Building Living Worlds
By Ravenhawk | June 21, 2008
A “Living World” is something that many game designers would love to claim to have created. It’s a common problem that many designs try to solve; How to create the illusion of a dynamic, living world on a mostly static platform?
Many games try to achieve this lofty goal, a dynamic, apparently ever-changing world which players can become truly immersed in. MMORPGS like to make this claim often and while it is true that the games are very active and alive, can they truly claim to have built a living world?
I would claim far from it. Most MMORPGs have more static and boring NPCs than most games. While there is much movement, the only non-players which move are the ‘invading monsters’ or other such attackables. The reason the game seems alive is because it is full of living people. The world itself is lifeless, dull.
NPCs are one of the largest problems. While developing various entertainments for the players, NPCs are largely ignored. What attention is given to them is put purely in a utilitarian sense; What do they need to provide for the players? Equipment, Items, Quests; Environment is woefully left off of the list.
I recently acquired a Wii Ware game called Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles; My Life As a King.
The entire purpose of the game is to build a kingdom. this kingdom starts off quite empty with just yourself and a few citizens. However as you build new houses other people are shipped in and quite quickly you have a rather bustling city under your charge.
The game itself has no adventures or “action” which your King directly takes part in besides talking to your citizenry. You delegate this work to your adventurers who busily scurry about doing various errands before each of their missions. The towns people will carry about on their normal business, walking along to inspect your new stores and parks, shopping for their meals, buying things at the market, and talking to each other. You can talk to them as you please and they enjoy talking to their little king, but in general, they go about their business regardless.
This, when paired with the oft varied and changing dialogs when you talk to them creates a very dynamic feel to a world in which little is actually happening.
Tags: Game Design, MMORPGS, FFCC, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, game design, Living World, MMORPGs, My Life As a King, NPCs
Topics: Game Design, MMORPGS | 1 Comment »
Government Forms and the Gaming Guild
By Ravenhawk | December 11, 2007
These days it is finally being seen as important by game developers to allow players to easily form groups. This is something that has been needed since the early online games, and I’m quite glad to see finally becoming a norm. However, I have personally found an issue with the forms of governance allowed by these groups. Most games only have one form of governance: Complete Autocracy.
For many games, this isn’t a problem and it is often the most efficient in order to get a particular action done. However, when a group gets to any reasonable size, a guild leader is going to, at the very least, require delegation of authority. Most of world understands that authocratic governments don’t work. So why is it that game designers feel that it is the only form of government that gamers need?
Now, to be fair, not all games have this great flaw.
Puzzles Pirates has a couple other forms of government, however, the implemented them in such a manner that you’re being sickeningly inefficient to get anything done unless you’re autocratic or have all your members with voting rights on a very regular basis.
Dream of Mirror Online has an interesting system for it’s guilds. In order to create the group you need 5 people over level 20 and like.. 40k. The person who creates the guild is the guild chairman and the others are the elders. Elders have the ability to recruit, etc. So far it’s pretty run-of-the-mill.
However, DOMO also allows you to create smaller, sub-guilds within your main guild. Then, you can set managers for these sub-guilds, which gives them complete control over the sub-guild. This allows not only delegation of power, but the setting up of specialized sub-groups within your guild. For instance, my friend’s guild is called Radical Dreamers. Within this guild he has a subguilds for the following activities: One for teaching new players the ropes of the game, one which runs guild events, one for PVP players, One for merchanting for the guild, and one for resource farming.
While still technically autocratic, the sub-guild system allows for some delegation of power, splitting the hold from the hands of one, to the hands of a small group.
I’m still waiting for a game which finds an efficient way to implement a democratic form of government for the guilds. If I work out exactly how I would see it working, I’ll of course post it here.
Posed Question to the Readers: What do you see as the ideal form of governing a gaming group?
Tags: Game Design, MMORPGS, Autocracy, Clans, Democracy, DOMO, Dream of Mirror Online, Games, Government, Guilds, Politics, Puzzle Pirates, PVP
Topics: Game Design, MMORPGS | 7 Comments »
MMO Fighting Game: Rumble Fighter
By Ravenhawk | June 5, 2007
I apologize for missing my weekend post, I went to work, came home, passed out, and spaced it. In other news, a friend dropped me a link yesterday to Rumble Fighter, a new game currently in its second phase of beta testing. He’s been taking part in the beta from the start and says it is generally an awesome game.
It’s a side-scrolling fighting game like Street Fighter. You choose one of four classes, who all have distinct stats and abilities. There are different modes of play, including FFA brawls, King of the Hill, and a couple other interesting sounding things.
You can customize the look of your fighter with items like cool hair, different clothes, flags, etc. Fighters are ranked on a variety of statics and when you get in the top fighters, you get different flags and things to equip to show off your awesome peak rankings.
Controls are done with the keyboard, but I know my friend used his controlpad to play so, you could map the buttons to whatever device you feel like fighting with.
After reading all the stuff about it, I personally was totally pumped to play. Sadly, I don’t know how long it will be until the game is open for play, I think it has at least a couple more phases of beta to go through. I’ll be prodding my friend to keep me updated on awesomeness as he goes through the beta, and if there is any news, you’ll get it here.
Tags: Beta tests, MMORPGS, Games, Fighting Games, Rumble Fighter
Topics: Beta tests, MMORPGS, Games | No Comments »
Gunster can still be played! (sort of)
By Ravenhawk | May 29, 2007
So, I was playing around with my google rankings for various search terms when I randomly started reading the wikipedia page for gunster. From this page, I found out that there is another version of gunster out there besides rain of bullets.
It’s called Gunstrike: Reloaded Bullets. Now, before you all rejoice, note there is a catch: The game isn’t in english. Gunster is like a whole lot of other online games in that it was made in Korea, not the US. That version of gunster is still alive, but its in korean. But heck, judging from all the traffic I’ve been getting from people looking for gunster private servers, I’m sure some of ye are into the game enough to play it in another language.
I’ve played a few MMOs that were in korean. Gunster is rather straight forward, so it wouldn’t be that hard to play the game. At least there are no little npcs who you have to wonder what they’re saying…
While its not exactly a private server, so it won’t be the same game, it’s something. And who knows, if it gets popular enough, maybe some of those private server types will latch on and translate it bit-wise. (Like private Ragnarok Online servers do)
Tags: MMORPGS, Gunster, Gunstrike, Private servers
Topics: MMORPGS | No Comments »
ijji is now accepted beta tester applications
By Ravenhawk | May 28, 2007
ijji, producer of a few of my favorite online games (Namely GunZ, Gunster, and Gunbound as well as some others) is currently accepting applications for people interested in taking part in closed beta testing for them.
One of my friends was already accepted and I just turned in my application. You can read the news posting here or just apply to test. I think it’d be a great opportunity to test some awesome games as they roll out some really cool stuff. Testing that new pool game would be awesome..
Anyway, just thought I’d drop the line out to my “loyal readers” as beta testing games is a dream of a lot of gaming people.
Tags: Beta tests, MMORPGS, ijji
Topics: Beta tests, MMORPGS | No Comments »
Brigand Kings can Invade Islands!
By Ravenhawk | May 26, 2007
Puzzle Pirates has released a new patch that has added a variety of awesome new features. First one I went and tried out was the new tournament system. Basically you can now have double elimination tournaments so you get prizes for 2nd 3rd and 4th place. Apparrently you can go even further but I haven’t seen anyone do it yet. I consider making a tournament with a prize of like 20000 poe.. for whoever gets 7th place. (Or 4th if thats the lowest you can go)
The horror of the really good sfers at the fact that, in order to win the big money, they’d have to throw a fight.. Ah, beautiful. Might be a nice way to climb the rankings, actually. Sabotage the higher up people by offering them money.
The next (and probably most imporant) item added is the fact that Brigand Kings can now blockade and potentially take over islands. For those of you not up on the Puzzle Pirates lingo, Brigand Kings are the Boss npcs. They never run out of moves when you fight them and now, they have nice big navies under their command which float around on flotillas next to islands.
These flotillas, if not properly pruned by players eventually are the fleet used to blockade the island. If the Brigand King succeeds in taking the island, the release warns of negative effects on the economy. I assume this means tax hikes. Personally, I’m not worried as I do all my shopping on an Ocean Master controlled island. So, I doubt the Brigand Kings will ever effect my shopping. At least directly.
My hope is that the Brigand Kings will invade some islands controlled by the super powerful flags. The same stupid flags have been dominating the viridian ocean for a very long time, something needs to screw with them.
They also added a new puzzle in which you are able to pull up treasure from sunken ships. Treasure Haul, as it is called, is basically a matching game where you slide your tiles around, trying to make 3 in a row, then those three disappear and new blocks come in.
Tags: MMORPGS, Brigand Kings, Puzzle Pirates
Topics: MMORPGS | No Comments »