Discussion VRMMO summoners/tamers vs real MMOs

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by Fluffums, Sep 8, 2021.

  1. Fluffums

    Fluffums 【R-18 Researcher】【Seeker of Moe】

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    It's a popular class (to be unpopular in-game so the main character can amaze everyone) in VRMMO novels, but there's just one thing confusing me that every single summoner and tamer I can think of has done that I don't remember seeing in a MMO - they can summon multiple allies at once. Usually they summon a full party at once, or the limit is based on the number of cute girls they'll party with regularly. In MMOs I've seen, even the vast majority of single player RPGs, at most you have one summon or tamed creature at a time per player.

    Now, I'm not saying it's bad that they can do that, and I'm not particularly looking for novels that don't follow the trend - I'm just curious where they got the "have as many tamed allies as you can feed" trope from originally. Is there a popular MMO out there I don't know of that allows you to keep multiple pets summoned (up to a full party's worth) indefinitely? Or do you think it's a single player game (but then, what game?) that gave the basic idea? Or maybe there was an early VRMMO story with a summoner with a bunch of summons that everyone copied?
     
  2. Kurotsubaki

    Kurotsubaki Reincarnation of the Seven Deadly Sins

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    Many MMO doesn't have a summoner class and use pet system. Though i guess some really do limit to only one summon per player but i know at least one who can summon multiple.
    It's Dofus
     
  3. Deleted member 369806

    Deleted member 369806 Guest

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    Not exactly pets but "Atlantica online" lets you keep multiples mercenaries for your party to a certain extent, you can also get a mount XD
    There are MMOs with summoner class tho, don't know all of them just played some of the ones here
     
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  4. Walter vi Britannia

    Walter vi Britannia Well-Known Member

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    In Guild Wars 1 it used to be possible to summon an infinite number of minions as a necromancer if there were enough dead bodies to raise. Sadly they ended up patching it cause it was too broken.

    But that's the thing, isn't it? If it WAS possible in a game, it would be too broken and it would end up being nerfed.
     
  5. asriu

    asriu fu~ fu~ fu~

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    @Mr Popo
    yes Atlantica Online, the theme Player is hero who accompany by their follower~ max 5 deployed at once so formation of six~ there still party system~ max 3 player(been long time ago) usually the party on 2 player~ while on party the mercenary kinda limited forget the detail~

    3 kingdoms online, one of the class is strategist which focus on healing~ the summon on form of soldier (or bodyguard) limited by charm stat~ higher the soldier grade it require more charm~ strategist max can deploy six~ other job can also use bodyguard but limited to class~ the bodyguard share exp with player so it kinda like have your own party~ back then it quite normal strategist hunt solo cuz if join party, exp shared among party plus the bodyguard...... the exp for strategist is too pitiful!

    ah almost forget on MOBA DOTA there is hero tree shepherd the one who transform tree into minions.... lol
     
    Last edited: Sep 9, 2021
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  6. sjmcc13

    sjmcc13 Well-Known Member

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    A lot of MMOs are made to encourage or force some level or parting with other players. At least if you want to complete everything.

    Most VRMMO series seem to be with games that are made to be more solo friendly, where the game is much more immersive then a normal MMO and is designed to be a second life.

    They also seem to be closer to Table Top RPGs in most cases, most modern MMORPG have really restricted build options for several reasons including balance, TTRPGs are much more open ended in character design. Most VRMMO stories you can see the character development aligning much closer to TTRPGs where the player has so many options for character development and personalization. TTRPG summoners and tamers have a tendency to be able to field huge swarms of allies, at least for short periods of time.

    Out of the series I have seen and can think of of the top of my head where summoners were the disparaged class (not that many though) they seem to have some form of a buy in cost or altered power curve, and that drove players away from the class. Like draining gold to acquire summons, extra quests, etc.

    In one the summons counted as party slots, had to be developed individually and has a cost in drops to acquire each summon. So they limited party size and reduced loot which left them to be disfavored, but at the same time in that series they were the ultimate jack of all trades class, if you had enough summons you would not need to worry about immediate revives in combat as a dismissed summon could be replaced with another one, and it was basically the games best class for a solo player (which the Mc was)
     
  7. Fluffums

    Fluffums 【R-18 Researcher】【Seeker of Moe】

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    TBH even without the necromancer bug, Guild Wars 1 had mercenaries and eventually named heroic mercenaries that could level up and be customized to some extent and took up party slots. Also on the topic of necromancers, Diablo and PoE had necromancers that could create quite a few minions, but the issue was that they're minions and don't really feel like party members.

    Unlimited summoning seems OP but after a certain point in any MMO quantity of allies can't beat quality of single strong enemies. In fact, due to AI problems, pet classes in WoW (as an example) often had to unsummon their pets during raids. If there's a restriction that pets count as party members, that players need to use MP/skill points/etc to power them up and therefore the player is weaker, there are many ways to balance it.

    I played Atlantica Online for a while (stopped because of management that didn't care about botters or hackers). Yeah, that's the kind of "summoning" system VRMMOs use, but every player has the same opportunity to use each ally so there's no summoner/tamer "class".

    I can definitely think of a lot of TTRPGs where summoning is possible, even strong, but I dismissed it from my mind because there's really nothing more annoying than one player taking an hour per turn deciding what each summoned/tamed beast does one by one. Even when I tried it personally and had summons, keeping track of the extra numbers was a pain... well, it was fine to have them act outside of combat and use them to scout or guard or cooperate with the GM to have "off-screen" combat with them helping to divide enemy groups. Hm... I can think of a lot of TTRPG references in VRMMO novels, but none that felt like the summoning reference was referring to them. Aside from the one related to Cthulhu.
     
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