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The perfect MMO
xcatlkd
Member Posts: 59
I have read a lot of gripping about the poor features and executions of many games all over this site. I wanted to put these people on the spot and ask them to create an outline of their ideal game. What features would it include, where and when would it be set, what kind of characters and what type of actions would be employed.
Please first include;
your prefered game type (ie FPS,RPG, etc. and style, fantasy, futuristic, etc.)
List some features of games that you have enjoyed and some that you have not
Finally, outline what your game would look like (assuming you had the unlimited design, programming and financial resources of, say, Blizzard.)
Thanks
Comments
MMOFPS based on Maple Story, with every player having Jean Claude Van Damme as their avatar. Who's with me?
your prefered game type - Futuristic
List some features of games that you have enjoyed and some that you have not.
Enjoyed: Easy to use UI.
Disliked: Instanced Cities, Raid Instances
Finally, outline what your game would look like:
I would have a classless/levelless system. it would be skill based. You would start out with a pick of a few skills. After you earned so much experience, you would spend it on new skills. Skills increase by use. You pilot a space ship and if you don't crash, you have a chance for your skill to go up. Players would have a choice of either grouping up to have a better ship, or go solo with a small scout ship. You would spend money on upgrades for your ship, the only repair bills you would have would be for the ship. There would be no set quests past a small newbie zone. The whole galaxy would be wide open. There wouldn't be instances. If someone came by and blew up a starbase, it would be destroyed until it could be slowly repaired. Everyone would be able to kill anyone else, but players could have prices put on their heads and hunted down. Breaking the laws of the local planetary system could result in having alot of people hunting you down for the reward. Basically a Wild West in Space.
My pic of a good RPG-
Type: RPG
Style: Futuristic or Midevil or whatever - I am open on the style really.
Features: sandbox style, playerhousing, good looking weapons and armor, good mature community, something to do when not in the mood for combat, some fun diverse combat when IN the mood for combat. Allow me to leave my mark in the world somehow. I loved in SWG how when I made a weapon, my name was on it. I would get a ton of mail from people I never met whom said "dude - I just saw this awesome blaster that you made! Can you make me one?"
Nonpreferred things: NO POINTLESS TIMESINKS! I will not waste my time having to click 5499 times to create a potion, weapon, or whatever. Sure, make it a challenging to find the ingredients, but dont cause me carpul tunnel. No forced grouping. I like to be somewhat independent. There are times I wanna group, and times I wanna do my own thing.
"...and with that cryptic comment, I'm off to bed!"
Pre-CU SWG with the armor/buff modifications implemented in the CU but without the Combat Levels and nerfs to entertainers. Also with Jedi TEF and Permadeath enabled.
Oh... and with the bugs fixed.
That would be my ideal MMORPG.... Pre-NGE SWG would be a nice start though
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
----------------------
Give me lights give me action. With a touch of a button!
they tried that in EQ, think it was the discord server. Many people tried it but I guess it didn't work out well enough for SoE to keep it live?
Personally, why take time to build a toon when some noob is going to wipe the group? I vote for rezz
This a rough draft and still in concept so I didn’t go over all of the angles.
But I think this is ground work for an original and balanced mmorpg.
Theme: Fantasy turn based strategy mmorpg.
Setting: Europe, West Asia, North Africa and India continents in a gothic late 19th century. Hybrid in sci-fi cyberpunk technology. (Its not really 19th century, just looks like it)
Would look like the people that did lineage got the new Unreal engine.
Example of races: Vampires, Witches, Werewolves, Mutants (and humans all from a varaity of backgrounds)
Combat:
You play as 6 characters at one time but only during combat. Otherwise you are represented by one of your six characters of your choice.
Combat is turned based. You organize your characters abilities before combat.
Co-op:
Some battles are 12 on 12 and require a friend.
No Lvling (of any sort):
You dont level your characters, their ablities or earn new ablities for combat. You can change what they do within their race and class at anytime.
They hold value through their profession and their reputation.
You characters earn reputation over time which allows them to do other missions/quest and challenge other groups for territory. Reputation is earned in a variety of ways, one of the best ways is doing quest from NPCs.
Reputation rewards for quest are balanced as:
Easy to find / easy to complete - low
Hard to find / easy to complete – mid (yields good items)
Easy to find / hard to complete - high
Hard to find / hard to complete – highest (yields good items)
*hard to find means, you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get to them. Understandably, nothing is “hard to find” in a game over the internet.
Owning Land:
Areas are customizable. You can own land if your group has enough collective reputation to challenge the person holding the land. If you win 2 out of 3 matches you take over the land. If he doesn’t except the challenge from the person with the highest rep within time he looses rep. (only 6 players can represent your collective reputation) If a land owners rep drops below a certain percent they loose control of the area.
When owning an area you order NPCs to gather resources for crafting.
By building different things you change the types of bonuses or effects that take place during combat in that area and other things like theaters or pubs to keep NPC moral up or to help players in their professions.
PvE
Story line mission (aka History missions) Rewards in dialog options that reveal quest with npcs. Many history missions lead directly to quest and visa versa.
NPCs have memory or complex faction rating with will allow you to be liked or hated by each NPC individually. They also work to fulfill needs. Example: they seek comforts (food, better clothes) through wealth. You can help them or someone they associated themselves with and earn their favor.
Only NPCs give quest that reward in diverse items and reputation.
Economy:
Only trade is through auction.
Taxing is set by people that rule that particular territory and players have to pay those taxes at NPC crafters.
Taxing high hurts your reputation with NPCs, (which can be balanced by doing quest and building and up keeping things that keep moral up) taxing low hinders your ability to customize your land.
Items:
There are no weapons, armor or stat changing drops.
All weapons and armor are basic for their classes but have unique bonuses and visual effects.
Those items are earned by buying them from NPCs, completing NPC quest or bought through a player auction.
Money and other items are dropped however.
Gamble (PvP):
Combat starts with a bid. If you match the bid you play for that about.
After the course of (estimate) 5 turns a player can raise the bid. If you call the raise you continue to play for higher stacks. If you resign the game you lose the money you originally bided on.
You can gamble money, reputation or both.
Also at least one mini game played in social buildings and is capable of playing for high level strategy for gambling in game money.
Community:
All of your avatars have personalities you select through a personality test (or just select from choice). After which you can upgrade their emotes, many of which allow you to interact with others, like hugging or waltzing, clothes (you get a closet to accessories) and profession. Clothes can give profession bonuses.
Professions:
Professions are preformed in areas build up by other players. Actors can perform in theaters; priest can help in churches etc. By doing your profession you can fulfill NPC needs and unlock quest. Players that tip you while you do your profession get bonuses for PvE battles.
You also endorse land owners though doing your profession in their areas which helps their rep.
Ouch.
But i said there is equipment. (quest offer equipment, npcs sell equipment, players in auction trade if they want)
Motivations are:
---the ablity to customize an area in sim fashion as an owner. There should be lots of areas with lots of options of customization with fuctions as to why you customize other than "it looks pretty"
*reputation is the oportunity to sim out an area. this is the whole crafting system and its world changing effects for everyone in the game.
---earning equipment that gives your characters flexablity to fight (and visual awesomness), therefor, edge in stratigic combat.
---customizing a visually unique rpg character that can " level" in profession to do rpg things
---gambling is its own reward and motivation which is based on this dynamic stradigy game
I thought those rewards were appealing... add in some sexy pixels and i'd buy it.
And the ownership system is sort of framework here, but anyone that enjoys playing through the storys or farming for equipment through the pve will be able to compete more frequentaly than people that like to gamble through pvp for the same areas. Which again, there are many areas to consider.
Imo, the weakest link is the co-op, mostly as i described it. In my mind the co-op is more involed, but quite simply its 2vs2 whether in pve or pvp.
I admit it needs work, but there isnt a turnbased stradigy mmorpg i know of and i think that would win unique points.
oh and for definding roleplaying. really good roleplaying - i wouldnt set up a succsesfull mmo hoping players roleplay. (it is a decision not a gamemechanic) neverwinternights is got the optimal set up. private player cooperated envornments set up to roleplay.
1. Fantasy but light on the magic, no healing monks or unblockable wizards, players are historically accurate roles living in a fantasy environment
2. PVP anywhere any time, but very large guilds, so that killing your own side would weaken your economy, also penalties for murderers, maybe even exile from their faction, this lik eeverything else, would be player controlled, not "auto-kick"
3. either unlimited level or a level limit that would take a powergamer at least 1 or 2 years to hit, games with levels as low as WoW and Guild Wars have no depth. The way to make this reasonable would be no character lives forever, powergamers can create characters of epic power and create a legend, but they will eventually age and die.
4. NO quick travel feature or teleporting, you must travel the large dangerous continent, teleporting ruins any sense of immersion, if you want to go to the northern ice islands you must gather a party and risk death for hours, upon getting there feeling exhausted and victorious. But horses dragons whatever sort of mounts could be added.
5. total free speech in game-this would be a controversial one, but i feel for it to be a real rpg people would be allowed to say what they like politically racially nationally etc it would only stop at actual threats, am I the only one that sees irony in that most games you watch peoples heads fly off from an axe strike but you get banned for saying "your relgion/race/country sucks"? i want an rpg world where there will actually be hated people and loved people, not a pre scripted "good and evil" thing. hated people woul dbecome lone wolves and stick with their own kind. Total RPG. Temporary political correctness double standards of whatever decade you live in shouldnt exist in an RPG world
6. lots of "rares" not only graphical but statistic, balance is boring and anti-role playing, i want extremely powerful 1 of a kind weapons to randomly spawn on servers just to create an element of surprise other than "hes level 3 im level 7 i can kill him". No weapons should be so common that players make up nicknames for them like "noob set" or "d-axe".
7. good or bad graphics? I dont care, but make them adult, every game thats come out in the past year or announced for next year seems to be set in a glowing enchanted forest, i want a dark burnt earth apocalypse with human characters that actually look like humans rather than anime/giant toddlers
8. secrets in the game, things that were made but never told about, having to stand in a random place at a random time using a random object. Things like this were in the early elder scrolls games and old Tibia games with horrible graphics but that are still played today because of their depth.
9. severe death penalties, you lose tons of exp when you die, days worth, you can get your loot back off of your body, but so can anyone else who happens to come across it. I dont like to be in a quest party and just repeatedly attempt it after we each died 50 times knowing we wont lose as much as we gain.
10. character aging, and eventually death, but heirs that aquire some of your last characters stats, so that players who have been around a long time and had ten heirs would effectively become unique bloodline, and eventually gain abilities to access areas of the game young bloodlines cannot, such as enchanting weapons, very old bloodlines could become highe ron the social class eventually royalty
11. non-linear territories, territory can be captured by enemy factions, even random private guilds or outlaws, but there are no magical borders or flags, if you capture it it can be easily captured back 2 minutes later, this would create a need for players to patrol areas, and create their own nations, split in half, merge 2 into 1, etc. Never an enforced computer balance.
12. historically accurate weaponry: RPG designers need to read some ewart oakeshott, warhammers were not giant blunt carnival mallets, they were spiked light weight weapons for piercing plate armour when swords and arrows could not, which brings me to another point, armor should not just be "defense: 12" it should also be the type of armour, historically swords and arrows could not pierce plate mail so maces, hammers, lances became more standard, I dont like to see RPGs where just because you have sword skill 100 you can magically cleave through plate armour with a katana (which would shatter on european armor in reality), but plate armour would of course ruin your stamina thus some players would choose to be light infantry.
Basically i want a living breathing changing world MMO, so that you log on and find everything has changed, the people on your friends list all have different names (they have become their Heirs), power has shifted, your character has aged, new factions have been formed
I'm not going to build a three page layout of what I'd like to see, I'll keep it short and to the point...
All I would like is a MMO that is based in the Forgotten Realms - Underdark location utilizing the races made popular in the R.A. Salvatore novels such as Illithids, Kuo Toa, Drow, and Svirfneblin. Faction based pvp, raids to the surface, customizable interface, and a hardcore character customization interface.