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How would you improve on stagnant genres - MMORPGs
Aeander
Member LegendaryPosts: 8,060
Let's get the largest and most contentious genre out of the way, shall we? I expect a lot of different answers here, because this genre is one that has actually seen its breadth and variety go down with time, like a funnel. Meaning that there are a lot of what I would call "homeless" MMO veterans.
I don't expect my personal answer to necessarily be popular, or to even necessarily be considered a true MMO (it's more MMO-lite), but I really do think it's an unserved niche. It's where I would consider myself "homeless."
My MMO would be a fully instanced world full of tailor-made challenges. It would basically be Guild Wars 1 with specific modernizations such as map modifiers, weather effects, improved companions, and passive trees.
The purpose of instances in a MMORPG is to create specific challenges for groups of players, and the nature of these challenges simply are not possible in an open-world setting:
1) Players will need to consider their skill bar and the skills of their teammates for all challenges in an instance prior to entry. All skills will be locked down while in a mission.
2) Instances will include a variety of enemy factions that each use the same kinds of skills that are available to players. Players will need to counter these to succeed on higher difficulties.
3) Every instance in the game would offer easy, normal, and hard difficulty modes. With the exception of Patrol maps.
4) Patrol maps are instances which provide drop in a drop out MMO-lite zones with dynamic content. Like a Destiny or Marvel Heroes patrol zone. Normal skill bar restrictions would not apply and AI companions cannot be brought in.
5) Instances will have unique, rotating modifiers, such as enemy fire auras that change out daily.
6) Weather can impact specific instances on a timer. Rain, for example, could greatly ramp up water and electric damage dealt and received while weakening fire damage.
AI companions will be available as party options for all missions except Patrols. These function like Heroes in Guild Wars 1, except with personal quests, romance options, and writing akin to a classic Bioware companion.
The game would offer hundreds of skills to choose from, but limit your skill bar to 10 skills, with one elite skill, at any given time. These would fall into schools of magic (rage, fire, water, air, lightning, psychic, nature, etc.), and two different schools can be mixed in a build.
The game would not be strictly action oriented. Functions like dodging and blocking would be tied to specific skills, meaning that they are available if desired, but come with an opportunity cost. The game would never be intentionally designed to test player reaction times.
Progression would be purely horizontal. There are no player levels, and gear progression would focus on different but equivalent modifiers. For example, one sword might increase all fire damage you deal, give you bonus fire damage on basic attacks, and grant you a permanent sunfire aura. Another sword might grant you lifesteal on hit, increase healing output, and restore mana over time.
Additional horizontal progression would be available through skill hunting. Different boss mobs throughout the game would have different skills, and defeating them will acquire the skill. Unlike its inspiration in GW1, no Signet of Capture or equivalent will be necessary.
There would be an extensive passive skill tree akin to Path of Exile. This would be a vertical progression element to a point, but would eventually cap out and never be increased. This tree would be complex, but freely refundable. It would also have speciality nodes unlocked in the same fashion as skill hunting. Each school of magic has its own tree, but only your primary school will be available).
I don't expect my personal answer to necessarily be popular, or to even necessarily be considered a true MMO (it's more MMO-lite), but I really do think it's an unserved niche. It's where I would consider myself "homeless."
My MMO would be a fully instanced world full of tailor-made challenges. It would basically be Guild Wars 1 with specific modernizations such as map modifiers, weather effects, improved companions, and passive trees.
The purpose of instances in a MMORPG is to create specific challenges for groups of players, and the nature of these challenges simply are not possible in an open-world setting:
1) Players will need to consider their skill bar and the skills of their teammates for all challenges in an instance prior to entry. All skills will be locked down while in a mission.
2) Instances will include a variety of enemy factions that each use the same kinds of skills that are available to players. Players will need to counter these to succeed on higher difficulties.
3) Every instance in the game would offer easy, normal, and hard difficulty modes. With the exception of Patrol maps.
4) Patrol maps are instances which provide drop in a drop out MMO-lite zones with dynamic content. Like a Destiny or Marvel Heroes patrol zone. Normal skill bar restrictions would not apply and AI companions cannot be brought in.
5) Instances will have unique, rotating modifiers, such as enemy fire auras that change out daily.
6) Weather can impact specific instances on a timer. Rain, for example, could greatly ramp up water and electric damage dealt and received while weakening fire damage.
AI companions will be available as party options for all missions except Patrols. These function like Heroes in Guild Wars 1, except with personal quests, romance options, and writing akin to a classic Bioware companion.
The game would offer hundreds of skills to choose from, but limit your skill bar to 10 skills, with one elite skill, at any given time. These would fall into schools of magic (rage, fire, water, air, lightning, psychic, nature, etc.), and two different schools can be mixed in a build.
The game would not be strictly action oriented. Functions like dodging and blocking would be tied to specific skills, meaning that they are available if desired, but come with an opportunity cost. The game would never be intentionally designed to test player reaction times.
Progression would be purely horizontal. There are no player levels, and gear progression would focus on different but equivalent modifiers. For example, one sword might increase all fire damage you deal, give you bonus fire damage on basic attacks, and grant you a permanent sunfire aura. Another sword might grant you lifesteal on hit, increase healing output, and restore mana over time.
Additional horizontal progression would be available through skill hunting. Different boss mobs throughout the game would have different skills, and defeating them will acquire the skill. Unlike its inspiration in GW1, no Signet of Capture or equivalent will be necessary.
There would be an extensive passive skill tree akin to Path of Exile. This would be a vertical progression element to a point, but would eventually cap out and never be increased. This tree would be complex, but freely refundable. It would also have speciality nodes unlocked in the same fashion as skill hunting. Each school of magic has its own tree, but only your primary school will be available).
Comments
But figuring out what those enhancements may be is fun in and of itself. The industry has shown us a lot of cool major shifts outside of the glacial MMORPG genre.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
At each era of time, I could possibly evolve forward by choice, or after meeting certain criteria and I could only come back to past eras way in the future after I master time travel, to visit my 'ancestors' if I wanted.
I guess the important thing is that the choice is mine ultimately, and I have so many choices to choose from I'd never get bored, and the choices aren't behind some paywall or MTX, and all that mobile game bullshit is left at the door. If there's crafting at each era, adventuring/exploring, fighting, etc... they would all fit with the time period and be as simple/complex as those times would allow.
If I have to pay a sub I won't care. Take my money. Take my blood. Where do I sign?
Idk if I'd want the beginning game to start out like Spore, and maybe end beyond NMS or SC, but that's kind of the scope I'd want the game to go for.
We'd get our prehistoric, ancient rome/greece gods, fantasy, king arthur, wild west, current times, cyberpunk, star trek and beyond, all in one game. Each expansion could be a new era expanding on the mechanics of the previous, and then maybe it would never end in my lifetime. It wouldn't get watered down, just the opposite, as technology increases and improves our characters lives it would both make things easier and allow for deeper exploration/understanding of everything.
OR if that's too grand for you, here's another idea.
We work in a library. The world has ended. We survived, and every book in the library is its own self-contained story our character can experience. Thousands of books, thousands of stories to live through, in tons of different genres. Then, kind of like Assassin's Creed after living thru the stories we kind of have to get back to reality and make sure we survive as well possibly, depending on whatever survival difficulty we'd want. Mine would be pretty low....ha
Gut ouT!
What, me worry?
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
I think that the bigger issue is the inherently high cost and long development times associated with the genre. Unless an idea is truly new, any new MMO is going to be outdated before it even launches.