A MMO Idea... What do you think?

JamesP

Here is a MMO Idea I would LOVE to play... How about you guys?

Hundreds of years ago the world featured a single continent... There were 4 major cities mixed with smaller villages. A northern City, Southern City, Western City, and Eastern City. Then a Massive Volcanic Eruption struck at the heart of the Continent splitting the continent into 5 distinct sections. All of the cities were cut off from each other. So they formed into 4 distinct nations developing and evolving independent from each other. Over the years the Volcanic Crater at the heart smoldered and remained too active for anyone to get near... The land on each newly created continent between the Volcanic Crater and the gates of the cities became hostile territory as the Volcanic Eruption unearthed unruly creatures from the depths. Now all these years later rumors start spreading that the Volcanic crater is dormant and cool enough for exploration. Each Elected Government offer free land to any daring adventurer willing to take a party and settle the territories Closest to the Crater with the hopes to be able to claim it's riches for their Nation.

- Take Control of one of 4 Castles (1 on each Continent) to claim the throne of your nation.

- As King set the taxes for your Nation and lead your nation into glorious battles against the other 3 nations as well as the hordes of creatures from the depths.

- Take control of "Relics" of the past, Buildings, and places of importance to the old world which contain clues about the existence and origins of the Creatures from the depths

- Advance your nation's technological level to allow your cities and towns to grow and advance into higher grade resources.

- As a guild form alliances to defeat your foes and conspire to steal the throne.

- The gears of war require a steady supply of Resources and items. Become a shop keeper, Tradesman, or world renowned craftsman and supply your nation with the finest in wares.

- When not in war laze around your house or the local tavern and catch up the latest news and going ons in the world.

Each city contains 4 gates...

Gate 1: Safe non-pvp Player housing zone

Gate 2: Player Shop District... Players are able to rent or set up a shop and hire a NPC to run it.

Gate 3: Entrance to the PvE Zones where players are able to quest and grind mobs

Gate 4: PvP No man's land... Claim land, set up your own cities, Lay Siege to other player's cities, Best Resources, ect. 

Lot's more to the idea but there is the basics!

So what do you guys think... Would you play it or not?

4507

So it's a four player muliplayer strategy game? 

JamesP

No... MMO. Upon creating your character you get to decide which nation you want to be part of. Multiple people per nation... Guilds fighting for control of their nation's castle/Throne as well as teaming up fighting against the other 3 nations for control of territory.

sunandshadow

The setting seems really small for an MMO...

JamesP

sunandshadow said:

The setting seems really small for an MMO...

What part of the setting? The World? It will consist of several Zones for PvE content per nation each containing NPC villages, open and Instanced Caves and Dungeons, ect. Then the PvP Zones are large open areas. Each PvP zone is broken into a 3x3 grids with "Control" points that Guilds can take control of then set up a town or city around in order to try and defend their control of it. The Control points are important areas in order to figure out and advance the lore of the game. The controlling guild is able to tax the use of the control points. The Guild with control of the most Control points in the zone controls the zone. 

Loke666

I could play something with that setting, but it seriously depends on the game mechanics...

Particularly the powergap between noobs and vets and how much impact gear gives on your character. For a game like that I think you would need a far less gap then MMOs tend to have, even sandbox games. Since there will be wars you need those to be fun and not forcing the players to spend months leveling and gearing up to be useful in them.

Also, since you are mixing PvP and PvE rather much you need good combat mechanics that works equally good against other players and mobs. That means you just can't use standard trinity mechanics (works fine for PvE but suck for PvP) but neither should you use FPS combat (works fine for PvP but suck for PvE).

To be honest do I think the mechanics demands more work, thought and playtesting then the setting. If you just use Wows mechanics I would stay far away from the game. A specific setting like yours demands custom mechanics and that isn't easy. The closest MMO to it I seen to your ideas would be DaoC.

But sure, rightly done it could be rather fun. RvR do have huge potential.

JamesP

The Combat will be Soft Targeting. Kind of a mix of the standard Tab Targeting in Theme Parks and standard FPS Combat. 

Right now for Combat I have 9 Combat related Skills with a bunch more such as Magic still to add.
Archery
Axes
Daggers
Hammers
Martial Arts
Shields
Spears
Swordmanship
Two-handed

Each Combat Skill then has a number of Abilities that you will unlock as you level up those skills. The way Leveling currently works is you level up your over all character and as you level you get skill points. You then spend the skill point to increase the level cap of your desired skills. You then level up your skills by using them.

ArChWind

How about a working demo?

JamesP

ArChWind said:

How about a working demo?

We will be entering Closed testing January 1st with my Clan and a few other selected people. I will then be gradually increasing the player cap and opening it up to more people as we see how things go. More then likely I will be doing a Live Stream the first day we enter Closed Alpha though.

ArChWind

JamesP said:

ArChWind said:

How about a working demo?

We will be entering Closed testing January 1st with my Clan and a few other selected people. I will then be gradually increasing the player cap and opening it up to more people as we see how things go. More then likely I will be doing a Live Stream the first day we enter Closed Alpha though.

Okay. I will revisit this then.

best

JamesP

ArChWind said:

JamesP said:

ArChWind said:

How about a working demo?

We will be entering Closed testing January 1st with my Clan and a few other selected people. I will then be gradually increasing the player cap and opening it up to more people as we see how things go. More then likely I will be doing a Live Stream the first day we enter Closed Alpha though.

Okay. I will revisit this then.

best

Awesome Look forward to your feedback as development progresses!

sunandshadow

JamesP said:

sunandshadow said:

The setting seems really small for an MMO...

What part of the setting? The World? It will consist of several Zones for PvE content per nation each containing NPC villages, open and Instanced Caves and Dungeons, ect. Then the PvP Zones are large open areas. Each PvP zone is broken into a 3x3 grids with "Control" points that Guilds can take control of then set up a town or city around in order to try and defend their control of it. The Control points are important areas in order to figure out and advance the lore of the game. The controlling guild is able to tax the use of the control points. The Guild with control of the most Control points in the zone controls the zone. 

Well, perhaps it's just the way you describe it.  The way you describe the world is kind of structural, and that's not the kind of thing people usually find appealing about a new world.

JamesP

The set up of the world was done to allow the PvE and PvP aspects to be separate from each other. I know most of the time those who enjoy PvE just want to be left alone and don't want to worry about people coming up behind them while they are killing a mob and killing them. Like wise those into PvP just want all out PvP being able to kill everyone and everything in their path. The layout of the world would allow safe areas for PvE and then areas for Full Destruction, full PvP, ect. the layout also ties into the lore nicely as well.

The Massive Volcanic Eruption left a large chunk of the land uninhabitable. Everything from the Volcanic Crater to the City gates became a wasteland. Everything on the other side of the cities were still livable. When the game starts the Wastelands were opened up for settling but are still lawless and full of creatures unearthed by the volcanic blast. Thus you get your all out PvP, wars, and battle for control of those areas. The areas that have been livable all these years are still under control of their respective nations and law and order rule. So they are safe areas for the player to dive into the PvE aspects of the game.

Once we start testing though we can officially nail down the final layout of the world. Being zones instead of open world we can be much more flexible in how we design the layout and it's easier to change if we find something works better.

VengeSunsoar

That sounds like a heroes of might and  magic game .

MMOExposed

need faction PvP rather than FFA. 

ApexTKM

Honestly I would write a series of complex stories and put them into a series of books first before I get a mmo idea together. I think that would entice people. Establishing a good amount of lore helps.

Kirrik

ApexTKM said:

Honestly I would write a series of complex stories and put them into a series of books first before I get a mmo idea together. I think that would entice people. Establishing a good amount of lore helps.

I would probably go down this route as well. Establish strong lore connections to the world and explore different characters and settings within the world.

Loke666

JamesP said:

The Combat will be Soft Targeting. Kind of a mix of the standard Tab Targeting in Theme Parks and standard FPS Combat. 

Right now for Combat I have 9 Combat related Skills with a bunch more such as Magic still to add.
Archery
Axes
Daggers
Hammers
Martial Arts
Shields
Spears
Swordmanship
Two-handed

Each Combat Skill then has a number of Abilities that you will unlock as you level up those skills. The way Leveling currently works is you level up your over all character and as you level you get skill points. You then spend the skill point to increase the level cap of your desired skills. You then level up your skills by using them.

That sounds good, but I would skip that 2 handed thing unless it is a balancing issue. Spears, swords, axes and clubs all have 2 handed versions as well as 1 handed and in many cases the weapon can be used as either.
Making them as specific skills makes no real logical sense (usually a sword master will beat the snot out of you with any sword, giving him a gladius or claymore wont make him a total noob with it, it might limit him a little while he gets used to it but that is about it), it is  more fun to add an exotic weapon skill were you can add a few weirder weapons instead (like scythe, weird martial arts weapons and similar things).

How will you handle armors? Will you have them class restricted or skill restricted (certain skills are disabled when wearing certain armors)?

Does this means that you will go for a skill based system or will you have regular levels besides the weapon levels (that was not unheard in older games, even EQ2 had a weapon skill that got raised with use in the beginning)?

Grunty

Have y'all forgotten who the OP is?  What 'game' they were associated with?  Their former business partner? Does undistributed t-shirts ring a bell?

sunandshadow

Grunty said:

Have y'all forgotten who the OP is?  What 'game' they were associated with?  Their former business partner? Does undistributed t-shirts ring a bell?

Its the former business partner most of us really dislike.  This guy has always been a friendly forum poster here, and he got screwed over right along with the investors.

JamesP

Grunty said:

Have y'all forgotten who the OP is?  What 'game' they were associated with?  Their former business partner? Does undistributed t-shirts ring a bell?

Yup I doubt anyone has forgotten who I am. And by all means IF you see me on KickStarter or any other Crowd funding site trying to get money from just an idea with out having a near complete product to show off then go a head and scream at the top of your lungs to warn people to stay away from me. However you will NOT see me on KickStarter with just an idea. Honestly GM's Kickstarter was done way too soon we should have taking a few months and got an actual networked prototype together before going on KS but it's easy to say after the fact what we should have done differently.

VengeSunsoar

There is nothing wrong with discussing ideas, sometimes it's a lot of fun. I kinda wish more devs would just kick around ideas on forums like this.

Loke666

VengeSunsoar said:

There is nothing wrong with discussing ideas, sometimes it's a lot of fun. I kinda wish more devs would just kick around ideas on forums like this.

Agreed, as long as you havn't set everything in stone it is a great way to get feedback for what would work and what would not work. Of course we do makes mistakes, some things sounds great in theory but doesn't really work when implemented in a game.

There are a few other devs here who been more or less active as well, Jacobs from Camelot Unchained is one of the more famous.

JamesP

Just wanted to let you guys know that I have gone ahead and purchased a Dedicated Server today. I'm in the process of getting the server setup and I'll be uploading the client this week. The Server will be online 24/7 going forward and I'll be pushing updates out to the server and client every Friday. 

The first few weeks I'll be focused on getting content into the game for Crafting and Resource Gathering. Combat and other features will be getting an initial pass after that. I'll be getting our website updated and getting a Development site online ASAP so you can check out what I'm working on, what I still have to work on, and what I have finished that will be pushed out in the next update. 

http://www.riseofheroesmmo.com/

JamesP

Just a quick notice to anyone who backed Greed Monger...

Please contact me and let's discuss what can be done for you guys to provide you with a home in RoH!

http://www.riseofheroesmmo.com/greed-monger-backers/

Kyleran

Well, at least it has a better title, if a bit cliche.