Persistent World Rountable: The Role Playing Experience...

#81 I'm going to resurrect this thread because I like it so much...

I like permadeath, but tempered with karma. I think it'd be cool if a character could go on quests to increase his/her karma, so that when they died, a cleric would just "happen" to come by and resurrect them, costing X amount of karma. (Of course, if they're on the 14th level of the Dungeon of Evil Doom, that might seem a bit far-fetched, but work with me here). This system would encourage players to play their characters carefully because of the permadeath, and would give them reason to go on something other than loot quests.

As for skills & stats, I prefer a description to a number system. "Weakling" as opposed to a ST stat of 3. Of course the numbers are still in the background, but descriptions make for a better RP environment.

And one thing I always liked is a system to allow your character to do the boring tasks while the player is offline. Like crafting, for instance. A game could require that a blacksmith takes 2 game days to make a decent sword (so as not to have too many bloody swords around). It would be boring to actually make it while playing, so you could set your character to the task of creating the sword while you're sleeping.

One thing that always bothered me with the whole crafting thing is the oversupply of items. If a system was put into place to degrade the items over time (unless maintained) until they were gone would be good... keeps people from collecting a thousand shirts, for instance (for some reason people do this in certain PW's)

#82 "What makes a good roleplaying experience?"

For me, it boils down to being able to experience the role that I've chosen to play. If I'm playing a hero, I want to be in a world that lets me do heroic things. Fantastic fights, grand rewards, cool weapons, NPCs that acknowledge my character as a hero etc... My litmus test back in the day of MUDs was to avoid any MUD that started you out fighting things like bunny rabbits and squirrels because it suggested to me that the game playing would be focused around mindless killing as opposed to the experience. I can enjoying playing these games, like Everquest, to a certain point, but eventually my ability to play a hero approaches zero while the effort required to play heads towards infinity.

#83 @Brian
The problem is that everyone wants to be the hero and that having that would take away some of the experience IMO.

Now to me I would like to affect the world. Taking EQ for example Lady Vox should only be around once. After you kill her she is dead. Now if you want to keep players coming back for more then instead of dieing make her run away when she gets low. Another thing to do would be to have offspring avenge the death.

Your right in that playing EQ makes you playing a hero turn into a zero and I wish other online games would come up with new ideas. The problem is that they see it as a money sink. More content == Less play money.

#84 @Eric
Affecting the world is something I always thought was an interesting aspect of the MUD, which I believe still often delivers the best roleplaying experience available on the computer at the moment. Regardless of obvious flaws of the genre, it certainly allows the player to make his mark upon the world. After all, text is easy to change.

The roleplaying experience would reach a peak if this versatility found in MUDs can be translated into graphical games. This idea poses so many technical and budgetary problems, I won't even start listing them. But that has never stopped this industry before, so technical and budgetary problems, one can only assume, are temporary. Once these are solved (note how I simply leapfrog the technical aspect by saying that someone else will solve them. It's a great game designer technique.) the possiblities are endless.

Not only will the death of Lady Vox be permanent, but the local villagers who have been freed of her reign of terror (I have no idea who she is, I can only assume that she reigned her share of terror) will paint your portrait and hang it in their city hall. And instead of the MUD version of this: "You see a portrait of a handsome lad in armor hung on the north wall" , the game will generate a picture of you and you can actually see yourself in all your heroic glory.

#85 I guess I just don't understand how a MUD can do that and yet a MMO cannot. I think the problem is wussification(is that even a word) of playing online games. Let me explain.

Online games figure their money is based on return customers that play the game. Which means they want everyone to experience being a hero which means no dynamic world. 800 people can kill the dragon and it will always be there for the next guy. While that was fun for me at first but as the other person said it did get old. I know that there is a way to do the MUD into graphical games and when I do it this place will be the first to see it.

Now that isn't to say that I'll have an MMO. I tend to find MMOs not my idea of fun. Instead I want to take the approach of playing with a group of people and playing an adventure. Be it 4 people or 20 people it would be something not huge. There are things in my head that float around but getting them organized is another story.

#86 @JD/Eric: I think the solution is not as hard as it seems. For my game, I'm creating name dictionaries in the database. As you add more names, the growth of the combinations are somewhat exponential (right now I can spit out something like 16,000 name combinations). The thing is, it's a pain in the butt to sit there and think up names all day (if you're not using your native name-set, which I'm not, since it's all original stuff).

But the solution is to use that dictionary and tie it in with the spawning of NPC's, and then set up your "bad guy groups" like drug cartels are set up: Once the boss falls, the void gets filled by someone else. Of course, he'll be surrounded by nameless, faceless, guards and such you can use as fodder, but after a short while, someone else will rise to that rank and take over. So you get your moment in the spotlight for inflicting a blow to that organization, but it by no means has ended their existence. And at the same time, the next guy or girl who comes through to do the same mission won't be killing someone who you killed (though there will still be a small chance at that because of the name generator's ability to generate the same name, but it's a small chance).

It's not a huge problem to set that up and work it into the story. A few lines of text about how this new bad guy leader is as bad or worse as the last one, the name generation taking place when the character respawns- or the swapping out of NPC's depending on who enters the area. To prevent multiple PC's from facing the problem of getting to the character at the same time, you make the place an instance, so that you can customize the experience for the player.

That's one way to get people to feel special in a game genre that has not really be designed for it since it's inception (and I'm seperating MUD's from MMO's here, because when they made that transition, a LOT of stuff got lost in the translation from 2D to 3D). I do think some of these newer games have done a small bit here and there towards mending that breach, like instances and hiding some stats to help the player concentrate on gameplay, but they're going to have to do a radical overhaul of the gameplay, rules, and UI in order to really make it the equivalent of a MUD or pen and paper RPG's. But it can and will be done...

#87 @Eric
I don't see it as a problem of wanting everyone to be a hero, because I don't think that's any different than a MUD. If someone on a MUD wants to be a hero, the people who run the MUD probably want to let him.

The problem of players leaving their mark on a MUD/MMOG's persistent world is one of content creation. If I only have to come up with text for a new set of areas and a new challenge, it's much less work than coming up with new models, textures, animations, etc. What can be pretty well polished and put into place in a few hours in the first case takes a few weeks for a rush job in the second case.

#88 @Ted: I agree with you all the way which is why I was glad you started the thread and still see it come back from the dead off and on. I think most of the problem that people get side tracked with is that they tend to see things as being a big overstaking task when it isn't. If you ever need help Ted let me know. I see your ideas and mine are very similar.

@Theo:
Creating new areas is one thing but what about retexturing or recoloring current models. For example Lady Vox was defeated by the Defenders of Norrath, however there are rumors that Lady Vox has come back from the dead(retexture) to once again take back the land of Everfrost.

That could be easily done. For me though I have actually been involved in things like this. I use to be a minor part in the EQ Emulator project and saw that it could be done.

#89 @Eric
I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm simply pointing out that the level of effort needed to add content to a text-only environment is a few orders of magnitude less than what is needed to add content to a fully graphical environment.

For example, you wrote the description of Lady Vox coming back from the dead and trying to take back Everfrost in what, 5 minutes. Now go ahead and create an undead texture for Lady Vox. You won't get a quality retexture done in 5 minutes (or 50), but you could possibly get it done in 500 (over 8 hours 20 minutes) including QC if there were no model or animation changes needed.

Now, what if I describe her now skeletal features, crushed armor, and the gaping wound in her side. I've just added 2 minutes of MUD updates, and probably a week of MMOG updates. How about the cloud of deadly spores that emanate from her emaciated corpse? Another 2 minutes for the MUD, and a few hours for the MMOG.

Again, it's not a possible/impossible thing, it's just a completely different work load to get through, and the 'Live Teams' for most MMOGs are only just big enough to handle the bug-fix load, and run a few big events a year.

#90 @Theo: Though the work is already done for EQ. I have seen the undead textures and everything else. They are choosing not to do it because like you said they handle bug fixes and other things and don't give a crap about what would make the experience better for players. Oh wait they do have that one server that if you pay $50/month you get events but $50/month is a bit overpriced IMO.

Regardless we both agree it can be done we just need to come up with a way to do it and I think people would be thrilled. It sounds like Ted is working on something like that right now.

#91 @Theo
What I am saying about the common MMO is that it mostly makes the final goal of everything to become the best fighter. All the other stuff just supplement the fighting. You cook food to sell (or eat to regenerate health so you can keep fighting) you get the money, you take the money and buy armor, potions, spells, weapons etc. These things all help you in combat. Whereas in an MUD, (a very good example of this is a game called Achaea) you can be politically successful and climb your way up the city government. Or you can buy a shop and become a rich man and live in luxury. Combat is not the be all and end all in an MUD. However, you also made the good point that developing new content (or customized content for individual players) is much different in an MUD that in a traditional MMO. This is of course because of the funds needed to create art as compared to the affordability of text.

The problem we run into then is that the type of people who have the money to make such a game tend to be rather conservative towards new ideas. Executives have the power in the industry and they like to wait for someone more imaginative to come up with an idea first before they spend their hard earned budget on it. So, if indies can't do it, and big companies won't, who will?
The only way I can imagine it is to get a bigshot designer whos name is recognizable and whose games have sold well enough to convince a publisher to bless this big-budget problem.

#92

Quote:The only way I can imagine it is to get a bigshot designer whos name is recognizable and whose games have sold well enough to convince a publisher to bless this big-budget problem.

I have to disagree here... Indies can do it- there's no question. The trick is to find a graphical representation of the other gameplay elements in MUD's. That is, if there's a feature related to politics in the game, how do you show that to the player? The underlying rules would generally be the same, with the exception to whatever changes you make for visual/audio presentation, but it's bringing the gameplay across that counts.

And in that, money means a lot less than you might think :)

#93 @Ted
If you can find a way to do it, more power to ya. I'm just looking at it in a realistic sense. Money has a tendency to find its way out of game budgets in unexpected ways, especially when it comes to art assets.