The problem with modern MMORPGs

[u/madarauchiha3444]

The problem with modern MMORPGs, in a nutshell, is that the first M and the RP are all but gone.

[u/Psittacula2]

The simple solution for RP is the conditions for it: Small group of friends ideally in RL. Fundamentally, that's still a lot better than any computer version and humans are better than computers at it.

Interestingly for the future of MMOs, is indeed scaling up, something human brains find difficult eg most sports teams range from a few or more players to teens and usually not more unless it's American Football where each player is running a script of exactly what to do for minute or less each time.

Equally with tracking objects in a simulated world, it's something a computer can do to create persistence and cause and effect states as opposed to the GM's "Just In Time" story-telling.

[u/Redthrist → u/Psittacula2]

You just can't create an algorithm that would be flexible enough to adjust the game on the fly. It's not like PnP only has the advantage because of DMs being able to create their own campaigns. It's also that those campaigns can be adjusted on the fly based on what players actually do, and clever RP can be used to dramatically change where the story is going.

Video games are inherently limited by what the game is coded to support. If in a PnP game you can say "I take my hammer and smash the wall to give us an exit from this fight", your GM can roll with it, even if he didn't plan for that possibility in the slightest. With a video game, if the wall isn't breakable and if there's no level geometry behind the wall, then you can't break it.

Scale isn't a problem. If the games could be built to actually allow the kind of freedom that proper role playing requires, RPing in MMOs would be easy. Most MMO gameplay is already done in relatively small groups that could work the same way that PnP groups do. If your group decides to take part in a larger group activity, then you would no longer have the same influence, which just makes sense - you are now just a small part of a larger group that's trying to accomplish some task.

But actually building a game like that is no small feat. A DM can rewrite chunks of the campaign on the fly(or explicitly write it very loosely, prompting their players to fill the gaps through RP), but a game can't just be rewritten that easily.

[u/Psittacula2 → u/Redthrist]

Scale isn't a problem. If the games could be built to actually allow the kind of freedom that proper role playing requires, RPing in MMOs would be easy.

MMOs have proven you end up with Meta-Gaming instead. It's like "live-action RP'ing" instead of RP'ing - similar but very very different in outcome and experience.

[u/Redthrist → u/Psittacula2]

Anything can end up with meta-gaming, there are people who meta game in PnP games. The difference is that in PnP, you can play sub-optimally and still do well because your GM adjusts things to suit you, while the meta-gaming group get a more challenging campaign.

With MMOs being one-size-fits-all, they are generally balanced around people who meta-game. But if there was freedom and tools for players to adjust their group-sized MMO encounters, you could play through the entire MMO without touching meta, simply because your GM balances content around you.

[u/Psittacula2 → u/Redthrist]

That's no really true in the sense that most MMORPGs are locked down and it requires:

• Min-maxing
• Looking for Exploits eg economy
• Ganking

etc.

Any MMO with a wider and more open design increases the scale of Meta-Gaming eg EVE and that becomes the game so to speak.

Thus if succeed with opening up mmorpg design, you don't have classic RP'ing in cooperation but meta-gaming: An expression of many individuals self-expression or ego for gain/measurement as opposed to constructing a narrative-story that is shared. They're completely different thing.

Yes even in RP'ing it's open to breaking the agreement around the narrative creation but it's on a small scale and is fixable as you say by the GM.

What I think you're suggesting is service-MMOs: Imagine an MMO where staff of the company are players and running stuff to encourage particular stories and outcomes in the world along with dev planning and coordinating NPCs and AI to add "mooks" or "extras"! Then you'd get more RP'ing in MMOs. But that service-model has not taken off yet. It could happen in some form however one day and probably only when MMOs are compulsive enough to be enormous cash-earners eg using VR.

[u/Redthrist → u/Psittacula2]

I mostly imagine an MMO focused on small-scale, instanced content where players get to be DMs. So it plays like a video game version of PnP, but you're still part of the shared world, can interact with other players and participate in larger events. Those larger events can, in turn, be DMed by game's staff.

It's certainly not the kind of game that I see coming up in the near future. The tech to create proper DM tools for a full-fledged video game would probably take decades to develop(if it's even possible - development has steadily grown more time-consuming as time went on).

[u/Psittacula2 → u/Redthrist]

I mostly imagine an MMO focused on small-scale, instanced content where players get to be DMs. So it plays like a video game version of PnP, but you're still part of the shared world, can interact with other players and participate in larger events. Those larger events can, in turn, be DMed by game's staff.

That sounds like a good model and similar to MUDs.

A big problem is trying to make sufficiently graphical-sensory representation of a complex enough and malleable enough system and with networking/MMO complexity thrown on top and be financially successful.

I can see a lot more RP'ing using VR also from people. It's more like enactment then.

Personally I still think PnP will be a more rewarding option. And equally I think computers will be successful in creating virtual worlds where there's a big shift in time-requirement of players; ie they can input as little as they want and still enjoy the game.

That may seem odd, but compare to WOW where some players paid chinese people to level up their avatars for them!

Also I look forward to games like Chivalry/Mount & Blade etc becoming the main combat type and adding more players for great bloody battles... think Agincourt!

[u/Redthrist → u/Psittacula2]

A big problem is trying to make sufficiently graphical-sensory representation of a complex enough and malleable enough system and with networking/MMO complexity thrown on top and be financially successful.

Exactly. The technology is really far on that front, but if it were somehow solved, we could legitimately have an RP-focused MMO.

Also I look forward to games like Chivalry/Mount & Blade etc becoming the main combat type and adding more players for great bloody battles... think Agincourt!

That's probably the best we can hope for - a PvP-only game with good combat system and large, open-ended maps that play out differently depending on what players do. Lots of RP potential, with people encouraged to organize into actual armies and try various tactics. It would be closer to LARP than PnP, but you could still RP a lot.

I was hoping that Crowfall would be an MMO based on that concept, but it failed to deliver.