posted
Recently, I've been working on an idea for an RPG. While the story could be implemented in several ways (tabletop miniatures, single player computer game, card game, etc) I think that the idea particularly lends itself well to an MMO. While I won't have the capacity to create said MMO for at least 10 years (by which point I'll probably have come up with something else that's more interesting) I find it to be a fun thought experiment and I'm interested in opinions here.
The basic idea is this: At the beginning of the game, you die. Your soul drifts down the river Styx. In the beginning you see "good" souls floating alongside you, and you watch them get fished out and brought into Heaven.
Then you fall over a huge waterfall, and end up in Hell.
You begin the game as a slimy, shapeless lemure, with seven simple abilities reflecting the seven deadly sins. The more you use each ability, the more powers you gain related to the corresponding sin. Your physical appearance begins to change as well. So if you use brute force Wrath abilities you'll develop a set of powers based on rage and combat, and you'll gradually take on the form of a muscular reaver demon. If you use manipulative Sloth abilities you'll develop powers based on acquiring minions to do stuff for you. You'll also gradually turn into tree-like demon that can take root to become stronger. Etc.
I think this particularly lends itself well to an MMO because it addresses some of the major "suspension of disbelief" moments that MMOs deal with (a world where everyone dies every ten minutes is the most obvious one). In Hell, it's not a matter of dying - you're already dead. Rather than killing people you're beating them into submission and then capturing their soul. Early on in the game you get captured and contracted into service with one of the six Kingdoms (Envy doesn't get it's own Kingdom - they're too busy having bad self esteem and wishing they could be as cool as Pride). When you "die" you reform at a nearby base for your contracted faction.
Now, the part I'm most interested in feedback on:
The biggest issue that MMOs face is that, in order to remain interesting for every new player who comes, you can't permanently change the world. The designers of the game have a plan, and you pretty much have to follow that plan because it's hard to design a world that can realistically respond to thousands of player decisions.
In this case, I'm actually dealing with a subject matter where the issue of free will is extremely relevant. Believers and nonbelievers alike have been asking the question "What's the point of Free Will if God already knows what's going to happen?" It seems to me there should be a way to directly incorporate this question into the game in a way that is A) philosophically interesting for the players who actually care and B) doesn't impact the fun of the players who don't.
Disclaimer: I am an atheist, but I'm working closely on this with a friend of mine who's a fundamentalist Christian. My hope is to design an experience that people of many different religious backgrounds can appreciate.
The story of the game is intended to be based mostly on Christian mythology but incorporates various other elements (River Styx being the biggest example) that fit well together. My current idea is to have the "classic" game (before any expansion sets) take place in the early days of Hell. The fallen angels and souls are constantly at war and have only explored the first two circles of Hell. The lower seven are filled with bizarre Lovecraftian horrors that were banished there at very beginning of the universe. The overarching plot of the initial game is the unification of Hell under Lucifer and the capture of the Beast that currently lords over the 9th circle.
The first expansion would involve the discovery that mortals can be tricked into making contracts with demons to allow temporary escape from Hell, allowing long term plans to be put into effect. A bunch of other hypothetical expansions would be possible (wars with other planes of existence, etc). The final expansion is Armageddon - the Beast you helped capture in the first game escapes, Hell Breaks loose (literally). Bunch of craziness happiness. And, inevitably, God wins. 'Cause, well, he's God.
So while I'm interested in feedback on anything you might find interesting, my big question is, how can you make choice meaningful if you already know how the story is going to end?
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How does this lend itself to being an MMO? Nearly everything you are suggesting makes the case for it being a bad fit for an MMO.
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Can you explain why? My feeling was that this idea takes things are normally problems with MMOs and, if not addresses them fully, at least attempts to use them as artistic features instead of groan-moments you're expected to just ignore.
Granted, if the idea simply doesn't appeal to you (I like it but I can think of a few reasons other people wouldn't) then yeah, those "artistic" elements would probably just seem pretentious and lame.
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quote: The more you use each ability, the more powers you gain related to the corresponding sin.
That reminds me of the way you get powers in Fable but a little more organic. Plus, you've got a bunch of people who miss the original skill tree system in Star Wars Galaxies that would love a replacement that lets you create your own character. Gain a level, but the set stuff just doesn't appeal to many as much as this.
quote: Your physical appearance begins to change as well.
Before Spore, I'd have worried about the art and storage you'd need for that.
quote: Early on in the game you get captured and contracted into service with one of the six Kingdoms...
The neat thing about this is that the sins have to work together to some degree while still wanting to be in charge. I can see that as a great justification for traveling to other kingdoms, sharing quests, grouping, etc while still allowing you to have RvR combat.
The other issue with capturing souls is that it makes respawning plausible. Capture one soul, another will be along to take its place soon.
quote: What's the point of Free Will if God already knows what's going to happen?
For me, I think it's that I don't. I always have the hope that I'll do better and turn out all right in the end. Though there's always that nagging doubt that it won't.
But demons don't really have that, do they? There's no faction trying to be good enough to make God change his mind.
I think your loophole is going to be eternity. God wins in the end, but there is no end in eternity. So will God ever really overthrow Satan and "win"? And if he did, you'd all cease to exist, so it's not like there's anything worse to come. You might as well make the most of the situation. Besides, in Hell, you've got to do something to get by so the other demons don't use you for their plots.
quote: The overarching plot of the initial game is the unification of Hell under Lucifer and the capture of the Beast that currently lords over the 9th circle.
I think that lends itself well to ongoing special quests and truely epic GM events, myself.
If Lust demons get to be pretty (yes, it's that important to me that I get to be pretty), you've got my $15 a month. Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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No, I mean, the artistic elements show promise, just not in the spectre of a MMO format. It's not that it doesn't appeal to me, it is that I see it weak in the 'never-ending quest to collect better foozles and more dings' driving environment of MMO's. You cannot start an MMO with the express purpose of it having an end. It is supposed to be there come hell or high water.
The first thing I note is that you want to create this game based on formless development "Job" style advancement. When people even the best in the industry try this in an MMO environment, it is usually a terrible failure. MMO's that work off of freeform job systems typically scrape by in spite of the weaknesses; they aren't aided by them.
The reason is because balance is notoriously difficult in MMO's even with classes that cause conformity over developmental lines. Classes (and to a larger extent, roles: healer, tank, dps) are esoteric concepts that must SOMEHOW become mostly mechanically equally footed with the other esoteric concepts.
In a freeform Job style character development, unless certain milestones require you to lock yourself into a class-style progression that permanently ground you into one developmental progression and void all others, there are so many developmental options available that it is absolutely impossible to make them all valid and viable. Even with the lock-in system, problems abound.
This means that the job development becomes a game within a game. It is a quiz. There are right answers and wrong answers. If you pick the wrong answers, you have to reroll. The right answers leave everybody structuring their characters towards the most viable application of roles (in effect: 'to be a healer from the sloth tree, these powers are required, and ignore these powers; if you did not fill up skills X and Y from Wrath before moving down Sloth progression, reroll, if you went Sloth/Lust, reroll ..')
In any game where the players are essentially allowed to make wrong choices for their character, bitchery and fun collapse ensue. This is what happened with DDO. It used D&D style character creation within an MMO, which meant that players were allowed to pick from a wide slew of sub-optimal feats for their class role, and they were allowed to design their character around sub-optimal stats. This caused mammoth complaints and invariably resulted in all people's mains being carbon-copies of the Elitist Jerks style "this is the correct answer" stats and feats.
A way way way better way to explore the game's concepts is in a freeform singleplayer experience, something like a cross between Fable II and Spore. You don't have to worry about balancing classes vis a vis other players and structuring the game around lewt and guilds, you just make each class interact differently and create a different gameplay experience through the course of a game which, because it is singleplayer, may have meaningful non-static progression.
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quote:Before Spore, I'd have worried about the art and storage you'd need for that.
Spore was actually the inspiration for this (I was looking at Diablo III gameplay videos at about the same time, and Ouallah (sp?)) Since this game wouldn't hypothetically be made for 10 years, I can pretend technology would have gotten even better to avoid the cartoonishness that bugged me in Spore.
quote:Lust/Pretty
Short answer: Lust and Pride are the "pretty" races/classes... Lust being sexual and Pride having a sculpted "work-of-art" look.
How to handle Lust is actually one of my big concerns. In WoW, succubi are rare and pretty disney-fied (wearing clothes and having abilities mostly represented with little floating hearts). Part of me wants to say "screw the teen audience, it's a game about Hell, let's depict it the way Hell would actually be depicted and let it get a strict adult-only rating." The other part of me is worried that would A) result in a lot of annoying perverts playing the game for the Lusty-aspects, B) a lot of perfectly mature teens that'll miss out on some sweet storytelling and C) I'm just plain squeamish about it.
The mechanics I have in mind for Lust are kinda like Rogues in WoW with a little Hunter thrown in: you start with an ability called "Heart's Desire" that chooses a particular opponent as the object of your affection and increases attack-speed against it. Further Lust abilities build up "Anticipation" (working like Rogue Combo points) and then a final Climax ability that usually consumes the target and steals their soul for you.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: No, I mean, the artistic elements show promise, just not in the spectre of a MMO format. It's not that it doesn't appeal to me, it is that I see it weak in the 'never-ending quest to collect better foozles and more dings' driving environment of MMO's. You cannot start an MMO with the express purpose of it having an end. It is supposed to be there come hell or high water.
The first thing I note is that you want to create this game based on formless development "Job" style advancement. When people even the best in the industry try this in an MMO environment, it is usually a terrible failure. MMO's that work off of freeform job systems typically scrape by in spite of the weaknesses; they aren't aided by them.
The reason is because balance is notoriously difficult in MMO's even with classes that cause conformity over developmental lines. Classes (and to a larger extent, roles: healer, tank, dps) are esoteric concepts that must SOMEHOW become mostly mechanically equally footed with the other esoteric concepts.
In a freeform Job style character development, unless certain milestones require you to lock yourself into a class-style progression that permanently ground you into one developmental progression and void all others, there are so many developmental options available that it is absolutely impossible to make them all valid and viable. Even with the lock-in system, problems abound.
This means that the job development becomes a game within a game. It is a quiz. There are right answers and wrong answers. If you pick the wrong answers, you have to reroll. The right answers leave everybody structuring their characters towards the most viable application of roles (in effect: 'to be a healer from the sloth tree, these powers are required, and ignore these powers; if you did not fill up skills X and Y from Wrath before moving down Sloth progression, reroll, if you went Sloth/Lust, reroll ..')
In any game where the players are essentially allowed to make wrong choices for their character, bitchery and fun collapse ensue. This is what happened with DDO. It used D&D style character creation within an MMO, which meant that players were allowed to pick from a wide slew of sub-optimal feats for their class role, and they were allowed to design their character around sub-optimal stats. This caused mammoth complaints and invariably resulted in all people's mains being carbon-copies of the Elitist Jerks style "this is the correct answer" stats and feats.
A way way way better way to explore the game's concepts is in a freeform singleplayer experience, something like a cross between Fable II and Spore. You don't have to worry about balancing classes vis a vis other players and structuring the game around lewt and guilds, you just make each class interact differently and create a different gameplay experience through the course of a game which, because it is singleplayer, may have meaningful non-static progression.
Ah, that's a fair point. I'll note that I don't consider "total free form skill development" to be essential to the game. I've toyed back and forth between having the Sins basically act like classes. At the beginning you choose your Sin and that's that. I like the ultra-flexibility but if game balance issues forced the issue I'd be fine with that. (It'd also help with the massive graphics-customization issue, so the artists don't have to find a way to make every combination of Demon look cool.)
An alternate solution is to have the abilities be flexible during the River Styx newbie zone, but once you reach one of the Kingdoms and get contracted, you're locked in. The Styx zone would be relatively short (30 minutes to an hour), so you can get the joy of freeform exploration but be able to redo it quickly if you end up with a primary Sin you didn't like.
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Spore is very very boring, though. I played it once straight through, until I reached the space age. And I didn't feel the slightest urge to play any of it again, because none of my game choices actually mattered in the slightest.
Your game sounds more interesting, in that the different choices actually lead to different abilities, unlike most of Spore -- where besides the initial Herbivore vs Carnivore vs Omnivore choice (which you can change midgame anyway, so you'll probably more than one of these in the course of a single session), nothing else really matters much.
I wonder if a table-RPG would be easier to make of your idea, though. Instead of leveling up in wizard/cleric/ranger/bard, you get to level up in lust/wrath/pride etc. These combines the concept of RPG-alignments with the concept of RPG-classes.
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I found Spore boring as well, for several reasons. (It essentially amounted to an "art" game as opposed to something you actually play, and I already go to school to learn "real" CGI. Playing Spore was like doing homework I couldn't turn in for extra credit.
I'm actually developing a table-RPG as well, since I have no programming skills and I'd like to actually play in this world as soon as possible, and tabletop games are something I actually have experience designing.
As for the "players getting locked into dumb choices" game balance issue, another solution is simply to have a "Reset" button a-la talents in WoW (call it the "Soul Forge" or whatever. You pay them to smash your soul into grey pulp and rebuilt it into something different).
Dual-Speccing could be called "Soul Fracture" giving yourself a split personality.
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Note that when I say Spore I'm talking about the conceptual mechanics behind the development of Spore. While I use both Spore and Fable as examples for conceptual mechanics, Fable itself is meh and Spore was so disappointing that I classify it as a post-hype non-game.
Now, what we see here is an example of how the requisite incentives and pressures of an MMO format is already warping and compromising what is, at its core, a cool idea. Already you have to give up the freeform and basically go into a Lineage I-II style prestige development. Gone is the interesting potential to merge priorities based on gameplay or be a hybrid of whichever Sins you like.
An MMO is one thing, primarily. Anything that you try to make an MMO out of will invariably tend to look like WoW or EvE. It gets molded into it. Already you are redefining things to create WoW equivalents. Soon, you have classes, talent specs, and towns full of static vendors and trade chats full of "L55 WRATH LFG ELYSIUM" and whatever you had before is buried under masses of nerfbat whiners in your game forum complaining about how sloth is gimped and gets no love from devs and that even top-spec Lust has no way to fight Pride and that Wrath players are quitting your game en masse because there's no use for them in end game raids and etc etc etc.
posted
I think we're all in agreement there. I didn't play Fable but from what I saw most of the choices were pretty boring. Control-alt-Delete had a good comic recently with the question "Why is it always 'build an orphanage' vs 'kill a baby kitten?' Why can't we have 'fuel an orphanage BY killing a baby kitten?'"
I did like that Fable had you change physically based on whether you got physically stronger and whatnot though.
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quote: I did like that Fable had you change physically based on whether you got physically stronger and whatnot though.
Did it? I don't remember this aspect of the game. You aged, depending on how much you used magic, but the only way to change how bulked up you were was by using the Berserker spell.
You also changed appearance according to your actions. Good actions gave you a shiny aura, blue eyes, phantom butterflies dancing around your head, and a halo. Bad actions produced an opposite effect, though I'm not sure what they were; I never got into playing a bad character.
I think you've got a neat idea, but as an MMO? I dunno. The plot skeleton you posted above intrigued me, but I don't know that I'd want to try and play it in an MMO environment.
It might be good as an RPG though.
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quote:Did it? I don't remember this aspect of the game. You aged, depending on how much you used magic, but the only way to change how bulked up you were was by using the Berserker spell.
This was my impression of Fable II, based on watching my roommate play and explain it. I might be wrong though.
quote:MMO Issues
It's not so much that I think this idea is best suited for an MMO - I think variations of the idea are equally suited for a variety of media. It's that I think an MMO is better suited to a story like this than attempting to fit something intended to represent traditional "physical" reality into the MMO mold. In real life, a world where people constantly die and come back would have major ramifications on how the world worked, and having a trainer "break" you of your talents so you can try something new is silly. A game set in Hell is free to make up laws of reality to fit the needs of an MMO that can be plausible and even genuinely cool.
(Certain Sci-Fi and Fantasy games could address the same issues differently, but the only one I've seen where it really makes sense is EVE, in which the cloning is actually appropriate. I don't know how they handled it in Star Wars Galaxies but it seems to me your average Bounty Hunter shouldn't be able to afford infinite cloning).
quote:An MMO is one thing, primarily. Anything that you try to make an MMO out of will invariably tend to look like WoW or EvE. It gets molded into it. Already you are redefining things to create WoW equivalents. Soon, you have classes, talent specs, and towns full of static vendors and trade chats full of "L55 WRATH LFG ELYSIUM" and whatever you had before is buried under masses of nerfbat whiners in your game forum complaining about how sloth is gimped and gets no love from devs and that even top-spec Lust has no way to fight Pride and that Wrath players are quitting your game en masse because there's no use for them in end game raids and etc etc etc.
A few posts back I suggested using a variant of "Talent Respeccing." I don't know offhand if there's been a "Formless Job Advancement" type game that included that, and whether it helped or not. Have you seen that tried and was it successful?
The rest of this post assumes it'd work reasonably well. Correct me if I'm wrong.
While including Respec and Dual-Spec options may appear to be borrowing even more from WoW, I think it allows you to create a fundamentally different game. Yes you have Respec and Dual-spec, but that lets you have a game where you can pick and choose stuff from 7 different classes and experiment with all kinds of cool combos.
This is something really lacking in MMOs and if it's at all possible to address it I'd like. Magic the Gathering designers divide players loosely into 3 player types - Johnny, Timmy and Spike. Timmy is about experiencing raw primal fun (usually in the form of smashing things), Spike is about proving how good he/she is, and Johnny is about expressing his individuality through clever combinations of ideas.
MMOs address Timmy and Spike just fine, but have been incredibly lacking in content for Johnny. One problem is that whenever Johnny finds something REALLY cool, it usually turns out to be overpowered, then boring, unoriginal Spikes take it over and turn it into something that ruins the game.
The solution in Magic (which involves a thousand new cards per year which can be combined with any existing card, and they make it work so it seems at least plausible in an MMO) is to try and balance things so that the cool combos Johnny gets to pull are unique and flashy but not necessarily powerful. And if the devs make a mistake the card can later be restricted, banned or erratad (sp?)
The only reason you've mentioned that this fails in MMOs is that players don't get to modify their "deck" whenever they want, they have to re-roll a new character. I think that letting them respec would help to alleviate that. (I think the best way to restrict respec-ing would be to make it fairly cheap but restrict you to once a week or month, so players don't have to worry about major consequences of trying new things, but aren't changing their character so willy-nilly that it loses all sense of identity).
As for people ranting on forums... honestly, I don't think those people are that important. They are a vocal minority. Their pleas should be considered for actual merit, but not because it's hypothetically possible to shut them up. I don't consider the forum part of the game, and while General Chat is I've never really had a problem turning off or even just tuning out specific channels with rants I didn't care for.
There's also something vaguely ironic about how online games tend to attract annoying jerks, and then creating an online game about a place where God sends the annoying jerks of the world...
[ June 05, 2009, 09:26 AM: Message edited by: Raymond Arnold ]
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Yeah I mean I guess we could talk all day about the MMO format, but I think barring an MMO format, what could the idea thrive best in?
Both in terms of computer/console gaming and potential for tabletop (which is much more plausible overall).
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What I'm designing right now is a fast paced tabletop RPG. I've previously designed an RPG that was incredibly flexible but extremely complex, and my biggest issue with it was that large scale combat was impossible. I'm trying to keep the flexibility of the old system but simply the numbers as much as possible so you can have more of a Diablo feel, wherein you're plowing down loads of enemies. (Certain Sins, Greed and Gluttony in particular, can only be workable if you have the opportunity to kill a lot of enemies.)
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No. I just read the wikipedia entry - the basic gist seems similar to White Wolf games, which I think may achieve something similar to same goal I'm going for but with different mechanics.
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Yeah I would recommend reading it just for the presentation of the setting, not the mechanics (of which there are few). It is a superb example of having story and theme create gameplay in lieu of tables, charts, and stats. It's the appropriate foundation for excellent creation and presentation of more structured gameplay ideas.
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By the way, here's the current breakdown of the seven sins and what I intend them to specialize in. A lot of this will likely change in the wake of actual playtesting. Ideas/criticisms welcome.
Greed - Souls are the currency of Hell. Different Sins approach that currency differently. Greed is the most traditional "economic" approach - they endeavor to acquire as many as possible, and hang on to them, miserlike. Greed Demons are modeled after Marley from Christmas Carol - they craft souls into chains that they cover themselves with, using as bags, weapons and armor. They can trade these chains to other people, but Greed specializes in being able to bear the weight many chains at once.
My current model for souls is thus (I anticipate running into problems when players try to actually use this for currency, but if it managed to work out it'd be awesome)
1. Souls range in quality. There are Lost Souls, Wretched Souls, Damned Souls and Diabolic Souls in ascending order of value. I don't think there's much problem with that.
2. Souls range in "type," identified by color. Envy Souls appear as green orbs, Wrath souls appear as red orbs, etc. This may end up being hard to implement without having a separate, neutral currency, because if different soul-types are reagents for different items, some may end up being more valuable than others and it could be hard to say "Selling this item for 20 Damned Souls" if damned wrath souls are worth twice as much as damned gluttony souls.
Items sold by vendors would always be measured in "blank" soul currency so there'd at least be some consistency to what is worth what, but I wouldn't be surprised if I had to drop this element in an MMO medium.
Sloth - Sloth demons are slower but harder to damage, and in combat they prefer to take root and use spells to manipulate their enemies. They capture souls and mold them into minions to fight for them.
Gluttony - Rather than saving up souls for long term gain, Gluttony is all about consuming them for short term melee awesomeness. When they do hold on to them for later it's only to craft them into consumable stuff (potions, food, etc)
Lust - As I mentioned before, Lust is sortof Roguelike in that they focus on single targets use something akin to combo points. They are somewhat of a hybrid class between Gluttony and Sloth - they can consume their targets for a short term buff or they can retain them as a slave for a while.
Pride - Pride is a little up in the air right now. I'm leaning towards them being mostly a crafter class that builds a variety of things. In an MMO a lot of those things would be BoP so Pride players will have some stuff only they can use.
Wrath - uses something similar to the Rage system in WoW, except that you don't "spend" rage. Rage goes up and up and up until you over-rage and go into a homicidal frenzy wherein A) you lash out at friends as well as foes and B) you put yourself through so much stress that you damage yourself. (I've tried this out in my earlier RPG and it's the favorite mechanic of most people who try it)
Envy - I've explored a few different roots for Envy. Originally I planned them to be doppleganger-like things that copy and steal abilities from enemies. I've since switched to serpentine Imps that are defined not by the abilities they wish they could have, but by low self-esteem that results in them becoming slinking stalkers. They do not have a kingdom of their own - they serve under the Pride kingdom, acting as spies and assassins while plotting to eventually take it over. Envy is the "stealth" half of the rogue class.
Fun fact that surprised me during research two days ago: Of the seven princes of hell, Leviathan is the prince of Envy. The way I'm choosing to interpet that here is that Leviathan begins the story as Lucifer's small serpent henchman(woman? I think I'm gonna go with she's female to break up the monotomy of a bunch of male demonlords decided on by a bunch of male medieval monks). If you're an Envy character, she appears periodically to give you missions, each time slightly larger than the time before. By the end of the first game she's grown into a monolithic Midgard Serpent style monster that winds her way across all of Hell, and in the end she's the one that unleashes the Beast you helped capture in the original expansion.
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quote:Yeah I would recommend reading it just for the presentation of the setting, not the mechanics (of which there are few). It is a superb example of having story and theme create gameplay in lieu of tables, charts, and stats. It's the appropriate foundation for excellent creation and presentation of more structured gameplay ideas.
Thanks. I'll check it out. (I've always felt vaguely guilty about not having done as much research as I should on existing games, but there are so many and there's only so much time to really understand them all).
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pride would absolutely be a D&D4 'leader' style class focused around area effect buffs, wouldn't you think? Or more a pet class than even sloth
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Oh, come to think of it... duh. Yeah. I think I had briefly considered that a while ago but then forgot and got caught up in the crafting thing. I do still think crafting should be an element. Lucifer is the quintessential Pride character and I like the idea of his goal being to unravel God's creation to make something he considers better. Then again, "taking over and ruling" could apply just as well and fits the "Leader" class perfectly.
For me, personally, the moments when I've felt Pride (in particular, when it's turned to actual arrogance that I'd actually consider 'sinful') related to artistic stuff, because that's what I happen to be good at, so that's what I've always associated it with.
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So let me get this straight... The different sins would be the REALMS, not the CLASSES right?
You'll have balance issues with that. Would probably be better to have Satan battle other old gods like Baal and Ashtoreth. You can pick which gods you'd want to side with, but they'd all have the same classes based on the sins.
But then, you're slipping into the WoW (2 realms) or DOAC (3 realms) mold.
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They are both classes (albeit with extreme multiclass options) and factions.
Aris actually hit that issue right on the mark:
quote:The neat thing about this is that the sins have to work together to some degree while still wanting to be in charge. I can see that as a great justification for traveling to other kingdoms, sharing quests, grouping, etc while still allowing you to have RvR combat.
If we're keeping the "freeform evolution" aspect then each side would definitely have access to the full range of abilities, but each faction is technically ruled by a particular Sin and there'd probably be benefits to staying on good terms with the faction associated with your primary skillset.
For instance, if you're primary abilities are based on Greed, you might get access to greed-centric items if you're on good terms with that kingdom. That doesn't mean it needs to be your primary kingdom (and remember there are 6 kingdoms so there's plenty of choices for who to go to war with).
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Man, I would love to see classes change based on MMO abuse behaviors. Every time you spend more than four hours online, you slide a point towards Sloth. Every time you visit the auction house, you slide a point towards Greed. Every time you engage in PvP, you slide a point towards Wrath. Every time you compare your stats with someone else, or trade gear, you slide a point towards Envy. Every time you message someone who claims to be female, you slide a point towards Lust.... j/k
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I actually had been thinking of having Sloth reward players for NOT playing (along the lines of Rest in WoW. And it'd be fairly early on the ability tree so most players could get access to it)
I'd also like to take some measures to encourage players to moderate themselves in general. I already discussed that in another thread though. The basic gist I settled on was you could only gain so many Sin points (i.e. experience) per day.
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The poster also hints at how each faction can have access to multiple Sins while still feeling natural. You should be able to identify which of those characters has some Lust and Gluttony leanings.
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posted
The idea sounds pretty interesting. I'm not really digging how the factions are based on the different sins though.
Posts: 1287 | Registered: Apr 2006
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There'd be plenty of betrayals and additional smaller factions (probably including one or two repentant "good" factions), and the ability to change sides. But it seems pretty straightforward to me that, after dumping a bunch of souls into hell, they'd mostly congregate into groups of like-minded individuals.
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posted
Ah. I would definitely play up the different princes rather than the sins, with each sin being their bonus or whatever rather than being the faction itself.
Posts: 1287 | Registered: Apr 2006
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Well again, the point wasn't that each faction consisted only of a single sin, just that one sin held the most political clout, and mechanically might provide some extra items or abilities if you had good reputation with them. A comparison might be in the real world, while you technically can be an actor or filmmaker in any part of the US, you'll have a lot more opportunities if you're living in Los Angeles than Poughkeepsie.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote: The factions at present are based on Binsfield's classification of demons...
It's a cool idea, but one of the big things D&D had to deal with was fundamentalist Christians flipping out about the named demons int he books. They seemed to object because naming the demons gives them power.
4E has some named demons, but they're made up names. I haven't heard anyone out protesting D&D lately, so I suppose fake names would be safe enough.
Unless, of course, you think the publicity of being protested would help.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
Although they don't use Lucifer and Satan specifically, D&D uses plenty of real demon names which have, at some points in history, been used as the actual name for the Christian devil. There's certain branches of religion that I expect to flip out over the game no matter what names I use. And yeah, I'm pretty sure the publicity would end up being a good thing anyway.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: The biggest issue that MMOs face is that, in order to remain interesting for every new player who comes, you can't permanently change the world. The designers of the game have a plan, and you pretty much have to follow that plan because it's hard to design a world that can realistically respond to thousands of player decisions.
I think this issue has more to do with the game designers and their work-to-player-satisfaction-achievement ratio than the players themselves. It's hard for designers to make aspects of the game that it's possible no one will see, or that will cease to be accessible because of player choice; it's much easier to wring the most player satisfaction from your work if everyone is going to see most of what you do (plot/mission/map routing) and it doesn't change (no real long-term player effect on the world.)
What I've been thinking would be cool would amount to: "If 'x' number of people don't perform the mission to retrieve the MacGuffin before this deadline, West Generictown is going to blow up. No, really. We're serious. 5...4...3...2...1... Okay, there it goes, up in a ball of flame. And it's your fault. No one is ever going to be able to go there again. All your quest contacts there are gone."
Or conversely: "If 'x' number of people perform the mission to claim the 'Rune of Unlocking' before the deadline, a new world will be available to everyone. And if you're one of the spiffy people who made it possible, when you go to the new world, you and you alone (and those like you) will be able to fly."
I think for this to really work, you'd want a tangible way to measure how many people had performed the quest in either case so you knew the designers weren't fudging things.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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quote: The factions at present are based on Binsfield's classification of demons...
It's a cool idea, but one of the big things D&D had to deal with was fundamentalist Christians flipping out about the named demons int he books. They seemed to object because naming the demons gives them power.
4E has some named demons, but they're made up names. I haven't heard anyone out protesting D&D lately, so I suppose fake names would be safe enough.
You actually shouldn't bother worrying about fundie objection to named demons at all. In Nomine doesn't.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I have very limited experience with MMOs and would have no desire to play a table-top game...but I just wanted to say that I love the general idea of this game. The subject material is interesting and I can totally imagine how it would look visually (I'm getting flashbacks to the last time I read Dante's Inferno.)
On a demographic note, I'm an atheist raised Catholic who is interested Judeo-Christian theology (even though I reject the God versus Satan storyline.) Sounds like a great game and you'd get my monthly payment!
Posts: 1733 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: In this case, I'm actually dealing with a subject matter where the issue of free will is extremely relevant. Believers and nonbelievers alike have been asking the question "What's the point of Free Will if God already knows what's going to happen?" It seems to me there should be a way to directly incorporate this question into the game in a way that is A) philosophically interesting for the players who actually care and B) doesn't impact the fun of the players who don't.
I think you have a different problem than you think you have. If you're suggesting that humans have free will and the power to change their afterlives after death, I think your premise is very likely heretical from a Christian standpoint. (Not to mention misguided from a Jewish one.) You have that ability only in this world, not afterward.
If your characters were demons, not humans, I suppose that might be another story. (I don't pretend to understand the Christian outlook on demons, but I gather it does have room for a war between heaven and hell.)
Posts: 884 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: In this case, I'm actually dealing with a subject matter where the issue of free will is extremely relevant. Believers and nonbelievers alike have been asking the question "What's the point of Free Will if God already knows what's going to happen?" It seems to me there should be a way to directly incorporate this question into the game in a way that is A) philosophically interesting for the players who actually care and B) doesn't impact the fun of the players who don't.
I think you have a different problem than you think you have. If you're suggesting that humans have free will and the power to change their afterlives after death, I think your premise is very likely heretical from a Christian standpoint. (Not to mention misguided from a Jewish one.) You have that ability only in this world, not afterward.
Not necessarily, by certain views of Purgatory. LinkPosts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Sterling: Not necessarily, by certain views of Purgatory. Link
Hmm. That may depend on whether Fr. Lagrange on page 31-32 is arguing with St. Aquinas or elaborating in claiming that the soul's voluntary acceptance of Purgatory is entirely inevitable. (I suspect the latter, but I could be wrong.)
Posts: 884 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:What I've been thinking would be cool would amount to: "If 'x' number of people don't perform the mission to retrieve the MacGuffin before this deadline, West Generictown is going to blow up. No, really. We're serious. 5...4...3...2...1... Okay, there it goes, up in a ball of flame. And it's your fault. No one is ever going to be able to go there again. All your quest contacts there are gone."
Or conversely: "If 'x' number of people perform the mission to claim the 'Rune of Unlocking' before the deadline, a new world will be available to everyone. And if you're one of the spiffy people who made it possible, when you go to the new world, you and you alone (and those like you) will be able to fly."
I like both of those ideas and agree with your appraisal of the situation. MMOs that have world events are often much cooler because of them, but they're not a cost effective use of Dev-time.
In Sinfall (Sinfall is my placeholder name for the game, referring to the waterfall you go over in the beginning of the game as well as the metaphoric descent into Hell), I think there's room to address stuff like this in that the bottom seven layers of Hell get civilized over the course of the game. It's inevitable that a new city is going to get built on each plane, but the nature of that city can depend on which faction completed the most quests and/or PvP objectives beforehand.
quote:I think you have a different problem than you think you have. If you're suggesting that humans have free will and the power to change their afterlives after death, I think your premise is very likely heretical from a Christian standpoint. (Not to mention misguided from a Jewish one.) You have that ability only in this world, not afterward.
I have pondered this, and gone back and forth a bit, although the note about demon free will vs human afterlife free will is a dichotomy I hadn't specifically thought of. There's technically not a huge issue with making the characters "fallen-angel demons" as opposed to "spirit-demons." But I think the concept's coolness is slightly tarnished by getting rid of the River Styx and spirit elements (not to mention the Styx provides an actual good reason for new players to continuously join the game, whereas continuously adding new fallen angels is still breaking rules of Christian lore. (My understanding is 1/3 of the angels all fell pretty much at once)
The bottom line will always be to make an awesome game, and the fact that this lends itself to neat philosophical concepts in the first place is gravy, let alone that it happens to provide a way to address some uniquely Christian issues that don't normally get addressed in a "good" video game. (The only Christian game I can think of is 'War in Heaven' which from what I heard was pretty meh).
My intention is to include enough imagery from a variety of cultures to make it clear this is not the verbatim story of one particular religion. (For example, I intend to imply that Leviathan was the serpent that gave Eve the fruit, but by the end of the game she'll end up paralleling the Jormungandr from Norse mythology). Despite that, I think there's room to address individual issues that the game lends itself well to addressing.
[Starts answering a question no one actually asked]
I'm a firm believer that games (computer and otherwise) are a medium of art that can be just as powerful as any other. However, right now a lot of people trying to make "Art" games do so by either making weird things no one wants to play or by filling them with cinematics to impact players the same way movies do. I think that's a mistake. The core component of a game is that players interact with it. This means
A) it has to be fun. One might be able to sit through a depressing movie and gain a valuable lesson from it, but a depressing game requires much more involvement from the player and if it's not fun on some level they're not going to make it long enough to get your message.
B) the message you're attempting to communicate should arise naturally from the player's interaction, not in spite of it. If the "Art" portion of your game consists solely of the cinematics, you haven't made game art, you've made cinematic art.
[/stops answering a question no one actually asked]
Apart from the concept just being cool, this idea is so exciting to me because I *think* there's a major opportunity to use the inherent structure of MMO interaction to make some kind of philosophical point. But I'm not sure how to go about it.
There was actually a bunch more I want to add but this post is getting long and if I addressed everything at once it'd probably be a novel, so I'm gonna leave off here.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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posted
Last night I got some ideas, starting from the issue of "what happens when you design an MMO to have an ending?"
One thing that really frustrates me are things that keep going long after they should have ended. Movies, TV shows, books, comics and games have all been guilty at some point in churning out crap because people keep paying for it. I have deep respect for someone like Bill Waterson who ends his strip when it's still actually good, even though he could have kept turning out more of the same.
Now, that issue applies differently to MMOs because one of the biggest draws to them is the nostalgia of having grown up within this alternate world. If an MMO ends you're not just ending a game, you're ending a world and a community. Being able to go back, months or years afterwards, and say "man, I remember this place like it was my own backyard" is a major draw of the genre.
That said, there's only so far in the infinite progression of loot and levels before things just become silly in a Dragonball Z kind of way. You're the strongest man in the world? Well here's a guy from ANOTHER world who's even stronger. And here's a guy so strong he can blow up PLANETS! And here's a guy who's so awesome he can beat up that other guy who blows up planets! At some point it just becomes dumb. (It also reaches a point where the game's been out for over 10 years at the graphics are starting to show their age. So far MMOs haven't actually existed that long. I know Everquest is still going but I'm not sure how many people still play it and if they do so for any reason other than pure inertia).
In WoW's case, I expect them to run another 6-8 years (3-4 more expansions) and culminate with a fight against Sargeras. Blizzard's already got another MMO in the works so I don't think that's a terrible business decision. Just as interest in WoW is starting to wane they'll launch another game that's even better.
With the Hell game, everything points towards Armageddon as the ultimate ending. Unfortunately, unless I deliberately run against the thread of every Apocalypse myth ever (I could do that but I think it's better to embrace the mythological archetype), Armageddon probably means the world ends, evil is purged from existence and a new, better world begins. And while I think it's okay to stop introducing new content to an MMO, I don't think it's sensical to say to millions of players "Go away, we don't want your money even if you do want to keep playing, because the world just blew up."
So with all that in mind, here's what came to mind last night:
I want a major portion of the game to revolve around Contract Magic. The six kingdoms contract you into their service in the beginning, players can form contracts with each other (i.e. parties) to safely work with enemy factions without immediate threats of backstabbing. Later on the discover is made that mortals can make contracts with demons to let them temporarily escape and set long term plans in motion.
As the demons start plotting against the other planes, they're forced more and more to deal with the ever present threat of God. It's not entirely clear why God hasn't destroyed these creatures who are working against him, and the uncertainty has several demonlords on edge. God's already seen how it ends and no matter how many forces Lucifer acquires, it seems kind of pointless if God can squash them on a whim.
Which leads to the climax of one particular expansion set, in which you help Lucifer launch an assault on Heaven. The goal is not to destroy it, merely to clear the way so that Lucifer can get an audience with God. The game ends with on a "Story of Job"-like note. Lucifer claims that the angels and mortals are flawed creations - they could never stand against the demon hordes on their own, the only thing giving them hope is the notion that God will sweep in and save them at the last moment.
So Lucifer convinces God to agree to the ultimate contract. He will not act during Armageddon, and his creations will stand on their own against both temptation and destruction during the next thousand years. Lucifer wins if he can remake the world in his image in that time. This sets the stage for actual tension and uncertainty in the final expansion set. You perform several missions assassinating or subverting leaders of the angels, until it appears all but certain that the demons will be victorious.
(Un)fortunately, it's at the last moment things unravel. Leviathan, the serpent of Envy that has feigned allegiance to Lucifer all these years, doesn't care about remaking the world. Her jealousy leads her to unleash the Beast that you helped chain in Part I as well as drive wedges between the other major demonlords. The coalition falls apart, and the final fight is against both Leviathan and all 666 aspects of the Beast - and this time you and your small party/raid group are on their own instead of having the backing of the entire Hell army.
The ending cinematic has Lucifer sitting, pissed off and dejected. An angel/God/Christ-figure of some sort comes up to him and says "Look, you tried building an empire out of Lust, Greed, Wrath, Sloth, Envy and Gluttony. Seriously, what did you think would happen?"
Lucifer's 'punishment' is to relive his attempts at victory over and over again, trapped in a moment where he knows he is doomed to failure but can't admit it to himself. It is pointed out to him that he can leave this form of Hell whenever he wants, but his own pride prevents him from accepting his failure. Thus does the MMO come to an 'end.' Players are free to remain in Lucifer's moment, repeating old content as much as they want, trying it on harder difficulty levels or whatever. But no matter how many times they run through the raid bosses the final ending never changes.
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posted
I have to ask: you seem to be trying to create an arty game. But what about this is at all deeper than the typical MMO fare?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
When I think up a game I like to think of "does it meet these criteria?"
1: Will people pay to play it? -1a. is it fun? 2: Can it be done? 3: Does it provide a different experiance from world of warcraft?
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I don't think there's any one "deep" point I'm making that's miles above what other games have had. I can definitely think of non-MMO games that are more "artsy." I haven't directly experienced enough MMOs to compare artsiness (wow, turns out artsiness is actually a word. Huh.) with anything other than WoW. I do think it's deeper than WoW, although if you can point a better crafted but less popular MMO I might be missing, let me know. In the meantime that's what I'll be addressing.
WoW makes approximately one philosophical statement: Racism is bad. Which is a perfectly good statement to make, and definitely worth addressing in any game about racial conflict, but ultimately doesn't help set it apart from thousands of other stories created in America. Likewise "Evil is self destructive" (the most obvious "moral" at the end of the story I just outlined) is not exactly a novel idea, nor is throwing all kinds of mythological references into your work. I'm not using those devices because they're deep unto themselves, but because they're cultural icons that help make the story identifiable and follow logically from the subject matter.
What I do think is deep, at least a little:
1. The core notion of the game, using the idea of Sins as character classes that define your skills. Developing abilities, colors, and images that make each Sin stand out as unique, fun to play, and resonate well with cultural archetypes. Letting the player's appearance develop organically from those sins. None of those ideas is totally unique (obviously descendent from WoW's distinctive classes and Spore and Fable's open-endedness) but most innovation is incremental anyway.
2. Using some of the inherent mechanics of an MMO as commentary about inevitability, and in general, weaving together all the elements of the MMO into a cohesive whole in which you never have to say "that's dumb, that's obviously only there for game balance." There will be necessary game balance features but wherever possible I want to build the story around them rather than in spite of them. If people come back to life every 15 minutes, I want the game to address the ramifications of that. (The only game I've seen do this well is EVE).
3. Corollary to 1 and 2: Addressing the fact that video games in general and MMOs in particular tend to tap into and provide an outlet for the darker sides of human nature. You yourself made an interesting point about this a few posts back.
4. Well rounded, interesting characters that evolve realistically over the game. This one I realize is not terribly obvious based on things I've said, since I've only given basic gists of 2-3 characters. I don't know how well I'd pull this off because it hinges on a million little things that'd all have to get done well, but I'd definitely intend to make each character feel real. The story of Lucifer in particular I find fascinating. I'm not sure I have anything to say about him that hasn't been said before, but I at least intend to say it well. (My guess is that my intended portrayal of Lucifer won't be that unique but several of the less famous demonlords will be)
5. Corollary to 4: Creating a world where you are encouraged to identify and ally yourself with the worst villain characters in human history, without losing sight of your humanity. I honestly am NOT 100% sure how to pull this off. I think it might require a little more skill than I currently have but since I wouldn't be doing this for 10+ years (if ever), and I'd be working with a bunch of people when I did, I think it's doable. The World of Darkness books are a major source of inspiration here (I actually do worry about being too derivative of them, especially of Geist, but I think the game has enough going for it to stand apart).
A related element is that I think it's slightly deeper to start with "okay, say God just dumped all the sinful people into Hell and then let them do whatever, what would be the actual ramifications of that and how would their society develop?" than to say "Okay we want a bunch of cool races to fight. Go."
6. This one isn't deep by itself, but it's a design constriction that forces me to be more creative when addressing other areas of the game: Creating a story that largely addresses Christian mythology that's specifically intended to incite the typical fears among the "Harry Potter is evil" crowd, while in the end addressing those fears and making a point that I think many of that demographic would ultimately appreciate. (The most of extreme of them obviously won't even bother to play the game, but I think there's a fair number of those extremists' children who will wonder what the ruckus is about, play it, and find appreciation for it). If this were a movie or book I don't think that would be a terribly original goal, but there aren't many games that have seriously attempted it and I think it's worth doing.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Creating a world where you are encouraged to identify and ally yourself with the worst villain characters in human history, without losing sight of your humanity.
What incentive would people have to avoid losing sight of their humanity?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
sound slike it could be a good STORY not a game.
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posted
I'm just throwing this out there, but in game design there are two general methods for getting a player to keep playing a game: Either the goal is to avoid a negative outcome(i.e. death, and thus, the end of the game), or to accumulate good outcomes(i.e. increasing your score, making more money, progressing in skill.)
The problem with this, however, is that it's been done so many times that it's basically assumed that the negative outcome is death and the positive outcomes are some quantifiable element that can be represented with numbers(levels, score, money).
In an MMO such as this, however, both types of motivations don't work, or at least would not be plausible. Your character is all ready dead. And gaining levels or acquiring money doesn't really make much sense if you are in hell. Of course, the easy way out would simply be to provide those positive motivations and cover up the fact that players are in hell.
But I suggest a more revolutionary approach. (hehe...)
Here's what I'm suggesting: The main motivation for characters to play the game would be, simply put, control over their characters. As a newbie to the depths of hell, you are given a limited amount of will and restricted amount of freedoms. While stronger players have more actions and ability to exert their will on other players. As your character exists in hell, the gameplay becomes something similiar to what I would imagine happens in the real hell, demons war for control over each other.
The positive motivation is simply being able to exert other players to fall to your will. In other words, you can actually "control" other players characters, and at the same time, they are actively fighting you for control over their own character.
Another advantage to this is that the game fundamentally changes into two parts: beginners will focus on the positive rewards of acquiring control. And veterans will focus on the negative outcome of losing their power and control to newwer upstarts.
I think, then, that this would require a gameplay system never seen before, because, well, it's completely revolutionary. A game such as this would do to gaming what 3d did to 2d, in my opinion.
urm... yeah. Just my two cents.
Posts: 4 | Registered: Jun 2009
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Permadeath arguably made SWG pretty good.
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Permadeath arguably made SWG pretty good.
Not at all. Not even remotely. Permadeath was such a horrific idea that it was revoked shortly thereafter. It did nothing but encourage cancellations.
SWG's flirtation with unlocks and permadeath systems ended up being a seminal example for other game devs in the "See, don't try that" category.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Permadeath arguably made SWG pretty good.
You know when WOW was in development some gamers begged Blizzard to include Hardcore servers, where one death meant the loss of your character (They had such servers in Diablo II).
Even without the example of SWG it was pretty easy to explain why that was a horrible idea within the context of WOW.
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