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View Full Version : Within this Rant is the Next Generation MMORPG


galganog
08-01-2006, 05:54 AM
I have had many ideas bouncing around in my head lately and seeing as you were the first MMORPG I played and enjoyed keeping them all inside my head is not doing anything.

So without further ado, and please when you read this after wards no flames.


I HAVE A DREAM!!!!

I have a dream that one day MMORPG's won't be just about the grind. That hardcore players and casual players sitting across the computer can all make meaningful contributions to the world weather they play 1 hour or 18 hours.

That "LEET" Characters won't exsist and that gold farmers even though there will be some, won't be able to ruin a game with it.

HOW WE CAN ACHIEVE THIS!!!

1. Dynamic and Player Made Content: MMORPGS of the future should encompase the WORLD AS A GAME concept. Shadowbane was good at that in one aspect PvP and Community. I loved how each server i went too had NOTICABLE changes, Guilds over the map and such, but there is always room for improvement.

a. 3 Warring Factions. Balance, Good, and Evil. Each one would contain 4 Races and there would be a total of 9 or so Classes which could be changed. One Factions would always be better at one thing but not so much that it could throw one thing out of alignment, just a little perk. BUT................... Any Race should be able to change Alignments. AKA You may start as a good race But through a series of quests you could become evil and such. TO prove your new found faith

I understand that in shadow bane it was a self created guild image, some were "EVIL" and some were "GOOD" but giving people a bax albeit a box they can get out of works better for the purpose of giving people a chance to define themselves better.

B. LOOKS< LOOKS< LOOKS Customisable Characters. I just want you all to know that FAT CHARACTERS NEED LOVE!!!!! I have wanted to make many fat characters but most games don't support and like to go for a toonish sort of beauty. All races should be able to be beautiful or ugly such as in real life.

C. Dynamically Built and changing cities!!! Every server map should start off with 3 different Base cities offering everything people need to start their own cities. Here is were some of my ideas come into effect.

a. NPC interactions are key!! MERCHANT Caravans by NPCS to Player cities!!! You could be hired to be a guard of said caravan and when you do you get a reward. Sometimes guilds or npcs could attack and loot NPC caravans. This would make sure that the AI is aware of where player cities or and build ROADS to cities. When you gain enough power you could be the one directing NPCS and it will be your goods they carries and you will be hiring peopl to guard them!

When your city takes off not just Players but NPCS move in!! Some of them will augment your work force, you can also buy NPCS like guards ands such but if you have a strong city NPCS would move in and as your city grew more powerful NPCS with different quests would show up and MOVE in persay.


b. REAL RESOURCES to build cities. I am tired of all magical GOLD being used to get items in most games. If you want to build a building you should be able to gather WOOD, STONE and tools to build it. If you don;t have the time you can HIRE NPCs to come and build said building for a reasonable fee. Building with a group of people though should go faster than NPCS. So instead of people logging on and saying lets go grind. people can say hey you want to be that house i am tired of killing mobs.

c. MINI GUILDS and PLAYER STORES. Guilds within another guild cities. People of the same profession could clump together and form mini guilds such as merchants, blacksmiths, assassins guild and the like to form Professional buildings. People could go there to create items, learn items or just hang out. Shadowbane had something like that but the NPC created the item you had no real way to get in there and make if feel like you made something. This leads me to my next topic.........

D. PROFESSIONS Far to often professions have been overlooked for drops. This should not be! Quality items should be accessible to all in many different ways. I for on would like a DYNAMIC Proffession system aka being able to create items and recipies based on ingredients that are lying around or by what i put in them. Probably the best way to do this would be to give each item used in forging or crafting a numerical value that corrisponds to the total crafted item. like a chunk of iron +10 durability steal +5 damged ruby +3 str and the like. You can then forge them yourself, which would not take as long or give them to an npcs. Skill lvl would determine how many items you could combine and the lvl of items you could create. Each giving it its own XP.

Many Variety in professions not just Crafting such as Merchants, Shipping created goods between cities to be sold. Your guild owns a small crafting village that no one comes too? hire a merchant to carry your goods to the a powerful guild city for selling.

Hunting, Baking, Fishing, Mining, Blacksmithing(Weaponsmith) (Armory Smith, Lumberjack, Carving, Alchemy, Farming Jewelcrafting are all Professions i would like to see.

For the Farming and Hunting and Fishing you create and bake or cook items sort of like Alchemy but you would have to create a distintions, Such as bread give you +100 hp over your max alotted hp can't be used in combat. Potions could and give you healing up to your max.


E. Player Power and LVLs is not the END ALL BE ALL!! The items the person is wearing would set them appart, player lvls would just all ow other perks probably involving city control and power. With that being said Items should have a lvl cap but there should be no reason the 10 lvl ones couldn;t take down a L VL 70. 10 peasants can still kill one man no matter what he has on. Unless he is a master swordsman or mage.

This may be severe but to get to lvl 100 takes time, those players should b eREWARDED with power to control game elements not kill new players with a whim. As your character lvls your reponsibility should mature.

F. HOW TO GAIN XP and LVL, All different types of crafts and professions should raise your Overall lvl cap but your lvls inside would suffer

A new player could log on totally skip fighting anything and start by getting a job Crafting or harvesting and gain lvls this way. AS in life if you get better at doing something you gain more renoun.

That being said a Master Farmer and Baker with a high lvl would suck at say defending itself if a bunch of lvl 10 warriors decided to attack them. So they could pick up the sword and yes. There should be a cap on what you want to learn though maybe 5 skills or so one character cant be like yeah i am LVL 100 in everthing. Thats just a big no.

G. DYNAMICALLY CHANGING MONSTER POINTS!!! I am tired of going to the same place over and over again and guides being posted about where to go. Make cities post bullitans monsters sited in forest. Not just a camp fest of where everything is. Dungeons would work but also dynamically changing monsters to stop camping and PVP rollers from showing up.

H. PVP Shadowbane PVP was pretty good asside from the fact that you couldn;t do anything unless you were high lvl. And that you dropped
everything when people killed you letting PVP Farm groups spring up.

I would propose that all players should get a spell Magic safe, which allows them to summon a safe and place items in it so if they are killed they keep them. If you get killed and your items aren;t in the safe well they get whats on you but it should have a cool down time and yeah.


Conclusion, This is just an overall rant with maybe nuggets of good ideas i hope whoever needs ideas reads these and gets some inspiration. Hope your next MMO is an MMO groundbreaking different and amazing.

LeddZeppelin
08-01-2006, 01:22 PM
got foots notes and the such?

BenSBG
08-01-2006, 01:32 PM
Find us $50 million and we're your studio.

KenshinDC
08-01-2006, 01:50 PM
For your first MMORPG played, you have some really nice ideas. If you haven't, you should probably play a more PvE oriented MMORPG since some of the things you mentioned are implemented to a lesser degree in them.

As technology improves, so shall game realism and dynamic gameplay in MMORPGs. If you look at how far MMORPGs have advanced since MUDS, there's no telling where they'll be another decade from now.

My only concern is that, right now, there has not been a single MMORPG (to my knowledge or in my opinion) that has been totally successful at implementing enjoyable gameplay for both PvPers and PvEers, and I really do not like the thought of them being seperate entities since this will seperate both developers and gamers into their respective genre of interest. The seperation will only cause slower progression or possibly seperate them into totally seperate entities. Such that PvP games will eventually become closer to FPSRPGs, where instead having Quake, Unreal Tournament, etc. weapons I'm weilding an sword or axe and going at people or flinging spells at them. PvE will maintain their grinding and never want to implement any PvP for fear that they too will adhere too much to an FPS standard while turning into simple FPS games where the entire concept is surrounding advancement of your character for no reason other than to look cool, run around in areas pulling huge amounts of mobs on other characters, and also making it into a rather unenjoyable gaming environment as well.

Since I like both PvP and PvE MMORPGs, I don't want to see great PvP MMORPGs turn into FPS games with swords and spells cause this will remove a lot of their playerbase while bringing in a lot of the FPS community that has no concept of epic battles, fighting honorably, and other things that made a lot of people get out of FPS games and into PvP games. But, I already see we have a lot of people from the FPS community wanting to turn games, such as Shadowbane, into a twitch gamestyle and make it where you no longer have to level or advance your toons what-so-ever. So, with as many people you see interested in game design these days... Someone may actually give in and present the concept fairly soon and start the seperation between the two, in which I guess I'll be forced to go back to PvE MMORPGs and settle for subpar PvP for as long as they allow it.

Though, one thing is for sure... I'm a huge supporter of Brad McQuaids viewpoints on MMORPGs (Co-Creator EverQuest). He has a futuristic vision that just as books were a way for a reader to become part of a story, it was eventually replaced by television because it applied to more of the senses, and so MMORPGs will eventually become more of a media standard rather than just viewed as games by the public. They'll be a way for you to create your own epic stories where you're the main character and have control over every aspect of it. For this reason, he also tries to maintain a certain standard of realism in his games that can only be advanced as far as our technology allows. Thus, cartoonish games like World of Warcraft are nothing more than children's bedtime stories... Something simplistic that many people can understand and enjoy when they're first getting into MMORPGs. But one day, they'll realize it is a children's books and want to move on to "grown up" stuff... And this is what people like Brad McQuaid strive for, but are unable to accomplish due to restrictions on technology. But, as I said at the start of this article, as technology advances so shall MMORPGs and we'll begin to see people like Brad McQuaid advance farther than what he already is, and that's why I agree with his ideas since there will always be room for constant improvement and advancement rather than settling for a set standard... Nothing should have set standards in life because then you'd become quite bored. Not to mention once you reach that final point, you then have to ask yourself... What am I to do now?

Anyway, enough bragging about a man I don't know what-so-ever in real life... All I'm trying to say is that MMORPGs are written stories without a set ending. And since the ending is the most important part of a story, people will strive for it and continously thirst for it to the point of making it an addiction. So, those Game Designers that can create a game where someone stays on the edge of their seat for the longest time in an MMORPG will be the ones that are most successful and contribute to the advancement of MMORPGs, while everyone else is simply a stepping stone that others will use to advance constructively.

But ya, your ideas are pretty awesome for this to be your first MMORPG and to be a PvP MMORPG at that. Constructive ideas are what devs need since it is the players experience that matters most in an MMORPG... While at the same time, you cannot make everyone happy. I'll say, "I like horror movies..." And someone else will say, "I like comedies." You just have to find your majority rule and go with it.

Anyway... I already know a lot of what I typed is a bit strung out and probably didn't get my point fully across. But, I'm late for class... So I'll respond to anyone's quotes of flawed logic at a later time.

Aurake
08-01-2006, 02:02 PM
I've noticed one tendency, games with purely player driven content tend to mean, nothing to do. This is fairly true of shadowbane, outside of PK, theres not much to do.

I think one of the causes for this is there are no game mechanics to provide players a way to create quests for each other.

I'll be you at release new shadowbane players wanted 1 of 3 things, but the first 2 being the overwelming majority.
1) Become swords for hire, either in the solider type way or in the bounty hunter type way. There are no in game mechanics for advertising these services, let alone showing the deed as done and getting payment.
2) Build an empire and enforce law. I know alot of people came to shadowbane with the "knights of honor" mentality. Where they could protect their little ones and run a kingdom. The failure in shadowbane is there is absolutely nothing of interest aside from PvP. I think that's the main flaw of the game. As much as I dislike PvE, I think the game needs fun and interactive leveling. I'd even go so far as to say longer leveling periods (more like it was at release) if the leveling were more interesting and macro'ing gotten rid of. However, shadowbane really lacks the "accountability" it touted at the start, so punishing people for PK'ing your newbies isn't really plausable
except for baning their city.
3) Just wanted to grief people. I don't think there were that many of these. I think most people want fun PvP over easy ganking.

I'd really like a game the mobs move around in, so zones are dynamic. Like there's still the sterotypical orc village, but if you kill them too often too easily, they move elsewhere. I think this would make a game much more dynamic, as well as make strong holds harder, seeing as you could actually overfarm camps. I've been working on a metrics system to allow mob families to intelligently make these decisions, but it gets very large very quickly... maybe why all the newer generation MMORPG's are done on distributed systems.

Saerain
08-01-2006, 11:34 PM
B. LOOKS< LOOKS< LOOKS Customisable Characters. I just want you all to know that FAT CHARACTERS NEED LOVE!!!!! I just want to say that thin characters need love, too. The medium seems to be the law in most games. There are no slender models and very few 'athletic' models. Instead, the choice always seems to be between Batman, He-Man, and the Hulk.

Or, sometimes, they will just give you a Vitruvian man and leave it at that.

Meanwhile, I see a lot of cries for fatter characters, while I am pining over quite the opposite. :p

Xanther
08-02-2006, 12:22 AM
Wow, some good stuff in there. Unfortunately, the technology just doesn't exist or costs too much to actually make this possible. Before my Shadowbane days I too wished to have a similar concept. I wanted to see a game that had actual peasant to working class to royalty in just one city/country. I wanted to see conflict, I wanted to see player driven economies, and I wanted to see destruction of other cities/forts/strongholds. I've gone a long way in this search, and so far, Shadowbane has given me the closest match I could find. We'll see what more will come in the future, as I feel this isn't the end of games like these.