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"Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with band in the furrow?? Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? "

-- Book of Job

   O Lord I want to be in that Number!
On Wednesday, May 07, 2008 at 08:19 AM posted by: Devilduck (Devilduck) |


news When the saints go marching in!

While I was at IMGDC, talking with people and listening to the sessions something struck me.  It seemed the majority there looked at religion as something to be at best scoffed at and at worst ridiculed.  Now on the surface you may think that this is a personal matter and does not reflect on game design but I argue that it reflects very heavily on the quality of a game design.   Let me explain.

Look at the current MMOs out there on the market.  While you can look at the lore and might catch a mention of Gods and Goddesses you really don't see much in the game play itself.  Here are games that are suppose to be set in an environment in which the common rabble held strong superstitious beliefs as well as the heroes pulling supernatural powers from the heavenly firment.    In some of the games it even mentions that powers come directly from the gods.  But characters in game show no hint that this is the case.  Paladins can group with necromancers; good aligned clerics can indiscriminately kill good aligned creatures with out any repercussions. It is almost as if the developer didn't take religion seriously or is so scared of offending someone that they make it a non issue. 

To me it takes away from the immersion of the game and here is why.  While I have my own personal beliefs, when I am in game I try to understand what would be my character's motivation to do something.  I have been known to turn down quests in other games just because I felt it was something that was against my character's background or was adverse to his beliefs.  And I would often stop playing a game when forced  do a particular quest just progress the story line.   And if I was the god or goddess that was pouring out my blessings onto a character that was not following my doctrine, I would be very pissed and be apt to withdraw my gifts at inopportune times. 

It seems to me that many developers have lost the ability to believe and in turn lost the ability to make a believable world and that is a great shame.  The ability is there to make more fulfilling worlds, and more believable story lines and content the developers just have to put in the effort and if I may say it, have a little faith.



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Date joined: May 24, 2005
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Posted:Apr 03, 2008 - 14:20
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Daneos



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Date joined: Mar 15, 2006
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Location: The Shadows
Posted:Apr 10, 2008 - 20:55
Very well put, though I think we should make a distinction between Religion and the belief in the supernatural, whether that be an Abrahamic God or Oceanic Mana we all know and love(until were OOM!)

Unfortunately I've never taken steps to play my characters religion, follow his dogma or even think upon the passing thought of it. In most high-fantasy games I play a Paladin who is obviously good aligned and should follow a set of moral rules laid down by his or her God or Church or Temple. I've grouped with Necromancers and Warlocks and even made jokes with them, not remembering my character. If we look at the lore of some games we can see they have put a lot of time into it, on the website side and some of this gets trickled down into quests and the odd book you might read in game but It seems their not going with the old Lawful Good etc etc rules(I haven't played a game were this is possible, I really should).


To address your point about devs not taking religion seriously I can't really give an answer. I'm not in the "industry" but if I were to guess it seems more like cutting corners or forgetting the old ways when MUDs and MMORPGS appealed to a few individuals.

Of the up and coming games it seems that the development is more focused on delivering an insta-fun game rather then something that can be achieved in the long run with trivial endeavors designed to engage and distract the player from the ever looming boredom.

I fundamentally believe that the players should be able to shape their own path and there must be systems in place that can let this happen. With this, however, some balance and control is lost but I never liked that anyway, being stuck into one class or way of playing. Thats why a skilled based system, which so many developers aren't doing is the way to go because of time, resources and management.

Maybe some developers dont quite have the story writing abilities that captivate us like Tolkien does in the Silmarillion(my high fantasy ends there, I'm more into Sci-fi Smile

Maybe they think there making a game.....rather then a world.


anyway, enough of my ramblings.
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Gembone



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Date joined: Feb 28, 2006
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Location: Florida
Posted:Apr 13, 2008 - 13:52
Personally I feel most rps's have strayed away from the RPG element of what they are creating. They have gotten to the point of just giving everything to the players instead of making them work for it. Religion is a big factor in any RPG and is severely neglected. Mostly I feel this is because of the negative effects the players would face due to not following the characters religious beliefs they themselves set for the character. As far as partying with evil-good aligned players is something that can be allowed if its a common goal toward each of their alignments. Just random grouping without taking alignments into account should have penalties. Although in a MMO I dont see this as a very plausable thing. Grouping can be hard enough without people you know much less not being able to group with any one because of their alignment. Also if players are unknown to each other it can be hard to know their alignment, its not a common conversation topic if people are RPing. some classes are easily known such as necro's or Paladins. Although a Dark paladin can hide his alignment by portraying a good paladin until the time arises for him to get what he is after.

This is a very hard thing to do in a MMORPG. Either for religion or for just basic alignment. Especially to encourage grouping. Although I do believe that a characters religion should play a major role in the way they are played.
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Devilduck



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Date joined: Jul 05, 2006
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Posted:Apr 13, 2008 - 23:55
lets use the paladin and necro examples.

Say a paladin and necro are grouping together. and they are killing these creatures, the paladin because the creatures threaten a small village and the necro because the creatures blood is used in certain spells.

Now. during the course of killing these creatures the loot is being dropped by these creatures. The necro should be rolling for all the loot and the paladin should be bypassing the majority of the loot as they dont need wordly goods.

So if the paladin does by pass the loot then he could get an exp bonus like wise if the necro doesnt act greedy then he gets negatives
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Gembone



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Posted:Apr 14, 2008 - 14:11
not all necro's are greedy for worldly goods. Mostly its about the POWER. As far as the paladin, he would be taking a minimal cut but enough to tithe to his god
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Devilduck



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Posted:Apr 14, 2008 - 16:27
the Paladin and necro were just examples. A more specific implementation would the choices facing the humans in Denia.

Take the woodcutter's widow. This poor woman lost her husband to the wolves in the spring, and now that winter is approaching she has not been able to gather the supplies she and her son needs to survive the bitter cold.

Old woman Kline lives in town by the bakery and knows all the gossip of the land and will be willing to tell the tale and all its woeful details. Of course Woman Kilne will say.. someone should help the woodcutters widow, its only the right thing to do. No Old Woman kline isnt in a position to help, being an old lonely woman herself and its too far for her to travel to the widow's cottage.

So the player is faced with a choice, take supplies out to the widow and increase the characters righteousness pool or ignore that line and continue on with something else.

So what does the player get for helping the widow? Nothing, there would be not reward, I mean come on she is a poor widow with no money or food to give. You expect her to pull out this wonderous sword that her woodcutter husband just happened to have kept after being passed down from generation to generation? But maybe the act of doing something to help is its own reward.
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Gembone



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Date joined: Feb 28, 2006
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Location: Florida
Posted:Apr 18, 2008 - 11:32
ok in that example would an evil player be able to go kill the widow and son and take over their land?
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Devilduck



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Posted:Apr 21, 2008 - 12:53
kill the widow... hmm that would be interesting, but not sure if the tech could handle it. besides there are those who would just slaughter the widow because they can.
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Gembone



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Location: Florida
Posted:Apr 21, 2008 - 15:48
could even open a whole new quest line. if the widow gets killed for what ever reason the son could put a bounty on the person or people who did the killing. Could even find a way to make it a rotating quest line. Once someone collects the bounty then the son could sell the property to another npc and the quest line could just start over from the beginning with the new owner of similar situation.
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Devilduck



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Posted:Apr 21, 2008 - 17:34
that would be very doable...
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Daneos



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Date joined: Mar 15, 2006
Posts: 126

Location: The Shadows
Posted:Apr 21, 2008 - 18:54
I'm seeing it as more of a general take on quests in terms of gaining alignment. If we take your example of the widow why not translate the reward into faction points with the town she lives in giving the paladin access to new quests. They could go from pauper to prince, discovering the foul plot that plagues the area.

Was it really wolves or was their dark magic at work?

I really like the idea of a rotating quest line. in SWG they had the Aurilian village which enabled force sensitive players work towards unlocking a Jedi character. It worked in 4 Rotating Phases that had certain events and quests that needed to be completed. In each new event the shield generator gets fixed up.

The problem is I think it reveals the mechanics of the game to much to the player. In fact I don't remember ever knowing in-game what phase it was.

What i'm not a fan of(and this happens in most games, ill pick on WoW) is how, as a player, you can witness an event or character change from one state to another but the story does not change.

For example in World of Warcraft there are several dragons disguised as humans. if someone has a quest to discover them, they and you will see this human npc change into a dragon who might get defeated and then change back into a human again.

I know this might not be very technically feasible in an open world but could work in instanced locations(like houses). There was an article on GCG or Gamasutra, i'll dig it out.

there are several mmo's that use instancing tech but for me you loose immersion and it becomes a single player game.




http://www.game...ndermeer.pdf
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Bring war material with you from home, but forage on the enemy... use the conquered foe to augment one's own strength.





Thats sweet sweet lewt!!!!!


-Sun Tzu, the Art of War
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Gembone



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Location: Florida
Posted:Apr 23, 2008 - 12:55
Very interesting read. But it doesn't take into account groups where one or more of the players may have already completed or be at a different level of the quest line. how would that be handled. would the newer players be advanced to the highest players level of the group or would the higher player be repeating what they have already done?
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