Feel free to make comparisons to and professional criticisms of other MMOs, but please please please don't devolve this into a WoW vs. EQ2 (or whatever) flamefest

Personally, I'd be certain to run small GM events which are genuinely interactive on a regular basis. For example, if I was a mover and shaker on City of Heroes, I might let a GM take control of [Supervillain X] and have him run amok through the city. From there, the players and their reactions carry the event.

Maybe a hero (or two) fights the villain head-on. Rookie heroes might go looking for the Freedom Phalanx, in which case more GMs would be asked to show up in the appropriate characters. Particularly intrepid heroes might go to to the Villain's home zone while the Villain in question tries to stop them from uncovering his nefarious scheme.

The upside to an interactive event is that the players feel involved and have an opportunity to gain fame by doing something other than having the highest number or the shiniest weapon.

The major downsides, of course, are that:

1. You can't accomodate every player in every event.
2. Responding well to players' actions can be very tricky.
3. Running events regularly would exhaust the possible types of events very quickly ("Dreck in Atlas!" "Again?").

In fact, now that I've written this, I think I see why the old EQ1 GM events were so rarely interactive.

Anyway; next?

-Fantasy-style MMORPG set in a post-apocalyptic world filled with mutant creatures and oddities.

-Character development:

--Balanced, yet freeform. Instead of choosing a class from x amount of available, you can specify your abilities with four archetypal trees (say, Fighter, Mage, Rogue, Healer) and general abilities outside of any tree.

--The concept of levelling up is omitted completely. Higher stats, especially HP and MP, will come from items and general abilities, possibly with some archetypal abilities adding more. Skills are bought with amounts of EXP.

--Skills work on a rank system, with each rank giving additional benefits (usually higher numbers on the same skill). Skill levels go from 1 to infinity, or at least as high as the program ends up being able to take unsigned integer numbers.

--Specialisation: Higher ranks for skills, and more powerful skills in trees, will naturally cost more EXP. When a player buys a skill or increases a skill rank in one tree, all of the skills and higher ranks in that same tree go down in EXP cost by that same amount, allowing those who want to focus solely on one tree to do so. To balance things out, however, that same cost will be divided among all of the other trees, so the cost of branching into another archetype's skills later on increases. To keep players from spending EXP on lots of ranks of low-level skills, then gliding their way to the high-level skills with no further EXP cost, a diminishing returns formula might be applied to the EXP rebate on later skills.

--Diversification: Entirely possible, and usually wise, to split EXP among multiple trees for more tactical options. However, due to the EXP cost of each skill being applied again and then divided among each other tree whenever a skill is bought, those that want more tactical options (such as a Fighter/Healer hybrid) end up paying for that a little with a slightly lower average skill level. However, if the player specialises too far in one tree, they'll likely hit a point where it would cost less EXP to diversify a little than to continue specialising.

--Instant respecs. Provided they're in a settlement and not out in the world questing, players can change around their skills and EXP as they please. A fighter/healer hybrid who has found some wicked mage items and wants to try specialising mage shouldn't have to restart and get all that EXP all over again, especially since there's no guarantee they'll like mage spec.

--Focus on player skill first, build second, items third. More time spent in-game obviously means more EXP for skills, and making items super important would just further shift things toward the hardcore player.

That would be aboot all I can think of at the moment.

Ruvyen fucked around with this message on 01-09-2006 at 10:52 PM.

It would be great to have a system that would dig from a list of various plots, figure out which hasn’t been done lately somewhere, and run it. Of course they would be simpler than what fun a GM could do.

I have actually been working on an MMO for the past years. Reading over them now, it would seem as if Blizzard had peeked at my notes while making WoW.

Oh, and I’d have a frikken usable Z axis for flying.

Vinven D`Slyfox fucked around with this message on 01-09-2006 at 11:01 PM.

For example (just going Horde-side) for now...

Level 12-20: The Kolkar Centaur launch a miniature invasion on the Crossroads, guards are substituted for lower-level guards.

Level 20-28: A Night Elf scout has been spotted in Ashenvale, it is believed she is carrying a report on Horde defenses to her superiors in Darnassus. Stop her before she gets to Auberdine.

Level 30-35: A rare breed of creature known as the Sillithud Hatchmother has been sighted about the Shimmering Flats. She is laying eggs that hatch and produce small hordes of Sillithid at a great rate. Stop her and cleanse the flats of the vermin.

And so on. You would either get a blue (or purple) for killing the necessary target or they would drop something to give you a quest.

I’d like to keep the Masquerade sort of system of keeping non-mundane combat heavily restricted in streets and stuff (doesn’t stop you from shooting).

A system I’d like to try to implement would be a mission based quest system without instancing. Say you and a group pick up a task to clear out the previously mentioned cabal. You complete the mission. For awhile that mission is unavailable and that place is closed down. For this sort of thing, I like the newspaper system from CoV (Grizzly murders in the city park? Could be something to be taken care of.), along with informant type deals. The downside of “locking out” events for awhile is that you have to have a huge number of total events or jobs to accommodate. You could also have something set up like WoW’s crowding system (where trash mobs spawn faster the more people are in the area killing. So the faster jobs are being completed by everyone, the shorter their lockout period). Higher end content could have more drawn out or far reaching events. You could try for official positions in your faction and have certain responsibilities and tasks to carry out to maintain or advance. Sort of like WoW’s honor system but more involved and not relying off simply farming honor.

I liked cinematics from FFXI so meeting with a contact or certain parts of missions could have those.

On PvP, I’m unsure where I stand. I know a system I liked that enabled you to “kill someone who needs killing” but prevented griefing was the Mark system. You can kill 3 people. If you kill 1 person, you get 1 mark, and in two weeks, that mark fades. If you accumulate two marks, it takes a month to lose one mark (and then another two weeks to get rid of that last mark). Three marks takes even longer. Four marks locks you out for a period while it decays. Death would drop any mundane possessions (any special ones could be soulbound or something). Wandering NPCs in the area could pick up those mundane items.

Maybe the Mark system would only apply to players of your faction on certain servers or something.

I’d approve of instanced apartments, condos, etc. a la EQ2, or larger things similar to CoH.

I think that covers most of the important ideas I like. Details on races and classes are still iffy because I’m not sure what the theme of the game would be.

Another idea I liked was an MMORPG done the sort of the way DAoC has Albion from Arthurian legends, Midgard from Scandinavian myth, and Hibernia from Celtic lore, this would have three factions with distinct historical basis. A faction rooted in Catholic or Christian lore. Obviously, for the supernatural abilities and antagonists, you’d have to draw from the more fanciful aspects of myths. Another faction drawn from Judaism (which has a ready supply of supernatural evils and magic if you touch on more nonstandard texts). For a third faction, I’m unsure if Islam would overlap too much with the others thematically (and I don’t know anything about their magical/fantastic myths). You could alternatively go for a Greek inspired faction, or a faction drawn straight from samanas and other mystics of India.

I'm not sure how coherent any of this is, as I'm very tired and I sort of just spilled these thoughts out.

First off, fantasy setting. Gods, demons, etc. Three-tiered world, meaning that both the heavenly planes and the demonic underworld are both accessable for high-level content.

The world would be divided into four continents (North, south, east, west), each one is fairly huge. Combined they'd be the real-world size of the US. North would be snowpacked, glaciers, etc. South would be deserts & savannahs. East would be very moderate, grasslands, etc. West would be heavy jungle & tropical. Since travel times would be an issue, emphasis would be placed on magical means of transport. A quasi flight/teleportation system that would transport over vast distances in a short period of time... for a price, of course. The higher the price, the faster you go.

Monsters would spawn randomly around towns, similar to SWG's system where the closer to town you get, the weaker the monsters are. Further out, however, there would be 'monster home' areas, randomly spawned caves/tunnels that house large numbers of beasts packed closely together. The caves/tunnels could be cleared for bounty quests back at towns, or simply for XP (Once cleared, the entrance would be sealed until a new monster type/family moves in.

Growth would be both level based, with skill trees. HP and Mana would grow based on your base class, as you level up. There would be a base 5 classes - Healer, Rogue, Fighter, Mage, Archer. Each class would have multiple skill trees. You can progress down any tree you wish, however each time you learn a new skill, the next one will take more and more EXP. Theoretically a person could master ALL skills for every tree, but that would take an incredible amount of time to do.

For class functions, Fighters would be primary tanks & damage soakers. Decent damage, high HP, can wear the heaviest armor, good mitigation, etc. Rogues have lower HP and similar damage, but are more versatile. Besides detect/disarm traps, they can stealth/pickpocket (May be required to steal a key in a dungeon, for example, without raising an alarm that would block passage. Also, coins stolen would be on a separate 'pocket' and wouldn't affect dropped coins upon a kill), status-effects such as poison (Weaken/DoT) and snare (Hamstring). Mages would be primary damage dealers/pet class, healers (Duh), and archers would be utility/damage, with low HP but long-range abilities (Put up a rope bridge over a chasm with a grappling arrow, for example). Similar to a rogue but more damage oriented.

Skills would need to be equipped to use, and the number of slots you have available to equip skills is limited based on your level. Higher level skills may do a lot more damage, or be a large AoE attack, and may use up more than 1 slot. There may be magical equipment which would boost the number of slots available.

Static dungeons would be located fairly far from cities, and be instanced. They would be fairly large, require a group, and require a fair bit of time (minimum of 3 hours per dungeon) to complete. Traps would randomly spawn at doors, in corridors, in rooms, etc. Rogues and Archers could detect them, rogues can disarm, fighters can destroy (And risk setting them off), etc. Chests would randomly spawn in guarded areas, requiring a battle to get at them, but would contain at least one class-specific reward (Fighters could get healing potions, weapons, armor, etc... Mages could get a spell reagent to enhance a spell for a couple uses, staves, robes, etc...) for each member of the party.

The planes would be the endgame raid content. Players could choose a side (good or evil), invade the opposite plane, kills creatures for XP and bounty items, which are exchanged back in your faction's plane for rewards. Each critter would drop a bounty items. Trash mobs would drop ~5, while epic mobs would drop one per raid member which killed it. The bounty items could be traded in for rewards (Trash items require quite a few, epic items are 1 for 1 trade). The planes would not be instanced, but would contain quite a few 'realms' within the plane (Each one containing 1-2 gods) which respawn once a week. To prevent high-end guilds from farming all the gods without letting other guilds get any, no guild could kill more than 2 gods per week.

Lastly, the death penalty would hurt without being too severe. When you die, you have to run back to your corpse (while invulnerable, ghost form). At that point, you get a choice between resurrecting there, or teleporting back to town at a small cost to experience. Either way, you will appear at 5% health and mana. Healers can resurrect a player at 50% health and 25% mana.

Not sure what else to say. I dunno how good/bad this would be, but I think it might be neat. Then again, I'm not very creative, so...

quote:

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Liam wrote, obviously thinking too hard:
Za should reply to this thread

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You just want him to give up all his secrets.

You pick your base type, and that gives you your special ability as well as your starting point on the grid. (Fast fighter, ranged fighter, thief, Black Magic, ect..)

Then, have it so that when you gain in one area, you lose a little in another. Your MP goes down a little bit each time you gain HP, for example. Or boost your Physical Defense, and your Magic Attack goes down some. Make sure you include a way to 'delete' taken spheres, if you decide to undo some of the things you've done to the character and change the way you use them.

GM events would be a must. But players should also be able to trigger large events by themselves, if you get enough of them working together.

Flight. True flight is a must. None of EQ1's Levitation crap, I'm talking about CoH's actual flight. Be it by spell, by magic item, or by rented griffon, true and contoled flight is a must.

Decent AI. If the MOBs are morons, people won't care about fighting them and just blow through them for the reward. Let some of them be stupid, and others smarter.

Let players change the world. I'm not saying let them burn down the towns, but make some areas that change depending on what the players have been doing. Have some creatures that can only be killed once (for decent but not outstanding loot), and then they are replaced by a related quest.

Good and evil will not allways be clearly defined.

quote:

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In a disastrous attempt to be funny and clever, Sentow, Maybe wrote:
Personally, I'd be certain to run small GM events which are genuinely interactive on a regular basis. For example, if I was a mover and shaker on City of Heroes, I might let a GM take control of [Supervillain X] and have him run amok through the city. From there, the players and their reactions carry the event.

Maybe a hero (or two) fights the villain head-on. Rookie heroes might go looking for the Freedom Phalanx, in which case more GMs would be asked to show up in the appropriate characters. Particularly intrepid heroes might go to to the Villain's home zone while the Villain in question tries to stop them from uncovering his nefarious scheme.

The upside to an interactive event is that the players feel involved and have an opportunity to gain fame by doing something other than having the highest number or the shiniest weapon.

The major downsides, of course, are that:

1. You can't accomodate every player in every event.
2. Responding well to players' actions can be very tricky.
3. Running events regularly would exhaust the possible types of events very quickly ("Dreck in Atlas!" "Again?").

In fact, now that I've written this, I think I see why the old EQ1 GM events were so rarely interactive.

Anyway; next?

---

It's a nice idea, but speaking from experience, I don't think you realize how right you are about all of the negative aspects.

I'll post what I'd have in an MMOG when I'm more sober.

Jensus fucked around with this message on 01-12-2006 at 09:01 PM.

Have three basic “classes” really profession paths.

1.The military path, player chooses a military force to join up with. Early levels have you running through training and school missions, and as you promote player can choose to go down a few different paths, with say one give you command of a large ship. At high levels missions/quests are more like running a on going campaign, with the player giving orders and position ships and assets. Pros would be ships and ordnance cost nothing, Military equipment will usually be stronger than anything else, possibility to run a larger ship without having to use other players. Downside, severe limitation on what you can have on a ship or fighter, Maybe some stricter rules to play under, and say you needed to do anything outside of a mission, you would be forced to use a non military craft.
2. Merchant, start out as like a small independent or sign up with a guild/corporation. Have a mop reopen career path, with some choice possibly locking you into strong contract, or striking it out for your own. Players I ninth a contract/guild would have access to mission all the time, independent have to pay more for missions, but have more freedom. Have a dynamic trade goods system set up, at high levels a player could hire out his ships, or other ships to make his contracts, runs planetary warehouse.
3.Freelancer/Merc. Most open path, possibly hardest since player must pay for everything. Player could go pirate, or join a police force, or have a small freighter and smuggle. Like I said open game play. Disadvantages would be unlike other profession, nothing is provided for to players, nor do they make as much money as say a merchant can.

And I would put in a dynamic mission system. Say player a is a pirate, take a mission from his pirate contact to raid a convoy. The convey happens to be the one player b a merchant is part of for his mission, and player c might be doing a patrol and be routed to the raid to take care of player a.

I have more but am too fuking tired to type.