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The Ultimate MMORPG
Zindaihas
Member UncommonPosts: 3,662
Hi folks,
I've been visiting this website for a couple years now because I think it is the very best for keeping up to date on the latest MMO info. I just created an account today so I could post this message. For about 4 years now, I've had an idea for an MMO that I believe would leave all others in the dust. Maybe it's true, maybe it's just me. But this is much more than an idea that is simply in my head. When I first came up with it, I wrote my ideas down so I wouldn't forget them. Since then, I have added to them and have done extensive research to cover as many aspects of the game as possible.
Just to give you an idea of how much thought I've put into this, I've filled about 10 pages of ideas, read just about every book in my library related to the subject, bookmarked numerous websites that would help and downloaded many pictures to my computer that might represent some of the artwork built into the game. The research has become so expansive, that I can share the genre with you, without fear of giving away any of my ideas.
One of the tricks to creating a popular MMO, I believe, is to make it a non-fantasy genre that plays like one. Fantasy has been done to death because it is the most fun to play in my opinion. To make another one, would be to recycle an old idea. So my idea is to make an historical game that incorporates the mythologies of ancient cultures into it. The two games that I have been following recently that come anywhere close to my idea are Roma Victor and Gods and Heroes. However, I honestly believe that neither of these games is going to go far enough to keep its players captivated for very long.
I had every intention of keeping this idea to myself for the time being until I read Nathan Knaack's featured article on this website "Outside the Box". I stumbled onto it and I could tell right away he was speaking my language. There is a lot of frustration out there among gamers to find the ultimate MMORPG because the ones that are coming out now have been leaving people disappointed. I don't know if there is such a thing as the "ultimate MMORPG", but I think my idea could come closer to anything else that's out there.
The reason I am posting this message is to see if it's at all possible to get someone inside the industry to listen to someone from outside the industry. I had a friend who worked for Microsoft Game Studios who said he would show it to someone there. But they wouldn't do anything with it. They say they have more ideas than they know what to do with. I don't doubt it. Ideas are a dime a dozen, but money does the talking. I am working diligently to make a fortune so I can walk into a company, lay down a pile of cash and say "make this game". Until then, I guess I will have to live in frustration and keep playing games that continually come up short.
Comments
i also have been thinking of thousands of ideas ive come up with a 17 page list
I also understand where u are coming from. Just like u I have many ideas sitting in folders and on bulliten boards but the sad fact is games need capital to start off on or else u might create a half-assed game that might fall flat on its face. My idea of a perfect game is to, quite simply, be fun. When I play a game I want to sit down and be entertained. I play games to get away from my problems not create new ones in the game.
Also I think a game has to have a great community. Like EvE Online for example. To tell u the truth I don't like EvE, the game itslef, that much but it was the people and the friendships I made in the game that kept me around. Another thing that interests me is fame inside a game. Alot of times when I play a game I am just another person. But I think it would be cool if someone would look at you and say "damn man, u look sweet", or "Whoa, lets stay away from that guy"
Finally an Ultimate MMORPG should have a great end game. When I reach "The End", or "Max Level" I want to be able to put all that hard work and sweat to good use. Not just go create another person and do it all over again.
This is my 2 cents, take it or leave it.
Yeah, that's the problem with your great idea - the people who work developing games are not gibbering idiots or literal 'code monkies', they have ideas of their own. Whatever idea you've had, someome already working for an MMO (or other gaming company) has already had. They don't have any reason to bother going out to someone else to get a new idea - especially when your idea forms the basis for several in progress MMOs (the Africa MMO springs to mind right off the bat) and is something that gets tossed around on the forums fairly often (like a recent discussion of a guy's idea for a prehistoric MMO).
And you really don't seem to have any idea about how much work goes into designing a game, you're talking about 10 pages of writing like it's a huge amount. I could write 10 pages on 'what I'd want to see in an MMORPG' in a few hours, it's certainly not going to be useful to a company that's going to need at least hundreds if not thousands of pages of specifications for the game if they actually make it. I've personally written around 100 pages of background and custom rules for a P&P RPG campaign that I ended up not actually using.
I know you think your idea is so amazing that game companies should be snapping it up, just like the last dozen guys to post that they have an amazing idea and want to know how to get a gaming company to pick it up, but I really doubt that the idea is worth anything to any MMO company, and probably actually has negative value to them (because if they formally look at your idea and it happens to be similar to something else they've been working on, then you could decide they stole your idea and sue them).
I can see where you are coming from, Pantastic, because I'm sure everyone whose ever spent any time playing an MMO has thought of ways to make a game better. And there really is no such thing as a new idea. So I probably sound like one of those, "oh yeah, another person who thinks he's got something." However, if these ideas are already out there, how come I don't see them in any of the games on the market? Maybe I see one here in one game and another there in another, but I've not seen them all together and some I haven't seen at all. When I say I have 10 pages of ideas written down, these are simply abbreviated one or two sentence thoughts that could easily be expanded tenfold in no time.
I've been reading some of the reviews on some of the top rated games on the markets and I'm seeing the same classes and same races over and over again. I'm talking about games that think they have something with 6 classes and 5 races. I have come up with 20 classes and 13 races, the vast majority of which have never been used in a game. And that is simply one example. Most people have a unique perspective to offer, whether or not their perspective is worth anything, only the market can determine that.
True, I am not a developer, which may be a considerable drawback, but at the same time, it could be an asset as well. Nathan Knaack's article is called "Thinking outside the box". Who better to think outside the box than someone who actually is outside the box? How many people in the industry have a degree in History? My guess is they are mostly programmers. Because of my love of history, I have always wanted to find a way to transport myself into a world that has long since disappeared. There probably aren't a whole lot of developers making games from that perspective. Michael Crichton captured it in his book "Timeline," but he's one of the few that I've read who was able to capture it in a way similiar to the way I imagine it.
Roma Victor would be great if it wasnt for the 'buy in-game stuff with real money' thing
You don't see your pet set of game design ideas because there's only a finite amount of money and developer time in the world. Only so many games get made, and a lot of them are going to be attempts to copy a successful game since that's what the people with the money often shoot for. It's very easy to write down 10 pages of one sentence ideas, it's a lot harder to convince dozens of people and the moeny to pay them to write a game based on those ideas.
I seriously doubt that your 20 classes and 13 races are as profoundly unique as you think (especially if some of those races are yet more elf, orc, and dwarf variants). DAOC has more classes and races than that (I forget the exact count, but it's like a dozen classes and 6 races for each of 3 realms). Plus you said the majority of them have never appeared in any game, but I rather doubt you've made an exhaustive search of P&P RPGs, or even just CPRPGs in order to back up that claim. Are you really sure that they haven't been seen in some out of print game? Or something pretty much identical to a usual 'character setup' in a classless game (like Fantasy Hero)?
Give me the quick 1-2 sentence descriptions and I bet I can name off an existing game that has an equivalent class/race for every single one. And if you can't tell me that much about them because it would reveal too much about the grand idea, good luck getting anyone to ever listen to your grand idea - if someome did want to give your concept a hearing, they're certainly not going to sign away the chance to ever do a game that happens to be in some way similar in the future.
I wasn't sure if you were going to respond to my post, but I did anticipate that you might challenge my statement about the introduction of new races and classes. Let be first say that I am no newcomer to RPG's, I go all the way back to the paper version of AD&D. And I also played DAoC when it first came out on the market. It held my interest for about two months then I adandoned it to return to Everquest which is the first (and still the best, in my opinion) MMORPG that I played.
I started playing DAoC because I was intrigued by the realm vs realm feature of the game and thought it would add an element of excitement that was absent in EQ. To my disappointment, I learned that the term "realm vs realm" is somewhat deceptive. More accurately, it is player(s) from one realm vs player(s) from another realm. You can stay in within your homeland and have no fear of opposing players. You actually had to venture out into the frontier to meet them. Well where's the hair raising suspense in that?
Now imagine if the land that you call home could be invaded and even captured by an opposing empire. Wouldn't that add a real sense danger? My game would do that. Since my knowledge of MMO's is somewhat limited, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there is a game out there that already does that, but again, that is but a single element of the overall concept of my game idea.
Now, let me address your challenge with a single example of what my efforts have yielded. In doing research for my game idea, I came across the name of a little known family which ruled the Carthaginian Empire back in the 6th centure B.C. They were a family of warrior priests called the Magonids. So right there in my game, you have a class known the magonid class that would be a warrior/priest hybrid. I can almost guarantee that there's never been magonid class in an RPG before, because chances are you would have to be an expert on the History of Carthage to even be aware of the term. Admittedly, it would be very similiar to the medieval paladin class, but since that classes are different and the eras are different, you could give them comepletely different abilities.
There's no question, even with the crowded field of MMO's out there, there's still room for something original. In fact, the industry is literally crying out for it. I was reading the thread started by Tyoka called "Losing hope in MMO's". He got several responses affirming his post. It's becoming a common reaction to gamers. I honestly believe I just may have the game concept that could fill that void. I'm not trying to sound cocky, I'm just trying to humbly express the confidence I have in this idea. Like I said in my original post, I'm still working on making that fortune so I can invest the money myself and have the game made. But if that doesn't happen, I agonize over the thought of this idea dying when people are literally crying out for something new.
Peace
Warrior priest hybrid? been done over and over.
While I'm willing to grant that the specific name you chose hasn't been used before, I don't think it's at all relevant. It's what the class can do that distinguishes it, not the name you pick rather arbitrarily for it. If I took World of Warcraft and renamed the Druid class to the Recklegsmit class, would it really be a different class? If one game calls a healer who wears cloth armor and mostly casts healing spells a priest, but another calls it a cleric, and a third a monk, are they really distinct classes?
I'm sure you think your idea is The Answer, like the last dozen people to post a topic like this, but creating an MMORPG is a lot more involved than coming up with some different names for classes based on obscure Carthegenian families. Or to want PVP that is like EVE with preset player corporations and alliances instead of pure player politics, or maybe like what's planned for Warhammer or Age of Conan. The tiny outline you have for a game may be something that someome can develop into a good game, but any game company has dozens of similar ideas created by people who know more about making and selling MMOs and who know more people in the industry to work with.
Unless you make that fortune, your specific game idea isn't going to get made, no one is going to buy the rights off of you. If you posted some of your ideas they could form a basis for a discussion, but these kind of threads are rarely productive.
If I took World of Warcraft and renamed the Druid class to the Recklegsmit class, would it really be a different class? If one game calls a healer who wears cloth armor and mostly casts healing spells a priest, but another calls it a cleric, and a third a monk, are they really distinct classes?
I agree with you wholeheartedly, and I never claimed it was the races or the classes that made my idea unique, but what they do do is properly fit them into the genre of my game, a genre which is only being attempted for the first time in the upcoming game "Gods and Heroes"
It's the internal functions of the game, when taken in their totality, that would make it unique. Another example, leveling and experiencing. This is a concept that is going to have to change in MMO's, even be abolished altogether. First of all, it establishes a set beginning and an end for your character. Nathan Knaack addressed this in his article "Column #3: The Future" when he talked about the linear progression of leveling. Once a player tops out, the incentive to continue playing pretty much goes away. So the obvious solution to this is to eliminate leveling. I was curious to read about a game in development called "Darkfall" which claims it will do that. There may be others as well. But that game caught my eye because it sounded very similiar to what I did in my idea. When I read the Q&A on that game, it said Darkfall was slated for release in Q1 2003, so I wonder if it will ever make it.
Even with getting rid of leveling, you can't completely eliminate the linear progression of a character. We are by nature, linear creatures. We are born, we live, we die. But what it does do at least, is get rid of the grind that everyone complains about. That was one of my big criticisms of EQ. It seemed kind of silly to start out killing bugs and rats and spiders for a future great hero. Although it would destroy the rigid structure of leveling that people are used too, it is a structure that needs to be destroyed, in my opinion. Why not simply advance through the acquisition of skills and items, and perhaps social interaction as well.
Anyway, each post you make draws a little bit more info out of me and I'll continue to respond as long as the topic remains interesting. Even if my game never gets made, I'll be content if someone comes out with a game that captures my fascination the way EQ did when I first played it. I'm still waiting for it though.
People have been saying that for decades about P&P RPGs, but D&D remains the #1 seller in spite of their objections. Ultima Online was the first MMORPG and was non-level-based (not sure if it's changed now), but then EQ, and later WOW and Lineage2 are the ones that came to dominate the market - and they all have levels. I do find it odd that you want character classes but not levels, typically people who dislike levels also dislike classes and opt for a skill-based approach like EVE or what Darkfall would have if it ever was released.
No it doesn't. You can have levels without grinding on rats at all, grinding is just having to do the same thing over and over again to advance. In WOW, for example, you don't need to just sit around and just grind out levels at all, and even if you choose to it's only like 7 days /played to powerlevel to 60. At 60 is where you have the big grinds, for things like honor system rank, battlegrounds items, newer raid dungeon loot, Argent Dawn enchants, Cenarion items, money for epic mount and some of the new gear, various consumables, and miscellaneous rewards (Darkmoon Faire, Timbermaw, etc). Several of these individual grinds take longer than it would to go 1-60, and they're all done at the point where leveling is over and done.
And there's noting magical about using skills instead of levels that prevents needing to kill bugs, rats, and spiders - one could easily make an entirely skill-based game where you have to spend time grinding weak enemies to get your basic combat skills up high enough to take on other enemies. By the same token, you could make a level-based system where you advance entirely based on time played and not on fighting enemies at all.
And any non-leveled game could easily have a 'level' indicator tacked on without changing the game at all. EVE, for example, could just add in a 'level' based on skill point totals without alterting play in the least (players already refer to character experience by how many million skill points they have anyway, they could just say 'level 10' instead of '5 million skill points'). Game design that is bad or that you don't like isn't related to whether or not there is a level indicator.
But like I've pointed out above, the things you don't like aren't an intregal part of a game having levels. And the stuff you don't like has been done without levels many times. The most popular MMORPG of all time, WOW, does pretty much what you're saying anyway, since 1-60 really isn't that long compared to the total character's lifetime if you plan to do the real advancement.
Plus, not everyone complains about the grind - look at the recent threads on Lineage2, that game has a much longer grind than EQ but numerous people here think it's a good thing about the game. I can't stand spending hours killing the same thing mechanically, but the fact that I don't like something doesn't mean that everyone does.
The one completely safe thing to say about posting cherished ideas online is that you're guaranteed to attract cynics.
And where MMORPGs in particular are concerned, describing any idea is automatically going to generate two kinds of response (sometimes simultaneously): "Duh, that's already been done," and "No one would buy that; it's too different."
Fighting that kind of schizophrenia is a lost cause. You can't listen to the cynics -- if you believe in your idea, you just do it.
However, there are a couple of good points that have been made that might be useful to consider.
First, sometimes we're not really as "out of the box" as we think we are. For example: classes? Having more classes than the current crop of games doesn't necessarily an innovative game make -- why have classes at all?
For that matter, why assume that a traditionally multiplayer world is what your idea needs? How about the "massively single-player online game" model that Spore will apparently take, where instead of having to deal directly with griefers you interact with other players by sharing parts of the game world that you create?
No, that's not the current standard model. ("No one would buy that; it's too different." Really? I think that's what they said about a crazy idea some guy had for a game where you play the mayor of a simulated city....) But isn't that really "out of the box" thinking?
The point I'm making here (constructively, I hope) is that those of us who enjoy design always approach problems with a set of assumptions. Where design gets interesting is when we recognize our assumptions and question them. Sometimes the answer is, "Nope, that's a good assumption to make and I need to keep it," but sometimes the answer is, "Wait, what if I turn that idea around... oh, cool!"
So before you get too deep into a design, it's a good idea to step back, identify the unspoken assumptions, and play with them to see what happens.
The second point is the hard fact that most ideas (with a few exceptions) aren't really new. Not only do designers come up with plenty of ideas themselves, they talk with each other -- not necessarily about details of a game, but about general design concepts that inspire ideas. If you have a good idea, chances are a professional game designer has encountered that idea, too.
Which means that ideas aren't enough. A concrete thing is always going to get more attention than an abstract idea -- for your idea to get adopted, you need to build something that incorporates it.
See:
Zen of Design: Breaking In
IGDA: Breaking In
IGDA: Words of Wisdom
In particular, I'd like to bring to your attention to Tom Sloper's rule of thumb on your chances of success or rejection based on what you bring to a pitch meeting:
The point to take away here is that it's not impossible for someone with a good game idea to sell it, but it's freakin' hard even under the best of circumstances... and downright impossible if all you have is a good idea.
If you really want to see your idea turned into an actual product, putting together some kind of concrete implementation of your ideas is indispensible. Even if it's just pieces of colored paper on a table, that's still better than a purely spoken description of a game or a ten-page design summary.
If you're not a programmer, then the only viable alternative for putting together a playable demo (or actual working game) is to know someone who is a programmer. If you can't do it yourself, then you need to be social enough to build a team to implement your ideas for you. That brings in all kinds of other problems -- voluntary part-timers in another part of the world generally won't dedicate three years of their life to someone else's project -- but a very skillful manager of other people might be able to pull it off.
The bottom line is that you can turn your idea into a real game, but it's really, really hard to do, and you should know that. It can be done, though -- just keep at it, and don't let anyone stop you.
Good luck!
--Flatfingers
P.S. "Carthaginian Empire"? Carthage was a part of the Phoenician civilization (hence the "Punic Wars"), but was it really imperial? Serious question; I'm not a trained historian. Speaking for myself, I'd really like to see a game that dealt with the Phoenicians. For such an interesting Classical-era civilization, they haven't gotten nearly the attention they deserve....
First of all, thanks for the words of encouragement, Flatfingers. I'm not completely naive to the challenges of turning an idea into a final product, although I am certainly green to this particular process. Just getting it to the development stage is a herculean effort, and that's only half the battle. I'm starting to understand the issues companies have to deal with to get the game distributed. It's makes me wonder how games ever get made in the first place. What's worse for me is that I'm not one who can easily jump through the hoops you have too just to get a seat at the table. I like to cut right to the chase and start working on the problem.
Based on your stats, since I have the idea cohesively laid out on paper, I currently have a 1% chance of making it happen. That's why I say if I can raise the cash needed, my odds of success skyrocket. And that's not wishful thinking either. I have a patent for an invention that is currently being considered by a fortune 500 company. If I can license it and get a considerable cash advance on it, one of the first things I would do is devote a large percentage of the funds to this game. By shear force of will, I would get it at least to that 10% success slot on your chart.
I don't know why I started this thread in the first place, I guess I just needed to vent some of the frustration that had been pent up after four years of working on this idea. I had every intention of keeping it to myself, but as the ideas started flowing, I started thinking, "Man, I've really got something here." Then after I stumbled onto some of the posts on this website, I decided, what the heck, I'm going to post myself and see what happens.
Now back to the subject at hand. It seems to me that number one rule of any online world should be immersion, immersion and more immersion. Just like the three most important things in real estate. When asked what attracts people to an MMORPG, that is always at the top of their list. Every programming decision should be made with that goal in mind. People want to escape this world, that's why they play these games. I'll never forget the first time I logged onto Everquest. I was totally mesmerized by the world that I had been transported into. Granted, I'll probably never experience that feeling again because the first time is always unlike each successive time. But EQ still had enough content to hold my interest for 2 years. So it happened once, I'm hopeful it can happen again.
As far as eliminating leveling, while at the same time keeping classes, Pantastic, why throw out the baby with the bathwater? Classes work and don't take away from the immersion rule I mentioned above, while leveling certainly can. Take Tolkein's Lord of the Rings, for example. It has class specific characters, but they are not characterized by any type of level. Aragorn is known as a ranger, not a level 60 ranger. But he is also known as a powerful ranger which indicates that he had to do something in order to acquire his abilities.
It seems to me that MMO's recently have been straying away from the immersion principle. A perfect example is the mini-maps and/or auto-mapping that have become commonplace in games now. The last three games I have played, D&D: Stormreach, EQII, and City of Heroes all had some sort of mapping built into the game. I can understand why they did it, it can be a very time saving tool for the players. But it only serves to remind them that they are playing a game, not living in another world. One of the most frustrating things about EQ was getting lost in a dungeon. But it was also one of the most rewarding. You get separated from your party and get jumped by a couple of mobs and maybe get yourself killed. But that was a real incentive to learn your way around and the satisfaction I felt when I finally got the tunnels memorized was worth the trouble.
Almost every idea that I have written down on paper for the game idea I came up with was done with the thought, "Is this going to make me feel like I am part of the world or is it going to make me feel like I am playing a game." If it makes me feel like I am playing a game, I threw it out or tried to change it so as to make it seem like I was part of the world.
As far as differentiating between multi-player online and single-player online, Flatfingers, I have to come down on the side of multi-player. This is based on my experience of playing "Dungeon Lords". It basically is a simulation of an MMO that is single player played on your computer, not online. I played it for about two days and it struck me as being a very lonely world. I'm willing to tolerate the jerks to also be able to interact with the fun players.
I find classes lessen my immersion to a degree, while levels make little difference. "Oh look, I'm good at fighting so I can never learn to move quietly or to pick a lock. Oh look, I can pick a lock, move quietly, and backstab, so I can't strap on a shield or heavy armor when I know I'll have straight up combat." Far from throwing out the baby with the bathwater, I'd much rather ditch restrictive class systems than concern myself overly with whether the game has an overall level listed for my character. Real people can generally pick up skills that aren't part of their profession pretty easily, I have a lot less problem imagining someome who wears heavy armor and swings a sword being able to sneak when they need to than imagining someome who can wave their hands and heal grevious wounds in 2 seconds flat.
No, it's obvious that he's a member of an organization called the Rangers; nothing in the books imply that he's part of a class that gets 'ranger skills' and that other people can't learn those skills. Aragorn is someome who has developed a lot of wilderness skills, melee and ranged skills, and healing skills, but there's no indication that one has to join the rangers to learn how to track, fight, or heal - in fact, we see people who aren't members of the rangers use every skill Aragorn does at some time. Plus every ranger class I've ever seen is restricted to light armor, but Aragorn wears heavy armor when it's appropriate (towards the end of the story). There's also no indications that all of the rangers share Aragorn's abilities; his healing especially seems related to his lineage.
I don't find annoyances 'rewarding' or 'immersive' at all, I want a game without frustrations and time spent on boring crap like running around halls trying to remember the pattern to get back to where I was. Give me actual challenges, like fights that take planning, not things that challenge only my patience. I'm also not sure why you think it's less immersive for my character to make a map rather than me make one on paper beside the game. If I have to break out of playing the game to do something else, it completely kills my immersion since it's very clearly real-world-me writing the map (or writing notes for quests, etc.).
That actually highlights exactly why game companies aren't interested in the game ideas that random people come up with. You have what amounts to a document of your exact preferences in a game, which is not quite a recipie for commercial success. If they ask 'why should we make this game?' all you can honestly answer is 'because I'd like it and I hope that lots of other people would like it.' I mean, every person in that company can probably come up with a design for a game that they'd like and hope that everyone would like, why go with your dream game and not Joe the level designer's or Bob the tester's? And from your comments, I'm not sure you really realize just how subjective your judgements are, which is part of why I'm pointing out how different my judgements on what's immersive or not are from yours.
The most common thing I find in people who have ideas for games is the subjectivity of those ideas. Because we like something, we assume that others like it, too -- maybe not everyone, but enough people to be worth implementing.
When I see a statement like "When asked what attracts people to an MMORPG, [immersion] is always at the top of their list", my natural reaction is to ask, "What people?" "People" aren't a monolithic group -- different people want different things.
Which is why I've been finding myself pushing the idea of game design based on personality types. Instead of coming up with some cool-seeming mechanic or setting, and then building a game around them, I think a more generally satisfying game could be had by looking at what actually motivates different kinds of people and designing gameplay features to meet those motivations.
For example, there's been a distinction that's been observed for years between people who play games for the gameplay mechanics and those who play for the play experience (alternately described as being about story or narrative or social interaction). One kind of gamer wants to "play in" a MMORPG; the other kind wants to "live in" the game world. (There are more kinds of gamers; this is just a convenient distinction.)
The point is that designing a game just for those who want to play in a virtual world is as limiting as designing a game just for those who want to live in a virtual world. Both matter. Both exciting gameplay and a rich world are needed for a MMORPG to be as interesting as possible.
In other words, immersiveness is good, but it's not enough. To think that it is is to focus too closely on a detail and miss the more important big picture: immersitveness and fun gameplay matter more to different kinds of gamers, and a game that wants to appeal to all kinds of gamers needs to offer features aimed at all those gamers.
That doesn't mean everybody should get every little feature they want. It means that the features that do get implemented should align with the most common personality types, and that all the features for each type should be sufficient to create a distinctive and generally satisfying play experience.
Of course, "most common personality types" invites subjectivity. For that matter, the idea that game features ought to be based on personality types is a subjective belief I hold; I'm no more immune to thinking I have The Answer than anyone else.
That said, I do think it's reasonable to be aware of our subjectivity, and to ask ourselves: "Is this something I personally think would be fun? Or is it something that a lot of people who don't think the way I do would find enjoyable, too?"
I believe that approach would generate better games.
But better someone with passion who makes a limited-interest game than a theorist who designs the perfect game but never actually finishes it....
--Flatfingers
Originally posted by Pantastic
"Oh look, I'm good at fighting so I can never learn to move quietly or to pick a lock. Oh look, I can pick a lock, move quietly, and backstab, so I can't strap on a shield or heavy armor when I know I'll have straight up combat."
Ah, you raise a very interesting point. And I'm starting to suspect that you have ties to the development community. Is that the case? Because I see you limiting your ideas to the paradigm that the gaming industry has imposed upon itself. Who says that a character class has to be restricted to such and such item or skill? The gaming industry does. I, myself, have been frustrated with characters I have played simply because I wanted to try something with him and wasn't able too beause the devs said I couldn't. I say if a wizard wants to wield a two-handed sword, let him. Just don't expect him to lop off heads with it the way a warrior could. If a cleric wants to try to pick a lock, nothing should stop him? He just better be prepared to become a pin cushion because he's not going to do it as well as a rogue. It's real life situations that should put restrictions on characters, not the game itself.
I'm also not sure why you think it's less immersive for my character to make a map rather than me make one on paper beside the game.
Because your character is not making a map, the game is doing it automatically. That's not realistic, nor is it immersive. It's like your character going into a dungeon equipped with a GPS system. Keep in mind that the auto-map feature shows the location of you and your group mates with little dots on it. If your character were mapping a dungeon by hand, it wouldn't indicate their location with dots, nor would it have a giant X on it saying "You are here." I never mapped a dungeon by hand when there was no auto-mapping feature, I just did it until I learned it by memory. Gamers have brains (most of them do anyway), make them use them. Old Sebilis in EQ is one of the all-time great dungeons in MMORPG's in my opinion. Four years removed from that game, I still can remember every nook & cranny of that place because I took the time to learn it. I can barely remember most of the dungeons I entered in D&D: Stormreach only a couple months ago because I didn't have to.
Now let me address the points of your last paragraph and also Flatfingers' comments. All I can do is argue for what I believe in. If I try to become all things to all people, my ideas become diluted and of less value, I believe. I have tried to do this when coming up with ideas for my game concept, and I find I can't concentrate. On the other hand, when I focus on what I think will make a great MMORPG, the ideas flow much more easily. And if the opportunity ever came where I could pitch it to a company, I know I could put together a much more coherent presentation. How can I argue passionately for what I don't believe in? If that proves to be the death nell of my game, so be it.
Now does this mean that I am closed to other ideas? Not at all. If someone offers me an idea that addresses something that I haven't and I think it works, I'll put it in there.
While this approach has probably killed more ideas than it has cultivated, it has also worked in the past with spectacular success. George Lucas' Star Wars script was rejected numerous times before he was able to turn it into a movie, and it is one of the most popular movies of all-time. Michael Crichton, who I mentioned earlier, gets panned by the most of the critics everytime he writes a book and they routinely end up on the best-sellers' list. And Brad McQuaid, the maker of EQ, made it the way he wanted, with significant input from others, of course. He left when he felt he was losing control of the development of the expansions and I left soon after because I felt the game went downhill fast after that.
In terms of placing so much emphasis on immersing onself in into an MMO, look at it this way. Companies invest millions of dollars, thousands of hours of manpower and years of development into creating an online world. How can their goal be anything less than transporting a gamer into that world? And why would a player be willing to invest 10 hours out of a day to play in a world they don't feel they have become a part of? It makes no sense. All the other elements need to be there, community, fun factor, etc., but they should be done in the context of feeling like you are in that world. People don't read fiction to pass the time away, they want to lose themselves in the story. When I play in an online world, I want to lose myself in that world. How could you not want that?