A View From the Road: We Need More Giant Robots

Lately, I've been thinking to a greater extent and more that there needs to be a suited mecha MMOG. Oh sure, there's NCSoft's Exteel, merely that's not so much an MMOG as it is an online team-based action spirited with persistent fibre elements – equal any multiplayer FPS, lonesome with equalisation up and equipment. But No, I mean an actual MMOG. Like, "go out into the persistent world, kill ten mecha-wolves, find a giant zip sword" style MMOG.

Now, gentle readers, there are those among you who may read this chromatography column and suppose, "Gee John, this article just seems like you'rhenium indulging yourself." And you know what? They're altogether right. But it's automaton week here at The Dreamer (and giant robots are every bit totally badass arsenic they've e'er been) so I think I'm even here.

Here's the thing: The Thomas More I think just about it, the more I find myself believing that a giant robot MMOG would constitute able to probably explain all the little nuances and quirks of the genre that we take for granted. Well, maybe not every last of them – merely more than a few.

Equipment and Stats: All right, I can buy the idea of characters getting larger and sturdier armor that might help protect against attacks, but how do they boost stats? "Oh, I just put up on this new hat, now I feel stronger!" How does my staff give me an special +30 Intelligence? Does it only lic when I'm physically moving it, or do I just have to be in the room? Sure, we can handwave these all with the handy fantasy account of "A wizard did information technology," just Army of the Righteou's face it: We both know that the thought of a new wristband making us Thomas More durable is a silly one.

Non soh if you were in a giant automaton. There, you'atomic number 75 simply upgrading equipment for concrete benefits – just like putting a inexperienced picture card in your PC. Technology gets better, after all. "This fresh engine doubles my power output!" Your new head equipment upgrades your targeting computer, giving you better truth. These new rocket boosters make you much more Jonathan Swift and spry in combat. And this powerful laser reave has had its limiters scaled game, meaning you can shoot down lasers that are giant-er and more destructive than ever before!

Razing Up: Ah, the staple of RPGs everywhere. Too bad it's ne'er truly made much sense: "I've just killed an arbitrary number of enemies. Now I suddenly know how to vacillatio my sword in a different way, and it has a cool new attack name!" Steady, it's a amercement fashio to represent character growth, and it's certainly true that sack 300 arrows will make you better at firing arrows, merely information technology feels totally too artificial. Is it remotely realistic to have a situation where you didn't know how to do this after shooting 299 arrows, but the 300th one all of a sudden unlocked Thomas More potential potential in your nou? Nah.

In a mecha MMORPG, you wouldn't "Unwavering Up" per se, you'd gain proficiency and certification with different technology and equipment. "I'm secure with basic middle-air transformation," you say proudly as your giant robot shifts from its jet-paladin form to its humanoid one. Those badass energy claws you've got your eyes on may look tantalizing, merely you won't be able to equip them until you've got your badass energy-claw licence. Or, if you deprivation to move out with a standard "leveling up" model – you precisely got promoted, now you sustain get at to weapons-grade equipment. It's not adventuring then much as red tape, but it serves the synoptical purpose. Hey, if we're going to be artificial, might as well have some justification for it.

Durability: Like leveling up, this one isn't necessarily limited to MMORPGs – you have a go at it how you'll cost acting a game, and you'll swing your big-tail axe at someone and connect squarely crosswise the dresser… and they'll stay permanent? That attack should have taken their damn arm off! They should be writhing on the ground bleeding to destruction, not twist up for their succeeding Fireball.

A homo (or elf, or orc) power not be able to take an axe to the face without miserable from an acute case of death, but you know WHO can? Yeah, a giant robot butt. A robot feels no pain, a robot will never bleed out and die, and a robot ass still rest fighting plane with its head and arm interrupt. Robots can take taxing penalization and stay in the game – even the most hardcore of meatbags can just take much. And that brings me to…

Respawning: Death is queerly non-eternal in Azeroth and Norrath. Okay, sure, I'll bribe the "magic Resurrection spell," because as long as we're accepting that people can shoot fire from their hands, why non take back the inactive? But what about the standard "you died, now run back to your corpse and get your stuff" method of coming binding to spirit? How can any major traditional knowledge character ever stay dead when they can just run back to their body?

With a automaton, you don't respawn. If you are the golem, you merely download your awareness into a new AI. With a piloted mech, you expel right before destruction, and sally in a repaired and/or rebuilt model of the one you were just piloting. It fitting so happens that you have a really efficient repair crew. And, um, that your ejection module is altogether foolproof and clothed in special shielding.

…nobody said all of these were perfect!

Magic trick: All reactionary, all right. Deceptio might non make sense in our human beings, but it's a fact of life in other worlds even as surely as trolls and dwarves are. Only for the sake of argument, let's just think back Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law of nature: "Any sufficiently advanced applied science is indistinguishable from magic." If we're dealing with giant robots, we've got the sufficiently advanced technology, assume't we?

Instead of using magic healing, you're merely using a nano-hangout polymer that instantly restores armor. Oh, and instead of Invisibility you're using light-bending technology. And you have flamethrowers on your wrists, and instead of blasting the enemy with sorcerous power, you blast them with lasers. This one's easy!

Classes: Another RPG staple, but not unrivalled that really holds dormy under scrutiny. Would any kid – even in a fantasise world – decide one solar day, "You know what? I want to grow up to make up a magic exploiter, but I don't want to have to memorize spells from a spell Koran, and so I'm going to be a Sorcerer and not a Wizard!" Nary, the kid decides, "When I grow up, I want to inject can from my men." Similarly, that guy sustenance in the woods with a pet wolf probably didn't take to grow upwardly to comprise a Ranger, helium yearned-for to evenhanded live in the goddamn forest with a pet wolf!

Similarly to how the whole proficiency/certification thing works, different sets of equipment would naturally lend themselves to variant roles in combat, even if you never give the role a course of instruction diagnose. The agile mecha with seven different blades and a built-in screen is clearly a melee specialist, the one with the giant sniper ransack is meant to engage in battle from an incredible distance, the one that can transform into the swift airplane mode is meant for mobile hit-and-run attacks, and the heavily armored one with the big-ass cannon is meant to plant its feet on the ground and destroy everything ahead of it. Do you need to give them class names? No. Do you know on the dot what they're meant to do? Curst letter-perfect you do.

So yes, I have a woolgather. I give a dream that one day we will be able to create our own individual pilot program characters and run around a town doing all the standard "in-town" upkeep of an MMOG, and and so we wish be fit to spell out into the harsh world and set in motion in our mecha of choice, whether information technology's sixteen feet tall or sixty. Sure, possibly information technology would be more existent that your standard fantasy RPG, but let's be honest: We wouldn't be playing a giant robot game for realism, would we?

We'd just be playing information technology because information technology would be awesome.

John Funk thinks Japanese mecha are a lot more badass than Western ones. Megas XLR doesn't calculate.

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/a-view-from-the-road-we-need-more-giant-robots/

Source: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/a-view-from-the-road-we-need-more-giant-robots/

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