Goblin Squad Member
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Call me old fashioned, or look no further than Diablo 3, Lineage Eternal or Torchlight. Am I alone in my belief that fully 3D MMORPGs lose more than they gain through utilising restrictive, costly and resource intensive 3D engines?
For further reference check these examples:
Isometric.
Floating Camera/3D.
Both offline and online, my greatest experiences in video games can be found within an isometric point of view. Such engines allow for far greater ease of control (especially for new MMORPG gamers), can be very kind on hardware requirements and offer a far smoother and immersive gameplay experience. Becoming a master of my floating camera has not been an endeavour I have enjoyed in any of my 14 years of online gaming, nor has the ability to see far onto the horizon been without the limitations of characters rezzing a maximum of a hundred yards ahead.
Fully fledged 3D games fall into a very similar trap in failing to differentiate themselves through a seemingly identical setup; blurring ones eyes slightly and almost every contemporary MMORPG becomes one and the same. This is very evident in the downgrading of engines such as that of World of Warcraft and The Old Republic in accommodating for low spec systems and a large quantity of simultaneous players in one area. Cartoony graphics and a dilution of detail are simply sacrifices made in acquiring a viewpoint which offers more problems than benefits. Personally I see this as detrimental to a titles character and identity when adopting this industry standard without serious consideration for alternatives. Upcoming and recent game titles alone have shown isometric view points to be both highly function, attractive and personally, far superior in the case of RPG and MMORPGs.
Graphics like this are more than functional and I was wondering what the communities views were on this topic?
Sidenote: Being an avid poster on predominantly MMORPG orientated websites, you cannot believe how refreshing it is to hear the opinions of normal people!
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I abhor isometric cameras. It's a huge turn-off for me and would be a giant, technological leap backwards if PFO were to do it in my humble opinion.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm a 2D overhead fan myself. There is more on the screen that you can decide to react to, and you don't have to spin yourself around and get your bearings all the time like you do with 3D.
Pathfinder on a battlemat is like 2D overhead, of course, and I prefer my CRPGs that way.
Edit: Well, I mean overhead view vs. over the shoulder or first person view. The overhead view can certainly use 3D.
Coldman,
i'd have to agree with you hands down...just put NWN in there somewhere :-P
You're right about the MMORPG oriented websites...only, we might be the ab-normal ones hehe...
I'm a 2D overhead fan myself.
...and I was thinking I was oldschool ;-)
Being an avid poster on predominantly MMORPG orientated websites, you cannot believe how refreshing it is to hear the opinions of normal people!
Who do you call normal?!
Ok, I admit a certain fondness for isometric graphics (Legend) but with current technology it should at least have ability to rotate it around to prevent some rogue trees and tricky walls covering you suddenly when you need clear view.
Being an avid poster on predominantly MMORPG orientated websites, you cannot believe how refreshing it is to hear the opinions of normal people!Who do you call normal?!
Ok, I admit a certain fondness for isometric graphics Legend but with current technology it should at least have ability to rotate it around to prevent some rogue trees and tricky walls covering you suddenly when you need clear view.
That's one of my huge problems with it. To overcome the shortcomings it becomes clunky to use (map rotation).
This is just fine for turn-based tactical map games, but causes a complete lack of immersion for me. I'm not a good looking down upon the measly world interacting only through an avatar... I AM that avatar!
At the very least I would like to view the world as if I were. And short of sending my consciousness directly into the computerized landscape, the over-the-shoulder and/or first person view is the closest we have to that.
I frequently played NWN2 with the camera zoomed way out, and overhead. So you can get the isometric look with a floating camera, but you can't get floating camera with isometric. Seems to me the floating camera would thus allow more freedom for players.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I loved isometric, but art styles and techniques have just moved on since those days. l wouldn't even know where to find an artist with isometric experience. And it would be almost impossible to translate modern lighting techniques. That's why even Diablo 3 is a 'pretend' isometric view - full 3D with a fixed camera.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Any reason not to do 1st person? Like Skyrim or Oblivion? I wouldn't mind that option if possible.
Unless the game is a shooter (where precise aim becomes important), third-person is usually chosen because it gives the player a greater sense of awareness of his character's surroundings.
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When it comes to camera placement, one man's "total crap" is another man's "total immersion". A wise designer wins this argument by refusing to enter into it at all.
In a modern 3d engine, POV is arbitrary and adjustable in game, so that a player's preferences may be allowed to predominate the way they play their game. All POVs are essentially technically valid and supported by the engine -- but certain game play advantages accrue to certain camera placements depending on the scenario. In almost all cases, this means that more information is better than less, and so an isometrically placed camera tends to provide more battlefield information.
The only real technical advantage that strict camera placement provides a developer is that by preventing certain camera angles in game, (looking straight up, say) the environmental artists do not need to model the normals on certain geometry as the game will never allow the character to see the object from that angle of view.
Other than that increasingly limited technical bonus, it just doesn't matter. Moreover, the longer that a game persists in the marketplace and the more that GPU power increases and certain camera placements come into vogue, the less the limited technical benefits derived from not having to model unseen geometry pays off. Consequently, almost no game engine does this anymore.
In short, my expectation is that camera placement will be arbitrary and selectable by the player. As it is in WoW, ToR and virtually all MMOs.
Now, if you are INSISTING that the game be balanced from a FPS perspective and inherently designed to be played that way -- you are asking for too much. People should not have camera placement foisted on them -- and sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
End result: Nothing to see here Citizens -- move along.
Isometric
Any reason not to do 1st person? Like Skyrim or Oblivion? I wouldn't mind that option if possible.Unless the game is a shooter (where precise aim becomes important), third-person is usually chosen because it gives the player a greater sense of awareness of his character's surroundings.
I find that interaction with surrounding is at best with 1st person, or at least, is the most immersing (which is a big + for me in RPGs). Unfortunately, 1st person is closely associated with (read inseparable from ) shooter games; which too bad IMO.
3rd person does offer the narcissistic gratification of looking at your own stuff however, which is a staple of fantasy...
Nothing is better than the isometric view of Diablo 2…and Diablo 3 looks amazing. It is easy for point-and-click mechanics.
However, I also enjoy exploring the landscape and watching mountains come in and out of screen during a 3rd person view.
I hate hate hate 1st person view. It is appropriate for shooters, but not much else. Besides, I am spending so much time to build up my avatar that I think I would deserve to see him/her as I play.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Any reason not to do 1st person? Like Skyrim or Oblivion? I wouldn't mind that option if possible.Unless the game is a shooter (where precise aim becomes important), third-person is usually chosen because it gives the player a greater sense of awareness of his character's surroundings.
+1 Floating Camera for me. See, I knew we would agree eventually. I second SB's opinion here...but more so for me is the simulation of proprioception that a full view of your character gives in a system that only has visual feedback.
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Goblin Squad Member
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+1 Floating Camera for me. See, I knew we would agree eventually. I second SB's opinion here...but more so for me is the simulation of proprioception that a full view of your character gives in a system that only has visual feedback.
I'll note that this isn't necessarily my personal opinion (by which I mean, how I would prefer the game to work if I got my way). Very little that I say is. I'm typically speaking with an eye towards the game's success, whether or not it would be something I play. I like to think that I represent a pretty mainstream perspective on gameplay, and that my tastes are varied enough to enjoy any high-quality game experience, but I'm not trying to make this my ideal game - that's simply an impossibility.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Some thoughts on camera.
I've noticed some mmos don't place the camera pivot point inside the character model and that affects the feeling of being in touch with your avatar in the game world in a hampering way in my opinion. If you check WoW, the camera pivot point is smack middle inside the character model and this works very well in my opinion.
Second: I also hope that holding the right mouse button and moving the mouse at the same time rotates the whole character and not just the head and the camera. If the head turns to look while the character rotates that's cool also. I think this affects the feel of being in touch with the avatar also. And if I remember correctly, this is how it is in WoW also.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I also hope that holding the right mouse button and moving the mouse at the same time rotates the whole character and not just the head and the camera.
It is my long-time hope that "standard" Mouse-Look/Mouse-Move will be used.
If you hold the Left Mouse Button, you turn the camera but not the character. If you hold the Right Mouse Button, you turn the camera and the character. If you hold both Mouse Buttons simultaneously, the character will move in the direction the camera is facing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you've played gw2, there's the same system as in wow with the some tweaks that I'm not really into.
The camera pivot is never inside the avatar.
If you move the camera using the rightbutton only the camera moves, but the model aligns itself with the camera when you start moving. This gives a feeling of moving a camera/character combination which is not good in my opinion.
Sometimes small things matter...
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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At this point, literal isometric is simply off the table; that change would literally require redoing all of the art and almost all of the game, and would end up worse.
3d, with a top-down camera (one of the options from NWN) would not require the same level of rework, and might be trivial to implement. I don't see any compelling reason for or against it, nor for or against first-person or over-the-shoulder cameras. (There's a very weak argument against the first-person camera, in that it make it harder to keep the camera from getting close to low-resolution textures than an over-the-shoulder camera does, meaning that low-res textures (and strange geometry) impact perceived quality less with an OTS camera.
