MMO Gaming

Why did no one tell me that my last post sounded like a half-drunken tirade? Did no one notice that my grammar was poor and my sentences barely intelligible? This is the kind of thing I need to be reminded. In the future, if I write a half-sentence like this, where my thought is not even finished, please let me know.

The post is not inaccurate in any particular way but because the very idea seems almost too possible.

I didn’t come on here just to humiliate myself though, I have a reason. I’ve been thinking. Much like my half-sentence above, I only wish I was a heavy drinker so that I could pass the blame onto something other than my own demented musings (often coming to me under the soft glow of the monitor while coding.)

I think I’ve mentioned it before, but maybe I haven’t. Maybe it is one of those ideas which I’ve had for so long that I can not remember whether I have ever uttered it to another human being or not. Like I said though, I think I have. I’ve just been thinking more about it recently.

Environments. Preferably destructible. I’m not talking fully destructible. I’m not asking for some sort of Red Faction-esque blowing through walls, just a little something to let me know that the environment is more than just some art stuck on the screen. Oh…I mean art with collision detection of course.

Look at the typical MMOG. Whatever form of “magic” they have (whether mystical or technological in nature) usually falls under the elemental kind, Fire, Water/Ice, Wind, etc. Everyone is pretty much familiar with this. My question is, why are environments, made out of many materials, just sitting there no matter what type of attack hits them.

Let me give an example. Let’s say we are talking about a boat made out of wooden planks. Why can’t the game determine a few things about the boat to make the environment more interactive. First, why doesn’t each “section” of said boat have some sort of “health” bar. In essence, rather than creating one model for “boat” why not create multiple pieces of the same model that fit together like puzzle pieces, to make up the boat (bow, stern, mast…um…that pretty much exhausts my knowledge of boats to be honest.) Then, depending on the material it is fashioned out of (in this case wood) it reacts differently to external player effects.

Shooting fire at the wood boat would make it light up, gradually damaging the hull and spreading, eventually hurting those on the boat if they were in the area of the fire. Or perhaps wind tears the wooden planks off the boat, making them act as projectiles which can hit and do damage not only to the rest of the structure of the boat, but to human and computer-controlled characters.

Perhaps you have a metal boat where “fire” damage caused the boat to become extremely hot and cause constant searing damage which gradually drains the HP of those in contact with it. Or maybe you use ice on the metal boat causing it to become very slick, increasing the chances of knockdown effects and causing slow to everyone in the affected area.

I’m not talking merely about AoE damaging moves, I’m talking about a really dynamic environment. No, it doesn’t have to be completely dynamic, but more than just a static world to look at would be nice. Not every little thing has to be a part of it, but some things certainly could be. When are we going to see it happen?

mmo, mmog, mmorpg, mmo gaming, game design, mmo design, mmo environments, game environments, world design, game worlds