Discussion which one do you prefer more for novel about gaming

So for the novels about gaming, I see that there are 2 types of them. The one about MOBA like LOL or King of Glory with plots like e-sport tournament championships or something. And the other one like MMORPG games, doing quests, farming monsters, making friends online, etc. Kind of like Japanese isekai but on the computer. I'm not sure if there are any other types of games but I mostly saw these 2.
Personally, I prefer the MMORPG more cuz it's easy to read and I don't need to use my brain much thinking about tactics or remembering the character skills. Also, I think it's easier to add some romantic kinds of stuff in that kind of game. Well, actually I can read anything if it's good but I just wanna know how you guys think.

 

I don't actually play MMORPGs or MOBAs, so I'm okay with unrealisticness in that regard (like the unique class thing).

Basically the only e-sports novel I've read was King's Avatar and from your description I think it's a MOBA, but I would honestly be okay with reading MMORPGs too (I just haven't since I'm more focused on reading other genres of novela)

 

In novels (especially BL), I actually prefer battle royale (PUBG, Fortnight, etc), which is not an option above. After that, MMORPG.

 

The issue with moba as a novel theme is unironically that it's too complicated. A mmo novel can focus on one character while occasionally showing what other people are doing or having various interactions, but team (e)sports doesn't really allow for a one-man team past a certain point. Therefore, it becomes more of an ensemble novel, which is super difficult to write well compared to a story with one protagonist. It works a lot better in manga/anime format, or if there's more focus on RL than the game itself.

Even in a raid or other team play in a mmo, you can give brief montages of how the other characters fight and be vague about how "the dps was high enough" "the healers were overworked because some idiots kept standing in the red circle" etc, and focus on how your protagonist helped or failed at a key point even if they didn't have #1 contribution to winning.

 

It might seem that way but I don't think it works like that. ESports team stories are going to work a lot like other team-based sports stories so it's a very well-trodden path and there is a ton of material for a writer to draw upon. It's also easy to earn audience buy-in because these stories are already familiar and they're inherently set up for the kinds of conflicts for the protagonists to deal with. Sure, these books are going to be more ensemble-based, but I'd argue that these are easier to write well than stories that focus solely on the protagonist.

The other side of the coin is that eSports focused stories are more about the characters and their struggles in and out of game, so the mechanics of the game itself are of secondary importance. MMORPG stories are all about game mechanics so this has to be airtight. The problem is that writers are probably not professional game designers so the games they come up with tend to suck, and suck hard at that. Worse yet, books going down this path have to come up with ludicrous reasons to raise the stakes of the game because it's otherwise very hard to get the reader invested.

 

Is there an option for neither?

The only novel I've read which I would classify as MOBA is Virtual World: Peerless White Emperor. Even that one actually focuses on two games, one MOBA and one MMORPG, while the actual story itself is a comedy that is like a gag manga. I think I stopped reading around chapter 600, so no idea how it progresses afterwards.

I've read The King's Avatar, but I'm not sure I would call it MOBA. The game itself is an MMORPG, while the professional league matches are deathmatches (both individual and team) using their MMORPG characters. While I enjoyed reading it, I have serious misgivings about how it would be as an actual game with actual professional league competitions.

All the others I've read are definitely just MMORPGs and most of them suck. In such a novel, the plot usually revolves around either NPCs being self-aware or the MC's interactions with other players. If the plot doesn't do either, then it's stupid because it's just the MC playing a hack-and-slash game with fetch quests on his own. If the plot focuses on self-aware NPCs, it eventually peters out because the author is just not imaginative enough to follow through on the plot point (and the MC feels too much like a Gary Stu). If the plot focuses on interactions with other players, usually the MC quickly becomes so stupidly overpowered that it's just not interesting anymore.

 

I don't really care which it is, instead what matters to me with these stories is a focus on interaction between player characters.
I really couldn't care less about the main character doing solo quests with mostly npc characters or the lore of the game they are playing if it neglects spending time with other characters in the story.
Also personally I find that I tend to enjoy gaming stories more if it doesn't just focus on the game and instead maybe spend half of the time with the characters outside of the game as well.

 

A lot of these stories are badly made games, but not all. Though to many are games that are only popular as they are the only option. to many VRMMO stories have the game being the first and only current one, which does allow more leeway in bad design but keeping players. For example there are many flaws in Infinite Dendrogram's game world, like no opening tutorial, and a massively unbalanced end game as without a limited superiors job you have a hard cap on growth, but with one you have no such cap. but in the world the game is still popular as it is the only working VRMMO, an apparently amazing play experience, and has 0 competition. The first MMORPG's were no where near as balanced or streamlined as current ones can be, and ya unique items that are limited to only a small handful of players are a problem.

The problem is what makes for a good story is normally not what makes a good game. For example the leader boards are usually a problem in these stories when you think about it, the difference between 1st place and 20th should be very small/minimal in any game, but in MMORPG novels there tends to be massive differences in power between 1st and 2nd.

Not really, mechanics are important, but not the primary driving force of these stories, and considering how flawed some real life MMORPGs are or can be, airtight is just unreasonable. patches exist after all.

 

I prefer MMO novels, because like... Well, MOBA novels feel like they'd focus more on the gameplay? And that's like... The most boring aspect of a gaming novel?

What I like seeing in VRMMO novels, are basically the interactions between MC and other players, as well as between the MC and NPCs with super advanced AI and whatnot. The game itself shouldn't be the focus, what should matter the most are the character interactions... And I feel like an MMO novel has a lot more room for doing this than a MOBA novel.

VRMMO novels can also have more interesting developments that are directly related to the game, I guess? Like... Having people starting to wonder what's the difference between a person and an NPC if the AI is advanced enough, or like... "Is it moral to kill an NPC when they don't respawn?" and other stuff like that... I dunno, I feel like this is more interesting than anything that a MOBA novel can provide.

Tbh though, I don't read that many gaming novels in general, because them being horribly balanced tends to make me get kinda annoyed, but... Well, I like the potential of MMO ones more~

 

Yeah, I mentioned that moba works better when less time is spent in the actual game and it focuses on the team interactions outside. The reason I was negative was that I feel like that's not really a novel about gaming anymore... it's a novel about coworkers/friends who just happen to be gamers. It could be an amazing story, but it's just not relevant to the OP's question. I feel like if the moba element is enough of a focus for it to be a video gaming novel, the gameplay/teamplay/strategic/tactical interactions are a little too complex over a short period of time for people who aren't familiar with that specific game to pick up without spending an inordinate amount of explaining the specifics. Meanwhile a vrmmo game has the main character start a new character from level 1, so the game can slowly gain complexity as the main character levels up and the readers learn the VRMMO's rules.

 

on general this cat prefer mmorpg because it have potential for more diverse stuff~
slice if life? OSO
esport? TKA
deathgame? meh the SAO
isekai but not isekai? typical vrmmorpg.... lul

MOBA on other hand more narrow cuz the genre itself is narrow, fight! thats all end of story~ it fast pace fight more so on mobile game so only esport stuff~ similar stuff if anyone decide to focus about FPS or RTS~
imo moba like military story that put emphasize on technical stuff while mmorpg the story about war

 

Both.

God Level Summoner should be the MOBA type, right? It's esport. Focussing more on winning leaque battle.
When reading this type (MOBA) the focus is more to and among the players' themselves.

Mmorpg is more to the story inside the game, and we care with the game's more than real life. But sometimes I did raise my eyes whenever there's feature inside the game that's so much real life. Unless the mmorpg is in far away era with super tech, then I wont say anything, stuff like vr with powerful conception of reality.

 

I would struggle to call most of the MMO novels true MMOs. There's simply not that many unique classes, quests, and equipment in a game.

OSO is the best blend of non-snowflake mechanics that I've read, even if other stories are just as or more enjoyable to read.

But I put the average expected level of design lower than SAO, which itself is worse than actual high profile flops IRL.

 

wut is unique class mean tho? quest and equipment sure kinda get your idea

 

I don't get how you'd be confused about class but not equipment.

Don't you think it's weird to have Legendary Moonlight Sculptor, itself a unique version of the "unique" class Moonlight Sculptor, which has access to all production proficiencies, several of which have nothing to do with physical AND magical sculpting, dedicated combat skills, personalized methods of clearing regular quests, and enough base stats to spec into combat builds that have nothing to do with the class' theme or skills?

 

ah this cat under impression you think not really mmo cuz lack of broken cheater special class that only MC and its gang can have while other players is pleb that can only choice whatever meta job/class usual mmorpg have

talking about unique
hidden class already weird enuf on mmorpg~ do author even know the crazy stuff players do to build wiki on game community? more so if it popular one~

 

I mean, yes, but there's not much else that falls under "unique class" in novels. FLFO is the best case scenario where it's unique because the player has a specific role in the server, but even that still hands out a crazy number of unlocks, buffs, items, quests, and resource collection points for free.

What are you left with, besides that? DnD-lite prestige classes that just shuffle around existing proficiencies? Kinda sad.

At least Path of Exile makes semi-unique equipment that artificially makes certain builds viable. It has a lot of downsides, but it actually WORKS, compared to what novels pull out.

 

That is because stories do not need to fully flesh out the game, and it should be the standard assumption that the story is not mentioning everything. In SAO's case in book 3 they mention a game bug that had really been there from the beginning, but had never been mentioned as it never mattered. Though the progressive novels do help flesh out the game more then the original novels did explaining more about how arts worked, but the simple ,fact is novels do not need to flesh out every aspect of a game, games only need to flesh out every detail once the go in to development, the pitch meetings to sell the game would likely only have highlights, probably with a similar level of detail to a novel.

Funny thing, one of the big sources of info players use is data mining. The nature of the games in these series would mean that they need to be more server dependent and less client dependent dependent then modern games. for example there are no cinematics to store on the client side for faster loading when everything gets generated on the fly. Anything that can be changed by players on the fly and would have to be shown to everyone can not really be stored on the client side, and would need to be server side only.

People go through a lot, but there have also been cases of easter eggs not being found for years, in major games. Player made wiki's can not be assumed to be complete references.

IIRC FLFO also had rather extreme conditions to unlock the class, in the MC's case there was a very real chance no one would ever find hers, and the devs knew it. As you had to chose 1 specific race, spend days mapping out the area no one else was in (MC was literally the only player there), assume the gap in the map was a hidden room as opposed to just a void (this is kinda the big one, as no one expects hidden areas in a starting zone, you expect those to be straight forward), find the entrance to the hidden room (which it would not surprise me if it could only be opened by that race), and then keep going back to the death trap until you find your way through it (which does not reward anything unless you are the specified race).
Once word gets out, someone will likely find them, but it was still the least popular race in the game and required traits that made you extremely unlikely to take that race, as the explore everything crowd wants to be able to go everywhere, and zombies had extreme limitations.

 

...I think you've misunderstood just how shortsighted SAO's design is, and how much is chalked up to "We made an AI handle all this". It's not about missing detail, it's about the very few things Kawahara confirmed from the very start because he didn't know at the time. They're not bugs, they're entire economies and meta, which can't be fixed without fundamentally changing 30+% of SAO. Even more if you include Progressive.

Extreme conditions don't make broken classes less broken. I didn't complain about them because I didn't know why they were made that way. I complained because no matter how people defend game design as unnecessary, I still drop novels when the ridiculous design outweighs whatever else the story can offer. FLFO is good in spite of vomiting a dozen mechanics on the MC 3 times faster than everyone else. OSO is less enjoyable to me because of the overused gags rather than the system. Curse Party fully embraces crazy interactions with parallel systems and has EVERYONE messing around with it, and it's morbidly fascinating.