ps i like spagheti westerns ,perhaps a western mmo whould be nice if it was ffa pvp and skilled based.
Hmmm....I don't know about FFA. It doesn't seem to be something the majority of gamers want. I was thinking a sort of open consentual would be better. Something like SWG where you choose to be open PvP or not.
A lot of people don't like the ffa thing and I don't blame them but being a PvPer, its just as important to have it. I think the 2 style can coexsist side by side but they really need to be thought out and equal attention needs to be given. You see many games add on one aspect at the cost of another. WoW and LotR tacked on a flimsy PvP portion while L2 tacked on a dull PvE. None of the games do both aspects well. SWG was close to the mark but it was unwieldy.
So you could do FFA one of two ways.
Elect to be PvP active. Simple as turning it on. Shazam, now anyone else who is PvP active can attack you. People who are not interested in that aspect need not be involved.
Do bad things and build up "bounty points". So if you do things like rob banks, trains, stagecoaches, steal cattle, kill townspeople or whatever else, you become an "outlaw" and get bounty points. This would enable anyone who is an active "bounty hunter" to kill for a nice reward from the local sherif. You become an active "bounty hunter" by going to the local lawoffice and reading the "wanted posters" and taking the option to hunt for outlaws. Again containing the PvP to the people who want to do it.
Thats really all it comes down to IMHO. Let the people who want FFA PvP, have it. Let them turn it on and walk around with it. Let the people who don't want it, stay out. Whats so hard about that? Lootable? hmmmm.....not sure. Maybe just a few items drop out the inventory? I guess since its totally vollenteery you could do loot..... / shrug the player would know what they are going into by electing to go FFA pvp.
A noteworthy idea Torak. The frontier feel of the Wild West could apeal to a lot of 'sanbox' fans. Gold rushes, land grabs, the Civil War, desperados, bounty hunters and gang warfare, railroads, ... sign me up!
You accept Monopoly money?
On the PvP aspect: perhaps have a PvP point pool that fills up after commiting certain tasks or crimes towards a faction? Stealing cattle, robbing a bank, ... the law will come and get you. Cheat the Native Americans and they'll come for your mining outpost.
See the problem you have here is that with only a few exceptions, only americans romanticize and enjoy things that have to do with the wild west. Most all europeans just think of it as one of humanity's lowest, where the spanish, english and french (among others)) went to this new continent they found, and slaughtered a whole race of innocent people.
(theres nothing "cool" about that)
Only to basically live in total anarchy and chaos, killing eachother for fun and overall make a mockery out of decent society. I just don't see how anyone besides americans would even consider playing a western game.
EDIT: To make my point even more clear, it's YOUR history, not ours.
That's a BROAD generalization. Sergio Leone, arguably one of the most prominent directors of westerns was Italian. His movies were filmed in Spain and spawned a whole genre of European-made spaghetti westerns throughout the sixties and seventies that still are evident today (movies like Alex Cox's "Straight to Hell" or Baz Luhrmann's "Romeo + Juliet" both bear Leone's influence). This is where prominent actors like Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Dennis Hopper got their starts. Freakin' Lee Van Cleef. That's bad ass. Putting politically correct squeamishness aside, the western genre is a powerful place to explore the same themes that any game based in a primitive society (whether it's medieval, post-apocalyptic, or whatever) can explore.
Just because it's not a part of your history does not negate it as a viable genre. Asians play games based in medieval Europe. Westerns play games set in feudal Japan. Sure, the cowboy flicks of the early 20th century romanticized and whitewashed people's perceptions of the frontier and cowboys, but the Hollywood machine romanticized EVERYTHING during that era, be it war, adult relationships, gangsters, rural life, urban life, the list goes on.
Looking at Native Americans as some ideal utopian society that was banished from Eden by European settlers is terribly misguided too. There were tribes that were just as brutal to opposing tribes as the Europeans were. The treatment of Native Americans by European settlers was often brutal and certainly unfair, but no worse than Vikings in the British Isles, or the Gauls sacking Rome, or the Crusaders pillaging Palestine. Conflict is the very fibre of humanity's ass backwards history--no matter what continent you live on.
Do you think people who play fantasy MMORPGs think it would be "cool" to live in the Dark Ages? Of course not. But there are certain elements of these eras that appeal to our primal hunger for adventure and exploration. And face it, if you play videogames, on some level, as long as you're not hurting anyone in RL, play violence, whether it's lobbing the head off an orc or shooting up a saloon in Tombstone, Arizona, is "cool" to you.
Personally, I'd love a western MMO. Done well, this could be an amazing, innovative MMORPG genre to explore. Not the simplicity of cowboys = good and "injuns" = savages. It would provide for great action and adventure as well as great social play: creating towns and societies in unsettled wilds and badlands, creating order and law where there is lawlessness, and making moral decisions as to how to interact with indigenous people through diplomacy, trade, or violence. It would also be the best genre, in my opinion, to step away from the conventional level-based advancement system and really have some fun with skills. And we'd get a breather from spacemen and wizards to boot.
The "Wild West" was not when the Americas was first colonized nor was it during the gold rushes, it was years later when people were scattered because the rushes (land/gold) had ended and you had a lot of people left with nothing and no place to go. And not just "colonist" but freed slaves, Civil war vets and Immigrants from other countries that had come looking for the land of milk and honey only to find that neither was available. It was not as shown from all the movies you have seen, actually only one (1) in five (5) “cowboys” that roamed the old west were white men from the original thirteen colonies. Most cowboys in the old west were (American) Indian, Black, Mexican, Irish, Chinese, French and other European immigrants.
Also, the actual gunfights were nothing like shown in the movies, before the invention of Smokeless Gunpowder the gun fights more closely resembled a Counter Strike match then the Duels at High Noon portrayed in the movies.
This actually would make for an interesting MMO if based on reality. Because while you would have the option of it being a FFA PVP game the rule of law (and yes sand boxes do have some rules) the “laws of the land” would detour most people from simply gunning everyone in sight down as anyone becoming an outlaw risked jail time if not a hanging. Now this would make for some interesting RP as the bad guys gang would have to plan and carry out jail breaks as well as town wide roving gun fights between the gang and posse (locals). Yet this also allows for duels to settle arguments. Add in crafting of everything from spurs to war wagons and weapons as well as everything else mentioned above (cattle/land/gold wars) and you have all the ingredients for a balanced MMO.
And really there is no limit but your imagination to what you could do. For example, you hear that the next town over is expecting a wagon load of women for their cat house. Meet the train and hijack the womenfolk and bring them to your town instead. Build your own cat house and name it Madam Ore’s and now the money your new workers are bringing not only improves the area (and the frame of mind of all the men) but allows you to hire more deputies, build the town and bring in a county judge thus allowing for players to become territorial marshals, also to pay bounties on the players that went to the dark side. And of course banks which will then draw the player outlaws.
There is actually so many ways to do; you could build a town run by outlaws which would naturally not be as attractive to homesteaders but would be the only place to get special items as well as where an outlaw could reside.
If done right it would appeal to every nationality.
Wasn't there a "Priest" or something in dev a while back? Think that was supposed to be old west theme with vampires or something. I was looking forward to it, but then it evaporated.
Wasn't there a "Priest" or something in dev a while back? Think that was supposed to be old west theme with vampires or something. I was looking forward to it, but then it evaporated.
Concensus - Too American? So noone should want to play a martial arts game because it's 'too asian?' or a Napoleonic conflict because it's 'too french'?
Melvis 1500 - No it wasn't all about people 'Having fun killing one another' There were settlers trying to make a living in harsh conditions, explorers discovering new territory, good people trying to uphold justice.
As far as exterminating an entire race... yes that was horrible, but that's the way of the world. Ever read any history at all? WORLD history, not just American history. It's all expansion, conflict and killing and taking land. It's not just America. There were cowboys having gunfights in Australia and there were 'Native Canadians' being shuffled about and displaced.
It would be boring to make a game where everyone loved one another and noone did any wrong. Players in a Western game can play texas rangers, lawmen, bounty hunters going after the bad guys. People love a good SIMULATION, the subject matter can be a dark period in history or a golden age- it doesn't matter since the game is still centered around conflict in some form.
I suppose your ancestors were all peace-loving and never did anything wrong all the way through history?
While being an interesting idea there are some major problems with this type of mmo....I'll just list a few I think this game would run into.
1. Lack of races-Basically everyone is human and will generally look the same unless you add in the indians but still there is only so much you can do.
2. Lack of expansions....say you start with the game during the louisiana purchase time well your eventually gonna hit the west coast and then according to history you only have so much time before the country becomes industrialized hence making a pretty short period to release expansions.
3. Gambling while maybe being a nice little side game would become quite boring for most I believe after awhile. I mean you can only sit and play poker so long before it becomes stagnant especially in a mmo where you might have punk kids just doing stupid stuff....this I really don't think would be a major part of the game at all.
4. Crafting would be very limited to probably just guns or bullets and while this would be fun it wouldn't really fit...I mean to stay accurate to history you'd just be able to walk into a gun store and buy the top of the line smith and wesson. And really there is no armor to craft that you couldn't just buy in a general store.
5. Robbing stage coaches........well while it might be fun to do with a good group unless your gonna have stage coaches running every couple of minutes they are gonna be seriously camped by hundereds of people same thing with trains.
6. Economy....what's even really the need for an economy? After you have the best horse and gun what else is there you really need money for? And obviously there aren't gonna be drops from the animals you kill for rare items since that didn't exsist in real life....now if you want to start inventing stuff that didn't exsist back then you might as well just make a fantasy mmorpg.
Yeah the more I think about it I'm seeing this might work as a total pvp game...I mean there are no classes and the skill tree would probably be limited to what type of gun you used and also this game would have to have some serious instances so everything isn't camped....Now it would be a great single player game but there's already some out there so I just don't know.
See the problem you have here is that with only a few exceptions, only americans romanticize and enjoy things that have to do with the wild west. Most all europeans just think of it as one of humanity's lowest, where the spanish, english and french (among others)) went to this new continent they found, and slaughtered a whole race of innocent people.
(theres nothing "cool" about that)
Only to basically live in total anarchy and chaos, killing eachother for fun and overall make a mockery out of decent society. I just don't see how anyone besides americans would even consider playing a western game.
EDIT: To make my point even more clear, it's YOUR history, not ours.
Oy! Speak for yourself (as stated by someone else ), I'd love a wild west MMO... Especially if I could join the US cavalry!
Heck, imagine a "european" MMO based on our past? iiick..The crusades, the inquisition, the 100 year war, the war of the rose, slaughter all around...
Well, I didn't read all of this..but I liked the OP's ideas, its fresh at least. I love fantasy, but even I have to admit the market is pretty saturated.
I also think that the game could be a bit limited...but why not do it steam punk alternate history kind of thing?
Comments
Hmmm....I don't know about FFA. It doesn't seem to be something the majority of gamers want. I was thinking a sort of open consentual would be better. Something like SWG where you choose to be open PvP or not.
A lot of people don't like the ffa thing and I don't blame them but being a PvPer, its just as important to have it. I think the 2 style can coexsist side by side but they really need to be thought out and equal attention needs to be given. You see many games add on one aspect at the cost of another. WoW and LotR tacked on a flimsy PvP portion while L2 tacked on a dull PvE. None of the games do both aspects well. SWG was close to the mark but it was unwieldy.
So you could do FFA one of two ways.
Thats really all it comes down to IMHO. Let the people who want FFA PvP, have it. Let them turn it on and walk around with it. Let the people who don't want it, stay out. Whats so hard about that? Lootable? hmmmm.....not sure. Maybe just a few items drop out the inventory? I guess since its totally vollenteery you could do loot..... / shrug the player would know what they are going into by electing to go FFA pvp.
One thing
Rodeos! Yeeeeeeeeee haaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!
A noteworthy idea Torak. The frontier feel of the Wild West could apeal to a lot of 'sanbox' fans. Gold rushes, land grabs, the Civil War, desperados, bounty hunters and gang warfare, railroads, ... sign me up!
You accept Monopoly money?
On the PvP aspect: perhaps have a PvP point pool that fills up after commiting certain tasks or crimes towards a faction? Stealing cattle, robbing a bank, ... the law will come and get you. Cheat the Native Americans and they'll come for your mining outpost.
That's a BROAD generalization. Sergio Leone, arguably one of the most prominent directors of westerns was Italian. His movies were filmed in Spain and spawned a whole genre of European-made spaghetti westerns throughout the sixties and seventies that still are evident today (movies like Alex Cox's "Straight to Hell" or Baz Luhrmann's "Romeo + Juliet" both bear Leone's influence). This is where prominent actors like Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Dennis Hopper got their starts. Freakin' Lee Van Cleef. That's bad ass. Putting politically correct squeamishness aside, the western genre is a powerful place to explore the same themes that any game based in a primitive society (whether it's medieval, post-apocalyptic, or whatever) can explore.
Just because it's not a part of your history does not negate it as a viable genre. Asians play games based in medieval Europe. Westerns play games set in feudal Japan. Sure, the cowboy flicks of the early 20th century romanticized and whitewashed people's perceptions of the frontier and cowboys, but the Hollywood machine romanticized EVERYTHING during that era, be it war, adult relationships, gangsters, rural life, urban life, the list goes on.
Looking at Native Americans as some ideal utopian society that was banished from Eden by European settlers is terribly misguided too. There were tribes that were just as brutal to opposing tribes as the Europeans were. The treatment of Native Americans by European settlers was often brutal and certainly unfair, but no worse than Vikings in the British Isles, or the Gauls sacking Rome, or the Crusaders pillaging Palestine. Conflict is the very fibre of humanity's ass backwards history--no matter what continent you live on.
Do you think people who play fantasy MMORPGs think it would be "cool" to live in the Dark Ages? Of course not. But there are certain elements of these eras that appeal to our primal hunger for adventure and exploration. And face it, if you play videogames, on some level, as long as you're not hurting anyone in RL, play violence, whether it's lobbing the head off an orc or shooting up a saloon in Tombstone, Arizona, is "cool" to you.
Personally, I'd love a western MMO. Done well, this could be an amazing, innovative MMORPG genre to explore. Not the simplicity of cowboys = good and "injuns" = savages. It would provide for great action and adventure as well as great social play: creating towns and societies in unsettled wilds and badlands, creating order and law where there is lawlessness, and making moral decisions as to how to interact with indigenous people through diplomacy, trade, or violence. It would also be the best genre, in my opinion, to step away from the conventional level-based advancement system and really have some fun with skills. And we'd get a breather from spacemen and wizards to boot.
The "Wild West" was not when the Americas was first colonized nor was it during the gold rushes, it was years later when people were scattered because the rushes (land/gold) had ended and you had a lot of people left with nothing and no place to go. And not just "colonist" but freed slaves, Civil war vets and Immigrants from other countries that had come looking for the land of milk and honey only to find that neither was available. It was not as shown from all the movies you have seen, actually only one (1) in five (5) “cowboys” that roamed the old west were white men from the original thirteen colonies. Most cowboys in the old west were (American) Indian, Black, Mexican, Irish, Chinese, French and other European immigrants.
Also, the actual gunfights were nothing like shown in the movies, before the invention of Smokeless Gunpowder the gun fights more closely resembled a Counter Strike match then the Duels at High Noon portrayed in the movies.
This actually would make for an interesting MMO if based on reality. Because while you would have the option of it being a FFA PVP game the rule of law (and yes sand boxes do have some rules) the “laws of the land” would detour most people from simply gunning everyone in sight down as anyone becoming an outlaw risked jail time if not a hanging. Now this would make for some interesting RP as the bad guys gang would have to plan and carry out jail breaks as well as town wide roving gun fights between the gang and posse (locals). Yet this also allows for duels to settle arguments. Add in crafting of everything from spurs to war wagons and weapons as well as everything else mentioned above (cattle/land/gold wars) and you have all the ingredients for a balanced MMO.
And really there is no limit but your imagination to what you could do. For example, you hear that the next town over is expecting a wagon load of women for their cat house. Meet the train and hijack the womenfolk and bring them to your town instead. Build your own cat house and name it Madam Ore’s and now the money your new workers are bringing not only improves the area (and the frame of mind of all the men) but allows you to hire more deputies, build the town and bring in a county judge thus allowing for players to become territorial marshals, also to pay bounties on the players that went to the dark side. And of course banks which will then draw the player outlaws.
There is actually so many ways to do; you could build a town run by outlaws which would naturally not be as attractive to homesteaders but would be the only place to get special items as well as where an outlaw could reside.
If done right it would appeal to every nationality.
An so it begins
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.[/CENTER]
Wasn't there a "Priest" or something in dev a while back? Think that was supposed to be old west theme with vampires or something. I was looking forward to it, but then it evaporated.
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/priest/index.html?tag=result;title;0
This massively multiplayer online role-playing game is set in the Wild West.
Genre: Fantasy Online Role-PlayingRelease Date: Canceled
Concensus - Too American? So noone should want to play a martial arts game because it's 'too asian?' or a Napoleonic conflict because it's 'too french'?
Melvis 1500 - No it wasn't all about people 'Having fun killing one another' There were settlers trying to make a living in harsh conditions, explorers discovering new territory, good people trying to uphold justice.
As far as exterminating an entire race... yes that was horrible, but that's the way of the world. Ever read any history at all? WORLD history, not just American history. It's all expansion, conflict and killing and taking land. It's not just America. There were cowboys having gunfights in Australia and there were 'Native Canadians' being shuffled about and displaced.
It would be boring to make a game where everyone loved one another and noone did any wrong. Players in a Western game can play texas rangers, lawmen, bounty hunters going after the bad guys. People love a good SIMULATION, the subject matter can be a dark period in history or a golden age- it doesn't matter since the game is still centered around conflict in some form.
I suppose your ancestors were all peace-loving and never did anything wrong all the way through history?
One more thing.. bite my shiny American Arse
While being an interesting idea there are some major problems with this type of mmo....I'll just list a few I think this game would run into.
1. Lack of races-Basically everyone is human and will generally look the same unless you add in the indians but still there is only so much you can do.
2. Lack of expansions....say you start with the game during the louisiana purchase time well your eventually gonna hit the west coast and then according to history you only have so much time before the country becomes industrialized hence making a pretty short period to release expansions.
3. Gambling while maybe being a nice little side game would become quite boring for most I believe after awhile. I mean you can only sit and play poker so long before it becomes stagnant especially in a mmo where you might have punk kids just doing stupid stuff....this I really don't think would be a major part of the game at all.
4. Crafting would be very limited to probably just guns or bullets and while this would be fun it wouldn't really fit...I mean to stay accurate to history you'd just be able to walk into a gun store and buy the top of the line smith and wesson. And really there is no armor to craft that you couldn't just buy in a general store.
5. Robbing stage coaches........well while it might be fun to do with a good group unless your gonna have stage coaches running every couple of minutes they are gonna be seriously camped by hundereds of people same thing with trains.
6. Economy....what's even really the need for an economy? After you have the best horse and gun what else is there you really need money for? And obviously there aren't gonna be drops from the animals you kill for rare items since that didn't exsist in real life....now if you want to start inventing stuff that didn't exsist back then you might as well just make a fantasy mmorpg.
Yeah the more I think about it I'm seeing this might work as a total pvp game...I mean there are no classes and the skill tree would probably be limited to what type of gun you used and also this game would have to have some serious instances so everything isn't camped....Now it would be a great single player game but there's already some out there so I just don't know.
Heck, imagine a "european" MMO based on our past? iiick..The crusades, the inquisition, the 100 year war, the war of the rose, slaughter all around...
we can but hope someone takes up the challenge with the backing to work on it
Well, I didn't read all of this..but I liked the OP's ideas, its fresh at least. I love fantasy, but even I have to admit the market is pretty saturated.
I also think that the game could be a bit limited...but why not do it steam punk alternate history kind of thing?
D.