Total Immersion

[Zenato]

I was having a discussion with a few friends the other day and we got on the topic of "immersiveness" of MMORPG games in general and it was mutually agreed that the one element of these games which takes people out of a feeling of total immersion was "numbers". Most games are centered around numbers and NOT content in the game itself.

Wouldn't it be cool if there was a game in which you didn't have numbers? No level, no skill values, no attribute values, no armor levels, no damage ranges, no lock levels, etc. This isn't to say these wouldn't exist in some form or another, but wouldn't be presented to the player at all. I know this wouldn't go over well with a certain element of players who need to know they're the max level, or what every stat or DoT of every weapon is, etc.

When you create a character you really just don't know what you have until after you play them for a while and figure out what they're good at and not good at. The system could randomly make one character slightly better at something then another, but all of this would be unknown to the player. Race would also have some hidden impact on a characters natural tendencies and abilities.

Nothing would prevent anyone from trying to master a skill, but after a while if you figure out you suck at it you might want to try your hand at something else.

When it comes to armor and weapons the material should give you a hint at its relative effectiveness, not some number. Sure items can have magical enchantments, but to the average person you wouldn't know unless used and you see a suprising ability to either protect or to inflict damage. Some characters might be able to learn a skill of item apprasial to give them a general description of a weapons special ability or lore name without actually telling them what the "numbers" are.

Without being able to examine someone's level would add a totally new dynamic to PvP play. Not only if you didn't know someone else's level, but if you didn't even know your level and where you stood might make for a more civialized Darktide with battles happening for real reasons rather than the whack a mole style of game play today. Walking into a town wouldn't mean instant death because you're low level.

I think a game designed like this would allow someone to become more attached to the character they play and be more in tune with each characters individual abilities because you would have to discover them, work on them, master them, etc.

You could also add an element of age to the game. Your characters would start off younger and as they got older internally certain attributes would change without the player knowing.

The environment could also have strange mods to your internal abilities you wouldn't be aware of at all; night, day, sunny, raining, snowing, full moon, time of year, location could all have random variances in your internal abilities or the abilities of your armor and weapons. You just really neve know.

Would anyone else like a game like this? What would be the downsides to this idea?

[Shadow Spectre]

That is one thing I liked about playing the old paper D&D game. Although you new what your character's abilities and skills were you didn't know what you found until you tried to use it. I love to find out new things about the treasures I found.

I don't think having your abilities hiden from you would be good. I think you should know that part and what skills you are better at. Say you have a high Str then you would know you would be better at certain things more than others. You would just not be able to pick your skills. Either you are born with the abilities or not.

I can see the skill progression working as it does now but at a faster rate. The more you use the better you get. I hate adding xp to things and then never using them.

You could also have schools where you can put your character in to learn more about a certain skill. You enter the character into the school pay for it and then you have to leave the character there unplayed for what ever time frame the Dev's wanted. Then when you take them out of school you have increased you skill to some level but always different for each person because everyone would be different.


I could see this working and being real fun for those people who like to play the old D&D.

[Zenato]

I don't think having your abilities hiden from you would be good. I think you should know that part and what skills you are better at. Say you have a high Str then you would know you would be better at certain things more than others.
The idea is that you figure out what your character is good at. If you can carry around a bunch of stuff without being overburdened you'd know you were strong. Also, I think a game like this should give more visual clues as to someones abilities when it comes to things like strength. Simply having overly large muscles in the arms and legs would give you a hint you were strong. You don't need a number to tell you this.

Numbers dumb down the game in my opinion as it takes away from you actually "being" your character instead of your character "being" the numbers.

[Holt Politician]

If deception and assess person were more meaningful, it could be done in AC.

Once you were transported into Dereth, you have amnesia. etc,etc,etc

[Zenato]

If deception and assess person were more meaningful, it could be done in AC.

Once you were transported into Dereth, you have amnesia. etc,etc,etc
Yes would be partially like what I'm getting at. However, I'm talking about not even being able to see your own "numbers" not just someone else's.

Of course in a game like this you don't get XP and you don't get to raise your skills and attributes. The system based on what you're doing decides with a fair amount of randomness what the benefit (if any) you should get. The system could also slightly reduce skills or abilities if a certain skill or abilities isn't used over time. Of course some things could be made hard to forget completely like forgetting how to ride a bicycle, but you might not be super proficient at it.

[Django]

Sounds interesting to me. The biggest issue I see is people optamizing by re-rolling constantly and learning how to determine their strengths and weaknesses quickly so they can wait til their character randomizes into the FotM template. I think it would work better if everyone started out mostly similar with a few differences then depending on the place where you start and how you "grow up" the environmental factors effect your character. For instance if you start in the peaceful city of technology you'll grown more in knowledge but less in combat abilities, you could grow in strength if you worked out, but maybe your time would better be spent studying (running experiments, I'd think most likely they'd be like mini-games). The opposite of that is the player who picks the "Bad Lands" to start out in, there's almost no place a player can go to learn, but they have to be tough to survive and learn how to fight so that's what they do. There would be "lost tech" around though, so a character who is interested in coming from the "Bad Lands" could find "lost tech" and learn things that the city boy most likely would have missed out on, but the "Bad Lands" knowledge isn't as basic or complete. Once either of these move out of the starter experience (the learning/enviromental based part) they can try to focus more on other skills, but depending on their enviromental conditions in the learning experience it's harder for some than others to be able to learn some things. So the city boy could pick to learn to become a good fighter, but they're going to to beat up some first and it'll take them longer to get into it but they may be able to use their higher intelligence and tech level to win more easily than just duking it out which would give them a different advantage. If the "Bad Lands" player decides to learn more he can take his "lost tech" knowledge but he still needs to learn a lot of the basics so it's going to take him some time to catch up but once he does he'll have some advanced knowledge that the city boy didn't have. Of course there'd be a few more enviromental factors, and how you react to your area while growing up will determine your skill sets more than the random numbers (or possibly selected preferance) that you used at creation but the started skill set will have some influence on how well you do. For instance if you make a city character who ends up rolling a low intelligence score you may find it harder to learn than some of the others around you, upon finding out it's more difficult to learn you can pick to either study harder and catch up with the others or you could become the bully and become a better fighter even though you're from the city.

Over all I think it sounds very interesting in an experimental way, I'm not sure how well the game would work out due to the fact that a fair number of players play for the reason of adjusting and optimizing their characters and gear so they could be the best. This might be more of a "game" to become the best, you can't just pick to be the best, you have to play in a way that'll condition you to be the best, but it's hard to say how many people would enjoy that.

About immersion, I think it would help a little, the greater goal, I believe would be to have a strictly enforced RP server for the game. It's not going to help imersion when you hear "Tech Based Fighter LFG!" that being a city boy who later learned to fight is looking for a exploration party with the intent of finding information and honing skills, which they could say and would be more immersive.

[Holt Politician]

In a way, I've always felt single player games like Final Fantasy, Knights of the Old Republic, Oblivion, Morrowind, and etc are like what you speak of. Doesn't really matter what kind of character you have.

They do have #s, but do those #s mean anything? Those type of games are winnable even if you maxed out charisma and set everything else to default.

I think (been awhile, could be wrong) it was the Might and Magic series that would ask you a series of questions and the answers you provided would formulate what your stats were.

Perhaps, in your game Zenato, the character selection screen could do the same thing. The player would be asked x amount of questions. His answers would be his stats, but unlike the M&M series you couldn't see your stats.

You would know your answers, so if they were specific like...
"While hunting, you encounter a wild boar. The boar begins to charge you:
Do you
A. Pull an arrow from your quiver
B. Unsheath your shortsword
C. Cast a fireball
D. Run like heck.

Thus, you'll either be an archer, melee, magician, or a coward. :)

Then the questions get harder, like "Friend A wants to jog 3 miles to town to sell his wool" Friend B wants to load hail bails into his wagon so he can sell them in town.
Answer A would increase your constitution, run ability, dexterity, and etc. Answer B would increase your strength, maybe even your wagon driving skills. :)

All of which you couldn't see, but since you know what answers you provided....

I'd hope if a MMORPG like this were ever created it would have like 100+ questions, so no one would be the same or very similiar.

[Zenato]

Sounds interesting to me.
Well put it on the list for things to do post LoTRO.

The biggest issue I see is people optamizing by re-rolling constantly and learning how to determine their strengths and weaknesses quickly so they can wait til their character randomizes into the FotM template.
Well your starting state would have to a little less obvious and almost to the point of non-obvious. I mean in AC if you go extreme one way or the other with your starting attributes there is a huge different on play right from the starting gate.

I'm talking about a game where everyone starts fairly similar and differences don't really develop immediately, but slowly over time. By the time you become aware of potential special abilities you've already invested a lot of time into your character. Lets say when the system rolls up a character it also roles up specific abilities and at what level (i.e. age of character) these special abilities would kick in if the character decided to go down a certain skill path.

The whole idea is to keep the player unaware of how the system is working internally. Sure the game would have to boil down to numbers on the server, but why present this to the player? Ever since the days of pinball machines the player has been presented with some quantifying value or number to compare themselves with another player which is ultimately used to determine who is the top player. Sure this might make sense for pinball, pong, pac-man, etc because these are just games. Now AC is just a game too, but a game of a totally different caliber. It allows you to play a virtual person in a virtual world. You're not simply playing a game you're playing a person.

In real life we don't walk around and see that Billy has a strength of 83 and Johnny is a number 100 and know Johnny is going to win an arm wrestling match based purely on the numbers, so why do we have this in a virtual world? If Billy or Johnny think they're all that they could simply just arm wrestle to find out. In AC a majority of the time you can predict the outcome of a PvP battle based on the numbers. Sure if two players are close in level and close in stats, armor and weapons there is an element of "technique" on the part of the player, but for the most part there is little mystery. So whenever one template gets a slight advantage over another template based purely on the numbers in some monthly update you see people dumping one character and re-rolling or hitting the boards and complaining about DoT. It is pathetic. There is no RPG in this. Sure a good game should attempt to balance things out so there is a diverse population, but I don't think the game should be so transparent with the "numbers".

[An Adventurer]

it sounds interesting, but I'm not sure how well it'd work as an MMORPG. I think to be a good game you'd need to find a balance between immersion and player control. For instance, not knowing what you are skilled in would be good for the immersion, but I wouldn't want to keep rerolling and "leveling" just to find out if I'm the warrior I wanted to play in the first place. I think at least a basic choice of class would be good. Warrior, archer, theif, healer, mage, etc.

I really do like the idea of no visable stats, skills, levels, or armor level/damage level. One thing that might not work with this system is health though. How do you know if you have almost killed a monster? and how do you know if a monster has almost killed you? There would have to be a lot of blood splatter and wounded sounds like screams or heavy breathing. At this point, its sounding more like a first person shooter. altough those usually have a health meter.

Perhaps, instead of numbers there would be words. Like how in combat in AC, the verb changes depending on the damage. Example: You nick drudge for 2 points of slashing damage vs. You mangle drudge for 100 points of slashing damage. But, there would be no damage points or types listed in the numberless game. Just: "You scratch the drudge!" or "You utterly shred the drudge!"

And perhaps instead of monsters having levels, they have descriptions, like in the orig. AC handbook. Creatures were listed as feeble, weak, dangerous, deadly, lethal. These descriptions could be based off of your own hidden skills vs. the creatures. The first time you fight something its difficulty would be unknown. If you kill it quickly and take little damage, all other creatures of that type are now weak when ID'd. Things decriptions would change over time. For example if the first thing you fought killed you it would be lethal, but if you killed them more, over time it would go down to deadly, then dangerous. It would basically be the game keeping track of your previous fights for you.

weapons and armor could be the same. over time, the quallity of the item would show up when you ID it. No numbers, but words that describe them better.

here's some things to consider...

would there be a radar/compass?
would the game be first or third person or both?
would loot be realistic? (for a monster to drop armor it would have to be wearing it, etc)
would there be realistic pack space?
more than one character slot?

EDIT: thinking about it more, this sounds sort of like the whole creature aspect of black and white. If I want my creature to be stronger I have him lift some rocks. If I want it to be more fit I'll have it go running. Everything your creature does changes it a bit. And in B&W2, what your creature does shapes its personality. You can have it entertain villagers, or eat them. Its actions make it good or evil. This kind of system would be very interesting in an MMO. All of your actions would affect your reputation, deciding what quests you can go on, what towns you are welcome in, and so on.

But on the other hand, I wouldn't want to log in and have to take care of my characters personal health like eating, sleeping, pooping, bathing, working out, etc, before I can go out and hunt. If you had to do all that stuff, you'd only get to go out and fight/quest maybe 10% of the time you play. Maybe... maybe you could set up activities that your character would do while you were logged out. set it up like: 40% sleeping, 10% working out, and so on, so all that stuff is taken care of when you aren't playing. I don't know. its late, I'm tired, and my brain isn't working anymore. I'll just stop for now.