Farewell to Hyboria
Jun. 25th, 2009 08:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pyatMy dad bought me a used IBM-XT clone for Christmas, 1989. Around that time, Omni magazine was carrying ads for dial-up MUDs, multiple-user text enviroments where you could hang out and pretend to be a dwarf. I loved this idea. I imagined making a con artist in one. I'd describe him as a wise old man, and he'd sit outside the town gate and sell bogus treasure maps to people. Indeed, when I eventually got onto MUDs and MUCKs, I did this sort of thing.
It's frustrating that I can't do that sort of thing in a much more advanced game, like the Conan MMORPG. I can't, because every character in the game is clearly marked as a player or computer character. And, no one talks to the other players, if they can help it.
I gave up on the Conan MMORPG about a day after my last review. I don't know whether this game in particular is just really badly flawed, or whether I'm simply not constitutionally fitted to play MMORPGs. Certainly they seem to require an investment of time over and above anything I'm willing to commit. I got to level 11, and the quests did not get any more epic. They just got longer, or more unrealistic.
At one point, a blacksmith asked me to fetch a crate of steel from a ship at the dock, in exhange for a pair of boots. I got there, and found the crate stuck in the crane. The crew told me I could have it, if I could get it down. I poked at the crane, and the crate fell to the deck and crashed open. The captain was displeased, but let me take the ore, though I'm not sure where I put it. But, this seems to have been an unavoidable scripted event.
Oops! Butterfingers! Can I still have my steel?
It also explained the pile of broken crates on deck. Every few minutes, another player comes along to do this quest, and a broken crate is added to the pile. Presumably, they vanish after a while, or the ship would be nothing but a pile of broken crates. Also, that seems like an awful lot of steel for me to be carrying on my own.
But, really, this is just an example of how the MMORPG works against any kind of immersive experience. How hard would it be to designed a quest that doesn't end up with a stack of broken crates piling up in the same place? It's like everything in the game is designed to remind you that you are playing a game. It's like watching a movie in which the boom mic is constantly visible, or reading a book filled with editing markups. It's like playing an RPG in middle-school with guys who make fun of you for trying to act in character.
Tortage
It almost makes me angry. Here they have created this enormous, beautiful world, with an engine for adjudicating relationships between players, with three dimensional cities and wilderness. This is precisely how I imagined computer games would be someday! Except, the reality is clunky and non-engaging.
You'd think I could wander through this world experiencing wonderful adventures, and meeting interesting people. But the game is specifically designed to defeat that. You don't go into the tavern and swap tales of treasure, or seek adventuring companions. You run pell-mell from place to place, following little arrows on the map and killing things when you arrive. The game does not encourage interaction. If you stay and chat, you get left behind.
The last quest I accepted involved killing 20 snakes, and 20 scorpions. I didn't even start on it. The one before that required me to kill 30 Pict tribesmen. Except, instead of killing 30 of them, I killed the same two guys, 15 times over... because they respawn in the same spot after a couple of minutes.
How is that fun? How is that immersive?
It's frustrating that I can't do that sort of thing in a much more advanced game, like the Conan MMORPG. I can't, because every character in the game is clearly marked as a player or computer character. And, no one talks to the other players, if they can help it.
I gave up on the Conan MMORPG about a day after my last review. I don't know whether this game in particular is just really badly flawed, or whether I'm simply not constitutionally fitted to play MMORPGs. Certainly they seem to require an investment of time over and above anything I'm willing to commit. I got to level 11, and the quests did not get any more epic. They just got longer, or more unrealistic.
At one point, a blacksmith asked me to fetch a crate of steel from a ship at the dock, in exhange for a pair of boots. I got there, and found the crate stuck in the crane. The crew told me I could have it, if I could get it down. I poked at the crane, and the crate fell to the deck and crashed open. The captain was displeased, but let me take the ore, though I'm not sure where I put it. But, this seems to have been an unavoidable scripted event.
Oops! Butterfingers! Can I still have my steel?
It also explained the pile of broken crates on deck. Every few minutes, another player comes along to do this quest, and a broken crate is added to the pile. Presumably, they vanish after a while, or the ship would be nothing but a pile of broken crates. Also, that seems like an awful lot of steel for me to be carrying on my own.
But, really, this is just an example of how the MMORPG works against any kind of immersive experience. How hard would it be to designed a quest that doesn't end up with a stack of broken crates piling up in the same place? It's like everything in the game is designed to remind you that you are playing a game. It's like watching a movie in which the boom mic is constantly visible, or reading a book filled with editing markups. It's like playing an RPG in middle-school with guys who make fun of you for trying to act in character.
Tortage
It almost makes me angry. Here they have created this enormous, beautiful world, with an engine for adjudicating relationships between players, with three dimensional cities and wilderness. This is precisely how I imagined computer games would be someday! Except, the reality is clunky and non-engaging.
You'd think I could wander through this world experiencing wonderful adventures, and meeting interesting people. But the game is specifically designed to defeat that. You don't go into the tavern and swap tales of treasure, or seek adventuring companions. You run pell-mell from place to place, following little arrows on the map and killing things when you arrive. The game does not encourage interaction. If you stay and chat, you get left behind.
The last quest I accepted involved killing 20 snakes, and 20 scorpions. I didn't even start on it. The one before that required me to kill 30 Pict tribesmen. Except, instead of killing 30 of them, I killed the same two guys, 15 times over... because they respawn in the same spot after a couple of minutes.
How is that fun? How is that immersive?
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no subject
Date: 2009-06-27 12:36 am (UTC)My boy plays Maple story which is filled with official ways to tie one character to another: Marriage , Adoptions, Clans, whatever. Each has an mechanical advantage, which is more reason than I have had to hang out with some of the bums Ive played with in table top rpgs.
Still this aint good enough.
What if the only source of improved power was interaction with other players.
Maybe each new character should have to enter a secret about them selves, would receive a PC as a Rival, or one as a mortal enemy.A love interest, as souls mate. A master and an apprentice.All random , with reasons for these things entered mad lib style , which wouldn't always match, but in RL that's true too.
The key would be you advance by finding secrets from those on your list of significant others (friend and foe alike ). Or Meeting your master, and becoming his student, with mechanical benefits for each of you.
Or killing things-more things than your rival, and letting him know about it. Other skills that are better than him are good too.
The key here would be to encourage churn.To do this there are no instant messages, just messages carried by other PCs.
Where is your true love?
Could be anywhere, better start asking people.
Still pretty stilted but better than usual.
Player hating is averted , talkers get what they want faster , and killing has to be personally significant to get you anything.
Now what if you had also and option to hand out quests to people.Lock in that quest and keep it , and it would be worth more. Dont want to dirty your hands on your filthy rival?
Make his death a quest-for some random guy,that you have never met.
Hmm, if you get a boost every time you better him , it would pay for you each to find the other and set up shop across from each other and take turns being better. Cheesy but social. Better make rival-dom a limited time offer.
Now one unofficial chat room could ruin all of this , but hey, why play talky game if your just going to cheat?
Well that was fun. Back to my M+M necromancer!