AO's biggest problems

[___________JagdTyger]

Financial backing and all that doesnt often factor in too much, look at ultima online, that came in with big backing, then they started cutting things behind the scenes to a minimum, thus squeezing more money out of it, and it becomes a cash cow with little expense.

Besides Star Wars is Star Wars, financial backing aside, the name sells itself, its not like the designers had to do anything to sell it, they would get people to try the game even if it was stick figures with lightsabers, with no story. Imagine if the company that makes Star Fleet Battles, decided to announce they were going to change the game so that it was mmorg and everyone could command starships in a ongoing universe.... its Star Trek after all, and needs no sales pitch to get people to play.

So what have we learned, if the product begins with the word Star, then its gonna sell regardless

Think I read somewhere that Warcraft was going to go mmorg, that wont need any selling, blizzard can throw all the $ they want at it, people will try it out regardless.

AO has done pretty good being that the product was new, without any movies, tv shows or anything to bring about its creation.


Jagdtyger

[Treonaut]

Ultima Online was good. You could have a player run city and have shops set up and actually affect how your server acted. You could shut down your city for a week while everyone went on vacation and people would notice.

And you could have a house. People would come and knock on your door and you would go and see who it was. No stupid 'buddy list' and instant communications like IRC. You actuallly had to look at your friend to talk to them.

And you could be whatever you wanted. There was so many times to play your guy over and over. And it made sense. If you cut down a tree, you got strong. In AO, if I kill a bug, I get better at Electrical Engineering.

And you could get tired of killing and decide to make cakes and pies. And when you made cakes and pies long enougn, you became a master baker. And when you drank a beer you burped and got sick and threw up.

And you fought the people your guild was at war with and nobody else could interfere. Fighting with a mace made you better at fighting with a mace.

And we didn't have to sit for 18 hours to get a rare drop. Sometimes they just happened. But, you never knew where or off what. So you decided what you felt like doing that day and you did it.

And I think the guy who made UO is going to make Star Wars.

[______________Orchid]

I hear 2 things.

People talk about AO with love because they wanted to see AO grow and thrive, just like parents look at their babies.

But AO isnt growing.. its just stagnating for the last year.

SWG is not in question simply because the people making it have a full family of thriving children already.

[Naraya]

Originally posted by Warlock

Not that I have anything against PvP (I dont do it myself) but

Why do so many people think fixing PvP will create story?

Dust brigade arent players, yet they provide story, so in this case PvM = story. Just because you get 50 clanners and 50 omni beating the hell out of each other in some zone doesnt make a story unless FC let is have an effect, and if they can/will do that they it can be done with PvM

Fixing PvP isnt the issue, its balancing the breeds/classes that needs to be done before PvP can be 'fixed'

Before you go fixing the breeds/classes though, how bout fixing some of the nagging bugs that are still lingering....?

[krystanova]

I am fairly active in the boards over on Final Fantasy Online, and one of the biggest questions over there now is: is Final Fantasy XI a mistake? Is taking a franchise that is built upon storyline, characters, and visuals into the world of MMORPGs, so focused on equipment, levels, and team-play, a good idea?

In one of my (probably) more hated posts there, I compared Tarasque to the "final" boss of Final Fantasy XI, the Shadow Lord. In that post, I basically trashed the idea of a "final boss" because that concept just does NOT work in an MMORPG.

I say this because the whole implication of a final boss is that it is the end point, the culmination of playing the game. Sure, in Final Fantasy X, I'm still uberizing my characters months after beating the game, but that's because I'm completist. The game emotionally ended for me when the final boss was gone. If that happens in an MMORPG, that is a bad thing, because the game depends on keeping you coming back day after day, month after month, something single player games do not worry about.

The ultimate point of that post was this: until and unless an MMORPG finds a way to continually innovate its storyline, to make it meaningful and emotionally involving, a story-based MMORPG is simply untenable.

Why? Because the current way storylines are approached is that the storyline must cater to and be accessible to THOUSANDS of people, and game makers are truly afraid to allow some people to rise above others, which is absolutely necessary in a game that depends on it's players and not some fleshed out, realistic characters like Auron, Lulu, Tidus, and others. A fundamental question at the core of a story-based MMORPG is this: how do we determine which players become movers and shakers? How do we decide which players take an influential role, and not insult the rest of the community?

It's a double edged sword. Do you run a scripted story, like AO is trying to do and FF XI does, and make it available to everyone (rendering it largely meaningless), or do you allow the players to work it out, a rapid descent into true anarchy?

This is a question NO ONE has figured out yet. Part of the problem is that there are no consequences for actions made by players in an MMORPG. They cannot die. There is no perceivable point to what they are doing, except accumulating the best stuff. People will cheat, people will steal, people will ninja-loot, people will gank, people will do a ton of things... and it'd be worse if the game included a storyline controlled by a limited few players, because you'd likely have heaping helpings of jealousy thrown in. PvP doesn't help in these matters, because it is often absolutely meaningless. Which would you rather be: feared because you have a title of Novice or whatever, or feared because you assassinated a major player character in a storyline event?

When I first read about AO in PC Gamer's September 2000 preview (or was it 1999?), I was thrilled by the idea of a game with a four-year story arc influenced by the actions of the individual gamer. I envisioned warring factions, powerful politicians, devious assassins, famous explorers. This, unfortunately, did not occur, and likely never will. Most of everyone's real accomplishments in this game are: being a great mapmaker, being a great website operator, being a great tradeskillsman, being a great teamer. While that's all great and fun, and no offense meant to some of my great friends in game (you know who you are!), most of these are NOT in game accomplishements, and are, fundamentally, not why I bought the game.

I am not here to bash the game. I really like the game, as I hope I've shown through my work on the beastiary. I wish it would expand and grow and improve. But, I also DO not believe that we can have the type of storyline the Final Fantasy games have in an MMORPG, at least not yet. Final Fantasy XI is itself a bit of evidence of this, and this is from master storytellers at Square. Maybe AO will turn it around and surprise me, maybe ONE of these games will. But, unless some of the fundamental approaches to the genre's treatment of player characters are changed, it may be a long time coming.

Rhiannon "Krystanova" Pourier

Visit Faunlore: Rubi-Kan Wildlife at:
http://beastiary.somnaterrae.org

And off-topic of this post: Richard Garriott (Lord British), creator of the Ultima series, including UO, has nothing to do with SWG. He is involved solely with Lineage: The Blood Pledge, a Diablo-esqe MMORPG he helped drag over from it's origins in Korea. And, as I understand, he still plays his games, even if assassins are still hunting him.

[______________Orchid]

I think one reaosn why you hear so much more about bad activities on AO is because people gave up on being nice to everyone. The reason everyone is nice in AO at launch and beyond is cos theres enough to do to keep it fun..

At this point people have to come up with their own ways to make AO unboring, which means going over the line.. any way they can.

That means more people not caring about being nice anymore.

The reason people are nice is cos good people join forces and energies to a likemind goal.

There are nothing to work for in AO except some lewt and levels, which in the final analysis mean nothing.

[krystanova]

True enough, but my point is NOT about being nice. I don't consider two warring guilds who shoot each other on sight and have massive battles that influence the game world NICE, but I do consider it establishing a storyline that players can influence.

My emphasis is that, done properly, the game can eliminate these problems (like ganking, stealing, etc.) by having real ramifications that affect players in the game world, just like would happen in real life. You can also then establish a storyline based on actions of players because the obsession is no longer on STUFF and LEVELS, but on accomplishing something in the world. Sure, we'll still get nastiness and bad people, but NOW, they'll have an influence AND repercussions that may turn on them, instead of just making everyone miserable, and we'll have a storyline.

[Treonaut]

In UO when you did bad things you marked as a bad person. People could then punish you. When you do bad things to people in AO they laugh at you and talk to their buds about how loser you are. It's full of bullys that can't be punished.

In SW: G, they are trying so hard that you can see the sweat to eliminate the jerks from able to be doing jerk stuff. And if you do jerk actions, then you will be punished by the game.

You go read the PvP forums and see how full of idiots it is. People who should have had more discipline from their parents but get away with being bad people in a game and feel powerful.

I liked UO because I could be a bad person if I wanted. Only I would be marked as a bad person and everybody knew it.

In AO sometimes I think 90% of the people are out just to make other people not have fun.

[krystanova]

Great. Now take that and integrate it into a game where the world and the storyline are legitimately affected by ANY individual, with a dynamic, adaptable, emotionally-involving storyline, and you're moving closer to a good game.

Simply having rules, laws, and consequences isn't enough either. You must make them MATTER to players. You must make it so that players are truly interested in the world and what will happen next, and the best way to do that is to make it up to them. Game enforced consequences aren't as effective or involving as consequences driven by the actions of other players who have in response to you.

Then, implement a system whereby some players can rise above the general population without players becoming envious. In other words, if you are not going to make an eternal scripted game in constant flux, make a world like our own, except without all the crappy stuff real-life contributes to the equation. It should still be an escape, after all, too.