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markyturnip 5/02/08 11:12:18 AM
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Hard Core Member
Joined: 11/03/05 |
Hi - I am not playing the beta, and I do plan on playing this game at launch. I am interested however - I always hear how its inevitable MMOs will be full of bugs right up till launch, and probably for the next month after that. OK, fair enough - but why is this? These games are in development for years; why is it so difficult to put out something that doesn't crash all the time? Is it the sheer size and complexity of an MMO game as opposed to any other? Because I am playing GTA IV, and that is a complex game... and yet it does not constantly crash on me. Is it that MMO development companies are traditionally pretty small outfits? Is there something particularly difficult about handling all those remote users interacting with each other? I could believe that... so many more variables and potential conflicts. But I would be interested to hear from people who know what they are talking about here - why does this genre have so much difficulty in making something that works from the get go?
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LodenDSG 5/02/08 2:37:55 PM
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Novice Member
Joined: 12/10/07
Honor; from birth till death, maintain. |
This question could have a really complex answer to it but from what I know (I am a programmer but though a student of I am not a game programmer). Updating a large number of clients in a real-time and rather large world is big part of the complexity of an MMO if not the main part.
MMOs are not typically ground breaking when it comes to UI, game play mechanics etc. even AoC has nothing that we haven't seen in other genre before but MMOs do have to manage a persistent world, and will be updating a large number of players as to changes in the world. There are also typically any way a larger number of possible combinations with an MMO hence the balance issues we see with MMOs but we don’t notice (As much anyway) with single player RPGs or adventure games.
There is also the complexity in the design of the game; MMOs have more in the way of balance to be concerned with when compared to a single player game especially if that game only has 1 or 2 choices for the player. To bring it into perspective, Overlord (simple but fun RPG/Adventure) has 1 player class that can be played 1 of 3 ways (evil, really evil and horribly evil) the designers will need to balance 3 play styles against each other and the game around that so that no one play style has an advantage over the others thus letting the reason for the players choice of play style be actually preference not drive to be the strongest option. MMOs on the other hand have several classes and each class has several play styles for example AoC has 12 classes and each has 3 major possible play styles so we have 32 aspects to balance in terms of player options/combinations this number could be increased when you take into account groups of players i.e. a priest and a solder vs a rouge and a mage and so on balance gets really hard the grater the number of players and player options and many bugs come up from balance issues.
There are other reasons I can think of which add to the difficulty in designing and developing a MMO in comparison to other genre but I’ll steep down here. |
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| string ScratchHead(thought) |
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tripmode 5/02/08 2:53:12 PM
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Novice Member
Joined: 6/19/07 |
Originally posted by markyturnip The simple answer is that there are a) Far more "variables" in an MMO than a traditional game or software b) Many more "points of failure" in an mmo than traditional games ..... As a programmer you have to really try to find every possible point where something can break and fix it. In an MMO, just trying to understand the problems is a challenge, never mind fixing them. Also, PC games are tough to code for because everyone's system is different. Whereas on an XBOX360 or a PS3, you don't have to worry about this (less variables!) |
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mxmissile 5/02/08 2:58:47 PM
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Apprentice Member
Joined: 12/13/05 |
any other excuses? this thread makes me laugh. i have one word for all you...
incompetence
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| Canceling a MMO subscription and posting about it, is like voting for an American president. It doesn’t mean shit unless > 50% post about it and *actually* cancel. |
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