Pumping Irony

Warning: This will likely be one of my meandering train-of-thought posts, so “hunker down” (whatever that means… you Southerner’s kill me) and bear with me.

As the frequency of posts this summer have indicated, my overall motivation for writing has dwindled. I’ve had a few in mind but never felt like sitting down and actually writing them. I’ve mostly been content to just peruse a few of my favorite blogs, make some comments and the occasional tweet and call it a day.

I’ve also not been doing any MMOGing (did I just invent a word?) either. Mostly because my PC is extremely unstable now and nothing — and I mean NOTHING — can be trusted to not crash. So far, Guild Wars is the only game of any sort that I have installed that I can eventually get to load up and not crash, however that doesn’t mean it will actually run properly. Random slowdowns and graphical glitches mar the experience there as well. I’m sorta-kinda in a mood to make a slow return to LOTRO but the client crashes immediately, which prevents me from even logging in just to pay the upkeep on my house there. By the time I build a Windows 7 system next month I’ll find out the hard way just how LOTRO’s esgrow system works and if I will lose any of my stored items or not.

I’ve found it nearly impossible to muster even an ounce of interest in the new batch of shiny MMOGs though.

Champions Online? Looks great but I remember in City of Heroes how I felt it was impossible to feel “super” when everyone was “super.” It was an even more pervasive feeling than in a fantasy game, for whatever reason. It goes back to “if everyone is special then no one is special.”

Aion? I’ve already played Aion, it was called every freakin’ Korean MMO in existence. I see no reason whatsoever to buy Aion for the exact same gameplay, exact same leveling + gear scheme as I’d get in any other fantasy MMORPG with the only differences being my adrogynous character performs some anime moves while I’m standing still clicking 1,2,3 on the hotbar and takes the wings off my elf from Perfect World so I can fly around. With restrictions on the flying, of course.

Even the MMOGs on the horizon seem like more of the same and nothing to excite me. The Old Republic? Straight-up DikuMMO with a mostly single-player leveling experience with the occasional multi-player content that filters us into the generic raid/PvP “end game.”

I have to say something positive though, so I’ll admit some interest in Fallen Earth because it’s the only one out there currently that had the balls to do anything whatsoever differently. That, and it seems mighty reminiscent of old-school Galaxies. So does Earthrise, which I’m still maintaining somewhat of an interest in, but I have a bad feeling the heavy focus on PvP will be that game’s downfall.

So what have I been doing? Obviously with a broken PC, my gaming has been exclusively on the 360. Ya know what? I’ve been having an absolute blast! Games can be fun! Who knew? I think all these years of DikuMMOs have altered my perception, so being forcibly removed from that scene has made it plainly obvious as to the sacrifices in gameplay and fun we have to endure for the sake of having (potentially) a few thousand other players on the server.

Aaron and Pete had mentioned Mercenaries 2 awhile back and I saw that it had drop-in co-op play so I picked that up too. Holy crap, is that game fun! Every time I play my imagination goes crazy with thoughts of expanding the game into bigger version of itself with persistence and more players, but it’s amazingly fun just with two-player co-op. I’m not overly fond of QuickTime Events (QTE’s) but Mercenaries 2 only has them when you’re hijacking a vehicle that is already manned by AI, so you fight them for control of the vehicle. The coolest part is that you get to watch the other player’s QTE from your perspective. If Aaron nabs a tank, I get to watch him crawl up the barrel of the cannon, yank the hatch open, headbutt the driver then drop in a frag grenade. How cool is that? It’s possibly more fun to watch than to do the QTE yourself. Oh and helicopters. Where else can you fire a grappling line at a helicopter in flight, climb up the line, open the door and wrestle with the pilot before overpowering him, throwing him out the door then piloting the chopper yourself? Also, unlike most MMOs, factions in Mercenaries 2 are often opposed to the other factions, so you have to plan out which missions you’ll do for which faction and be willing to take a (sometimes severe) penalty in your standing with one faction in order to increase standing with another.

I’ve also picked up GTA4 which I got last year but didn’t stick with it because of, you guessed it, MMOs! GTA4 in particular, but also Saints’ Row 2, Crackdown and to a lesser degree Mercenaries 2, have amazing worlds that seem alive. NPCs are having conversations with each other, sometimes they’ll get into a fight, sometimes they’ll mug another then the police get involved. Most NPC drivers are pretty conservative but occasionally one will get virtual road rage and go careening down streets and cause accidents. All this is without any input or stimulus whatsoever from the player. It’s just happening. Player stimuli can cause reactions as well. Bumping into fellow pedestrians on the sidewalk will get a “Hey, do ya mind?” reaction. If I peel out at a red light, nearby AI might react to that, even if it’s only making a snarky comment. Sliding around a corner towards a group of AI will elicit a panicked reaction. Beeping my horn or  aggressive driving can also get some interesting reactions from the AI. We’re always complaining of wanting more “worldy” worlds in our MMOs. Immersion? Right there it is. Make the world alive. What gets me is this type of AI behavior and world design has been around since the release of GTA3 in 2001! Possibly earlier than that, but GTA3 was my first real experience with it, and that was on the PS2 for cryin’ out loud! Sure, there’s no persistence in those games; drive out of rendering range and come back and that city block may be populated by totally different AI citizens doing totally different things, but that’s not the point. All this on-screen AI behavior is being rendered live on the fly  by consoles with limited resources while almost 9 years later MMORPGs that have persistent AI that are run on their own AI servers just stand there like mannequins or at best move in an extremely limited patrol path. I can see where we’d want to keep Quest NPCs in a restricted location so we’d know where to find them but all the other town citizens? Why can’t they just live their little virtual lives instead of standing there? If I ride my horse aggressively into the stables in LOTRO, why can’t they NPC’s react to that and rush out of the way, perhaps saying something about my crazy riding? Why don’t NPC’s decide on their own to walk out of Bree and go fishing or farming? Times are hard in Middle Earth, why are there no pick-pockets running from the guards? Why don’t the guards kill gold farming chat spammers after he’s been reported?

Why did GTA 3 in 2001 running on a PS2 with its measly 299 MHz CPU and 32 MB RAM have a world that seemed so much more alive and dynamic than modern AAA MMORPGs that cost three times the development budget, are played on more modern PCs with far more resources, and have AI running on their own dedicated servers? That’s just pathetic. And don’t even get me started on the sprawling urban layouts in GTA 3 or 4 compared to the pitiful “cities” we have in MMORPGs.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 3:20 pm and is filed under MMO Gaming, Whatever, Xbox 360. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.