08-11-2009, 04:20 AM | #31 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Sweden, Stockholm
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Re: GURPS as an MMO Engine
Quote:
It is typically the hardcore fans that start number crunching. Just take a look at the JRPGs like Final Fantasy, how many if you who played it actually knows what +5 to attack, or an Attack stat of 255 means aside of "a lot"?
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"Prohibit the taking of omens, and do away with superstitious doubts. Then, until death itself comes, no calamity need be feared" |
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08-11-2009, 04:40 AM | #32 | |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
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Re: GURPS as an MMO Engine
Quote:
I'd like to hear about those cutoff points. I'm always curious about RPG design stuff. |
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08-11-2009, 04:46 AM | #33 | |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
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Re: GURPS as an MMO Engine
Quote:
Absolutely unusable for tabletop gaming, of course. |
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08-11-2009, 04:52 AM | #34 | |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
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Re: GURPS as an MMO Engine
Quote:
Blue for "almost certain of Success, microscopic chance of a Fumble". Green for "Very reasonable chance of Success". Yellow for "Not too good chance of Success." Orange for "Low chance of Success". Red for "Very low chance of Success (Attempting this action is a sign of desperation)". |
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08-11-2009, 07:50 AM | #35 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: GURPS as an MMO Engine
Basically, skill goes 0 to 100, attribute goes 0 to 100 (usually), and averages around 50. Tasks have a difficulty (usually 0-200). A roll is Appropriate Attribute + Skill + (random_variable) versus Difficulty. For a simple roll against difficulty 100, variable +/-100, this results in a very intuitive prediction of a chance to succeed. Now, of course we can get complicated if we want to, but it stays easily calculable.
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08-11-2009, 08:01 AM | #36 |
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Oklahoma City
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Re: GURPS as an MMO Engine
Seriously…
The mechanics are ultimately irrelevant to the end-user. Unless something weird happens, it'll all be under-the-hood. I seriously doubt anyone's going to want to see all the modifiers pasted up on the HUD. There are any number of ways the rules can be handled, none of which will exactly mimic the pen & paper version, and none of which will happen on the surface where anyone could see to complain. The only exception to this is in character creation—that's where you would "see" GURPS. (And once again, Fallout pulled off that part acceptably, if not well). So, in an attempt to turn this conversation in a more useful direction, I would ask the lot of you a slightly different question: How would you change the gameplay for a GURPS-based MMO to make it stand out from the myriad others out there, while keeping the overall GURPS feel? I have two offerings to that end, off the top of my head. (1) Get rid of "Levels" and "Leveling" entirely. Never actually "spend" points to "purchase" character traits. You should gain competency by either doing or training. Even for Ads/Disads—those should be gained in play, not bought off a list. No more treadmill. (2) Either start everyone at a higher level of competence, or allow people to start where they want to, points-wise. Nobody has to start out "killing rats" if they don't want to—just jump in and start kicking @$$ (or whatever).
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08-11-2009, 08:48 AM | #37 | |
Join Date: May 2009
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Re: GURPS as an MMO Engine
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08-11-2009, 09:08 AM | #38 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Sweden, Stockholm
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Re: GURPS as an MMO Engine
I could not see GURPS functioning well as an MMO, at least not following the normal guidelines.
otherwise... A 100 point character. This guy will be fairly competent at what he does from the beginning, and if he gets reasonable amounts of character point awards per mission he will after a few days of furious grinding be quite amazing at everything he does. The Hardcore player will soon get bored and leave. The Casual player will take longer to turn into an expert at what he does, but when he does he will soon feel that he has run out of things do to, not really caring too much about the roleplaying part of missions, and leave. Chatters and casual socializers of the Second Life kind won't find the MMO, and if they do they will feel that it is to complicated, and they will want to give their character whatever houses, clothes and accessories they'd like without running around doing strange missions. The stereotype doesn't come there as a gamer after all. The roleplaying Gamers will like it, and many will probably stay for a few months, but roleplaying gamers are a minority. They want a responsive world though, and an MMO can't do that well. You can make the Causal, Hardcore and Gamer-Roleplayers stay for longer by adding a lot of things do to. Crafting? Infiltration? Diplomacy? But without a long level-like grind they will quickly finish and get bored. Levels are there to keep the players challenged, and to make them feel that they are improving, but with levels a GURPS MMO won't be anything special at all. I haven't really analysed the ways a GURPS MMO could work before, but overall I think it is a bad idea. You'd either need to strip away the system, or corrupt it to make it function by the rules-of-which-makes-MMO-tick. Strip away the system and you get Second Life with an (hopefully) updated graphics engine, corrupt it and you get Anarchy Online or World of Warcraft. There is one way I could see it working out though, but that is for a very special play-style, not the typical roleplaying, and that is the Vampire the Masquerade/Eve Online way. The Mega-Coporation, the Illuminati, the independent country, and so on. A player driven world where people run around playing little cogs in the machine, or sit around making big economical or political decisions. For that kind of game GURPS could work, perhaps even without altering it too much. That is hardly a typical MMO RPG though, and while it has a niché of interested gamers it will feel too heavy for most players. This way a GURPS MMO could actually work out though. ...problem? Well, creating it won't be easy obviously, and it won't appeal to the Dungeon Fantasy gamers, and action-rpg players at all, but it will also likely face the competition of, by that time likely long since released, World of Darkness Online, since they would be similar. GURPS may be large on the RPG market, but on the computer game market they are unknown. Illuminati Online (Powered by GURPS) needs something to make it stick out, to make it unique, and I simply do not believe that Powered by GURPS is enough to drag the players over to Illuminati's side. World of Darkness Online (or whatever the release name will be) is developed by the makers of Eve Online
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"Prohibit the taking of omens, and do away with superstitious doubts. Then, until death itself comes, no calamity need be feared" Last edited by RedMattis; 08-11-2009 at 09:12 AM. |
08-11-2009, 02:51 PM | #39 |
Banned
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: GURPS as an MMO Engine
I lovvvvvvvvve how "impossible" or "unusable" gets tossed around so nonchalantly.
The bottom line is, if you want something to work, it'll work. If you want it to fail, it'll fail. |
08-11-2009, 05:36 PM | #40 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Sweden, Stockholm
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Re: GURPS as an MMO Engine
Quote:
Impossible and Unusable are of course the wrong words. Sure, you can create a GURPS game with the standard MMO formula, and the GURPS ruleset, the question is, this an idea worth working on? Could we even make it good enough that people will want to play it? I believe that is what most people mean when they say GURPS is "impossible" or "unusable" for an MMO in the thread.
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"Prohibit the taking of omens, and do away with superstitious doubts. Then, until death itself comes, no calamity need be feared" |
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