Hey people, today after my regular session of playing and chilling with the internet, I started my usual meditation I have almost every day and then it got into my mind the idea of having "guns" inside a mmorpg. After a while I told myself, well there are guns already, you have some bows, a few throwing knives and the dwarves in warcraft have some sort of 17th century rifle, and of course you need to add the stockpile of MMOFPS games around, not to mention the defunct Tabula Rasa game with tons of rifles, pistols, machine guns and so on.
But what I mean with 'a MMORPG game with guns' is one game centered in the use of guns. Yes, I mean those guns, the ones with shells full of "gunpowder", and bullets. You probably say hey, there is games like that already, APB (All Point Bulletin) is one example, also there is an upcoming game with a lot of guns, by the name of "The Secret World".
Let me clarify something here, when I say GUNS!!! In the MMORPGs World, I mean it as a standard rule set for developers to use in the creation of their games, like the "WoW Age", instead of having a lot of games using the standard WoWish leveling style, with talents, standard gear (robes, pants, wrists, boots, helmet, 2 rings, 2 trinkets, cape, and a few other accessories), spells, skills, and etc. Lets create a new mold for games, one by the name of the "Era of Virtual Gun Powder", and now instead of armor, we have Kevlar with Riot Shields. The Spells and Swords are gone and then you have, Machine Guns, Assault Rifles, Snipers, Pistols, and the list will keep up naming all the modern weapons.
First, we need to analyze for a minute the roll of guns in their right perspective, right now the games use what we can call ancient times weaponry, that's right, everything in almost every game is inspired by old weapons, swords, spears, axes, hammers and such, honesty non of use have ever seen any of this guns used in a war, as they turn to be obsolete long before we were born.
We have fun with something that not even our grandpas used in the World War II, which will give you an idea of how outdated; your sword is as weapon of war. I haven't seen any sword in action, I don't think I will, but from time to time, I hear someone shooting an AK-47 in the street.
To be honest we believe that our guns are completely and absolutely powerful, the M16, AKs, G36, Famas, Stayr, and honesty the list of firearms is endless, from .22 caliber up to 30mm caliber. These weapons can shoot some serious firepower, and we know that.
For the same reason we have a powerful perception of our modern guns, we also believe and take the old weapon from our ancestors back in the ancient Greece, as a wimpy slashing kitchen knife. I don't really want to finger point anyone here, but part of the guilt goes to Hollywood, making people believe that old melee weapons are wimpies.
The problem right now in the MMO world is that we play a large amount of games in the ancient times, but with some magic enhancement in their side. We initiate a battle with a monster, or another player, and the slashing and hacking starts, or the spell casting starts. For a 1 minute or less, you hit like 10 keys in your keyboard. You really use your best skills to do the highest amount of damage, tons of damage numbers pop up, and when you are finally victorious, there is like a dozen or more hits in the combat log.
For some reason this manage to gets away, we play MMOs, we kill mobs this way, shooting like no tomorrow, or slashing like we really mean it and it feels normal, remember our perceptions we have in our minds about ancient weapons is that they used to be weak compared to our guns right now.
But let's say that now we have guns full of powder with the biggest caliber around, we roam around the jungles of X place in Y game, and all the sudden a monster agro us. The most basic gamer instincts will tell us one thing. If is red... SHOOT IT!!! And so we do, we start shooting the monster a lot of bullets we cast our best skills, like improve damage, or improve accuracy and so on, after 1 minute, the monster is dead.
Honesty if you shoot a monster more than once, twice, maybe 3 times, it will feel and look wrong, we are going to be asking ourselves, this M16 requires to be shot 30 times into a monster in order to kill it, which is almost a full magazine, if not all! (Fallout 3 is a clear example of this, guns with heavy RPG style, a lot of people complain about the weapon impotency). I know, your weapon will look ridiculously weak, correct me if I am wrong veterans of war, but if you shoot someone in the core body, only once, without any kind of armor with your new modern weapon, what you expect is a dead or knock out target. Straight to the point, the target will have a hard time standing if they can.
Yes, people, we know it, that is the idea we have in our heads of how weapons work, BOOM! And down with the target, or at least 3 shoots will suffice, but you can shoot 500 rounds per minute, which will take you one second to defeat your target.
The point is that, our perception of how guns should work, and feel in combat are so different from what MMORPGs expect us to believe is the right thing. We accept old melee weapons to require tons of hits to kill a target because we haven't seen them in real combat and single player games don't transmit an accurate idea either.
I am going to be honest with you people, if there is an animal, and you take a machete, and you slash the animals throat only one time, the animal is going to die. You slash one of his legs, and the injured muscles and nerves, not to mention the bleeding, won't let this creature move this leg so well again, the pain can incapacitate it from combat. Same with you, if a big animal bite you and twist your arm, and break your bones or decapitate your limb, you are done.
In short let me explain it in a few lines
1. Ancient melee weapons
Reality = They kill quickly, tons of pain will disable you.
Perception = They are weak, you need like 10 hits to kill.
2. Modern Weapons (Guns)
Reality = They kill quickly, tons of pain will disable you.
Perception = BOOM! Headshot!!!
This contrast on what we accept and expect from different kind of weapons is what make the MMORPGs based on modern guns so scarce, any of you remember Tabula Rasa? I played that game before it was closed, one of the mechanics used there was to stop moving and kneeling and you do more damage, if you move then you do less damage, this is so wrong!!!! If you move you have less accuracy compared to standing. The weapon damage is not affected at all, if you hit anyways by chance a target while running, the damage is the same.
You probably are wondering, why we don't develop a MMORPG game, with an extremely fast paced combat? This will be awesome, but this extremely fast paced combat will take away the Roll Playing aspect, and introduce an action one. Like FPS games, or any other action game around. A big part of MMORPG is the slow combat progression, you get time to think, move, and cast one of your 100 spells depending on your situation, and the smartest player who adapts to the situation wins. This is how MMORPGs work, they require the slow paced to function properly, something that the modern guns can't provide correctly, or at least not right to our minds.
But if you like the Sci-Fi or modern games, and also love to the MMORPG style, don't give up, there is a few Sci-Fi games around, with tons of action, this ones make a bit more sense, you have energy weapons, probably they do more damage than bullets, but take it this way, they develop shields in the future, and other advanced protective technologies, besides the standard issue armor this days. It will make sense if you have to shoot 10 times with a 1000 watts proton blaster into a 9000 watts tachyon shield, after all you need to dissipate those 9000 watts to get into your target, of course if they don't regenerate quick.
It is sad that we don't have a lot of modern guns MMORPGs, and we got an endless flood of fantasy ones, but if developers are going to risk putting money into games full of M16s, or AKs we need to get accept the fact that mobs will require you to shoot like 20 times to be killed, otherwise it won't be MMORPG at all.
Remember to play a genre that you really enjoy, don't play MMORPGs because you are hoping for something that right now it doesn't exist, if you love the MMOs then play them, but if you like to have guns in your games over the Roll Playing aspects and you don't like wimpy weapons, then I suggest you move to the FPS games. If you like guns and want the feeling of massiveness, then I will recommend only one thing, wait until a real MMOFPS is released in the future. Maybe we don't need to wait a lot.
Have fun.
|
