Incline Suppose you could fly in an MMO

[Not.AI]

1. How large would the world have to be?

2. How large would you expect the world to be?

3. How large would you want the world to be?

(All different questions when you think about it.)

Me. I have not seen flying done well in any RPG other than Dragon Knight Saga (Divinity 2). Have you seen flying done well?

Me. Both good and bad idea for players to have a jetpack (Elex). That, too, was single player.

 

[laclongquan]

City of Heroes/Villains done this pretty well I think. Once you get access to Jump ability or Fly, the whole map seem to open up very wide.

 

[Bester]

It's like asking "suppose you have a power punch in an MMO, how much damage would it do?"

There's no context in your question. Gameplay mechanics determine how often you want to encounter other players. Depending on THAT, you want to balance the MOVING SPEED of flying against WORLD SIZE, but also taking into account naturally forming clusters of people for various gameplay reasons.

Your question absolutely sucks. In early MUDs, it was the norm to have 6-9 rooms per number of players during peak hours. And that's only because Muds are a very simplistic representation of an MMO. In a 3d MMO, it all depends on a huge number of factors.

 

[Not.AI]

It's like asking "suppose you have a power punch in an MMO, how much damage would it do?"

There's no context in your question. Gameplay mechanics determine how often you want to encounter other players. Depending on THAT, you want to balance the MOVING SPEED of flying against WORLD SIZE, but also taking into account naturally forming clusters of people for various gameplay reasons.

Your question absolutely sucks.

Context is bad for creativity. Whoever presupposes the context (more often than not) presupposes the answer to the question.

No context means you get to choose a context.

(a) Was a famous physics exam. How far can a bird fly?

(b) Over many (different) contexts the invisible things that matter most become visible. Underlying invariants. "Rules" if there are any. The things that do not vary with context.

What if the goal is those rules that do not vary? Or whether there are any.

No context is a context.

 

[Bester]

I didn't know about this Prosper alt. Never mind then.

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

In my opinion it would work better with limitations. Flying zones like in capital cities/hubs then gliding mechanic elsewhere. I enjoyed the mechanics in Aion with updrafts and would often dick about just trying to glide around for as long as possible catching updrafts when running was a perfectly valid option, also in Firefall's earlier days (beta I think) you could craft modules that changed how abilities worked and essentially have unlimited gliding ability at the expense of useful powers, but its okay, you just made yourself a better gun to blast shit. Of course im more partial to a gliding mechanic than powered flight, feels too much like a version of god mode/creative mod where you just up and levitate or zip around to wherever you want to go. Developing around gliding vs powered flight means you can really have fun with the terrain, you have to be able to walk to points to launch from, with flying theres nowhere you cant get to, so why bother with environmental storytelling/world crafting.

 

[Not.AI]

In my opinion it would work better with limitations. Powered flight, feels too much like a version of god mode/creative mod where you just up and levitate or zip around to wherever you want to go. Developing around gliding vs powered flight means you can really have fun with the terrain, you have to be able to walk to points to launch from, with flying theres nowhere you cant get to, so why bother with environmental storytelling/world crafting.

I agree. The glider was very fun in Far Cry 1.

Energy shields had to exist precisely because otherwise player could just fly anywhere in Divinity 2.

So player had to walk and disable the shields. For certain areas first. Or had to go around them.

From the start "can" go everywhere and everything is open.

Shield generators guarded by much higher level enemies. That kind of gating/pacing mechanism. Not bad, on the same plane as games without level scaling, level difference to enemies only thing stopping the player from going somewhere too easily. Just flying meant player could even more mix up the order in which they fought certain enemies and arrived at places. Not bad, original, but partly defeated the you-fly-anywhere mechanic promise.

I'm among the few who enjoyed Anthem but while I liked the freedom of simply flying around at will, as you say it was making a joke out of the topography like using a noclip cheat.

Was going to say the same.

Gotta also check out Aion and City of Heroes/Villains.

 

[Norfleet]

In my opinion it would work better with limitations. Powered flight, feels too much like a version of god mode/creative mod where you just up and levitate or zip around to wherever you want to go.

Powered flight is only a version of godmode if it has no limitations: If you can't stall, run out of fuel, be shot down, and/or crash, then, yes, it would be godmode. But if it requires that you maintain lift, not run out of fuel, and not be brought down by AAA or shot down by other fliers, then it's suddenly not so godmode.

 

[Cirtdear]

It's like asking "suppose you have a power punch in an MMO, how much damage would it do?"

There's no context in your question. Gameplay mechanics determine how often you want to encounter other players. Depending on THAT, you want to balance the MOVING SPEED of flying against WORLD SIZE, but also taking into account naturally forming clusters of people for various gameplay reasons.

Your question absolutely sucks.

Context is bad for creativity. Whoever presupposes the context (more often than not) presupposes the answer to the question.

No context means you get to choose a context.

(a) Was a famous physics exam. How far can a bird fly?

(b) Over many (different) contexts the invisible things that matter most become visible. Underlying invariants. "Rules" if there are any. The things that do not vary with context.

What if the goal is those rules that do not vary? Or whether there are any.

No context is a context.

Human to Human context is very dangerous. Proper quantification is impossible when you don't know what someone else is really thinking. Yet quantification is easy to manipulate and claim victory.
We but are children in bathtubs of the mother simulation. Care to disagree? I care to change the context. The facts underlying the context can be changed at about a half wrong frequency.
Which means half right bragging can be inflicted on those who honestly don't know what's being discussed.

 

[Thac0]

I didn't know about this Prosper alt. Never mind then.

He eerily writes a lot like Prosper lol.


I think Aion online had the right idea, that you had to restrict flight to certain zones. This way you can design the mobs and the questing around the ability to fly there and dont have to constantly worry about questing cheese, air ganking, pulling aerial mobs into town etc etc.
They just botched the execution hard by making flying zones super rare and super boring. I only remember one cool one where the flying zone was in a coastal area over a beach castle.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/24200/DC_Universe_Online/ this has flying too.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Jesus Christ, some of the new posters sound like they didn't spend a single day in school.

 

[Norfleet]

(a) Was a famous physics exam. How far can a bird fly?

Well, about half the circumference of the Earth, tops, after which it starts coming back.

 

[Mastermind]

as big as possible, but even with a not so big world it works well (morrowind, might & magic 6-8)

 

[Not.AI]

The how far can a bird fly question actually has a right answer.

Assume bird has some mass. Okay. So that's fuel. Flappy flappy. Okay. Now some fuel is gone. But the bird is now some distance away. Model it as a glider. Guess some parameters. You get an approximately right distance. It varies with the bird, yes, but there is a region of right answers. Most answers are clearly wrong. Even though infinitely many *different* answers are correct.

Bonus points. If the bird you picked was a goose.

John Wheeler was a grandmaster of these things.

Point. If you don't know a parameter of a situation you assume it. Just label the assumption as that and move on. You will then probably think of something useful you would not have thought about. And maybe you do get the right answer too. But if not, in the worst case, you will at least get the right rules set. Also fun to do.

as big as possible, but even with a not so big world it works well (morrowind, might & magic 6-8)

Good point. Morrowind would still be fun even if hundreds of people were levitating around.

That did kind of depend on fog. A lot of fog. It seems small without the fog. One mod that improves the graphics quite a bit removes some fog and it is less impressive suddenly.

 

[Helton]

You can fly in Anarchy Online. Works fine.

 

[Raapys]

Flying was in fact one of the finest things in Anarchy, since you needed lots of moniez to buy your first plane thing. Once you finally got it, you could suddenly reach mission locations in a fraction of the time. Very satisfying.

They dodged the whole combat while flying issue though, by making you unable to attack.

 

[ADL]

Flying keeps people away from each other in what is supposed to be an extremely social genre of video games so no thanks.

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

Flying keeps people away from each other in what is supposed to be an extremely social genre of video games so no thanks.

Partly one of the reasons I enjoyed Firefall, you would inadvertently hook up with a group heading to the same objectives using each system the game gave you to get there (jetpacks and gliders) and it was almost natural in that you would render assistance along the way, kill some mooks, res someone that got downed, drop a glider pad/ammo/hp pad. Partly why I have a boner for gliding as well, Aion got me started with its gliding and updrafts mechanic, I would sperg out and just lose myself for an hour or two farming aethyr without landing just to test myself and make flight regen pots or running around and gliding looking for updrafts around the world, when I played Firefall it wasnt as good not having updrafts but you could change yaw and trade speed for elevation. There were also jetpacks so you werent ground bound until you found an elevated surface either and aerial movement was limited by its fuel system.

I think I mentioned ive got more of a preference for gliders vs powered flight, so my opinion is much more skewed in that direction, updrafts would be a luxury to add and playing Aion on an unstable connection got really fucking messy at times. Probably should just find a flight sim with a selection of gliders and get my jollies off there

 

[Ninjerk]

You don't have to imagine it. Multiple MMOs have done it.

 

[Not.AI]

Flying was in fact one of the finest things in Anarchy, since you needed lots of moniez to buy your first plane thing. Once you finally got it, you could suddenly reach mission locations in a fraction of the time. Very satisfying.

You can fly in Anarchy Online. Works fine.

Sounds like I need to check out AO.

They dodged the whole combat while flying issue though, by making you unable to attack.

Good idea maybe, less might be more. If something cannot be done well, maybe better that it not be done at all. "Nothing halfway" etc etc etc.

Flying keeps people away from each other in what is supposed to be an extremely social genre of video games so no thanks.

Could be true. If they move around randomly. But ppl tend to seek ppl out. Flying also allows them to join up with a party that they see in a distance, more easily than if they were all on foot. More variation in speed when flying.

So whether it spreads ppl out or clusters them depends more on what players make of it than on flying itself. Would depend on the demographics of the players of the game? More than on design of the game?

Partly one of the reasons I enjoyed Firefall, you would inadvertently hook up with a group heading to the same objectives...

This.

Alex Wendt: "Anarchy is what you make of it."

Maybe best is when flying is available to anybody but an expensive resource sink? Would "nudge" ppl to join groups rather than fly around avoiding each other. Groups could tackle quests etc with a bigger reward?

 

[Norfleet]

Assume bird has some mass. Okay. So that's fuel. Flappy flappy. Okay. Now some fuel is gone. But the bird is now some distance away. Model it as a glider. Guess some parameters. You get an approximately right distance. It varies with the bird, yes, but there is a region of right answers.

Albatrosses can remain in flight indefinitely, though, can eat (refuel) in-flight, and only ever land to breed. They have basically indefinite range.