Is there a reason MMORPG's don't have save game states? ...Or do they?

You're in a dungeon with your group, about to kill the last boss and get the reward you so desperately wanted. Before then, you, a powerful level 10 warrior with OVER 9000 XP!!!!!!! must defeat a level 1 rat. Not a giant rat, but a normal rat.

In real life, your cat, dog, significant other, or coca cola bottle accidentally hits the power button on your computer, and everything shuts down! If you have none of the above, it could be Dr.Pepper or Sweet Tea. Otherwise, a meteor strikes through your house, destroying your computer, with a message from an alien saying "Why are you alone? Have a Dr.Pepper, on me. -Arlogkhj the Kind, Master Alien of Planet Chubacco (P.S. the J in Arlogkhj is silent.)"

After a fast restart, you dbl click your desktop icon before your computer is done loading, type your username password (giving it to the Korean gangsters you bought gold from) and log in...only to find that the level 1 rat hit you for 1 damage... OVER 9000!!!!!!!!! times. So much for Conan the Immortal. Your group kicks you out and you're expelled from your guild, "Wow, you disconnected right when we started and we all wiped. Get a better computer and tell Arlogkhj he's a @#$@."

Pondering how your group knew of your new alien friend (...or better yet-- why they didn't kill the level 1 rat for you...) you forsake your diet to get thin like you once were and you down your Dr.Pepper while running to your room full of Justin Bieber posters. You dive into bed, hugging your pillow with Miley Cyrus playing in the background. "It's not fair!!! It's just nOT FAIR!!!!!!! Waaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!"



All of these tragic events could have been prevented with a save game state, or a "drop" feature which has been around in the RTS genre longer than Starcraft 1.
In singleplayer encounters, the entire dungeon could "pause" via a save game state and load upon reentry. In a multiplayer cooperative encounter, it could pause with a popup allowing your group to wait for your return, or drop you and continue on.
Yet regardless of these features, a simple "auto-target enemy and begin attacking" would suffice much of the time, as many of these games are quite easy. So much so a child could win against a lower level mob, especially a level 1 one, because remember, you have experience OVER 9000!!!!!


Is there a REASON no one has done this before? MMORPG's and all games use save states and similar features. RTS games are modernized to include the "Drop Popup" although they don't allow reconnects (which IMO is VERY stupid, given that some RTS games can take HOURS to complete, and a single drop can ruin the entire experience for everyone involved).

 

MMO servers know exactly when you've disconnected, the reason they keep your character in the game for about a minute before timing out is to stop people from cheating the system.

Imagine a character in a group attacking all the enemies in an area and then logging off just before he dies, his character will disappear and all he has to do is wait for the monster to clear away and then log back in again.

There are countless ways a client can cheat in online games and MMOs in particular will do everything they can to take control away from the client (never trust the client) which is also why clients don't control movement speed or special powers, it's all server based to stop people sending false information like 2X speed or infinite health

 

Yep... did I miss what that has to do with the topic? Like...(and I don't mean to be rude at all) what is your point?

I am not being sarcastic, just a bit confused.

Thanks

 

You seem to have a complaint about disconnects in an MMO, clearly you can't have any information stored on the client and your information is stored perpetually on the server so I'm not sure what you mean by save states.

Also pausing an online game for every disconnect is just well... obviously extremely annoying for all the other players involved who will more than likely drop out of the match as soon as they get a disconnected player as they may or may not rejoin again.

Now if you're talking about games with only a few players then I think they already do pause the game but no MMO will ever do this because there are too many players to ever justify pausing the game

 

It wouldn't be extremely annoying to the players. Why? Because a linkdead is significantly more annoying than an instant pause. Often you don't notice someone is linkdead for several minutes, and people end up waiting several minutes for them to return. Players in groups going linkdead is very annoying in its own regard, much more so than a convenient feature.

RTS players aren't extremely annoyed when the game is paused to wait for someone's connection, any more than they are even MORE annoyed that there is ANY problem, ANY lag, or the inevitable worse: losing someone entirely.
When you have been playing a 2v2 or 3v3 match for 1 hour and it's 20 minutes to 1 hour more to end, and your teammate disconnects, it's SIGNIFICANTLY more upsetting than if your teammate lags for a few seconds or even minutes.
The time it takes to start over, as well as the progress you lose because you can't continue without them, is certainly worse than any waiting, even a long wait.

If the other players immediately drop their group mates, then it's NOT annoying, as they instantly get a 100% guarantee that the person is linkdead, and can IMMEDIATELY continued playing. This is MUCH better than going on for 5 minutes not realizing there is even a problem, until the person stops responding, and waiting for 5 more minutes to see if the person is responding (emergency afk and will return), went linkdead but will be back immediately, or is gone permanently.

Pausing the game is in personal dungeons or instances, not the actual game world. Why would anyone suggest the entire world pausing because of a disconnect? That doesn't make any sense, as the game would never unpause. Obviously it would be for ONLY that group, and ONLY in personal instances. Well, it could be in the game world, but only the players and the correlating mobs would be paused, as pausing people outside of a group is entirely pointless and utterly stupid.


For instance, the group of 4 is in the Deadmines instance in WoW, and one player disconnects right before the final boss. The game will most likely be paused ANYWAY as players wait for the person to return, being unable to fight the boss without their healer, mage, or tank. It is also courteous to wait for a reconnect. However, what if that disconnect occurs in the middle of the boss fight? The player will stand there doing absolutely nothing, and the team will be slaughtered. Why? Because of networking. They aren't being punished for sucking as players. They aren't losing because they are inadequate. They just potentially lost the entire instance (as well as death punishment) for something entirely outside the game or player's control.

There is no reason the game cannot fix this feature.
At the very minimum, allow AI control to take over.

It also has MUCH MORE to do than just disconnects and going link dead. There are times when a player needs to log off, whether immediately or because their time is up in the game and they have to go. Why should a player be punished going through a 1-2 hour dungeon, losing all their progress, because they don't have time to play?

There is no reason the game cannot save the instance and everything within it upon logout, EVEN DURING COMBAT, if the player is alone. This is NOT a "save game" they get to keep reloading. This is a PAUSE. Save games for the client means that singleplayer can reload that save point anytime they die and try again from that spot. No! This is a pause, which upon logout pauses everything, saves all the information, and upon logging in allows the player to resume where they left off.

With how instancing dungeons works, really there isn't much of a reason this cannot be done without much more effort, but is a great feature to add for casual players.

 

If you do that, some people will complain that the AI didn't do what you would have done. I guess the problem is much more complex than you think it is. Someone already brought up preventing cheating. I guess that's the major problem there because in the past, smart players did intentionally pull the plug to gain an advantage when MMO-developers tried to be "nice" to their players ;-)

The example you gave with the rat is not really a good example because if you're playing with people with brains, they will see that you're beaten up by a rat and make sure you don't have any real trouble. Usually, when someone is linkdead, someone else in the raid (or group) will notice and warn the others. If it's someone important, they'll usually wait or just get rid of some trash mobs (like ... lvl 1 rats ;-) ). In "good guilds", when this takes longer than 2 minutes, they'll even call you on the phone to make sure you didn't die in front of your computer because the lvl 1 rat scared you to death (or to make sure that you weren't abducted by aliens).

So, I don't really see the problem that needs to be solved there. If this kind of thing happens in the middle of an encounter ... well, then you are in trouble but there's no realistic way to solve this except players being really skilled and handling the unexpected situation "professionally" (e.g. protect the linkdead player, hoping they'll get back online ASAP - that's really what tanks are for ;-) ).

Your question is also a bit misleading because persistent online worlds (which MMOs usually are), do keep the game state all the time. That's why they are called "persistent".

In which game do you lose all your progress when exiting after 1-2 hours? That's bad game design. At least in WoW, there's a couple of solutions to your issue:

a) Most normal instances usually don't last longer than 1 hour. If you have less time - you can simply leave the instance; nothing lost (except, maybe, some friends ;-) ).

b) Raid instances which usually take 3-4 hours to complete have instance IDs. So you can without any problem leave after 2 hours, and return the next day (at least, if the 24 people you're playing with agree that this is a good idea ;-) ). People do that all the time. Instance IDs are reset once a week (I think on a specific day ... it's been quite a while that I played WoW). Of course, if you're so smart that you have your 2 hour session right before the instance is reset ... well, that's really not the game designer's fault.


Ah ... and also your example "fighting the boss, and then someone goes linkdead". Again, this is a non-issue: When first trying to a fight a difficult boss, it's very usual that the group / raid wipes. That happens all the time even when no one goes linkdead. Solution (as implemented in WoW): You don't have to do it all again because all the previous bosses are already gone (this again works with instance IDs; which in a way are "saved game states" per player/group/instance).

All you do is return to the instance, run to where the boss is and try again.

In the end, it all comes down to proper game design for multiplayer. And one aspect of that is that players can disconnect.

 

i would grief every group i am in with disconnects and pause their game

you compare RTS multiplayermatches with MMOs, good one + i guess you have a different understanding on what is annoying than 99% of other gamers out there.

 

Few ridiculous workarounds:
- Get yourself few BTUs (to be able to finish your quests/missions or whatever when the power comes down).
- Keep your computer free off crashes (test your drivers, antivirus, background apps, etc) before playing.
- Protect your computer from hardware failures (make sure to have a raid setup, and quality hardware).
- Don't drink, don't eat, neither pee or poo on place (bring the toilets near you or move your computer near the toilets)
- Close your doors and windows to avoid any alien abduction (even if they can teleport you to their ships, it reduces their chances of abduction).
- About the meteor crashing in your house. Well, this one is tricky, something that comes to mind quick is "move your house!" Yeah, you can play in a mobile trailer house and move your house while the meteor is coming. And don't worry, those aren't light beans, you'll have plenty of time to see the monster coming (if you aren't in front of your desk of course). ^^

 

Few things.

Firstly, it's not always certain exactly when a player DCs unless they close the client themselves. A player that atually DCs has to time out. You can't just DC a player instantly just because he lags for a bit. Usually 20s or so and most games will display when a player has DC'd, even when not removed from game.

Secondly, automatically removing a player when a DC is detected is bad. For starters it's very exploitive in pvp just being able to alt-f4 to avoid death. But worse, being able to control exactly when you are removed from server has been used in various exploits in years past to do stuff such as duplicating items.

 

Even if it was only features in dungeons it could be heavily abused as well. Consider timed runs, where you have "x" minutes to accomplish something within a dungeon to get a bonus reward. If you could pause the dungeon by having someone fake a DC quick then it greatly diminishes how difficult that sort of accomplishment is.

But even if you didn't allow the pause to pause timed events (only AI interactions) it could still be heavily abused. Imagine going up against the insanely difficult new raid boss that everyone is waiting for - you, as the raid leader, realize it's going to hell and you don't have much time to explain an altered strategy to your group - or maybe a key player died and you need to figure out a viable alternative quickly. Well just have Joe the DPS'er fake a DC while you guys can chat it up about it and the encounter will be paused for you.

Those are only the two most obvious (to me) ways it could be abused - if MMORPG players have proven anything over the years it's that they'll find incredible ways to abuse just about any game mechanic. Allowing for a pause in dungeons feels like opening up a whole crate of worms without any *real* benefit.

For most people DC's are an infrequent annoyance - for some they happen more regularly. Any guild who is going to get so annoyed at a DC that they'll kick you on the spot is the same guild that's going to get annoyed at you pausing the encounter (and screwing up everyone's mental timings in the process) - either is going to be annoying enough to warrant benching you if it's too frequent an occurrence.

So lets say hypothetically it was only available in small team dungeons (5 man or so), not raids - and that it did not stop any meaningful dungeon-specific timers. Then there's still the enormous question of "how long before we consider someone link-dead to the point where we pause the game for you?" 5 seconds? A lot of people lag like that on a regular basis, and it would be prohibitively annoying to pause the game everyone time someone lags out for 5 seconds. 20 seconds? Chances are if you were going to wipe without them, it would have happened by now.

I don't think it's a question of "nobody has thought of this yet" - but a question of "Well, we weighed the pro's and con's and really don't think it's something our game would benefit from implementing."

 

...Says who exactly? I have to tell you it is extremely annoying when you have to wait 54 seconds for someone to finally stop lagging, just so in a couple minutes there lag timer restarts and you have to wait another 54 seconds. In most cases, I just can't wait for it to get to that last second so I can press that awesome drop button, and this is when its a league game, not custom. ITS EVEN WORSE IN CUSTOM (simply because it doesn't matter at all if you lose your team mate.

On the other hand, if its going to be a couple of seconds here and there because they have an internet connection that's only 1 step up from dial-up, then its OK. It really just gets annoying after 15-20 seconds.

And as has been stated, there are reasons for making it so a MMO doesn't work this way. Not because its annoying (even though it truly is).

 

As opposed to the character doing absolutely NOTHING?

I really don't view it as "Will people complain?" as much as "Which would be worse? An AI that may not be ask good as a player, or an AI who does NOTHING letting you sit there and die?"

No one will get upset at a feature that increases your likely hood of survival on disconnect from 0% to even 10%, let alone more. I also imagine that the AI could be very simple, such as "Get Away and Log Out". Something as simple as "If being attacked, then attack back and use abilities to hinder the enemy, and run away. Once safe, log out. If attacked while trying to log out, hinder and run away more."

When designing a game, you don't HAVE to implement a feature that is full proof against complaints. That would just be silly! Some people will complain about anything and everything. Yet having a feature that tries its best to let you survive AS OPPOSED TO doing absolutely nothing, guaranteed that you will 100% die unless you can log back in fast enough (and even so, probably will die.)

No one would "grief" others by disconnecting. The players can immediately click "Drop" and the only person that was griefed was you. I don't think anyone would get their jollies off.

Schlumpfsack: Hahaha you guys are SCREWED! *unplugs his internet*
*PAUSE* Drop Schlumpssack? *Group clicks 'Yes'*
*3 seconds have passed*
Group Leader: What was that about?
Group Member: No Idea... let's go!
Group Mocker: Look at me, I'm Schlumpfsack! Dur dur dur! I'm so S.M.A.T.!

 

roflmao, great post, and I loved your solution for the meteor! lmao!!

 

Says you, the person who didn't quote the full sentence.

Taking a sentence and cutting it in half can completely change the meaning, as you just did. I did not say what you quoted, I said this:

I never said they wouldnt get annoyed. Only you made that claim. I said they are no more annoyed at pause-drops than they are annoyed at lag. I never said they weren't annoyed at lag.

Troll failed dude. Please read the entire sentence before replying, or don't bother replying.

 

It is quite obvious that MMORPG's constantly have save game states. This was the point of the thread, showing how easy these simple feature would be.

There are plenty of ways to implement it without allowing players to abuse the system. Every MMO is different, so this would be more or less a beneficial feature depending. However, it is quite a good idea, as disconnects ARE quite common, and deaths by them, unlike what some of you stated here, certainly does happen, even in skilled and attentive groups.

Even if it doesn't happen often, it certainly does happen.
I'm surprised at the lack of support for such a feature among developers here. On every other forum I discussed the idea on, the gamers or developers absolutely loved the idea, and some stated that it would fix their biggest problems with MMO's, allowing them to play when they otherwise wouldn't.

Such a simple feature already inherent in the game, and I completely disagree that players would abuse the feature, as the developer gets to design the feature depending on the game. Also, to ever state a good feature shouldn't be implemented because "It can be abused by players!" is just silly if you actually develop games. Players can abuse anything and everything...but that doesn't mean the feature can't be designed to prevent abuse. I am grateful developers don't live in fear like some of you do, dismissing an idea out of fear of abuse without realizing that the developer can alter the feature at any moment. Innovation and casual-friendly features are important for progression. Fear will only lead to boredom and stagnation.

The fact you could allow a PAUSE in private instances or AI take-over to attack the target back is a vast improvement over the AI doing absolutely nothing, sitting there while a level 1 rat takes the expert player down over time.

You also must take into consideration that a MMO is a MMO. There are thousands of players who play...which means that even if "most players" dont have problems and the chance to die from going linkdead is slim, it doesn't mean it doesn't directly effect hundreds if not thousands of players. 1% of 1000 is 10, and that's a lot of players.

 

I am completely baffled by anybody trying to reason with the OP.

 

The only place it would work are instances, which are at their core really not any different that RTS games: private game sessions with a limited amount of players.

That said, not every MMORPG has instances, and those that do usually have both instances and persistent content (eg: WoW), and it would not be worth the time and money to invest in developing different network protocols and linkdeath/pausing procedures for different situations when the benefit would be negligible at best.

 

No need to insult me because your brain is limited in the ability to not understand Potential Abuse != Bad Idea.

I am baffled by the fact so many people are repetitively mentioning "flaws" in the idea such as abuse in PvP or it only working in "instances" when the OP talks about how this would only be done in private instances among cooperative or single players...

The sole fact no one can comprehend the following sentence from the OP shows that it is not I who have trouble with reasoning or logic skills, but those too...incapable...of basic reading comprehension or problem-solving.
I understand everyone is capable of finding potential flaws in someone else's ideas, but I really don't believe I'm the only person who looks at someones idea, comes up with those flaws, and says "Yea, but that could be fixed by [solution], so the idea is pretty good!"

It seems most people give up on ideas without even attempting problem solving. Perhaps they are just incapable of any form of post-formal thought processing? I don't believe so. I'm sure anyone here could fix this idea to prevent abuse. I just think most here are simply looking to troll and bash others, not actually think about the idea.

Look at legend, for example, he clearly sees how it would work, and the requirements of the game for it to be a great feature. He does not say "This is a horrible idea because it wouldn't work in WoW!!!!111" or "I didn't actually read what you said, but your idea is stupid!" No. Instead, he used his brain to both see flaws AND solve them in his own mind, before posting.

I only wish more people were as intelligent as him, and not as 13 year old as you.

 

Great post.

The idea would be implemented in a game where dungeons are instanced and cooperative or singleplayer instanced. Obviously the pause, save, and logout of a character upon quit or disconnect would only occur in Singleplayer. The pause would occur in private multiplayer. The end, as you stated, it would need to be instanced to work well.

However, the computer AI taking over could work in ANY situation, including PvP. It would not be beneficial to unplug either, as 99.99% of players > limited, basic npc AI.

However, it's a bit easier to survive disconnects or emergency log-offs when you have an AI that safes "play defensively and try to get back to a safe spot." while others in PvP make attempts to block the pursuing enemy players. The enemy still has the advantage, as a player who retreats or logs off is a player who is no longer a threat. This is especially abuse-free in a game where PvP is objective based, as opposed to a pointless free for all massacre.

Most MMORPG's already have linkdead protocals where upon disconnection, the players are informed of the linkdead player. It does take a bit, but it's ALREADY a normal feature in modern MMO's. Adding an AI-Takeover command or a Pause? option is not going to be a significant amount of work for such a progressive feature.

Well, developing the AI (if it was not already developed) would, but certainly not a pause or save feature. Even so, something as small and simple as turning on Auto-Attack automatically upon being attacked (which some games do, but some do not) would help to prevent linkdead deaths.

 

This is not a debate... it is a feature already done in RTS games.

There are thousands of players who would like me. I already know a very large (small) amount that have said this feature alone would cause them to subscribe, as they CANNOT play a MMO without it.

 

I guess it really depends on the type of game - but creating an AI just for the sake of fixing trouble with network connections (or crashing computers) seems rather expensive to me. AI - even game AI - is not a trivial field. Like, in some cases it may be great if the player beats the rat up. But in other cases, another player e.g. "sheeping" the rat might get really upset at the AI for good reasons. Then again, the AI might be used as some sort of "bot" when it's "too good".

Of course, every problem can be solved - but will the time and trouble invested really be worth the effort? Especially, when there's other solutions already available that are much easier to implement (instance IDs and the like which make the "cost" for a player that loses their connection comparatively harmless). Keep in mind: In many games, a "wipe" really isn't such a big deal. It's a bit annoying, especially when it's the 10th in a row, or when it's because of a network failure - but usually, you just get everyone back together and try again.

On the other hand, when it's a game that has "AI agents" as part of its game design, the situation changes. In that case, implementing "AI takes over when player no longer does anything or connection is known to be lost" might be a low hanging fruit. Also "pausing" could be part of your game mechanics. If carefully planned, that could be quite interesting - and when you already have it, why not also use it for network dropouts.

Also, if you have something like "permanent death" (a player char that dies *really* dies), you absolutely have to find a solution that this will never happen to a player "by accident" (while you also have to prevent people from pulling the plug just to save themselves). Maybe that's one of the reasons such drastic things are really really rare in actual games.

 

and how would they know i had no disconnect? magic powers?
This makes no sense at all.

Why don't people kick you now if you have a disconnect after 3 seconds? because today they don't know if it is a real disconnect, but with your "game pause" solution, they get power to see if it is griefing or not???????

 

Good point.

I guess that's where everyone else sees different. My game design includes permanent death, which is WHY I had to come up with a solution.

Also, the AI in the game is the major feature (Players can play as the "Hero" or "Boss" with permadeath chance, or as a "Minion" without any penalty and for free)

There were many players who told me they would absolutely love to play a game (MMO or permadeath) but their connection problems made it 100% impossible for them to ever even want to play. On releasing this idea, several immediately jumped at the idea, smiling, "Wow, even a very simple AI would make it where I could play!"

However, I am discussing TWO separate ideas. The AI vs the Pause feature.
You had great points though. Much more intelligent than the others who dismiss it for reasons of possible "abuse" as if abuse doesn't come with ANY and ALL features, lol.

In my browser game, you can cheat just by moving off-screen, lol. Movement is abused! Ahhh!! According to others, I'd better just not allow the player to move. Too much possible abuse and grief in multiplayer to allow the movement feature.

 

It makes perfect sense, I don't really see why you don't understand it.

In many MMO's, a linkdead player must start over the instance (as he logs in outside of the instance) upon official linkdead. If someone goes linkdead, many people don't know it and have to wait.

If someone is just afk, the pause will never happen.
If someone goes linkdead, it will.

It is definitely beneficial for the group to know if a player has went afk or gone linkdead.

If they want to /kick you, they can at any moment. Just because theres a lnkdead doesnt mean they wont wait for you. They can simply click "UnPause" and continue WITHOUT kicking you.

The entire feature of "PAUSE" is to PROTECT players while they are IN combat.

 

good luck balancing an MMO that you can "pause" ^^

 

Yes indeed, I shouldn't have not quoted the whole thing, as my post still stands. Like I said I would much rather lose someone entirely (and most people I know feel the same way), than have lag. Besides, I did read the whole thing. I almost always read the entire thing before replying.


... Did you seriously call me a troll? I was stating my opinions and saying you don't quite have the nail hit with the hammer, it was more constructive than not.

 

emergence: people have answered your question of "why don't MMOs save your game state" A DIFFERENT subject would be, "Here is my suggestion to implement save states in a MMO". That would be an applaudable effort and I'm sure it would be supported. You could even make pausing the game, part of the game play (i.e. 'and yet it moves' on the Wii). Or you could make a system where, if a player tags a mob and then pauses, the player AND the mob will pause while the rest of the world passes by around them. I'm sure that would be exploited, i.e. any low level toon could tag a rare mob with good loot, pause, and wait for friends to come help. In fact, sending 5 people to camp in 5 different locations and then teaming up to kill the mob(s) when they spawn would be pretty common, I bet. But you could just make that part of the game - possibly it would encourage people to not act like jerks on the global chat because who's gonna share their mob with the person who keeps spamming Chuck Norris jokes and Anal [Eviscerator]?

Nope. You can break the OP's question down to the first sentence of the thread title, "Is there a reason MMORPG's don't have save game states?" Lots of reasons were given to answer the OPs question. The OP has disagreed with the rational behind those reasons- which is his/her prerogative - but I see little point in the OP trying to convince anyone that (for example) WOW should allow instances to be saved on disconnect. We don't program for WOW and we aren't in any position to change how WOW operates.

The OP asked for reasons, and people have provided reasons.

 

So sue me for quoting myself, but anyways...

You could make some sort of storyline where characters have the ability to stop time, so it makes sense to do so. We could spend all day coming up with story lines and fictional technology and visual queues to make it work. Saving states in a MMO is not impossible, and can possibly be done with great advantage (the novelty alone might make a game popular if done right), but it still stands that current MMOs don't use save states for good reason. Current MMOs are not designed for in-combat save states, specifically the prevention of very likely exploitation.

 

Ah, ok ... that changes the perspective entirely. I agree with Mike Ekim: The subject probably wasn't ideal for what you really wanted. Keep in mind that even when people read the complete posting, the subject is really why people click on the thread and it really sets the expectations.

So, IMHO, probably you would have received more interesting results with a subject like "how can network disconnects be handled in a game with permanent death". Well, maybe not ... probably most people are not too familiar with the concept of permanent death in MMOs and given that the tone in this forum has severely degraded, it may have had the same or similar results (so I guess I'd stick with Mike's recommendation of focussing on the solutions instead of the problems "what about pause and AI to solve network disconnects in persistent multiplayer games?")

Anyways, back to the issue ;-) ... I've read about permanent death in Richard Bartle's "Designing Virtual Worlds" and found the idea very fascinating. However, I haven't yet made up my mind whether or not I will really implement this in RaMtiGA (that's where I'm considering implementing it) and one reason is the risk of network disconnects and the resulting unfairness. In any case, I would limit the situations in which your character could die to situations that are completely voluntary. In other words: Players will be able to play the game without ever having the risk for their char to be killed. However, if they want to be real heros, they can put themselves into real risk ("permanent death" would really mean your character is gone for good ... however, I'd implement some sort of reincarnation which will make your "new-born" character learn things quicker, kind of like in real life; so it wouldn't be like you'd completely start from scratch - but it would certainly cost you a day or two of pure play time to get back to where you were before).

I'm really not sure whether I would be willing to get involved in an encounter that has the potential of permanently killing my char even with an AI fallback when I have a very unstable connection. At least not if there's any value in the char (obviously, if the char is just something I've invested a few hours into, permanent death isn't a big deal).

What about allowing a player you trust to take over your char while you're disconnected? Basically, what you'd do is this: You'd have an in-game agreement with another player from your group that when you lose your connection, they can take over your char. Obviously, this would be a real challenge for the other player because they'd have to control two chars simultaneously. However, they would have the opportunity to "save your life", which is certainly something heroic. One solution from the user interface perspective is a split-screen approach, with keyboard actions going into the currently active part of the screen.

This approach would prevent any sort of cheating and would most likely give you much better chances of surviving such an issue than an AI. You could still support the player controlling two chars with some simple AI features (like "smart auto-attack" or "smart follow").

With the "Pause-approach", I certainly wouldn't implement that in a way that's automatically pausing the game on a disconnect. One thing that you could do in PvP environments is pop up a window for everyone saying "player X disconnected, please pause for a moment". Then, the player can decide whether they want to honor that or not ... in PvE based games ... I really don't see pause as an option unless it's integrated into the game mechanics as a real element that you could always play with (even without disconnecting). Otherwise, it will certainly be used for cheating.

 

dude if you lost someone entirely in a RTS game that had already ran for 1 hour in a 2v2 or 3v3, then you would lose.
So you'd rather play for 1 hour and then lose 100% than to have lag? Yea right. No one wants to lose HOURS of a great game because of a silly disconnect. Emergence obviously bested you bc you didnt read his post all the way through and instead of apologizing or admitting you were wrong you say you'd rather lose someone in a RTS game?
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! liar lol

The guy never talked about WOW, what are you talking about? maybe its just me but I agree with emergence when he says some ppl cant read LOL. i'm not the smartest here but even i am smart enough to understand what he is talkin about and see he never asked if games have save game states. learn to take a joke and read a book plz bc im cracking up at how you cant read LOL

 

The conversation was enlightening, albeit a bit unnecessarily heated But as others have mentioned, I don't think the title was appropriate, hence the heat. I'm not even sure you were really talking about save states, but more just the pausing/AI takeover thing (I mean, clearly "true" save-states would not work in a persistent world that continues to operate when you are not there )

I think the AI takeover thing could possibly work, but it would REALLY depend on the game mechanics. For instance, if I went LD during a raid boss in WoW, the difference between me simply not doing anything and autoattacking would hardly make any difference in the outcome of the battle. And to make it any more sophisticated would be immensely complex once you get into the complexities of all the different classes, how many abilities they have, and taking into account the positional and strategy factors of different boss encounters, you'd have to create a ridiculously complex AI algorithm for the takeover bot. Then you'd have to ask yourself "How good should the bot play?" Which would add a whole new layer of complexity.

 

i liked ur post and agree. i read he was talkin about different things but all related to the same thing. its immature for ppl to get upset and troll and flame someone because the title is purposefully an obvious and stupid question to draw ppl in. im not the smartest perosn here but even i had no problem with the title bc im not a troll and i have enough common sense to see how its on time. save game states work in both pausing and alternatively AI so it isnt off topic even someone dumb like me could figure it out. im worried about the community when the ppl here are dumber than me. that means they are some form of disabled LOL

bunch of kids on the forums if they gonna get upset that the "title is wrong" LOL this forum has gone down hill when ppl cant make a thread to discuss multiple ideas and instead trolls gangup and flame them for not having a correct title and spamming the forums with multiple threads each for each idea. i was absolutely amazed at how incompetant some of these ppl are not understanding how it would be a good feature. players would like this and it would advance the mmo experience like getting rid of time sinks or getting rid of xp loss or hour long travel times LOL

ppl here posting and disagreeing with the idea are like those weirdo ppl who want to keep level loss in everquest and get punished for no reward or benefit. at least emergence wants to give rewards with loss and from what ive read elsewhere his idea for permadeath is less progress loss than everqeust 1 was where u could lose levels but the levels took days to get. u see permadeath everyday in FPS games and RTS games so its not a big deal taking it into a MMO. ppl disagreed with emergence bc they were too dumb to see it and i was one of them until he explained the rest of the game and i was like dude that makes sense and that sounds cool. i admit i was the same as the other dumb ppl who were too closed minded to understand a MMO can be anything u want it to be it desnt have to be a copy of everquest or world of crapcraft.

 

The difference between lag and loosing a player that many people are missing is this:

Lag is just generally annoying... To just about everyone. Humans hate waiting and when doing anything related to media, they naturally expect things to flow smoothly. Because of this, not many people will play a game that has low frame rates or poor network latency.

Drops on the other hand, although annoying to some, is much more opinionated than lag. If you did a survey, I am sure you would find that while some people claim that drops are too annoying and must be dealt with, you would also find many of disagreed, claiming that drops are not that big of a problem.

When weighing the two contenders, you'll see that lag, being a problem for generally all players, far outweighs drops,which only annoy some of the player base. This is why developers tend to spend their development funds on resolving the former rather than the latter.

Your opinion is only one of billions. The majority always rules in these scenarios.

 

the majority never rule in game development dude only the game developers decisions rule and matter. the majority dont make games.

besides ur still wrong if you asked ppl if they'd rather... play an RTS for 2 hours and then 20 minutes before finishing an epic game, play with.... lag for the last 20 minutes OR suffer a drop on their team, losing 100%, making the entire 2 hours played an ENTIRE WASTE, with no chance of winning now or even playing bc the moment the player is dropped that team loses.

no one would pick the drop. ppl dont want to lose 2 hours of work and surrender an epic game they invested heavily in to win bc they dont want to play with "some lag" for the last 20 minutes. my god dude do u even play RTS games? if u did u would know that ppl play with lag regardless of anything. ppl dont want drops more than they dont want lag. emergence said they were annoyed at lag too but drops are worse and i agree u just dont play RTS games if u dont know what its like to play a 2 hour game and about to win but ur teammate drops so u lose. that is horrible man its so upsetting bc it doesnt matter if ur the best player in the game and the ai takes over u will still lose bc 2 > 1+AI bigtime in RTS and the entire 2 hours of playtime were completely worthless bc the game just *ends* before someone wins.

 

And who are you to claim everyone's decision?

I am just saying that humans are instinctively impatient creatures. You would be hard pressed to find a human (Granted there are most definitly some out there) who are able to tolerate lag for more than a couple seconds.

Also, where the hell did you come from? You have 8 posts, all of which are in the gossip section, and your name is "RonnyRulz". You don't exactly sound qualified to bash me on any of the topics you have done so.

Furthermore, it almost seems too much of a coincidence that all of your arguments that I have seen are defending emergeance and using his biased arguments as basis.

 

EVE online has permadeath in that you lose your ship you bought if it gets blown up.
In that game if you lose internet connection your ship carries on doing what it did before so the guns will keep firing but importantly the whole universe doesn't suddenly pause and you ship doesn't disappear, you just have to log back and and hope your ship is still there when you get back.

Simply, pausing an MMO game is never going to happen.
Making your character disappear or gain some kind of advantage after a disconnect is also never going to happen in a PVP heavy game like EVE online due to cheating players.

Lame star craft 1 players used to pull the plug on their connection when it was clear they were gonna lose so that the loss wouldn't register on their account. If a player had a high number of disconnects then people tend not to play with them.

There are many clever people working on MMOs, I'm sure they've thought this through very carefully.

 

This topic is really sad. Carebear rule the world.

"I already know a very large (small) amount that have said this feature alone would cause them to subscribe, as they CANNOT play a MMO without it. "

Let me guess, kindergarden?

 

Says who I would lose? I have won before, all it means is you get twice the income and twice the amount of units. In some cases its a big advantage. I assure you, I keep away from lying dude. Like I said, I would much rather lose someone to lag than have the stupid screen appear really often... Oh, and if we were playing a game with lag for an hour, we wouldn't have gotten far into it because of the lag.

 

This reminds me:

http://www.sosariantales.com/Tale 10 pk piffle.htm

We were playing online games for more than decade, there are even people, who play online games professionaly (mmo, rts, fps...), so loosing costs them money. Nobody ever complained and cried for some save carebear mechanism preventing loosing. Even in age of 33.6 modems, when lags and loosing connection was something happening almost nonstop.
How often do you loose, or die because of lag? Once a month? Mostly you die or loose, because your oponent is better. But for new, modern kindergarden generation of "gamers" is loosing something unimaginable. They have never lose a game in their life, because nowdays is almost impossible to loose in game. Then they go online a got terrible owned and their reaction is calling mum and crying on forums for some tons of save mechanisms preventing loosing. Sad story is, that many game designers do it, because they think, they will sell more copies.

 

The OP DID discuss WoW. You have helped prove the point that some people can't read.