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What features can honestly make you feel as if you're "part of the world"?
Dauzqul
Member RarePosts: 1,982
I keep hearing people complain about not feeling as if they are "part of the world". I agree with that statement. What honestly would make you feel like you're part of the game / inside your character?
I remember my experiences with Darkfall and Mortal Online. While there were no "hold my hand quests", the games were just so damn boring...
I remember my experienced with WoW, SWTOR, AoC, WAR, etc... The "quest hub to quest hub" progression was just so damn boring...
I remember my experiences with Darkfall and Mortal Online. While there were no "hold my hand quests", the games were just so damn boring...
I remember my experienced with WoW, SWTOR, AoC, WAR, etc... The "quest hub to quest hub" progression was just so damn boring...
Comments
https://www.revivalgame.com/features/living_world
How do you make a world live?
Phrases like a “vibrant living world” and “visceral feel” get thrown around a lot in games. It’s clear we want our game worlds to be, if not real, then at least tangible in a way that allows us to treat them as real. We want more than a simple background behind our characters as we hack and slash our way to victory. In short, we want our worlds to feel like worlds. Revival’s world of Theleston is built around this desire.
Living things grow and change
When we talk about things being living in the games industry, we usually mean “dynamic” -- we mean that things need to change, so that what you saw one day isn’t necessarily what you will see the next. For us, that’s a pretty good start, but it’s only the first requirement on a longer list.
It’s not enough for a world to simply change. To truly live, a world needs to grow: that change has to be guided and directed. That world also needs to respond to the things done upon it, to essentially play with the players that tread its surface.
Theleston is such a world; whether Theleston thrives or dies depends not on the roll of the dice, but rather on the impact of its denizens and powers. This will have the effect of creating a play space where new events can dynamically appear across the world, but they won’t be simply chosen from a list or picked by capricious random numbers. The world won’t simply change, it will grow or wither in response to events, as well.
How do events unfold in the world, then?
Our agenda-based storytelling technology has been developed to choose world events intelligently, and in accordance to the storylines lain out by our Storytelling team. This conductor technology keeps the world alive with new happenings for players to respond to. In addition to that, we have built an extensive framework that enables our content team to easily respond to player choices and activities by steering the world’s content in particular ways.
Finally, articulate needs-based NPC AI makes our population look intelligent and alive.
While our karma system can quickly and easily help a player determine if someone is evil or not, it too is like a clockwork: beneath the surface of that simple assessment is a record of deeds and the judgement of the gods and powers of the world associated with it. Something as simple as where you’ve been in the world can alter some element of your karma. In this way, everything you do plays its part not only in how you develop, but in how the world responds to you.
The world, in turn, works the same way. Areas keep their own karmic relationship with the powers of the world and the flow of destiny and this relationship works with the karmic balances of the players in the area to help determine what happens here. Sometimes, this can be simple things such as a town expanding its farmable fields as players wipe out the dangerous predators in the area, but it can also lead to momentous things such as the rise and fall of cults and great powers.
Of course, karma alone doesn’t drive the day to day motivations of the players or the world’s NPCs. Players have whims and desires and so do the NPCs of the world. These desires drive the NPCs in their day to day work and help to define their habits and their moment by moment decisions.
Whether a guard decides to be diligent in his duties or to slack on the job and instead spend his time chatting up his friends depends on how that guard is feeling that day and his general disposition. This sort of desire driven AI is applied to all of the denizens of Theleston, from simple animals up to the powerful spawn of the great old ones or the outer gods.
But won’t that be robotic and mechanical, like a watch?
It is incredibly important to the team that we create something significantly more than a simple mechanical system. In fact, our live storytelling system is a sign of our huge commitment to ensuring that the world will not seem mechanical or automatic. This isn’t a place where everything moves like clockwork despite the gears turning beneath the system; Theleston isn’t that world and Revival isn’t that game.
As we’ve already hinted, the live storytelling team is the solution to the problem. Left to its own devices, Revival offers an intricate and varied sandbox for players to experience, but what really sets it apart and makes the world grow and change like a thing alive is the mind guiding its development, it’s live team. Taking the roles of the most powerful gods and beings in the world, they will push the players to excel and will act as the guiding hand that forces the world to change. This presents the players with the chance to interfere with or assist their plans, and this interaction is what truly breathes life into the world of Theleston. No day will ever be the same as the one before it, but every day will play its part in building the unique and ever expanding history of the world.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
It's not really something that demands a virtual world to achieve and technically most sandbox games can be noted as having less "life" than many other titles in that npcs and prefab content tends to be exceptionally sparse, so its not an argument of genres.
Rather this is a flaw of personality. Does the game have any emotive or characteristics imbied into the narrative, characters, world, or otherwise to engross a player well enough that immersion is achieved?
If the content developed is too derivative, "flat", or lacking tratis that might catch one's interest, then it ends up feeling lifeless.
EDIT: In this regard, I'm looking forward to seeing how the Taleworlds Minecraft story game turns out.
"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
Weight,climbing,swimming,pets and mounts and training both,crafting.
What i want most are realistic ideas NOT ideas that a dev feels balances a game or whatever.Example i want races and classes to feel VERY different not just some paper doll to play barbie with.Some should be smarter,stronger,wiser,faster,better cardio,better vision, etc etc.
FOOD is another example,SOE decided food would only have an effect after a fight,how is that plausible in any way?When you eat or drink it should have a fairly long lasting effect and ALL the time not here and there,ok effect is on ok effect is off,the idea is just dumb.
A developer should allow the game to grow in advancement/technology,update the game often to make it happen.
I want to see npc's have families and die off.
You see the big problem in the big picture?F2P devs are NOT going to pay a team to steadily keep a game real,they just want to sell you some half ass game until your bored then sell you a DLC or another game.That is super unrealistic,you see nothing then one day later there is an entire new world like it was magically created out of thin air.I want to see that world slowly evolve like you would in real,homes slowly being built log by log etc etc.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I would love full interaction with the environment, including the elements and combat itself. I would rather have less people on a server and per zone if they can manage to make a full interactive world.
Cast a fire spell on an enemy and the sparks hit a tree or grass? it starts burning down to a crisp unless someone (npcs or water/ice magic spells) put them out. Slam the walls/door of a house with your two handed hammer and you break it but you get in trouble with the guards. On the same token, crafters (players and/or hired npcs) can rebuild those broken walls and anything else.
Killing mobs for survival, not because a poorly written npc wanted some bear asses to make dinner.
THere are so many features to mention, i'll just let everyone add their own.
Third person, for me, is me at a desk roleplaying a character who is in the world. Even if the game is excellent, and even if my RP is done well, it's still me, the character, and the world. Not me and the world.
If i'm a soldier, part of an elite group, etc.....WHY THE HECK AM I PICKING UP ROCKS!? Let me fight, let me get sent into the front lines, quests where i'm pretty much part of a huge war and i need to kill someone specific or control a specific area. Make these places huge, full of life, soldiers fighting everywhere, enemies constantly trying to stop you. Make me feel like i'm a real warrior, not a new recruit that gets sent everywhere to search for stuff.
If the game takes place during a war.....make it a damn war. If i take a few steps outside, i want to see my people getting ready for combat, training. If i leave the area, i want to see them fighting the enemy. As well, if it's a war.....make the enemy attack? Look at WoW for example. It's called World of WARCRAFT, there's barely any war in most of the MMO unless you look in specific places.
Chronicles of Elyria is very promising too but there isn't enough information about it yet.
* more info, screenshots and videos here
That sounds great as far as it goes, and it's part of what I'm interested in. But buying game stuff for cash pretty much removes me from the world. Literally.
Once upon a time....
For example for me Star Wars Galaxies was the closest I ever felt to being part of it's world due to the freedom. Another person I am sure of might have found SWG a boring experiance and also might not have felt the world felt alive.
what I have noticed over the years is that more and more people seem to rely on the game making the gameworld feel alive, while from my experiance with SWG it was the players that made the world come alive and not due to NPC's.
But I am also think that what I feel makes a MMORPG feel alive is something that is hard to achieve current day...mainly due to how gamers play today..I don't blame them as it's what is fun for them and after all gamers want is to enjoy themselfs.
The world itself needs to feel like it's alive. Not just a backdrop. There needs to be lots of interaction. Far beyond opening doors and sitting in chairs. Picking things up and dropping things in the world, moving/pushing things, etc.
My character should be able to "reach out and touch" the world.
I think using the mouse is important, as your hands to maneuver things.
I also think there should be ways and reasons to look closely at, to study items or world art such as inscriptions, maps, table tops, etc.
These worlds need to come alive in a direct way to game play.
Of course they also need to feel alive in every other way too, such as weather, NPCs, AO, etc.
Once upon a time....
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Basic things, mostly...
Things like the ability to sit on a chair, lay on a bed, type something out and have it appear next to my character on the screen (not just in the chatbox). Those are the basic things.
Having things (clothes, items, abilities) that aren't in some way connected with fighting...things people generally have. Those are things that are a bit more than basic.
Apart from those things, perhaps the ability to create spaces that need not have anything to do with fighting...perhaps a bar, or a garage, or a gym. Those would be nice.
Frankly, if you give me those things, the combat or the leveling system doesn't need to be 100% good. I'd be very forgiving in the more technical aspects if the basics above were considered.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
You get what you pay for.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
Unfortunately you can't give players that kind of power.
First you have to look at offline RPG's, than ask yourself if it's the world it's self.
Elders Scrolls Oblivion & Skyrim are good examples. They are highly Immersive and interactive. If they do it for you personally, then you can say it's the setting. You actually can use some mmos that are solo online games such as Elders Scrolls Online or Rift, their based on playing solo with others playing around you and they tell a good story.
If not then you need social activity found in an mmo.
If it's social activity that you crave, then you would have a problem. ALL newer mmo's only offer auto everything. They do the social activities for you such as Guildwars 2 and Final Fantasy 14 with mostly dynamic events and dungeon finders.....Games like this leave you still craving and NOT part of the world, if you are trying to fill the void by social interaction.
Bottom line :
In a nut shell it's People or the World itself. If it's people you crave, your kind of screwed !