOs where closer to what I would like to see the genre be than what they have produced in the past well honistly in the past 5-8 years or so.
Instancing: this horrid idea was begged for and hailed as the best thing since sliced bread but because of this we lost the ability to randomly log in, randomly walk to X dugon (alone) step in side hunt at the door meet another random player doign the same create a random small group step in deeper merge with otehr random small groups go deeper become . . . you get the idea. Yes isntancing removed an anoyance and decressed the level of ass hattery; in all honisty even though we all hate the ass hats and the crowded dungons without them the world is a little less intresting
Grouping all but reqiered: I can remimber playing DAoC for the first time, mobs my level or hier where most likely going to kill me 1 on 1 logicly so 150lb man vs 800lb monster im betting the monster wins, in order to play the older games to there fullest and most effcent manner you wanted to be in a group even if it was a random pickup group, each and every build seemed to have an inharent weekspot a gimp if you will thus you *needed* to play with others that or have some downtime/high risk hunting. Enter the current build of games where you can in most of them solo to max level most quickly by doing it your self, where most (not all) quest are solo affars where it actualy slows your game a fair bit to hunt with a friend . . . why am I pay $15 a month for a single player game with an IM chat?, isnt IM free?
Easy mode: I do like having to strugle a bit, I do recall being one of thouse who thought the new quest NPC indicators where a good thing, who liked the sparkles on quest targets (at first) etc. etc etc. having had it for some time I can see how badly this has hurt the fun of this genre. A large chunk of the fun of this genre was beign lost, was having to figuer it out, was looking for the next thing to do the act of doing was yes the most imediatly grattifying thing but long term learning the world via exploration not fully interactive map, finding the trick to quest not by mindlessly follwogn the gold arrow and clickign on teh sparkly object but by talking to vets, reding NPC dialogs, etc. gave a long term since of accomplishment to the game over all
Fluff: This is my own term so I understand but what I mean is all thouse little things that dont make you stronger, faster, or otehr wise more uber, thouse money sinkes and time sinkes that I truly loved of older MMOs seem all but gone. Player housing yes I know EQ2 and LotRo have it and they are 2 of the better MMOs imo ont eh market atm but the villages of player owned homes, the trophies I used to spend days collecting the supplies to just so I could have one (gave no stats, in fact couldn't be equiped at all jsut hung on a wall in the house) thouse are the fullf things that helped provide reward beyond the next level up or glowy
Do I think its all doom and glome for the MMORPG genre, no not at all, like most things it ebs and flows, has its ups (EQ, DAoC, WoW) and its downs (DAoC post ToA, every thing since lol jking) and all the inbetweens. I do think we are on the down side atm and that we have been for some time thats clear based on the absolute crap that has been published as of late, as to why or when it will end is all speculation but if I am right (which I rarely am lol) and we are seeing the logicle tide of the genres growth then we should see the up soon as one doesn't tend to notice the trend untill its nearly over and thus transitioning. None of this of course takes into account the impact of the current economic issues, I think we might continue to see sub par crap for some time fueled by greed, fear and ignorance. Clones of what they thinked worked last time, rush jobs with an incressing number of hidden fees (Item malls, paid services, etc.) trying to get as much out of the gamer as they can for as little investment as they can which is of course very self distructive with somthing like game since game is not a *must*and there is no reason a gamer *needs* a new game when we have 20+ years of damn fine game development alredy to play and all readaly available + the output of indies who goals are offten more about getting seen than annaly raping the player (Note that some dont come with KY jelly).
Em thats true and thats the point, now dont forget you need a social requierment of some form, if a player can enter the world and does not in some copacity need the others then yes he will most likely just run around ass clowing his way till he is board to death. Then again if you give him all the creative freedom possible while making him dependent on the others he plays with then he will learn some manners or quite very quickly out of boardom.
Somthing I do recall from earlier games with yes much smaller populations but read it out.
There have been and always will be ass hats around, thats also part of the fun, the best method I have seen to keep this in check however is not by forcing the players down a given road even when there are tight rules put in place to prevent ass clownery true ass hats just find a way to cheet the system. What did work though was when your fellow players actualy had some impact on your game, when you needed players to give you the time of day in order to be succesful in the world at large thats when you had the most control over ass hattery. In thouse games where player interaction is a must you tend to find at least in my experance that ass hats are just as prevalent as they are in any other game at the starter levels but dwnedle down to nothign by mild amuzment and the occasional anoyance just past the starter areas.
All of that aside the fact is I will not pay $15 a month for a single player linear RPG with an IRC, if I dont get a real MMO with an actual social aspect to the game where you cant just solo 1-max in 3 months, or buy the best eqp off the item mall and own vets 5min later then I will simply not buy the game. There are way to many good stand alone RPGs out there for me to wast $15 a month of a graphicly inferior, buggy, laggy steamer; what truly seperates MMORPG from Multi player RPG for me is the social requierment, not the present world, not the character customization or combat or <add feature here> stand alone RPGs all do this better than any MMO every has or ever can as they do not have the limitation of networking to deal with; MMOs are social games, where the players can shape out there own stories impacted by thouse around them and impact other players stories jsut as well beyond that a MMO is just a shody RPG with crap graphics a clunky UI and a monthly fee. Even from the competative point of view what is PvP if you take away the persistent social aspects, its a sub par FPS typicaly rendered in 3rd person suffering horridly from balancing issues.