| Is it possible to create a real mmorpg?; No one roleplays anymore... | |
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| Topic Started: Jan 28 2008, 01:17 AM (3,450 Views) | |
| techwizrd | Jan 28 2008, 01:17 AM Post #1 |
Magister ex Machina
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I have constantly been searching for, looking at, and trying various Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, otherwise known as the popular genre of MMORPG. I think the general reason why people play FPS is because it lives up to its name. MMORPG's are becoming a futile dream nowadays. A First-Person Shooter just has to have some mass of players running around in a field with some type of gun, crossbow, or other shooting weapon. MMORPG's require something altogether different. In my mind, a real MMORPG can qualify as a MMORPS only if it follows a one key principle. The players must roleplay and immerse themselves in a game, completely in character. Quests must be made subtle and be based on the personal obligation of the character themselves. Games, these days, are becoming boring and annoying, full of little messages yelling about how you have a new quest in you Quest Log. It seems that communities are unwilling to roleplay and are completely focused on furthering their characters. D&D is a real RPG, but DM's are very inexperienced nowadays and submit to their players, and reveal the inner mechanics of the game world. There is no safe haven for those of us who like playing RPG's where you actually roleplay. Some MUD's are doing a good job, but is is easily spoiled by zealous players. When I sleep at night, I dream about immersing myself in a world and becoming an average member of society and learning to know what it feels like living by a different set of rules, standards, and environment. Reality is not measured in statistics. Jobs are not classes and errands are not elaborate quests. The inner mechanics are not revealed and unraveled in an obvious way to the players, the beings of sentience and thought. I think that the central piece to a RPG is not the quests, or the gold, or the weapons, or the armor, or the leveling, or the slaying of monsters, or any concrete thing at all. I think the central thing that attracts us all is the ability to experience and taste the feeling of living a different life in a different world where anything and everything is possible. I think the single most attractive feeling is knowing a different reality. Sadly, this experience relies mostly on the players and their own actions. I believe the main problem is not the game (although it is still a problem). I believe the main problem is the modern mindset. Although I am unable to put a finger on the exact nature of the mindset, I believe the mindset is one of constant need to prove oneself to others and in turn, prove oneself to oneself. Todays players reason wrongly that they must prove themselves by constant self gain by whatever method, be it cheating, hacking, exploiting, or guides. I think the true proof in community is the immersion and constructive contribution one is able to add to a community that makes the community something unique and creates a more enjoyable end user experience within the community while still following the guidelines that define role playing in a reasonable manner. Roleplaying should be immersing oneself into a new world, not a futile attempting advancing oneself by pure self gain. So I pose a question to the community. This is not rhetorical, but it may be if you choose to accept it as rhetorical. Is it possible to have a real Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game? Or are we doomed to live in a world where the brand MMORPG is just a misnomer for a futile dream? I think that we should all make it our personal goals to role play in role-playing games, encourage others to do so, and encourage others to read this article. I just hope that this radical view won't be shot down by some zealous idiot sitting behind his computer screen with nothing better to do but hurt himself and others. Feel free to comment and tell me what yuo think. I am welcome to hearing other people's valid opinions (although I will not tolerate insults) as I try to keep an open mind. Edited by techwizrd, Jan 28 2008, 01:18 AM.
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| BobTheFerret | Jan 28 2008, 08:00 PM Post #2 |
It's The End Of The World As We Know It
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Depends how well it's coded. I've ... looked into ... some networking code that ought to do it. And I am *cough* quite familiar with how to use it, so I could probably _code_ a MMORPG, though not in 3D. The real problem is one of bandwidth. One could do p2p systems, but those can be unreliable and are prone to cheating and modified peers. |
| It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. | |
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| techwizrd | Jan 28 2008, 09:31 PM Post #3 |
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Magister ex Machina
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Well, that is not a real problem actually. You could probably use any framework like Arianne or Planeshift. We would just have to find a clever way of hiding all the statistics from the common man's view and instead let people build a community where people exist a pseudo-political realm where everyone plays not to upgrade stats, but to form a community. There has to be someway for the game to encourage playing like that. Frankly, when role players care more about their stats than role playing, the game becomes pointless and stupid. One way to enforce this, is have people exist in certain towns and are put into a certain vocation (class?) based on the current infrastructure of the town and niches available. When politico-economic infrastructures start becoming imbalanced, GMs can take money out of the economy, put money in, impeach certain officials, assassinate some person, or otherwise create a circumstance that corrects certain problems. I personally think of this as a great project to examine human behavior and paths that people choose and steps to correct problems in society. This is more like a very interesting experiment as I think about it. If we do make a game like this, I think we should be very careful about our GM's and community members, as a I have read about a lot of games where people quit because the GM's was very mean and unhelpful. |
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| BobTheFerret | Jan 28 2008, 09:40 PM Post #4 |
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It's The End Of The World As We Know It
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That needs people. And, also, I'd prefer not just extending a premade MMO wrapper. Besides, I could probably get all the features of Arianne just by reusing the codebase from [x] program I "found". Edited by BobTheFerret, Jan 28 2008, 09:41 PM.
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| techwizrd | Jan 28 2008, 09:52 PM Post #5 |
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Magister ex Machina
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Arianne is just a framework. We can rewrite parts of that framework and write all the overlaying code like the GUI and clasess and etc. in Java, Python, XML, or something equally good and have a completely original RPG. Arianne is just a framework. We can use it to manage a server and the underlying parts while writing the whole upper-layers. A fitting analogy would be FreeBSD is Arianne and Darwin is our RPG. |
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| BobTheFerret | Jan 28 2008, 09:56 PM Post #6 |
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It's The End Of The World As We Know It
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Yeah, but I still want to try a [x]+[x] mashup... In any case, I dislike certain technical choices the Arianne people made. (UDP? WTF!) |
| It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. | |
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| techwizrd | Jan 28 2008, 10:29 PM Post #7 |
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Magister ex Machina
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But... That's unreasonable and weird. Anyway, we can't have servers unless we rent one, buy one, or borrow one. And that server must have FiOS or better. I just want a fun game where you actually role play in the real sense of the word. |
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| BobTheFerret | Jan 29 2008, 07:34 AM Post #8 |
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It's The End Of The World As We Know It
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And homebrewing instead of using a cruddy template hurts us why? |
| It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. | |
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| techwizrd | Jan 29 2008, 06:44 PM Post #9 |
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Magister ex Machina
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I'm not saying we have to go specifically for Arianne. I am just saying that we shouldn't home brew. Home brewing an RPG framework means it is untested and we have to write a server application to manage a high volume of players, items, maps, moderation, not to mention logging of various suspicious activities. Not only that, we would have to write a fast cross-platform client. Only after all that, we will be able to write an RPG of any sort. Now considering we do that, we would be reinventing the wheel, and due to a lack of resources, we would be writing something completely untested. We would be attracting a relatively low volume of users, developers, and players. If we do try that, it will not come to fruition any time in the near. How about we just use my definition of 'a moment'. If you are still interested in writing it from scratch, I would suggest The server be managed on an Apache base with a basic framework written in C++ and extended by plugin architecture that uses Python. The client can be an written in Python, Java, or JPython. We just don't have enough people to actually do this project... |
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| BobTheFerret | Jan 29 2008, 07:15 PM Post #10 |
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It's The End Of The World As We Know It
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I think it would take less time to code it outright than to figure out how to make the *&!@ other guys' code interact. I already have all the parts I need. |
| It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. | |
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| techwizrd | Jan 29 2008, 08:40 PM Post #11 |
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Magister ex Machina
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I kind of doubt that... Anyway, I can start coding right now... I think I might at least write the server and plugin architecture |
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| Nate | Dec 21 2008, 07:31 PM Post #12 |
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Meh, there are/ were some good mmorpgs. I stopped playing Runescape a year and a half ago, and since then Jagex have consistently made it worse through 'improvements'. I've played regnum wars, and I was pretty impressed. However, when I played there were hardly any English speakers, which made the multiplayer element less interesting. The main language was Spanish, and although I can speak a fair bit, I'm not fluent enough to communicate with players ingame. Friends have told me the game has more English speakers now, so I think I might try it out soon. |
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| techwizrd | Dec 28 2008, 03:54 AM Post #13 |
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Magister ex Machina
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Well, after delving back into Nethack, Angabnd, and other rouge-likes, implementing a multiplayer rouge-like would be awesome (and difficult). I do know that MAngBand exists, but I'd rather make something my own. |
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| slurpee123abc | Dec 31 2008, 08:54 PM Post #14 |
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Slurpee
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Your theory about people wanting to increase their stats for fun is indeed correct, but only in certain cases. It, for the most part, does not apply to strategy games, which, bye the way, are technically role playing (command and conquer). It also does not apply to first person shooters, because most of the entertainment in those kind of games comes from suspense. However, I would certainly agree with what you say. If you want to make a game like another world, where there is a community and stuff, forget it. That is advanced stuff. You have no idea. To create a community and participate in one, you have to make advanced decisions, and take part in many complicated actions that would be like a virtual reality. Something like that is called "real life". Why create a video game that is a copy of "real life", when you already have the ability to walk outside and participate in a community. Anyway, like I said, creating an interactive virtual reality would be near impossible in the near future. Edited by slurpee123abc, Jul 6 2009, 06:33 PM.
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| Deleted User | Sep 4 2009, 06:10 PM Post #15 |
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Deleted User
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Jeez man what's with that huge wall of text! Anyway, realmcrafter allows you to make mmo's, but it's pretty expensive and has a strange interface. |
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