STO is an MMORPG: A Discussion for Another Thread

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: A criticism of the 'Terran Gambit' episode arc.

paradox

dewolf13 wrote: »

And no, not 'pretty much every combat-based game' simply throws enemies at you in mindless repetition. Indeed, even looking ONLY at Star Trek Online, other missions allow you to approach 'the fight' in a multitude of ways. Even missions where you both 1) play as an alternate character, and 2) alone, without a player-commanded away team (i.e. J'Ula at the temple on Boreth) had a lot of variety throughout the mission. In fact, it is those combat games that just resort to throwing enemies at you mindlessly that tend to be flops (in the modern era), and worthy of criticism indeed. In fact, one of the popular criticisms of combat in e.g. 'Dragon Age II' vs 'Dragon Age: Origins' was just that. So you're free to hold up such design as a standard, but it's a pretty low bar.

And that's the reason why virtually all RPGs like this, where you target an enemy and select abilities to use on them, tend to have an 'auto-attack' that applies so long as they are engaged, where you only select your 'special' abilities on demand, because otherwise it's just mind-numbingly tedious, without even being a challenge. Alternatively, a game could be designed as a first-person shooter instead -- but as has been discussed at length elsewhere, STO's attempt at being an FPS with 'shooter mode' is dreadful, which is why auto-fire is a very welcome quality-of-life feature in 'RPG mode' (not a cheat). Analogously, it also wouldn't be particularly challenging, albeit tedious, to force the player to hold the 'move forward' key even for traveling long distances -- but developers often include an 'auto move forward' simply because it avoids an unnecessarily tedious control feature that doesn't even add to the challenge.

It tries to be a Shooter, an RPG and a MMO all in one but ends up being more MMO and Shooter than an RPG, I feel like STO needs to add more RPG elements like player choices that have impact the game like in Dragon Age a game @dewolf13;c-13732806 mentioned had you choose between siding with either Elves or Werewolves or that choice to either die fighting the Archdemon or performing the Old God Ritual to save your character, another RPG element involves talking to companions on the ship/camp, with the potential to romance them, also the option to be either the Hero or Villain of the story, playing the Villain is something players enjoy, for example look at SW:TOR, the Imperial side/Sith Empire is more popular than the Republic Side, even my Main is a Sith Warrior.

rattler2

paradox#7391 wrote: »

It tries to be a Shooter, an RPG and a MMO all in one but ends up being more MMO and Shooter than an RPG, I feel like STO needs to add more RPG elements like player choices that have impact the game like in Dragon Age a game @dewolf13;c-13732806 mentioned had you choose between siding with either Elves or Werewolves or that choice to either die fighting the Archdemon or performing the Old God Ritual to save your character, another RPG element involves talking to companions on the ship/camp, with the potential to romance them, also the option to be either the Hero or Villain of the story, playing the Villain is something players enjoy, for example look at SW:TOR, the Imperial side/Sith Empire is more popular than the Republic Side, even my Main is a Sith Warrior.

STO is an MMORPG. And you can have an RPG with shooter elements, see Mass Effect.
However having the player choice impact the game like Dragon Age or KoTOR is difficult in an MMO setting because the story is pretty much on a rail. Yea you can have responses alter dialog, but the destination has to be the same for everyone in an MMO setting. And you really can't romance any BOffs because of the fact that, other than the ones you get at the start of the game and a couple you get on the way, like the Kobali and Voth BOffs, your crew isn't pre-set. We can literally make our whole crew scantily clad blue alien women if we wanted! They wouldn't have an existing personality because of the sheer customization we have available. The Romance angle worked in TOR because you had pre-set companions with distinct personalities. EVERYONE got those same companions. That is not true here. Other than Tovan Kev, EVERY BOff can be dismissed.

baddmoonrizin

WTF? MMO literally means massively multiplayer online, any video game where the player interacts with a large number of other players, which is EXACTLY what STO is. 🙄

rattler2

By your definition, the ONLY MMOs are Elite Dangerous, No Man's Sky, and EVE.
Halo is primarily a single player game with a multiplayer element that is competitive. DOOM is a single player game with a multiplayer element that is competitive. Most single player games, especially shooters, come with a multiplayer mode.

STO is an MMORPG as it is a fully multiplayer game. We can just CHOOSE to run missions on our own, but we have a persistant world where we run into many other players, which include TFOs, conversations, events, and selling things on the Exchange to other players.
FF14 is an MMORPG as it is fully multiplayer, with dungeons and raids that require many players, a player driven Market Board (exchange)...

So STO does qualify as an MMO. Just because its not a sandbox doesn't mean it isn't WHAT THE GAME IS ADVERTISED AS.

baddmoonrizin

No, but they're not marketed as such either. Star Trek Online, however, is. It doesn't really matter what YOU think it is. It is.

leemwatson

colonelmarik wrote: »

baddmoonrizin wrote: »

WTF? MMO literally means massively multiplayer online, any video game where the player interacts with a large number of other players, which is EXACTLY what STO is. 🙄

As I say, I don't want to derail the thread, but your definition would make ANY online game an MMO, which I think is not the case. Would you call Halo an MMO? Rainbow Six? Doom? They all have you interacting with a large number of other players, but they're all definitively Action games.

Halo, thankfully isn't an MMO (it nearly became one though) due to it's lack of social zones, which is great cause I don't have to put up with the gripes and tribbulations that we have here in ESD and Beta Quad chat in STO; amazingly XB doesn't suffer the same as PC does . STO meets the definition of an MMORPG, and quite frankly is one the sanest out-there still.

baddmoonrizin

/split

fleetcaptain5

Hey look, it's System. The guy whose threads from a decade ago keep being necro'ed. xD

jonsills

Despite your idiosyncratic redefinition of the term, Colonel, the acronym "MMO" stands for "Massively Multiplayer Online", and refers to games where you interact in real-time with a large number of other players. Fallout 76 is an MMO, in which you are one of a number of people who rode out the Great War in Vault 76, then emerged into post-apocalyptic West Virginia. Three times per hour, the game pops Events which require a large number of people (or, I guess, a few people of very high level) to handle; additionally, there are the equivalent of TFOs in the form of Daily Operations (a group of four players running a mission to benefit the Brotherhood of Steel) and Expeditions (four players riding a vertibird to the Pitt, once Pittsburgh, to assist the Union with its various troubles - sadly, we know that 175 years later the foundry will still be pretty much in the hands of the trogs, because that's a DLC for Fallout 3). However, clearly the players can't literally change the world, because then new players wouldn't be able to join that world - phasing software is expensive and difficult to maintain. The illusion is sometimes given by having open events before a world change - just before the new chapter of the Brotherhood arrived, for instance, the servers were tasked with gathering resources to convert an old observatory into their new HQ.

The Division and the imaginatively-named The Division2 are MMOs set in, respectively, New York and DC following an outbreak of a genetically-engineered version of smallpox/influenza (planted on US currency just before Christmas, so it's known in-game as the Dollar Flu). In both games, there are multiple instances that are intended to be run through by several people.

And both Star Trek Online and Champions Online are MMOs, even though CO isn't as "massively" as it used to be. Still a number of players, though - during the current Winterfest event, I rarely have to wait more than a few moments to fill out a team to run the Finkle Foundry mission.

All of the above are also "role-playing", in the modern sense that you choose how your character grows and expands over time. In FO76, you choose your SPECIAL changes up to level 50, and select your Perks which can severely impact how a character plays. (Chinese Stealth Armor has no pockets, for instance, so on my sneaky-sniper character, I had to prioritize Strength for carrying capacity, Agility for stealth, and Perception for sniping. She's invisible when she crouches, and she can snap a Super Mutant's head off from 50 meters with her bow or further with her suppressed .308 rifle.) Division has you select specialties and equipment as you level (my roommate has a character in Div 1 who is nigh-immortal as long as he stays away from the flamethrower guys, thanks to his healing machines). And I'm pretty sure you're at least vaguely familiar with the progression system in both STO and CO.

There are, of course, many other MMORPGs out there, as well as games that claim the title simply because your character changes over time (the difference being that in some games, you have little to no input over how they change). But by any reasonable definition, STO is indeed an MMORPG. (And, in fact, I can't think offhand of any current MMOs that permit an individual character to change the world. Single-player RPGs, yes, which is one reason why both Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 are going to be single-player RPGs rather than MMOs, but for "massively multiplayer" you need characters to be able to share the world, and changes are frequently mutually exclusive - my FO4 playthrough where I'm a Minuteman and loyal Railroad agent is completely and utterly incompatible with my roommate's playthrough where he agreed to stay with the Institute, which requires destroying the Railroad, for instance.)

davefenestrator

STO is an MMO by the normal definition of that term.

Anyone is free to make up their own gatekeeping definition of a "true" MMO, just like they are free to decide what the "real" Star Trek shows are (which is of course TOS ). As long as you don't attempt to enforce your gatekeeping on others. Your fun is not wrong unless you start to claim it is The One True Fun. At that point you should go start your own better forums, with blackjack and compensated dating.

starkaos

jonsills wrote: »

Fallout 76 is an MMO

It is amazing how many Fallout 76 players refuse to believe that it is an MMO. Although, it is missing a few features that are standard in most MMOs like an Account Bank, Mail system, Exchange, and Chat system. There is a chat mod, but the most recent update seems to have broken the mod due to encryption.

rattler2 wrote: »

STO is an MMORPG. And you can have an RPG with shooter elements, see Mass Effect.
However having the player choice impact the game like Dragon Age or KoTOR is difficult in an MMO setting because the story is pretty much on a rail. Yea you can have responses alter dialog, but the destination has to be the same for everyone in an MMO setting.

Having meaningful player choice impact in MMOs is only possible in instances.

paradox

colonelmarik wrote: »

I've had that argument before... I don't think STO is an MMO, because it lacks the attribute that defines the genre.

That is, Action games are about the action. You play to DO something specific, be it driving a car, flying a plane or shooting space invaders.

Adventure games are about the story. You play to go through the events of the story. There might be action IN the adventure game, but it is there to serve the story.

MMOs evolved from Adventure games, but are different in one significant way, that I call "the sandbox." Before the invention of the MMO, people played adventure games to their conclusion, at which point the game was over, and the players lamented that they wanted to keep playing in the world of the game. MMOs were designed to let them DO that. In order for this to be so, the world of the game itself needed to have the content built in, to allow players to entertain themselves without quests or stories.

In a sense, it's the approach to the environment that distinguishes things.
Action games' environment is little more than an arena for the action to happen in.
Adventure games environments are created AFTER the story is created, and usually only includes areas needed for the story.
MMO environments are created FIRST, and the quests are plugged into the environment, using assets that already exist (for the most part).

Basically, a game can claim to be an MMO if it doesn't rely on questing or repeated action, since these are the defining attributes of Adventure and Action games. If you can entertain yourself with the world of the game, it's probably an MMO.

There are precious few actual MMOs left, if you ask me.

STO is an action game. We fight and we fight, and nothing else. The world of the game is an inert lobby, where people just queue up to repeat the same battles, over and over.

TOR is an adventure game. You do the quests and the stories, which are great, but the world of the game provides nothing to do after you've done them.

ESO comes close. You can do other things, like crafting or exploring, but it falls a bit short because the things you can do beyond questing are so limited.

Ironically, the closest thing I've seen to an MMO is probably RDR2 Online or GTA5 Online, because the world of the game offers a lot to do that doesn't require quests, and isn't just mindless action. I say it's ironic because Rockstar says RDR2 is NOT an MMO.

Now, I say all this very much aware that people are going to disagree. I'm not going to bother responding to any disagreements, because I don't want to derail the thread any more than I have done.

Cheers.

I've played all the games you listed, any game filled with Griefers like RDR2 Online and GTA Online, shouldn't be here, MMOs are supposed to bring in Players not drive them away, I played RDR2 Online near launch, I left it because I kept getting targeted by random high level players when I was minding my own business, plus it doesn't help that I'm bad at shooting targets in videogames and I'm usually better at close combat.

jonsills

Griefers are a hazard in an MMO, in large part precisely because of the "massively multiplayer" aspect - some people are just jerks. When FO76 launched, PvP hadn't been made optional yet, and people could destroy your CAMP while you were away. If that hadn't been changed when it was, my wife would have quit playing - she was on the verge. Now folks can come by and toss grenades at your place to their heart's content, and all that will happen is they'll waste grenades (and the resources that went into making them, because grenades aren't that easy to come by, reasonably enough).

Some games, like WoW, split servers into PvP and PvE. There was a time, though, when PvP could happen on any server, depending on where you were on a map. It was incredibly inconvenient when you had to respawn either at the closest graveyard or the spot where you died; this became exponentially worse when you'd get two high-level griefers, one camping your death site and the other the graveyard. (Fortunately, the time that this happened to my wife and myself, we were members of a guild that had a couple of maxed-out people on it who responded to our call for aid. They cleared out the death site so we could get our stuff back, because if we'd switched servers everything on our corpses would have been loot. Just one of the reasons I quit that game and never looked back.)

Third hand, given the nature of the crapsack world of GTA, I'd fully expect the online version to be stuffed to the gills with griefers, trolls, and scammers. It's the internal logic of the game, after all - the characters in all the GTA games are at best amoral sociopaths who'd sooner beat you over the head and steal your wallet than talk to you. (At worst, they're murderous psychopaths who take joy in the violence of the weapons they can use on you, from chopping heads off with a remote-control helicopter to firing rocket launchers with merry abandon.)

avoozuul

Makes me wish they made PvP optional in SoT.

spiritborn

jonsills wrote: »

Some games, like WoW, split servers into PvP and PvE. There was a time, though, when PvP could happen on any server, depending on where you were on a map. It was incredibly inconvenient when you had to respawn either at the closest graveyard or the spot where you died; this became exponentially worse when you'd get two high-level griefers, one camping your death site and the other the graveyard. (Fortunately, the time that this happened to my wife and myself, we were members of a guild that had a couple of maxed-out people on it who responded to our call for aid. They cleared out the death site so we could get our stuff back, because if we'd switched servers everything on our corpses would have been loot. Just one of the reasons I quit that game and never looked back.)

when and where was this because apart from the special versions of the 2 zones that you had to unlock (and could return the regular PvE version if you wanted IIRC) it's pretty much impossible to enable Warmode (aka become PvP active) without wanting to do so, they even removed the ability to hit other players if you're not PvP enabled so the most common PvP griefing tactic (at least on my server) was made impossible.

For those curious it was go in front of lower level person doing PvE quests while you were PvP active so that they accidentally hit you and turn PvP active allowing you to kill them easily (as the people doing this were max level) often with victim having no way to defend themselves (and before you state anything I've seen both Horde and Alliance do this so it's not a faction specific tactic either).

phoenixc

MMO does indeed mean "Massively Multiplayer Online...", it is not a genre in itself though people have gotten lazy and just use the MMO part instead of saying MMORPG. It is the RPG part that is important, not the "MMO" part when trying to distinguish the differences.

STO is a classic example of the "Theme Park" style of MMORPG, and there are other styles (some games, like EVE Online, are even hybrids). And most of those styles use questing in some form or another like STO, ESO, and EVE (STO and EVE just call them "missions", but they are the same thing), the only difference is how rigid the rails those stories ride on are and whether the quest givers are centralized (STO), spread out all over the map (ESO), or a mix (EVE and its Agents which tend to clump together but not rigidly so), they are all MMORPGs (though again, EVE is hybrid to the point where it is barely so).

Action games, like MOBAs, Shooters, and a few others I forget the acronyms for at the moment are the ones that are nothing but mainly unstructured action, not MMORPGs. The fact that those games feature little (if any at all) roleplaying support generally makes it obvious that they are not MMORPGs.

And no, the vast majority of MMORPGs do not allow the player characters to make lasting changes to the terrain, political, or most other environments (that is part of what makes EVE Online and its player-built permanent-until-destroyed complexes a hybrid, it has some "Survival" game aspects among other things).

Economic considerations like crafting/gathering/etc. are another matter. Some MMORPGs like ArcheAge (and the hybrid EVE) have economies that are mostly or entirely driven by player characters but those have to be created that way from the ground up, trying to backfit that kind of economic system into a game not designed for it is difficult and time/resource consuming to the point where it is generally impractical.

jonsills

Oh, I wasn't going to accuse one side of doing it more than another - Horde players tended (while I was there) to be more self-consciously "eee-vill", because they never read the lore on where the Horde came from, but the so-called "good guys" of the Alliance weren't all that good, either in lore or in playstyle.

As for when that incident with PvP on any disputed map was, oh, this was many years gone, back when the level cap was 50 or 60, before Death Knights even existed. They'd started to fix it before I left. Not going back, though, because that was just one of my many issues with the game, and I seriously doubt most of them have been addressed (heck, when I left they were leaning into the concept of gearscore harder).

spiritborn

phoenixc#0738 wrote: »

And no, the vast majority of MMORPGs do not allow the player characters to make lasting changes to the terrain, political, or most other environments.

WoW and FF14 are very good examples of this, The players can't change anything thru choices in Azeroth or Hydaelyn (the star/planet/world that is not the deity) all changes are part of the narrative and same for everyone.

rattler2

spiritborn wrote: »

phoenixc#0738 wrote: »

And no, the vast majority of MMORPGs do not allow the player characters to make lasting changes to the terrain, political, or most other environments.

WoW and FF14 are very good examples of this, The players can't change anything thru choices in Azeroth or Hydaelyn (the star/planet/world that is not the deity) all changes are part of the narrative and same for everyone.

Since Endwalker, the world of FF14 has another name it goes by now, Etheirys. For the most part its still relatively interchangeable, but they only really start calling it Etheirys in Endwalker, probably because we learn more about Hydaelyn and everything else that has been building up to that from the very beginning.

spiritborn

rattler2 wrote: »

spiritborn wrote: »

phoenixc#0738 wrote: »

And no, the vast majority of MMORPGs do not allow the player characters to make lasting changes to the terrain, political, or most other environments.

WoW and FF14 are very good examples of this, The players can't change anything thru choices in Azeroth or Hydaelyn (the star/planet/world that is not the deity) all changes are part of the narrative and same for everyone.

Since Endwalker, the world of FF14 has another name it goes by now, Etheirys. For the most part its still relatively interchangeable, but they only really start calling it Etheirys in Endwalker, probably because we learn more about Hydaelyn and everything else that has been building up to that from the very beginning.

Yeah I used Hydaelyn as the other name is a) kind of a spoiler b)not something all FF14 players are familiar c)matches Azeroth in that it's also a name for powerful female creature related the planet (the Mother Crystal in case of Hydaelyn and the sleeping titan in case of Azeroth)

angrytarg

Aren't persistent servers a requirement for an MMO, to make them distinct from single instances/temporary servers that close once the last player leaves?

rattler2

spiritborn wrote: »

Yeah I used Hydaelyn as the other name is a) kind of a spoiler b)not something all FF14 players are familiar c)matches Azeroth in that it's also a name for powerful female creature related the planet (the Mother Crystal in case of Hydaelyn and the sleeping titan in case of Azeroth)

While it is a bit of a spoiler, its also documented on the FF14 wiki. And without context... well... ya know.

Also I still get a bit irked by WarCraft's retcon. In WarCraft and WarCraft II, there was the Nation of Azeroth. Then WarCraft III makes no mention of Azeroth whatsoever, then in WoW... *points gun meme style* It was always Stormwind. NO EXPLANATION WHATSOEVER! I mean if they explained that the rebuilt Nation of Azeroth was named Stormwind it would be more acceptable. But there was NO EXPLANATION! IT CAME OUT OF NOWHERE!

davefenestrator

angrytarg wrote: »

Aren't persistent servers a requirement for an MMO, to make them distinct from single instances/temporary servers that close once the last player leaves?

The database for the players' state is persistent, but depending on the MMO it might have a few massive world servers or a fleet of smaller world servers that get replaced as their health declines over time from things like memory fragmentation and resource leaks. The instances for raids and dungeons might be run on the same or different servers.

In many MMOs, the world state is fixed aside from events that have no lasting effect and the current state of farmable resources, so it doesn't matter if you shut one down and boot the players off as long as the player's status / state is properly saved to the database servers.

Fallout 76 has a set of medium-to-large servers for the MMO, but also offers smaller private servers for up to 8 players that run the same world code just with less resources so they can only handle the smaller number of players. You can move back and forth between the private and public worlds because player state still goes into the one main database and the world state doesn't matter.

phoenixc

A lot of the "servers" are virtual now too and not actually a particular piece of hardware in a fixed location (that is what most of the "megaservers" are for instance).

Also, even when they are not being run on a virtual machine, often the server names are just a convenience and actually use a group of real servers with the functionality split up between the world simulation servers and separate resource servers that handle things like inventory and are the actual source of things like the graphics textures and whatnot.

paradox

davefenestrator wrote: »

angrytarg wrote: »

Aren't persistent servers a requirement for an MMO, to make them distinct from single instances/temporary servers that close once the last player leaves?

The database for the players' state is persistent, but depending on the MMO it might have a few massive world servers or a fleet of smaller world servers that get replaced as their health declines over time from things like memory fragmentation and resource leaks. The instances for raids and dungeons might be run on the same or different servers.

In many MMOs, the world state is fixed aside from events that have no lasting effect and the current state of farmable resources, so it doesn't matter if you shut one down and boot the players off as long as the player's status / state is properly saved to the database servers.

Fallout 76 has a set of medium-to-large servers for the MMO, but also offers smaller private servers for up to 8 players that run the same world code just with less resources so they can only handle the smaller number of players. You can move back and forth between the private and public worlds because player state still goes into the one main database and the world state doesn't matter.

I feel like Fallout 76 failed at the MMO genre, Fallout is usually an RPG which in 4 lacked some dialog elements from previous games and gave generic voice lines, while I get playing as human Vault Dwellers or that one time you play as a human Courier in the single player games, but as an MMORPG, where are the playable Ghouls and Super Mutants?, It's a missed opportunity but Ghoulification could've been an interesting gamplay mechanic for 76 like how Vampirism works in the Elder Scrolls games, If I can't live out my Fallout MMO fantasy of playing as a Ghoul, then I don't want it.

jonsills

You can't play as a ghoul in any of the Fallout games unless you download a mod (for good reason - ghouls have the potential of going feral for no readily apparent reason, and nobody trusts them. How are you supposed to unite factions if nobody wants to be seen talking to you?). And modding an MMO is right out, for what should be fairly obvious reasons. Other hand, if you don't like the voice acting of the main character in FO4 (I don't, personally), play as the female character - like Mass Effect, the female voice actor for the protagonist is (IMO) much better.

On the third hand, FO4 was the only one where the protagonist was voiced at all - previous versions had gone with the traditional cRPG idea that if the protagonist had a voice, it would make the player feel more removed from the character. I've never felt that way personally, but then I'm hardly the one to go to for info on how most people would react to pretty much anything...