1) Skill based advancement system like Oblivion (which also has levels) + FFX/XII esque "grid" instead of rigid talent trees with TcoS focus on eliminating Holy Trinity of healer/dps/tank 2) Massive open world with lots of sandbox-like elements, but also including a large number and variety of quests, and also a instanced story-driven main "campaign" that allows you to make choices that matter like Mass Effect 3) Traditional MMO combat with added depth and multi-layered interactions to create a more fast paced combat while still keeping the non-twich principles of traditional MMO combat 4) More then just combat - fully developed social, political, economic, and exploratory options for advancement that are NOT just seperate advancement trees, but actual alternatives to the same advancement path offered by combat 5) Traditional instanced dungeons and raids with soft caps on player limits and dynamically altered conditions based off of group composition 6) Little to no focus on gear statistics and numerical values, fully customizable appearance. Focus on not what the "best" equipment is but rather what is best for your individual character/play style. No tiered equipment progression ladders 7) Varied and bountiful PvP options, from instanced battlegrounds and arena-like play, and open world siege/territorial control in multi-front factional warfare. PvP a choice not forced. Truly functional honor/morallity system to highly discourage ganking/griefing practices and encourage bring justice to those who do gank/grief 8) Variety in server types, some with above mentioned PvP options, others FFA, some servers "hardcore" with steeper leveling requirements and more difficult mobs, increased death penalties and reliance on grouping etc. but with greater rewards 9) No verticle expansion, ever. No increased level caps ever, instead focus on radial/horizontal expansion 10) Cutting edge graphics designed not simply for eye-candy and polygon count, but instead for truly massive scale and epic storytelling
Ya know, wasn't going to quote anyone in this thread as most of what is put here is by people who only understand the genre from their own perspective and not from a point of creating both a game that will appeal to a lot of people but one that has the potential to make money and even grab the 45 year old soccer mom.
So to add to your list;
I want a game I can take to any guild within WOW and say look this is what you need to be playing, its more interesting its more fun it has all the cutesy crap you like and has stuff that appeals to the more hardcore people.
Its got to be a game that is as much about socialization as anything else, and that means it has to have solo content to occupy someone when their friends are not around.
I want an ingame MP3 player :P (yes i know some have it but not enough do, and i don't want it to be a bloody mod),
I want to see the ability to chat when your not logged into the PC client through a PDA/webbrowser/iphone type device.
I want the ability to do some buying and trading of items while not logged into the PC (again pda type access)
I want the ability to be connected to the members of my guild/clan/corp/supergroup/whatever you name it.. that doesn't require me to be online playing the game.
Mostly I want to see parts of the game accessible though other means than the pc client. I'd really like to see parts of the game (combat and basic stuff accessible though consoles) with the advanced stuff requiring a PC.
I want UI mods but I don't want to see the ability to script skills/abilities. Too often these games turn into who writes the best script rather than choices and decisions made when under pressure by the player. How often have we seen someone who puts together a script that flawlessly executes some combination of skills that is essentially unbeatable in pvp?(or someplace else.. or turns something difficult into press "I win button repeatedly"
Lastly I want to see where tactics and cooperation in pvp reward more than gear does. Gear dependency needs to be minimal.
AND 2 most important things
DEVS that TALK to the community
DEVS that respond to obvious out of whack balance issues in a timely manner (aka 2-3 weeks NOT 6 months or more)
First thing i want in NEXT GEN is to bring back the FIRST GEN Let it forget WOW was ever made. Let it bring back UO world. Classless and no levels. But most of all a big living and breathing world where existance of your character mathers, where you have a reason to play beyond artificial "carrot" like raiding and epic gear. Basically Take AO,OU,SWG,EVE now spice it with next gen combat gameplay - Tabula Rasa style , or AOC, TCOS (they got the clue) Add some good story quests that could be instanced (but nothing else should be) TURBINE knows how to do that. Put all this in huge world And there you got it....
I have to agree. Before new games get better, dev's are going to have to take a trip back to 1999-2000, the Golden Age of MMORPG gaming. GIve us a world, not an adventure track.
If im walking up a big ass mountain, and i want to go up the thing my way.. not someones premade path..
I want a highly in-depth character customization when i make my own character.. if i want one bicep to be bigger then the other.. i want to make it that way.. ect.. if i want him to have 1 pupil bigger then the other.. then i better have it that way.. type thing
An mmo to please the person playing it..
If one day i wake up and decide i want to be a traveling merchant of some kind.. then dangit, i want my own journey and some type of storage vehicle that walks around with me..
Like how dungeon siege let you have those rolling carriage things to store items in.. ect..
I want to stand up on a high cliff and look across the vast never ending world.. and fix my eyes on a destination miles and miles and miles away.. then i want to be able to run to that same exact spot..
A HUGE ASS VAST WORLD, WHERE I CAN GO ANYWHERE, ANYTIME.. ANYWAY
If i want my ingame character to take steroids.. then i want him to take steroids..
If i want my character to be a little pushover begger.. then thats what I want to be..
yea..
lol :P
i want something that.. if i choose a job.. military, merchant, .. ect.. i want to have to go to some place and train there and make it last..
Too many times i complete something and i dont feel proud .. because i could just do it again in like an hour.. I want something that i can feel good when i complete it..
If i choose military, and i go in.. i want the training to last 6 weeks.. damit.. haha not 10-15 minutes..
I want player based shops.. you invest in a lot and build a store.. and run it yourself.. instead of walking into some place in game to buy things from a fake person..
If i want to be the CEO of a business of some type.. i want to own my own store, my own items, make my own profit. ect.. hire people out.. ect..
It would be awsome if/when you get to the highest accomplishment, you can have quests for the newbs to do.. to pay them, reward them.. ect..
1) 3+ unique RvR realms / races where humans are the fodder NPC's along with elves, dwarves, gnomes... all the cutsey / common races that are so often seen.
2) Open skill based game with no levels. All skills can be learned by all races
3) Skills are randomly realised by fighing NPC's and enemy players that use the skill in combat against them. Once realised the player can blood sacrifice / train / practice until the skill is learned. Attributes are gained randomly depending of the type of skills used / enemy fought.
4) Classes have a life cycle process where say once 100 hours are played that toon retires and the next generation take up the fight. 2nd generation toons start with 10 skills of the players choice from their parents skill list. 3rd generation starts with 12 skills, 4th = 14 skills, etc. Attributes would also increase through generations.
5) I want melee fighting that works like DAoC's anytime, positional, reactionary, follow-up combat. I also want combat to be player customised in 2 ways.
a) skills can be enhanced through PvE achievements / quest rewards / RvR achievments / RvR quest rewards where enhancements (CoH/CoV) can be added to the skill (Nothing to OP'ed)
b) melee style chains can be put together by the player
7) Comprehensive crafting that actually means something, something like SWG or EVE for complexity and scope. With resources that can be captured.
8) Players can build structures that permanently exist in the world unless destroyed.
9) Realm invasion can occur and a races main city can be razed and all skills for all toons can be reset to 0. To make this difficult a 'zone of occupation' would exist which would be setup so that a lot of realm cooperation would be needed to breakthrough or defend the barricading structures in place. I could think of some measures here that could be in place that could prevent a skill reset even if the main city was razed and all structures destroyed.
10) If the player participates in RvR then they may be offered a reward on performance to play an epic race. This would be something offered to the player community once a day to players until someone accepts the reward. The epic race would be subject to perma-death. There would be some structures in place here to make this even more interesting.
Another set of features which can be sub-classed under user-interface, that I would like in an MMO (and oddly WoW has most of it).
1) Open Interface. Let me screw up my toolbars, and what not. If I accidentally install a bot, shame on me, but not those who make some very good modifications to the client UI. Sometimes, it's better to let players make the game as comfortable for them as leaning back in their favorite chair at home.
2) Use XML or YAML as your interface data framework. There's nothing more that I dislike than having a client data framework that is in some gibberish standard, XML and YAML exist for such things, it's called separation of form from data.
3) Open music player lists. This includes even combat music and scene change music. That doesn't mean one should trash their music department, rather understand that some players like different kinds of music, and gaming should be fun enough that those sorts of music can be included as part of their experience. There's a reason why people have winamp/vlc/etc on in the background while playing their favorite FPS/RTS or single-player RPG, it's because it's their experience and they want to enjoy it.
-Player built cities (fortresses, starbases whatever)
- fun PvP, meaning no loss of XP, money etc., the ability to compete for everyone, skill more important than gear, = all of this hopefully eliminating 5 vs 1 gankfests and instead promoting equally numbered teams fighting for a predefined goal ( basically FPS rules inside an MMORPG),
- Player created quests, stories and events in general (races, parties, competitions of any kind)
- The ability to change the skills/class of ones character with relative ease ( promoting commitment to a single indentity on a specific server ) ->
- Making a players actions affect his reputation (1 char per server rule)
and alot more i don't remember right now. In short:
Give me a sandbox where everyone starts out equal and have the decicions of the players decide the fate of the server/world and the avatars living in it.
Every night I pray for an MMO that isn't item based. (Think back to when people PvPd on UO with GM weapons and a stolen apron with their butt hanging out the back. THAT was their uber PvP setup.)
_______________________________ PM me when an MMO as good as UO was comes out.
I would like a game with 'freedom' not having to feel like you have to level all the time do quests or kill repeadidly i would like somthing like an online fantasy life. like build a house or maybe even a city get jobs like wood cutting tailor builder be whatever etc. Buy or unlock spells doing different tasks such as dungeons big hard ones that will be rewarding if you unlock that rare spell you always wanted or that great looking armor that gives you nice magic or defense.
Open your own little shop like e.g Drakes Contractors building) haha that be awesome. lovley scenery . You can farm hunt etc you get my point socialize with everyone group and so on so much stuff that would be great i have all these ideas going through my head and i am in work ;_;
Something that doesn't use hit points, and not by any other name.
How do you propose knowing if you are about to die or what it takes to kill something/someone then?
By adding changing character animations, cuts and bleeding and something like the blur effect when you get drunk in WoW.
Considering pretty much any game that has combat of any sort also has hit points from MMO to FPS to strategy games, I really dont see how this is going to work. There needs to be some correlation from the damage dealt to the damage received.
You would use physics models and damage tables of some sort perhaps. Get hit in the arm with X amount of force from Y weapon and you suffer Z effect. Could be loss of arm or any number of lesser effects. The healer class (if you must have one) would have to repair damage using a skill set, rather than just mindlessly filling up or toping off some bar shaped hitpoint bucket. Hitpoints are an ancient contrived value that will always render extremely familiar "new" games, imo. Next gen has to get much closer to believable in order to break the mold.
This is a little off topic, but when I think about it, I don't know if I've ever heard a convincing arguement as to why any of the MMO's out right now (or any of those coming out in the very near future) are anything but newer 1st gen MMO's? I know this horse gets beaten a lot, but seriously, is there an MMO out there that has a solid claim as a 2nd Gen MMO? This is assuming, of course, that your definition of "generation" means a drastic shift in game play from the previous generation.
We are currently developing a 3rd generation MMO. I will leak the design goals here. Perhaps this will answer the question well. I cannot reveal the name of the game or the developer, but let's say the game guide will be released on mmorpg.com to let polayers sign on in order to assist with investor relations.
oPlayers should be able to feel as though their actions directly affect the development and progress of the entire game world.
oPlayers should feel as though their character is very unique in the world.
oPlayers should experience the drama and excitement of a story, not a grind.
oContent and progress of the game world should be primarily player driven.
oArbitrary rules, game features, and NPC interaction should be minimized or removed completely. Features such as mini-maps, chat functionality, mail systems, and many more should be REAL functions of the game world.
oPlayers who prefer pvp, pve, casual, group, or solo play should all have multiple role options in the game world.
oHarvesting, Crafting, Leadership, Diplomacy, and Politics should be real features. They should not be secondary goals or functions.
oThe story should progress. The game should not remain static.
oQuests should not repeat. Other than resource gathering quests, quests should be dynamic and more often than not, player created!
oThe development of the game and the game forums should be more responsive to players than other developers have been historically.
This is a little off topic, but when I think about it, I don't know if I've ever heard a convincing arguement as to why any of the MMO's out right now (or any of those coming out in the very near future) are anything but newer 1st gen MMO's? I know this horse gets beaten a lot, but seriously, is there an MMO out there that has a solid claim as a 2nd Gen MMO? This is assuming, of course, that your definition of "generation" means a drastic shift in game play from the previous generation.
I think you e right all MMOs out now are derived from D&D rules.
The only one i know of that is not is Eve online. I hear UO is different too.
Let CCP add to EVE Online: planets walking and exploration (each with different landscapes, citizens and content), planetary fights, walking through stations and ships, more ingame media (newspapers, TV, global space network) and more thought out PvE, it will be Next Gen MMO anyone would dream of
Ravenshroud - Thats a very interesting list of features. How far into development are you?
EVE is the one MMO I was thinking of thats more difficult to lump into the 1st Gen group. But then again. maybe thats only because EVE is a decsendant of UO, rather than EQ, like most every other MMO out there.
Personally, i just want a complete sandbox game that is totally player driven. There are a few elements i would like in this game.
Players MAKE everything. When the game comes out there shouldnt be much made because players havent made them yet. People will basically be in a forest. There would be a GOOD crafting system that would allow players to do everything from make a sword to build a castle.
Someone will have to come up with something completely revolutionary to replace the HP system because all the rest of the things have too many drawbacks. If you say it depends on where you hit, then everyone is just gonna start aiming for the head. It just doesnt work. So you would have to have an HP system. Keep it to 100 points however, and the amount and type of armor you have on depends on how hard you get hit, as well as where you get hit..
Levels should have been replaced a long time ago with skill points only. You get a certain amount of skill points, you learn a new skill. If you have been fighting you get a fighting skill. If you have been crafting you get a new crafting skill etc. There should be a low lvl cap, like 20 or something, and past that you just get skills. Level will play a major part. A lvl 1 would just have 5 HP and you would get 5 more HP every level till you hit lvl 20. I say this, instead of a game without levels, because in my opinion someone who just started playing should NEVER EVER be on par with someone who has been playing for a year.
Raids should still be an option. Big raids. Its what some people play for. They shouldnt be the only option to getting good gear, but they should most definetly still be an option, and they should continue to have outstanding rewards.
PvP will be open ended, where one town can go annihilate another town, and force them to rebuild or move.
Grinding WILL BE THERE. If you need wood to build your house you go get enough damn wood to build your damn house.
Realistic NPC drops. By this i mean if you and your friends go slay a dragon, all you get off that dragon is its hide, and its horns or w/e. Since its a dragon i dont care if you make a magic talisman out of it, or w/e just you shouldnt get a peice of plate gear off a dragon. You can "make" some armor out of its scales, but just getting stuff isnt real enough. Since when do dragons carry around swords.
Towns will replace guilds, and the really big towns will have castles that can be assaulted, and the potential to raise an army and destroy the entire server will be there, because you know after that happens the leader will be there for a little while, but then factions will break off again because a world with no one to kill would be boring.
So basically a completely open ended game, and there is how you do it. I like Sci Fi games just fine, but it would be way too hard to make. Realisticly making a metropolis that Sci Fi games should have would compromise how open ended the game is.
Comments
So to add to your list;
I want a game I can take to any guild within WOW and say look this is what you need to be playing, its more interesting its more fun it has all the cutesy crap you like and has stuff that appeals to the more hardcore people.
Its got to be a game that is as much about socialization as anything else, and that means it has to have solo content to occupy someone when their friends are not around.
I want an ingame MP3 player :P (yes i know some have it but not enough do, and i don't want it to be a bloody mod),
I want to see the ability to chat when your not logged into the PC client through a PDA/webbrowser/iphone type device.
I want the ability to do some buying and trading of items while not logged into the PC (again pda type access)
I want the ability to be connected to the members of my guild/clan/corp/supergroup/whatever you name it.. that doesn't require me to be online playing the game.
Mostly I want to see parts of the game accessible though other means than the pc client. I'd really like to see parts of the game (combat and basic stuff accessible though consoles) with the advanced stuff requiring a PC.
I want UI mods but I don't want to see the ability to script skills/abilities. Too often these games turn into who writes the best script rather than choices and decisions made when under pressure by the player. How often have we seen someone who puts together a script that flawlessly executes some combination of skills that is essentially unbeatable in pvp?(or someplace else.. or turns something difficult into press "I win button repeatedly"
Lastly I want to see where tactics and cooperation in pvp reward more than gear does. Gear dependency needs to be minimal.
AND 2 most important things
DEVS that TALK to the community
DEVS that respond to obvious out of whack balance issues in a timely manner (aka 2-3 weeks NOT 6 months or more)
I have to agree. Before new games get better, dev's are going to have to take a trip back to 1999-2000, the Golden Age of MMORPG gaming. GIve us a world, not an adventure track.
What do I want?
"If there's a will, there's a way" - type thing..
If im walking up a big ass mountain, and i want to go up the thing my way.. not someones premade path..
I want a highly in-depth character customization when i make my own character.. if i want one bicep to be bigger then the other.. i want to make it that way.. ect.. if i want him to have 1 pupil bigger then the other.. then i better have it that way.. type thing
An mmo to please the person playing it..
If one day i wake up and decide i want to be a traveling merchant of some kind.. then dangit, i want my own journey and some type of storage vehicle that walks around with me..
Like how dungeon siege let you have those rolling carriage things to store items in.. ect..
I want to stand up on a high cliff and look across the vast never ending world.. and fix my eyes on a destination miles and miles and miles away.. then i want to be able to run to that same exact spot..
A HUGE ASS VAST WORLD, WHERE I CAN GO ANYWHERE, ANYTIME.. ANYWAY
If i want my ingame character to take steroids.. then i want him to take steroids..
If i want my character to be a little pushover begger.. then thats what I want to be..
yea..
lol :P
i want something that.. if i choose a job.. military, merchant, .. ect.. i want to have to go to some place and train there and make it last..
Too many times i complete something and i dont feel proud .. because i could just do it again in like an hour.. I want something that i can feel good when i complete it..
If i choose military, and i go in.. i want the training to last 6 weeks.. damit.. haha not 10-15 minutes..
I want player based shops.. you invest in a lot and build a store.. and run it yourself.. instead of walking into some place in game to buy things from a fake person..
If i want to be the CEO of a business of some type.. i want to own my own store, my own items, make my own profit. ect.. hire people out.. ect..
It would be awsome if/when you get to the highest accomplishment, you can have quests for the newbs to do.. to pay them, reward them.. ect..
I want a game with:
1) 3+ unique RvR realms / races where humans are the fodder NPC's along with elves, dwarves, gnomes... all the cutsey / common races that are so often seen.
2) Open skill based game with no levels. All skills can be learned by all races
3) Skills are randomly realised by fighing NPC's and enemy players that use the skill in combat against them. Once realised the player can blood sacrifice / train / practice until the skill is learned. Attributes are gained randomly depending of the type of skills used / enemy fought.
4) Classes have a life cycle process where say once 100 hours are played that toon retires and the next generation take up the fight. 2nd generation toons start with 10 skills of the players choice from their parents skill list. 3rd generation starts with 12 skills, 4th = 14 skills, etc. Attributes would also increase through generations.
5) I want melee fighting that works like DAoC's anytime, positional, reactionary, follow-up combat. I also want combat to be player customised in 2 ways.
a) skills can be enhanced through PvE achievements / quest rewards / RvR achievments / RvR quest rewards where enhancements (CoH/CoV) can be added to the skill (Nothing to OP'ed)
b) melee style chains can be put together by the player
7) Comprehensive crafting that actually means something, something like SWG or EVE for complexity and scope. With resources that can be captured.
8) Players can build structures that permanently exist in the world unless destroyed.
9) Realm invasion can occur and a races main city can be razed and all skills for all toons can be reset to 0. To make this difficult a 'zone of occupation' would exist which would be setup so that a lot of realm cooperation would be needed to breakthrough or defend the barricading structures in place. I could think of some measures here that could be in place that could prevent a skill reset even if the main city was razed and all structures destroyed.
10) If the player participates in RvR then they may be offered a reward on performance to play an epic race. This would be something offered to the player community once a day to players until someone accepts the reward. The epic race would be subject to perma-death. There would be some structures in place here to make this even more interesting.
Another set of features which can be sub-classed under user-interface, that I would like in an MMO (and oddly WoW has most of it).
1) Open Interface. Let me screw up my toolbars, and what not. If I accidentally install a bot, shame on me, but not those who make some very good modifications to the client UI. Sometimes, it's better to let players make the game as comfortable for them as leaning back in their favorite chair at home.
2) Use XML or YAML as your interface data framework. There's nothing more that I dislike than having a client data framework that is in some gibberish standard, XML and YAML exist for such things, it's called separation of form from data.
3) Open music player lists. This includes even combat music and scene change music. That doesn't mean one should trash their music department, rather understand that some players like different kinds of music, and gaming should be fun enough that those sorts of music can be included as part of their experience. There's a reason why people have winamp/vlc/etc on in the background while playing their favorite FPS/RTS or single-player RPG, it's because it's their experience and they want to enjoy it.
-- Brede
-Player-run economy
-Player built cities (fortresses, starbases whatever)
- fun PvP, meaning no loss of XP, money etc., the ability to compete for everyone, skill more important than gear, = all of this hopefully eliminating 5 vs 1 gankfests and instead promoting equally numbered teams fighting for a predefined goal ( basically FPS rules inside an MMORPG),
- Player created quests, stories and events in general (races, parties, competitions of any kind)
- The ability to change the skills/class of ones character with relative ease ( promoting commitment to a single indentity on a specific server ) ->
- Making a players actions affect his reputation (1 char per server rule)
and alot more i don't remember right now. In short:
Give me a sandbox where everyone starts out equal and have the decicions of the players decide the fate of the server/world and the avatars living in it.
1. A world that thrives and changes on its own. (I.E. with no player interaction).
-Mobs attack other mobs, certain bad guys attack cities, certain areas are destroyed/built, ect.
2. True diplomacy similiar to SWG
3. Player run cities
1. Exciting, dangerous, and challenging leveling.
For me there is nothing so fun as going into a non-instanced dungeon and fighting mobs, and perhaps
teaming up with other players already there, and chatting between respawns, or chatting after we have all
wiped, or zoned out to save our hides.
2. Smaller worlds
IMO all the MMOs are spending alot of dev time on making worlds that are unnecessarily HUGEtm.
There is no need to have massive zones/areas when they are mostly empty of mobs/npcs, all it does
is give players more travel time. Look at DaoC, each factions home realms were quite small, and they still
managed to have more than enough content to support players of all levels.
3. Remove "no-trade" items, level restricted items.
Many will say this stops twinking, but so what... if you have spent many many hours to get a character
to maximum level, AND have played many many hours more to be able to give an alt, a few good items.
You deserve it. IMO the reason these rules are in place is because in the current set of MMOrpgs,
EVERYONE has uber gear, there is no level of rarity/uniqueness to characters.
4. Remove 5x103567 stupid pointless quests.
I know that over time players wanted to be able to level by quests alone, and thats possible now.
But honestly for me, killing 100 <insert mob name here> was about 5x103567 times more fun. Actual
combat melee/magic, screaming for heals and almost dying, running away and being pursued by mobs..
was more fun. And hopefully by the time those players get to end-game raiding level, they will actually
know their character and how it functions in a group/multi-group situation. Instead of being a newbie
at max level (ie WoW/Lotro ... /.... /... / ..../ ... /..... ).
5. Make classes that can solo, not a whole game that can be soloable.
Combine all of my points here and you will have a Fun/exciting/dangerous world that is not pointlessly
big so that players havn't got massive amounts of areas to wander around in trying to find similiarly
level players to group with. Because in most games no one uses LFG flags/options.
Flame/Troll on
Does anyone know how to make a mmoRPG anymore?
Every night I pray for an MMO that isn't item based. (Think back to when people PvPd on UO with GM weapons and a stolen apron with their butt hanging out the back. THAT was their uber PvP setup.)
_______________________________
PM me when an MMO as good as UO was comes out.
I would like a game with 'freedom' not having to feel like you have to level all the time do quests or kill repeadidly i would like somthing like an online fantasy life. like build a house or maybe even a city get jobs like wood cutting tailor builder be whatever etc. Buy or unlock spells doing different tasks such as dungeons big hard ones that will be rewarding if you unlock that rare spell you always wanted or that great looking armor that gives you nice magic or defense.
Open your own little shop like e.g Drakes Contractors building) haha that be awesome. lovley scenery . You can farm hunt etc you get my point socialize with everyone group and so on so much stuff that would be great i have all these ideas going through my head and i am in work ;_;
How do you propose knowing if you are about to die or what it takes to kill something/someone then?
By adding changing character animations, cuts and bleeding and something like the blur effect when you get drunk in WoW.
Considering pretty much any game that has combat of any sort also has hit points from MMO to FPS to strategy games, I really dont see how this is going to work. There needs to be some correlation from the damage dealt to the damage received.
You would use physics models and damage tables of some sort perhaps. Get hit in the arm with X amount of force from Y weapon and you suffer Z effect. Could be loss of arm or any number of lesser effects. The healer class (if you must have one) would have to repair damage using a skill set, rather than just mindlessly filling up or toping off some bar shaped hitpoint bucket. Hitpoints are an ancient contrived value that will always render extremely familiar "new" games, imo. Next gen has to get much closer to believable in order to break the mold.
Oooh, just remembered one more thing.
When I or we take a badass boss down, I wanna feel as epic as I did after killing a Colossus in Shadow of the Colossus!
This is a little off topic, but when I think about it, I don't know if I've ever heard a convincing arguement as to why any of the MMO's out right now (or any of those coming out in the very near future) are anything but newer 1st gen MMO's? I know this horse gets beaten a lot, but seriously, is there an MMO out there that has a solid claim as a 2nd Gen MMO? This is assuming, of course, that your definition of "generation" means a drastic shift in game play from the previous generation.
We are currently developing a 3rd generation MMO. I will leak the design goals here. Perhaps this will answer the question well. I cannot reveal the name of the game or the developer, but let's say the game guide will be released on mmorpg.com to let polayers sign on in order to assist with investor relations.
o Players should be able to feel as though their actions directly affect the development and progress of the entire game world.
o Players should feel as though their character is very unique in the world.
o Players should experience the drama and excitement of a story, not a grind.
o Content and progress of the game world should be primarily player driven.
o Arbitrary rules, game features, and NPC interaction should be minimized or removed completely. Features such as mini-maps, chat functionality, mail systems, and many more should be REAL functions of the game world.
o Players who prefer pvp, pve, casual, group, or solo play should all have multiple role options in the game world.
o Harvesting, Crafting, Leadership, Diplomacy, and Politics should be real features. They should not be secondary goals or functions.
o The story should progress. The game should not remain static.
o Quests should not repeat. Other than resource gathering quests, quests should be dynamic and more often than not, player created!
o The development of the game and the game forums should be more responsive to players than other developers have been historically.
e right all MMOs out now are derived from D&D rules.
The only one i know of that is not is Eve online. I hear UO is different too.
Let CCP add to EVE Online: planets walking and exploration (each with different landscapes, citizens and content), planetary fights, walking through stations and ships, more ingame media (newspapers, TV, global space network) and more thought out PvE, it will be Next Gen MMO anyone would dream of
Ravenshroud - Thats a very interesting list of features. How far into development are you?
EVE is the one MMO I was thinking of thats more difficult to lump into the 1st Gen group. But then again. maybe thats only because EVE is a decsendant of UO, rather than EQ, like most every other MMO out there.
Personally, i just want a complete sandbox game that is totally player driven. There are a few elements i would like in this game.
Players MAKE everything. When the game comes out there shouldnt be much made because players havent made them yet. People will basically be in a forest. There would be a GOOD crafting system that would allow players to do everything from make a sword to build a castle.
Someone will have to come up with something completely revolutionary to replace the HP system because all the rest of the things have too many drawbacks. If you say it depends on where you hit, then everyone is just gonna start aiming for the head. It just doesnt work. So you would have to have an HP system. Keep it to 100 points however, and the amount and type of armor you have on depends on how hard you get hit, as well as where you get hit..
Levels should have been replaced a long time ago with skill points only. You get a certain amount of skill points, you learn a new skill. If you have been fighting you get a fighting skill. If you have been crafting you get a new crafting skill etc. There should be a low lvl cap, like 20 or something, and past that you just get skills. Level will play a major part. A lvl 1 would just have 5 HP and you would get 5 more HP every level till you hit lvl 20. I say this, instead of a game without levels, because in my opinion someone who just started playing should NEVER EVER be on par with someone who has been playing for a year.
Raids should still be an option. Big raids. Its what some people play for. They shouldnt be the only option to getting good gear, but they should most definetly still be an option, and they should continue to have outstanding rewards.
PvP will be open ended, where one town can go annihilate another town, and force them to rebuild or move.
Grinding WILL BE THERE. If you need wood to build your house you go get enough damn wood to build your damn house.
Realistic NPC drops. By this i mean if you and your friends go slay a dragon, all you get off that dragon is its hide, and its horns or w/e. Since its a dragon i dont care if you make a magic talisman out of it, or w/e just you shouldnt get a peice of plate gear off a dragon. You can "make" some armor out of its scales, but just getting stuff isnt real enough. Since when do dragons carry around swords.
Towns will replace guilds, and the really big towns will have castles that can be assaulted, and the potential to raise an army and destroy the entire server will be there, because you know after that happens the leader will be there for a little while, but then factions will break off again because a world with no one to kill would be boring.
So basically a completely open ended game, and there is how you do it. I like Sci Fi games just fine, but it would be way too hard to make. Realisticly making a metropolis that Sci Fi games should have would compromise how open ended the game is.