You people keep assuming I said I could code an entire engine. I said I had the ability to code the entire engine, meaning that my concepts aren't that difficult to code. I like how no one read it the first time I said this. I could easily logically lay out every single one of my ideas. Once it's in logical form, the coding aspect is up to the knowledge of coding itself. I don't have that knowledge, but I do know the logic behind my engine. THAT'S what I meant.

JediKirby

People always say they know the logic until you try to code it. As you said, you said you didn't know how, only the logic. There's so much more than the logic you're thinking of, and you won't understand until you are an experienced programmer. People always say "well the logic is simple"...but it's not.

I haven't really seen a huge ammount of adds for Guild Wars. I think some of it has been word of mouth. But like any popular game obviously advertising has a lot to do with it. The other half is can they match their hype gameplay wise.

Everyone has the ability to code, most people just lack the knowledge. :p

Is anyone else besides me confused as hell? Is he speaking English? 'Cause in the English I know, those two sentences are fairly equivalent.

Also, what Emon said.

The ability to do something does not mean that you could actually do it. I have the ability to fly a kite (All of the physical and mental skills) my success, however, is not guarenteed only on my abilities, but on me actually doing it. I am not able to fly a kite for the life of me, even though I have the ability to do so.

And as for emon's comments, maybe, maybe not. I don't know, because I'm not a coder. Perhaps some day I will learn enough to see my fallacy, or maybe yours. Until then, I can't go on the assumption that I'm initially wrong.

JediKirby

Yes it does. Otherwise, you didn't have the ability, then, did you?

Yeah Freelancer's right.

ability (n): The quality of being able to do something, especially the physical, mental, financial, or legal power to accomplish something.

But let's not hijack with English semantics.

Taking parts of my paragraph out of context asside, you know what I meant.

I think the word you're looking for is "capability."

Or "capacity" works.

Or, you know, you could just flat out say you don't know how to code it :S

We all have that ability.

I'm getting sick of this.

Let's forget about all of these technicallities; it's really starting to piss me off. Maybe I can't code the engine: WHATEVER. Let's get back on topic.

JediKirby

Why have a discussion when we can all pick on someone for a mistake in their wording? Everyone loves an English nazi.

zerg rush! kekekeke

I think the best way to put it is everyone has the potential to gain enough knowledge and experience to code the engine. Now I'm done.

Pres butan!

[edit]I made a very stupid mistake and overlooked a post; my apologies.[/edit]

Yeah, a large portion of the making of an engine involves translating complex math into terms the computer understands.

And my post... was ignored.

Why couldnt this be done? Forget about the graphics engine, this boils down to gameplay, or, even simpler stats. A genus system wouldnt be all that hard to do, heck the sims 2 has one. You could have various stats affected by bloodline.

Not having the game hold your hand through "spells" would be interesting. Potential for player experimentation there.

The whole concept of massively multiplayer games is flawed. If you want roleplaying, it's better to stick to the NWN style of multiplayer - story-driven custom campaigns led by a GM.

Your character creation idea reminds me of the character creation system in Darklands, which is a really nice one. You start by choosing your family background (nobility, peasants, etc), then choosing your occupations for the first few years of your life. The occupations list is quite impressive (for a religious-type character, you can pick hermit, monk, nun, friar, bishop, abbot, and/or oblate, for example) and the available choices depends on the age and previous occupations.

I sort of agree with Flirbnic...the more I think about how you could fix a MMORPG, the more I start to think that smaller scale online RPGs more along the lines of NWN persistant worlds are really the way to go.

Its just impossible to create a world founded an illogical premise and keep its in game economy and balance working for any real length of time. Case in point: With the respawning monsters acting as an effective money tree...most MMORPGs have suffered from rampant inflation at one time or another.

However, I think if the designers stuck to design and ignored stupid balance breaking player requests they could make a world that would be sustainable for a reasonable life cycle like 5 years perhaps.

Read that link that I posted, I found it pretty interesting. You may want to skip the food section, its not for everyone.

Yours too, eh?

Sorry Burrie.

Yeah, I didn't see anything in kirby's idea that really addressed this, which is the main reason these games don't have roleplaying. Its not so much the game design as it is the players of the game.

One man's idea of fun (role playing) isn't necessarily everyone else's idea (roll playing/stat whoring/whatever) but unless the game world specifically enforces one idea or the other, you're going to have both types. And the majority type (which I think its safe to say, are roll players) is going to either make life very difficult for the others, or make them move on entirely.

While removing the stats from view is an interesting (but not new) idea they wouldn't really be removed from view. Some people, through trial and error...would figure out how the system worked, then post it on the web somewhere. Now we're back at square one all over again, except newbies are at a further disadvantage. That, in and of itself wouldn't force people to role play in the game.

People have a competive nature, and when you throw them in a stat based game with other players you're going to have people crawling all over themselves to maximize their effectiveness at...maximizing their effectiveness (stats)!

I don't have an answer on how to get people to role play in MMORPGs. I'm not sure there is one, because I don't think as many people as you might think want that. kirby said 10% of the market is being ignored...well, unfortunately that is the nature of the beast here. Video games in general are a highly competitive market, where very few titles actually turn a profit. And MMORPGs have quickly become very competitve genre within that market. I'm not even sure if we'll see a big developer want to invest in a project that only 10% of the market base might buy. But maybe more people would like it if they only tried it, it is easy to get caught up on the same old thing.

As I said a little earlier, I think small scale ones are the way to go. Besides, those wouldn't have monthly fee, and with modding you can create you own kind of world

TOO BAD LUGNUT

NWN was too slowly-paced.

People roleplay in MUDs

There's nothing wrong with a slow-paced game.

Well, if you enjoy watching two people circling each other for five minute with some severely boring animations...

Is that what the battles are like later in the game or something? I haven't gone very far. Anyways, that's a NWN-specific issue, and has nothing to do with the point I was making.

I think combat will definately pick up later. The characters(including the PC) have more levels, and thus, more abilities and ways to attack.

Plus, interesting things can pop up in combat, and the pace can be bloody good with the right module(I'm specifically thinking of the ending of Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 overall of Hordes of the Underdark)... or with the right DM. Hell, the last session I DMed at the end of 2004 was bloody mad with one helluva revelation of the quiet fighter up to that point, as well as the revelation of why the magic user had been tagging along with the party all that time.

Thief is a good example of how slow paced gameplay can be excellent. Most of the time is spent sitting around or crawling around in shadows observing the movement of the guards and such, and it still manages to feel really intense. It would make for an excellent co-operative multiplayer experience.

Back to the topic of the thread:
I noticed another similarity between Kirby's ideas and Darklands: Apart from the quality of the items, the game doesn't give you any numbers relating to the effectiveness of the various weapons and armour. The manual says which types of armour each weapon can penetrate, and whether a weapon does a lot of damage or a little damage.

I'm not actually sure whether or not I like the idea of hiding stats from the players, though.

As for the issue of actual roleplaying... The less rules and restrictions a certain medium has, the more roleplay-friendly it is. Example: MMORPG's are some of the most complicated games on the market, with all sorts of stats and skillsets and levels and whatnot. Very few people roleplay in MMORPG's.

First person shooters are some of the simplest games on the market. You pick up a gun, you aim, you shoot. But a number of different FPS games (Action Half-Life, The Specialists, JK/JO/JA) have very large communities dedicated to roleplaying.

And finally, the most interesting, creative, and consistent RP I've ever seen, has come from AOL chat rooms. I am not joking.


The easiest way to create a roleplay-friendly environment is by giving the players a lot of resources, without giving them many restrictions.

Not meaning to call you out, but you've got that backwards, I'm afraid.

The reason MMORPGs don't have much roleplaying isn't because of the complex ruleset. As I said before, the whole concept of a massively multiplayer game does not lend itself well to roleplaying. They do not have stories, apart from 'events' that are generally large-scale and pretty much only offer new ways to level up. A group of roleplayers might be able to collectively act out some kind of story, but they are limited to what the game provides, and each character in the story must be a PC.

The people who roleplay in chat rooms and FPS games are probably the same people who roleplay in RPGs.

Which part do I have backwards? That FPS are simpler than MMORPGs, or that FPS have larger RP communities?

Benevolent Upward Mobility Post, because I want to see another response from Kirby. Or anyone else, I guess.

I agree completelly about the beginning of that, but I also think that a game could be designed that offered the player a world at which they could make their own story because the players are so diverse, and lack so many similarities that make RPing impossible in other games. They're also able to effect the world in more than one way. Guilds aren't just groups of people who game, and they aren't "given" a guild house. They buy, and build a guild house. Taverns are populated with whole groups of people with all different motives. With so many ways to 'level up' asside from increasing your stats, like becomming more powerful as far as alegences go, by building your own home to live in, to join a war taking place elswhere in the game (Not a Quest war, an actual war that happens in real time, not because the GMs or whatever force it to happen, because players find a reason to have a war, because cities require the war to happen to continue to thrive.) There could be noble houses, a city of magic users that are all players, players that made this city. A group of people that all agree about morals of magic. They practice magic as not a tool to fight, but a tool to do the bidding of some higher god. So many possibilities instead of 'quests' and progressive leveling of your character.

Perhaps what we need is ranges for skills. There's a way to be uber, but it's only as long as you consistantly keep it up. You don't needto play constantly, but you need to continue to make the decisions that keep you strong. This strength effects other things though, like your ability to remain quiet, your physical agility, your being easier to hit because of your larger build. Speed slightly decreases, but can be kept up at the same time as strength, but with more penalties. A system like this would allow new players to not have to kill mice for x levels before other players even acknowledge their existance.

JediKirby

Even in the examples you give (such as a player-started war) there is the issue of the large scale. With lots of people, it is harder to be a character in the story, rather than just an 'extra'. The whole statbuilding aspect of MMORPGs makes this more difficult as well.

Anecdote time: When I was playing Nexus, my friend Sumez was a royal guard or something. (It's an MMORPG with a smaller community, and that alone makes it better for roleplaying.) There was something going on, I can't remember what exactly, but Sumez and some other guards went to the palace to protect the princess, because someone was apparently going to be attacking. Possibly skeletons. I was left out of the roleplaying, because I was a new player and was still at a lower level. (Levelling up is always tedious!) I was able to observe, and saw that they were just standing around being OOC and waiting around for the attackers to come.
Events like this rarely ever happened, and it would be easy to miss it by being offline.

Another anecdote: A popular MUD called Achaea which Dormouse and I have played at various times encourages roleplay to a great extent. You actually have to do some roleplaying to progress with your character. It doesn't work, though. That's pretty much the only roleplaying I ever witnessed (apart from a couple things), and it was awkward and uninteresting.
I can only one player-initiated RP event. A player was kidnapped and imprisoned by members of an opposing guild. Of course, I didn't even know the people involved, and there was very little chance of something that interesting happening with me.

I don't think players can be relied upon to initiate lots of interesting RP.