Open World PVP/PVE Sandbox MMORPG Without Vertical Level and Gear Progression
Open Narrative Realm vs. Realm*. Maybe even with action combat. Some reasonable vertical skill and ability progression, but without the ability to master many things and with permadeath.
Your idea immediately fails.
You are giving people vertical skill and ability progression, so that means power gaps. You want open world pvp, which means regular deaths.
So, right off the bat you are telling your players that they have to play it safe and avoid PvP in order to acquire their better skills / abilities, but as soon as there is any sort of time committment involved, people don't want to lose that effort and so permadeath will put people off ever engaging in pvp.
You're not using your imagination.
Combat skills and powers can only be advanced to a basic level by training. Only real combat experience will advance someone to intermediate, expert, and master levels. But by engaging in combat regularly enough to increase one's abilities, there is a very real possibility of death at all times. Not many people will survive long enough to master any combat skill, ability, or power.
Also, there are many elements of the game that will sometimes, even often, force people to fight.
Limited quality and quantity of raw materials and resources and limited quality and quantity of all material goods. Realms might often go to war as they come into conflict over available land and resources. They could choose to make alliances or treaties, but this wouldn't always be feasible if they are overpopulated and they need to feed the people of their realm.
Magic, magic items and equipment, holy/unholy powers, holy/unholy items and equipment will be rare. (In a different setting highly advanced technological or scientific items and equipment would be rare.)
Furthermore, monsters wouldn't simply spawn in one place. They would have their own growing or shrinking communities. They could also move into other areas and establish camps. If unmolested, these camps could grow into settlements which would continually grow and produce more mobs and more powerful mobs.
The nature of the world will often create the necessity to fight and possibly die very frequently.
I like realism and logic. I want mobs with strengths and weaknesses. I want mobs who can establish camps which can grow into settlements and produce more mobs/more powerful mobs if left unchecked. I want morale checks and the possibility that a mob or mobs will flee from battle. I want weight and encumbrance. I want hunger and thirst (and the possibility of dying from either). I want fatigue and the need to sleep (and the possibility of falling asleep on your feet). Fatigue is important. People need to sleep, both players and characters. Player-characters and NPCs can only accomplish so much in any 24 hour period (game time or real time). Players should not be able to live on the game. And there should be no way to increase the amount of things a player can accomplish in a day by paying more money.
I want open narrative as opposed to closed narrative. I would also prefer quests/missions/tasks of which progress/completion could be deduced and accomplished logically without the need for detailed quest descriptions or even generic/hold-your-hand/obvious quest givers. Player-characters should be able to make contracts with each other to perform tasks in exchange for barter/trade/reward. NPCs could also offer quests, but they shouldn't be part of any generic questline and should reflect the actual needs or wants of the individual NPC or the NPC's Realm. Please no more of Everquest 2-type wander around aimlessly until you figure out what in the world the quest wants you to do garbage.
I want day and night cycles. I want different NPCs, mobs, and events available during the night than are available during the day. I want buildings in towns that are closed or open depending on whether the sun or the moon is out. I want some mobs that are weaker or stronger during the day or night. I want weather that actually effects the environment, player-characters, npcs, and mobs.
I want the ability to interact with mobs (who don't even ever bleed) in more ways than leaving their corpses to rot in the dirt (I mean disappear into nothingness). How about being able to bargain/bribe/trick/distract/knock-out/tie-up/capture? How about being able to rob mobs without killing them?
I want to get rid of default maps. Player-characters should have to draw maps themselves (with the cartography skill they may or may not have) or buy them from other players or npcs. I want the ability to make or buy fake or incomplete maps. You don't know whether a map is accurate until you try to use. Player-characters shouldn't be able to make a map of a dungeon unless they have some sort of rudimentary drawing skill at least. And enough intelligence and/or wisdom to realize it might be a good idea.
Open World PVP/PVE Sandbox MMORPG Without Vertical Level and Gear Progression
Open Narrative Realm vs. Realm*. Maybe even with action combat. Some reasonable vertical skill and ability progression, but without the ability to master many things and with permadeath.
Your idea immediately fails.
You are giving people vertical skill and ability progression, so that means power gaps. You want open world pvp, which means regular deaths.
So, right off the bat you are telling your players that they have to play it safe and avoid PvP in order to acquire their better skills / abilities, but as soon as there is any sort of time committment involved, people don't want to lose that effort and so permadeath will put people off ever engaging in pvp.
You're not using your imagination.
Combat skills and powers can only be advanced to a basic level by training. Only real combat experience will advance someone to intermediate, expert, and master levels. But by engaging in combat regularly enough to increase one's abilities, there is a very real possibility of death at all times. Not many people will survive long enough to master any combat skill, ability, or power.
Also, there are many elements of the game that will sometimes, even often, force people to fight.
Limited quality and quantity of raw materials and resources and limited quality and quantity of all material goods.
Magic, magic items and equipment, holy/unholy powers, holy/unholy items and equipment will be rare. (In a different setting highly advanced technological or scientific items and equipment would be rare.)
Furthermore, monsters wouldn't simply spawn in one place. They would have their own growing or shrinking communities. They could also move into other areas and establish camps. If unmolested, these camps could grow into settlements which would continually grow and produce more mobs and more powerful mobs.
The nature of the world will often create the necessity to fight and possibly die very frequently.
They all sound like good ideas for a game, but still incompatible with permadeath.
Permadeath only works when you have nothing to lose, or when death is extremely rare. These features you describe give people things to acquire - new gear, skills, homes, materials, money etc - but then you threaten to take them away as soon as you die, unless you have a family to inherit. But again, the family mechanic sounds like it requires time to achieve.
So, it sounds like there would be two schools of players. Those who recognise the pointlessness of acquiring anything and just explore the game to have fun, accepting death and having to start over every 30 minutes or so. These people will have fun, but it will be the same short amount of fun each time resulting in low retention.
Then you'd have the play-it-safe people, who would go out, carefully acquire skills, gear, money and a family. Only once they had their safety mechanisms in place would they feel comfortable engaging in risky gameplay but the instant they die they then have to re-setup their safety mechanisms and reacquire their skills.
Just doesn't sound well thought out. Remove the permadeath and the rest sounds fine, but with permadeath your idea is guaranteed to fail. For example, an evening spent PvPing in WAR would probably result in 10-50 deaths - 10 if I stuck to premade raids in the lakes, or 50+ if I were grinding scenarios. Even a game like SWG with long time-to-kill, I would still die 2 or 3 times a night. Do you really expect players to have to create brand new characters multiple times per play session?
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
@cameltosis - Why do you assume it will be incredibly difficult to start a family and have children? Have you ever played Fable II? Why do you assume that I haven't thought of a lot of things just because I didn't write a book with my first post on this subject?
And there would be the possibility of resurrection if you this is set in a fantasy world. Although not every priest will have a raise the dead spell handy, and holy shrines that might do the trick won't necessarily be easy to find. Limited time to do so though. Corpses could decay and rot. You would need your friends to carry your body somewhere if there wasn't a method of resurrection handy. But Constitution would decrease by one every time you die. Once it reaches zero, no more resurrection possible.
Also, different areas would have different alignments. Some areas would be lawful good, some would be chaotic evil, and everything else in between. If you don't know what alignments are, consult an old D&D rulebook. Laws and customs would be different in different areas and realms. Just being of different alignments could be a reason why kingdoms go to war sometimes.
Some places would be safer than others. Some places would be far more dangerous than others.
But the thing is war would really actually mean something. And even just getting randomly killing or getting killed out in the wilderness might spark a war.
Life is much more significant when you can lose things or die.
Also, do you expect me to play games that are easy and carebear enough for 9-15 year-olds to play?
Do you ever want to actually play Game of Thrones, or you just wanna watch it?
@cameltosis - Why do you assume it will be incredibly difficult to start a family and have children? Have you ever played Fable II? Why do you assume that I haven't thought of a lot of things just because I didn't write a book with my first post on this subject?
And there would be the possibility of resurrection if you this is set in a fantasy world. Although not every priest will have a raise the dead spell handy, and holy shrines that might do the trick won't necessarily be easy to find. Limited time to do so though. Corpses could decay and rot. You would need your friends to carry your body somewhere if there wasn't a method of resurrection handy. But Constitution would decrease by one every time you die. Once it reaches zero, no more resurrection possible.
Also, different areas would have different alignments. Some areas would be lawful good, some would be chaotic evil, and everything else in between. If you don't know what alignments are, consult an old D&D rulebook. Laws and customs would be different in different areas and realms. Just being of different alignments could be a reason why kingdoms go to war sometimes.
Some places would be safer than others. Some places would be far more dangerous than others.
But the thing is war would really actually mean something. And even just getting randomly killing or getting killed out in the wilderness might spark a war.
Life is much more significant when you can lose things or die.
Also, do you expect me to play games that are easy and carebear enough for 9-15 year-olds to play?
Do you ever want to actually play Game of Thrones, or you just wanna watch it?
I'll try to frame my response clearly as it's an indepth topic with many nuances.
We're talking about an MMORPG, so I am making the assumption that it will have a AAA budget. In order to generate a AAA income you're going to have to appeal to a broad range of players. I do believe it is perfectly possible to create a AAA sandbox and for it to be a success, it just hasn't happened yet.
Given that it is an MMO, you want people playing for months / years so you can monetise them for longer. This is especially true with sandboxes and the sort of territorial control you're after as a strong, stable community results in a much better experience for everyone.
You want permadeath.
That means, upon dying, you can never play that character again. Any progression you have made on that character that is tied directly to that character is immediately lost. Any progression you have made, or items you have acquired, that have not been protected, are also lost.
That is a massively negative experience for those involved. The average gamer can't handle it. Even if you are a willing participant, you could lose months / years of progression. If you are an unwilling participant (e.g. your net connection dies whilst fighting something), it feels even worse.
So, permadeath generally puts off the majority of the playerbase completely, and even for those it doesn't put off, it encourages very cautious gameplay. Players become unwilling to participate in PvP, or do new raids, because a single death and you're fucked.
If you want to somehow mitigate the effects of permadeath, for example, your family feature that allows you to play as a child and inherit your dead parents stuff, then you lessen the importance of permadeath. But, there is still going to be a time penalty involved in dying. You need to create a new character and find a new name. It could then take you days / months to get your new character back to the same level of progression as the one who just died. That means lots of time avoiding pvp and avoiding challenging pve. Boring.
So, you could consider mitigating the effects of permadeath further. But, it is still going to come down to time. How long will it take you to get back to where you were? As a PvPer, anything longer than 20 minutes and I'm out. This is based on the expectation that every PvP encounter will result in the death of at least 1 person and that average time-to-kill is under 10 minutes (in most mmos, you're lucky if ttk is 60s)
However, if you make it so that it only takes 20 minutes from new toon to maximum skill/ability progression, you basically don't have progression and you remove a big motivation from a lot of gamers. If you have it longer than 20 minutes, you discourage your playerbase from taking risks, resulting in boring gameplay. If you make it so that character progression is irrelevant to your ability to pvp or raid, then permadeath becomes irrelevant - you may as well just respawn.
The features you are describing also have absolutely nothing to do with difficulty or being a carebear. The presence of risk does not make something difficult. The fear of wasting months of your life does not make you a carebear. Perhaps you could do with reading some books on psychology - if you want to your game to do well and have good retention, you need to provide your players with positive feedback. Permadeath is such a massive negative effect that it will kill your game.
With all that said and done, I do believe we need to give players more motivation for in game actions, and territory control / buildings is the best solution I've seen so far. Look into Camelot Unchained's CUBE system. In that game, you will be able to design buildings from scratch outside the game, then import your designs to the game and build it within the game world. From the sounds of it, building a decent sized castle might take an entire guild months to collect enough materials to actually build it. But, the enemy can destroy it!
By going down this route, CU will give players extra attachment to the things they see around them, because they will have been built by real people. It encourages you to attack other things and defend your own. It will be a real loss to have a big structure destroyed by the enemy, yet at no point will your ability to participate in your favourite activity be impaired.
Finally, I don't see what game of thrones has to do with anything. The magic of that series is about the long term plans/schemes/politics (which doesn't translate into gameplay) and the epic battles (which also doesn't translate into gameplay). Even if you could, somehow, implement these features, you get screwed over by permadeath. I do want a sandbox MMO with territory control, and I'm getting it with Camelot Unchained.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
The possibility for your character to become a lich? Even a lich king.
Or maybe a necromancer raises your character's corpse as a zombie? And you even end up fighting your old character at some point?
And people's corpses don't have to disappear either. A necromancer could visit an old battlefield to raise skeletons from.
The possibilities that we may intentionally or unintentionally waste time, or lose something we put a lot of time and effort into, or lose a loved one or lose a friend, are major factors in our real lives.
I'm not interested in just creating another game. I want to live in a virtual world. A realistic, dynamic, true role-playing game online. I want to experience it. I want to see how long I can survive. And possibly even thrive. Your character in a pencil-and-paper role-playing game can die at any time, on any adventure, in any dungeon, during any given campaign. And yet, people still continue to play those games to this day. Why is that?
People play MUDs with permadeath as well.
To me, the most thrilling thing about Game of Thrones is that nothing is certain. Basically anyone can die at any time. Even major characters. No one is safe. Everyone is at risk. The outcome is not set in stone.
But if you just want to play silly children's game for the rest of your life, go right ahead.
Also, how can you really claim something is impossible if it's never been tried?
And how many games have you played that you don't play anymore? What about all that wasted time and effort?
Did you ever play console games as a kid? I don't know about you, but sometimes I repeated something (such as a level) several times before I could beat it and move onto the next stage. I lost all my progress sometimes. Or what if I forgot to save my game in a single-player rpg? Oops.
You want to go to your grave without ever being able to play an MMORPG like this? Because guess what? I'm 99.9% sure that the vast majority of us are gonna die someday in real life. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday.
"Every man dies, but not every man really lives." - William Wallce, Braveheart (1995)
I saw that movie when I was seventeen years-old. My father died at the age of forty-one when I was fifteen, so the scene where the girl gave him a flower at his father's funeral was especially poignant for me. I admit I shed a tear or two. I've been well-acquainted with the certainty of human frailty and mortality for a long time. Partly because of that, I have no problem trying to think outside boxes and question paradigms. It's actually fun for me.
OK, if you've got necromancy or resurrections, you haven't got permadeath have you?
As I said before, it all boils down to time. What is the ratio of time spent in game doing things you don't want to do, versus doing things you do want to do?
I like my PvP. That means I want balance. As you stated vertical skill progression, that means I have to be at the top of the power curve in order to find balanced, enjoyable fights.
How long do you envisage it taking to reach the top of the curve?
In the game you have outlined, the ratio of shit to good gameplay is atrocious. For every hour of good pvp I will have in your game, I'm going to have days / weeks / months of grinding shit. Why on earth would I subject myself to that?
In a game without permadeath, I'm willing to endure that shit because it is a one-time hurdle to overcome. I will happily spend a month grinding dumb quests and getting pissed off with shitty stories and pointless trash loot, because I know at the end of it I will be able to experience balanced PvP and challenging PvE. The goal of any game is to make the player have fun. If I'm having fun, its not a waste of time. If it leads to fun, its not a waste of time. The longer I play the game, the better the ratio of fun to shit, because I only had to do the shit content once, but was able to repeat the fun stuff forever.
In your game, you are asking me to repeat the same content every time I die. You want me to repeat that shit. Why? Can you not fathom how that would drive most gamers away?
I can see that your game would be fun if you were a 10 year old carebear, because your mechanics encourage you to avoid all challenge and conflict. They force you to repeat the same easy content over and over.
I'm not a carebear. I want to fight people. I want challenging content. I just don't want to waste days / weeks / months of my time just to be able to attempt that content.
Understand?
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
What easy content are you talking about? Closed narrative generic questlines? Pre-made classes? Ever having do the same thing twice? Nope, won't be a factor.
Here, let me show you all the possible progression paths you might have:
Peasants/Food and Raw Material Gatherers/Producers
Tradesmen/Artisans (Craftsmen)
Builders (Architects and Engineers)
Fixers (Repairers and Mechanics)
Bankers/Investors
Explorers/Survivalists
Merchants
Entertainers
Pilots/Drivers
Soldiers
Priests
Doctor/Physician
Scholars (Historians, Mages or Scientists/Inventors)
Rulers/Nobility
Criminals
Decorators
Artists
Different Social Classes - Peasant/Serf, Commoner, Clergy, Nobility, Criminal/Outlaw
Of course, some of those options also would depend on what kind of setting your playing in.
If you think this game would be all or even mostly about combat, think again.
I've responded to nearly every thread that keeps popping up about PvP and PvE. I've given the exact same answer in every thread because no one refutes my statement. Most likely because it's the truth and a known fact, that PvE players can't stand open world PvP, let alone open world PvP with full looting.
I've also given plenty of examples of people doing things, such as committing suicide in BDO, just to avoid getting to level 50 and being flagged for permanent open world PvP. No one responds to my statement because they can't. Yet here we are with another PvP and PvE post about the same nonsense.
No, I don't want open world PvP. Like many many other PvE players. I do not find open world PvP fun or engaging. I gave examples of games that had fun and engaging PvP that makes sense. PvP that actually has meaning and purpose. The only purpose for open world PvP is to gank / grief. There is no other reason to have it. By the way, killing other players to disrupt their "leveling process" is not a reason for PvP. I consider that griefing / ganking.
If you want to know what type of PvP works in an MMO that also has PvE. Here is a list of MMOs I'm sure most PvE players would agree with.
Star Wars Galaxes ( PvP flag system. Turn it on or off when you choose, with a 15 minute timer before it can be turned off after it was turned on to prevent abuse. )
Dark Age of Camelot ( PvP frontiers. An entire area where 3 realms would fight over keeps, towers and relics which gave significant advantages to both PvP and PvE. Completely separate from 99% of the PvE environment. There was still some PvE content in the frontiers, but not enough that it became an issue. )
Of all the PvP games I've played. As a PvE player, these are the only 2 that had PvP that made sense, had purpose and did not promote griefing / ganking.
That's because most MMORPGs developers seem to believe that vertical level progression, basically unlimited/infinite vertical gear progression, and/or unlimited/infinite skill, ability, and/or power vertical progression are the only ways to allow players to progress in an MMORPG. And for some reason, they give people the ability to kill, but there is no law, crime, or punishment. We don't see a whole lot of meaningful consequences in mmorpgs beyond the most basic and rudimentary. We have freedom in this world, but we also know that our choices and decisions all have consequences, whether good, bad, or indifferent.
Do you all play MMORPGs so that you can be guaranteed to become the best or the strongest if you just play for a long time or pay enough money?
Did you know there are no such guarantees in real life? So, why do we want to play role-playing games that give us this totally unrealistic guarantee? And why do we want to play massively multi-player online role-playing games that will never be realistic, dynamic, true role-playing games online?
It's up to you all what you want, I suppose. Doesn't matter to me. You can keep playing the same stuff over and over for the rest of your natural lives. I'm not gonna stop you. I'm just trying to help people realize that there may just be a different, and perhaps even better and more enjoyable way to design, program, and play these games. Whether or not I ever get to play a game like this is not really all that important. I'm not gonna die if one like I've been describing never gets made. Just imaging it is pretty fun for me. Probably not as fun as it would be to play, but I'll never know if no one ever makes the game.
Interesting that the care bears always ended up beating their enemies.
That's probably due to the fact that they didn't go into the situation thinking that they were doing to die a "horrible death" and lose all their equipment...
They stayed positive, fought and won... which is actually the PvP motto
Do you all play MMORPGs so that you can be guaranteed to become the best or the strongest if you just play for a long time or pay enough money?
Did you know there are no such guarantees in real life? So, why do we want to play role-playing games that give us this totally unrealistic guarantee? And why do we want to play massively multi-player online role-playing games that will never be realistic, dynamic, true role-playing games online?
It's up to you all what you want, I suppose. Doesn't matter to me. You can keep playing the same stuff over and over for the rest of your natural lives. I'm not gonna stop you. I'm just trying to help people realize that there may just be a different, and perhaps even better and more enjoyable way to design, program, and play these games. Whether or not I ever get to play a game like this is not really all that important. I'm not gonna die if one like I've been describing never gets made. Just imaging it is pretty fun for me. Probably not as fun as it would be to play, but I'll never know if no one ever makes the game.
Why do you bring real life into the equation? Like we want to live in a virtual world that mimics the challenges we face in real life.
@immodium - If that's what you want to do with your time and your life and your money, that's totally up to you. There are plenty of games for you to 'play' in already. Me, I want to actually role-play.
If you don't like the idea of living in a virtual Middle Earth, Westeros, or any other fantasy world, that's fine. They still have plenty of games for you, and they'll probably keep making plenty more. Me, I'd like to have just one game that I would really enjoy playing.
You are saying high level ganking is "rare" and that you must be doing something like "power leveling" to consistently experience it. This is wrong. There are entire groups focused around newb ganking such as the Goblin Preservation Society and Fallen Lords in Darkfall. Veteran groups may have despised them but they rarely did anything about them because veteran groups lived in the clan cities and newb griefing groups did nothing but hang out in safe areas and war dec them. Thus my point about EVE. I was in a corp that was consistently fighting wars but I couldn't convince anyone to come hunt high sec gankers with me because they would just retreat into the shadows because they were well practiced at running from any real threat while making easy kills all day, and ultimately they just told me it wasn't worth spending the time when we had more tangible enemies to fight.
You also feed very well into the point I was making by pretty much admitting to being one of the kind of people I fight. When I say anti-griefer that actually is a bit of a narrow brush. What I actually mean is this. When I come into an Open World PvP game I run on a NRDS "Not Red Don't Shoot" policy as much as possible. In other, I don't attack any group that doesn't give me a reason to attack them either by unprovoked attacks against me and my guild/allies or just generally being the type of guild that runs around killing everyone. The counter being NBSI or "Not Blue Shoot It." Our KOS system is how we effectively track who is red and who isn't. In Darkfall the vast majority of guilds are NBSI. In EVE it's almost a requirement if you live in dangerous areas. In ArcheAge any group that thinks they can get away with it will purple any group outside their own and their immediate allies if they feel they can get away with it. The vast majority of veteran PvPers in PvP games are NBSI.
So that leads to two things that disagree with your narrative:
1. PvP that happens in starter zones is a very major thing that very much does happen. Yes a lot of PvP and the vast majority of good PvP happens out away from the starter zones. That doesn't mean that it doesn't happen or that the impact on the community is insignificant.
2. PvPers do not check to see if you are in the level range / gear range that is appropriate to fight against them before attacking you. If you aren't blue, they kill you. Given most of these games have massive levels of power disparity that means the majority of PvP happens where there are massive power disparities in play.
So this:
Is not propaganda. It is the hard cold truth about PvP in the vast majority of existing PvP titles.
Everyone coming into PvP titles will be playing the role of that child should they choose to engage in PvP for as long as it takes them to overcome the games barrier to entry (Which is generally months or years to anyone with a life outside the game not willing to swipe hardcore.)
Here are the positive truths of PvP:
1. The game gets far less violent and toxic once you get beyond the starter areas. 2. By hooking into a good group you can see more success in PvP at a lower power level. 3. It really is not that hard to get yourself into a mindset of "Only unbank/undock what you are willing to lose."
They do not negate these though.
The negative truths of (existing) PvP games:
1. There will be griefers camping starter areas and veterans usually don't care enough to deal with them. 2. There will be massive power disparity and you will be the child in the picture for a very long time. 3. If you do not wish to sell your soul to a large guild or alliance you will remain that child for a very long time, and the vast majority of large guilds and alliances are toxic.
There's a reason the vast majority of people in the world do not use Dungeons & Dragons or most any other pencil-and-paper PvE system to play a PvP game around the dinner table.
If a player can defeat or overpower someone just because he or she has played longer or paid more, it is not a PvP game. It is more than likely a gankfest. It may not always be, but it has a clear and present danger of being one for anyone in the game. Unless they're max level, max combat skills and powers, and/or equipped with BIS gear.
I disagree. Lineage, one of the most popular pvp mmorpgs in the world, is a graphical DIKU MUD which is directly evolved from D&D.
There are many factors that make a game and community work, or not, in addition to how power gap is handled. The clear and present danger is part of the attraction for many people. If there are no power gaps the world becomes a lot safer, more fair, and bland.
PvP isn't always about being fair. You can set up pvp games like that, or pve games for that matter. But in a virtual world environment it's the inequities that add challenge. How the game manages that can make it interesting or frustrating.
Obviously, there will always be unfair situations or encounters in a realistic game. But MMORPGs right now are from realistic.
My definition of Unfair in MMORPG PvP: Losing to someone just because they've played longer, played more hours, or paid more money and have thus become far more powerful than I can hope to be without playing for months or years or paying an equal amount of money. I can compete with people's wallets all day long in the real world if I like. If I haven't played a sport as long as someone else, I probably won't be placed in the same league as them. Unless I am sort of genius or prodigy. To be more precise, I don't want to be an ant fighting against gods because I haven't played as long as someone else. There are advantages one might gain by spending more time with any particular activity, just like in the real world, but they shouldn't make a person unbeatable. I should have a chance of moving up from the Minor Leagues to the Major Leagues rapidly if I have the talent and the skill. Baseball players aren't allowed to use corked bats in games, and they certainly wouldn't be able to use a magical bat that always hit a home run every time they swung at a pitch.
Now if someone outsmarts me or outnumbers me*, fine, that can happen. Wandering out in the wilderness alone is not the greatest idea most of the time.
*Or maneuvers better or plans better, whatever. Basically I want things like wits and skill, tactics and teamwork to play a larger part in PvP than anything else.
And on any given battlefield, there will be soldiers or warriors that are stronger, smarter, more skilled, what have you. But soldiers and warriors don't normally go into battles alone. They usually bring along some allies or comrades that can make up for their weaknesses. And their strengths will hopefully make up for the weaknesses of their allies or comrades.
And Lineage is way more popular in Asia than it is in the west, right?
Comments
You're not using your imagination.
Combat skills and powers can only be advanced to a basic level by training. Only real combat experience will advance someone to intermediate, expert, and master levels. But by engaging in combat regularly enough to increase one's abilities, there is a very real possibility of death at all times. Not many people will survive long enough to master any combat skill, ability, or power.
Also, there are many elements of the game that will sometimes, even often, force people to fight.
Limited quality and quantity of raw materials and resources and limited quality and quantity of all material goods. Realms might often go to war as they come into conflict over available land and resources. They could choose to make alliances or treaties, but this wouldn't always be feasible if they are overpopulated and they need to feed the people of their realm.
Magic, magic items and equipment, holy/unholy powers, holy/unholy items and equipment will be rare. (In a different setting highly advanced technological or scientific items and equipment would be rare.)
Furthermore, monsters wouldn't simply spawn in one place. They would have their own growing or shrinking communities. They could also move into other areas and establish camps. If unmolested, these camps could grow into settlements which would continually grow and produce more mobs and more powerful mobs.
The nature of the world will often create the necessity to fight and possibly die very frequently.
I want open narrative as opposed to closed narrative. I would also prefer quests/missions/tasks of which progress/completion could be deduced and accomplished logically without the need for detailed quest descriptions or even generic/hold-your-hand/obvious quest givers. Player-characters should be able to make contracts with each other to perform tasks in exchange for barter/trade/reward. NPCs could also offer quests, but they shouldn't be part of any generic questline and should reflect the actual needs or wants of the individual NPC or the NPC's Realm. Please no more of Everquest 2-type wander around aimlessly until you figure out what in the world the quest wants you to do garbage.
I want day and night cycles. I want different NPCs, mobs, and events available during the night than are available during the day. I want buildings in towns that are closed or open depending on whether the sun or the moon is out. I want some mobs that are weaker or stronger during the day or night. I want weather that actually effects the environment, player-characters, npcs, and mobs.
I want the ability to interact with mobs (who don't even ever bleed) in more ways than leaving their corpses to rot in the dirt (I mean disappear into nothingness). How about being able to bargain/bribe/trick/distract/knock-out/tie-up/capture? How about being able to rob mobs without killing them?
I want to get rid of default maps. Player-characters should have to draw maps themselves (with the cartography skill they may or may not have) or buy them from other players or npcs. I want the ability to make or buy fake or incomplete maps. You don't know whether a map is accurate until you try to use. Player-characters shouldn't be able to make a map of a dungeon unless they have some sort of rudimentary drawing skill at least. And enough intelligence and/or wisdom to realize it might be a good idea.
They all sound like good ideas for a game, but still incompatible with permadeath.
Permadeath only works when you have nothing to lose, or when death is extremely rare. These features you describe give people things to acquire - new gear, skills, homes, materials, money etc - but then you threaten to take them away as soon as you die, unless you have a family to inherit. But again, the family mechanic sounds like it requires time to achieve.
So, it sounds like there would be two schools of players. Those who recognise the pointlessness of acquiring anything and just explore the game to have fun, accepting death and having to start over every 30 minutes or so. These people will have fun, but it will be the same short amount of fun each time resulting in low retention.
Then you'd have the play-it-safe people, who would go out, carefully acquire skills, gear, money and a family. Only once they had their safety mechanisms in place would they feel comfortable engaging in risky gameplay but the instant they die they then have to re-setup their safety mechanisms and reacquire their skills.
Just doesn't sound well thought out. Remove the permadeath and the rest sounds fine, but with permadeath your idea is guaranteed to fail. For example, an evening spent PvPing in WAR would probably result in 10-50 deaths - 10 if I stuck to premade raids in the lakes, or 50+ if I were grinding scenarios. Even a game like SWG with long time-to-kill, I would still die 2 or 3 times a night. Do you really expect players to have to create brand new characters multiple times per play session?
And there would be the possibility of resurrection if you this is set in a fantasy world. Although not every priest will have a raise the dead spell handy, and holy shrines that might do the trick won't necessarily be easy to find. Limited time to do so though. Corpses could decay and rot. You would need your friends to carry your body somewhere if there wasn't a method of resurrection handy. But Constitution would decrease by one every time you die. Once it reaches zero, no more resurrection possible.
Also, different areas would have different alignments. Some areas would be lawful good, some would be chaotic evil, and everything else in between. If you don't know what alignments are, consult an old D&D rulebook. Laws and customs would be different in different areas and realms. Just being of different alignments could be a reason why kingdoms go to war sometimes.
Some places would be safer than others. Some places would be far more dangerous than others.
But the thing is war would really actually mean something. And even just getting randomly killing or getting killed out in the wilderness might spark a war.
Life is much more significant when you can lose things or die.
Also, do you expect me to play games that are easy and carebear enough for 9-15 year-olds to play?
Do you ever want to actually play Game of Thrones, or you just wanna watch it?
I'll try to frame my response clearly as it's an indepth topic with many nuances.
We're talking about an MMORPG, so I am making the assumption that it will have a AAA budget. In order to generate a AAA income you're going to have to appeal to a broad range of players. I do believe it is perfectly possible to create a AAA sandbox and for it to be a success, it just hasn't happened yet.
Given that it is an MMO, you want people playing for months / years so you can monetise them for longer. This is especially true with sandboxes and the sort of territorial control you're after as a strong, stable community results in a much better experience for everyone.
You want permadeath.
That means, upon dying, you can never play that character again. Any progression you have made on that character that is tied directly to that character is immediately lost. Any progression you have made, or items you have acquired, that have not been protected, are also lost.
That is a massively negative experience for those involved. The average gamer can't handle it. Even if you are a willing participant, you could lose months / years of progression. If you are an unwilling participant (e.g. your net connection dies whilst fighting something), it feels even worse.
So, permadeath generally puts off the majority of the playerbase completely, and even for those it doesn't put off, it encourages very cautious gameplay. Players become unwilling to participate in PvP, or do new raids, because a single death and you're fucked.
If you want to somehow mitigate the effects of permadeath, for example, your family feature that allows you to play as a child and inherit your dead parents stuff, then you lessen the importance of permadeath. But, there is still going to be a time penalty involved in dying. You need to create a new character and find a new name. It could then take you days / months to get your new character back to the same level of progression as the one who just died. That means lots of time avoiding pvp and avoiding challenging pve. Boring.
So, you could consider mitigating the effects of permadeath further. But, it is still going to come down to time. How long will it take you to get back to where you were? As a PvPer, anything longer than 20 minutes and I'm out. This is based on the expectation that every PvP encounter will result in the death of at least 1 person and that average time-to-kill is under 10 minutes (in most mmos, you're lucky if ttk is 60s)
However, if you make it so that it only takes 20 minutes from new toon to maximum skill/ability progression, you basically don't have progression and you remove a big motivation from a lot of gamers. If you have it longer than 20 minutes, you discourage your playerbase from taking risks, resulting in boring gameplay. If you make it so that character progression is irrelevant to your ability to pvp or raid, then permadeath becomes irrelevant - you may as well just respawn.
The features you are describing also have absolutely nothing to do with difficulty or being a carebear. The presence of risk does not make something difficult. The fear of wasting months of your life does not make you a carebear. Perhaps you could do with reading some books on psychology - if you want to your game to do well and have good retention, you need to provide your players with positive feedback. Permadeath is such a massive negative effect that it will kill your game.
With all that said and done, I do believe we need to give players more motivation for in game actions, and territory control / buildings is the best solution I've seen so far. Look into Camelot Unchained's CUBE system. In that game, you will be able to design buildings from scratch outside the game, then import your designs to the game and build it within the game world. From the sounds of it, building a decent sized castle might take an entire guild months to collect enough materials to actually build it. But, the enemy can destroy it!
By going down this route, CU will give players extra attachment to the things they see around them, because they will have been built by real people. It encourages you to attack other things and defend your own. It will be a real loss to have a big structure destroyed by the enemy, yet at no point will your ability to participate in your favourite activity be impaired.
Finally, I don't see what game of thrones has to do with anything. The magic of that series is about the long term plans/schemes/politics (which doesn't translate into gameplay) and the epic battles (which also doesn't translate into gameplay). Even if you could, somehow, implement these features, you get screwed over by permadeath. I do want a sandbox MMO with territory control, and I'm getting it with Camelot Unchained.
The possibility for your character to become a lich? Even a lich king.
Or maybe a necromancer raises your character's corpse as a zombie? And you even end up fighting your old character at some point?
And people's corpses don't have to disappear either. A necromancer could visit an old battlefield to raise skeletons from.
The possibilities that we may intentionally or unintentionally waste time, or lose something we put a lot of time and effort into, or lose a loved one or lose a friend, are major factors in our real lives.
I'm not interested in just creating another game. I want to live in a virtual world. A realistic, dynamic, true role-playing game online. I want to experience it. I want to see how long I can survive. And possibly even thrive. Your character in a pencil-and-paper role-playing game can die at any time, on any adventure, in any dungeon, during any given campaign. And yet, people still continue to play those games to this day. Why is that?
People play MUDs with permadeath as well.
To me, the most thrilling thing about Game of Thrones is that nothing is certain. Basically anyone can die at any time. Even major characters. No one is safe. Everyone is at risk. The outcome is not set in stone.
But if you just want to play silly children's game for the rest of your life, go right ahead.
Also, how can you really claim something is impossible if it's never been tried?
Did you ever play console games as a kid? I don't know about you, but sometimes I repeated something (such as a level) several times before I could beat it and move onto the next stage. I lost all my progress sometimes. Or what if I forgot to save my game in a single-player rpg? Oops.
"Every man dies, but not every man really lives." - William Wallce, Braveheart (1995)
I saw that movie when I was seventeen years-old. My father died at the age of forty-one when I was fifteen, so the scene where the girl gave him a flower at his father's funeral was especially poignant for me. I admit I shed a tear or two. I've been well-acquainted with the certainty of human frailty and mortality for a long time. Partly because of that, I have no problem trying to think outside boxes and question paradigms. It's actually fun for me.
As I said before, it all boils down to time. What is the ratio of time spent in game doing things you don't want to do, versus doing things you do want to do?
I like my PvP. That means I want balance. As you stated vertical skill progression, that means I have to be at the top of the power curve in order to find balanced, enjoyable fights.
How long do you envisage it taking to reach the top of the curve?
In the game you have outlined, the ratio of shit to good gameplay is atrocious. For every hour of good pvp I will have in your game, I'm going to have days / weeks / months of grinding shit. Why on earth would I subject myself to that?
In a game without permadeath, I'm willing to endure that shit because it is a one-time hurdle to overcome. I will happily spend a month grinding dumb quests and getting pissed off with shitty stories and pointless trash loot, because I know at the end of it I will be able to experience balanced PvP and challenging PvE. The goal of any game is to make the player have fun. If I'm having fun, its not a waste of time. If it leads to fun, its not a waste of time. The longer I play the game, the better the ratio of fun to shit, because I only had to do the shit content once, but was able to repeat the fun stuff forever.
In your game, you are asking me to repeat the same content every time I die. You want me to repeat that shit. Why? Can you not fathom how that would drive most gamers away?
I can see that your game would be fun if you were a 10 year old carebear, because your mechanics encourage you to avoid all challenge and conflict. They force you to repeat the same easy content over and over.
I'm not a carebear. I want to fight people. I want challenging content. I just don't want to waste days / weeks / months of my time just to be able to attempt that content.
Understand?
Here, let me show you all the possible progression paths you might have:
Peasants/Food and Raw Material Gatherers/Producers
Tradesmen/Artisans (Craftsmen)
Builders (Architects and Engineers)
Fixers (Repairers and Mechanics)
Bankers/Investors
Explorers/Survivalists
Merchants
Entertainers
Pilots/Drivers
Soldiers
Priests
Doctor/Physician
Scholars (Historians, Mages or Scientists/Inventors)
Rulers/Nobility
Criminals
Decorators
Artists
Different Social Classes - Peasant/Serf, Commoner, Clergy, Nobility, Criminal/Outlaw
Of course, some of those options also would depend on what kind of setting your playing in.
If you think this game would be all or even mostly about combat, think again.
That's because most MMORPGs developers seem to believe that vertical level progression, basically unlimited/infinite vertical gear progression, and/or unlimited/infinite skill, ability, and/or power vertical progression are the only ways to allow players to progress in an MMORPG. And for some reason, they give people the ability to kill, but there is no law, crime, or punishment. We don't see a whole lot of meaningful consequences in mmorpgs beyond the most basic and rudimentary. We have freedom in this world, but we also know that our choices and decisions all have consequences, whether good, bad, or indifferent.
Did you know there are no such guarantees in real life? So, why do we want to play role-playing games that give us this totally unrealistic guarantee? And why do we want to play massively multi-player online role-playing games that will never be realistic, dynamic, true role-playing games online?
It's up to you all what you want, I suppose. Doesn't matter to me. You can keep playing the same stuff over and over for the rest of your natural lives. I'm not gonna stop you. I'm just trying to help people realize that there may just be a different, and perhaps even better and more enjoyable way to design, program, and play these games. Whether or not I ever get to play a game like this is not really all that important. I'm not gonna die if one like I've been describing never gets made. Just imaging it is pretty fun for me. Probably not as fun as it would be to play, but I'll never know if no one ever makes the game.
That's probably due to the fact that they didn't go into the situation thinking that they were doing to die a "horrible death" and lose all their equipment...
They stayed positive, fought and won... which is actually the PvP motto
Why do you bring real life into the equation? Like we want to live in a virtual world that mimics the challenges we face in real life.
We don't, we want to play RPGs with others.
If you don't like the idea of living in a virtual Middle Earth, Westeros, or any other fantasy world, that's fine. They still have plenty of games for you, and they'll probably keep making plenty more. Me, I'd like to have just one game that I would really enjoy playing.
I'd live in the Star Wars universe. Only as a force sensitive billionaire mind.
I just got the impression from reading the books and watching the films that eau de toilette wasn't readily available to all.
You could smell the shit and piss of Athens for miles around according to some ancient texts. I assume he's referring to that reality.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
You are saying high level ganking is "rare" and that you must be doing something like "power leveling" to consistently experience it. This is wrong. There are entire groups focused around newb ganking such as the Goblin Preservation Society and Fallen Lords in Darkfall. Veteran groups may have despised them but they rarely did anything about them because veteran groups lived in the clan cities and newb griefing groups did nothing but hang out in safe areas and war dec them. Thus my point about EVE. I was in a corp that was consistently fighting wars but I couldn't convince anyone to come hunt high sec gankers with me because they would just retreat into the shadows because they were well practiced at running from any real threat while making easy kills all day, and ultimately they just told me it wasn't worth spending the time when we had more tangible enemies to fight.
You also feed very well into the point I was making by pretty much admitting to being one of the kind of people I fight. When I say anti-griefer that actually is a bit of a narrow brush. What I actually mean is this. When I come into an Open World PvP game I run on a NRDS "Not Red Don't Shoot" policy as much as possible. In other, I don't attack any group that doesn't give me a reason to attack them either by unprovoked attacks against me and my guild/allies or just generally being the type of guild that runs around killing everyone. The counter being NBSI or "Not Blue Shoot It." Our KOS system is how we effectively track who is red and who isn't. In Darkfall the vast majority of guilds are NBSI. In EVE it's almost a requirement if you live in dangerous areas. In ArcheAge any group that thinks they can get away with it will purple any group outside their own and their immediate allies if they feel they can get away with it. The vast majority of veteran PvPers in PvP games are NBSI.
So that leads to two things that disagree with your narrative:
1. PvP that happens in starter zones is a very major thing that very much does happen. Yes a lot of PvP and the vast majority of good PvP happens out away from the starter zones. That doesn't mean that it doesn't happen or that the impact on the community is insignificant.
2. PvPers do not check to see if you are in the level range / gear range that is appropriate to fight against them before attacking you. If you aren't blue, they kill you. Given most of these games have massive levels of power disparity that means the majority of PvP happens where there are massive power disparities in play.
So this:
Is not propaganda. It is the hard cold truth about PvP in the vast majority of existing PvP titles.
Everyone coming into PvP titles will be playing the role of that child should they choose to engage in PvP for as long as it takes them to overcome the games barrier to entry (Which is generally months or years to anyone with a life outside the game not willing to swipe hardcore.)
Here are the positive truths of PvP:
1. The game gets far less violent and toxic once you get beyond the starter areas.
2. By hooking into a good group you can see more success in PvP at a lower power level.
3. It really is not that hard to get yourself into a mindset of "Only unbank/undock what you are willing to lose."
They do not negate these though.
The negative truths of (existing) PvP games:
1. There will be griefers camping starter areas and veterans usually don't care enough to deal with them.
2. There will be massive power disparity and you will be the child in the picture for a very long time.
3. If you do not wish to sell your soul to a large guild or alliance you will remain that child for a very long time, and the vast majority of large guilds and alliances are toxic.
My definition of Unfair in MMORPG PvP:
Losing to someone just because they've played longer, played more hours, or paid more money and have thus become far more powerful than I can hope to be without playing for months or years or paying an equal amount of money. I can compete with people's wallets all day long in the real world if I like. If I haven't played a sport as long as someone else, I probably won't be placed in the same league as them. Unless I am sort of genius or prodigy. To be more precise, I don't want to be an ant fighting against gods because I haven't played as long as someone else. There are advantages one might gain by spending more time with any particular activity, just like in the real world, but they shouldn't make a person unbeatable. I should have a chance of moving up from the Minor Leagues to the Major Leagues rapidly if I have the talent and the skill. Baseball players aren't allowed to use corked bats in games, and they certainly wouldn't be able to use a magical bat that always hit a home run every time they swung at a pitch.
Now if someone outsmarts me or outnumbers me*, fine, that can happen. Wandering out in the wilderness alone is not the greatest idea most of the time.
*Or maneuvers better or plans better, whatever. Basically I want things like wits and skill, tactics and teamwork to play a larger part in PvP than anything else.
And on any given battlefield, there will be soldiers or warriors that are stronger, smarter, more skilled, what have you. But soldiers and warriors don't normally go into battles alone. They usually bring along some allies or comrades that can make up for their weaknesses. And their strengths will hopefully make up for the weaknesses of their allies or comrades.
And Lineage is way more popular in Asia than it is in the west, right?
Most people didn't live in large cities in Middle Earth.
So the people living animal shit smelt better?