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Role Playing (Games)

The Secret Life Of MMOG Characters 131

Posted by Zonk from the doing-their-own-thing dept.
An article at Gamasutra pines for MMOG characters to have their own lives. Specifically, the author wishes that over a very long period of time xp would accrue for parked characters. From the article: "Here's what I'd like to see: instead of Vanille Ice and all the millions of unused characters sitting on their collective tookuses, why not imagine that each day they venture forth and do some low-level crime fighting (orc slaying, etc.) just to, you know, 'stay in shape'. Now this workout wouldn't actually happen in any way visible to players logged on, but these characters would earn nominal amounts of experience each day. And in three months time, presto, a new level."
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The Secret Life Of MMOG Characters

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  • ... nor not working out? (Score:5, Funny)

    by XoXus ( 12014 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @01:06AM (#14675179)
    It'd be funnier if they *didn't* work out, and grew a bit broader around the midsection as a result.
    • In that case I need to go save my Guild Wars characters from succumbing to theirweight. It's at least half a year since I last played with them.

      And on a completely unrelated note; anybody else feel like Slashcode is reading your mind? The anti-script code of the reply page often says something related to what I'm typing, and the quote at the bottom of the page often offers the most insightful comment to whatever story I happen to be reading. Coincidence? - At which point must one stop blaming coincidence? -
      • Anti-script code of the reply page?

        I must be missing something -- I'm looking at the reply page right now, and I'm not seeing any sort of anti-script code. Do you post a lot with out signing on or something?

        But I agree with you about the quotes on the bottom of the page. I never used to pay much attention to them, but lately there have been a few that were either eerily related to the subject I was writing about, or such gigantic non sequiturs that they made me laugh.

        Does anybody know where they're being pu
    • That would be AWESOME!

    • Not Working Out (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kentyman ( 568826 )

      It'd be funnier if they *didn't* work out, and grew a bit broader around the midsection as a result.

      What's sad is the ammount of players who would frantically try to keep their character in shape, while completely ignoring their real body!

      • Should make a line of exercise equipment that tracks your activity and applies it to an avatar. THen make the avatar usable in an arcade game or something.

        I can just see the gamers dying from exhaustion trying to powerlevel their ExerFighter...

  • ATITD does this (Score:5, Informative)

    by merreborn ( 853723 ) * on Thursday February 09, 2006 @01:07AM (#14675183) Journal
    A tale in the desert lets you perform "Offline tasks", after you've done them sufficiently in game. If you've collected 500 units of grass in your lifetime, you can set your character to collect grass while you're offine. Or, you can accrue "run time", which you can use for instantaneous travel (the idea being that you did that running while offline).
    • If your characters actually collected "grass," this would quickly become the most popular game in the WORLD.

    • Progress Quest did this first (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 09, 2006 @03:46AM (#14675676)
      I'm pretty sure Progress Quest [progressquest.com] did this first.


      For those who haven't tried it; IMHO it's the first MMORPG that provides all the best excitement of everquest without any of the tedium.

      • I ran it in Wine on Linux, and got the same framerate as Windows users, and I didn't even have to pay for Cedega! Progress Quest rocks, because it gets rids of that unnecessary tedium when playing a low (or even high) level character in an MMORPG (the single-player mode is equally exciting, as well). I am addicted and have this game running for days on end!
      • My favorite Progress Quest quote, from the Info [progressquest.com] page:
        Gamers who have played modern online role-playing games, or almost any computer role-playing game, or who have at any time installed or upgraded their operating system, will find themselves incredibly comfortable with Progress Quest's very familiar gameplay.

  • Um, don't they have this already? (Score:5, Informative)

    by nifboy ( 659817 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @01:08AM (#14675188)
    I thought it already existed, just that World of Warcraft called it a "rested state" and made you actually, y'know, play your character to get the extra experience.

    (for those who don't play WoW, leave your char logged off for a few weeks and when you come back you get double experience up until your next level or so)

    And besides, the power levelers [worldofwarcraft.com] are going to run circles around "casual" players any day of the week.

    (Guess who just got -1 redundant! Oooh! Oooh! I know! I know!)

    • Re:Um, don't they have this already? (Score:5, Funny)

      by kg4czo ( 516374 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @01:26AM (#14675278)
      (for those who don't play WoW, leave your char logged off for a few weeks and when you come back you get double experience up until your next level or so)


      Blasphemy! What respectable WoW citizen would do such a thing?
    • I think the absolute max "rested state" you can store up it 1.5 of a level over the course of 2 weeks. (Don't quote on me that though)

      WoW however also enjoys the fact that hitting level 60 isn't that hard at all so some friends of mine who play it say its not really worth it since people generally fall into two catagories. A) they play so infrequently or in short periods of time that the xp boost eventually just caps out and is 'wasted' or B) they play 'hardcore' enough that rested bonus just isn't worth th

    • (for those who don't play WoW, leave your char logged off for a few weeks and when you come back you get double experience up until your next level or so)

      It's actually just 10 days to hit your rest cap of 1.5 levels; each 8 hours yields 5% of a level of rested XP.
    • From the linked site:

      As soon as i get done editing the whole movie, i will then be able to distribute it. I plan on putting voice commentaries in it, speed up any boring parts, i figure i can bring down 115 hours of gameplay down to a 30 hour movie...

      Wow. Because I was afraid I wasn't going to have anything to do this weekend.

      The sad part is that there are people out there who are going to watch that thing, in its entirety, with rapt attention throughout.

    • Actually, it's over a weekend that I can up my rested bonus til the next level if I don't play. Unfortunately, they don't call the game "Warcrack" for nothing.
  • If you remain logged off for an extended period of time, leveling up happens 100% faster.

  • That's how it's going to work in Vendetta Online (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Beolach ( 518512 ) <beolach@@@juno...com> on Thursday February 09, 2006 @01:13AM (#14675222) Homepage Journal
    The MMO that I play is Vendetta Online [vendetta-online.com], and it is currently in the process of some significant overhauling. The biggest focus right now is on rewriting the client, but the devs are also working on improving the AI of the NPCs, so that they'll live their lives much the same way the player characters live theirs. But rather than "this workout wouldn't actually happen in any way visible to players logged on", the actions of the NPCs in Vendetta Online are very much going to be visible to players. If there's a trade mission being offered, and a player doesn't take the mission before an NPC shows up where the misison is being offered, the NPC will take the mission. And when a trade mission is taken, either by a player or an NPC, a Pirate mission might be made available from a competitor, which can also be taken by either players or NPCs.
    • That's what I get for posting before RTFA. He was refering to player characters continuing their lives while the player is offline, not NPCs living a life similar to a player characters. As it happens, the devs of VO have mentioned plans to eventually have actions players can set their characters to performing while they're offline, but that's a bit more of a long-term goal.

  • Eve Online (Score:5, Informative)

    by GoNINzo ( 32266 ) <GoNINzo@@@yahoo...com> on Thursday February 09, 2006 @01:16AM (#14675238) Journal
    You train skills offline in Eve Online. The longer you are in the game, the more likely you'll have more experience. So, you can have one person who plays 16 hours a day for a month, versus one person who plays 30 minutes a day for a month, in the end of the time, they could have the exact same skills. (though the 16 hour a day player might have more money.)

    There are other games that develop these ideas as well, but I don't think it's a serious article. Any article that mentions Progress Quest obviously thinks of MMO's very highly. heh

  • EVE-Online..yes it does this too (Score:4, Informative)

    by ironwill96 ( 736883 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @01:19AM (#14675250) Homepage Journal
    Offline skill-based "leveling". The author of this article needs to check out EVE. Your character trains while you're asleep, while you're playing, heck, even if you cancel your account and leave a long skill running it will keep training!

    It really makes for great gameplay because no matter how much someone grinds the game, they won't train any faster than me (unless they can get some uber implants which assist slightly in the speed at which you can train skills). But basically in EVE I can start a new character and within about 2 months or so compete and kill players that have been playing for 3 years because you can specialize - take many things to level 4 in a specific subset of skills (there are 5 levels to every skill) intead of that last "level 5" that takes eons to train (like over 23 days for some skills).
    • How about if your account has been suspended due to lack of paid days?

      My account is currently waiting for the banks to get their acts together. Will I have Eidetic Memory 5 (what I was training for when it was suspended) when I get back? I was suspended on Monday.
    • and skills are everything in EVE, and not money, right? heh. heheh. heheh eheh ehehehhhe hehe.

      NOT.

      The guy who plays 16 hours a day in EVE will school your ass, because he's got the money to buy the equipment, and in EVE, equipment is damn near -everything-. He with the biggest, most expensive gun wins, pretty much hands down. The game is in my opinion horribly, horribly biased in this respect. It is, at its heart, an intergalactic capitalism simulator. Probably banned in China it's so capitalistic.

      Then
      • Until your ship gets blown up due to a gank, then you lose those billions you spent on that one basket of eggs.

        Equipment in Eve only really matters one on one, but if you're badly outnumbered, that little bit of improvement from the overpriced equipment isn't going to mean squat.
      • Banned in China because of capitalism? Ha ha.

        Ha.
      • You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Most people in EVE don't even PvP with their most expensive ships because they can't afford to lose them. A small handful of cheap, throwaway ships can take out targets that are worth far more than the cost of the small ships added together, and this happens all the time. You're clueless.
    • I'd be inclined to disagree as far as whether a new player can truly compete in EVE against the experienced people. There's no way any player will stand a chance against players that have two years worth of extra skill points. Yes, you can specialize and compete against a player that didn't, but most of the PvPers always specialize in combat too.

      EVE's system (and the one proposed in the article) are great for the casual gamer, but crap for new players to any game. It means they'll never catch up no matte
  • So that means by now, perhaps my level 24 Swashbuckler in EQ2 would be maxed out. I haven't played that one since a month after its release.

  • Fantastic! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Elvon Prezton ( 928185 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @01:24AM (#14675268)
    Just what I want to see when I login: When I pop into the zone, I'm in my house... but I'm not alone. There's a level 93 quadruple-classed Ninja/Executioner/Assassin/Brawler named "Chok Norissss" giving me a red-assed beatdown! As I lay there bleeding to death, Chok explains himself... Apparently, while I was logged out for a few days, my toon decided that he would go pork Chok's in-game life partner, repeatedly...

  • What WoW did was ok, this goes a little too far (Score:4, Insightful)

    by garylian ( 870843 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @01:34AM (#14675306)
    Wow's idea that you could spend a week (at least at launch) with that toon being offline and end up with 1.5 levels of 2x experience worked. It was incentive to bring your alts out once in a while, and have them gain a level fairly quickly, then put them back in the closet for a week or two.

    But you still had to do stuff to gain that experience, and quest rewards weren't doubled. Only actual mob experience doubled. You had to work for it. It was just easier to get somewhere on that less used toon.

    But just gain experience while off-line? What's the point in rewarding people for doing nothing? Next you are going to ask that you be given a stipend for not playing that character? The character should get free currency because they weren't played?

    No offense, but you play MMOs to accomplish something. I don't want to accomplish something by NOT playing.

    Or, as Herm Edwards, former coach of the NY Jets put it, "You PLAY to WIN the GAME".
    • No offense, but you play MMOs to accomplish something. I don't want to accomplish something by NOT playing.

      That almost made me think of something. Hmm... life priorities... videogames... damn, lost it. Oh well, off to raid BWL!

    • But just gain experience while off-line? What's the point in rewarding people for doing nothing? Next you are going to ask that you be given a stipend for not playing that character? The character should get free currency because they weren't played? No offense, but you play MMOs to accomplish something. I don't want to accomplish something by NOT playing.

      This is not just about secondary characters, but about casual players.

      Many MMORPGs struggle with accommodating both casual players and power gamers.

      • Trust me, I understand about what TFA was talking about. Heck, my wife and I duoed in WoW all the way to 60, with rarely grouping with our guildies due to time constraints on our part. My wife is working on her masters degree, and I do some editing on the side. We played most nights, but only for about 3 hours a night. Weekends may have been more.

        From lvl 10 through lvl 50, we were almost always in XP bonus. We weren't power gamers. We took our time, and we had fun with it. And due to that bonus we w
    • Or as Eric Mangine said: "If we can.. uhhh... win the... uhhhh... division. There will... uhhh... be better competition."

      As a Pats fan I will miss the Herm's Jets vs. Belachick's Pats epic battles from the past few years.
    • The rest system is also very friendly towards casual players--if you can only play once or twice a week, you'll find the rested state pretty handy. I guess that it also helps wow keep subscribers. If you can play once a week and it takes forever to level (despite how easy the game is, time could limit someone like that), you may become discouraged and cancel. But with rested state... "Hey this is cool, I level more quickly because I haven't been playing! Thank you blizzard!!!" Of course, a grind is a g

  • How about, you know, shortening the grind? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @01:38AM (#14675315) Homepage
    I love how there are a lot of solutions to the problem that the basic act in most MMPORPG's is boring. You grind away, killing baby spiders of tenderness or sickly sewer rats until hours and hours later you level, at which point you can go buy a bunch of new spells and some new abilities. Then you test them out in combat, and head back out to grind for another 6 hours to level one more time.

    Combat always seems to be too straightforward. I've been playing world of warcraft dwdfor about 80 hours, and so far I've found one enemy that I couldn't kill with a default strategy. Sure, towards the endgame I could group up and do interesting things, but for now it is a grindfest. At least they don't make you sit down for a half hour like Everquest did: 60 seconds or so of wasted time is enough in WoW.

    If your game can be easily scripted, you haven't made an interesting enough game. Every single MMPORPG out there suffers from this.

    Free leveling would be a great way of drawing people back in to play if they haven't been on in a while, but it doesn't solve the fundamental problem that what you're asking the player to do should be fun.

    • "what you're asking the player to do should be fun."

      Or challenging. Eve Online looks like it has a decent challenge level, the rest of them look to be gerbel wheels for humans.

      Maybe it's just me, but the whole magic/fantasy thing seems to be approaching the "too worn to wear" point. Maybe the game makers could mix it up a bit and do a "Glory Road" type of game where the players are from the present but find themselves in different times and places and have to figure out how to survive and prosper. "Dr Who"
      • Very true.

        In WoW (and AC / AO / etc) you can kill wimpy strawlings far, far below your level for 100 XP, or you can pick on a giant demon of instadeath and after a long and epic fight walk away with 150. You can lure enemies out once at a time the easy way for 100 XP each, or you can take them on the manly way two at a time for... 100 XP each. It seems like MMPORPG's are the perfect place to reward players for trying insane things and surviving, but the winning strategy is the riskless plod.
  • Online I'm a busty, easy, cleric maiden giving freely of her body to any adventurer she comes across. Offline I live in my dad's basement on welfare and am posting this to Slashdot. It's funny because it's true!
  • It's called progress quest. [progressquest.com]

  • Wrong way around (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Grail ( 18233 )
    The writer wants to have characters do something while the player is offline. WoW tries to address this with "rested bonus".

    What I always thought would be a better idea is to have characters get tired the longer they grind. The first two hours of "work" each day you get 100% XP. After that it's a linear roll off until at 8 hours, you cease to make any XP gains by grinding (still get XP from questing).

    Then people would have a dis-incentive for "power levelling" and just go out and enjoy the world and, you kn
    • A lot of people aren't interested in the RP though, which is why some MMO companies have pure RP servers. The same for PvP.

      Besides, to tell you the truth, it kinda creeps me out a little. I mean, who wouldn't be creeped out by a Dwarven warrior saying "It'll put some hair on yer chest?" Or some Pally walking up and saying "How art there fair lad?" when I'm a Night/Dark Elf.... *shutters*
    • Nope. Not 100% XP and linear roll.
      100% constitution (strength, to hit etc) and (some, maybe atan()?) roll. Your character gets tired and doing stuff gets increasingly difficult. You still do a wonder of slaying the dragon, no matter if you do it fresh and refreshed or after a week without sleep. So you go slaying fresh and rested because it's easier that way.

      As for accumulating XP while offline doing "daily job", nope. Your character has some daily job that keeps it from starving, from LOSING their XP (forg
    • WoW did this originally - the rested bonus went from 200% experience (after you've been logged off for the standard period) to a 50% penalty, depending on how much you levelled without logging.

      Unsurprisingly, the 'hardcore' people (which was the majority, as this was back in the US beta IIRC) tore Blizzard a new one on the forums. Blizzard then redid it as the nice, simple, two-tier system we have today. Most of the truly hardcore aren't going to be 'encouraged' to explore the world, they want to do it on


    • What I always thought would be a better idea is to have characters get tired the longer they grind.


      So instead of giving players a bonus for being rested, you'd rather give a penalty for not being rested?

      Sure, there's no real difference, it's just spin, but you're advocating a negative spin.
      IMO, positive spin is better.

      -- Should you believe authority without question?

  • Day job? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Allison Geode ( 598914 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:58AM (#14675537)
    what if you gave the characters a day job, like some folks do in D&D campaigns. say, you have to make your character go to a business, get hired, and then, when you're not out adventuring, you can be said to be doing the "day job." day jobs probably don't provide much advancement, but certain jobs could be based off of skills. in one campaign, a character got a job as a 'blacksmith'.. and after finishing a particularly long dungeon exploration, we decided that "the next adventure happens two months later, when you're all summoned to the village elder's house....." in that two-month's span, they got a salary (based on their chosen job, and if any of their 'skills' seemed like it would make them better at performing that job), and recieved X amount of money for 2 months of labor. nothing much, granted, but enough to seem reasonable and provide a more interesting level of immersion.
    • In EVE, I sort-of do have a day job. I'm heading towards career in Science, and I'm currently doing reseach for a few NPC Agents.

      Well, I would be if the damn banks would hurry up and pass my payment on.
    • Actually, I really like a variant of this. What if you could hire PCs when they weren't on? You hire the guy and the AI controls him - he has your skills, your gear, but the AI is running the character. The problem is figuring out how it's supposed to play it - obviously you want certain skills in combination, otherwise not terribly useful. But, that could be really clever...
      • The real problem here would be that I don't care who you are, the hired PC is dragon fodder. I can see it now.

        "Hmm.. six level 10 orc fighters versus my lvl 8 fighter and these four lvl 5 mages i hired out... I'll just have them stand in a line and run the hell away!"

        Every time you log in your charecter would be dead or would have accumulated every injury that the coders could concieve of... maybe a few they didn't.

        • Those issue are easily taken care of. The real problem is when you hire a character, then in the middle of the adventure there person logs in and the character leaves.

          • Excellent point. I believe this might also be easy to handle. When you log in there is a message box saying, you've been hired out by blah, to do quest blah, the wages are blah. Then your char can 'wake up' and start fighting without the AI (less sever load). You could just tell the other guys their on their own and split (but no cash).

            I suppose it would also be pretty easy for you to set blocks of time aside for when your char can go questing on his or her own. Like, say, when you're at work, or sleep

      • Well, the AI would be just a generic based on class and various items, etc. Yeah, certain skills probably would never get used, others would get used differently than the player intended, etc., but it would at least keep your rogue from acting like a mage.

        I'd probably make sure there were some limitations both for and against the player. The AI is going to be reasonably stupid, so I'd probably discount any kind of permanent death or major loss of items, etc. Of course, the NPC could die, it just wouldn

    • In Ultima 7 [wikipedia.org] your character could get various day jobs around Brittania. You could drive goods from farms to cities if you owned a wagon, you could follow a (simple) recipe and bake bread, you could take wheat to a mill and then take the processed flour to a bakery, you could smithy some weapons, etc.

      You couldn't actually open your own shop and get business, so you were restricted to being paid by the item by your boss (or trading partner) NPCs but it was still a great touch of immersion. But what else could

  • Jekyll / Hyde: The MMO (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Wilson_6500 ( 896824 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @03:04AM (#14675557)
    Wow. Take it to the next level. Whenever you're not online, your character has some other personality that actually works towards a _different_ and possibly contrary set of goals--instead of grinding XP, maybe he goes out and harvests fish or shoots puppies or something. Of course, the more time you spend online, the harder your character works against you when you're offline (just to keep it fair for the casual gamer). Man, that'd be hard to balance, but why do games always _require_ that you're in more or less total control of your character? If you're going to give them an "offline" life, why not do something _interesting_ with it? Imagine logging back in only to find that some naked newbie's character is locked in your apartment's bathroom. Total riot.
    • Let's take it a little further -- rather than just having one human player per character, why not trade them around a little?

      Every time you log on, you get dropped into a character that somebody else has just logged out of. Feel like doing something anti-social? Violent? Cannibalistic? Go for it! And the best part -- once you've gotten the character in jail / being chased by hundreds of angry players, log out and let somebody else take over. It'll be HI-larious.

      After all, you can only program a script to be
    • It sounds like you'd like to have the offline state sort of go into Sims mode and your character can do what they want to do instead of what you tell them to do... I actually like that idea combined with min. leveling. Now what would be really "funny" is allowing those characters to form there own parties or be lead to do things by others. Of course, those that are on line would now have the ability to manipulate newbiew characters. Of course those that are always on-line after work my come home and find fo
    • Someone actually discussed a similar idea at MUDdev con 2003. Unfortunately the archives at kanga.nu are pretty unreachable, so it's hard to find transcripts and the like at this point.

  • Some Ideas (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SilentOneNCW ( 943611 ) <<silentdragon> <at> <gmail.com>> on Thursday February 09, 2006 @03:32AM (#14675639) Homepage
    Many games have some sort of "offline-life" built into the game. Eve, World of WarCraft, Progress Quest all have this system; that to hinder power-leveling players from ruling 'teh w0rld', those characters that aren't played as often gain some sort of bonus; like WoW's concept of 'rested xp' (a second bar that overlays your normal xp bar, and the longer you rest at an inn the more of this second bar fills, and when you gain experience that is covered with this second 'rested' bar, you gain it at double the rate) or Eve's auto-skill improving (your characters train while you're offline, having them increase in skill levels over long periods of time.)

    However, these don't, I think, adequately balance the playing-field; in WoW even with the rested bonus countermeasure, those that grind constantly still have a significant edge in arms and armor, and it is this issue that must be addressed. Perhaps, as 'Time Goes By,' you could tell your character to pursue various tasks; somewhat like the training option in sports simulations that allows your character to focus on a single aspect of the game (shooting, tackling, tactics, etc) or in Homeworld Cataclysm in which the Beast mothership can focus on one aspect of her being to accelerate it (building, researching, firing, defending). Similarly, one could instruct your character towards a course of action on log-out, dependent on your locale and skills.

    For example, Yassi the Night Elf hunter could be instructed, upon log-out, to hunt low-level wild beasts, with her skinning skill and also make bags with the leather recieved, so that when I log back onto Yassi, she'd have made a lot of bags, and improved her skinning and leatherworking skills in the process. Or, if Yassi was miles from home in the Barrens, she could be instructed to make her way back to Darnassus; when I log back on, she's got less silver (for hippogryph fare) but she's back in Darnassus. Or she could even grind against low-level monsters and merely collect their drops. In this way, one could automate some of the more mundane parts of the game, and allow greater freedom for offline characters.

    Of course, it would be mightily important to ensure that only one character per account could use this ability (otherwise each player would just create tons of mules to harvest stuff) and that the benefits recieved would be much lower than the benefits of doing it one's self; I'd say between ten and twenty percent.

    Any thoughts?

    • "those that grind constantly still have a significant edge in arms and armor, and it is this issue that must be addressed."

      i guarantee you that any game in which a casual player can do as well as a hardcore grinder would be out of business faster than you can spit:

      1- all the hardcore players get pissed off when they realize their uncle Ed has the same set of armor that they do, and quit for a Real Game.

      2- the semi-hardcore players are now the closest thing there is to hardcore, and they have the same realiz
    • Not to sound like a smartass, but why would you bother to PLAY then?

      I mean, I'm exactly in the demographic you talk about - I'm a casual, 5-10-hour-per-week player. I have lots of guildmates that I started with, that hit 60 (in WoW) months before I did, they all have full sets of Tier 1/2 epic gear, while I'm still strugging to get my first few Tier 1 pieces. When I started MC, they had just about moved it to 'farm' status. Now that I'm ready to farm MC and hit ZG, they are almost ready to break into AQ.
    • Another issue is that rested state only helps you pre-60. Once you're at max level, all the rested state in the world won't benefit that character. This is where people who grind really have an advantage.
  • Disclaimer: I don't claim to know anything about, well, anything.

    Sure, getting XP modifiers and offline cash and breast plate, etc. -while- absent is fine.. but why should you? What incentive does the ever-giving, limitless-supply, disneyworld factory conveyor belt of the MMORPG world have to fork out this stuff? Tax those that wish to -take advantage- of these systems..

    This is just an example of -one- application. The variables, adjustments and angles are limitless. You could SkillShop (TM)(R)(C)(patent pe

  • Won't 'fix' anything (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @06:43AM (#14676044) Journal
    What is fundemantally wrong with a lot of MMORPG games is that people seem to be fixated with getting levels. They are willing to spend hours of absolute boredom to get just that next level taking them one step closer to being... well high level. And then what? Oh but the high level content is so much better.

    Right, sure. Lets take the MMO out of the MMORPG for a moment. Would you think say a game like Baldur's Gate was as much fun if you first had to grind you way to level 20 before getting on with the game proper? No.

    In single player land we want the game to be fun regardless what our level. Levelling up is just a way to give you a few new toys to play with. Just because the level 18 spells are really neat doesn't mean it is excusible that the level 1-17 spells suck donkey balls.

    In short I think MMORPG's should be fun to play regardless your level. Removing levels completly is not going to be acceptable but I think they should be far less important. If the casual player who after a year is still a low level can have as much fun as the power grinder (or perhaps even MORE fun) then you got a game that people will not cancel because they find themselves all alone unable to find a party. Current games suffer to much from the fact that a new player is in a world with everyone else at high level being bored.

    But frankly I think it is impossible to achieve this. The only way I can think of doing it is to make combat far far more complex. Stop it with the simple D&D crap and get some real strategy and tactics in there. Perhaps where the difference between a low level and a high level isn't just special moves but plain experience. Then adding difficulty would be easy. Just increase the number of attackers. With real AI and real combat you could then easily have mixed level groups. Imagine this scenario. High level fighter keeps the center position, a low level fighter stand by his side attacking only one enemy being protected from being overrun by the high level who can fend off multiple attackers.

    Current combat ALWAYS runs like this. EVERYONE attack the biggest threat and then work their way through the mob. This is not 'real'. In real live the heavy would take on the heavy and the low levels would take on lower level enemies. One on One. Just imagine how different fights would look. Rather then a dozen models all meshed together they would be spread out more. Rather like a big fight in the movies.

    Yeah yeah, I am rambling. I just think that a game that I am expected to play for years should be more challenging then a single player game I finish in a week. For me the problem with all the MMO's I have played is that I grow fed up with the combat wich is boring and repetetive. Change this. Make it so a cellar filled with rats is fun. Scale the dungeon for total group level. So 1 level 1 player gets 1 rat. 2 level 2 players get 2 rats. But a 2 level 1 and a level 10 get 12 rats. Now they have to work as a team, perhaps with the level 10 just concentrating on keeping the enemies at bay and the low levels picking them off one by one.

    Tada! Fun for everyone. Sadly it ain't going to happen, the current move is to arcade like combat with it becoming more about twitchy turning games then cool strategy and hot tactics. MMO the world of lag and everyone is going for combat that requires instant reaction.

    DDO is particulary bad, you got to block manually. Oh sure, that is fun. For the first day. But after you played a year and blocked a million times it might get a bit repetitive.

    Sadly I am in a minority, I actually prefer it if my avatar is not under direct control but rather takes instructions and carries them out.

    • "What is fundemantally wrong with a lot of MMORPG games is that people seem to be fixated with getting levels. "

      Actually that's what's right about most fantasy-esque MMO's. Almost every RPG imaginable has some sort of leveling system. Without levels, or "goals" if you like, gaining skills and whatnot starts to lose its value. That and developers need a way from everyone speeding through their content in a month while keeping the game interesting, if you can finish the entire game in a month you don't hav
      • Levelling up was never my goal in all the black isle games. I was playing it for the story. Silly me I guess.
      • You played Diablo 2 to get items and skills? I played it to kill Diablo and play out the story. Then replayed it to try out some of the other character types. Items and skills were just things that helped me to my goal of beating Diablo. If anything, I give more props to someone who manages to do it with lower levels and fewer items than with more levels/items.
        • "You played Diablo 2 to get items and skills? I played it to kill Diablo and play out the story. Then replayed it to try out some of the other character types. Items and skills were just things that helped me to my goal of beating Diablo. If anything, I give more props to someone who manages to do it with lower levels and fewer items than with more levels/items."

          I didn't mean to say story isn't important but I'm talking about a game in terms of replayability, i.e. it remains fun long after you've finished t
    • I don't see your plan having much of an effect, unfortunately.

      If a single lvl 1 rat is a challenge to a lvl 1 toon, why do you believe that 12 lvl 1 rats would be a challenge to a lvl 10 toon? There is nothing that says the mobs will scale like that. In fact, I haven't played a game where that would hold true.

      Those lvl 1 rats are designed to be challenging to a lvl 1 player. They are made to have a reasonable chance to hit that lvl 1 player through the toon's expected armor/skill level. A lvl 10 charact
    • Right, sure. Lets take the MMO out of the MMORPG for a moment.

      GENIUS! The is the only way you can get a good roleplaying game is cutting the number of people down to something manageable. That and removing anonymity would be awesome as well.

      But you knew that... you are preaching to the preacher.

    • "Real Fights" ? ? ? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by airos4 ( 82561 )
      "This is not 'real'. In real live the heavy would take on the heavy and the low levels would take on lower level enemies. One on One. Just imagine how different fights would look. Rather then a dozen models all meshed together they would be spread out more. Rather like a big fight in the movies."

      What real fights do you watch, where people end up slugging it out one on one? Beatdowns in the street are usually gang vs solo. Police and other people trained to fight wait until they have overwhelming numbers
  • A system that rewards people who not play it is detrimental to the motivation of the gamers. Why should anyone grind on when all they have to do is create a dozen alts that can sit unused and slowly but steadily gain level? Too many shortcuts or 'easy roads' means that fewer will be interested in the difficult road, and soon enough fewer will be interested in the game.

    So, the reverse would be better, or in my mind at least more interesting. A system where experience steadily decreases while you are away, at
    • The monthly rate is the same if you are a casual player or an hardcore gamer, so that make sense if game companies tries to keep casual player. After all by being casual, they also consume a lot less resource ...
      Additionally think of the hardcore gamer coming back from holliday or after the exams, the harder it is to come back the more likely this gamer will try some other game and because the games favorise that much deep commitment, that also mean that player is lost.

      But I aggree that its overly difficult
      • Well, I happen to know a couple of hardcore gamers. Well, it is hard to actually know them, because there is rarely time to speak unless in game... But from what I have observed I would say that coming back after the holidays or exams knowing they are at a clean level wouldn't be a problem, quite the opposite. It is more likely they would enjoy the challenge to get that extra level in the bag before they have to leave... And once they come back tackle the next level, and the next level with the same enthusi
  • In a game like WOW which has a level cap, offline leveling would only let players reach the maximum (and i think most broken level) faster. The rested bonus is a much fairer way of doing it, and also helps the game last longer.

    i'd also add that eve is different in that its skills your learning and not XP gaining and as some skills can take months to level up, it doesnt make frequent players feel less valued.
  • I would like to see a somewhat harsher game... I mean, I play ArcticMUD off and on and that is one harsh game... you die, you lost immense amount of exp, all your gear, suffer stat damage for a week or more, etc etc etc... so harsh i usually let the character die for good (good roleplay) and take a few months off before playing again... sounds unfun? problem is, I keep coming back... the point becomes, in a persistant world, when you log off, your character should still be int he game as an NPC... lets sa
    • I'm not sure that this would pan out -- the critical problem with WoW economies is that there's a totally unlimited supply of money, and unlike fiat currency in the real world, it's printed without much control at all.

      E.g., when you complete a quest or kill a monster in most games, you get some money. (Don't ask me why that boar I just killed had 15 Copper on him, I don't want to know.) It's being created all the time, if there wasn't some way to take it out of the economy (objects getting destroyed, "bound
      • oh yes... it would have to be that dynamic... barter would be allowed, and minting of coins could literally be a form of tradeskill... but then again, that could be risky as you might not want to have to waste data tracking individual coins... but that depth isn't really necessary... if you had a dynamic 'culture' or 'faction', among its stats could be 'monetary units' that remain blank until that faciton/culture/town whatever had reached a critical mass enough to be able to give manpower to minting (assumi
  • it is not the toon that needs to stay in shape to adventure, it is the gamer. If you haven't played a character in a while, whether you were just offline or if your primary is a mage and your alt is a tank, you need to practice your own skills on greenie or even gray mobs. What are your best combos? is your hotbutton bar optimized for your current level and the types of mobs you are facing? what tactics work best vs. casters? vs. the snare+range types? vs. BAF melee types who run for help before you exp
    • I agree with your train of thought when it comes to practicing skills and it can probably be applied in game. I think it would be interesting if you lost skill points in crafting or weaponry if you didn't exercise them after a while. Instead of your unarmed combat level staying at 30 points while you did nothing but pummel things with a swords or daggers, have that value slowly degrade as your other value continued to rise. Therefore you'd have to build up your skills again or rotate weapons every once i
      • Degrading weapon skills is a horrible mechanic that serves only to punish players for wanting to try out different weapons. You'll end up with everyone using the same type of weapon for many levels, because nobody wants to lose their skill that they need to properly use the uber weapon they want later on. Basically nobody would even consider playing around with other weapons unless the bonuses on them were extremely beneficial.
      • is that it is simple, and doesn't do crap like that.

        Why would you [punish the casual player like that? or punish players who like to try lots of different stuff?
  • Having never played CoH/CoV but having RTFA, it seems like the author has proposed a strange solution to a simple problem. His problem is motivation. There's no in game content availible to him at the moment that's enough to make him keep playing personally and that's understandable. I've had friends quit because they feel they can't keep up and their characters aren't strong enough to do anything. I don't blame them because if you keep staring at the same mobs or you're in the same place that you've be

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