There can never be a perfect MMORPG. Everyone has a different idea of what that would be. IE some love PvP some hate it, some love questing, some hate it, some love loot, some hate it, some love grinding, some hate it etc etc etc.
BTW Guild Wars is NOT an MMORPG.
Laying in bed, looking up at the stars, a single thought passed through my head. Where the fuck is my roof?
The perfect MMORPG must contain at least 4 races, but 8 jobs.. There also should be lot of skills what you can choose, so not if you get a higher lvl you get a new skill but like buying them with skill points u receive while fighting,crafting etc. There also should be alot of continents with snow, desert, forest, lots of hills. The climate must be adjusting to the world.
And of course a wide range of monsters and quests to lvl your character.
you spent an incredible amount of time on that post based on your perfect MMORPG, and for that i congradulate you. One thing i forgot to include in my post, would be the fact that there would be multiple alliances throughout the races. Like lets say, an Orc met a Goblin. As many know, Orcs always pick on Goblins, so you would be able to duel that goblin, but NOT kill him. But if an Orc met a Human, you can attack on site, regardless of where you are. That would make race tensions so much greater. You are able to attack the other race without any consent, although it would be based on level. For instance, a level 12 could only PvP others in the level range of 9 - 16 lets say....
Weather Weather would have an effect on your character, if you get cold and wet then you will tire and feel uncomfortable and will not fight as well as if he was fine and dry.
To counter this problem you may have to camp and dry off, or change clothing into something more practicle for the weather.
Similarly if you pick a dark elf or something like that your character will not like the sun, my dark elves will be a mainly subterrainian race and thus will not be used to the sun and it will reduce sight distance etc.
Sight Sight distance will give an advantage or disadvantage to certain races, as will infravision etc.
For example if a dark elf is on the surface then he will not be able to see very well due to the glare of the sun. This would make him vulnerable to ranged attacks as he would most probably not be able to find his attacker until he got close.
The same goes in the dark, changing things such as contrast and gamma would not help a human see in the dark, because the game would alter the level of detail to only allow him to see certain things. An elf with infravision however would see perfectly fine and would obviously have an advantage over a human.
This is just one more way in which i want to keep all races as different as possible. And to give each race unique advantages in certain situations. I intend to keep the game so that no character is Uber in all situations.
In my opinion the perfeft mmorpg should have the following. It should have a wonderful environment with everything from the sky to trees plants and small animals. There should many classes and several races. Their should be different groups or sides to fight against each other. Their should be more than a hundred quest maybe a thousand. There should also be many trade skills. The mmorpg must also be unpredictable there must alway be something going on or changing. That is my idea of the perfect mmorpg.
i totaly agree with what you say mmorpg should be changeing the wholr time. it sould be a new experience every day. from what ive heard WOW is going to be like that. and i agre with the quest most mmorpg have less than 10 quest to do like knights online.
well i dont think there wil ever be a perfect mmorpg but it's nice to think what a perfect mmorpg will have. lets just hope WOW is as good as they say.
I cant wait to play wow either. They say that the wow has a great environment with wonderful deatails. There is over 1700 quests and they say that theres going to be 300 more by the time the game is released. Im hoping to win a beta key so i dont half to wait until december to play. I have read alot about it and i loved warcraftII and warcraftIII. All of blizzards games are always a success and i think this one will be too.
Originally posted by bsherlock Ok here goes with my perfect MMORPG Character creation You would firstly pick a race, then depending on the race your chose you would be given an option of one of many many careers. The races would each have different classes, with some classes available to more than one race, and each race would slightly alter a chosen career path. For example if you chose to be an elf fighter then your skills would be tailored towards swords, but an orc fighter would be tailored towards anything big and sharp and hitting stuff really hard. Examples of races would be: Human (there would be 2 or 3 tribes of humans with different cities, all at war with each other) Elves (including high elves, dark elves, forest elves) Orcs (including goblins) Dwarfs Lizardmen Ratmen Faeries (pixies/ sprites etc) Examples of classes: Fighter (allowing for specialisation in one or more weapons branches) Paladin Thief Energy mage Elementalist Necromancer Beastmaster Archer Naturist (not a nudist ) Assassin (could also include Ninja) There would also be a huge choice of faces, body sizes and shapes, and colours, similar to CoH, but with more earthy colours to represent the different setting. Once you know how you look you will go into the stats creation screen, here you will see your race baseline stats, there will also be a pool of points to distribute how you see fit. However you would have to put points into key stats in order to fit into your chosen profession. for example a human fighter may have to spend 10 points in strength, whereas an orc would not. All characters would have the same stats, allowing any chosen profession to turn their hand to anything, but with varying degrees of efficiency. For example it would cost a fighter 4 points to increase magic skills, but only 1 point for a mage. Also the fighter would have a lower skill cap on magic than a mage. Each character would pick from fighting skills AND tradeskills, and these would advance completely seperately, so that you could become the king of blacksmiths and king of swordsmen. There would also be stats for weaknesses and fears. If you put points into fears then you would gain bonus points which would automatically be put into the appropriate opposite skill. When each stat reaches a certain level you will get the chance to pick a skill, for example if you have 50 in sword skill you may be able to choose a special sword attack or defensive move, which you would have to activate in combat. This is in addition to the standard sword attack that everyone has. Stats would range from 0-100, and would represent your percentage chance to successfully do whatever the stat represents. With an additional chance of 5% (of your skill lvl) to do a critical operation, such as produce a stunning item, or a critical hit in combat. PvP There would be PvP, not truly open however. There would be a middle ground, where armies of each race would have wars, and depending on who was winning these wars the middle ground would change, so that if one race won often enough then they would edge closer to another races outer cities. Possibly even wiping out an entire race if they edge the territory close enough and take over the races main city. This would be done over huge lengths of time and involve various missions for players on both sides. There would also be PvP whereby for example an orc slayer could kill an orc player at any time, in any place and with no penalty. And he would be expected to do so and gain an Xp bonus for doing so. The orc would equally be able to attack the orc slayer at will. This is PvP based on race and profession. There would be things such as revenge killings, or random killing, but see the crime and punishment section and this should not happen too often. Roleplaying As mentioned above there would be scope for roleplaying because each character would have fighting skills and tradeskills, as well as social skills. And spending time on each set of skills would allow for an increased rate of xp growth for all skills. For example if i spent 33.33% on fighting, social, and trade then i would earn xp faster in each are than someone who concentrated on one area only. Also as in the above example players would get bonus' for playing in character, an Orc slayer killing an orc would gain a bonus. A thief sneaking about unseen would gain xp, and making a successful steal would bring more xp. The quests would also make for roleplay, because they would get you to do things which your character would probably do if it were real life. IE a wizard may be set a task of researching a specific piece of information, and may have to scour libraries up and down the country to find it. Once he finds it he will have to speak to the person who gave him the quest and actually type the information himself, thus proving that you know the lore of the game or whatever. Combat Combat would be point and click based, in that you would select a target and to initiate an attack you would have to select that attack from your skills bar. Each attack you would make would need a seperate click on the skill, allowing you to use special skills which are earned from having a high enough skill with the chosen weapon. The general combat would be scaled so that the enemy would always outnumber your character, and that you should be able to defeat several equal level enemies at one time. Large scale combat would be designed for balanced groups, requiring ranged combattants, melee fighters and mages/ healers to be successful. Also with the possibility of winning in a single stroke should you assasinate the enemy leader. Crafting Players would not craft every item in the world, and a standard sword can be bought anywhere, there would also be unique items to be found naturally. However any person who is following a trade can also make unique items, or standard items. There would be pieces of unique items around the world, and the first person to find a piece of a specific item would then become the only person able to find the rest, unless he sold the part, which would transfer the ability to find the rest to the new owner. Once the parts are collected a unique item can be created, which will be better or worse depending on the skill of the craftsman. items will never fail, they would just be poor quality, though they could be recycled. Each item would have several options when creating it, for example there may be 20 different sword handles, with 20 kinds of etchings upon them, same for blades, chest pieces, shoulder pads etc. Crafters could create almost any design they wanted. People would also be able to request a specific design, they would open a design window and create the design and produce a blueprint (which would not be a skill, but an inherant ability) the crafter could then use the blueprint to create the item in the requested style. A crafter can then set up a shop, he could for example hire an NPC to be a shopkeeper, which would be payed by the hour. Or he could organise a contract to sell goods to a standard NPC shop, thus guarenteeing a sale, but at lower prices. Or he could chose to sell his goods himself, or even not sell them at all. Enemies There would be enemies scattered around the world, but each type of enemy would have one, or several bases, which spawn the creatures. These would however be well protected and almost impossible to get to since they would contain LOTS of enemies. Basically you would not be able to get to these bases without an army, a map and a lot of time. However the enemies would spread out from these bases and can be found anywhere inside that races territory. For example say wild boar, these would roam the forest spreading out from a single point. Once you found a pack and killed them they are then gone forever. No boar will spawn, but another pack of similar size will leave the main base and head out into the forest to a random location. This would leave similar numbers of boar in the forest at all times. There would however be a cap on the number of boar spawned in the main camp. And if you kill more boar than spawn you could eventually wipe them out altogether. This would be the same for all non playable races. Each race would also have a motive. Boars may hunt truffles for example, and will head to truffles in the forest, which would spawn at complete random. But orcs may head to the nearest town to attack it, meaning the town would have patrols around its borders, testing its defenses. If a certain amount of orcs arent killed each day then the orcs would detect a weakness and attack in force. If the attack is successful then that town would fall, and would need to be re-taken by the players, other wise the orcs would establish a stronghold and push onto the next city. Computer opponents however could never take a races main city, only players could as mentioned above. Levelling Players would have levels, each time you reached a certain amount of xp you would get points to distribute among your stats. However if you used your sword a lot then you would be force to put most of those points into sword skill, with only a few point that you could put in skills you did not use. Base stats kile strength would go up at a different rate to levels, for example if you carried around a heavy weapon then after say 20 game hours of doing so you would gain a strength point. The next point may take 30 hours, then 40 etc etc. Running all the time would increase your speed, leaping your agility etc. If you took the time to go to the library and read up on lore then you would gain wisdom or intelligence. This would also increase your own knowledge as the books would contain the entire history of the world, and may even contain stories about your own deeds should you be the one to complete one of many unique quests. Questing There would be many quests which are standard, for example a city plagued by orcs would want orcs killed all the time. There would be many characters around the game which would also give you large quests, which could take days to complete and may require you to form a team at least some part of the adventure. Completing these would open up further quests and give unique rewards. Then there would be unique quests. For example once 20 orc slayers reached a certain level then NPC's would seek these players out and give them a special tasks. Completion or failure of which would affect the world. This task may be to get together and go to a certain point where an orc army is gathering and stop it before it starts. Completion would gain prestige and fame and unique items. Failure could result in a huge orc raid on a town or city. There would be many of these quests both large and small with would be triggered by certain events. And they would be added to over time to continue the story of the world. There would also be NPC guilds for each profession, allowing you to get extra quests only open to that chosen profession, which would give rewards specific to your own class. Graphics The graphics would be realistic, rather than bright and animated. however not so good they would take a high end system, just good enough so that you could recognise the difference in armors and weapons etc. Costs This game would cost whatever is needed to keep it running, if it is as good as i want it to be then it is worth the money, and for those whiners who dont want to pay then go play an inferior game. Community The community would be held together by the social set of skills, these skills would not be vital to the game, and may include things like drinking and gambling, or even wenching, through to dancing, instuments etc. it would encourage people to swap tales and sit in pubs and basically interact. There would also be fatigue like in SWG whereby only time spent relaxing would help you, but unlike SWG where this time is wasted you would be able to gain xp in your social skills, and also the bonus to xp as mentioned. Law and Order Crime would be a possibility in this game, it would be possible to kill somebody if you felt like it. However there would be a penalty, which would involve time spent in prison, where basically you have to perform certain tasks, like breaking rocks, which would go fast or slow depending on your strength etc. You would also lose any illegally aquired items, which will be covered soon. The thief class would be useful, in that you could sneak into almost any building and attempt to steal something. If you get seen you get caught, so stealth and player skill come in handy here. there will be an indicator to show if you are hidden, but this can go off in a second is an NPC or PC turns around. If an NPC catches you they will initiate dialogue, and could tell you to put it back, blackmail you, or report you to the law, etc. PC's cannot catch you stealing from NPC's. However you could steal from PC's also. You can steal anything apart from quest items and unique items. And the chance to do so is based on your stealth skill, your stealing skill, the actual players awareness, and the awareness skill of the character. If you are successful then you get the item, and the player does not get a notification until you have escaped. They then get told they have been pickpocketed and have lost an item. You cannot steal a fortune from somebody, and you cannot steal things like armor from somebodies chest, or weapons from their hands. If you get caught however there are penalties. If you fail the attempt they are notified and you are momentarily frozen mid-action unable to move. This enable to 'victim' to run, tell the law, or attack you or whatever they choose to do. getting killed would bring extra penalties other than the standard death penalties, such as the ability of the 'victim' to loot a random item from your corpse, as well as the item you would normally drop. If they inform the law then you would be hald in prison until you performed whichever task you were set. Getting put in prison more often increases the sentence each time. The sentence in prison is basically just a time penalty for the player and does not affect the character in any way. It is simply an annoyance to the criminal which i think would be as annoying as having an item stolen. Also being caught by the law would involve the confescation of all stolen items on your character. you could of course keep stolen items at home when attempting a robbery, but anything illegally aquired would be taken by the law. An attempt to steal these back could be made as they would be stored in a chest in the prison for a certain length of time after the crime. Death The penalty for death would be two-fold. First you would drop a random item, which would not be something you are wearing, nor would it be a unique item or a vast amount of money. You would also lose an amount of xp depending on how often you have died. this would only come into effect on lvl 5, but if you first die on lvl 5 of lvl 50 the initial penalty would be the same. You would never lose a lvl, so if your xp dropped to the level baseline then no amount of deaths would have any further penalty. There would be special conditions for death in certain places. IE raiding a dragons layer would result in losing one unique item for the dragons collection. Getting killed in an orc fort would result in capture and torture and probable loss of stats. These extra penalties are to represent the risk as well as the reward. Languages Each race would have its own language, and if you do not understand a language then your interaction with that race would be limited. However if you managed to learn the language then you could interact with some less hostile members, and amy even manage to befriend a certain race. With the ultimate privelidge of being granted entry to another races main city. Gods At character creation you can choose a god, or you can turn to a god at sometime during the game. Once you have a diety you will then have to actively worship that god. Some gods will demand you make sacrifices for them, some will require daily worship. Some more strict gods will demand you perform rituals. Or for example may forbid you from doing certain things or going certain places. IE: the god of frost may demand that you stay in the frozen north. If you successfully worship your god correctly then you may get a bonus, or you may get nothing (Gods are fickle). if you do extra worship then your chance or a reward will increase, or you will have a chance of a greater reward. These rewards will be blessings, which you can call on at any time. However should you stray from your god, or worship another god then you will suffer for it. You may be cursed, plagued, struck down or whatever. And the only way to stop the curse is to appease that god again. Once the god is appeased you may go to a certain temple dedicated to that god and donate your way out of worshiping that god. For example to stop worshipping the sun god the priest may demand you bring a flame crystal which may only be found in certain remote regions. However these tasks will depend on lvl, because there is no point asking a low lvl character to kill a shadow dragon for example. Homes Characters will have a home, which will be an appartment in the starting city at the beginning. This will be bland at first, though you will be able to decorate it with trophies, such as the heads of enemies, items etc etc. You will be able to purchase, steal or conquer different abodes on your travels. ranging from large mansions and farms in the wilderness to small hovels dug out of mud. All items in the initial home are safe, plus those in one further, nominated 'safe house'. Any items in other homes are available to steal by thieves. And must be protected. This could be by hiring guards, by magic or by being there yourself. Dungeons There will be dungeons, castles, lairs, open forest trails etc etc. These will contain any number of beasts and villains, and will be completely cleared out should you defeat the 'boss'. however over time new creatures will take refuge in the dungeons and they can become richly rewarding and well defended again. Dungeons may have traps, which may be impossible to get past without a skilled thief. They may have guardians which will only be affected by magic, or only by swords. Or they may contain puzzles which will require logic to defeat. These will be easier/harder depending on your character. IE if your character is thick then you may get a hard puzzle. But if you are a super-intelligent mage then you will only get a simple puzzle, to reflect the fact that your character is clever. Or a gate may only open to a certain item, or a certain person who for example has completed a specific quest. Transport Each character can purchase a mount, which he can even ride into battle should the mount be good enough. However the mount is risked in this way and may die. That mount will enable speedy travel to anywhere. There are also caravans heading daily from one town to the next which you can tag along to. Finally there is magic. This is available from magic items, or as a spell which can teleport you either to a specific destination, or a friend can recall you to their position. Guilds As well as the mentioned guilds which are designed for particular classes you will have to chance to create your own. You can be a mamber of a player guild and an NPC guild. NPC guilds will have to respect the tradition of whoever is leader. IE an elf will not team with an orc, unless that orc character has learned elvish and completed certain quests to earn the respect of the elves. And this no orcs will be allowed into an elvish guild. Elves will tolerate humans, but only say 10% of the guild can be human. Elves will also tolerate drawfs, but not many at all. Guilds will have guild colours and insignias which can be designed in game and have to be unique. People will have a toggle option to change into guild colours at any time. And do not need to pay to have their weapons and armor coloured. Tourmanents and challenges In order to include PvP in the game slightly more there will be a challenge option, whereby you can challenge an opponent to combat at a time and location of your choice, with the possibility of a wager. As you win or lose you will move up/ down the PvP ranking list. But the rank is based on win/defeat ratio and the rank of your opponent, as opposed to the person who wins the most often. There will also be tourmanents. For example one city may host a jousting tournament. Whereby you can participate with NPC challanges, and other players and will win/lose depending on your skill in the particular field (in this case lances and horse-riding). Prizes, prestige and fun for all involved. NPC's NPC's will be scripted and thus will perform certain actions based on the game time. They will be voiced by actors, and possibly even have animated cut-sequences when you first meet them depending on how important they are. An example of the scripting would be that a merchant may shut his shop and go home at night. Allowing you to rob him during the night if he does not have guards. once robbed once he will increase the amount of guards to prevent further theft. And if you are caught he will not serve you again. Then once a year the merchant may take a journey to a nearby city in order to stock up on rare goods. You can follow him and trade with him on the way. Or you could kill him, in which case he would be gone for good, though somebody else would surely take over his shop in due course. once he gets to his destination he will set up shop there temporarily, then return to his original location with a fresh stock. Also guards would patrol the city, possibly even following known criminals should they spot one. Fame/Infamy Depending on your deeds you would receive a measure of fame. most people will simply spend their lives being average, but the special few may embark on a unique quest and earn fame across the land. Those people will receive a different reaction from NPC's they meet, depending on that level of fame and the deed in question. For example the orc slayer who stopped the orc army would get a favourable reception in the town he saved. But would be hated by orcs even more than before. Also a thief who is caught several times would become infamous, as would a murderer, and as a result prices would get higher and special items would become unavailable at normal shops. He may also be denied access to certain areas as a result.
There is bound to be something i have missed out, so i will update this when i think of it. But let me know what you think. PS: and making a game like this is realistically possible if a company was prepared to take the chance.
Right now the MMORPG with the most elements that I like is Wish. With a 24 hour constantly progressing storyline and a roleplaying based playing style, it sounds like the type of game to REALLY get into, because its always different, always changing. Thats what makes a game good game great, change.
My perfect MMORPG would combine MMORPGS with my favorite part of science. Cybernetics
bye bye keyboard... bye bye mouse. This is what I want to do. Its been a dream of mine (well it started with offline rpgs, but when I first played UO I thought it would be better) since I was 5 and played my first RPG on the computer, and ever since I have soaked up everything I could learn about what I now know is called Cybernetics.
Just watch.. some day, it will come true, and maybe, lol, just maybe, Ill be the one who does it. *goes on wishing*
after 6 or so years, I had to change it a little...
Those are some really good ideas, though one that I dont think was mentioned would be the possibility of a "combination of turnbased/fps". Now I'm not exactally sure how they could engineer this, but perhaps there could be manual "blocking" etc. There would be a miniature screen in a corner, showing where the next attack is going to land. You can attempt to block/counterattack etc, with a percentage chance coming from both timing and skill rank. Slashing etc when in melee combat, would use directional swings via the mouse etc. As I said, this idea is a bit sketchy due to lag etc, but I think at the rate technology is progressing, an "FPS/turnbased melee fight" would put alot of pep back into MMORPG combat.
First of all, first person view. third person is too detached and boring, you control a character instead of being it/him.
no quests at all. just face it, quests is a single player feature, they dont add to multiplayer games. (note taht there is a difference between quests and missions. There should of course be missions available from npc's, but they should be fairly limited in length and significance.
Player created missions. A rich system for players hiring players. makes for a lof of player interaction, as well as making the available missions at any give time more diverse and varied than just automatic NPC missions.
nonconsentual PvP. Anyone should be able to kill anyone at will. there should be consequences, and one should be able to protect oneself, but no stupid PvP areas or switches. hiring player escorts should be worth your time and money.
advanced economy. an econ that makes sense, and that rewards the player that actually does something good, like takes goods from a production site to where its needed.
Stats! ok, so I'm a stats whore, I want to know how many frags I got, and like to work hard to improve my kill:death ratio
honour/respect system. do good stuff, and people like you. do bad stuff and people dont like you. this should show ingame, and if youre a menace, the local authorities should kick you out.
skill based combat and movement. Take a look at jumpgate to see what I mean. Not twitch gaming like couterstrike, and not point and click, rather a middle ground where your movements matter a lot to how well you hit and so on, forcing you to employ extremely short-term tactics. Ability to survive better by dodging and so forth.
no max level/wealth. constant rewards for progress that doesnt flatline after some time playing, but keeps rewarding you for your efforts.
rare objects/skills. I want to be able to go somewhere few people ever went, and find something really rare, to bring home and sell really expensive. if every part of the game is easily attainable, it looses its charm.
exploration. endless empty areas with small specs of gold in them, perhaps randomized and respawning, something to reward exploring the endless wastes beyond the current civilized world.
avatar/vehicle customisation. the more the merrier, though I seriously doubt the concept of letting players supply own artwork or models, there would be too much crappy stuff ruining the looks of the game.
racial diversity. a few races, having major differences between them and giving each a unique sense to them is much mroe important than just number of races. (races in this case can be replaced by factions, countries or whatever.)
racial tensions. the goals of different groups of players should clash, one mans failure the other's fortune. Also, restrictions on friendly interaction between races. other races should be strangers to you, their lands unknown. the more mystery the better.
This isnt really a description of the perfect mmorpg, just a few ideas I have about some concepts common to all mmorpgs
I think thats its technology advances over the next few years and not content that will make the perfect game. Many of the above ideas are all variations on the same themes.
What I think will make the perfect MMORPG will be advances in Tech over the next decade that will enable us to have full 3d glasses technology embedded into the game (not an overlay, but embedded into the code) and full voice recognition tech so we can all speak to one another. (not like the teamspeak, rogerwilco stuff of today) I mean really just speaking and have your toon do the talking. Maybe in 10 years the 3d glasses thing will give way to virtual reality headsets, but I am more skeptical of that. Anything that expands your mental and visual perception of the gameworld is the next great leap.
If you make a game world thats huge, with state of the arts graphics and then and add the technology to make us feel like we are really there instead of having to use only our imagination to take us there then thats the great leap forward.
Thats the perfect MMORPG imo and thats years away of course but I always think its fun to look ahead
exactly. we need new tecnology to bring these games to the next level. "Dark and light" will be intresting to follow with there technology with just one server for all. One problem I think is that many developers do to much self..they develop a new 3d engine and net code. Over and over. And with the current demand for state of the art graphics all the time, its hard manage 100's ppl on screen at the same time. And handle situations to dynamic change the world on current 3d-engines? no way..
and we need faster internet! maybe when ipv6 will do a difference. but not that much.
I dont agree that the current technology is not up to the standard we need.
If we are talking about VR then the technology obviously isnt there, but for example to incorporate my ideas, or other suggested ideas into a game is quite possible.
The reason that a game such as this will never be seen comes down to money, which is the core of everything. A company can make lots and lots of money with very little risk if they simply copy the current games and make then slightly better. People are wowed by the graphics and talk of this feature and that feature and they get their percentage of market share.
If a game was to be produced such as mine then the company would need to spend a lot more time and money to produce it, and they would need a much bigger market share. If the game is done right then they would very probably get there market share, and i have included a poll to see who would play it.
However there is a huge risk involved, because if they made a bad job of the game, or if somebody else had secretly been producing an even better game then they would lose huge amounts of money.
The equation they work on is spending/income, and whichever is highest wins, the developers may care about the standard of the game itself, but the financiers certainly do not.
Originally posted by OracleP4 WOW will be the perfect MMORPG for me ------------------- "Do I come to your workplace and tell you how to kill civilians? No, so don't tell me how to do my job" - Sam Fischer.--OracleP4
Oracle said it best, I was bored one day 3 years ago. I decided to make up the blue prints for the "perfect game". After it was all said and done, i checked gamespot, (or some game review site) and saw that a new game had been added. It was one screen shot of this game called WORLD OF WARCRAFT, maybe you have herd of it. Well that was 3 years ago, and I am still eagerly waiting for that game.( thouching story right)
THE BEST GAME IN THE WORLD AND YOUR NEW ELECTRONIC MASTER!!!!!!
EVERQUEST 2!!!!!!!!!!
just admit your are wrong on go on with it, Eq2 will be the best. You can play your little WoW game over there with all your other little kiddie friends, just as long as you know who the king is!!!! Everquest 2!!!!! As for me, i'm going to play the better game, which is: Everquest 2!!!!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -EQ1 character:Grotub, shaman of the Tribunal server
god dammit bsherlock, that almost brought a tear to my eye. It was.... beautiful! Of course ill marry you! ..... I mean play your game ......
I wish that after such high quality posting, in particular bsherlock's, we would not see pointless spam posts from people not participating in the discussion, but are just being noisy and crude.
So, bsherlock, I would like to look closely at your ideas, and throw in comments, opinions of my own.
Character Creation
Character creation must be diverse. I liked the way in CoH you could choose from lots of different variables, but I think a real MMORPG must go further than this. The way games are heading currently, in which sliders can variate the specific variables to the exact settings you want them is shaping up nicely. I am quite looking forward to having a go with character creation in upcoming games to see how they fare, as to me, the characters appearance is vital. I don't want my character to be a statistic, or even a statistical hero. To me, developing a character introduces a want to improve and overtake others, to the point at which I will be remembered for deeds done, and recognised not purely through the name floating above my head, but by the distinct look that my character has. Of course this spreads into a variety of topics so I will stop here with the simple conclusion that CC must be diverse as it is vital to how immersive an MMORPG is.
Races: The list Bsherlock put forward is pretty good. Here it is again:
Human (there would be 2 or 3 tribes of humans with different cities, all at war with each other) Elves (including high elves, dark elves, forest elves) Orcs (including goblins) Dwarfs Lizardmen Ratmen Faeries (pixies/ sprites etc)
Humans: got to have them. 3 tribes? Well in AC1 there was, although humans were the only player race. I do think this could be a good idea, as human avatars will always be popular, and the 3 tribe system will diversify the racial balance, and spread out those who only want to play humans. I for one prefer playing humanoid avatars, im not sure why, thats just how it always turns out for me. I know I would certainly enjoy a variation in the human race, and I seriously think it could successfully break up the clump effect formed around more popular races.
Elves: Again, the clump effect is broken down a bit. For similar reasons I think the splitting of elves into the 3 groups is a good idea. I think elves are a must have race for fantasy games, so I give this the thumbs up.
Orcs: I have never played an orc MMORPG before, if you understand what I mean by that. The first time my line of thought was even brought to the matter was when I first started looking at WoW. I wouldn't want to play as an orc, and I always think of them as more of an NPC race .. but they are a main fantasy race and so in a truely diverse fantasy game the should be included.
Dwarfs: Size differences are important to me. I very much like the extreme differences between race heights in EQ2. The screenies of a troll standing by a dwarf just crack me up! Again, dwarves are a true fantasy race, and should definitely by included.
Lizardmen: Not so sure ... It would help to diversify things. An extra choice is always nice, and there is room for some nice customization there, and some good roleplay.
Ratmen: Ditto for the lizardmen.
Faeries & Associates: Very unsure. I think there would be problems trying to work them into the same systems as the other races, which would cause them to be odd.
Diverse races are important, but I think they should all be based on the same systems, which could present problems when transporting them to races such as faeries.
Classes & Skills: I think classses are neccesary. Its human nature to group things, and so classing someone is natural. An accurate and realistic game should therefore follow this. In Bsherlocks game, you would pick a class, and diversify a bit as you follow it. I personally like EQ2s class system, where you pick a basic class, and then choose different routes when you get to certain points. These new routes give access to new trees. What I would like to see is a main tree for each main archetype. If this tree was a real living growing tree it would have very thick foliage, as there would be many branches and lots of skills coming off of them.
I wouldnt want players to become a melee character to play melee, then get access to a 'brawler' tree and play their way through that as such. I would prefer to see just one tree, that the player can place their skill-credits/points/xp around how they feel fit, buy skills and abilities as they go. They could choose to focus on particular branches, a branch will follow the same line of skills and abilities, or they could choose to do a little bit of everything. A player with the melee tree might notice there are some branches with un-melee like abilities on them, such as some magic. These branches will may contain some skills that mages are able to get, however a melee player will find purchasing them as a meleer is far pricier than it is for a mage. Through this system, players would become much less similar, as people would be eager to try the many skills there are available. There would be some way of preventing players from doing a bit of everything and making poor characters, by the way of exciting higher level skills that will lure players into specialising down only a few paths.
Now back to actually naming classes. Each skill/ability that you purchase with your points will have tied to it, but hidden from the player, a number for each class. For example, a basic sword attack skill might be tied to the ranking of 'sword = 1'. A complicated archery attack might be 'archer = 4'. A character who has lots melee skills, mostly basic ones, and a couple of basic archery skills might have their skill rankings added up to something like 'sword = 13, archery = 3'. Based on these numbers, the players general abilities will land them with a title related to the skills they own. Later on, as players head down specialist branches, new categories will be introduced, or higher numbers, so the players title will constantly adapt to fit with the skills they have at that time, and will convey the sort of skills that avatar has to offer.
Its late now, so I will post tomorrow more of my ideas and opinions. Night all.
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MMORPGs: Treadmills that make you fatter.
www.silkyvenom.com <-- a good site for Vanguard information
Tradeskills: I think crafting is very important to MMORPGs these days. On top of a crafting system, I would like to see a good trade system, which is what I will talk about first. When beta playing for AC2, a suggestion that I posted on the suggestion forum (along with many others) was that cities should have trade stalls. These would look like a typical english sunday market stall - a wooden crate or or two, a small canopy over the stand, and a seat behind it for the seller. The idea being that sellers could pay a fee, and be allowed to rent a stall for a certain amount of time. The longer they want it for, the more it costs. The stall will act a bit like a chest, the player will doubleclick it to open it up (once they own it) and then will drag items they want to sell from their inventory, into the stall inventory. The items would be still present in the sellers inventory, just greyed out until they are sold or retrieved. The items in the stall inventory would appear on top of the crates, just sitting there. Other players could select them, and examine them to see what they were and how good they are, as well as a price that the seller selected for each item when they placed it for sale in the stall inventory. A trading city would have a courtyard, not too big, that would contain several of these, all of different sizes. The larger the stall, the more spaces it has, the more it costs. The seller must be present at the stall, sitting on the chair for the stall to be able to sell. The whole point of this being that players will gather in towns, to buy and sell. There will be greater interaction between them because of it, if you think I price is unfair, you could always ask the seller to lower it. Players would also travel between towns to reach new markets if they cant find what they are looking for. I would not want to ditch the normal trade system of opening trade with someone, having a two panelled box and an accept button, you put your items/money in, and they put theirs, then you both click accept and the items are swapped. I think its important that players can still give each other things. There are obvious advantages to selling from a stall though, a fixed market, easy advertising (the people just come and have a look), and you dont have to be at the keyboard the whole time although it helps.
Now to crafting.
AC2 was the first crafting MMORPG I played. It was pretty fun because of that, when I first started crafting. Those who have played it may understand what I mean when I say, the fun soon left it. SWG had the same problem - when you start crafting its fun, different, interesting. When you have crafted for a while its just a total grind. I think EQ2 has got it spot on with their new crafting system - players will actually be involved in what they are making, rather than dragging ingredients to a box and clicking assemble. But although I love their ideas, I have been thinking of a different one, that is by no means better, its just of my creation. The ideas actually came to me whilst reading Bsherlock's crafting ideas. This is what I imagined.
A traveller reaches your city and seeks you out as you are known to be a fine tailor. You take him to some location, be it your shop or house, im not sure which would be better. You take him to your tailor tools, there are several, one of which is a dummy. You are able to load onto the dummy, any peice of clothing you want. You have been working on a few shirts, which is what this customer wants, so you put a few on the manequin in succession, to hear the customer tell you "Hmm, no, its not quite what I wanted" after each one. You ask him what he would like then. He tells you that all of your shirts had no pockets, he would like two breast pockets. Now you zoom in on the dummy, with the shirt he thinks is the best style, although it has no pockets ... yet! Two breast pockets, same material as the shirt, no problem. A panel is hovering by the side of the dummy, the screen looks a bit like character creation. The panel holds a variety of skills you know, you flick through the menus until you find the right pocket design. You then click this and hover it over the manequin's shirt, it can lock into a number of places, you can't put variables such as pockets everywhere, only in sensible places. At the moment, the pocket that is hovering is made to look odd to notify you it isnt attached, but to the customer, it displays as the shirt will look once finished, if they give the ok, then you can click, and you will be told how much cloth and cotton it will take to make the pocket, and to attach it. You have plenty of material left, but it isnt the right colour, so you close the alteration panel, and turn to the big tin basin you have that is still full of the coloured water from the dyeplant you were using last night, its the right colour. You have the option to use a pair of scissors on the roll of fabric to create a smaller peice and just dye that, or you can dunk all of the material in. The colour is selling sell at the moment, so you put it all in. Dyeing requires a small amount of time, so you wait for a minute or two, chatting with the customer. You are notified that the dyeing is done, and you remove the fabric from the bowl. You then turn to the dummy again, zoom, select the pocket, place, and click. You need to select the fabric and thread you want to use. Once that is done, you need to sew it on. Once you have sewn on both pockets, the item of clothing is complete, and you can trade it to the customer.
Every activity has skills you can use for it. In the tradeskill tree you have the ability to travel up different branches, and the skills and abilities on those branches can be either active skills, or passive abilities. Active skills will be actual actions you can do to have an effect on your activity, and passive abilities will grant increases to certain abilities. This means your character will be able to craft at a certain level, and when they recieve crafting xp, they can increase how good they are at a certain task, to get better results. Im not quite sure how it would effect finished products, maybe the man's pocket will fall off if you sewed it badly, or if you dyed it badly, it will slowly change back to its previous colour. There would also be different blueprints you could obtain, such as different pocket designs. You could get these from the tree, or from the big bad world. I would want the crafting to be a little different every time. The way I see it, you can never make mass production fun, as it *is* doing the same thing. But that is the players choice, my system would allow lots of changes, and alterations and experimentations, so a player could actually genuinely enjoy themselves, just playing around with designs on their own.
I think thats it from me on crafting.
PvP: I like Bsherlock's basic PvP idea, with the clashing empires, and the moving middle ground. The middle ground should yeild some bonus to the empire who controls it, but not a PvP related one. This would mean that it is actually worth fighting for, and pushing the enemy back to retain the benefit. I also like the idea of taking minor towns. Each town should have its own individual benefit, so it will be worth pushing forward to take one for yourself. I think this would add a slight planetside-like element to the PvP - people can just fight if they want to, by hunting around in the middle lands. If they want to be of help to their empire, they could take towns, in a capture the flag/hack+hold type way. Im not sure if this would satisfy PvPers as I am not much of one myself, but PvPing would be difficult, and strategic, which would mean the best PvPers are the ones that shine through, not just the PLed ones who have the best skills. I don't like forced PvP, as I despise griefing. I think open PvP generally leads to just that, fairly often. PvP will be worthwhile though - killing someone who is a higher level than you will get you some nice xp, but griefing newbies wont. In most MMORPGs I have played, PvP gets you very little xp, and so it is really just something to do when bored. I want it to be integral and intertwined with other systems, such as crafting, by the way of players fighting to keep hold of resource mines etc. I am not so keen on the 'profession PKing'. I think that could lead to a lot of griefing and camping. Its a nice idea, and would add some fun roleplaying, but some players would camp certain areas to kill newbie orcs etc. I think ambushing is fine, and should be encouraged in PvP, but when it becomes just an XP grind, waiting for the next newbie to come along, then the immersion is ruined.
Roleplaying: I am quite a roleplayer myself, and I think it increases my enjoyment of a game by a lot. Pretty much anything that a game does to encourage RPing is great, in my books at least. I have already commented on the profession PvP, so I won't go over it again, but I think that my suggestions in the crafting and tradeskills section would encourage players to RP a little more. Ideally I would like to have customers saying to a tailor, "Hmm, a little more off the sleeve please" and "Do you think you could hem that skirt, and bring it up above my knees?" To me RPing is another vital component in an MMORPG. Im not saying that until all players RP no game will be good, but rather that if a game encourages players to RP, through random comical items, lore, and actual benefits to playing your character rather than grinding them, then the immersion and depth and, in my eyes, therefore enjoyment of the game will be increased.
Im going to take a breather, Ill post more later.
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MMORPGs: Treadmills that make you fatter.
www.silkyvenom.com <-- a good site for Vanguard information
Originally posted by Ziver hrm, perfect mmorpg...This isnt really a description of the perfect mmorpg, just a few ideas I have about some concepts common to all mmorpgs
You posted basically the same idea of some of the stuff I mentioned earlier in the post and I find it kind of weird people keep talking about races, classes, and levels. You did mention some racial ideas that seem better than most, but I guess I'm getting tired of fantasy setting games. My thought in a cyberpunk world with city-states that there would be tensions between citizens of different city-states. This would also lead to meaningful PvP instead of the same consensual PvP that we see in most games.
Like I said, I rather see 1st person becuase personally I feel it makes the game more immersive. I agree that quests are better suited for single-player games, but in co-op games that can also be fun (CoH). I would like to see a game with quests being more controlled by players and player actions though. I think economy is probably the most attractive feature to the majority of people out there even if they admit it or not. MMORPGs with great economy systems have done very well.
Everybody knows there isn't such a thing as a perfect MMORPG because people like different things. Still, with what I consider perfect probably won't happen until I make the game myself.
Comments
There can never be a perfect MMORPG. Everyone has a different idea of what that would be. IE some love PvP some hate it, some love questing, some hate it, some love loot, some hate it, some love grinding, some hate it etc etc etc.
BTW Guild Wars is NOT an MMORPG.
Laying in bed, looking up at the stars, a single thought passed through my head. Where the fuck is my roof?
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scientology
bsherlock,
you spent an incredible amount of time on that post based on your perfect MMORPG, and for that i congradulate you. One thing i forgot to include in my post, would be the fact that there would be multiple alliances throughout the races. Like lets say, an Orc met a Goblin. As many know, Orcs always pick on Goblins, so you would be able to duel that goblin, but NOT kill him. But if an Orc met a Human, you can attack on site, regardless of where you are. That would make race tensions so much greater. You are able to attack the other race without any consent, although it would be based on level. For instance, a level 12 could only PvP others in the level range of 9 - 16 lets say....
thats all from me !
-Farseen-
______________________________
Tested: Knight Online, Wish Beta, Ryzom Beta, Planeshift Alpha
Played: UO, EQ, AO, SWG, FFXI, Shadowbane, EVE, Horizons, AC2
Current Testing: Everquest 2 (soon)
- Farseen
Current Game: Panzar
Thanks Farseen.
More to add though
Weather
Weather would have an effect on your character, if you get cold and wet then you will tire and feel uncomfortable and will not fight as well as if he was fine and dry.
To counter this problem you may have to camp and dry off, or change clothing into something more practicle for the weather.
Similarly if you pick a dark elf or something like that your character will not like the sun, my dark elves will be a mainly subterrainian race and thus will not be used to the sun and it will reduce sight distance etc.
Sight
Sight distance will give an advantage or disadvantage to certain races, as will infravision etc.
For example if a dark elf is on the surface then he will not be able to see very well due to the glare of the sun. This would make him vulnerable to ranged attacks as he would most probably not be able to find his attacker until he got close.
The same goes in the dark, changing things such as contrast and gamma would not help a human see in the dark, because the game would alter the level of detail to only allow him to see certain things. An elf with infravision however would see perfectly fine and would obviously have an advantage over a human.
This is just one more way in which i want to keep all races as different as possible. And to give each race unique advantages in certain situations. I intend to keep the game so that no character is Uber in all situations.
MUAHAHAHAHAHA
MUAHAHAHAHAHA
i think you miss under stod what i said
i meant that there will be a sever in every country to cansel out lag
:-)
i totaly agree with what you say mmorpg should be changeing the wholr time. it sould be a new experience every day. from what ive heard WOW is going to be like that. and i agre with the quest most mmorpg have less than 10 quest to do like knights online.
well i dont think there wil ever be a perfect mmorpg but it's nice to think what a perfect mmorpg will have. lets just hope WOW is as good as they say.
CYA
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I cant wait to play wow either. They say that the wow has a great environment with wonderful deatails. There is over 1700 quests and they say that theres going to be 300 more by the time the game is released. Im hoping to win a beta key so i dont half to wait until december to play. I have read alot about it and i loved warcraftII and warcraftIII. All of blizzards games are always a success and i think this one will be too.
(o'.')--------oo----('.'o)
(o'.')--------oo----('.'o)
Right now the MMORPG with the most elements that I like is Wish. With a 24 hour constantly progressing storyline and a roleplaying based playing style, it sounds like the type of game to REALLY get into, because its always different, always changing. Thats what makes a game good game great, change.
My perfect MMORPG would combine MMORPGS with my favorite part of science.
Cybernetics
bye bye keyboard... bye bye mouse.
This is what I want to do. Its been a dream of mine (well it started with offline rpgs, but when I first played UO I thought it would be better) since I was 5 and played my first RPG on the computer, and ever since I have soaked up everything I could learn about what I now know is called Cybernetics.
Just watch.. some day, it will come true, and maybe, lol, just maybe, Ill be the one who does it.
*goes on wishing*
after 6 or so years, I had to change it a little...
- Folks will be rewarded for what they do and what they do only, and the best way to be good at anything will be inside that aspect of the game.
- Brain will matter more then skill, skill should be irrelevant.
- "Coercing? No no, I assure you, they are willing to bring my bags and pay public transportation just to help me, it is true!''
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Those are some really good ideas, though one that I dont think was mentioned would be the possibility of a "combination of turnbased/fps". Now I'm not exactally sure how they could engineer this, but perhaps there could be manual "blocking" etc. There would be a miniature screen in a corner, showing where the next attack is going to land. You can attempt to block/counterattack etc, with a percentage chance coming from both timing and skill rank. Slashing etc when in melee combat, would use directional swings via the mouse etc. As I said, this idea is a bit sketchy due to lag etc, but I think at the rate technology is progressing, an "FPS/turnbased melee fight" would put alot of pep back into MMORPG combat.
hrm, perfect mmorpg...
First of all, first person view. third person is too detached and boring, you control a character instead of being it/him.
no quests at all. just face it, quests is a single player feature, they dont add to multiplayer games. (note taht there is a difference between quests and missions. There should of course be missions available from npc's, but they should be fairly limited in length and significance.
Player created missions. A rich system for players hiring players. makes for a lof of player interaction, as well as making the available missions at any give time more diverse and varied than just automatic NPC missions.
nonconsentual PvP. Anyone should be able to kill anyone at will. there should be consequences, and one should be able to protect oneself, but no stupid PvP areas or switches. hiring player escorts should be worth your time and money.
advanced economy. an econ that makes sense, and that rewards the player that actually does something good, like takes goods from a production site to where its needed.
Stats! ok, so I'm a stats whore, I want to know how many frags I got, and like to work hard to improve my kill:death ratio
honour/respect system. do good stuff, and people like you. do bad stuff and people dont like you. this should show ingame, and if youre a menace, the local authorities should kick you out.
skill based combat and movement. Take a look at jumpgate to see what I mean. Not twitch gaming like couterstrike, and not point and click, rather a middle ground where your movements matter a lot to how well you hit and so on, forcing you to employ extremely short-term tactics. Ability to survive better by dodging and so forth.
no max level/wealth. constant rewards for progress that doesnt flatline after some time playing, but keeps rewarding you for your efforts.
rare objects/skills. I want to be able to go somewhere few people ever went, and find something really rare, to bring home and sell really expensive. if every part of the game is easily attainable, it looses its charm.
exploration. endless empty areas with small specs of gold in them, perhaps randomized and respawning, something to reward exploring the endless wastes beyond the current civilized world.
avatar/vehicle customisation. the more the merrier, though I seriously doubt the concept of letting players supply own artwork or models, there would be too much crappy stuff ruining the looks of the game.
racial diversity. a few races, having major differences between them and giving each a unique sense to them is much mroe important than just number of races. (races in this case can be replaced by factions, countries or whatever.)
racial tensions. the goals of different groups of players should clash, one mans failure the other's fortune. Also, restrictions on friendly interaction between races. other races should be strangers to you, their lands unknown. the more mystery the better.
This isnt really a description of the perfect mmorpg, just a few ideas I have about some concepts common to all mmorpgs
I think thats its technology advances over the next few years and not content that will make the perfect game. Many of the above ideas are all variations on the same themes.
What I think will make the perfect MMORPG will be advances in Tech over the next decade that will enable us to have full 3d glasses technology embedded into the game (not an overlay, but embedded into the code) and full voice recognition tech so we can all speak to one another. (not like the teamspeak, rogerwilco stuff of today) I mean really just speaking and have your toon do the talking. Maybe in 10 years the 3d glasses thing will give way to virtual reality headsets, but I am more skeptical of that. Anything that expands your mental and visual perception of the gameworld is the next great leap.
If you make a game world thats huge, with state of the arts graphics and then and add the technology to make us feel like we are really there instead of having to use only our imagination to take us there then thats the great leap forward.
Thats the perfect MMORPG imo and thats years away of course but I always think its fun to look ahead
exactly. we need new tecnology to bring these games to the next level. "Dark and light" will be intresting to follow with there technology with just one server for all. One problem I think is that many developers do to much self..they develop a new 3d engine and net code. Over and over. And with the current demand for state of the art graphics all the time, its hard manage 100's ppl on screen at the same time. And handle situations to dynamic change the world on current 3d-engines? no way..
and we need faster internet! maybe when ipv6 will do a difference. but not that much.
I dont agree that the current technology is not up to the standard we need.
If we are talking about VR then the technology obviously isnt there, but for example to incorporate my ideas, or other suggested ideas into a game is quite possible.
The reason that a game such as this will never be seen comes down to money, which is the core of everything. A company can make lots and lots of money with very little risk if they simply copy the current games and make then slightly better. People are wowed by the graphics and talk of this feature and that feature and they get their percentage of market share.
If a game was to be produced such as mine then the company would need to spend a lot more time and money to produce it, and they would need a much bigger market share. If the game is done right then they would very probably get there market share, and i have included a poll to see who would play it.
However there is a huge risk involved, because if they made a bad job of the game, or if somebody else had secretly been producing an even better game then they would lose huge amounts of money.
The equation they work on is spending/income, and whichever is highest wins, the developers may care about the standard of the game itself, but the financiers certainly do not.
MUAHAHAHAHAHA
MUAHAHAHAHAHA
Oracle said it best, I was bored one day 3 years ago. I decided to make up the blue prints for the "perfect game". After it was all said and done, i checked gamespot, (or some game review site) and saw that a new game had been added. It was one screen shot of this game called WORLD OF WARCRAFT, maybe you have herd of it. Well that was 3 years ago, and I am still eagerly waiting for that game.( thouching story right
)
----------Social{S.O.S}
----------Social{S.O.S}
THE BEST GAME IN THE WORLD AND YOUR NEW ELECTRONIC MASTER!!!!!!
EVERQUEST 2!!!!!!!!!!
just admit your are wrong on go on with it, Eq2 will be the best. You can play your little WoW game over there with all your other little kiddie friends, just as long as you know who the king is!!!! Everquest 2!!!!! As for me, i'm going to play the better game, which is: Everquest 2!!!!!
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-EQ1 character:Grotub, shaman of the Tribunal server
Hmm my ideal MMORPG?
1. Absolutely no level grinding! Best replaced with quests or missions ( I love doing em!)
2. An expansive world rich with lore and beauty to immerse in (a world I can be amazed by and never be bored with)
3. PVP - duel system (players must be asked before pvp-ing); raids, guild wars and (if possible) full-scale war!
That's all.. I think...
*anticipating WoW*
god dammit bsherlock, that almost brought a tear to my eye. It was.... beautiful! Of course ill marry you! ..... I mean play your game ......
I wish that after such high quality posting, in particular bsherlock's, we would not see pointless spam posts from people not participating in the discussion, but are just being noisy and crude.
So, bsherlock, I would like to look closely at your ideas, and throw in comments, opinions of my own.
Character Creation
Character creation must be diverse. I liked the way in CoH you could choose from lots of different variables, but I think a real MMORPG must go further than this. The way games are heading currently, in which sliders can variate the specific variables to the exact settings you want them is shaping up nicely. I am quite looking forward to having a go with character creation in upcoming games to see how they fare, as to me, the characters appearance is vital. I don't want my character to be a statistic, or even a statistical hero. To me, developing a character introduces a want to improve and overtake others, to the point at which I will be remembered for deeds done, and recognised not purely through the name floating above my head, but by the distinct look that my character has. Of course this spreads into a variety of topics so I will stop here with the simple conclusion that CC must be diverse as it is vital to how immersive an MMORPG is.
Races: The list Bsherlock put forward is pretty good. Here it is again:
Human (there would be 2 or 3 tribes of humans with different cities, all at war with each other)
Elves (including high elves, dark elves, forest elves)
Orcs (including goblins)
Dwarfs
Lizardmen
Ratmen
Faeries (pixies/ sprites etc)
Humans: got to have them. 3 tribes? Well in AC1 there was, although humans were the only player race. I do think this could be a good idea, as human avatars will always be popular, and the 3 tribe system will diversify the racial balance, and spread out those who only want to play humans. I for one prefer playing humanoid avatars, im not sure why, thats just how it always turns out for me. I know I would certainly enjoy a variation in the human race, and I seriously think it could successfully break up the clump effect formed around more popular races.
Elves: Again, the clump effect is broken down a bit. For similar reasons I think the splitting of elves into the 3 groups is a good idea. I think elves are a must have race for fantasy games, so I give this the thumbs up.
Orcs: I have never played an orc MMORPG before, if you understand what I mean by that. The first time my line of thought was even brought to the matter was when I first started looking at WoW. I wouldn't want to play as an orc, and I always think of them as more of an NPC race .. but they are a main fantasy race and so in a truely diverse fantasy game the should be included.
Dwarfs: Size differences are important to me. I very much like the extreme differences between race heights in EQ2. The screenies of a troll standing by a dwarf just crack me up! Again, dwarves are a true fantasy race, and should definitely by included.
Lizardmen: Not so sure ... It would help to diversify things. An extra choice is always nice, and there is room for some nice customization there, and some good roleplay.
Ratmen: Ditto for the lizardmen.
Faeries & Associates: Very unsure. I think there would be problems trying to work them into the same systems as the other races, which would cause them to be odd.
Diverse races are important, but I think they should all be based on the same systems, which could present problems when transporting them to races such as faeries.
Classes & Skills: I think classses are neccesary. Its human nature to group things, and so classing someone is natural. An accurate and realistic game should therefore follow this. In Bsherlocks game, you would pick a class, and diversify a bit as you follow it. I personally like EQ2s class system, where you pick a basic class, and then choose different routes when you get to certain points. These new routes give access to new trees. What I would like to see is a main tree for each main archetype. If this tree was a real living growing tree it would have very thick foliage, as there would be many branches and lots of skills coming off of them.
I wouldnt want players to become a melee character to play melee, then get access to a 'brawler' tree and play their way through that as such. I would prefer to see just one tree, that the player can place their skill-credits/points/xp around how they feel fit, buy skills and abilities as they go. They could choose to focus on particular branches, a branch will follow the same line of skills and abilities, or they could choose to do a little bit of everything. A player with the melee tree might notice there are some branches with un-melee like abilities on them, such as some magic. These branches will may contain some skills that mages are able to get, however a melee player will find purchasing them as a meleer is far pricier than it is for a mage. Through this system, players would become much less similar, as people would be eager to try the many skills there are available. There would be some way of preventing players from doing a bit of everything and making poor characters, by the way of exciting higher level skills that will lure players into specialising down only a few paths.
Now back to actually naming classes. Each skill/ability that you purchase with your points will have tied to it, but hidden from the player, a number for each class. For example, a basic sword attack skill might be tied to the ranking of 'sword = 1'. A complicated archery attack might be 'archer = 4'. A character who has lots melee skills, mostly basic ones, and a couple of basic archery skills might have their skill rankings added up to something like 'sword = 13, archery = 3'. Based on these numbers, the players general abilities will land them with a title related to the skills they own. Later on, as players head down specialist branches, new categories will be introduced, or higher numbers, so the players title will constantly adapt to fit with the skills they have at that time, and will convey the sort of skills that avatar has to offer.
Its late now, so I will post tomorrow more of my ideas and opinions. Night all.
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MMORPGs: Treadmills that make you fatter.
www.silkyvenom.com <-- a good site for Vanguard information
Ok, Im back for more.
Tradeskills: I think crafting is very important to MMORPGs these days. On top of a crafting system, I would like to see a good trade system, which is what I will talk about first. When beta playing for AC2, a suggestion that I posted on the suggestion forum (along with many others) was that cities should have trade stalls. These would look like a typical english sunday market stall - a wooden crate or or two, a small canopy over the stand, and a seat behind it for the seller. The idea being that sellers could pay a fee, and be allowed to rent a stall for a certain amount of time. The longer they want it for, the more it costs. The stall will act a bit like a chest, the player will doubleclick it to open it up (once they own it) and then will drag items they want to sell from their inventory, into the stall inventory.
The items would be still present in the sellers inventory, just greyed out until they are sold or retrieved. The items in the stall inventory would appear on top of the crates, just sitting there. Other players could select them, and examine them to see what they were and how good they are, as well as a price that the seller selected for each item when they placed it for sale in the stall inventory. A trading city would have a courtyard, not too big, that would contain several of these, all of different sizes. The larger the stall, the more spaces it has, the more it costs. The seller must be present at the stall, sitting on the chair for the stall to be able to sell. The whole point of this being that players will gather in towns, to buy and sell. There will be greater interaction between them because of it, if you think I price is unfair, you could always ask the seller to lower it. Players would also travel between towns to reach new markets if they cant find what they are looking for. I would not want to ditch the normal trade system of opening trade with someone, having a two panelled box and an accept button, you put your items/money in, and they put theirs, then you both click accept and the items are swapped. I think its important that players can still give each other things. There are obvious advantages to selling from a stall though, a fixed market, easy advertising (the people just come and have a look), and you dont have to be at the keyboard the whole time although it helps.
Now to crafting.
AC2 was the first crafting MMORPG I played. It was pretty fun because of that, when I first started crafting. Those who have played it may understand what I mean when I say, the fun soon left it. SWG had the same problem - when you start crafting its fun, different, interesting. When you have crafted for a while its just a total grind.
I think EQ2 has got it spot on with their new crafting system - players will actually be involved in what they are making, rather than dragging ingredients to a box and clicking assemble. But although I love their ideas, I have been thinking of a different one, that is by no means better, its just of my creation. The ideas actually came to me whilst reading Bsherlock's crafting ideas. This is what I imagined.
A traveller reaches your city and seeks you out as you are known to be a fine tailor. You take him to some location, be it your shop or house, im not sure which would be better. You take him to your tailor tools, there are several, one of which is a dummy. You are able to load onto the dummy, any peice of clothing you want. You have been working on a few shirts, which is what this customer wants, so you put a few on the manequin in succession, to hear the customer tell you "Hmm, no, its not quite what I wanted" after each one. You ask him what he would like then. He tells you that all of your shirts had no pockets, he would like two breast pockets. Now you zoom in on the dummy, with the shirt he thinks is the best style, although it has no pockets ... yet! Two breast pockets, same material as the shirt, no problem. A panel is hovering by the side of the dummy, the screen looks a bit like character creation. The panel holds a variety of skills you know, you flick through the menus until you find the right pocket design. You then click this and hover it over the manequin's shirt, it can lock into a number of places, you can't put variables such as pockets everywhere, only in sensible places. At the moment, the pocket that is hovering is made to look odd to notify you it isnt attached, but to the customer, it displays as the shirt will look once finished, if they give the ok, then you can click, and you will be told how much cloth and cotton it will take to make the pocket, and to attach it. You have plenty of material left, but it isnt the right colour, so you close the alteration panel, and turn to the big tin basin you have that is still full of the coloured water from the dyeplant you were using last night, its the right colour. You have the option to use a pair of scissors on the roll of fabric to create a smaller peice and just dye that, or you can dunk all of the material in. The colour is selling sell at the moment, so you put it all in. Dyeing requires a small amount of time, so you wait for a minute or two, chatting with the customer. You are notified that the dyeing is done, and you remove the fabric from the bowl. You then turn to the dummy again, zoom, select the pocket, place, and click. You need to select the fabric and thread you want to use. Once that is done, you need to sew it on. Once you have sewn on both pockets, the item of clothing is complete, and you can trade it to the customer.
Every activity has skills you can use for it. In the tradeskill tree you have the ability to travel up different branches, and the skills and abilities on those branches can be either active skills, or passive abilities. Active skills will be actual actions you can do to have an effect on your activity, and passive abilities will grant increases to certain abilities. This means your character will be able to craft at a certain level, and when they recieve crafting xp, they can increase how good they are at a certain task, to get better results. Im not quite sure how it would effect finished products, maybe the man's pocket will fall off if you sewed it badly, or if you dyed it badly, it will slowly change back to its previous colour. There would also be different blueprints you could obtain, such as different pocket designs. You could get these from the tree, or from the big bad world.
I would want the crafting to be a little different every time. The way I see it, you can never make mass production fun, as it *is* doing the same thing. But that is the players choice, my system would allow lots of changes, and alterations and experimentations, so a player could actually genuinely enjoy themselves, just playing around with designs on their own.
I think thats it from me on crafting.
PvP: I like Bsherlock's basic PvP idea, with the clashing empires, and the moving middle ground. The middle ground should yeild some bonus to the empire who controls it, but not a PvP related one. This would mean that it is actually worth fighting for, and pushing the enemy back to retain the benefit. I also like the idea of taking minor towns. Each town should have its own individual benefit, so it will be worth pushing forward to take one for yourself. I think this would add a slight planetside-like element to the PvP - people can just fight if they want to, by hunting around in the middle lands. If they want to be of help to their empire, they could take towns, in a capture the flag/hack+hold type way. Im not sure if this would satisfy PvPers as I am not much of one myself, but PvPing would be difficult, and strategic, which would mean the best PvPers are the ones that shine through, not just the PLed ones who have the best skills.
I don't like forced PvP, as I despise griefing. I think open PvP generally leads to just that, fairly often. PvP will be worthwhile though - killing someone who is a higher level than you will get you some nice xp, but griefing newbies wont. In most MMORPGs I have played, PvP gets you very little xp, and so it is really just something to do when bored. I want it to be integral and intertwined with other systems, such as crafting, by the way of players fighting to keep hold of resource mines etc.
I am not so keen on the 'profession PKing'. I think that could lead to a lot of griefing and camping. Its a nice idea, and would add some fun roleplaying, but some players would camp certain areas to kill newbie orcs etc. I think ambushing is fine, and should be encouraged in PvP, but when it becomes just an XP grind, waiting for the next newbie to come along, then the immersion is ruined.
Roleplaying: I am quite a roleplayer myself, and I think it increases my enjoyment of a game by a lot. Pretty much anything that a game does to encourage RPing is great, in my books at least. I have already commented on the profession PvP, so I won't go over it again, but I think that my suggestions in the crafting and tradeskills section would encourage players to RP a little more. Ideally I would like to have customers saying to a tailor, "Hmm, a little more off the sleeve please" and "Do you think you could hem that skirt, and bring it up above my knees?"
To me RPing is another vital component in an MMORPG. Im not saying that until all players RP no game will be good, but rather that if a game encourages players to RP, through random comical items, lore, and actual benefits to playing your character rather than grinding them, then the immersion and depth and, in my eyes, therefore enjoyment of the game will be increased.
Im going to take a breather, Ill post more later.
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MMORPGs: Treadmills that make you fatter.
www.silkyvenom.com <-- a good site for Vanguard information
Like I said, I rather see 1st person becuase personally I feel it makes the game more immersive. I agree that quests are better suited for single-player games, but in co-op games that can also be fun (CoH). I would like to see a game with quests being more controlled by players and player actions though. I think economy is probably the most attractive feature to the majority of people out there even if they admit it or not. MMORPGs with great economy systems have done very well.
Everybody knows there isn't such a thing as a perfect MMORPG because people like different things. Still, with what I consider perfect probably won't happen until I make the game myself.
i think the perfect mmorpg must be:
good char.
good lvling it must get tuff arfter geting lvl 20
cool outfits.
jobs you can master and unlocked characters.
and a massive storyline that you find back in the game.
gr.Benjarro