New Game Category: NOT-So Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game

OK, so this is kind of a brainstorm I got while watching some upcoming MMO gameplay footage. I'm sure most of us have played Dark Souls/Demon's Souls. I think we can also agree that it game some of the best combat in an RPG ever. It also has a really revolutionary multiplayer system where other people kind of waft in and out of your game world, giving it a connectedness missing in single player RPGs. So, what's my point?

Make more games that do that. I know it sounds simple. And you may be saying "But there are already Online RPGs and Single Player RPGs with a multiplayer mode". But what I am talking about is a single player game, with all the awesome combat it allows with a nice sprinkling of multi-player but still being your own world.

One of the things holding back MMO combat right now is the fact that all of your actions have to be fed to a server(think in terms of MB/KB per second). If you have 200 people all on the same server, all sending complex combat data(not to mention physics) you can see how that multiplies exponentially.So they have to dial it back to not lag.

The Souls series solved this issues by allowing another player(or 2) to connect with your game world. The limited people means less data. The game play is still awesome but now you are connected, but it's still your world. It's not some zone where your actions mean nothing once you leave. It's your world. So, in the future this could definitely be expanded upon. Instead of just 1 or 2 people. How about 5 or 6...all gathering at an entrance to a particularly nasty cave housing a dragon boss. You could have a friends list and invite specific people(something missing in the Souls series) to your gameworld. It would be limited, but think of co-op game sessions, where(as long as you have the same objective in all of the player gameworlds), you all beat a really tough boss together and it "counts" in all game worlds. IOW in your game, you really killed the boss, not just the boss in your friend's game.

Yes Diablo did this but that was the old top down style. Dark Souls is the only one I can think of that had top notch combat with what I like to call a "single player-world-multiplayer connectivity"(the name needs work lol). Only now are (non FPS) action games incorporating multiplayer in larger frequency,but it's still usually in a dedicated multiplayer environment. That world goes away. It only exists in the multiplayer world and there is typically no story or anything.

Again this is more of a brainstorming session and not a complaining or anything like that. Alot of companies want to add as many people per server just for that epic feeling, and while that will be great in 10 years when people have 500mb/sec connections, right now, I like the idea of an small, closely nit of travelers all trying to make it thru a scary game-world together. Dark Souls has already laid the foundation, now its up to you, the game devs to do it. To see a good implementation of this concept, check out Star Citizen. It's not MMO, not Single player, not Multiplayer...it's all three. If I've missed any recent games that do this small scale non dedicated multiplayer, please forgive correct me. Otherwise....Your thoughts?

Good points. My inital thought were more of a co-op type thing. Like "O my goodness, without these 3 other people I don't think I could have made it out of that castle" type thing. Although the Souls series definitely had PVP that wouldn't really stop your progress but slow it. Really, it was the seamless nature of the multiplayer of the Souls games that makes it so awesome. It doesn't really break immersion.

It would be tricky tho to make all of the player game worlds be persistant(IOW all reflect the individual changes for the particular player while still interacting with others in their version of the game world) in a single player setting. Maybe, when you gather a "party", that portion of the game world transforms into a uniform game world "section" for all party players, and then when they leave, the changes made stay that way for them in their world and yours. This allows for consequences.

I used to call MMOS this when they started introducing group instance zones to Everquest 1. I hated the idea and still do. It takes the MM out of MMORPG. Has anyone played Eq1 lately. Its not even the same game anymore, im surprised people still play it at all its a right bag of wank.

But aren't theme-park MMORPGs already kinda like that? Playing your own story, but with a few people here and there for dungeons and instanced PvP?

I think this would be perfect for a handheld Pokemon game. Think about it. You're just exploring the world, minding your business when the next trainer you encounter and face isn't a npc but a real person. Boom.