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Old 08-11-2009, 04:20 AM   #31
RedMattis
 
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Default Re: GURPS as an MMO Engine

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Originally Posted by Molokh View Post
A nonlinear effect of modifiers will alienate newbies and casuals, leaving only hardcore geeks. MMOs are better server by a flat percentile chance 'curve', which is easy to understand, with bonuses easy too. Even more complicated ones should still be linear - people just don't understand probability/statistics all that easily.
Most casuals are happy with each point "Significantly and exponentially increases your chance of success".
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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Old 08-11-2009, 04:40 AM   #32
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: GURPS as an MMO Engine

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As somebody who is examining and trying out ideas for an MMORPG, I think GURPS doesn't fit. The first reason is that GURPS is not meant to be 'GMless'. Compare to SPECIAL or the late D&D products, which seem more like wargames.
I think the biggest problem is that with a very few exceptions (EVE Online, and even that isn't much of an exception), MMORPGs and other MMOGs are built around the type 1 RPG paradigm, where characters start hugely incompetent and then grow vastly in power. GURPS is firmly a type 2 system, so doesn't fit that mold at all.

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Also, the 3d6 system, while very easy to use on tabletops, is inappropriate for MMORPGs. Personally, I prefer percentiles and flat distributions for CRPGs (even though I use a flat distribution with cutoff points; I can explain if you want me to).
I'd like to hear about those cutoff points. I'm always curious about RPG design stuff.
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Old 08-11-2009, 04:46 AM   #33
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: GURPS as an MMO Engine

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Huh; I'd say that a normal distribution system is ideal for an MMO, and 3d6 is about as close to a normal distribution (with a mean of 10.5 and a standard deviation of, IIRC, 2.97) as you can get with dice.
4d6 or 5d6, or even more dice, would be even better, especially since a simple alteration of the critical hit/failure probabilities can then be achieved by rolling an extra one or two dice, e.g. to penalize a character for being unfamiliar with a given culture or language (or terrain type). Say, 6d6 for normal rolls, 7d6 for penalized rolls and 8d6 for "are-you-sure-you-want-to-try-this?" severely penalized rolls.

Absolutely unusable for tabletop gaming, of course.
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Old 08-11-2009, 04:52 AM   #34
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Default Re: GURPS as an MMO Engine

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A nonlinear effect of modifiers will alienate newbies and casuals, leaving only hardcore geeks. MMOs are better server by a flat percentile chance 'curve', which is easy to understand, with bonuses easy too. Even more complicated ones should still be linear - people just don't understand probability/statistics all that easily.
That should be solvable by using a colour-coded system.

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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Old 08-11-2009, 07:50 AM   #35
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Default Re: GURPS as an MMO Engine

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I'd like to hear about those cutoff points. I'm always curious about RPG design stuff.
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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Old 08-11-2009, 08:01 AM   #36
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Default 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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Old 08-11-2009, 08:48 AM   #37
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Default Re: GURPS as an MMO Engine

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Originally Posted by Gigermann View Post
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?
By creating an open source fan driven system the fans can create the look and feel they want, and let play, and other innovations, develop organically.
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Old 08-11-2009, 09:08 AM   #38
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Default 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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Last edited by RedMattis; 08-11-2009 at 09:12 AM.
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Old 08-11-2009, 02:51 PM   #39
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Default 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.
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Old 08-11-2009, 05:36 PM   #40
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Default Re: GURPS as an MMO Engine

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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.
Didn't mention either in my post.

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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