Client design is very important not just so the server runs properly but also so that players can easily play the game and that it's easy enough for someone to figure out how to install and such. For the most part installation isn't really an issue. Most mmorpg's have this fine since all packages usually install automaticly and download without issues.
The client side issues usually either come from bad patches example the development team not pretesting patches before they release them to the users. A perfect example of this would be Tera Online now that it's free to play. With every patch release they usually make some client side mistake that makes it so more then half of the player base has an issue. And then usually it's the community which comes up with work arounds of how to fix these bugs. I know cause I've had to help friends with this. That is pretty bad for a mmorpg. You shouldn't have to have your player base figure out how to fix your bad patches.
But the client itself is important we've also seen some pretty bad clients that seem to be built very poorly. One of the worst ones was that of Star Wars: The Old Republic. If you had a operating system that was 64bit it would memory leak causing it to crash and unless you had like 10 or 20 gbs of ram it would be impossible to run on these systems. Very bad coding for a client which was sapposed to be able to run with very low requirements. 32bit systems had less problems but still had crashing and memory leak problems which would take away from the fun of PvP.
Now not to bash Tera Online cause I still play it but the client is very poorly designed as well. Only the issues are not memory leaks. The issues with the client are because they choose autodesk as a product. The issue with autodesk is that it's a flash based system. People who know me most likely have heard many times that flash is CPU heavy and the mix between GPU and CPU is a bad combo. The user interface basicly has this flash overlay working on it which causes the user to lag really bad. This also ends up allowing people to exploit the user interface. You ask how? it allows players to walk up walls just like World of Warcraft's wall climbing bug using levitate only its achived just by spaming jump and some user interface key. So flash designs should just be thrown away cause your causing many players issues. Yes you can reduce some of the issues by various changes with graphics, CPU, client modification. But in the end it fails cause you can't make it perfect its flash its very broken.
Speaking of World of Warcraft one feature which no game has really implemented quite like WoW was the LUA based UI system. Being able to create addons really improved on the game itself. So it would be nice to actually see this implemented cause I could totally see some really unique ways for people to make addons in a PvP mmorpg which would really improve the game play. Like for example being able to make an addon which tracks people you've killed and the locations you've found them as well this way you can also make maps for hunting for your guild and such. Of course you would need to be careful about how to implement it so that it wouldn't be exploitable. But I think for the most part this wasn't that much of an issue for World of Warcraft. And I believe with a strict banning policy for people breaking rules this would not be much of a concern either.
Using a user interface which allows modification usually also allows people to customize it in various ways which will make the player base more happy over the more standard can't change much type interface which people will either have to love or have to hate. This is where allowing a user to be able to change various things besides the normal font, color, and size. Users want to be able to customize skins and do more with it and show off the art that they can create.
Friday, November 22, 2013
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Server Side Design for a PvP MMORPG
I'm sure some of you are most likely thinking what would someone like me know about server side setup and design for a mmorpg. I actually had some experience running servers. And when it comes down to most mmorpg's they lack proper server side coding.
For example we have some pretty beast servers which are possible with multi-core processors but most mmorpg's are not built multi-thread and don't take advantage of having multi-core processors for processing data. Just imagine if a mmorpg was built from the ground up and could take into account a server with just two server cores. Your talking much more power being able to have more players in a single map and less server crashes because of performance problems.
For the most part I can't really comment too much about servers but there's one feature I have yet to actually see be made possible from an mmorpg and that's the ability to cross server and i mean with success. Tera Online had cross server event's but these caused the server to lag really bad and crash. Could be related to the lack of multi-core processor support or it could be because of how the server was coded. They of course removed the feature with the change of nexus but its one of those features which would have been really interesting to have work properly.
Another thing which I can't stress enough will also be related to keeping the server free from botters and hackers. And being successful in doing this will come down to the way players are delt with. Currently every single mmorpg on the market falls short because they only have the resort of banning someone by IP. The issue with doing this is that more then 80% of all ISP's allow a user to change there IP just by resetting the modem. You can also bot and hack using a proxy with hamachi to get around this as well. So all they need to just get a new proxy and you can download tons of proxies all over the net or pay 5 dollars to get a list of some good ones. So when a game server ban's by IP all they do is force these people to change how they are hacking and botting and they continue to do it again. Deleting the account just makes them make a new account not really any loss for a botter.
So how does one deal with people that bot and hack? Instead of banning by IP the login server during authentication should be recording a persons hardware address such as CPU, harddrive, ram that way if someone needs to be banned from the server the server will ban them based on the serial's of these key componets in their computer that way it would be impossible for them to return to the game unless they changed computers. You might ask why not just record the mac address of a computer since it's easier there's software on the internet to change mac address really easily so this is not a safe address to use for banning people and can be changed just like that of IP addresses.
The reason why you would be so strict to offenders in a mmorpg is take for example World of Warcraft this is a top advertised game but did you know they are actually one of the most known hacked games as well even with the game security known as warden. This is because the more offenders you just slap on the hand by giving them just a delete of account they will just use some of the money they made selling gold to buy a new copy of the game only to start botting and selling gold again. If the very first offender of hacking had his computer banned from playing the game he would have gave up on the idea cause no one wants to buy a new CPU to be able to play a mmorpg. The more strict the punishment people will go to the hacking community and be like guys don't hack cause your computer gets banned from connecting to the server.
For example we have some pretty beast servers which are possible with multi-core processors but most mmorpg's are not built multi-thread and don't take advantage of having multi-core processors for processing data. Just imagine if a mmorpg was built from the ground up and could take into account a server with just two server cores. Your talking much more power being able to have more players in a single map and less server crashes because of performance problems.
For the most part I can't really comment too much about servers but there's one feature I have yet to actually see be made possible from an mmorpg and that's the ability to cross server and i mean with success. Tera Online had cross server event's but these caused the server to lag really bad and crash. Could be related to the lack of multi-core processor support or it could be because of how the server was coded. They of course removed the feature with the change of nexus but its one of those features which would have been really interesting to have work properly.
Another thing which I can't stress enough will also be related to keeping the server free from botters and hackers. And being successful in doing this will come down to the way players are delt with. Currently every single mmorpg on the market falls short because they only have the resort of banning someone by IP. The issue with doing this is that more then 80% of all ISP's allow a user to change there IP just by resetting the modem. You can also bot and hack using a proxy with hamachi to get around this as well. So all they need to just get a new proxy and you can download tons of proxies all over the net or pay 5 dollars to get a list of some good ones. So when a game server ban's by IP all they do is force these people to change how they are hacking and botting and they continue to do it again. Deleting the account just makes them make a new account not really any loss for a botter.
So how does one deal with people that bot and hack? Instead of banning by IP the login server during authentication should be recording a persons hardware address such as CPU, harddrive, ram that way if someone needs to be banned from the server the server will ban them based on the serial's of these key componets in their computer that way it would be impossible for them to return to the game unless they changed computers. You might ask why not just record the mac address of a computer since it's easier there's software on the internet to change mac address really easily so this is not a safe address to use for banning people and can be changed just like that of IP addresses.
The reason why you would be so strict to offenders in a mmorpg is take for example World of Warcraft this is a top advertised game but did you know they are actually one of the most known hacked games as well even with the game security known as warden. This is because the more offenders you just slap on the hand by giving them just a delete of account they will just use some of the money they made selling gold to buy a new copy of the game only to start botting and selling gold again. If the very first offender of hacking had his computer banned from playing the game he would have gave up on the idea cause no one wants to buy a new CPU to be able to play a mmorpg. The more strict the punishment people will go to the hacking community and be like guys don't hack cause your computer gets banned from connecting to the server.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
The Best PvP Mmorpg of all time...
Currently does not exist. The reason I say that is each mmorpg has different faults which cause them to be poor mmorpg's whether it comes down to some kind of pay to win system. Or whether it just is lacking componets which make it a good anime. Then there's mmorpgs which started out really well but then decided to go for a pay to win scheme and ruined the overall game play or community.
Lets take a look at some of the mmorpg's of the past up to current date and look at them and compare features.
Conquer Online: This one came out back in 2003 and was a chinese mmorpg set in a 2D world. The game was surprisingly entertaining and at the time of its release movement was based on holding control and clicking the ground to jump making it a very unique mmorpg at the time when most mmorpg's had nothing more then clicking spaces to move with no jumping. PvP in Conquer Online was completely opened world no safe zones towns where guarded by guard NPC's which would chase flagged or black named players. PvP could be toggled on or off but had no way of preventing being killed by other players. A PvP capture mode was also in place to kill players with flashing blue names. The more players a person killed they had a chance to drop items and if they continued to kill more then 100 points of players they had a chance to lose most of the equiped items. When players where killed they would lose experience, money, and some of the items in the invetory at random. When Pkers died while red named they would lose alot of experience and have a chance to drop an item. Revive killing was possible and done by players. Items dropped by Pkers would be free for all for who ever was fast enough to jump and pick them up. Conquer Online had weekly guild wars, Arena based weekly pvp, and other PvEvP events which made it very fun.
Conquer Online was a very fun PvP system while it lasted but they decided to ruin it orignally the game was free to play with the only item purchasable known as dragonballs these items where vital for upgrading gear and where high demand. But Conquer Online decided it would make more money from a lotto system adding every rare and special item even items that where double socketed and +12 which in previous years where something you had to work to actually achive. And over one week they basicly ruined it for most players. The game itself only continued to go more pay to win to a point that it became a race to pay to win in the end providing the best packages to people who spend more then 1k in a month and such. Requiring people to have talisman's, dragonsoul's, making +12 items and super double sockets just to compete and the free to play players who made up the game had no way to compete anymore which lead to most of the community leaving. While Conquer Online has some player base still its a turn off for new players since no one wants to spend a car payment or more every month to compete in a mmorpg. The final staw was the removal of many of the pvp for open world they soon made it so PKing wasn't possible anymore and items that dropped would go into a pay to get back system rather then going free for all for who ever killed that person.
World of Kungfu: This game had a similar style of play as Conquer Online did but the open world pvp was short lived players ganking during a pvp event caused this game to scream for the removal of Pking all together they removed open world pvp from this game. But the cash shop was pretty pay to win and the GM team was very corrupted and favortism was really high in the end.
Perfect World International: This mmorpg was very popular among the PvP community but again this is another free to play game which released without pay to win and then decided to keep getting progressivly worse with the pay to win until they ruin the PvP aspects for its community. While you still have pvp and you can still gank people people that open world pvp get strict debuffs on damage and HP when killing other players.
World Of Warcraft: Some of you might not say that world of warcraft would classify as a PvP game but it does have pvp servers which do have what you would find in other mmorpg's. Of course its not the brutal kill someone get items or kill too many people and you can lose items. But it has some form of incentives for pvp and there isn't safe zones which spells a good pvp system. The flaws with the pvp in world of warcraft is having different factions at war cause you end up with 10 hordes vs 2000 alliance players which isn't really far and controling the balance is nearly impossible. The rewards of course doesn't really make it too worth playing in the end for open world pvp so most people end up just sticking to the few battleground types and that's generally it.
Tera Online: If you haven't seen this one ive been playing this one for almost two years now. The game is pretty and the combat system is a very good one. But the open world pvp is horrible there is no incentive based pvp for open world. GvG's have no incentives as well and because of the large amount of town safe zones in the pvp server it ruins the game even if you gvg for fun because people will stand inside the safe zone and just insult you and call you a scrub because you cant kill them. The only time people do GvG's is during the laggy nexus which your stuck in a portal with 120 people at 5 fps and cant even see what's killing you.
Ragnarok Online: The only reason I bring up this game which of course is not open world pvp is because they have some really great aspects which it would be nice to see them actually add to any of the newer mmorpg's. RO had the GvG system anyone would have loved not only giving incentives but providing years of fun grinding the dungeons in each of the main city area's as well as the rare treasure box items. But of course once the game went free to play they decided to pay to win that as well. And the Ragnarok Online 2 is nothing more then a cartoon version of World of Warcraft made to attempt to be Ragnarok Online.
When it comes down to trying to find a mmorpg most people now aday's don't really look for specific features now everyone expects the following:
In the past people looked for more then just graphics and character models being sexy it was more like so:
But you might be asking why make a blog like this and why spend the time to write this up. Lately I keep having conversations with friends about what makes a good mmorpg and surprisingly not all of my friends think its just good graphics or sexy characters many of them remember the mmorpg's which had good features and such. So I got to thinking what would make a good mmorpg and why not just put together all of the idea's in one place. Honestly if I had the money and resources to try and make a mmorpg like what I would enjoy playing i would do it in a heart beat. But no one has that amount of money laying around to just pull together a team and develop a mmorpg the amount of time and effort that would go into planning and drawing would be impossible to do alone.
So instead we will just day dream about what would be the perfect mmorpg and how to make a mmorpg that would not only be extremely fun but make someone want to play for years and keep an active community.
Lets take a look at some of the mmorpg's of the past up to current date and look at them and compare features.
Conquer Online: This one came out back in 2003 and was a chinese mmorpg set in a 2D world. The game was surprisingly entertaining and at the time of its release movement was based on holding control and clicking the ground to jump making it a very unique mmorpg at the time when most mmorpg's had nothing more then clicking spaces to move with no jumping. PvP in Conquer Online was completely opened world no safe zones towns where guarded by guard NPC's which would chase flagged or black named players. PvP could be toggled on or off but had no way of preventing being killed by other players. A PvP capture mode was also in place to kill players with flashing blue names. The more players a person killed they had a chance to drop items and if they continued to kill more then 100 points of players they had a chance to lose most of the equiped items. When players where killed they would lose experience, money, and some of the items in the invetory at random. When Pkers died while red named they would lose alot of experience and have a chance to drop an item. Revive killing was possible and done by players. Items dropped by Pkers would be free for all for who ever was fast enough to jump and pick them up. Conquer Online had weekly guild wars, Arena based weekly pvp, and other PvEvP events which made it very fun.
Conquer Online was a very fun PvP system while it lasted but they decided to ruin it orignally the game was free to play with the only item purchasable known as dragonballs these items where vital for upgrading gear and where high demand. But Conquer Online decided it would make more money from a lotto system adding every rare and special item even items that where double socketed and +12 which in previous years where something you had to work to actually achive. And over one week they basicly ruined it for most players. The game itself only continued to go more pay to win to a point that it became a race to pay to win in the end providing the best packages to people who spend more then 1k in a month and such. Requiring people to have talisman's, dragonsoul's, making +12 items and super double sockets just to compete and the free to play players who made up the game had no way to compete anymore which lead to most of the community leaving. While Conquer Online has some player base still its a turn off for new players since no one wants to spend a car payment or more every month to compete in a mmorpg. The final staw was the removal of many of the pvp for open world they soon made it so PKing wasn't possible anymore and items that dropped would go into a pay to get back system rather then going free for all for who ever killed that person.
World of Kungfu: This game had a similar style of play as Conquer Online did but the open world pvp was short lived players ganking during a pvp event caused this game to scream for the removal of Pking all together they removed open world pvp from this game. But the cash shop was pretty pay to win and the GM team was very corrupted and favortism was really high in the end.
Perfect World International: This mmorpg was very popular among the PvP community but again this is another free to play game which released without pay to win and then decided to keep getting progressivly worse with the pay to win until they ruin the PvP aspects for its community. While you still have pvp and you can still gank people people that open world pvp get strict debuffs on damage and HP when killing other players.
World Of Warcraft: Some of you might not say that world of warcraft would classify as a PvP game but it does have pvp servers which do have what you would find in other mmorpg's. Of course its not the brutal kill someone get items or kill too many people and you can lose items. But it has some form of incentives for pvp and there isn't safe zones which spells a good pvp system. The flaws with the pvp in world of warcraft is having different factions at war cause you end up with 10 hordes vs 2000 alliance players which isn't really far and controling the balance is nearly impossible. The rewards of course doesn't really make it too worth playing in the end for open world pvp so most people end up just sticking to the few battleground types and that's generally it.
Tera Online: If you haven't seen this one ive been playing this one for almost two years now. The game is pretty and the combat system is a very good one. But the open world pvp is horrible there is no incentive based pvp for open world. GvG's have no incentives as well and because of the large amount of town safe zones in the pvp server it ruins the game even if you gvg for fun because people will stand inside the safe zone and just insult you and call you a scrub because you cant kill them. The only time people do GvG's is during the laggy nexus which your stuck in a portal with 120 people at 5 fps and cant even see what's killing you.
Ragnarok Online: The only reason I bring up this game which of course is not open world pvp is because they have some really great aspects which it would be nice to see them actually add to any of the newer mmorpg's. RO had the GvG system anyone would have loved not only giving incentives but providing years of fun grinding the dungeons in each of the main city area's as well as the rare treasure box items. But of course once the game went free to play they decided to pay to win that as well. And the Ragnarok Online 2 is nothing more then a cartoon version of World of Warcraft made to attempt to be Ragnarok Online.
When it comes down to trying to find a mmorpg most people now aday's don't really look for specific features now everyone expects the following:
- Pretty /Sexy characters
- good graphics
In the past people looked for more then just graphics and character models being sexy it was more like so:
- Good story
- Character customization (whether it be stats or talents)
- Pvp with various types (open world or some sort of incentive based pvp)
- Quests which are fun
- fun leveling
- activities and events
But you might be asking why make a blog like this and why spend the time to write this up. Lately I keep having conversations with friends about what makes a good mmorpg and surprisingly not all of my friends think its just good graphics or sexy characters many of them remember the mmorpg's which had good features and such. So I got to thinking what would make a good mmorpg and why not just put together all of the idea's in one place. Honestly if I had the money and resources to try and make a mmorpg like what I would enjoy playing i would do it in a heart beat. But no one has that amount of money laying around to just pull together a team and develop a mmorpg the amount of time and effort that would go into planning and drawing would be impossible to do alone.
So instead we will just day dream about what would be the perfect mmorpg and how to make a mmorpg that would not only be extremely fun but make someone want to play for years and keep an active community.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)