Following Adele's lead, I decided to give wordpress a shot. I'm a little confused trying to figure out some of the options and widgets and the like, but I think there are a lot more options on wordpress, and if I'm willing to fork over 15 bucks a year, I found a great site with thousands of themes to use if anyone else is interested.
Anyways, here is my new page.
~Kanthalos
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Player Based Quests
I’ve been thinking about questing lately and what’s wrong with it. Well, I’m not going to take on the whole issue right now, but here is a little something I’ve come up with.
I think one of the main problems with quests is that you don’t feel like you have any reason to do them, other than for the reward. Even though I realize that this is a good chunk of the problem, I think part of the solution can be found in changing the reward, and the way to do this is to have rewards from other players (in a sense.) From what I’ve heard and read, EVE Online has a contract system in which players contract other players to find or do certain things for them. A similar system could be used when players require something in other games that they need. Say they need a crafted sword or they need materials gathered. They could post on a task board that they will pay for them very similar to an auction, but they will also recieve a visible trinket (which is unique to every player, or at least one of a thousand patterns) could be given to the player as well in order to show that they’ve helped another player. Maybe when the player receives so many of them they could turn them in to an NPC and receive a commendation award or some kind or equip them or use as a decoration for housing. While this isn’t very different from doing a normal quest it does two things. It allows the potential to develop relationships and find players who can help you with certain things in which loyalty can be formed. It also gives players reason to help real people as opposed to an NPC, show off a little bit, and if you choose, to receive a reward once you’ve helped lots of other players. Hopefully they could create a system that allowed for more interesting tasks that players needed assistance with, but this would still be an interesting possibility. They would of course have to make the rewards not so powerful as to exploit the system, but good enough to make it beneficial to do it, possibly consumables or just a novelty item as well that looks cooler. I’ll focus on other aspects of quests later, but there’s a little bit to think about.
~Kanthalos
I think one of the main problems with quests is that you don’t feel like you have any reason to do them, other than for the reward. Even though I realize that this is a good chunk of the problem, I think part of the solution can be found in changing the reward, and the way to do this is to have rewards from other players (in a sense.) From what I’ve heard and read, EVE Online has a contract system in which players contract other players to find or do certain things for them. A similar system could be used when players require something in other games that they need. Say they need a crafted sword or they need materials gathered. They could post on a task board that they will pay for them very similar to an auction, but they will also recieve a visible trinket (which is unique to every player, or at least one of a thousand patterns) could be given to the player as well in order to show that they’ve helped another player. Maybe when the player receives so many of them they could turn them in to an NPC and receive a commendation award or some kind or equip them or use as a decoration for housing. While this isn’t very different from doing a normal quest it does two things. It allows the potential to develop relationships and find players who can help you with certain things in which loyalty can be formed. It also gives players reason to help real people as opposed to an NPC, show off a little bit, and if you choose, to receive a reward once you’ve helped lots of other players. Hopefully they could create a system that allowed for more interesting tasks that players needed assistance with, but this would still be an interesting possibility. They would of course have to make the rewards not so powerful as to exploit the system, but good enough to make it beneficial to do it, possibly consumables or just a novelty item as well that looks cooler. I’ll focus on other aspects of quests later, but there’s a little bit to think about.
~Kanthalos
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Player Run Events
Hello for the second time today. I decided that for this post I’d focus on player run events. This is something that I’ve noticed seems to be relatively nonexistent in the MMO’s I’ve played recently. Back when I was playing Asheron’s Call actively, these were constantly going on on my server. My guild would frequently host things like scavenger hunts that would lead people all over the world solving riddles and performing feats in which the winner would either receive gold or a rare item. I think this is an excellent way to get the community interacting with one another. We would group up with other guilds on occasion which was a great way to meet new players outside of your guild which lead to alliances for questing, grouping, or for PvP. Speaking of PvP, tournaments were also hosted which were a lot of fun, and while there are official tournaments that players and teams can compete in, I find it more fun when the players host the event and can receive a reward in game.
There are many ways in which players can host an event which can be mutually beneficial. Things like races, killing competitions, scavenger hunts and a multitude of other things can all be used which could charge a small fee (say 10g.) Say you get 20 competitors, that’s 200g, with the winner getting 75g and second place getting 30g. That’s a 95g profit for the host, a good prize for the two winners and even if you lose you have fun and only lose 10g. This is a great way for guilds to earn money for raiding supplies or for helping out lower level players. Furthermore, this is something that needs no interaction, regulation, or assistance from the developers. It is solely on the shoulders of the players. Of course, the host needs to be reputable enough that players know they won’t have their money stolen, but again, even if you lose the 10g, you aren’t going to be hurting that badly. I’m honestly surprised I haven’t seen more (or at all for that matter) of these kind of player run events in games recently. Perhaps this is the cause (or effect) of many players thinking communities today are immature, selfish, and just plain rude. It’s something to think about, and maybe work with your guild to host such an event.
~Kanthalos
There are many ways in which players can host an event which can be mutually beneficial. Things like races, killing competitions, scavenger hunts and a multitude of other things can all be used which could charge a small fee (say 10g.) Say you get 20 competitors, that’s 200g, with the winner getting 75g and second place getting 30g. That’s a 95g profit for the host, a good prize for the two winners and even if you lose you have fun and only lose 10g. This is a great way for guilds to earn money for raiding supplies or for helping out lower level players. Furthermore, this is something that needs no interaction, regulation, or assistance from the developers. It is solely on the shoulders of the players. Of course, the host needs to be reputable enough that players know they won’t have their money stolen, but again, even if you lose the 10g, you aren’t going to be hurting that badly. I’m honestly surprised I haven’t seen more (or at all for that matter) of these kind of player run events in games recently. Perhaps this is the cause (or effect) of many players thinking communities today are immature, selfish, and just plain rude. It’s something to think about, and maybe work with your guild to host such an event.
~Kanthalos
Update/Initial LotRO Experience
Sorry for the break all, I spent several days with my fiancée since we are a few hours apart so I was a little too busy to do any real writing so I figured rather than doing a little half-hearted blog entry I would wait until I got back so here I am.
To start things off, a few days before I left I finally caved and bought LotRO. I know that it isn’t going to last me more than a month (or possibly two) but I figured it was worth giving it a shot. So far, its been pretty fun, I started as an elf unlike the Hobbit I made in beta so that I would encounter all new quests and locations (at least to start.) In three days of playing I made it to level 12, and so far the quests have been fairly fun. I will say that I get a bit frustrated when I complete quests and have to run something like 15 minutes to turn it in and get back to where I was to continue on I get a bit frustrated, but it’s a minor complaint. As for the quests themselves, they aren’t revolutionary by any stretch, but they are decent. I haven’t gotten to the point of forced grouping yet, but I can see it looming in the near future, and I must say I’m not thrilled. I’m more of a soloer at heart who groups for the fun of it. I also enjoy a good grinding session from time to time which this game severely frowns upon as quests are about 75% of the experience you gain. I will say that the trait/deed system is rather interesting but still far from stellar. Attempting to stay away from a formal review as a) I’ve only played about 12 hours and b) you’ve read a thousand of them already I’ll just say that a month is all I expect to get out of this game, but that’s ok. I’m going to continue to say that EQ2 is the best fantasy MMO on the market right now, but refuse to play since my graphics card ruins the experience. I’ll be back later today with some stuff I’ve been stewing over about quests and/or player run events.
~Kanthalos
To start things off, a few days before I left I finally caved and bought LotRO. I know that it isn’t going to last me more than a month (or possibly two) but I figured it was worth giving it a shot. So far, its been pretty fun, I started as an elf unlike the Hobbit I made in beta so that I would encounter all new quests and locations (at least to start.) In three days of playing I made it to level 12, and so far the quests have been fairly fun. I will say that I get a bit frustrated when I complete quests and have to run something like 15 minutes to turn it in and get back to where I was to continue on I get a bit frustrated, but it’s a minor complaint. As for the quests themselves, they aren’t revolutionary by any stretch, but they are decent. I haven’t gotten to the point of forced grouping yet, but I can see it looming in the near future, and I must say I’m not thrilled. I’m more of a soloer at heart who groups for the fun of it. I also enjoy a good grinding session from time to time which this game severely frowns upon as quests are about 75% of the experience you gain. I will say that the trait/deed system is rather interesting but still far from stellar. Attempting to stay away from a formal review as a) I’ve only played about 12 hours and b) you’ve read a thousand of them already I’ll just say that a month is all I expect to get out of this game, but that’s ok. I’m going to continue to say that EQ2 is the best fantasy MMO on the market right now, but refuse to play since my graphics card ruins the experience. I’ll be back later today with some stuff I’ve been stewing over about quests and/or player run events.
~Kanthalos
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Music and MMO's
I was just listening to a Jason Mraz CD that I've got at work and I can't help but think back to my time spent in EQ2 over a year ago when I was listening to the same CD. The same thing happens when I listen to Dream Theater and Un'Goro Crater, as well as Switchfoot and Asheron's Call. Does anyone else have similar experiences? I'm curious to know :)
~Kanthalos
~Kanthalos
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Uncanny Valley and MMO’s -- Part 2 of 2
I described the Uncanny Valley hypothesis and how I related it to MMO’s in my last post, choosing to look at the technical aspects of whether or not players will one day be able to feel as though their avatars are an extension of themselves or whether in fact, they even desire this. For the second part of this, I’m going to focus on the emotional aspect of this idea. Social interaction with other players and NPC’s would play the greatest part of course, as well as character freedom. I will warn you I do get a bit side-tracked at times, but I think everything ultimately relates to the topic.
I’ll start with social interactions. It’s clear that currently in MMO’s there is very little true social interaction, at least that actual involves your avatar. Sure you can click on an NPC to obtain a quest and type a message to another player on the keyboard, but your character simply sits there while you perform these actions. I think the first step in changing this involves voice communication, which we have recently seen an influx in with the use of software like Ventrilo and TeamSpeak. In fact, some games have already included systems built into the game that allow voice chat, either through a third party program or one they’ve created themselves. Dungeons and Dragons Online has a built in system, Lineage 2 uses MSN messenger, and EVE Online is currently implementing a system as well. Again, though, this is simply for players to communicate what they want or need from other players. Rarely is it used to role play, speaking as the character would. This is part of the problem that many players currently have in using voice chat. They feel that it breaks the illusion when a 13 year old middle-of-puberty boy starts talking in Ventrilo while playing a 300-pound dwarf. While I agree that this breaks the atmospheric feel of the game, I would argue that so does reading the text that people type into a box. You don’t see people walking around with a whiteboard and a dry erase marker writing everything they want to express (I hope,) so why is this any more realistic than a 54 year old man with emphysema talking for a night elf woman? Also, companies have started creating voice chat programs that will altar your voice such as MorphVOX Pro (Vivox is also working on a program as well) to whatever you want yourself to sound like. While they are far from perfect it’s a sign that things are changing and heading in this direction.
More than just talking to other players though, I think a large step towards realism in MMO’s is NPC’s actual talking to you. I know EverQuest 2 has started with this and some of the quests you obtain will actually have the NPC say it out loud to you. The biggest problem you run into with this is getting voice actors that are actually good. If they are poorly done, it’s worse than just reading it so you have to be careful when implementing something like this. Also, I think if you get good voice actors, people might be more interested in actually reading the quests more than they do now, usually just clicking the accept button and reading the objective later, but quests are another subject I’m going to tackle after this. Also bodily movements (expressions) and mouth movement are essential in this. No matter how good the voice actors are, if the NPC is a rock then it will just be awkward and simply won’t work.
True character freedom is also very important in creating a sense of realism in order to feel a part of your character. Characters will need to actually be able to have control of the way they move. While this might not be possible in combat yet, there needs to be some way of doing so when not in combat. Asheron’s Call uses a combat/peace mode system. Perhaps this would work for the proposed situation. This may not be possible with the current mouse and keyboard configuration, but is just one more step towards realism. The ability to push someone, pick up a rusty axe off the ground, hold someone’s hand, or even scratch our characters head (your imagination can come up with all sorts of other possibilities I’m sure) would be incredible addition to a game. While we do have e-motes, they just aren’t the same.
Well there you have it. These are the most essential things that I’ve come up with when it comes to having a more realistic take on our characters we play for hours on end. There are many more things involved in believability in MMO’s, but they involve gameplay which is a completely different subject in my opinion. So is truly connecting with your character something you even desire within a game? Clearly we desire our games to be based on our reality, but how much is too much? These are questions I would love to hear your responses to, so let me know what you think. I hope you enjoyed this, and I’ll be back soon to talk about questing and possible improvements that could be made.
~Kanthalos
I’ll start with social interactions. It’s clear that currently in MMO’s there is very little true social interaction, at least that actual involves your avatar. Sure you can click on an NPC to obtain a quest and type a message to another player on the keyboard, but your character simply sits there while you perform these actions. I think the first step in changing this involves voice communication, which we have recently seen an influx in with the use of software like Ventrilo and TeamSpeak. In fact, some games have already included systems built into the game that allow voice chat, either through a third party program or one they’ve created themselves. Dungeons and Dragons Online has a built in system, Lineage 2 uses MSN messenger, and EVE Online is currently implementing a system as well. Again, though, this is simply for players to communicate what they want or need from other players. Rarely is it used to role play, speaking as the character would. This is part of the problem that many players currently have in using voice chat. They feel that it breaks the illusion when a 13 year old middle-of-puberty boy starts talking in Ventrilo while playing a 300-pound dwarf. While I agree that this breaks the atmospheric feel of the game, I would argue that so does reading the text that people type into a box. You don’t see people walking around with a whiteboard and a dry erase marker writing everything they want to express (I hope,) so why is this any more realistic than a 54 year old man with emphysema talking for a night elf woman? Also, companies have started creating voice chat programs that will altar your voice such as MorphVOX Pro (Vivox is also working on a program as well) to whatever you want yourself to sound like. While they are far from perfect it’s a sign that things are changing and heading in this direction.
More than just talking to other players though, I think a large step towards realism in MMO’s is NPC’s actual talking to you. I know EverQuest 2 has started with this and some of the quests you obtain will actually have the NPC say it out loud to you. The biggest problem you run into with this is getting voice actors that are actually good. If they are poorly done, it’s worse than just reading it so you have to be careful when implementing something like this. Also, I think if you get good voice actors, people might be more interested in actually reading the quests more than they do now, usually just clicking the accept button and reading the objective later, but quests are another subject I’m going to tackle after this. Also bodily movements (expressions) and mouth movement are essential in this. No matter how good the voice actors are, if the NPC is a rock then it will just be awkward and simply won’t work.
True character freedom is also very important in creating a sense of realism in order to feel a part of your character. Characters will need to actually be able to have control of the way they move. While this might not be possible in combat yet, there needs to be some way of doing so when not in combat. Asheron’s Call uses a combat/peace mode system. Perhaps this would work for the proposed situation. This may not be possible with the current mouse and keyboard configuration, but is just one more step towards realism. The ability to push someone, pick up a rusty axe off the ground, hold someone’s hand, or even scratch our characters head (your imagination can come up with all sorts of other possibilities I’m sure) would be incredible addition to a game. While we do have e-motes, they just aren’t the same.
Well there you have it. These are the most essential things that I’ve come up with when it comes to having a more realistic take on our characters we play for hours on end. There are many more things involved in believability in MMO’s, but they involve gameplay which is a completely different subject in my opinion. So is truly connecting with your character something you even desire within a game? Clearly we desire our games to be based on our reality, but how much is too much? These are questions I would love to hear your responses to, so let me know what you think. I hope you enjoyed this, and I’ll be back soon to talk about questing and possible improvements that could be made.
~Kanthalos
Monday, June 25, 2007
Uncanny Valley and MMO's -- Part 1 of 2
A few months ago I came upon the hypothesis of Uncanny Valley (in relation to MMO’s). In a basic summary, it means that as robotics become more realistic, humans will begin to think of them more in terms of a human than a machine and will develop sy(e)mpathy for them. I'm looking at this in relation to MOGers and their avatars. I suppose the title of this post is a bit misleading, because I’m twisting it (or perhaps pushing it further.) While I can see players thinking their characters are realistic, and seeing them as more of a real entity, will the average player (barring psychological issues) ever relate to their avatar enough that they feel a part of their character? MMO’s can be incredibly enjoyable and you can have a lot of fun with your characters, but rarely (at least for me) do I ever feel as though I have just experienced it rather than my character. I’m going to break this up into two elements which are technical and emotional. I’m going to focus on some of the technical aspects here that I can currently think of, focusing on how realistic your character looks and their movements and such. The emotional will focus on character freedom and social interaction and such which I’ll look at in another post.
There are definitely several elements to this, but I think currently the main element has to be graphics. As of now, there aren’t really any games out there that are realistic enough to be considered lifelike to sympathize with your character or actually feel connected to them. While Vanguard and Lord of the Rings Online have upped the bar on graphical expectations of MMO’s, they are still not realistic enough to feel as though you are looking at a living, breathing being. Perhaps with the wave of MMO’s hitting the shelves in Q4 2007 through Q2 of 2008 this distinction will become less noticeable, but it isn’t likely to see extremely lifelike characters until probably 2012 or later. Is that enough, though?
As an extension of the graphics issue, character creation is not nearly customizable enough to make a character that really looks like you currently. Also, there are a lot of people that won’t want to make a character that looks exactly like them anyway. Most people want to make characters that are aesthetically pleasing, regardless of the fact that it won’t look anything like them. This isn’t that unusual as it is a game hence it’s a break from reality, so making a character unlike yourself isn’t strange whether we could do it or not. So if we choose to make characters that don’t look like ourselves, does this break the possibility of truly relating to our character? This is also taking into account only human characters, not elves, dwarves, gnomes, ogres, etc. To me this doesn’t seem possible to truly relate to your character as a different race, but maybe that’s just me putting a limit on my imagination.
Another element that I think breaks the illusion in MMO’s (and many other games) is the third person view. This is sort of bordering on emotional, but it is also technical in the way you actually see your character. While you can use a first-person view in most MMO’s to do so would greatly reduce your field of vision and hamper your game play, so it’s not really feasible to do this. That said, if you are looking for more a role-playing version of the game, then you can do this, but you would always be facing the fact that you are limiting yourself, so could you do this?
The last aspect that I want to focus on right now is actually controlling the way your character moves. While this might not be possible with the current mouse-and-keyboard setup, this will be a very big barrier in terms of believing in our characters and believing they are an extension of ourselves that needs to be solved for this possibility.
I guess the bigger question that needs to be answered is whether we even desire to relate more to our characters or not. I’m sure there are a lot of elements that I haven’t covered, but I’m in a slight hurry right now but I really wanted to get this out, so let me know what you think and I’ll be back later with the second part of this topic.
-Kanthalos
There are definitely several elements to this, but I think currently the main element has to be graphics. As of now, there aren’t really any games out there that are realistic enough to be considered lifelike to sympathize with your character or actually feel connected to them. While Vanguard and Lord of the Rings Online have upped the bar on graphical expectations of MMO’s, they are still not realistic enough to feel as though you are looking at a living, breathing being. Perhaps with the wave of MMO’s hitting the shelves in Q4 2007 through Q2 of 2008 this distinction will become less noticeable, but it isn’t likely to see extremely lifelike characters until probably 2012 or later. Is that enough, though?
As an extension of the graphics issue, character creation is not nearly customizable enough to make a character that really looks like you currently. Also, there are a lot of people that won’t want to make a character that looks exactly like them anyway. Most people want to make characters that are aesthetically pleasing, regardless of the fact that it won’t look anything like them. This isn’t that unusual as it is a game hence it’s a break from reality, so making a character unlike yourself isn’t strange whether we could do it or not. So if we choose to make characters that don’t look like ourselves, does this break the possibility of truly relating to our character? This is also taking into account only human characters, not elves, dwarves, gnomes, ogres, etc. To me this doesn’t seem possible to truly relate to your character as a different race, but maybe that’s just me putting a limit on my imagination.
Another element that I think breaks the illusion in MMO’s (and many other games) is the third person view. This is sort of bordering on emotional, but it is also technical in the way you actually see your character. While you can use a first-person view in most MMO’s to do so would greatly reduce your field of vision and hamper your game play, so it’s not really feasible to do this. That said, if you are looking for more a role-playing version of the game, then you can do this, but you would always be facing the fact that you are limiting yourself, so could you do this?
The last aspect that I want to focus on right now is actually controlling the way your character moves. While this might not be possible with the current mouse-and-keyboard setup, this will be a very big barrier in terms of believing in our characters and believing they are an extension of ourselves that needs to be solved for this possibility.
I guess the bigger question that needs to be answered is whether we even desire to relate more to our characters or not. I’m sure there are a lot of elements that I haven’t covered, but I’m in a slight hurry right now but I really wanted to get this out, so let me know what you think and I’ll be back later with the second part of this topic.
-Kanthalos
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