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A new generation of MMORPG
FastTx
Member UncommonPosts: 756
So let the question be out there... If a new generation of new MMO's were to come out, what would need to be added to take you away from current generation of MMO's. What will set the first truly next gen MMO apart from the rest? I'm sure the question has been brought up many times but I wanted to throw a view I doubt is heard of very much.
When I play these games you'll always find the certain player finding the best build, trying to find the best DPS so they are the best at killing, or the the tank who is trying to max out every inch of defense possible, or the rogue trying to max out his speed and simply just having the best stat sheet. What if a next gen MMO took something away instead of adding something? Simply taking away numbers (at least hide them from the players) to make it harder to take a statistical approach to the game. Players would need to pick their armor and weapon based on the graphics in game showing how revealing or how protective the armor can be. Today we have excuses where a piece of armor not much more than a bikini can be considered high end defensive gear, simply because of the number. A game without numbers would force the producers to make their armor more protective to rank effectiveness. You'd still have names of objects and probably some descriptive text which can tell you things about the armor where simple graphics cannot.
This game would need to be heavily dependent on graphics, these graphics would need to show detailed design and the state of the characters health and strength. You should be able to say "Hey I can take that, I'm not tired and I should be able to stab my sword through that no problem!" At least it's better than saying "Ok it take me 3 nukes to take that mob, at 25 MP per nuke I will need 75 MP, so I will wait for my MP bar to hit that point before I kill it!"
It would also have to have a realistic type of looting. You aren't going to loot a Silver coin from a rabbit. You are going to collect rabbit pelts and sell them at the local armor shop (no, the weapon shop won't buy them, if they do they will buy the item and sell it for more at the armor shop!) Even so this might be a little stretching it, but the game doesn't have to show how much "currency" you have on you. Gold coins should weigh something and should be worth storing in the bank. Hell create a miniature stock market in game and have it influenced by the world. Obviously something this huge would need a huge persistent sandbox of a game.
It would need some sort of voice acting other than "Yes", "No", "*Grunt*", "*Agree*", and "*wait*" emotes. It's not hard to find about 10 voice actors to do a wide range of voices and implement the actual quest dialogue. Oblivion did it and it's a single player RPG with more quests than a lot of MMORPG's and more detailed and involving at that. With the rest of the gaming industry implementing voices to all dialogue, you'd figure a next gen MMO might do so as well, it can be played client side and most hard drives can handle downloading a few sound files.
It would need skill to actually play the character, no turns based on an "Attack Speed" value. Leaping up in the air and swinging your two handed sword down upon someone else's head should do more than a thrust to the abdomen and probably leave them more open to boot. None of these "stances" which are given to classes to support which mode of attack you are in. These modes and numbers which can calculate attack and defense can change every nanosecond and it needs to be kept up. A spar between two swordsmen should be more about trying to find their opponents weak spot while defending their own than about attack power, defense and attack speed.
The unknown factor, with no levels, experience points, skill points and stat sheets combined with a brilliantly detailed artistic settting in both character, scenery and equipment seems a huge burden, but it is a task a next gen MMO may or may not accomplish. There are some huge benefits to such a system, players wouldn't feel the need to gain those extra exp points during the day and may choose what equipment they wear not because it gives +3 more defensive bonus but because it just looks more badass on your character.
Obviously by this post you will realize I'm not a big fan of the "attack damage over opponents head in red, heal in blue" system. I'd also probably rather there was no map (unless you had some skill in making maps, or you bought a readily made map). I'd like a compass and some roads with road signs and NPC's giving me directions on where I can find the next town and a massive server cluster which involves one huge world and no parallel universes. Everyone is connected all the time.
I could be completely wrong about this and no one would want to play in the direction an MMO like this would go, it's only a few details and obviously could not be summarized in a few short paragraphs. Ideally it would be a graphically intensive sandbox game without numerical statistics at least client side and a few more enjoyable gameplay elements will be encouraged.
Comments
I'll say this much: if such a game were made, I would definitely give it a try.
"By the data to date, there is only one animal in the Galaxy dangerous to man, man himself. So he must supply his own indispensable competition. He has no enemy to help him." -Lazarus Long
This sounds alot like chronicles of spellborn....they took away stats on armor and supposedly have very unique graphics...I myself won't play it but others might like it.
I read the first part of your post.
Like the idea.
Not going to happen.
Explanation: Thottbot, Allakhazam, Stratics, and a dozen of other sites where you can hook up information about which armor is best.
The first guy who gets a hold of different armors, will write down the name of both, test them... and come up with a result which is better. Then he will tell everyone it, and within a month, you have a chart of which armor is better than the other... Even if you dont have numbers on the charts, they will just be ranked with a number.
Simple as that... Not going to work.
About the loot, alot of games have loot that only could come from that specific, but usually these games also have a high depth crafting system. Which i am a very big fan of, and i think the next-Gen MMORPG's will need to work on the crafting, to suit all needs.
YES! Actors and computer games is the future... Although Westwood did it 12 years ago with Command & Conquer. I do believe you need an upgrade on this part. They didnt only have actors, they had movie actors playing the parts. Who wouldn't want Arnold Schwarzenegger do the voice overs in Age of Conan?!
If you need skill to play the RPG... Like aiming skills and so on, if will not be a MMORPG, it will become a MMOFPS. Which is a whole other genre, and i do not applaud to that. I like other MMO genres, but I like MMORPG's more than anything else
About mapping... It will just become like Ultima Online, where people used 3rd party clients to see where they were heading... Wont work. Fan sites will make a full map overview within days of the game release... Just look at Dark and Light, and that game was by far the largest game there has ever been(Not including EVE online, where every map looked the same).
Please take this as constructive critizm, and let the discussion/share of ideas go on
Futilez - Mature MMORPG Community
Correcting people since birth.
Mini-games. Thats it. If a game has thier basic PVE combat, maybe a little PVP, and a trading card game inside. I would drop all my mmos and play that game.
[quote]The first guy who gets a hold of different armors, will write down the name of both, test them... and come up with a result which is better. Then he will tell everyone it, and within a month, you have a chart of which armor is better than the other... Even if you dont have numbers on the charts, they will just be ranked with a number.[/quote]
And is there a problem with this? People will do it so what? In real life if you were picking sporting equipment you would want the best you can get, you will do tests to make sure yours is the best and obviously it will become known. Don't make it easy for players by telling them how much of an armor rating something has exactly compared to something else. Armors will deteriorate with time and have a weaker rating compared to a brand new piece, they can be repaired but obviously there won't be a bar saying this, the graphics will have to show the armor getting weaker and more worn in. You'll say "Hmm... my armor doesn't look in the best shape, I better get someone to stitch it back up."
Picking and choosing from games I like.
Very complex systems but relatively transparent ones. Anarchy Online was well-mapped by the player community by the time I played it but that didn't mean there wasn't contention about what actually worked best. It was just too complicated to boil down to any one build, at least on Rubi-Ka. I spent a lot of time just figuring out where to go next with my characters, that was fun.
Flying, always a good touch. Build it up over the life of your character. Start maybe with some kind of jump/glide, early.
Building combat skills out of subskills, linking them to movement too. I think Saga of Ryzom might've done this. Never played it. Charge, jump at, jump over, etc. Being able to build an attack like a side swipe by combining a charge, veer, and slash. Would be interesting. Be able to change the power cost, induction time, amount of damage, most of the effects of the skill by fiddling with it.
For quests, I think one of the weak points right now is that while the developers are trying to tell somekind of story with their quest arcs the NPCs are often completely without dimension. I was kind of hoping SOTNW would be a main character with a party of secondary characters that could be interacted with. One of the things I have a lot fun with in SRPGs is unlocking party member dialog, side quests, and special abilities.
Either moving the combat in or moving it out, as it were. Usually you have a kind of queue of abilities with a depth of 1. I'd like to see that bumped up to 3 or 4. Alternatively, take your basic "power bar" and make it much smaller but make it recharge much more quickly. Maybe let people choose how much power to toss into a particular skill (either beforehand or through some kind of arcade-y type of combat) and have them form up combos so there is a benefit to not tossing them all on max-power.