Your role in the stagnant MMOG cycle...

[Arnold]

Roleplaying is about your ACTIONS being defined by the personality you imbue the character with, whether that personality is different from your own or not.

It has fuck all to do with the statistics your character has; those are just mechanics to allow you to resolve the actions your character takes.

Yeah.  And the Shadowclan weren't just putting on a show when others were around.  You could ghost their fort and they'd be going about their orcly duties and speaking their languages, abusing gruntees, etc.

[Arnold]

Frankly, I personally believe traditional 'RPG' games aren't really compatible with the MMO framework.  There is too much focus on becoming a hero, a world-changer, in the RPG genre to have it work out properly with more than a few important characters, nevermind thousands.  This is especially true for fantasy, whereas comic-hero systems have fewer issues, since all the heroes typically affect a limited area of effect(often one city), which allows for other heroes to be doing their thing elsewhere.  There just isn't room for more than a couple world-shaking heroes in any universe, so one designed to allow hundreds or thousands of them is bound to have problems.

Wow, that got long and rambly.

--
Alkiera

I wish someone would implement my idea of having a hero/god type character that is fully developed upon completion of character generation.  The Amber characters (and game) were like that.  We didn't get a "Hero's Journey" story for Corwin.  He just was there, and the action was immediate.

[Arnold]

And then there are games like Amber Diceless RPG, which I don't think rscott would even call an RPG... Your character had a rank in a few stats, strength, endurance, dexterity, and willpower, I think. It basically set up a pecking order for each stat, to settle contests between characters.

So... seeing as there is a method to determine success in Amber, and it appears to have nothing to do with the player, i would guess that Amber would rate higher on my personal RPG scale, towards the RPG end.

Yeah, you would like that one.  There was an example in the rule book of a character being faced by a sphinx and asked a riddle (or a similar situation).  The character in question had very high intelligence and its player simply told the GM "I solve the riddle and spit back the answer".

I had more fun with games where the players had to solve the puzzles/riddles/traps.

[WindupAtheist]

Just remake UO with modern shiny graphics and a larger world.

Post-Trammel UO.

The MMOG world will be better off once you Koster-esque "ganking = virtual world" proponents are all driven into the sea.

[Arnold]

Aliera,
IMO, if the result depends more on the player than on the role (the character) then you aren't role playing.  You are playing a FPS.  Its a bit  of a scale, some games the role/character skill matters more than the player skill, those are rpgs.  But move down the scale and where you have the player skill matters more than the role/character skill, you have a FPS.  And somewhere there is a 50/50 middle, though i don't think a game has been made yet that has that split.

You're right.  We shouldn't have an open chat sytem either, because a player might say something that is more witty than his 5 intelligence character would ever come up with.  Some simple pulldowns, with generic chat options for "buy/sell/truce/fight/group" should be enough.

[Arnold]

[quote="rscott"

But when i see people arguing for the removal of the charater (player skill should matter), and i see how people don't like how levels matter too much in DAOC for instance, I realize it won't stop there. If levels mean very little, then stats are on the cutting boards as well.  Anything that gets in the way of player skill won't be liked. Everyone has to have the uber template, the uber skills, the uber weapons/armour.  To the point where everyone has the same stuff, so what stuff it is is irrelevant.   No one is happy until the only real difference between their character and the enemy character,  is player skill (like quake).  Once you start down that slope, its going to get real slippery.[/quote]

What are you so afraid of?  Both systems have an advancement scheme.  Once scheme allows your character to get better through time played.  The other system allows the of the character (which means the character gets better) to get better through time played.  One systme is very hands on, the other is very hands off.

[Arnold]

Couple other things I would sight are Savage where it is a FPS but it also has levels (*gasp*). Leveling up is mostly visual but it does give *small"* perks like +1 armor in one level or +1 melee damage in one level.

Gamestorm had a game called, IIRC, "Magestorm", which was an FPS with leveling.  It was pretty fun, and all the levelling was through PvP.  However, levelling just unlocked new spells and maybe gave you hit points.  It wasn't a big deal because the game was level segregated and you were only ever competing against people who were ~5 levels higher.

While it was fun, I'd rather just play an FPS that gives you your full character from the start.

[Yegolev]

Next generation? No combat.

The central core in the current generation is combat, and that combat is the path to character improvement, the major element in PvP interaction, and the most fleshed-out mechanism. Everything about the combat, endlessly hacking at respawning mobs with no real affect on anything.

Drop it, and a world of possible interactions reveal themselves. Some games already touch upon it with crafting and player economies - but both only exist to further the combat core game. What I want is politics, trade, diplomacy, spying etc. Not whacking rats or other pure time-consumiong tasks.

new registant, nice forum.  smart people here.  anyway....

i agree with this a lot, probably more than any other single idea.  ever since UO i have wanted to exist as a craftsman, particularly as a blacksmith.  my dream of being a miner and smith with an established customer base and reputation as a good merchant were literally killed by the unrestrained PVP.  after that terribly disappointing experience with what i knew was a budding gametype, i stayed away from PVP in many other games.  but i still wanted to be a blacksmith.  this is one thing i really, really liked about A Tale In The Desert: the marginalizing of combat (can't quite say elimination, but it definitely isn't like in other games).  if for no other reason, it keeps the jerk-factor low.

i'm easy (at the moment) so it's pretty short.

must have:
1. auction house system.  i'd prefer something more evolved than FFXI.
2. skills, not levels.
3. functioning economy, preferably Hong Kong type instead of USSR type.

must NOT have:
1. no-trade/soul-bound items.  see #3 above.
2. world outside newbie area is a total death-field.  let me explore!
3. PVP against which i have no defense at any point in time.

otherwise i'm pretty easy.  of course, you never know what new idea will anger me to no end.

[Rasix]

Your shift key is very very lonely.

[schild]

Your shift key is very very lonely.

Your 'comma' key is very, very lonely.

ZING!

[Rasix]

Orders of magnitude, biotch.

[Yegolev]

Your shift key is very very lonely.

we are currently seeing other people, but we get together occasionally, for the kids.

[JMQ]

Yes.  I want to live another life, not watch my character live it.

Me too, but it absolutely has to be more interesting than my current life.  The realization that my online life was at least as tedious and frustrating as my offline one was what finally allowed me to throw the EQ monkey off my back.

[stray]

Yes.  I want to live another life, not watch my character live it.

Me too, but it absolutely has to be more interesting than my current life.  The realization that my online life was at least as tedious and frustrating as my offline one was what finally allowed me to throw the EQ monkey off my back.

I heard Steven Seagal plays EQ. Imagine how frustrating it is for him. He can kick more ass in real life than his character can in the game.

If someone could make a game that even Seagal would consider "fantasy", then we'd all be happy.

[JMQ]

Uh oh. Did I just step in a bear trap?