It’s Called Suspense
I mentioned yesterday about playing HL2 a bit and how it is a refreshing change of pace compared to the current and by the looks of things future, MMOs. It got me thinking about what was different and one of the things, among many possible choices, was suspense. Half-Life excels at creating a suspenseful atmosphere, visually speaking places can look creepy and dark, the music perfectly sets the tone and constantly keeps your heart racing for the fear of some monster popping out of nowhere. And, oh yeah, monsters can actually pop out of seemingly nowhere.
Why isn’t this ever done in MMOG’s? Is it an impossibility? I can’t imagine why, from a design standpoint, it would be. It seems like, from the designers perspective rather than have enemies who will pop out of places they would rather just populate the world and let it be. Strictly speaking this is probably much easier than setting up some encounters to scare the crap out of your customers by having mobs pop out in front of you as you are sneaking your way around, but for the sake of fun it would add a lot.
I’m not saying every mob should be like this, that just takes the suspense away, but having some mobs do this would be a great addition. Allow for more dynamic interactions between mob and player. Yes, AI is probably one of the most difficult things to program, but giving your game a good AI can greatly increase the chance a person will continue to play your game. Set up mobs that do more than auto-attack you as you auto-attack them, change it up. And please, give me a scare every now and then.
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