I'm tired of games that create a situation where players seem to start the same. i.e. elder scrolls online. Everyone starts as a ghost or whatever called.
Are there any examples of a good solution to this. Or any ideas on how you might keep starting a unique thing for each player?
ID:2055439
 Mar 19 2016, 10:41 am
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Mar 19 2016, 12:32 pm
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EmpirezTeam
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I think WoW had some interesting origins for characters. I especially liked the fact that dwarves were descendants of titans if I recall correctly ( don't quote me on this because my WoW lore skills are not on fleek ).
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Yut Put wrote:
its hard to design an intro because often you also have to leave some moral ambiguity open for the players origins, this is why TES traditionally starts you as a prisoner ES: V Can make you love or hate the imperials. The imps were going to kill you just cause rite. Then the dragon cums along and basically save the one scrub he wanted to kill, and you get to choose the storm cloaks or the imps. Go with the storm cloaks and you find out the imps have a torture chamber and if you've been brain washed properly by society you should know torture chambers are a no no. However go with the imps and you find out that the imps have some people that are sympathetic with some scrubs the dude even says he wished they never had the torture chamber. Later in the game you learn the storm cloaks are right ass holes right? I mean they are basically racist to the dark elves and be like gtfo of skyrim n stuff. Then you learn the imps are trying to bring order back to tamriel because the age of tibus septim is basically over and people don't want to get in line and shit. The imps also basically only see the nords as savages who are trying to defile the empire based off of that one commander who had a nord female assistant or something (I mean it's obvy they were intimate and he took a fancy to the savage warrior lady typical romance novel rite there amirite?), but the nords arent only savages they are warrior savages who can act as a powerful military force not to mention the harsh environment of the north as help them become hardened and seasoned warriors. You can do one or the other or neither (unless you want to have that one quest in your quest log while you try to 100% the game). <3 me some es. Though we shall never talk about eso... ever. Edit: Oh yeah right i forgot. Something interesting is that even if you choose to go with the storm cloak dude or the imperial dude They both have a family in the same town... riverwood. I think that has some sort of meaning that im to lazy to try to figure out right now. | |
Earlier MMOs would have different spawnpoints instead of one for all, but nowadays games care less for that kind of intensity with distance. Take EverQuest and WoW for example. EverQuest gave a great sense of distance; you could literally walk in one direction for hours and hours going through different biomes until you find your friend.
In EQ, several races of similar origins and geographical backgrounds might spawn together. WoW had areas for each race. I dunno. I liked it better back then. | |
Konlet wrote:
Earlier MMOs would have different spawnpoints instead of one for all, but nowadays games care less for that kind of intensity with distance. Take EverQuest and WoW for example. EverQuest gave a great sense of distance; you could literally walk in one direction for hours and hours going through different biomes until you find your friend. The only mmo i ever played for more than a day is pirates of the Caribbean online some time in 2008... jack sparrow saved the player from being a prisoner, and that intro doesnt change :c. and lotro. | |
I didn't even realize MMO same-starting place was a thing? ESO is garbage fam. EVERY other MMO that I've ever played (Tera, Wildstar, Black Desert, WoW, FF:ARR, Probably more I'm forgetting) has had race/class specific spawn places, with different backstory and quest progression.
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Tera has all races/classes spawn together, aside from the reaper class which is like deathknight from WoW. Black Desert has only one spawn as well.
You're high, Rushbutt. | |
Konlet wrote:
You're high, Rushbutt. ^ ESO does have faction specific starting areas that all have their own stories. | |
Just no. The age of MMOs is over. Niche markets only or slowly waiting for it to die off.
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I want it where each player can say they have a story no one else does.
I think the solution is to make it so players can create a location in the game. Then they can start there. Faction locations aren't unique enough. Also, race locations aren't unique enough. Combining them isn't unique enough. With location creation, it's always unique. | |
Sir Quizalot wrote:
I want it where each player can say they have a story no one else does. The problem with this is that, when you're trying to use computers to generate a starting story or something like that, if everyone has a unique story then no one does. Computers are just not at the point where something like this is really feasible. When your player is just starting, it is important to grab them to make them want to play your game. It is difficult bordering on impossible to achieve that without handcrafting it. | |
Location doesn't really prevent players from having similar stories. Unless you create a separate quest line for each and every possible location a player could start at, they're going to complete the same quests, fight the same bosses, acquire the same loot and fight the same PvP at endgame.
I think there's a mod for Skyrim that allows you to start off at a random location. The thing is, you're playing the same Skyrim. So your first like, 10-15 minutes are different from other players, but that's about it. By the time you've beat the final boss, you've done a bunch of stuff everyone else who played Skyrim has. Maybe not in the exact same order, but that's not relevant. | |
EmpirezTeam wrote:
Location doesn't really prevent players from having similar stories. Unless you create a separate quest line for each and every possible location a player could start at, they're going to complete the same quests, fight the same bosses, acquire the same loot and fight the same PvP at endgame. Wat he said. | |
The problem isn't so much starting locations being the same. It's players all being treated the same. You could be a human, elf, orc, a warrior, wizard or even a merchant and most games just don't even care. At worst you're all treated the same, at the absolute best you start in a different location (but do all the same quests anyway). I particularly like it when you're the chosen one who will save the world, just like the other 10,000 players on the server.
It's kind of silly that in a multiplayer game with lots of players, you make everyone the same. Most people will probably disagree with me, but I am all for making people different and even locking content from players just because. There can only be one "the one", and when someone achieves this status, everyone else is just going to have to deal with the fact that they're not special snowflakes. Likewise, not everyone can be part of the elite knights, once it's got 100 members that's it, everyone else go home. That ancient artefact? You think everyone gets a copy of it? Hell no, there is one of them. Not everyone will get chance to slay a demon lord and save the world either. You'll be lucky if you get to slay a dragon and save a town. Like I said, most people will disagree with me, but I can't stand having a MMO where everyone sees and experiences the exact same thing. It's almost as bad as single player MMOs (that is, MMOs where people solo everything). When you combine the two, you end up with the recipe for modern day MMOs, which is probably why the genre is the worst genre of video games in existence. | |
The Magic Man wrote:
MMOs, which is probably why the genre is the worst genre of video games in existence. That explains why it's also one of the most popular genres of video games in existence. | |
Argumentum ad populum.
McDonalds serves the best food on the planet right? I mean, how can they sell more food than any other restaurant of any kind on the entire planet if the food they serve is not the undeniable best food ever? Also, MMOs aren't even that popular. Outside of WoW and maybe FF14, there hasn't been a particularly popular MMO released in the past decade. All of them reach a peak player count in the first week, and from there they only lose players until they inevitably die (the only exception is sub based MMOs going free to play, which usually results in a small spike of new players, but then they just continue losing players). | |
You're going to be very unsuccessful if you waste hundreds of man hours on features that only one person is going to see.
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It's because of the boring ass "stand in one spot and grind mobs that provide no challenge whatsoever for hours" game play MMORPGs revolve around. It's one of the reasons I was instantly addicted to the MOBA genre - THERE WAS NO DUMBASS NPC GRINDING! Finally, a game where I can just log in and PvP 24/7 ( that wasn't a first-person shooter )!
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