As we've all witnessed, roleplaying isn't the only social interaction in MMOs. People like being with friends while playing, even if the interaction is on the level of "Woohoo! Look at my new badass sword!". That's why MMOs get away with less content/h than single-player games.

Edit: And how exactly are MMOs worse than single-player games, game-mechanics-wise? Aren't they pretty much the same, as far as single-player CRPGs are concerned: Combat-levels-items-spells?

Another edit: Ah, you said "gameplay", not "game mechanics".

I agree with you Oluf. I have been, and still am, frustrated at how primitive MMO's really are. The best singleplayer games are much, much better than the best MMO's in terms of gameplay. They offer a tighter, more meaningful experience, while the MMO gets away with gameplay so basic it ought to be outlawed, something that very often feels like a slap in the face of the player.

What should even this out is the social aspect, yes. For many people it's somehow nice to run around in a world where others run around, nice to be able to chat casually with others. When you get home after a long tiring day at work, you do not neccessarily want a tight, intelligent game where you have to work and think too much. But a casual, easy game with obvious rewards, while you chat with others, that feels good.

For them anyway. And why are gamedesigners continually making the same MMO's, trying mightily to say that their MMO is unique, while in reality they only change cosmetic things while the underlying mechanics are always and constantly the same? It's not that they want to be millionaires, but they want their game to be released and not die off quickly. The MMO market is crazy, and it takes a lot of effort and money for most games to get to the launching stage. Now, you can keep all these tried and proved game mechanics, fiddling a little with veeeery small changes here and there (Conan: The players first go through a singleplayer game before meeting others. LotRO: You gain traits by doing things, etc.) OR you can go all out and infact design a whole different MMO, a new way of gaming and interacting, something that completely breaks from the mould of MMO's (Seed).

As a gamedeveloper, especially as you get older, you do want to do the latter. But, that's where it gets to be very, very tough. You have to sell your idea to investors. Yes, that's usually where it ends, unless you can really show what you want and that there is a market for it. Or you could have the money in your own gamefirm, by having made a lot of other things over the years. That's even more unlikely, but Bioware and Blizzard are like this, and their success with other things also means they can easily get money. And who knows, maybe Bioware will innovate the MMO market slightly.. But the best bet for an original MMO comes from small, very brave and hopefully skilled developers.

Yes, Seed could have been something truly unique, showing others that it IS possible to do something original and not just a new (slight) spin on the usual fantasy/grind/combat/level-gain formula. Others might have seen this and stepped up if it had worked. But.. It didn't work, which is really, really sad. Other small, unique games are in the making or already out there (Wurm Online, Adellion, A Tale in the Desert), but they are not done by professional people (they are ugly, some are simple, their release are uncertain, and they do not get out to a broad audience). Seed could have been a turning point, but sadly it was not to be.

And I'm going CRAZY over all the combat you have to do in MMO's. Like that was realistic or fun.. Oh wait.. It is.. Right.. Kill 40 woves, loot them, buy equipment, level up.. Do NOT think to yourself: "Hey.. Why am I doing this?".. You are doing it to level up so you can kill 40 bears instead, and otherwise do exactly the same and get some slightly different equipment.. How easy it is for gamedevelopers to create this sort of content. Sure, they have to work, but they hardly have to think. Which goes well with the player not thinking much doing this either

Uhm, right.. Anyway.. As long as the masses actually support these very, very sad gameplay mechanics, that's what most (or all) developers are going to do, because the workload put into a MMO and the risk of financial ruin are immense. You do not take chances with this, you create what you know people would like, and then you add your own twist as you can (and that twist is, when you think about it, very small indeed).

Maybe someone tries somethin like Seed again, and maybe it will work out better then. You do not need 1 million subscribers to be a success, EVE Online already proved this, and that is, really, a unique and great game in its own right, if not really a RP game. If you want to make a RP focused, unique game, then you're looking at attracting less than EVE's 150.000 (I think) subscribers, but if you know what you're doing, 5000-10000 subscribing customers can be enough to sustain the project too. The trick is to get these people where you want them before the money runs out.

I'd say AIs would be more interesting in single player games - in MMOs they'd be nice too, but since they'd have to compete with real human brains (no matter how moronic), they'd be less of a return to the (sizable) investment of developing them.

Personally, I'd like to see more complete world simulations, where quests would also be designed in a way that connects them to the simulation. "Deliver item X", for example, would be way more interesting if you'd have to find said item X in the ever-living market. This is, of course, a simple example, and I think EVE uses something like this in its "offers".

I'll admit, I found EVE to be mindbogglingly dull.  I am...a speck.  A speck I cannot even see.  Fighting other specks I can't see which are killing me with rockets and things which are, also, specks.  There was a spacestation, but there was no place to interact with other people in said space station.  I never even saw my character other than a mini avatar.  And what does one do?  Mine.  Mine a lot.  Just let your speck float around a large rock and hurrah, you're now mining.  So simple my husband even created a bit of coding in order to mine when he was away at work. 

I will readily admit I need visuals!  I need to see people, hear people.  I need explosions, whooshy noises and fireballs and so forth!  It doesn't need to be brilliant but it needs to be there for me.   This may have to do with the fact I'm dyslexic and have a hard time even remember right from left (let alone north - MUDs were impossible for me as a result).  But give me those visual elements and I'm all over it.

As far as roleplay goes...well what can I say?  I've played Morrowind, so I will refute the statement that roleplaying in single player games is impossible.  For a laugh, I created a character who fought defensively with her hands, but never did any offensive fighting.  She'd defend herself, but that was it.  I did not do the main mission, I did side quests only, and she dedicated herself as a monk to a particular temple.  I roleplayed the frell out of it, even though I was doing it solely for myself.  It worked out rather well to be honest, and I got rather far until I realised what I was missing.

An audience.

Roleplaying is a very interactive, community thing.  It's also a rather "showoff" sort of thing.  There's something to be said for creating a storyline idea, gathering people together to interact in it, and have them tell you later "wow!"   For most people that's roleplaying's core right there.  The interactivity.  However, get nearly half a million people in the same spot, and eventually, everyone is going to start differing on what gaming, roleplay, or anything else should be. In a Massive Multiplayer game, there is no way you can be what several hundreds of thousands of people want you to be.  Also, this is about money. People out there in gaming want to be paid, and they have to provide to the highest bidder.  And, unfortunately, the highest bidder doesn't appear to be roleplayers.  Or at least these games aren't marketing to roleplayers, though I have said time and time again that we may be a SMALL fanbase, but we are a very LOYAL fanbase. 

Most roleplayers in the MMOG community aren't even asking for much these days; just a server that is actually policed by its own policy rather than the debacle servers that WoW offered would be nice.  Unfortunately, gaming companies have realised we'll pay them regardless, whether they deliver the goods or not.  We're addicts, and as long as the drug is still reasonably affective we don't care if it's been cut with rat poison.  So, we pay them even when xUberDooDx logs in and starts dancing naked at us.  We pay them even when an "immersive interactive environment where you, the player, can affect the destiny of the world" doesn't happen without a huge uber-raiding group of people who, more than likely, don't roleplay.  We pay them when they fire their storytelling staff.  We just sigh and "make the best of it".

However, witness in comparison the PvP community.  They rant.  They scream.  They beat a dead horse over and over again.  They go over things in minutae, in fine detail, they howl, they withhold their money.  Eventually, they get what they want.  DDO was a prime example.  Turbine said for ages that they were not going to add PvP to the game because it made no sense to have it in, it wasn't at the heart of the D&D experience.  PvPers didn't take no for an answer, and they kept beating the dead horse.  So, Turbine said they would "consider" adding PvP.   Still the PvP crowd screamed and swore and fell on the ground kicking their feet in a brilliant imitation of my three year old autistic son having a strop.  Finally, Turbine added PvP into a game that never should have had PvP in the first place.  Into a primarily old school roleplaying game - RATHER than hiring GM's to host scenarios or put forth gaming concepts.  What did roleplayers do?  Sigh and quietly kept going on.

Perhaps the roleplayers need to shout and rant more.  Perhaps we need to quit shelling out for mediocre gaming and really demand something better.  Perhaps we need to realise that MMOG's will never, EVER give us what we want as what we want is so far outside the norm (more rp, permadeath and no combat, if I read you folks properly), that we need to give up on them and LARP instead. 

But certainly, what we're doing now isn't working, and isn't being heard.

I don't know what the solution is...other than to get a bit louder, a bit more agressive, about what one wants.  And, also I suppose, to know when to pull the plug on your membership when it isn't getting delivered.  But I've been online gaming for over 12 years now, and I know when some of my dreams are just that...if I really want the sort of game I want to play, then I best write it, have my husband code it, and I'll invite a few friends to play it.  There's no way a gaming company is going to deliver a game to my own exacting standards...especially if they want cash.

Last edited by Trevenni (2007-06-06 20:58:37)

First of all, Trevenni, I'm not sure when and how you played EVE. Like a few others here, I was in the beta. Back then, yes, it really was a very pretty space mining simulator. Even after launch, it took rather a long while to improve, though. Nowadays, you can mine... or you can trade, fight, manufacture... well that's the main of it, really. The point is that unlike most other games, you aren't forced into the role of a fighter.

The speck thing, I don't really understand, because in the default view and zoom level, my ship takes up a little over a third of my screen. Not much of a speck - especially when you consider that the damned thing weighs 1,1 kilotons without any load or equipment.

The interaction is a bit of a problem. They're fixing that, but it will be a while. (See other thread.) Since EVE is a fairly small game, they're more perceptive to the needs of the player base, and the desire for character-to-character interaction is great.

I don't really think that the MMOG world differs that much from single player games. What are you really comparing with, here? If you compare WoW to a single player game, it would have to be something equally popular - that is, something like Half-Life or Diablo II. Morrowind/Oblivion compare more in game-style, but they don't have the immensely wide audience-focus that WoW has. Also, Morrowind and Oblivion aren't really much in terms of gameplay innovation. It's pretty much same old with new, shiny graphics.

I have said this before: I'm seeing a fission in the MMOG industry. No doubt, there will be more games in the megaton WoW category, but I think they are unlikely to reach the player base size of WoW. Also, with middleware popping up more and more and server hosting getting cheaper, more reliable and easier to manage, it's becoming a lot more viable to create games for smaller audiences. It's happening right before our eyes. As someone at another forum pointed out, there are dancing and soccer MMOGs, now. URU takes adventure gaming online. The market is developing.

MMOGs today are mostly primitive and uniform, yes. Honestly, so are single-player games. The nature of capitalism is to exploit until you can't exploit any more, and the way games are today makes them great cash cows. We won't see the huge games getting any more interesting any time soon, but with a more stable, diversified market and cheaper hosting, it becomes possible for the people who really do want to make great games to get them published. Seed failed. We all know how tragic that was, but Seed almost made it! Think about that for a second and then look at what is happening on the MMOG market again.

Personally, I actually have more hope for the MMOG scene than for single-player games. The latter have barely developed at all in the last eight years.