UO is a game that can ignite flamewars at the drop of a hat. There are, to this day, deeply held differences of opinion on what that game was all about.
The most important thing to note is that if open PvP is an option, it will completely dominate the culture of the game. Your game will not be an adventure with the option for PvP, it will be a post-apocolyptic lord-of-the-flies nightmare that might have some adventure on the side.
Imo the first mmo with territorial open PvP warfare and NO ridiculous character progression taken straight out of single-player games is going to take off like a rocket. Imo those devs should have played more GURPS and less D&D as kids. Unlike D&D where a tank can drive over you if you're high enough level, in gurps a total newb can still slit the throat of a fully maxed out character.
I find it utterly ridiculous how this old school sandbox crowd keeps screaming for "realism" while their character progression mechanics are unrealistic to the extreme. Yes, I could be a 100 pound weakling but I can still put a bullet in a SEALs forhead if I get lucky. However, the mmo dev crowd are still living in this "RPG IS ABOUT PROGRESSION" mode and imo there is no chance this will change soon.
Ironically, the only hope I see for proper FFA sandbox mmorpg coming up is from the FPS crowd. Firefall and Planetside 2 are onto something because they're not stuck with this "PROGRESSION" munchkin bs. Mark my words - they will create really popular sandbox mmoprgs while the mmorpg crowd will keep lining up failures because they are trying to combine massively online gameplay with character progression systems designed for linear single-player games. It's sad.
This post is so full of win. GURPS style character design AND progression would be great in an MMO. Sure, you'd still have munchkinism / min-max, but by keeping characters within a given (small) range of CPs, there would be no exponentially more powerful characters.
Yeah, gurps really is the most complex, realistic and well thought-out rpg system out there (correct me if I'm wrong though). There is a HUGE pile of awesomely researched ultra-realistic GURPS sourcebooks for everything, from Cthullhupunk to 200+ page detailed tomes on building gameplay-balanced and realistic vehicles... from wooden carts to death stars. In those days we all wished for computers powerful enough to drive those systems... oh my, what fantastic RPG would be played in the 21st century? And what do we get? D&D straight out of 1978 with glowy swords and gazillion polygons. Makes me want to puke.
Incidentally, the first Fallout was to be based on GURPS but due to Steve Jackson being a crazy old man it kinda fell through. But you can still see traces of GURPS even in the latest Fallout game...
Although I have a soft spot for GURPS, having watched SJ evolve it from the earlier games, I found the ruleset to be a little arbitrary and inelligent. Great for generating sourcebooks, but needlessly wordy in its lists of advantages/disadvantages for my tastes. I feel an MMO ruleset needs to have more nice mathematical structures at its core and fewer lists.
Asherons Call Darktide server best FFA open pvp i have seen.
First off you are fair game from level 1, that means bring your big boy pants because you are going to get killed alot. The game wasnt full loot it would drop random stuff from inventory or what you had on, but it normally took higher value items first. so if you carried what we called " death items " like say a robe that you wont ever use but its value is high you were normally ok because that would drop instead of a piece of armor. but there was allways a chance you could drop somthing decent.
The game was harsh and yes you had people that just loved to stroke their e-peen while ganking people 100 levels lower than them. but you know what? it was worth it, because the Devs left it alone and the players policed themselves. find a guild, make friends and back each other up. In this game when you killed sombody it meant somthing, that person didnt just rez up, or have a friend rez him or go to some spawn pad 20 feet away. he portaled all the way back to his life stone wich could be on the other end of the world. in other words it could take you alot of running to get back to the place you were plus a 5% vitea debuff to his stats that would stack if he dies again without working it off, so maybe you should think twice before starting a war over some spawn of mobs.
also this was a skill based game, and it actually took skill to play. you could dodge in-coming magic and missle attacks by moveing out of the way, and no not like Darkfall were you go into first person and have to aim, it was a dynamic engine that shot magic were the other character was going to be " kind of like a aim bot " but you could see the projectiles and move. this also worked while fighting mobs.
anyways just my opinion im sure others will come here and say how much it sucks because they got ganked and killed. or couldnt handle loseing items but what ever.
Comments
UO is a game that can ignite flamewars at the drop of a hat. There are, to this day, deeply held differences of opinion on what that game was all about.
The most important thing to note is that if open PvP is an option, it will completely dominate the culture of the game. Your game will not be an adventure with the option for PvP, it will be a post-apocolyptic lord-of-the-flies nightmare that might have some adventure on the side.
Yeah, gurps really is the most complex, realistic and well thought-out rpg system out there (correct me if I'm wrong though). There is a HUGE pile of awesomely researched ultra-realistic GURPS sourcebooks for everything, from Cthullhupunk to 200+ page detailed tomes on building gameplay-balanced and realistic vehicles... from wooden carts to death stars. In those days we all wished for computers powerful enough to drive those systems... oh my, what fantastic RPG would be played in the 21st century? And what do we get? D&D straight out of 1978 with glowy swords and gazillion polygons. Makes me want to puke.
Incidentally, the first Fallout was to be based on GURPS but due to Steve Jackson being a crazy old man it kinda fell through. But you can still see traces of GURPS even in the latest Fallout game...
I never heard of GURPS before. I did some research and I ordered bunch of books.
GURPS: Basic Set Characters, Campaigns, Magic, Low-Tech, High-Tech, Powers, Fantasy. All 4th Editions!
This will be a good lecture!
Hopefully one day I will lead the development of the MMORPG/FPS Sandbox/Theme park game you all want! (pipe dream)
i7@4.2Ghz, 12GB@1600Mhz, GTx580 SLi, 1920x1080@120Hz, 7.1 Creative Gigaworks S750
162 Original PC Game collection. Surprisingly not a virgin.
Although I have a soft spot for GURPS, having watched SJ evolve it from the earlier games, I found the ruleset to be a little arbitrary and inelligent. Great for generating sourcebooks, but needlessly wordy in its lists of advantages/disadvantages for my tastes. I feel an MMO ruleset needs to have more nice mathematical structures at its core and fewer lists.
Asherons Call Darktide server best FFA open pvp i have seen.
First off you are fair game from level 1, that means bring your big boy pants because you are going to get killed alot. The game wasnt full loot it would drop random stuff from inventory or what you had on, but it normally took higher value items first. so if you carried what we called " death items " like say a robe that you wont ever use but its value is high you were normally ok because that would drop instead of a piece of armor. but there was allways a chance you could drop somthing decent.
The game was harsh and yes you had people that just loved to stroke their e-peen while ganking people 100 levels lower than them. but you know what? it was worth it, because the Devs left it alone and the players policed themselves. find a guild, make friends and back each other up. In this game when you killed sombody it meant somthing, that person didnt just rez up, or have a friend rez him or go to some spawn pad 20 feet away. he portaled all the way back to his life stone wich could be on the other end of the world. in other words it could take you alot of running to get back to the place you were plus a 5% vitea debuff to his stats that would stack if he dies again without working it off, so maybe you should think twice before starting a war over some spawn of mobs.
also this was a skill based game, and it actually took skill to play. you could dodge in-coming magic and missle attacks by moveing out of the way, and no not like Darkfall were you go into first person and have to aim, it was a dynamic engine that shot magic were the other character was going to be " kind of like a aim bot " but you could see the projectiles and move. this also worked while fighting mobs.
anyways just my opinion im sure others will come here and say how much it sucks because they got ganked and killed. or couldnt handle loseing items but what ever.