Mmorpg world: New World | MMORPG.com

Yes… I wanted to dedicate an article to this game, with a little introduction about how games are made in general. But the introduction is long, so I’ll talk about it briefly (this time), especially since you already know how these games are made anyway, so you don’t need to drink in detail.

So! Last time we had a small group of children of the same age. But what if there are about 200 children, and their age varies from 6 to 12 years? Or 12 to 17? Say it’s impossible? But no! Meet my invention — Big City Jail Detective RPGame! nine0011

Place

Of course, two hundred children need more space than one room. So we will use the entire territory of the camp. At least that part of it, which is easily visible… is clearly visible from one point. We don’t need children to run off in unknown directions. So, we use the space of the camp, practically without premises — the street.

Mechanics

Since children are of different ages, it is necessary that everyone be interested. So we create a lot of locations where children can do different things, and all together these locations will simulate work Cities

The main mechanics of the game

Each location is some kind of institution. Each location has a leader who is responsible for it, and he, as it were, is the director of this organization. Children coming to each location can either use its services, for example, in the «Cafe» location — buy vile salty cookies, or get a job there (for example, as a seller), and receive a salary in the form of chopped paper money.

Every N minutes the beginning of a new day is announced and the children, if they work somewhere, receive a salary. nine0160

^{Minuldon is a mixture of minute and guilder. Related to the setting of the game in which they were used}

Of course, if the children do not work anywhere, then they will quickly run out of the money given out initially, and they will have nothing to spend. Also, if not everyone works, then there may not be enough workers at some station, and the economy of our City will die. But see more about this in the Punishment section

Additional locations

All children need to be interested. And it just so happens that not all children (and adults) are always in the mood to earn money and spin like a squirrel in a wheel. Therefore, we add dead-end locations that do not interact with the outside world in any way, but which may be more interesting for small children, or adult lazy stumps. Examples of such locations:

• Art Workshop — children sit and draw
• Beauty salon — girls paint on their faces
• Massage Salon — Don’t Ask…

But dead end locations can start to be important in the City. See the section «Changes to the game mechanics»

Conflict

Of course, anyone who has played tabletop role-playing games knows that in any fictional universe there must be conflict. So in our game, the evil Game Master outlawed everything sweet. For any signs of consumption, or for possession of sweets, the player is immediately sent to prison _(location) by the police _(location) At the location «Cafe» you can buy only disgusting dry cookies and water… But is there sweets somewhere else? He recruits children to sell under the counter lollipops ! (in fact, this is such a mobile location). Children willingly take such a risk, although they know that now the police will be chasing them. But lollipops are always expensive, and civilians (other children) are willing to buy them, which is a very profitable business … But at the same time, other children start hunting for them. nine0011

In some cases, you can use not one Mafiosi, but two. Two criminal gangs… The dumping of prohibited goods begins, and in general, everything just happened. Watching the players live their roles is a pleasure.

A very important point that leaders very often miss when conducting this game: No one should know about the mafia at the beginning of the game. It should not be announced to children when declaring the rules, otherwise it just sounds stupid — the Game Master just banned sweets, and now he says that they can be bought from the mafia. nine0011

Game mechanic changes

There is an interesting location, but it doesn’t always work — Parliament. Very intelligent children should go there. They can write bills that, if approved by the Game Master, can change the entire course of the game. This is something like the World Change cards from the game Nefarious.

For example, my parliament once introduced a rule that during the day all organizations that do not have at least one piece of art must be fined by the police. Thus, the dead-end location «Art Workshop» became important for the gameplay, and the players flocked to buy scribbles of babies. nine0011

Punishments

I will never forget how one girl (15 years old) ran into me because I, as her counselor, allowed her not to go to one game. And it was a cool horror story, which everyone discussed later. And she only had to listen to these stories, because she was able to persuade me, to allow her to stay in her room to lie around. And then I listened to her complaints: «Yes, I didn’t want to go. But why didn’t you make me?»

So children (or girls?) must sometimes be forced to have fun. So we are introducing another location into the game — the Army. The call in our city is mandatory, but very selective. We only call on those who are clearly not in the mood to play. The mood of such a person will quickly appear, since this station will have the most reckless leader who will catch players who do not work anywhere and do not spend money. For parasitism such players will have to run around for about one in-game day and generally do all sorts of active things to protect our City from an invisible threat. Only from the invisible — visible threat, the police are dealing with us.

Setting

In fact, the game already has a setting. But you can add some locations or rules that add atmosphere or color. For example, I once ran a magical Big City Jail Detective RPGame. There were additional locations, like the Sorcerer and the Witch. The witch, for example, hired «Witch Heralds» for herself. Ordinary players came to her location, and for a nominal fee they sent damage to other players. It was implemented quite simply. For example: a curse could send an unwanted subject to the army. For this, the Witch wrote whom and where on a special form, and her herald carried this curse to the counselor at another location. In that game, it became very popular for the mafia to send police officers to the army.

Results

Here is a brief description of the game for a large number of people of various ages. I spent it several times, and the children always had only one disappointment — the game ended after a while, and they still did not have time to try all the works and visit all the locations. nine0011

Actually, I have a certain number of invented games. For example, as an IT specialist, I made a couple of games in which part of the game is a simple program on the screen, and part of the elements in the real world. With a layer connecting them — an intelligent counselor. If you liked this article, then I will write about the development of these games in the following articles.

P.S. The first game with cells was invented on the go, along with the writing of this article, so it is most likely very unfinished.

Reasons for MMORPG stagnation — Where is my new world? nine0001

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Somehow there are no breakthrough projects on the horizon. No one strikes with revolutionary mechanics or a bewitching plot. What’s this? Death of a genre? Changes in gamers? Or a natural result of the development of the gaming industry sector?

MMORPG is a funny thing. Almost everyone has come across them, many have grown up on them and only a few (percent, of course) have not seen such a curiosity in their eyes. A sort of parable in all languages.

If you look closely, the plot of such projects is almost always the same: mountains of content, a fascinating and catchy plot, loyal comrades and unforgettable adventures. We will talk about what the players get as a result, and also reflect on the reasons for the discrepancy between the desired and the actual. nine0011

The origins of the genre

In general, here you can delve into the first representatives and how it all formed, but now we are interested in a few specific points.

First: the progenitors of the MMORPG genre are tabletop role-playing game systems like D&D, GURPS and Warhammer. They are still popular, and their mechanics are based on:

• the presence of the roles of the player and the master responsible for the world;

• live communication;

• freedom of action and ideas.

In other words, freedom of action and cooperation with other players lay at the origins of the MOORPG. And, most importantly, these systems were based on live, human communication. Well, that’s ideal.

Second: the genre was at that time a real revelation for the gaming industry in terms of scale. Both in terms of the number of active players and the size of the developers’ profits. Successfully taking off, World of Warcraft set an incredible development bar for that time with its mechanics, and the “Korean” branch of projects, tailored to the mentality of the planned market, set the bar for the amount of content. Although here I can be wrong, because I personally did not find this dawn and I will be grateful if they supplement or correct me. nine0011

At first everything was fine. For players, MMORPGs have become an outlet, a second home, and the guilds they belonged to have become a second family. The social side has become the key «human» mechanics of those projects.

Boiling point

The problem with «bestsellers and sequels» is that it is difficult to reach even the same level, maintain development and achieve even greater heights.

A good release time, which led to an avalanche increase in the number of players, led to the fact that the project became a worldwide phenomenon, but maintaining this status, as we can see from the current state of Blizzard, is far from being as easy as we would like . So, at the peak of popularity in 2010, about 12 million people played World of Warcraft, while by 2018 the number had decreased by 6 times — to 2 million. nine0011

Having created the principles and mechanics, which then migrated to subsequent representatives of this genre, the mastodons began to gradually fade away due to the fault of the engine itself.

Why? I think the reason is the recruitment of some critical mass of game mechanics. It is impossible to «wind up» the game engine without losing the quality and quantity of innovations. And it’s not about the technical side. After a certain point, old players get bored with the «pillars» of MMORPGs — raids, instances, sieges, and new mechanics are no longer so impressive, especially against the backdrop of the penetration of a powerful and terrible grind into all projects. nine0011

New players were simply afraid to start playing, seeing the abundance of incomprehensible, and therefore repulsive mechanics. Due to the fall of online, the studios’ income also decreased, and the decrease in income led to a decrease in the number of new ideas and mechanics. The circle is closed.

In addition, the developers moved away from communication, which brought the main pleasure in the founder of the genre, towards the individualization of the gameplay. Replacing special “markets” with live communication with auctions, the emergence of party member systems for one dungeon, which, although it simplified the search for team members, led to the fact that you forgot the raid participants a couple of minutes after it ended. nine0011

And the icing on the cake was the atmosphere-killing premise of the plot that we are the chosen one who will save this world. I want to believe. But with our brains, we understand that there are hundreds and thousands of such rescuers around you. And every developer puts the same thing. Although it is worth noting here that mainly Asian projects are guilty of this, which, in fact, are the absolute majority.

What is the result?

Everything ended if not with death, then with a deep coma of the genre for the following reasons:

• reduction of sociality and individualization of the game process;

• a huge pile of mechanics that scares off new players;

• lack of fundamental innovations due to the technical features of the engines and the lack of human resources;

• notorious grind.

I rummaged through many forums, dimmed a little and came to a disappointing conclusion: the MMO genre in the usual sense is dead for most players, while sandboxes and session games became the closest successors to its main features and a kind of «banner». nine0011

The sandboxes, having laid the foundation for freedom of action, burst into the market and pulled the blanket over themselves. It became much more interesting for players to deal with a variety of mechanics surrounded by a small group of friends. The development of computers made it possible to shift complex probability calculations and cumbersome game mechanics from the shoulders of servers to home PCs. Here you have a sea of ​​​​content, and a fascinating story, and the belief that you and your friends are heroes (after all, you are unique in the game world).

The social component in a broader sense was taken away by session games. No matter how much we spit on them, but competent representatives of this industry are distinguished by what the best representatives of MMORPG have never been — they valued time. There’s no need to spend months leveling up your character: Warframe offers an enjoyable and dynamic gameplay experience from the very first minutes. nine0011

Where are we going?

In order to answer this question, let’s imagine an ideal MMORPG. Unique quests, an interesting and individual story with dynamic reactions to the actions of the players, as well as scope for social interaction and much more elaborate and intuitive mechanics.

Sounds utopian? Naturally. Where did I get it from? I think it’s time to talk about a whole literary genre, generated by the desire of players to feel the atmosphere of a real MMORPG. One that cannot be implemented at the current level of technological development. LitRPG. Let’s start with an excerpt from the unshakable Wikipedia. nine0011

LitRPG (or Literary RPG ) is a relatively new subgenre of fantasy literature based on the subculture of popular RPGs. This genre describes both reality and the world of computer role-playing games, fictional or real.

Fan fiction based on computer books appeared quite a long time ago. One of those who turned such stories into an independent subgenre is the South Korean writer Nam Hee Sung with his work «The Legendary Moon Sculptor», currently numbering more than 52 volumes. The work of translating his books into Russian inspired the writers of this subgenre in Russia. nine0011

Another representative is the Japanese writer Kawahara Reki with his classic book «Sword Art Online», which has already 17 volumes since 2002. The main characters are trapped in a new generation MMORPG and are trying to beat the game in order to get out.

In Russia, the term LitRPG appeared in 2012 on Samizdat, where it appeared as a characteristic of the novel «The Reign of the Sleepless Clan» by Dem Mikhailov. Well, then let’s go.

But the most interesting thing is that all the games in these books were typical representatives of the ideal MMORPG: a virtual capsule, full immersion, an individual plot and path for everyone, the possibility of non-standard use of game mechanics, as well as the indispensable presence of a social component. nine0011

A typical portrait of such a project: many individual classes and abilities, a well-developed plot, a vibrant economy, a strong clan system and a well-developed living world that reacts to the actions of the players. Is it realistic in our time? Absolutely not. Not a single development team, even their coalition, is enough to cover such a scale of action.

Although I’m lying. EVE Online fits the description one hundred percent: there are clan wars, and a well-developed world, and the economy rests on the players, and developers quickly roll out content. But not everyone will like the project, which was called «Excel in space». Most people want to play as a beautiful hero saving the kingdoms, and not a cloned miner mining ore in the zero sector. nine0243 Until artificial intelligence or its analogue is developed, as well as full-fledged virtual reality, one can not even think about such a thing. But after the advent of such devices, the world is waiting for the rebirth of the gaming industry and all its genres, as well as a completely new gaming experience. Yes, of course, all this will take decades, but I still hope to catch this moment and try this miracle.