I wouldn't need 250 million,i could probably build a 200% better game than Chris Roberts for half the budget and i guarantee i would not be so lame as to try and bait gamer's into spending money before the project is done. People like Robert's don't even understand the simplest concepts.Gamer's like to DISCOVER and build things,NOT just outright buy everything from the cash shop.Cash shop gaming is taking away the very fun gamer's want out of the game,it is a retarded way of thinking as well a very greedy way of thinking.SOTA and Crowfall are two more games doing the same stupid ideas that remove the fun out of the game.
To me ,i see it like some kid goes to the amusement park,gives the ticket guy 5 bucks for a ride,then the ticket guy says "oh don't bother with the actual ride,we just give you a ticket that says you did the ride".AFK gaming is the same dumb idea,oh don'r bother with the ride,just pretend you did the ride in your sleep.
Like to me the most simple common sense ideas are totally missed by developers,they simply do not understand how to make a game,it is like ALL their thoughts go into the money making process and forget they actually have to make a fun game.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Steampunk or dieselpunk. Actually, I'd see if I could purchase a license to use the world from the anime Last Exile. That would be an awesome setting for an MMO.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
The MMORPG market is full, so I wouldn't because it would fail. There is no more room for new titles, especially not with that budget. Making new mmo titles will just end up making them all unprofitable at this point, every new mmo that launched in the last few years took a portion of players from other games. That's not sustainable and it would of led to the entire market crashing, which is why no more are being made now.
There is way too much competition, potential players have demands that are impossible to meet, the players are far too tribal and hateful to anything that isn't their current mmo and the player pool is too small.
The mmorpg players day in the sun has ended, the fact you had a hayday at all was thanks to wow making publishers think they could repeat what that game did. Nobody has even come close to it.
Yeah, if you do the same as everyone else the game will fail. A game just like Wow would need to be better and have a lot of content.
Now, if you can make a fun MMORPG that isn't like something else things are different because then you don't really have any competition but if you do the same as everyone else you have 100 games with more content and already optimized which is a recepie for failure.
A new hit MMO needs to be enough different so you don't really recognize the gameplay, at least to a certain degree. GW2 have earned quite a lot of money and ESO at least did acceptable. A new game would need to be more different from the rest then they are though since time still is moving but they do prove that you still can earn money on a MMO.
Also, I think you should stay away from high fantasy at the moment, far too many games. Pick a good historical period (tip: musketeers are popular in culture and well fitted for a MMO even as been pointed out before, western is nice as well) or use horror, steampunk, dieselpunk, superheoes (yeah, have been done but just 5 or so times), spies (James Bond online would work) or something else that is popular but don't have much or any MMOs set in it yet.
I think the easiest to pull off would be a Lovecraft MMO set in the 30s with a sanity counter that affected how you see the gameworld (low sanity and you get a lot of nasty ambient effects making the world feel horrid while a saner player see it as nice and sunny).
WAR is also popular with gamers, could be 'nam, WW1, 30 year war, Norman invasions, crusades or US civil war. WW2 have been done.
'Holding' = tower defense....one side attacks because they joined an outlaw clan, the other side defends because they are homesteaders trying to grow crops for the crafters
look just dont like the idea and move on, stop being trollish about it.
Tower defense games are fields of towers defending against endless hordes of AI enemies. They're interesting because they're a puzzle game where you get to manipulate a stupid AI in fun ways, and gameplay is basically nonstop (while playing a tower defense there's not really any significant length of time where you're not making decisions about which towers to place where.)
Homesteads didn't have tall walls and varied towers. The aesthetic doesn't mesh with tower defense in the slightest.
Discussing the reasons an idea wouldn't work isn't being trollish. It's simply the rational discussion of a topic. Without being able to explain the moment-to-moment gameplay of a game in a way that sounds compelling, a game is going to achieve mediocre success at best.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Steampunk or dieselpunk. Actually, I'd see if I could purchase a license to use the world from the anime Last Exile. That would be an awesome setting for an MMO.
It is a rather odd setting but would work, it have potential. Pumpkin scissors would work even better. Heck, plenty of anime settings that would work, Full metal alchemist, Trigun, Full metal panik or maybe Code Geas.
'Holding' = tower defense....one side attacks because they joined an outlaw clan, the other side defends because they are homesteaders trying to grow crops for the crafters
look just dont like the idea and move on, stop being trollish about it.
Tower defense games are fields of towers defending against endless hordes of AI enemies. They're interesting because they're a puzzle game where you get to manipulate a stupid AI in fun ways, and gameplay is basically nonstop (while playing a tower defense there's not really any significant length of time where you're not making decisions about which towers to place where.)
Homesteads didn't have tall walls and varied towers. The aesthetic doesn't mesh with tower defense in the slightest.
Discussing the reasons an idea wouldn't work isn't being trollish. It's simply the rational discussion of a topic. Without being able to explain the moment-to-moment gameplay of a game in a way that sounds compelling, a game is going to achieve mediocre success at best.
f off please
I get it..you dont like the idea of a wild west sandbox crafting/building MMORPG.
move on
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
I'd limit quests. Absolutely zero killx/colletx quests. I'd encourage group play without people thinking they have to do it. I'd come up with systems that encouraged as much player interactivity as possible. These are MMOs, they should use the players to create content. Overall, I'd focus most of the development on gameplay. What are people actually doing and how can you make that as interesting as possible?
I know this all sounds vague. To get more concrete ideas, I'd take a million of the Dev costs for a vision quest. I'd buy a Cadillac, drive it to Vegas, buy a crapload of peyote, and go ham. After that I'm sure I'd have some really good concrete ideas.
No solid ideas on gameplay, but players will be required to go to a store and register for an account with a formal document (like passport or ID card or drivers license). Or maybe that's my idea; a company specialized in handling real life accountable player accounts.
Without going into all of the nitty gritty details, I'd first say that you're doomed to fail if it takes you $250 million dollars to develop your MMORPG.
Given the competition in the MMORPG space - let alone the competition in the entertainment space, the kind of game you'd have to make to get a worthwhile return on your investment will require you to create yet another game that attempts to appeal to ALL gamers in the MMORPG demo, including the lowest common denominators. Meaning - it will have to be an ultra casual game (because you need a massive number of subscribers / players to support that price tag) that people will get board with in less than a years time.
There is already too much competition for casual entertainment right now.
Take a quarter of that budget and develop a polished niche based MMORPG game that exists in an under served market in the MMO space. If it's a compelling game, people will play it because they can't go anywhere else for that same kind of experience...and you aren't beholden to the fickle customer that will just as soon watch youtube videos vs play your $250 million dollar game you spent blood sweat & tears on over 5 years to develop.
I'd probably do something set in the Wild Western era of the US. A mix of sandbox exploration, survival with traditional elements of PvP.
Without going into all of the nitty gritty details, I'd first say that you're doomed to fail if it takes you $250 million dollars to develop your MMORPG.
not really true.
I know of an MMO that was made by an extreemly small team and given that the payout of said MMO goes to basically 1 person, maybe 2 its been a success for more than 10 years
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
- I would love a MMORPG where you are the hero with unique skills and can summon your own armies in battles against other player territory grounds to conquer. - With an in dept management world. - A Dynamic world where there is also strategic NPC armies that behave non scripted. - Prison feature where the enemy hero has a chance to break out in a non scripted behavior so it remains unique. - Guild bosses - World bosses - Smaller group army dungeons where each player can deploy one or two summons to form a party. - Summon armies ranked to a cap score, for example you could have a larger small individual strengh army or an lower amount bigger strengh summons, with also class based summons as assistance to form a personal party. - resource management, and resource capture points such as gold mine, wood, stone - Summon armies upkeep or that they perform less effective as penalty.
not sure if that would exeed the budget. I love summons!
I'd limit quests. Absolutely zero killx/colletx quests. I'd encourage group play without people thinking they have to do it. I'd come up with systems that encouraged as much player interactivity as possible. These are MMOs, they should use the players to create content. Overall, I'd focus most of the development on gameplay. What are people actually doing and how can you make that as interesting as possible?
I know this all sounds vague. To get more concrete ideas, I'd take a million of the Dev costs for a vision quest. I'd buy a Cadillac, drive it to Vegas, buy a crapload of peyote, and go ham. After that I'm sure I'd have some really good concrete ideas.
Limiting quests isn't that vague, TSW have dome just that for example, and in a way GW2 does it as well. And agreed, a full questlog of uninteresting rat killing quests depresses me.
The other stuff is harder unless you want to force player interaction with force grouping (but it doesn't sound like that is what you are saying). Rewarding players for working together without forcing them too much demands a lot of work, but if you pull it off you do make the game better.
Player created content is really hard besides player owned farms (and even them take some work). Not sure how you can pull that off in a really fun way, some games have tried but none of them really succeded well. Would be great if you could figure out good mechanics for it though.
The million of devs idea suck, with that many people you get zero things done. A small handful that thinks the same way is far better, preferably that don't think that they just should continue what everyone been doing since 2004.
Discussing the reasons an idea wouldn't work isn't being trollish. It's simply the rational discussion of a topic. Without being able to explain the moment-to-moment gameplay of a game in a way that sounds compelling, a game is going to achieve mediocre success at best.
Making unrealistic assumptions and unnecessary dialogue is trollish however, and it's pretty exactly what you have chosen to do.
A "homestead" isn't one building and a few fences, it's the environment that it is placed in as well. We can again reference the way Red Dead Redemption worked on this end, placing certain ranch buildings in canyon segments or using large hillsides and such to create natural barriers. When it comes to attack and defense type games, that's a pretty simple style of gameplay quite common to FPS and action games already and can be a quite straightforward user experience when you talk about adding craftable defenses and such to the mix.
Tribes Renegade would be a perfect example of that.
"Moving out west" was a pretense to activity and the gameplay that ensues from that setting introduction.
You have chosen to give poorly thought arguments and rather ceaseless trolling behavior to yet another thread.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Discussing the reasons an idea wouldn't work isn't being trollish. It's simply the rational discussion of a topic. Without being able to explain the moment-to-moment gameplay of a game in a way that sounds compelling, a game is going to achieve mediocre success at best.
Making unrealistic assumptions and unnecessary dialogue is trollish however, and it pretty exactly what you have chosen to do.
A "homestead" isn't one building and a few fences, it's the environment that it is placed in as well. We can again reference the way Red Dead Redemption worked on this end, placing certain ranch buildings in canyon segments or using large hillsides and such to create natural barriers. When it comes to attack and defense type games, that's a pretty simple style of gameplay quite common to FPS and action games already and can be a quite straightforward user experience when you talk about adding craftable defenses and such to the mix.
Tribes Renegade would be a perfect example of that.
"Moving out west" was a pretense to activity and the gameplay that ensues from that setting introduction.
You have chosen to give poorly thought arguments and rather ceaseless trolling behavior to yet another thread.
I very much doubt he didnt understand what I meant originally and I seriously doubt he is misunderstanding me on my comparison to 'holding land' and 'tower defense'. He wants to pick a fight by pretending to be not very intelligent
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Without going into all of the nitty gritty details, I'd first say that you're doomed to fail if it takes you $250 million dollars to develop your MMORPG.
not really true.
I know of an MMO that was made by an extreemly small team and given that the payout of said MMO goes to basically 1 person, maybe 2 its been a success for more than 10 years
Did they spend $250 million on it?
The point I was trying to make is the more expensive your operation is, the more money you'll need in a short amount of time to recoup the expenses + profit to make the investment worthwhile. Generating that kind of cash influx would require you to create a game that appealed to a massive number of gamers in the MMO space....particularly the casual gamers - who are incredible fickle and by definition never stick around.
There is that old saying that goes something to the effect of those that try to please all truly ever satisfy none.
There are competing objectives between hardcore & casual MMO gamers, and it's difficult to keep them both happy in the same game....and I mean really happy to the point of playing loyally for years on end.
That said....if you just plucked the $250 mill off a money tree and never had to pay anyone back, then ya....you could do what ever the heck you wanted on diamond crusted 22" spinners.
But given the reality of things, you're better served keeping your cost down so that you can deliver a REALLY good game to a niche audience and be profitable at the same time.
Good point, mechanics like that would favor the people who start at launch (or headstart) and not attract new players due to that.
Seeking gold in a large area could be fun but the problem really is that it isn't long term. I think the serie "Deadwood" would offer a better source for a MMO, with intrigue, murder, gambling, theft, romance and so on. Player owned saloons with gamble would help.
Lol. mechanics to challenge another player to a duel at high noon with the possibility for other players to bet on the outcome would be cool as well (give a percentage to the winner to discourage folding down which can happen in a MMO but not IRL).
Having some players to own farms, ranches or mining rights is fine but that should be more of a sidegame and not the main point of the game. Otherwise you would just get a bunch of insane miners with a mule and a shotgun shooting everyone getting close to their mine, and while playing that could be amusing a full server of them and the despoerados trying to steal the gold would be rather bizare and not a fun game. A game can just take a few insane miners before it gets silly.
Treasure maps to lost mines, hidden cashes from the civil war (even though with my luck I would find a million in conferate bills) and similar can be amusing if you don't overuse it. A few player run gangs against the sheriff, his deputys and maybe a Texas ranger, pinkerton dective or US marshal can also be fun but not all players can play desperados and lawmen.
The west works for a MMOFPS game with limited progression (compared to fantasy MMOs) but Seanss ideas would work better for a single player game or a small server with 50 players on. If we are talking massive games you need more.
Well those are certainly more compelling sounding verbs, but for the most part they're unproven as videogame mechanics. So they're sort of still in the same boat as Sean's list of things. Unproven videogame mechanics doesn't mean it would be completely impossible to design exciting moment-to-moment gameplay around them (and this is true of some of Sean's things too), but it's far riskier and more costly as a result of having to create something entirely new from scratch.
Creating something so innovative that players don't know if they want it is also risky, since players have shown repeatedly that they are innovation-averse. (Hundreds of extremely innovative indie games are made each year, but everyone isn't constantly jumping into each new genre as it's created. Instead, FPSes remain the dominant genre, and players have shown a strong preference of endless sequels.)
To be fair, even the 'boring-sounding' stuff like farming could be developed this way. Mobile games like Hay Day aren't exactly deep, but provide an example of how non-combat gameplay (farming) can still be relatively compelling to a certain demographic of players by providing and endless stream of things to upgrade and a lot of plates to get spinning all at once (keep farming sugar cane so you can keep grinding white sugar so you can keep making cake in your oven)
It's just a question of what you want the one defining game mechanic to be, really. You can effectively only do one thing really well, and anything else is going to be a brief, shallow sideshow.
Another thing to always keep in mind is the things that make Deadwood great aren't things videogames have a good track record of capturing. Deadwood, and other popular non-interactive entertainment, is successful because it revolves around interesting situations with high-quality scripts and acting. Now Telltale Games could certainly create a great Deadwood game because it would mostly be cutscenes with cool situations to experience, but the amount of "game" in Telltale's games tends to be very limited. I don't really feel this makes them fail as entertainment -- they're still pretty darn good -- but what I'm saying is recapturing what makes Deadwood (or The Walking Dead or Firefly or whatever) good hasn't been done well as interactive entertainment.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Farming games, treasure hunting, gambling, etc are all features that have existed in games for quite a long time now. What are you even talking about with the idea that they are unproven mechanics?
Again, Red Dead Redemption. Also Red Dead Revolver, Call of Juarez, Outlaws, Mad Dog, Oregon Trail, Oddworld Stranger's Wrath, Hard West, Fistful of Gun, Gunman Clive, etc.
Country Life, Harvest Moon, Happy Farm, etc.
Who knows how many gambling games...
When it comes to the features that have largely been in question, there are many examples to choose from for reference to how they not only could work, but have already been done. You having not played them does not cause something to not exist.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
There is only really one thing you could do without going sci-fi or fantasy, and that is making a real life emulator. A wild west mmorpg is a form of fantasy, zombies are sci-fi, horror world is sci-fi or fantasy - To make an interesting game you would have to escape reality in some way, otherwise it would just be a reality sandbox.
So ignored that limitation, I would make some form of mmorts. Where you play as a character and progress as a character in a persistant world mostly like a non-themepark mmorpg (disqualifies all modern mmo's), while having rts building mixed in (base building, defending, exploration, expansion, resources management and control).
You not only level yourself, but also key members (npc) of your organisation, complete with abilities, skills, levels (or whatever fits the game best) - You take these npc with you on traditional mmorpg play where they gain xp/gear/points/whatever and the same npc are also used in the rts part of the game as military, production, service, diplomacy (you name it) personnel. Imagine yourself playing as both a leader who issues orders as well as an adventurer and explorer who directly influence both rpg play and rts play.
Player conflicts will be limited to indirect pvp by power struggles on influence of factions by supporting and helping these, by alliances and various means, and only consentual pvp is allowed.
And there is more, but this is mmorpg forums so why waste time writing more details. You can transfer the 250m to Bank of Panama account number 666 666 666, thank you.
You have the entire human history to pick from and that is all you can think of?
mmorpg forums.. where any kind of original thinking is shot down :chuffed: At least it is a new idea that hasn't been done to death.
I tried to open my old post about the type of MMORPG I'd love to make, but the links now say I don't have permission... anyway, basically I'd try to get Jean Auel to approve and preferably co-produce a game based on the first book in her Earth's Children® Series, Clan of the Cave Bear. There's six books in the series which makes for possibly six expansions or perhaps have them as new land masses to be discovered and/or originate from. One of the best part of her books imo is the wealth of lore in them, from plant uses and clothing/tools to art to be learned and utilized.
edit: pvp would be totally optional, toggle for open world duels/battles between clans(no special rewards/drops, just for those who enjoy a bit of pvp) and then only in special arenas during festivals, unique titles being the only prize.
To elaborate a little further, I believe there could be a real market for this kind of game world based largely on the fact that it has sold 45 million copies of the books worldwide and imo would be much more fun and hopefully even somewhat educational as a survivalist mmorpg than those where you get dropped in some prehistoric world predating human life. --------------------- http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2010-09-13-auel13_ST_N.htm
"She has spent a night in a snow cave in January, softened hides with deer brains she has squished with her bare hands, and learned to start a fire without matches.
Those survivalist skills, gleaned through research, have served author Jean Auel well in her best-selling Earth's Children series, which began with the iconic The Clan of the Cave Bear in 1980.
Sept. 30 marks the 30th anniversary of the novel set 35,000 years ago in prehistoric Europe during the Ice Age. Cave Bear and four sequels star blond, blue-eyed Cro-Magnon Ayla, an early modern human.
Three decades later, with 45 million copies of the books sold worldwide, the publishing equivalent of a party has begun." ---------------------
It would be a game where you have to learn what and how to gather/hunt to survive, you can only carry what you can use in the short-term to survive as you have only your own strength and no means of storage beyond what caches you may attempt to hide from scavengers in caves or under rock piles. I believe this should take the character long enough to learn at least basic skills(slingshots, wooden spears, fishing with nets, basic line made from animal/human hair, what isn't poisonous to eat) before being strong enough to head out looking for other survivors. No fire.
Finally after finding others in the earthquake devastated ice age landscape to live/work/travel/hunt/whatever with, would you be in a position to start or join a clan or village where you could build a dwelling large enough to store more than your immediate needs call for and only after earning a spot in the village, subject to exile if you disgrace the clan, break the rules, or do not pull your weight in it by contributing through hunting/gathering or providing some other means to make your presence valuable to the clan (ie. weapon/tool crafting, leather work, medicine man/woman, fire-maker, tamer, etc.). Many of the skills you need/want to learn you will have to find mentors for, or at the least, to excel in, just as they will need students that will pay to be taught(with food or whatever the student is able to trade). Exile means just that, no longer welcome to participate in that clan/village in any way. Redemption would have a high price but would be worth it(ie. fire is only available in villages or at the seasonal gatherings).
There will be a hierarchy in each village, subject to an even broader one per continent/people and every season will provide a gathering where players will have the opportunity to meet other clans who have all traveled to the gathering(any clan from any continent is welcome), join them for learning purposes(different mentors, hunting/gathering options), or just because they want to live in a different area and experience the different lifestyles.
You will be able to learn every skill but only excel in one.
Only one character per account per continent. You can have more than one character but they must all be on/from different continents and cannot join the same clan/village.
Hunting companion animals, mounts and/or pack animals are limited to what you are able to tame, limited to one of each type able to spawn at the same time.(ie. cannot have two wolf companions hunting with you at the same time, but can have one wolf, or whatever you've got to hunt with, one mount and one pack animal).
Anyway, this is the gist of what I imagine and yes, there would be consensual pvp(against my personal preference), but since this is a survival mmorpg and not yet another king of the world war mmo, there will be no wars between continents.... but should two clans want the same village location and both are willing to fight for it, they are able to pvp with the winner taking the location, should one not want to fight then it would be up to the higher hierarchy to determine which clan should get it. There would also be consensual pvp between players(toggle) as well as pvp tournaments at the seasonal gatherings.
The game itself would be pve centric, with pvp limited to stat-less weapons and armour. Oh and all "magic" skills would be healing or crowd control with no offensive damage.
Well those are certainly more compelling sounding verbs, but for the most part they're unproven as videogame mechanics. So they're sort of still in the same boat as Sean's list of things. Unproven videogame mechanics doesn't mean it would be completely impossible to design exciting moment-to-moment gameplay around them (and this is true of some of Sean's things too), but it's far riskier and more costly as a result of having to create something entirely new from scratch.
Creating something so innovative that players don't know if they want it is also risky, since players have shown repeatedly that they are innovation-averse. (Hundreds of extremely innovative indie games are made each year, but everyone isn't constantly jumping into each new genre as it's created. Instead, FPSes remain the dominant genre, and players have shown a strong preference of endless sequels.)
To be fair, even the 'boring-sounding' stuff like farming could be developed this way. Mobile games like Hay Day aren't exactly deep, but provide an example of how non-combat gameplay (farming) can still be relatively compelling to a certain demographic of players by providing and endless stream of things to upgrade and a lot of plates to get spinning all at once (keep farming sugar cane so you can keep grinding white sugar so you can keep making cake in your oven)
It's just a question of what you want the one defining game mechanic to be, really. You can effectively only do one thing really well, and anything else is going to be a brief, shallow sideshow.
Another thing to always keep in mind is the things that make Deadwood great aren't things videogames have a good track record of capturing. Deadwood, and other popular non-interactive entertainment, is successful because it revolves around interesting situations with high-quality scripts and acting. Now Telltale Games could certainly create a great Deadwood game because it would mostly be cutscenes with cool situations to experience, but the amount of "game" in Telltale's games tends to be very limited. I don't really feel this makes them fail as entertainment -- they're still pretty darn good -- but what I'm saying is recapturing what makes Deadwood (or The Walking Dead or Firefly or whatever) good hasn't been done well as interactive entertainment.
It surely is unproven but I think we are beyond the tried and proven MMO mechanics now. And you can look on singleplayer games like the "Red dead" series.
I fear that we passed the time when you just can make a game similar to EQ/Wow and make it popular today, at least long term and with 250M you surely would have enough money to experiment and try out new mechanics.
But yeah, you can't just take a TV show and implement it straight over a game, but I think you can add some stuff from it very well. Poker games at the saloon for example. If you go for a themepark thing players could also pick sides between a few people (like the 2 saloon owners and the Sheriff in Deadwood) and help them to further their agenda, no matter if you use quests or DEs. Sandboxing is slightly harder but player run gangs do have some potential.
I BTW think you can make a few things well, it is when you try to do everything and make all potential players happy (open world PvPers, arenaPvPers, soloplayers, group fans, raiders, crafters and so on) that you fail miserably.
There is only really one thing you could do without going sci-fi or fantasy, and that is making a real life emulator. A wild west mmorpg is a form of fantasy, zombies are sci-fi, horror world is sci-fi or fantasy - To make an interesting game you would have to escape reality in some way, otherwise it would just be a reality sandbox.
So ignored that limitation, I would make some form of mmorts. Where you play as a character and progress as a character in a persistant world mostly like a non-themepark mmorpg (disqualifies all modern mmo's), while having rts building mixed in (base building, defending, exploration, expansion, resources management and control).
You not only level yourself, but also key members (npc) of your organisation, complete with abilities, skills, levels (or whatever fits the game best) - You take these npc with you on traditional mmorpg play where they gain xp/gear/points/whatever and the same npc are also used in the rts part of the game as military, production, service, diplomacy (you name it) personnel. Imagine yourself playing as both a leader who issues orders as well as an adventurer and explorer who directly influence both rpg play and rts play.
Player conflicts will be limited to indirect pvp by power struggles on influence of factions by supporting and helping these, by alliances and various means, and only consentual pvp is allowed.
And there is more, but this is mmorpg forums so why waste time writing more details. You can transfer the 250m to Bank of Panama account number 666 666 666, thank you.
You have the entire human history to pick from and that is all you can think of?
mmorpg forums.. where any kind of original thinking is shot down :chuffed: At least it is a new idea that hasn't been done to death.
You are missunderstanding me, what I commented was the "really only one thing you can do" comment. You have the entire history of the world together with horror, steampunk, dectective/CSI and a whole bunch of others.
Better yet,take a look at hearthstone,Blizz likely made a billion on that game,does it look like a billion dollar game ...lol not a chance in hell,it looks like an Indie game.
Point being,no doubt what so ever ,a simple gamer can do better,but sadly it is not all about making a great game,it is about tricky,sneaky marketing and luring in a permanent fanbase that buys anything and everything you sell.This point being that sadly certain devs can make 20k games and make millions whilst a hard working Indie group might struggle to break even.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
a western, with outlaws, train robberies, indians, trappers, lawmen, mexicans, and cheap whores in saloons and card games, and cheaters, and settlements, and exploration
Comments
People like Robert's don't even understand the simplest concepts.Gamer's like to DISCOVER and build things,NOT just outright buy everything from the cash shop.Cash shop gaming is taking away the very fun gamer's want out of the game,it is a retarded way of thinking as well a very greedy way of thinking.SOTA and Crowfall are two more games doing the same stupid ideas that remove the fun out of the game.
To me ,i see it like some kid goes to the amusement park,gives the ticket guy 5 bucks for a ride,then the ticket guy says "oh don't bother with the actual ride,we just give you a ticket that says you did the ride".AFK gaming is the same dumb idea,oh don'r bother with the ride,just pretend you did the ride in your sleep.
Like to me the most simple common sense ideas are totally missed by developers,they simply do not understand how to make a game,it is like ALL their thoughts go into the money making process and forget they actually have to make a fun game.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
#IStandWithVic
Now, if you can make a fun MMORPG that isn't like something else things are different because then you don't really have any competition but if you do the same as everyone else you have 100 games with more content and already optimized which is a recepie for failure.
A new hit MMO needs to be enough different so you don't really recognize the gameplay, at least to a certain degree. GW2 have earned quite a lot of money and ESO at least did acceptable. A new game would need to be more different from the rest then they are though since time still is moving but they do prove that you still can earn money on a MMO.
Also, I think you should stay away from high fantasy at the moment, far too many games. Pick a good historical period (tip: musketeers are popular in culture and well fitted for a MMO even as been pointed out before, western is nice as well) or use horror, steampunk, dieselpunk, superheoes (yeah, have been done but just 5 or so times), spies (James Bond online would work) or something else that is popular but don't have much or any MMOs set in it yet.
I think the easiest to pull off would be a Lovecraft MMO set in the 30s with a sanity counter that affected how you see the gameworld (low sanity and you get a lot of nasty ambient effects making the world feel horrid while a saner player see it as nice and sunny).
WAR is also popular with gamers, could be 'nam, WW1, 30 year war, Norman invasions, crusades or US civil war. WW2 have been done.
Homesteads didn't have tall walls and varied towers. The aesthetic doesn't mesh with tower defense in the slightest.
Discussing the reasons an idea wouldn't work isn't being trollish. It's simply the rational discussion of a topic. Without being able to explain the moment-to-moment gameplay of a game in a way that sounds compelling, a game is going to achieve mediocre success at best.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I get it..you dont like the idea of a wild west sandbox crafting/building MMORPG.
move on
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
I'd encourage group play without people thinking they have to do it.
I'd come up with systems that encouraged as much player interactivity as possible. These are MMOs, they should use the players to create content.
Overall, I'd focus most of the development on gameplay. What are people actually doing and how can you make that as interesting as possible?
I know this all sounds vague. To get more concrete ideas, I'd take a million of the Dev costs for a vision quest. I'd buy a Cadillac, drive it to Vegas, buy a crapload of peyote, and go ham. After that I'm sure I'd have some really good concrete ideas.
Without going into all of the nitty gritty details, I'd first say that you're doomed to fail if it takes you $250 million dollars to develop your MMORPG.
Given the competition in the MMORPG space - let alone the competition in the entertainment space, the kind of game you'd have to make to get a worthwhile return on your investment will require you to create yet another game that attempts to appeal to ALL gamers in the MMORPG demo, including the lowest common denominators. Meaning - it will have to be an ultra casual game (because you need a massive number of subscribers / players to support that price tag) that people will get board with in less than a years time.
There is already too much competition for casual entertainment right now.
Take a quarter of that budget and develop a polished niche based MMORPG game that exists in an under served market in the MMO space. If it's a compelling game, people will play it because they can't go anywhere else for that same kind of experience...and you aren't beholden to the fickle customer that will just as soon watch youtube videos vs play your $250 million dollar game you spent blood sweat & tears on over 5 years to develop.
I'd probably do something set in the Wild Western era of the US. A mix of sandbox exploration, survival with traditional elements of PvP.
I know of an MMO that was made by an extreemly small team and given that the payout of said MMO goes to basically 1 person, maybe 2 its been a success for more than 10 years
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
- With an in dept management world.
- A Dynamic world where there is also strategic NPC armies that behave non scripted.
- Prison feature where the enemy hero has a chance to break out in a non scripted behavior so it remains unique.
- Guild bosses
- World bosses
- Smaller group army dungeons where each player can deploy one or two summons to form a party.
- Summon armies ranked to a cap score, for example you could have a larger small individual strengh army or an lower amount bigger strengh summons, with also class based summons as assistance to form a personal party.
- resource management, and resource capture points such as gold mine, wood, stone
- Summon armies upkeep or that they perform less effective as penalty.
not sure if that would exeed the budget.
I love summons!
You would have intellectual battles with other posters and gain Titles which granted bonuses in +Agree +Insightful and +Awesome
@nariusseldon Would be a raid boss that could take damage for 20,000 LOLs and any Agree's would reset his LOL meter back to zero.
edit: With the other 249,999,000 I'd buy a Mclaren, a Lamborghini, a Porsche, a Bugatti, a Ferrari and Derek Smart's soul
Just because I could.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
The other stuff is harder unless you want to force player interaction with force grouping (but it doesn't sound like that is what you are saying). Rewarding players for working together without forcing them too much demands a lot of work, but if you pull it off you do make the game better.
Player created content is really hard besides player owned farms (and even them take some work). Not sure how you can pull that off in a really fun way, some games have tried but none of them really succeded well. Would be great if you could figure out good mechanics for it though.
The million of devs idea suck, with that many people you get zero things done. A small handful that thinks the same way is far better, preferably that don't think that they just should continue what everyone been doing since 2004.
A "homestead" isn't one building and a few fences, it's the environment that it is placed in as well. We can again reference the way Red Dead Redemption worked on this end, placing certain ranch buildings in canyon segments or using large hillsides and such to create natural barriers. When it comes to attack and defense type games, that's a pretty simple style of gameplay quite common to FPS and action games already and can be a quite straightforward user experience when you talk about adding craftable defenses and such to the mix.
Tribes Renegade would be a perfect example of that.
"Moving out west" was a pretense to activity and the gameplay that ensues from that setting introduction.
You have chosen to give poorly thought arguments and rather ceaseless trolling behavior to yet another thread.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
The point I was trying to make is the more expensive your operation is, the more money you'll need in a short amount of time to recoup the expenses + profit to make the investment worthwhile. Generating that kind of cash influx would require you to create a game that appealed to a massive number of gamers in the MMO space....particularly the casual gamers - who are incredible fickle and by definition never stick around.
There is that old saying that goes something to the effect of those that try to please all truly ever satisfy none.
There are competing objectives between hardcore & casual MMO gamers, and it's difficult to keep them both happy in the same game....and I mean really happy to the point of playing loyally for years on end.
That said....if you just plucked the $250 mill off a money tree and never had to pay anyone back, then ya....you could do what ever the heck you wanted on diamond crusted 22" spinners.
But given the reality of things, you're better served keeping your cost down so that you can deliver a REALLY good game to a niche audience and be profitable at the same time.
Well those are certainly more compelling sounding verbs, but for the most part they're unproven as videogame mechanics. So they're sort of still in the same boat as Sean's list of things. Unproven videogame mechanics doesn't mean it would be completely impossible to design exciting moment-to-moment gameplay around them (and this is true of some of Sean's things too), but it's far riskier and more costly as a result of having to create something entirely new from scratch.
Creating something so innovative that players don't know if they want it is also risky, since players have shown repeatedly that they are innovation-averse. (Hundreds of extremely innovative indie games are made each year, but everyone isn't constantly jumping into each new genre as it's created. Instead, FPSes remain the dominant genre, and players have shown a strong preference of endless sequels.)
To be fair, even the 'boring-sounding' stuff like farming could be developed this way. Mobile games like Hay Day aren't exactly deep, but provide an example of how non-combat gameplay (farming) can still be relatively compelling to a certain demographic of players by providing and endless stream of things to upgrade and a lot of plates to get spinning all at once (keep farming sugar cane so you can keep grinding white sugar so you can keep making cake in your oven)
It's just a question of what you want the one defining game mechanic to be, really. You can effectively only do one thing really well, and anything else is going to be a brief, shallow sideshow.
Another thing to always keep in mind is the things that make Deadwood great aren't things videogames have a good track record of capturing. Deadwood, and other popular non-interactive entertainment, is successful because it revolves around interesting situations with high-quality scripts and acting. Now Telltale Games could certainly create a great Deadwood game because it would mostly be cutscenes with cool situations to experience, but the amount of "game" in Telltale's games tends to be very limited. I don't really feel this makes them fail as entertainment -- they're still pretty darn good -- but what I'm saying is recapturing what makes Deadwood (or The Walking Dead or Firefly or whatever) good hasn't been done well as interactive entertainment.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Again, Red Dead Redemption. Also Red Dead Revolver, Call of Juarez, Outlaws, Mad Dog, Oregon Trail, Oddworld Stranger's Wrath, Hard West, Fistful of Gun, Gunman Clive, etc.
Country Life, Harvest Moon, Happy Farm, etc.
Who knows how many gambling games...
When it comes to the features that have largely been in question, there are many examples to choose from for reference to how they not only could work, but have already been done. You having not played them does not cause something to not exist.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
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http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2010-09-13-auel13_ST_N.htm
"She has spent a night in a snow cave in January, softened hides with deer brains she has squished with her bare hands, and learned to start a fire without matches.
Those survivalist skills, gleaned through research, have served author Jean Auel well in her best-selling Earth's Children series, which began with the iconic The Clan of the Cave Bear in 1980.
Sept. 30 marks the 30th anniversary of the novel set 35,000 years ago in prehistoric Europe during the Ice Age. Cave Bear and four sequels star blond, blue-eyed Cro-Magnon Ayla, an early modern human.
Three decades later, with 45 million copies of the books sold worldwide, the publishing equivalent of a party has begun."
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It would be a game where you have to learn what and how to gather/hunt to survive, you can only carry what you can use in the short-term to survive as you have only your own strength and no means of storage beyond what caches you may attempt to hide from scavengers in caves or under rock piles. I believe this should take the character long enough to learn at least basic skills(slingshots, wooden spears, fishing with nets, basic line made from animal/human hair, what isn't poisonous to eat) before being strong enough to head out looking for other survivors. No fire.
Finally after finding others in the earthquake devastated ice age landscape to live/work/travel/hunt/whatever with, would you be in a position to start or join a clan or village where you could build a dwelling large enough to store more than your immediate needs call for and only after earning a spot in the village, subject to exile if you disgrace the clan, break the rules, or do not pull your weight in it by contributing through hunting/gathering or providing some other means to make your presence valuable to the clan (ie. weapon/tool crafting, leather work, medicine man/woman, fire-maker, tamer, etc.). Many of the skills you need/want to learn you will have to find mentors for, or at the least, to excel in, just as they will need students that will pay to be taught(with food or whatever the student is able to trade). Exile means just that, no longer welcome to participate in that clan/village in any way. Redemption would have a high price but would be worth it(ie. fire is only available in villages or at the seasonal gatherings).
There will be a hierarchy in each village, subject to an even broader one per continent/people and every season will provide a gathering where players will have the opportunity to meet other clans who have all traveled to the gathering(any clan from any continent is welcome), join them for learning purposes(different mentors, hunting/gathering options), or just because they want to live in a different area and experience the different lifestyles.
You will be able to learn every skill but only excel in one.
Only one character per account per continent. You can have more than one character but they must all be on/from different continents and cannot join the same clan/village.
Hunting companion animals, mounts and/or pack animals are limited to what you are able to tame, limited to one of each type able to spawn at the same time.(ie. cannot have two wolf companions hunting with you at the same time, but can have one wolf, or whatever you've got to hunt with, one mount and one pack animal).
Anyway, this is the gist of what I imagine and yes, there would be consensual pvp(against my personal preference), but since this is a survival mmorpg and not yet another king of the world war mmo, there will be no wars between continents.... but should two clans want the same village location and both are willing to fight for it, they are able to pvp with the winner taking the location, should one not want to fight then it would be up to the higher hierarchy to determine which clan should get it. There would also be consensual pvp between players(toggle) as well as pvp tournaments at the seasonal gatherings.
The game itself would be pve centric, with pvp limited to stat-less weapons and armour. Oh and all "magic" skills would be healing or crowd control with no offensive damage.
I fear that we passed the time when you just can make a game similar to EQ/Wow and make it popular today, at least long term and with 250M you surely would have enough money to experiment and try out new mechanics.
But yeah, you can't just take a TV show and implement it straight over a game, but I think you can add some stuff from it very well. Poker games at the saloon for example. If you go for a themepark thing players could also pick sides between a few people (like the 2 saloon owners and the Sheriff in Deadwood) and help them to further their agenda, no matter if you use quests or DEs. Sandboxing is slightly harder but player run gangs do have some potential.
I BTW think you can make a few things well, it is when you try to do everything and make all potential players happy (open world PvPers, arenaPvPers, soloplayers, group fans, raiders, crafters and so on) that you fail miserably.
You are missunderstanding me, what I commented was the "really only one thing you can do" comment. You have the entire history of the world together with horror, steampunk, dectective/CSI and a whole bunch of others.
There is never just one thing you can do...
Point being,no doubt what so ever ,a simple gamer can do better,but sadly it is not all about making a great game,it is about tricky,sneaky marketing and luring in a permanent fanbase that buys anything and everything you sell.This point being that sadly certain devs can make 20k games and make millions whilst a hard working Indie group might struggle to break even.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
How to induce cooperation in a game, make the reward compelling...