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The One Man MMO Project

onemanmmo.com

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Re: The One Man MMO Project

#51

Post by jplayer01 »

DizzyDoo wrote: post #49

A number of years ago I completed an MMO project by myself (art, programming, marketing, etc). It was fun! Real-time server was in Python Twisted, lots of Cython to speed up the deepest parts of the game loop. Django for the main website. The client was Flash (this was back in 2013, when it was still kinda a thing), which meant anyone could jump in really quickly, but technically that was challenging for a real-time…

Even teams with hundreds of developers aren't able to put out enough content to keep players satisfied without resorting to artificial limits. Maybe it's a problem with how these games and the tools are designed, but I've always believed something like EVE or Second Life is the only real viable paradigm for MMOs. Give players the tools to build their own experience.

I recently had some time off and ended up burning through nearly all of Destiny 2's content inside of 2-3 weeks. Hell, I can jump into WoW and be raid ready inside of a week or two, and just go straight into the latest raid. I think there's something fundamentally very wrong with how modern MMOS are designed, but it doesn't seem like anybody is interested in properly exploring the solution space.

Re: The One Man MMO Project

#52

Post by inimino »

jmnicolas wrote: post #22
inimino wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do a lot with the right, simple architecture and a programming language at the right level of abstraction.

I bet you could answer 99% of Stackoverflow questions with this generic answer ;-)

Indeed ;-) But I bet 99% of those wouldn't need to be asked if people hadn't overcomplicated things in the first place...

Re: The One Man MMO Project

#53

Post by DizzyDoo »

jplayer01 wrote: post #51
DizzyDoo wrote: post #49

A number of years ago I completed an MMO project by myself (art, programming, marketing, etc). It was fun! Real-time server was in Python Twisted, lots of Cython to speed up the deepest parts of the game loop. Django for the main website. The client was Flash (this was back in 2013, when it was still kinda a thing), which meant anyone could jump in really quickly, but technically that was challenging for a real-time…

Even teams with hundreds of developers aren't able to put out enough content to keep players satisfied without resorting to artificial limits. Maybe it's a problem with how these games and the tools are designed, but I've always believed something like EVE or Second Life is the only real viable paradigm for MMOs. Give players the tools to build their own experience. I recently had some time off and ended up burning t…

It's true, and it's why so many MMO's find themselves leaning into adding that grind to leveling, or a repetition in the end-game loop. The days of every developer taking a crack at creating a 'WOW killer' (and all of them failing) have thankfully past, I'm sure there are a bunch of traditional MMO's that are still trucking along nicely (Final Fantasy 15, Black Desert Online, the new Maple Story) but that sort of Quest Content driven game isn't so predominant nowadays (outside of nostalgia trips like WOW Classic and Runescape Classic). I can't say I miss them too much?

Re: The One Man MMO Project

#54

Post by moduspol »

jokoon wrote: post #47
seanwilson wrote: post #16

I remember ages ago it was common to see the advice "don't try to create your own MMO" as they were one of the most complex game dev projects you could do. Are MMOs any easier to make now given the libraries and cloud services that exist today?

Realm of the mad god proved it's possible to make a miminalist MMO game The difficulty is building a MMO that is appealing and fun to play, so you have to think about multiplayer game design, which can involve a little bit of game theory, economics, reward systems... A mmo is not difficult to make by its strict definition, once you have a large open world, the spatial partitioning to manage network traffic, things wo…

Honestly, this is the appeal (to me) of building a private World of Warcraft server.

This way, the user-facing artsy stuff is mostly done. You just need the backend stuff, although admittedly some fun is removed since you have to work with the network protocols the pre-existing clients expect. You'd undoubtedly learn about how and why various aspects of the game were implemented the way they were.

And yeah, there's already a project for private WoW servers, but if I ever get a few months off work, that's something I'd like to look into doing separately. Maybe after enough time, Blizzard would open source the clients so we can hack on those, too. Although WoW still brings in good money, so that'll probably be a while.

Re: The One Man MMO Project

#57

Post by nickjj »

crtlaltdel wrote: post #14

love it! i spent YEARS playing and coding for MUDs and ran a few games as a solo admin/coder. imo it is so very satisfying to watch the global chat channels after a new feature/area/weapon/mob gets rolled out...and what the community thinks of it. i can recall more than one occasion where a well planned quest resulted in interesting dynamics after players started interacting with it. an example; one quest would add a…

On the topic of MUDs.

There's a 1 man developer who wrote not only his own MUD but tools to create and find MUDs to play[0].

It's all written in Elixir and open source[1]. He's given a couple of talks[2] about it and does some living code on Twitch.

I have no affiliation with the author but I did watch some of his talks just for fun.

[0]: https://grapevine.haus [1]: https://exventure.org/ [2]: https://youtu.be/Ef_fG5pd5TY?t=36

Re: The One Man MMO Project

#58

Post by Itaxpica »

DizzyDoo wrote: post #53
jplayer01 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even teams with hundreds of developers aren't able to put out enough content to keep players satisfied without resorting to artificial limits. Maybe it's a problem with how these games and the tools are designed, but I've always believed something like EVE or Second Life is the only real viable paradigm for MMOs. Give players the tools to build their own experience. I recently had some time off and ended up burning t…

It's true, and it's why so many MMO's find themselves leaning into adding that grind to leveling, or a repetition in the end-game loop. The days of every developer taking a crack at creating a 'WOW killer' (and all of them failing) have thankfully past, I'm sure there are a bunch of traditional MMO's that are still trucking along nicely (Final Fantasy 15, Black Desert Online, the new Maple Story) but that sort of Que…

The dynamic gets really interesting - I play Final Fantasy 14, and looking at content you can tell the moment they switched the core of their monetization strategy from subscription fees to optional cosmetics. The game got tighter and way less grindy and repetitive; the later expansions are significantly better games for it (so much so that the devs are actually talking about going back and cutting out a bunch of the earlier grind for newer players, since it's notorious for putting people off).

Re: The One Man MMO Project

#59

Post by rodolphoarruda »

munificent wrote: post #40
seanwilson wrote: post #16

I remember ages ago it was common to see the advice "don't try to create your own MMO" as they were one of the most complex game dev projects you could do. Are MMOs any easier to make now given the libraries and cloud services that exist today?

It's easier to make a 2010-era MMO today than it was today. The problem is that "MMO" today now means a 2019-era MMO. Player expectations rise in sync with technology advances, faster even. So if you're targeting a AAA, tech-heavy genre like an MMO, it never gets easier.

I agree. I have a long time design of an MMO resting in my computer. It is a text-based game that runs presidential elections in a corrupt country in Latin America. There are 4 parties competing and the winner, of course, it the one whose candidate is finally elected. The biggest design problem it had was: how to implement massive voting, programmatic. So maybe today, the 2019-era as you mentioned, using AI somehow could be the solution.

Re: The One Man MMO Project

#60

Post by Smithalicious »

DizzyDoo wrote: post #53
jplayer01 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even teams with hundreds of developers aren't able to put out enough content to keep players satisfied without resorting to artificial limits. Maybe it's a problem with how these games and the tools are designed, but I've always believed something like EVE or Second Life is the only real viable paradigm for MMOs. Give players the tools to build their own experience. I recently had some time off and ended up burning t…

It's true, and it's why so many MMO's find themselves leaning into adding that grind to leveling, or a repetition in the end-game loop. The days of every developer taking a crack at creating a 'WOW killer' (and all of them failing) have thankfully past, I'm sure there are a bunch of traditional MMO's that are still trucking along nicely (Final Fantasy 15, Black Desert Online, the new Maple Story) but that sort of Que…

Just a heads up, you mean to say Old School Runescape; Runescape Classic refers to the first version of Runescape that was superceded by Runescape 2 (in 2004) and is now defunct.
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