help us build a list of awesome things in games [Archive]

Erloas

2011-05-03, 09:51 AM

To be blunt it sounds like what you are planning on doing is completely unworkdable.
Professional developers with a lot of people, money, resources and experience can't say "we're going to take all the cool ideas from every game and mash them together so we have the coolest game ever." Its been tried and it never works for a lot of different reasons. Its definitely not something a few friends can program in their basements.
Your sights are too high and being what is reasonable.

It takes teams of 50-200 people years of working full time to build an MMO world. The scale of that sort of game is not a small team sort of thing, unless you have a small world without a lot of diversity and a limited and very focused design in mind.

As for things that are fun in games, there are a lot of ideas that work amazingly in one type of game and not another. Not even having the vaguest idea of your game will make it impossible to give ideas that would work. There are some things that are amazing for single player or co-op games that are the worst thing ever in a versus game.

And how exactly is telling us anything about this game going to be a problem? Sure the "I don't want someone else to steal our ideas" is there... but what exactly are they going to steal since you are here asking for all of the ideas in the first place? If the core premise of your game is really new and innovative and completely unlike anything we've seen before, then the chances of our favorite things from other games working with that core is minor at best.

If you look at the more popular indy games out there they never try to do everything. They tend to have a fairly simple idea executed well.

Anasazi

2011-05-03, 11:16 AM

First, sorry for the wall of text.

There seems to be some confusion on why we want this list and I'll go ahead and clear that up for you all right now. When you're building a massive world you accept the fact that eventually your team, be it of 10 or 50 or 200 people will eventually run out of ideas. It is common practice in games to source to different content to fill in these gaps, as someone mentioned above, I'll go ahead and use WoW as an example.. WoW's mythos references greek, roman, egyptian, african, and asian history, mythology and religion in countless different ways. Most mmo's have to do that. All those cookie cutter wow games tend to reference one source which is why they dont seem as polished. Heck, wow even takes things from pop culture and plugs it into their game.

Now, the goal behind the list is to ensure that the elements that we like that others come up with that we might have forgotten to input into our game will be added into the game... after we're ran our course on ideas. Its not a starting position, its a check list. And to assume that everything that everyone comes up with will make the list is just plain silly, that would be the most random and convoluted game in the history of games, not to mention it would have my team spending its time running around with its head chopped off throwing in pieces of data that the average gamer wouldn't get.

There's no doubt that some of the people of this forum will come into this topic and instantly see that a team of people are making a video game and instantly dismiss it because 'real' companies dont do that. Some might also assume that our goal is impossible because if creating games was easy everyone would be doing it... got a surprise for you all, its not as hard as people think. What it requires is a willingness to complete the project, and patience to stick through all the twists and turns of the creation process, and the skill set of countless different people coming together to bring about a creation. To assume that just because the big companies dont do something or cant do something is because its impossible is misguided at best. Again, I'll reference Blizzard. When the Blizzard North team was fired they went off and eventually formed what is known today as Runic Games. Come July, Runic will have released its second spiritual successor to diablo... and Blizzard will have released... nothing in the Diablo line, they're too busy trying to combine diablo with wow to release anything. All awhile Runic moves closer to releasing a diablo-esk mmo. Did i forget to mention that Runic when it released its first game, was a very small company? Its because this is an exception instead of the rule that people believe it to be impossible. For a less impressive reference you can look at 3 Rings who built Spiral Knights over the course of 3 years, from scratch, with a team of 11.

If we were wired like the big companies then we wouldnt be trying to throw something new into the market. Now, creation of an engine takes time. Creation of models takes time. Both of these very large elements are already done.

Now if we could avoid further discussions about the game itself and actually get back to why I started this topic in the first place, that would be great.
As a side note, Psil thanks for the thought but we're way ahead of you on that. and Eldan, AWESOME ideas, thank you VERY much for the three ideas and we will most likely add them somewhere into our game where they will make sense.

GloatingSwine

2011-05-03, 12:53 PM

Sure the "I don't want someone else to steal our ideas" is there... but what exactly are they going to steal since you are here asking for all of the ideas in the first place?

People stealing your ideas is never a problem. Ideas are piss easy, I have ideas for games all the time. Turning ideas into games or game mechanics is hard (and I say this as someone who's been involved in playtesting for published tabletop games and wargames.), especially because sometimes you get an idea out of your head and onto a table and it just doesn't work (and that's one of the hardest things about game design, murdering your darlings, realising when an idea doesn't work and taking it out when you really wanted that idea in there).

Don't worry about having your ideas stolen, ideas are less than a tenth of a percent of the work.

Erloas

2011-05-03, 02:30 PM

I have a feeling that what you are actually looking for isn't really what you said in the original post. Awesome things in games can be almost anything, from mechanics, to animations, to special effects, as well as locations, environments and enemies.

If you are asking specifically at world building, which mostly seems to be what you want, then at least having a genre would be nice.
If you have a steampunk design then vast desert wastes which work so well in Fallout (1&2) wouldn't really fit. An alien world with otherwise completely unfamiliar plant and animal designed would be great in a sci-fi setting but wouldn't work at all in an alternate history setting. A tropical rain forest with a volcano at the summit would work for some things but wouldn't be a good setting for large scale army type battlefield, nor a more urban Bladerunner or Tron type game. A modern high tech heavy industry city would be great in a Battletech based game but not make any sense in a fantasy setting.

The same thing goes for enemies and background creatures/npcs that create a real feel to a setting.

The short answer is what makes something amazing for a game is that it fits in perfectly with that game. It embodies the world trying to be created. It makes sense with the setting. Consistency with the setting is key to keeping a setting believable.

Same goes with quests. Kill&collect makes sense in a setting with apothecary type crafts, in most semi-modern and sci-fi, much less so. A bounty for enemies killed works in some settings and not others. The thing about quests though, especially in an MMO, is they either reward you for what you would already be doing and are just free items/exp/money or they are there to get you do to something you normally wouldn't and tend to be either grindy or just letting you know boss X is located at point Y and you should go kill him. I think the ability to create a game that people are active in without being lead around with quests is the best way.
EVE does very well with quests making up almost no part of the game, and in fact many people go a long ways in the game without running a single quest, and although some people grind out quests constantly its a fairly limited side of the game.
I think WAR did a very good job with the idea of public quests though, it is a great idea that was hampered only by their other ideas getting in the way.

Personally I think the biggest downfall of MMOs is actually WoWs single biggest contribution to the genre. That of being able to do everything by yourself or with very few other people. The community makes the game and as far as I'm concerned WoW completely killed the sense of community that the previous generation of MMOs before it had. And other companies trying to follow in the success of WoW replicated all of those same mistakes.
Find a way to actively encourage, and make it better for everyone, to be grouped up and working together. IMO soloing is the death of MMOs.

Tvtyrant

2011-05-03, 02:37 PM

Things I like:

1. Free explore areas where you get XP for exploring, maybe for killing things. This as opposed to "guy with chalice/exclamation mark over head" that hands you prepackaged quests. Sure I could kill a Purple Worm/boss if I have tons of preparation no problem, but its more realistic and cooler if it simply randomly rips out of the ground and attacks me.

2. Free flowing combat or hexes; I hate games where you are playing a hex type combat system that simply removed the hex boundaries from sight to make it free form. Either make me really mobile and animated (and the enemies) or lock us down so I can use tactics.

2011-05-03, 03:14 PM

Things I like:

Being suddenly assassinated by my estranged (and schizophrenic) bastard son a la Crusader Kings. That really doesn't happen enough in games

Anasazi

2011-05-03, 03:23 PM

nice additions people. lets keep it going!
and remember, the things you list dont have to be from video games, they can be from your campaigns or anything else. if you had a thought of something sweet and always thought ud like to see it, lay it on us!

akma

2011-05-03, 03:49 PM

Here are a few suggestions:
1. Combat system that is at least partly based on the player skill and not just his character skills. Make the fighting system more like Devils may cry then like Baldur`s gate. Still, character power could help greatly. Have enemies fight diffrently from each other.
Maybe even a bonus boss that`s designed to counter the player fighting style, but I guess this would be hard to program.
2. Intresting quests. Plot twists, riddles, intresting plot, NPCs with resonable motives, etc.
3. No grinding. You could do that each monster gives XP only once, so the game encourages you to kill diffrent monsters instead of the same one over and over again (or maybe allow killing the same monsters again but in diffrent ways). XP for exploration. Last time I imagined an MMORPG style game in my head I thought of the idea of XP only from quests.
4. Fetch button. This button will enable players to immediatly recieve very cheap items, instead of having to bother to go somewhere else and take them, in case they need them. It would also enable them to bring items they store somewhere else.
5. Free teleportation. Walking long distances for practical reasons is not fun. The players should be able to teleport to anywhere they have been to before, unless there is a good reason not to. You don`t have to call it teleportation.
6. Fun from the start. I remmember seeing an MMORPG in which at the start you could only start fires, and was supposed to do it for a while before learning more advanced skills (like fighting, and if I remmember correctly even that required taking a few skills).

Will the game be available to us for free?

I saw your post after I posted:

if you had a thought of something sweet and always thought ud like to see it, lay it on us!

That`s sounds like an invitation to write things for your game directly.

Erloas

2011-05-03, 04:44 PM

In a class based system no class should be able to spec itself out of its primary role.

Crowd control should be left behind. It sucks in PvP. In single player its either a necessary crutch for a weak class or it gives a class too much power. In co-op its either a necessity that forces specific group makeups or not worth using (and no point in having) and tends to cause a lot of strife.
There should be no pure support roles (this is getting better and better, I think both LOTRO and WAR did a pretty good job at this).

Players shouldn't be punished for playing the game. This is EVEs biggest problem and one many early games also struggled with. I'm not a fan of sever death penalties, it discouraged PvP and even in co-op it creates a lot of strife between players.

No consumables. I've never liked them in any game (which is so very very many games). Its very hard to find a balance between them being too precious to use and them being little more then an ability with a timer and time/money sink built in.

Concept: a player is a squad or group rather then an individual. Sort of a champion with an accompanying unit, as seen in RTSs and most table top games. Gives a whole slew of options for player advancement and customization. Could be used to implement a levelless system and balance much like EVEs ship designs but in an organic setting. Would also lead to diminishing power as fights gone on and much more interesting and varied healing mechanics.

hamishspence

2011-05-03, 04:50 PM

Underwater seems to be something of a neglected region type.

An MMO which really developed that, in depth, might be an interesting change of pace.

Truly three dimensional combat, for example.

ShinyRocks

2011-05-03, 04:59 PM

Personally I think the biggest downfall of MMOs is actually WoWs single biggest contribution to the genre. That of being able to do everything by yourself or with very few other people. The community makes the game and as far as I'm concerned WoW completely killed the sense of community that the previous generation of MMOs before it had. And other companies trying to follow in the success of WoW replicated all of those same mistakes.
Find a way to actively encourage, and make it better for everyone, to be grouped up and working together. IMO soloing is the death of MMOs.

This is a good example of why you need to be sure of what you want to do and do it, rather than try to please everyone.

Erloas's opinion is perfectly valid; it's also the complete opposite of mine.

I don't play WoW any more, but when I did I almost entirely soloed. That's what I liked. That's what I still like. Then why play an MMO? Because it still has an entirely different feeling from a standalone solo game. I liked playing the auction house. I liked running up to heal someone who was nearly dead, killing the mob, giving them a wave and then running off. I liked giving 100 gold to a newb level 5 player and watching them freak out. I liked city raids/city defence sometimes. I liked seasonal events. I liked /dancing with someone from the opposite faction because we were both just fishing and it was nice and peaceful. I didn't really like dungeons and I never set foot inside a raid or had the slightest desire to. WoW was a way for me to unwind and chill out. If it had forced grouping on me to progress, then it wouldn't have done that.

An MMO that basically requires grouping will have a definite, strong market. It would also turn off some people, like me.

Innis Cabal

2011-05-03, 05:08 PM

MMO?

Not-wow.

Don't try to be like wow, don't try to copy anything that wow does.

I'm sick to death of the vast majority of MMOs being the same damn game.

Other than that:
If there are multiple races, make them unique. Ctrl^C Ctrl^V Tolkien get a little old.

... Basically what I'm trying to get at is be 'unique'.

If something is unique, there is a damn good chance I would try it.

I always giggle about this complaint because WoW didn't make the mold. EQ 1 did. WoW is just the most popular but 90% of the key bindings are the same as EQ 1 and 2 among other things.

TheSummoner

2011-05-03, 11:11 PM

I do not know how big your team is, nor do I know how far along in your project you are. A MMO is a rather huge thing to attempt for a first game (or have you made any other games with this team in the past), but the optimist in me says that it's doable if you have a team willing to put everything into it... To either accomplish your goal or destroy yourself trying. You will need this passion if you want any hope of success with a team that consists of only you and a few friends.

I'm a Computer Graphics major, going for game design... A MMO is an eventual goal of mine as well, so I'd like to think this gives me a bit of insight into your mindset. (Note: I have no interest in working on your project with you, so don't think that's why I'm bringing this up. I'd just like to think I have a decent understanding of your goal and want to give you some advise based on my own observations.)

1) Plot comes first. A MMO (or any other game for that matter) that is nothing more than a random assortment of "collect 20 bear asses" and "kill the vaguely evil dude whose doing bad things for no particular reason" will appeal to no one. Decide on an overall plot... A main conflict. Give the plot room to grow... If the main antagonist is to die at some point, what happens next? Does someone else, perhaps an existing character who got away take over the antagonist group? Is there some other threat that can logically be introduced? If you already have a setting, come up with a plot that suits your setting. If you do not, build your setting around the plot you come up with. Avoid pointless "Kill X" or "Collect X" quests... Even the smallest quest should have some plot relevence. Why is the player slaughtering these tigers? Why does the quest-giver need 17 jars of assorted nuts and bolts? Not everything has to be an epic confrontation against some threat to world, but there DOES have to be some reason for it or its just grinding... Boring.

2) What is the player's role in the world? Is he an epic hero (note: I hate these in MMO's. A game with millions of players cannot have every player be some sort of champion, chosen by the gods to save the world from every poorly-defined threat to existence). Is she a supersoldier, fighting to protect her planet from an alien threat? Is he a survivor in a post-apocalyptic hellscape? Are different factions in the game? Alliance vs Horde, Order vs Chaos, Supersoldiers vs Space Pirates vs Giant Alien Bugs. Or are the players suppose to all be on the same side? (A poor choice if you plan on including PvP IMO. How do you justify players supposibly being on the same side but being able to kill eachother when away from society?)

3) Size matters. A world too large gets tedius to navigate. A world too small doesn't really seem alive. Unlike quests, not every location on the map needs to have an ingame purpose... Random scenery that can be found by wandering the map can add to the world. Hidden shrines with references to past events in the game world's history... Scenic overlooks that let players look down on the hard work your team put into making the game world... That sort of thing.

4) On that subject... What is the role of the NPCs in the game? Funny thought eh... Why would anyone care. Well, it makes the world seem more alive. Immersion makes for a good game. Random, nameless townsfolk wandering the capitol aimlessly and a pack of alien locust patroling the same general area for eternity doesn't seem like a living world. Know what game handled NPC action well? Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. In Majora's Mask, each important NPC had a pre-determined path that they followed during the repeating ingame 3 day cycle. It was fairly simple in Majora's Mask because the game repeated the same 3 days every time you played... But the same concept can be applied to any game really... Certain enemies are nocturnal. You do not see them during the day. Carnivores hunt herbivores and herbivores graze. NPCs in cities have daily or weekly routines they follow. Every day, Urist McDrunk (I love Dwarf Fortress!) wakes up at about 7am, heads to the tavern a little before noon, goes home at 9pm and falls asleep at 11. Every saturday at 3:30pm, he gets into a fight and is thrown out of the tavern. Angry over this, he offers a quest to kill the jerk he got into a fight with from the time he gets thrown out of the tavern until the time he goes to sleep.

5) Does the game focus on solo content or group content? PvP or PvE? Are you going to try to facilitate more than one of the four possible combinations? There really is no right or wrong answer, but it is something you need to keep in mind.

I might post more later...

Anasazi

2011-05-04, 12:05 AM

I appreciate how much thought some of you are putting into this, as a reminder I am bound from speaking to the specifics of the game, as much as I might want to I cannot say anything from what I've already indicated. I felt that adding my own skill set to this article would pull away from the focus of the post, as these things can happen. I will say that this is far from my first game, and its not my first MMO.

Summoner, you speak to larger elements of the creation process, things that we need to consider at the beginning of the creation process, this list is not for that, it is to cover very specific world elements such as desired terrain elements, or specific challenges people would like to see. That being said, I think you do have a decent understanding of the process. Needless to say your points have already been addressed, and I appreciate you using rhetorical questions rather than straight out asking knowing full well that I can't answer them. We'd very much like to hear your specific thoughts on elements that you've enjoyed over the years if you'd like to give them.

Innis, you're absolutely right, EQ setup the standards for what has become the basis for game UI, but with each major leap in a specific genre more and more elements become common place, many elements within the tables of wow are now considered by production companies to be required elements in mmorpg worlds. Until we can break the cycle and address new levels of genre combining this wont change, and whatever successor to wow will also add to the ever growing list of this.

Ham, good ideas, we're already there but great ideas.

Erl, and Shiny: both of you have valid points, where a game stands in its initial focus ends up determining what specific type of players it attracts. In that regard, I can say that we're taking the path less traveled by the industry. make of that as what you will, its about as specific as i can be at this time.

As always, great ideas, keep them coming!
see if we can focus a bit more on specific examples.

TheSummoner

2011-05-04, 01:50 AM

Well... As far as settings go, I really can't be sure how appropriate any given one is without more about your game world... But I'll give it a shot anyways.

Variety is good. Just make sure the way they line up makes sense... A desert wasteland should not be next to a frozen tundra unless you have a damn good story explanation for why (a wizard did it!). No two adjacent areas should be too similar... I'm no expert in how various biomes fit together so theres not much I can say on it... It really is something I need to research myself... Grasslands, forests, swamps, snow-covered hills, mountains, caverns, deserts, jungles... All good biomes that can work in almost any setting. Mix it up a bit... A cavern under a mountain is different than a lava cave. A frost-covered forest is different than one cloaked in shadows and overrun by dark creatures. You can also do more exotic things if thematically appropriate... An area that is completly mechanical could work well in a more sci-fi setting, but wouldn't make much sense in fantasy. A plague world. Alien worlds covered in exotic plants not quite like anything the player would be familar with.

As far as the types of challenges the player should face, it's best to strike a balance between casual, singleplayer content and group content. Satisfy both audiences... Have enough at the endgame to keep the people who play 2-3 hours a week entertained and offer some serious challende for people who play atleast twice that a day. Before the endgame, group content is less important (though it shouldn't be neglected) and high-challenge is unnecessary (that said, don't make it too easy either). Personally, I love a good challenge. I love older, Nintendo-Hard games because I rarely get a challenge out of most newer ones. Not everyone feels this way so you should try to appeal to both mindsets and everything inbetween.

Now... The biggest thing a MMO offers that other games don't is the ability to tackle challenges with a large group. Back when I used to play MMO's, all of my satisfaction from them came from endgame group content. Challenges that required both strategy and coordination to overcome. At times, it could be irritating since I could lose while filling my role perfectly, but the sense of satisfaction I got from success made it worth it.

If I haven't made this abundantly clear, I love boss encounters. Not just in MMO's, but in games in general. In my opinion, a well designed boss should have enough variety in his moveset that the players cannot predict his every move, but at the same time, should not be completly random. I'll use the Megaman series to give examples of bosses that fail each type (because I love Megaman!)...

In Megaman 1, several bosses had rather poor AI and incredibly simple patterns. This resulted in bosses being incredibly easy IF you know what to do (and painful as hell if you don't). One boss, Iceman, moves left and right, stopping in three specific places in the room. When Iceman stops, he jumps in the air, shooting three shots as he descends. He then jumps up again, shooting three more on the way up. This is ALL Iceman does. I personally consider him the hardest boss in the game, but only because you have to be very accurate to dodge his tightly-packed attacks and because he only needs 3 hits to kill you. Iceman is not a well designed boss. Iceman is incredibly predictable and his pattern is so obvious that anyone could pick up on it the first time they fight him. (That said, both Fireman and Elecman from the same game have patterns that are a bit trickier to pick up on, but much easier to manipulate. I can kill both with my eyes closed after getting into position).

In Megaman 2, we have an example of a boss that is too random: Quickman. Quickman is... Well... Spastic. He DOES actually have a pattern, but there are too many random factors for him to be manipulated in any way. Fighting Quickman is a matter of agression and reflexes, not strategy.
Incase you want to know Quickman's pattern as best as I can tell it...

Once you enter Quickman's room and the battle starts, he will either take a high jump or a low jump at you. If he does the high jump, you have to get out of the way before he lands. Once he lands, he will charge. If he does the low jump, he will fall short so you need to stand still. Immediatly after landing from the first jump, he will do a high jump and you must run under him. At the highest point of his jump, he will throw three Quick Boomerangs at you. After landing, he will immediatly jump again and after that, he will charge. When Quickman throws Boomerangs, they will fly a distance, pause, and then fly at wherever you are.

Quickman will always do between 1 and 3 jumps and then charge at you. The height of his jumps is random as far as I can tell, making it tricky to dodge him. He always tries to jump towards you, so the length of them is predictable enough. After a series of jumps, Quickman will charge you. He will run towards where you were at the beginning of the charge and continue to run for a little bit. He will not change directions during the charge.

If Quickman is only going to jump once, he will not throw Boomerangs. If he is going to jump twice, he will throw them on the first jump. If he is going to jump three times, he will throw them on the second jump. Second to last jump is always when he throws the Boomerangs. The problem is that there is no way (as far as I can tell) to know in advance how many times he is going to jump. If he doesn't throw them on the first jump, he might jump again, throw and jump a third time... Or he might just charge you. You can't tell.

Quickman also moves faster when jumping or charging from further away.

The fact that the floor in his boss room is incredibly uneven may or may not make dodging easier... And the fact that it IS flat in the rematch makes coming up with a good strategy... Something that hasn't happened in the 23 years since the game was released.So yeah... You need to strike a happy medium. A good boss is not 100% predictable, but should have enough of a pattern that players can form a strategy. A GREAT boss would have more than one potential way to deal with him/her.

Sorry... I went off on a bit of a Megaman tangent there... But that series has a LOT of bosses that can be used as examples... Both good and bad.

Finally, consider the overall tone of the game. Is it a whimsical happy world or is it grimdark or somewhere inbetween. Match the content to the tone. (Something I'm sure you've already decided on, but reminders never hurt).

Anasazi

2011-05-06, 03:50 AM

You'll be happy to know that we're rather adapt to the concept of boss fights in our world and you will not be disappointed. I too am a fan of megaman, having developed by very first megaman game when i was 7, which was right after the X series first launched, needless to say I wasnt a fan of X and my game focused on Blues' time between the games.

Anywho, between the group we have a pretty broad knowledge base to draw upon for boss coding... which i'll just say will be something a new to the market. Even still, I was able to convert what you had into an idea or two to add to our list.

Whoracle

2011-05-06, 06:45 AM

Might as well repost an early draft for an MMO I've done some years ago.

Feel free to take any of the (halfbaked) ideas in there.

http://www.frozeninfinity.de/austausch/lax/omsorpg.txt

It's obviously a plain text file.

Triaxx

2011-05-06, 09:04 PM

For all the myriad of sins that Bethesda might have, Dive Rock is one of the most amazing scenic locations in the game. (Even if you'll probably have to use ForceWeather to see anything.)

And I have to agree with TvTyrant. If you're building with hexes let us see them. Fallout Tactics was a particularly frustrating example because it was clearly just as hex based as 1 and 2, yet we couldn't see them, and that made it very hard to precisely position our troops. Something which, as it happens, is extremely necessary for tactical game play. Whodathunkit?

Anasazi

2011-05-07, 12:41 AM

whoracle- an interesting idea you had there, much of it was either already along the lines of our work or completely opposite of our goal, we did develop two ideas from yours that your concept made us think of so thanks for the assist.

triaxx- while the game will be technical in its fights and challenges, it isnt in any way a hex/square based combat system, for its style you can look much closer to current mmo's in that regard. we felt that this aspect is so well relied upon by players of the genre that changing how a players character operates would pull back from the enjoyment of the game, fighting the controls of a character can be painful and annoying. That being said, the world is an entirely different element and we are looking to cause players to reassess what they know of operation and functionality from their surroundings.

Keep the suggestions coming, we're building quite the impressive list on our end. :)

Seerow

2011-05-07, 01:09 AM

Have you considered something like an evolving world?

Doing so would probably be a huge resource hog, and may not be worth it from a development perspective, but from an awesome perspective, the idea of players actively shaping the world is cool.

Like say guilds have the power to build/upgrade towns/cities, as their town becomes more developed, the area around it becomes gradually more tame, and enemies around it get weaker. At the highest end, you may have npc monsters constantly attacking a city until it develops enough to settle it some, but on the other hand, some monsters/quests, or even instances, may only appear if the area is feral enough. Others may only appear if the area's been settled. That way you have a guild who may want a city in a given area for their own income, or to get something specific, or simply because they don't like that zone with monsters that are just irritating enough that they wanted them gone. On the other hand, you have players who want higher level content in the zone, and may fight for control of the territory, or maybe to simply burn the city, to get the area to the way they want.

It encourages PVP, gives people a sense of world building and community, and makes the world a little more dynamic and alive. I'm not sure how well it would work in practice, but as a concept it just seems like something that would be awesome.

TheSummoner

2011-05-07, 10:31 AM

Lord Loss

2011-05-07, 10:48 AM

Dark Fantasy (none of that Dragon Age bull, I want actual dark fanatsy). Irish/Scottish folklore and the Cthulhu Mythos, as well as mysteries, preferably. I am so sick of the traditional MMO "hack-and-slash" routine, it would be nice if you had dark sidequests that involved little or no combat and interesting plotlines.

Example: For the Irish folklore, perhaps a quest in which a child is replaced by a Changeling and you had to find out what happened to the actual child... but instead of hack-and-slashing your way to the kid, you could follow clues, interview people, etc.

Other non-tradtional stuff that's nice: A victorian-type city, a Necropolis, a Dreamscape, Underwater stuff.

As to the actual game, a 1rst person view and mature art style would be nice but is probably ridiculously difficult to make.

EDIT: Games also need to stop taking themselves eriously. Stuff like winding up in "Alice in Wonderland" or siliness similar to that found in Monty Python's the Holy Grail would be awesome and encourage me to actually play MMOs.

Seerow

2011-05-07, 11:42 AM

Re Evolving world:

Don't give players a source of free income through control of a city or anything along those lines. A MMO's economy is already a very fragile balancing act... Because there is, in theory, an unlimited amount of money available (every time a player kills a monster or completes a quest, more is created without an upper limit), you need to strike a balance between the rate at which money is created and the rate at which it is destroyed (through player expenses such as consumables and the like). If you fail this, the ingame economy will suffer from massive inflation.

Yes, money out of nothing would be potentially bad, but imagine if something similar to the Perceptors out of Dofus that taxes all gold and drops from non-guildies in the zone, taking a portion of it (depending on how developed the city is) for themselves.

Also, if you go this route, you'd almost certainly want to split the players into atleast two factions. Having them all in one group where any PVP that happens is done randomly and can happen between any two players... Well... It would make little sence for most players to WANT to destroy a developed city. Pretty easy to justify an enemy faction doing it though.

Hrm... I think you underestimate the human desire for conflict. I've seen games with no forced factions, no controllable resources, and really nothing in game at all worth fighting for, and people would still bind together in large groups and alliances, and spark a major conflict every few months.

Now, in an MMO you'd want a bit faster pace than that, but you have plenty of incentive there for players to want to burn that city down. Remember, per my suggestion enemies around the area become less feral the more developed the land is, so if you try to build on prime end-game area, people are going to get pissed and come sack your ****. I imagine places like that would be a constant warzone, people competing for control to get the extra drops from the zone, and keep the zone at the level they want.

Mid-level zones would probably also be a source of conflict, but less frequently, probably being attacked when somebody's leveling and can't hit a zone they wanted to because it's suddenly too low level, causing them to call their guild in to get a forced reset on the area.

Low level zones I imagine would be relatively conflict free, though there would still be fighting over them simply because volume through low level areas tends to be much higher than others, so people who can take advantage of a mass of low level resources would likely fight over these areas from time to time, but it would have less of a impact overall than the higher areas.

TheSummoner

2011-05-07, 05:47 PM

When I was talking about justification for conflict, I meant a game-plot justification. Yeah... people will light the world on fire just to see it burn. People will strive to build a monument to destruction. Unlike Lord Loss, I think a game needs a strong plot, even MMO's. Theres nothing wrong with a game taking itself seriously as long as it is consistant about it. Conflict needs purpose. An enemy faction burning a city to ash has a purpose. A sadist player doing it just to watch it burn does not.

Further, I have trouble seeing such a thing working out well with a no-faction game system... How would you justify pure wilderness and pure civilization offering an equal amount to both low level players and those in the endgame? Atleast as I see it ending up, low level players would gain more from the relative safety of a city where high would have more to gain from unsetteled wilds. Unless it was in pure balance between what players of any given level have to gain from it being in either state, the strongest players will dictate the condition of the area and they'll keep it in whichever state benefits them most.

WeLoveFireballs

2011-05-07, 06:03 PM

One Idea I came up with ages ago that would make the greatest MMO ever created. No question. Would be for players to have the ability to shape the major events in the world. To raise armies, build or destroy cities, raise monarchs or destroy them, exterminate races, build colonies, discover continents. Any yet still having the basic new player with nothing but a handful of coins and the clothes on his back.

I have no idea how to create this but it would be the greatest game ever.

hobbitkniver

2011-05-07, 06:34 PM

MMO?

Not-wow.

Don't try to be like wow, don't try to copy anything that wow does.

I'm sick to death of the vast majority of MMOs being the same damn game.

Other than that:
If there are multiple races, make them unique. Ctrl^C Ctrl^V Tolkien get a little old.

... Basically what I'm trying to get at is be 'unique'.

If something is unique, there is a damn good chance I would try it.

Yes. Every online game has become wow and it needs not be so.

Kislath

2011-05-07, 06:43 PM

It's hard to say what I like, but I can certainly tell you some things I absolutely despise:

PvE getting nerfed for the sake of the PvP'ers. It's not fair for PvE'ers, playing on PvE servers, to get completely hamstrung at every turn because of the whinings of a bunch of PvP'ers who find themselves on the receiving end of the abilities we use on mobs. You wanna make something truly different? Make the very game mechanics different on PvP servers from those on PvE servers. Players who want to lay PvP should stick to PvP servers and leave us carebears alone.

All characters of a given class and level being the same as all the others of the same.
This is the worst. The talent tweaks are so minor they might as well not even exist. Why not let us pick from a choice of new spells /abilities/perks every time we make such gains? That way everybody isn't all the same, and making a character build is actually worthwhile.

Professsions.
We need more of them, and what is UP with having to forget everything you learned previously if you want to get a new job? I say we should be able to keep old professions IF we max them out first. Max out a profession, and you get to keep it after switching to something else.

TheSummoner

2011-05-08, 01:39 PM

PvE getting nerfed for the sake of the PvP'ers. It's not fair for PvE'ers, playing on PvE servers, to get completely hamstrung at every turn because of the whinings of a bunch of PvP'ers who find themselves on the receiving end of the abilities we use on mobs. You wanna make something truly different? Make the very game mechanics different on PvP servers from those on PvE servers. Players who want to lay PvP should stick to PvP servers and leave us carebears alone.

No argument on this... Or at least none on the basic thought that PvP should not dictate the way PvE is handled. When I played MMO's, I was never much of a PvP'er. I always played on a PvP server (because I'm silly and care about immersion even in games where the plot is usually just a justification to kill things and break people =P), but I rarely would go out of my way to PvP (that said, if I saw an enemy character I thought I could take and I had nothing better to do, I'd usually give it a try).

I don't think the mechanics should differ between the two... Ability X should do the same thing regardless of whether you're attacking an enemy space marine or a giant enemy crab... But that one shouldn't dictate the other. Small changes (such as duration) are fine, but entirely separate mechanics... No.

All characters of a given class and level being the same as all the others of the same.
This is the worst. The talent tweaks are so minor they might as well not even exist. Why not let us pick from a choice of new spells /abilities/perks every time we make such gains? That way everybody isn't all the same, and making a character build is actually worthwhile.

To be fair, this is usually because of the players as much, if not more than the game devs. There are people out there willing to crunch the numbers to find what build is best (atleast for specific situations anyways) and once this information becomes widely available, players will go for the optimal build.

Making different builds handle slightly differently depending on abilities taken is something that you should strive for, but if the number crunchers have determined a specific build is the best possible for PvE, then you can expect the majority of PvE players of that class to follow that build. A perfect balance is all but impossible and there really isn't much that can be done about it other than try to design things so that the optimal build is highly situational and that one build is not the best available for a high number of scenarios.

Professsions.
We need more of them, and what is UP with having to forget everything you learned previously if you want to get a new job? I say we should be able to keep old professions IF we max them out first. Max out a profession, and you get to keep it after switching to something else.

This I disagree with. Sure, in real life, you can find a few Renaissance men who do a bit of everything and manage to excel at it all... But this isn't a common thing. Typically a jack of all trades masters nothing. If you wanted to represent this, you could possibly do something like allow a maximum total skill level between all skills and allow the players to build them up in any way they choose... But most people would still focus on a handful that they would be able to reach maximum rank in.

If the scale goes from 1-100 on each skill and you can have 300 total points, players will get more use out of what they get from 3 maximum rank skills than 15 with only 20 points.

Anasazi

2011-05-09, 01:43 AM

As the specifics of our game isn't based on my opinions alone, I'm told I can speak about my own opinions on some of these elements brought up by some of you.

On the subject of the evolving world:
It's my belief that this is the future of the industry. Worlds that have a direct outcome based upon the effects of the many is a very enticing effect. One of the free mmo's I use to play was built on a three faction setup and that each faction elected a human player to decide the course of political relationship with the other two factions and several other elements that helped guide the other players of that faction to a specific destination... It was a pretty wicked element, though everything was hard coded so the elected leader was very limited in what they could do, which was the only reason it didnt sit well with me. Never the less, the idea was pretty unique and it gave the feel that at any time the world could shift dramatically all because of what the few, or powerful, decided. Personally, I'm more of a fan of this idea when its built around the actions of the many, rather than the preferences of the few.

On PVP/PVE Balance:
Ultimately every designing team has to choose what its focus will be, while games can share elements of both the overall vibe and play of a game changes greatly between which of these two options is selected. I'm an odd one when I play mmo's, I tend to play heavily to the opposite of the focus. In one mmo that was clearly pvp based I spent a great deal of my time assisting in the area pve quests, while in another mmo that was clearly pve based I spent several years doing nothing but honing my pvp skills. I like a good challenge which is probably why I personally lean this way. Just because a game is build one way doesnt mean that it cant be fun in the other methods. Sure, you're bound to run into balance issues between factions or classes, but each person should already know of those when they're walking into said challenge. If a person is unwilling to learn what works and what doesnt then they're not specifically the type of person I target for games I make. That being said, in the past I have heavily favorited not only doing the opposite, as I indicated above, but I also spent a great deal of time finding ways to make the very worse of the opposites into the very best they could be. Infact, some of these moments when I succeeded in doing so have been my very favorite moments my gaming history. In this regard I find that PvE based games tend to favor more developed worlds and content is a big thing to me. I also prefer when PvP elements are skill based rather than gear based.

I'm a solid fan of the extrodinary, its my belief that mmo's dont offer this element enough. Some games offer an achievements option thats tacked ontop of the game, as some form of 'whose the best player'... as if the number of pitiful things like hugging all the creatures in the world actually mattered to anyone or made you a better player. Several years ago I played a new mmo to the market, it brought with it an instant recognition of player status by making certain visual elements of a character very hard to achieve. Just a glance at a player could tell you were that person has been, and what they've done. Now, this was an awesome element that I intend on bringing back but the game stopped with it there, it never went beyond: 'Hey, I look sweet now and I got some sweet stats because I went and did X.' In that regard I think the developers of old somewhat failed us because it could have just as easily been: 'Check this out, this visual element here means that I did X, and because of that Y was created, and players both new and old alike now get Z because of it.' Now, I'm not saying that this was completely ignored in mmo's, as some did it here and there but the effects where almost always temporary. More importantly, these elements were never achievable by lower level characters... we've gotten accustomed to having to be max level to do the epic. Some claim this element was added so that you couldn't go off and complete something sweet unless you knew your stuff and spent time working toward it. The reality is it was created to force players to spend more time absorbed in the world before they could achieve what they wanted (ie companies did this so they could keep the player hooked longer). The idea of hooking the player like that wasnt a bad one, and for their design, it was the only way they could, as they litterally built the world around the concept of the more powerful you are the better you are. This brought with it the idea of 'the grind' thats required in most games, forced leveling and time requirements. The grind is yet another thing I, and most players, dislike about video games. When was the last time you were involved in a grind to accomplish something grand in a tabletop?... it doesnt happen too often because you're usually set upon a great epic story from day one, one that only gets better and more involved as you level, but all awhile each task is a challenge and a memory.

...Talk about a rant, huh? Just remember that this isnt the official position of my crew, or the direction the game is heading regardless, just the musings of my own. As always, keep the thoughts rolling in.

Cizak

2011-05-09, 04:14 AM

Characters with back stories and personalities. You should feel for characters, even NPCs.

I also like ridiculously huge monsters :smalltongue:

Triaxx

2011-05-09, 04:40 AM

Good to know.

Majora's Mask and it's Zora transformation had the best underwater movement and combat ever. Jetting around as Zora Link was tons of fun. And the electrical shield could be engaged by hitting R to kill anything that was about to ruin the fun.

Kislath

2011-05-09, 09:18 AM

Summoner, I totally dig your profession points idea. That would be fantastic.

TheSummoner

2011-05-09, 03:25 PM

[...]This brought with it the idea of 'the grind' thats required in most games, forced leveling and time requirements. The grind is yet another thing I, and most players, dislike about video games. When was the last time you were involved in a grind to accomplish something grand in a tabletop?... it doesnt happen too often because you're usually set upon a great epic story from day one, one that only gets better and more involved as you level, but all awhile each task is a challenge and a memory.

This bit here got me thinking a bit...

Just Friday I started replaying Final Fantasy (the original one... The NES one that 8-Bit Theater was loosely based on) on a whim. (At this point, I've beaten the Four Fiends and only Chaos remains). While there are certain points where grinding random monsters would make things a bit easier (If you haven't played it, the first dungeon, the Marsh Cave can be pretty tedious), but the game is perfectly possible to get through without stopping to grind... With only the experience gained from fighting the random encounters along the path of the main quest, the game is perfectly possible to beat. Even back in 1987, game designers were able to make a game that didn't REQUIRE grinding.

Part of the problem lies in the "Twenty Bear Asses" style quest, that is essentially an excuse to make players kill random creatures... But like the above issues with characters of the same class and level being essentially identical, this is just as much the fault of the players themselves... It makes sence for the players to be unable to confront the major villains until the end of the game... While MMO's don't have a true end, maximum level fits the rule well. If the maximum level is 45, then a level 32 player doesn't stand much of a chance against the bigbad of the game. (Granted, some games have level caps beyond what is necessary to beat the final boss, but this is usually in single player games and would be rather anticlimactic). Many players will rush through the lower level content to get through the higher end content.

So... From the development side, what can you do to discourage grinding? Well... The first step is to make lower level content seem important. Everything should have a purpose... Maybe defeating a group of bandits that have been harassing caravans is less epic than confronting the undead king who leads a legion of zombie soldiers and has taken control of the southern wastes, but it still has meaning. Some players will still choose animal genocide over completing meaningful plotlines, but they can't say you didn't try...

Another issue is that if a player has reached maximum level on one character and chooses to level up a second (probably one of a different class or build), he/she has already experienced the content once. The best you can do here is offer enough variety that a player going from level 1 to whatever the maximum is doesn't have to experience the same thing twice.

Going back to my original Final Fantasy example... You COULD make completion of certain plot points required for progression
FF1 requires you to first beat Garland to explore further than a small area. Then you needed a ship which you could get in the next town. Then you needed to open a canal to reach the ocean which required a rather lengthy series of mini-quests, then you could go about fighting the Four Fiends. Lich was available right off... Kary required a canoe (which I think you had to beat Lich to get), Kraken required the Airship (which also required the canoe... You could save Kary for last if you chose) and a few other things that were easy enough to get with the Airship, Tiamat required a slab which was found in Kraken's temple, and finally, Chaos himself required all Four Fiends being defeated.Advantages of doing things this way is that it ties players into the overarching plot of the game and if done well can discourage grinding. Disadvantages include the fact that some players might not like being forced to complete certain objectives to reach the endgame and that it can reduce the number of options for replaying or leveling up a second character.

Anasazi

2011-05-10, 01:14 AM

You also have to remember that some people will prefer to just take the mass slaughter method to leveling instead of quests anyways. Time and time again, games have demonstrated that this method is still viable. Until you straight up make the grind useless there will still be emphasis on it.

Speaking to the FF element, there’s an issue with that comparison. While you're able to go off and adventure on some side quests in those games, the main plot point of the world is still the same one regardless of what you do. The same is true with some MMO's but in a world that’s constantly evolving due to player involvement, this is not a viable option. You're able to relegate each areas for a general purpose but what exists in the area could change down the road so getting comfortable with a growth formula isn’t the greatest of plans. It’s because of this that most games shy away from the evolving world option as it requires a great deal of on the spot manipulation of the world. (or a lot of 'if-then' statements :P)
Also, you have the continued issue of if you allow the players to follow a set path of quests to level up you could either make it too easy/mindless to level, or make it take way too long. I'm more partial to the latter assuming of course that leveling up is actually a worthwhile achievement, not just something people do to shrug off the lower levels and get to certain content earlier on.
Making the lower level grind less important is more than just making the actions you take early on be more meaningful, its about providing everything the person expects from 'endgame' content at said lower levels. Its about changing the formula that higher levels means infinitely more useful gear, its about destroying the boundary that the actions you take at lower levels effects you just as much as the higher level ones.
(Referencing WoW again, sorry…) Lets take Hogger raids... if you're not familiar with this, Alliance members (specifically right outside the human start zone) had a level 11 elite gnoll named 'Hogger' in which a raid of level 1's (and sometimes as high as 5) enchanted to as powerful of a stat as they could, would go in and attempt to take out. There was no real point behind this besides just doing it. When you're max level and have almost everything, then what additional challenge awaits for you? little in a world like that so the players that want a challenge go out and find one. sometimes this challenge is single player based, others its like the Hogger raids. If these challenges presented themselves throughout the course of the leveling process and would actually provide a useful benefit even at higher levels, there’s a pretty good chance that players would take advantage of them. That being said, there’s always the few that will go back when they're infinitely more powerful than the target and just one shot them, so there also has to be restrictive elements to this process to keep it from being cheap.

As for the quest thing, mmo's have become far too complacent with using shared quests to level. If you build quest chains around racial requirements, faction requirements, or even class requirements you can still use a system that works for multiple groups and gives a great deal of replay value, sure its more work but whats some extra lines of syntax when it means you're infinitely improving your product...
Establishing that leveling is just the side product of succeeding in your challenges instead of the focus of a game is also important to this element as the need of replay in general is greatly diminished. Again, this comes down to not allowing players to just skate by as they level.
You'll no doubt annoy some of your player base by this process but all in all I think you gain more than what you lose.

TheSummoner

2011-05-10, 01:45 AM

The FF comparison was purely about grinding... In short, it isn't necessary (in an even halfway competently designed game anyways), but there are people who will do it anyways... Either to make getting to the end easier or for moneys. Other than entirely eliminating (or atleast severely reducing) experience gains for non-quest kills, there really isn't much you can do to reduce player grinding... And in a way, thats asking for the ire of people who would rather endure the grind to get to the end anyways...

Lets keep this going a bit... I find this sort of analysis pretty fun. I'll toss in both FF1 and WoW comparisons. What are the main differences between level 1 and the maximum level? Player power and the abilities at the player's disposal. What is the difference between an early boss and an endgame one (Lich vs Chaos. The boss of a low level instance vs Deathwing... Now anyways... I played a bit of vanilla and TBC and quit before Wrath).

In the Final Fantasy example... Not much really Chaos has stronger abilities and more health than Lich does, but the characters under your control do as well. You have access to a few more buffs that you will likely want to apply before you start hammering away on the boss and you might have to deal with Chaos's annoying habit of occasionally healing to full health... But there really isn't much difference. It was an early game in the genre... Hell, it was an early game period, so it can be forgiven I suppose.

In a game like WoW, there are a few more differences... The difference in difficulty between a high level encounter and a low level one is much more drastic (a bunch of level 1 characters attacking a level 11 boss does not count. I mean an encounter that the characters are appropriately leveled for). In a low level encounter, bosses are designed for parties of 5. In a max level encounter, bosses can range from 5 to 10 to 25 players, with higher player counts representing more difficult or further into the endgame content. Now, Blizzard could've designed 10 or 25 player encounters for players below the maximum level, but how often do you really think players of the intended level would bother to get a party together for such a thing? Is it truely worth putting the effort into designing content that would rarely even be seen and even more rarely seen by characters of the intended level? (Back when I played in TBC, I did manage to get a much-smaller-than-the-design-intended group of friends to do some endgame vanilla content, but this was largely caused by nostalgia and I didn't exactly have an easy time doing it).

I would also like to note that I was only throwing out hypothetical solutions... Not ones that I necessarily endorse. While I said that requiring players to complete certain objectives to reach maximum level was a possible method of fighting grinding, I never said I thought it was a good idea. Honestly, I believe best solution is to offer more interesting ways of reaching the maximum level and if players choose the boring route, then they have no one to blame but themselves.

Anasazi

2011-05-10, 04:25 AM

Depends on whose perspective you're taking. from a gamer standpoint the grind is nothing but a time sink. From the companies perspective, its a necessity to keep their profits high. Outside of mmo's I know of very few games that force the player to grind xp. take the final fantasy mmo's for example, 11 was almost entirely just grinding, and its rpg counterparts aren't (unless ur going after the weapons or extra content).
If you cut xp from kills in general that would remove the grind in the sense of the slaughter of masses, but it would be replaced by the quest grind. fact is, unless you're willing to have people only explore or kill for resources or some form of prize instead of growth of stats, theres going to be something in the game that resembles a grind, thats part of what makes a mmo a mmo.

Chaos' self full heal is one of the reasons why hes a dreaded boss, having an enemy with a power like that forces the player to remain at the top of their game the entire fight or risk the chance of having to start over... its pretty wicked and one of the many reasons why I prefer the older rpg's to newer ones... also, final fantasy has a nack for using that same annoying aspect in many of its tough fights
.
As for wow, well, you have to be careful with bringing the topic up around me, I played that game longer than any other mmo and much of what it has is what I dislike about the genre, and I'd like to avoid turning this into a thread about wow. that being said-> (/begin wow rant) when referencing boss design on wow, one must note which version of wow as vanilla was a very different beast from its expansions. vanilla did have instances with tough boss fights before max level. with each expansion more and more handholding for the public so that more and more players with different levels of skill could join in and play. Make no mistake, Blizzard did this for money. In vanilla the largest raids in the game where 40 mans, and they had 25 man counterparts, also global cooldown was 1.0 seconds and even with the best gear your raid could still get wiped like butter onto bread if one person in the raid screwed up bad enough (AQ40 for example this very thing happened alot... on trash mobs). Burning Crusade brought down its large raid size to 25 man, and introduced 10 mans, it also upped the global cooldown to 1.5 seconds, and was the first big step for forcing groups to have a base value of gear before they had enough stats to kill a boss, removing some of the required skill to down a raid boss and replacing it with amazingly higher damage values, BC was the last of the fights that required a specific combo of party members. Wrath came out with even more 10 mans and even went and introduced a 300% bonus xp for linked accounts, at this point Blizzard said to @#$$ with low level quests and was hardcore focusing on having everyone get to max level, something that in vanilla days was quite the accomplishment but has slowly disolved of awesomeness over the years. I'm not even going to go into Cata, they're straight up grasping at straws these days. its not even just about bosses either, gear was different in vanilla days too, most people who actually took the time to do some very long and tough instances could start obtaining their dungeon set 1 at level 52... had blizzard started that trend in the lower levels, 'endgame' today would be defined by the top 30 levels, not the single max level...(/end wow rant... sorry, make no mistake, my disdain for wow these days is probably greater than most peoples, and I am aware that EQ, and Ultima before it, built the mold that it followed, but WoW cemented it... not to mention, the Guiness record holder for Most Popular MMO is usually a good reference point :P).

Anywho, lets see what we can do about adding to the list still. :)

ShinyRocks

2011-05-10, 06:01 AM

It's only a little thing, but I think it's better when the game acknowledges day and night. You couldn't shut down the shops at night in an MMO, obviously, but even just having a different character serving behind the counter on the 'night shift' would help with immersion.

Also, a thing I didn't like in WoW (and I expect others) was the over-reliance on gear. I mean, I like awesome gear as much as the next person, but it should be helping you, not the only thing that renders the game at all possible.

When I last played WoW, at level 80 you'd be running around with say 25,000 HP, 23,000 of which came from gear and only 2,000 of which was on you. And mobs would hit for 4,000. The numbers are arbitrary, but you see my point. The strength should be in the character; the gear should be icing.

Triaxx

2011-05-10, 09:32 AM

True grind is actually somewhat useful. By true grind, I mean the fights that occur between entering the dungeon and opening fire on the boss. Anything else extra and useless to a player, because it doesn't add anything. True grind gives you the time to attain new abilities, as well as to learn how they work.

Without True Grind, you're basically going into fights blind without knowing what you're doing or how you're doing it. So there needs to be some grind, even if it's only encounters that get you from A to B.

My idea for an MMO is basically having most of the dungeons off shore from the rest of the game world. So that the worst of the enemies are out where you can't wander into them by accident. And a mixture of both instanced and joint dungeons. So some are one group only, while others can be competitive or co-operative.

Of course, part of the fun would be getting to a competitive or co-operative first to have an early start. Part of that is from methods of travel, which include ships, and airships and other abilities to travel by water.

Kislath

2011-05-10, 11:17 AM

Hey, that could be pretty cool. A new world, unexplored, on which your ( spaceship?) lands in one spot. The local area is safe-ish, but the game centers on exploring the outer areas

Seerow

2011-05-10, 11:30 AM

Anasazi, are you familiar with the french MMO, Dofus?

I ask this, because you disapprove of WoW's focus on the endgame, and speeding people up to the max level, and Dofus is pretty much the opposite end of the spectrum. Characters go up to level 200, but your average character is around 100-150, with only a very very few people at 200 (at the time I quit, my server had like 3 lvl 200 characters total, after the server had been open for 2-3 years). Most of the dungeons are designed with this in mind, gaining levels has a lower overall importance.

This model actually works pretty well. Dofus is very slow and grindy in other respects (you can max out skills by harvesting thousands of diamonds, which takes a ton of time and/or money, you max out stats by grinding out tons of low level mats to trade in for scrolls that improve your stats. All gear must be crafted, and takes a ridiculous amount of mats, nevermind how long it takes to levelup professions... oh and then gear can have its stats altered by maging, another grind intensive process due to its RNG and the costs associated, and yet another skill that needs to be grinded to max level), but it's a model of a MMO that has instances that work across a larger variety of levels, where the level cap is something very special, but people not at the cap can participate in the large majority of content.

Erloas

2011-05-10, 01:49 PM

I will just say that WoW failed me long before end-game. In fact when I left I was a couple levels away from the (original) level cap because for me the game was fundamentally bad on many levels.

I hate elite mobs, the entire concept just shows a fundamental break in progression. In how hit-rates, defense, and attack power mitigation is so utterly tied to level that instead of making higher level mobs, they make lower level "super" mobs.
Its really hard to have mixed group levels with that sort of design.
I remember the "good old days" of DAOC where people actively worked together as a group to do everything and having people 10 levels apart still worked and everyone was getting decent exp. It was still grinding mobs at that point, but it was doing it with other people and there was enough downtime to get to know the people you were playing with. It also made it so that by end-game everyone knew what their class was supposed to be doing in a group environment. You didn't have incompetent team players at max level because they wouldn't make it that far. Things like group bonuses made it so that grouping was a faster way to get exp, things like area exp bonuses meant people wouldn't camp the same site constantly because getting that bonus exp was worth moving for. And of course that was before the power leveling PBAOE groups (and the power regens that made them possible).

Of course EVE has the most interesting character advancement system in any game I've ever seen. It obviously has its own drawbacks and it takes a very specific character design to work right... probably not a system that would work for fantasy, but would work with the right sci-fi design. There is still grinding in EVE but its entirely based on personal choice and its no faster to develop that way compared to any other. Of course grinding is then on the secondary improvement line, what you can afford to equip yourself with.

I think WAR had a great compromise on level advancement between grinding and questing, and that was PvP. Something that was always fun (and at least usually available) and was changing so it takes a lot longer to get boring. It also reinforced the concept of the game from the first level to the max level and got people doing what they joined the game to do, pvp. They failed a bit in the end when some of the focus changed from fighting other players to running raids and in doing so ruined a lot of the learning of the players' class and role ideas because they weren't the same (nor was gear or specs) by switching between to completely different focuses in the end game.

Anasazi

2011-05-10, 09:19 PM

we have a pretty strong standing point on where our game resides in comparison to those on the market, lets go ahead and start focusing on specific elements of the worlds rather than generalized thoughts again by moving away from discussion creation aspects as my team is beyond this point already.
think back to your favorite moments of any game you've ever played, remember this included tabletops also, and go ahead and list it here and why it still stands out in your mind.

Erloas

2011-05-11, 02:01 PM

I don't really think there are specific elements to a game that really "make them awesome," at least not in any non-direct story based games. In table top games I've had some awesome moments, that come to happen due to game mechanics, but the game mechanics don't make the event, they take part in it. They aren't the sort of thing you can design.

And I think thats also the case in MMOs. I've done events in MMOs that were great the first time, or with a specific group, but doing the same thing with different people doesn't end up as anything special. A lot of it has to do with something being new and unknown, it takes a lot of the magic away when half the people have already been there and done that event, when people already know whats coming and how to counter it. Those sorts of things though are next to impossible to keep interesting when guides to doing it will be posted as soon as a few people on some server have done it. Which is actually a big benefit from being a small scale game.

I think the key features to those awesome events are that it deals with a lot of other people, its difficult without having to require X highly specialized character builds and flawless execution, and the outcome is grand enough to benefit the majority of people involved (at least on the winning side if its vs).
The best example for me is the early relic raids in DAOC, where it was an event almost everyone on the server took part in, that succeeded and failed on the leadership of the players, and it got a whole server working together (and against) to get it to happen. Bringing the whole community together.

Kislath

2011-05-12, 02:27 AM

Eldan

2011-05-12, 03:32 AM

Implement the Code Duello. Certain powers aren't allowed in PVP by an honour system.

TheSummoner

2011-05-12, 12:18 PM

If you look on any WoW forum right now, you'll see that a whole lot of people are very upset lately regarding PvP vs PvE. I hope you guys are paying attention. Don't repeat WoW's mistake. Find a way to not have to nerf the PvE for the sake of the PvP'ers.

If you don't mind me dragging t his slightly off topic, what did Blizzard change that has people's underwear bunched up?

Kislath

2011-05-12, 02:24 PM

Dude, take your pick; every other week they're sticking it to somebody. Lately the priests and paladins have been getting the worst of it, and rather severely. It's like Blizz has suddenly decided that healing is a bad thing, and they want it stopped! They really have it in for healers these days, but all suffer.

TheSummoner

2011-05-12, 03:47 PM

Well... I don't play WoW (not anymore anyways) so I really don't know what there is to pick from. Still, I am a bit curious, so if you could give a quick rundown of the recent ones, I'd probably find it interesting and I'd appreciate it.

Triaxx

2011-05-13, 06:25 AM

Another thought I had was D&D style non-consecutive classes. So you don't have to spend the entire game in only druid, but you can take say... 30 levels of druid and either continue in another 30 levels, or shift to fighter.

Also, have some extra PvP only levels. So that when you go from a PvE to a PvP server you can gain more levels, but if you go back to a PvE server, you don't have access to the extra strength/health from those levels. Though you might retain access to the extra abilities.

Anasazi

2011-05-14, 01:17 AM

honestly, i think the extra emphasis on pvp is unnessassary, atleast for our world, and the character class issue is an initial development area element which we're already past, but we were able to extract a thought or two that we liked from what you threw at us Triaxx, so we appreciate the assist.

you may be curious to know that we have 51 items on our list now, while some of that was items we had before I ever posted this thread, many of it is thanks to those that contributed. It isnt always exactly what you have suggested either, sometimes you suggest things that straight up dont apply to our game or world, but those thoughts help lead us to new ideas, which we are able to put down. Now, as stated, the list isnt a guarentee on what we're going to be doing, to be honest some of the things my team and I came up with from day one no longer apply due to how much our world has progressed over the life of the project. Thats a good thing by the way, it means that the world is taking on a bit of its own life which is what all developers hope for. Anywho, just keep plugging away at suggestions and we'll keep adding them to the list.

Kislath

2011-05-14, 03:45 AM

Well, one thing I like, and many others do as well, judging by the usermade mods for it, is a good CUSTOM crafting system. I like being able to find raw materials and turn them into something awesome unlike all the other same-old,same-old stuff. And please, not soulbinding on them.

Triaxx

2011-05-14, 05:29 AM

Well, it's a set of ideas from the MMO in my head, which is in the sort of world where you're using swords and knives and yet can still have Advertising in the game and have it make sense. It's a sort of mixed tech world, that exists in it's state because that's they way they all want it.

But the idea is to have PvE be free-to-play and ad supported, and then PvP is on pay-to-play servers. Thus the extra PvP draw, but allowing anyone who wants to play do so on the free servers.

akma

2011-05-14, 05:08 PM

What about if the focus on items won`t be in bonuses they bring, but in the new options they give the players?
For exemple, weapon X might not be stronger as weapon Y, but with weapon X you could hunt incorporal creatures. A sword and an axe might not simply have diffrent bonuses, they could require diffrent fighting styles.
Ten diffrent swords that the only diffrence between them will be their power and graphics will be a bit boring, after all. No need to have two items who serve the same purpose at all. The purpose doesn`t have to be combat oriented at all, even with weapons. Low level equipment could have special abilities too, but much weaker then the abilities of high level equipment (but could be as usefull).
If you`ll allow grinding, give great bonuses on doing things the hard way - beating a monster unarmed? Bonus XP. Beating a few monsters that attack at once could also give bonus XP. That way competant players who want to grind could level up more quickely.

invinible

2011-05-14, 10:24 PM

I love RIFT's soul trees and hate WOW's talent trees because the former is open to player customisation without going overboard with it while the latter is now so restrictive that most people can't make the builds they want to make without ending up as carbon copies any more.

Erloas

2011-05-14, 11:17 PM

honestly, i think the extra emphasis on pvp is unnessassary, atleast for our world, and the character class issue is an initial development area element which we're already past
Well it would make it easier to address a lot of things if we knew a bit more about the game. I know you've said you can't say anything, but without knowing even the most basic things about the game its hard to actually say anything.
Can we assume from what you've said that there will be NO PvP in this game? Even a small amount of possible PvP, that PvP isn't a central point in the game but an option, would change a lot of what I would like to see in a game.

So many ideas would work in some designs and not others. My idea of what makes a good death penalty are almost completely different in a PvP game vs a PvE game. Its even different between one genre and another. Thoughts on character skills is completely different in a heavily roled class based game then it is in a classless system. Possible class mechanics change between PvE and PvP games.

Crafting... I hated the tiered farmed resource gathering of WoW. So often there was some nice looking thing you could make but by the time you could possibly kill the widgetmonsters to make the widgetcoat you were past the point of the coat even being decent. Having to start crafting right away to not end up at higher levels farming "greys" for hours to get caught up to your level sucks. Having everyone and their mule characters running every single craft makes it another requirement and time sink and/or completely kills the market for the finished items. It also encourages people to farm, and farming sucks, especially if the game is big enough to draw any amount of attention to it.*
DAOC's crafting maybe have been a PITA, horribly expensive and time consuming, but at least at the end of the day the goods were valuable and there was a decent market for them. And along those same lines, I really liked DAOC's hard cap on stat boosting. And the fact that there wasn't a huge difference in what you could relatively easily acquire and what you could craft. The hard cap forced people to make their characters more well rounded rather then simply min-maxing everything. And with the item bonuses designed the way they were you could max out some stats but you had to make real choices on secondary stats and there was a real choice between offense and defense in that.
And in many of the same ways, its also one of the things that makes EVE's crafting and character design/customization so great.
You really need limits on a lot of things to keep character growth under control and to work as expected.

*at least with a more purchase based crafting system people are naturally picking up what is needed to craft and at least then the choice of what to farm to make more money is a lot more varied then farming the only "wolfs" you can find between lvl 12 and 16 then moving to the next small population at 17-24.

I also really like crafting systems that let you salvage the base components from normal items (but don't require you to).

I also don't like the bind on wear/pick-up that is so common now. Maybe for a very few particular items, but not most things. I think it helps the community for people to be able to pass around items to guild mates and other people. Of course that only really works with item degradation so that the economy doesn't get swamped with everything. And when items don't take months of raiding to acquire, its not as big of an issue when they need to be replaced.

Those of course are all ideas that both DAOC and EVE have in common. And while EVE might not be the most successful game ever, it does have the most loyal fans I've ever seen in an MMO. Its very clearly what it is and doesn't change to cater to every player, it looses a lot of potential players because of that but the ones it keeps are very dedicated to the game.

Triaxx

2011-05-15, 06:15 AM

I've always thought it'd be interesting to have PvP areas just outside boss-zones. So that if two groups go in, they have to fight for the chance to take on the boss.

Erloas

2011-05-15, 07:29 AM

I've always thought it'd be interesting to have PvP areas just outside boss-zones. So that if two groups go in, they have to fight for the chance to take on the boss.

WAR had this, but I don't know how much it ever actually happened. Usually boss raids were rare enough that the chance of two groups meeting there at the same time was fairly minimal. And of course the Land of the Dead, ie Tomb Kings, expansion was a gated high level zone, so only one side could control it, and enter, at the same time.

And of course that does remind me of one of the best things in an MMO, Darkness Falls in DAOC. Which was also gated control, but if you where in before it switched you could work your way over to the other side to fight other people. Knowing DF just switched you could always expect some good fights going in. Sometimes you would have 1-3 full groups go to the enemy side and wait for people to port in (they were safely out of reach at the port but had to move to unsafe areas to do anything) and big battles would go on there, usually lasting until the new side got the numbers to wipe out the other side but it could take a long time. It also lead to a lot of more interesting battles because with death messages letting everyone know enemies were around you had to be a bit more selective about attacking the enemy. And of course your group was seldom perfect and often times you just took who was available, which was a big difference from fighting the pre-planned groups. And once you died, if you weren't rezed and had to release you couldn't get back in. Sometimes you would have just 1-2 people log out in DF then hours (or a day) later come back and start killing people when people aren't expecting enemies to be around. And of course in some of the lower areas it ways always groups, so if you didn't have a full group (because no one else could get in) then you had to be a lot more sneaky, hiding and waiting for them to pull some mobs that would be enough challenge for them to be distracted enough that you could kill someone quick enough. Hunting down stealthers that were slaughtering your lowbies was always a lot of fun. I also thought it did a lot to reinforce the community of the game, it was one more thing that helped define the us vs them theme and got people working together more.

And since I kind of brought it up.... be very careful with stealthers. Not nearly as much of an issue if there isn't PvP, but a huge issue if there is any PvP. Even in just PvE it can allow people to by-pass challenges they shouldn't be able to. But I think the biggest issue is making a stealth class that is well balanced for group play. So many of their strongest abilities tend to require stealth, which tends to make them under perform in groups, but if they are strong enough without stealth then they tend to be too strong when they can use it. Finding the right balance between alpha-strike power and sustained damage and survivability tends to be very difficult. They are, by their nature, more independent type class designs, which tend to cause issues in a group based design.

Anasazi

2011-05-15, 09:18 AM

Well it would make it easier to address a lot of things if we knew a bit more about the game. I know you've said you can't say anything, but without knowing even the most basic things about the game its hard to actually say anything.
Can we assume from what you've said that there will be NO PvP in this game? Even a small amount of possible PvP, that PvP isn't a central point in the game but an option, would change a lot of what I would like to see in a game...

You'd be surprised how many times I've wanted to let slip information on the game, and in some ways I already have. I choose my words very carefully so sometimes I cant straight out say something but I have made reference to other examples... keep a close eye and you'll find some of the information you're looking for.
To be specific, I'm restricted to discussing anything that our game brings new to the market, unfortunately thats alot of things, and what I can say about some things only leaves further questions that tend to lead into said new elements... for example, to Erloas' statement above... pve is a massive part in our world, but much like the real world aspect pvp is always lingering around, so our world you have an equal opportunity to group or kill(/attempt to kill) the person next to you. Now, this statement might seem useful but what I cant tell you is about all the wonderful things we're doing with pvp growth in our world, nor can I indicate how factions work in our world to allow for such things. Moreover, I cant even tell you things like what the genre of the game is as that hasnt been done yet either.

A simple answer can lead to countless other questions and then you're left wondering whats up. This distracts from the purpose of this thread which isnt to discuss our game but to help flesh it out when we get to that point. Make no mistake, eventually you will see notice of our game, and if this thread progresses long enough I'll eventually leave a link to our games website once its up and running. Until then lets just focus on throwing as many random elements into the mix as we can, make no mistake, this is helping better our game world.

Invinible... you're gonna like what we came up with :)
Erloas, Kis... on the aspect of crafting, we've built a new style for professions in the game.. to be honest its so different we're not even sure we're still going to call them professions, but its brand new and makes a great deal of awesomeness and sense. also, in our world its going to be popular to follow through with these professions because of how uniquely beneficial they are.
Akma.. we're way ahead of you, we even took it a step further.

Great suggestions everyone, keep them up!

Triaxx

2011-05-16, 06:15 AM

I just kind of hope this isn't like the excessively hyped games that spend months telling you. 'We can't tell you anything!' Then it turns out they didn't tell you anything because it's not worth all the effort you put into hoping it was interesting.

TheSummoner

2011-05-16, 07:50 AM

Anasazi

2011-05-16, 08:39 AM

Eh, one guy on a forum looking for suggestions is hardly excesively hyped... Hell, it's hardly hyped at all.

Don't get me wrong, it's a fun conversation, and it has me curious... But I'm not going to be losing any sleep in anticipation.

exactly. hopefully it builds no hype at all to be honest, I mean, I want people interested in the topic here and giving ideas so we can expand our list but not interested in what the game offers... not yet anyways.

besides, its hard to champion a cause when you dont even have a name to champion to :) (incase you were wondering, its been intentionally withheld for that very reason). If you're curious about it, just imagine all the little things that big companies do to pad their wallets/budget, and think of the opposite... thats what we're doing.

anywho, lets get some more conversation going about potential game elements. Feel free to add new elements to the mix at any time but lets build up an actual discussion about some of the elements that we've built from this thread (keep in mind this is just discussion, these arent guarenteed elements to exist in our game world). we'll start off with 3 but feel free to throw in your own as we go, ill select:
1) the idea of having sub-effects to common styles of attack, ie a slight stun to targets (say .25s) to targets hit by melee, and a slow duration to targets hit by ranged (say .5s).
2) class based systems vs non-class potential jack of all trades style
3) required aspects to a User Interface, things like minimap, skill list, etc, what works, what doesnt, what needs redesigning

that should get the ball rolling.

akma

2011-05-16, 05:53 PM

exactly. hopefully it builds no hype at all to be honest, I mean, I want people interested in the topic here and giving ideas so we can expand our list but not interested in what the game offers... not yet anyways.

It doesn`t build any hype. I`m not waiting for the game to come out, but if you would put a link, I would try it (and I wouldn`t try any other MMORPG soon, probably not even if a friend recommands it). I think that`s just the right amount, although your avoidance of details is slightly annoying.

anywho, lets get some more conversation going about potential game elements. Feel free to add new elements to the mix at any time but lets build up an actual discussion about some of the elements that we've built from this thread (keep in mind this is just discussion, these arent guarenteed elements to exist in our game world). we'll start off with 3 but feel free to throw in your own as we go, ill select:
1) the idea of having sub-effects to common styles of attack, ie a slight stun to targets (say .25s) to targets hit by melee, and a slow duration to targets hit by ranged (say .5s).
2) class based systems vs non-class potential jack of all trades style
3) required aspects to a User Interface, things like minimap, skill list, etc, what works, what doesnt, what needs redesigning

that should get the ball rolling.

1) Sounds good in general, but that depands entiraly on the combat system. If it depands on combat reflexes and precision, then 0.25 seconds could be significant. If it would depand on preperation and then simply clicking attack, then it won`t be felt at all.
Also, what about repetatly using the same attack over and over again? Would the target be stunned repetitly?
2) I like playing games solo in general, and I would like to be able to do everything myself, so I would prefer a jack of all trade style. But a friend of mine feels the opposite.
3) With design, the important things need to be accessed immediatly. Players will get used to the interface pretty quickely, so as long as they get the important things immediatly you`ll be fine. A statistics section, an achievement section, possibly recent activities section (could be usefull if the players didn`t log in for a while).

Some more ideas:
A) No random drops. They make no sense and encourage grinding for getting them. For exemple, it doesn`t make sense that you could only get the heads out of some kills. I know you won`t have a pointless collect twenty bear asses quests, but if only 1 out of 10 creatures will drop something usefull/expansive, then it will still encourage grinding it. I would rather have a single hard fight then 10 fights which are exectly the same. I`m fine with the exact amounts of drops by a creature varias - for exemple, some humans could drop more money then others after being killed.
B) Something to counter kill stealing. Simply annoying.

Seerow

2011-05-16, 06:52 PM

A) No random drops. They make no sense and encourage grinding for getting them. For exemple, it doesn`t make sense that you could only get the heads out of some kills. I know you won`t have a pointless collect twenty bear asses quests, but if only 1 out of 10 creatures will drop something usefull/expansive, then it will still encourage grinding it. I would rather have a single hard fight then 10 fights which are exectly the same. I`m fine with the exact amounts of drops by a creature varias - for exemple, some humans could drop more money then others after being killed.

I agree with this, but with one change. Some boss encounters, particularly from instances, should have random drops. Either that, or your gear should be entirely crafted, and rely on things dropped from bosses to keep things rare.

Like, say every trash mob and instance boss has their set drops (things like head of the boss, bones of the dragon, etc. Whatever you deem appropriate to be found every time, but generally things turned in for quests, or used for crafting.), and their on person holdings (these might be things like pieces of artifacts for major bosses, bits of gold/silver for lesser bosses, minor magic items that they happen to have on them, etc).

But if you have loot in a similar manner to WoW, then you want to make sure the boss isn't dropping their entire loot table, or the gear quickly becomes something everyone has. This could be seen as a good thing if you want no grind at all, but only if you want any given person to want to run an instance once or twice, then never have reason to again.

TheSummoner

2011-05-16, 07:12 PM

3) With design, the important things need to be accessed immediatly. Players will get used to the interface pretty quickely, so as long as they get the important things immediatly you`ll be fine. A statistics section, an achievement section, possibly recent activities section (could be usefull if the players didn`t log in for a while).

Dear god no. Don't jump on the *colorful and likely board inappropriate insult* achievement bandwagon. These almost invariably end up one of two ways... Either counterintuitive and against any reasonable goal one might have in the game (aside from the achievement itself) or pointlessly easy (and thus not achievement in any way other than being labeled as one).

Make a game that people play to actually have fun or accomplish some actual ingame goal, not to complete some idiotic list that no one else cares about.

VGCats had a comic about achievements (well... actually about Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony's online services, but achievements were referenced with Microsoft) that I think hit the nail on the head... I'd link it, but theres a bit of language that the board might not like and I don't feel like risking it. It involves hats if you feel like looking it up yourself though.

Edit: Statistics, recent activity and maybe a logbook type section with world and creature info is fine, but achievements are just a pathetic attempt at padding.

Some more ideas:
A) No random drops. They make no sense and encourage grinding for getting them. For exemple, it doesn`t make sense that you could only get the heads out of some kills. I know you won`t have a pointless collect twenty bear asses quests, but if only 1 out of 10 creatures will drop something usefull/expansive, then it will still encourage grinding it. I would rather have a single hard fight then 10 fights which are exectly the same. I`m fine with the exact amounts of drops by a creature varias - for exemple, some humans could drop more money then others after being killed.
B) Something to counter kill stealing. Simply annoying.

A) Depends on the item being randomly dropped... Bear asses are one thing that you should realistically be able to claim almost all of the time (I suppose there is a chance you maim the bear so bad that its ass is no longerusable), but if you're suppose to be getting an item that not all of the enemies would have to logically carry (I dunno... A humanoid enemy wearing a bear-tooth necklace or something) then it can be excused.
B) First person/group to attack an enemy gets experience and loot nothing kills them before they can claim it. Simple enough.

Triaxx

2011-05-17, 06:41 AM

I'm not talking solely commercial games. X3:Terran Conflict had one modding team impose a Non-Disclosure Agreement on anyone that wanted to help. Seriously? And it turned out to be... boring. They got everyone all excited about it and it was just.... boring. But they didn't tell us anything about it.

Okay, back to the topic. Fallout New Vegas had a good way to work this. There's a quest where you're asked to kill three enemies, and bring back the heads. It's possible to fail the quest if you shoot them in the head so it can't be collected. (You are then of course treated to a spray of blood as your character rips the head off, which is awesome.)

akma

2011-05-17, 08:26 AM

Dear god no. Don't jump on the *colorful and likely board inappropriate insult* achievement bandwagon. These almost invariably end up one of two ways... Either counterintuitive and against any reasonable goal one might have in the game (aside from the achievement itself) or pointlessly easy (and thus not achievement in any way other than being labeled as one).

That`s a point against bad achievements. I`m not talking about achievements like "kill 10,000 mice", I`m thinking of things like "beat a monster 10 levels higher then you alone", "Defeat boss monster X", etc. Achievements people could actully brag on.

A) Depends on the item being randomly dropped... Bear asses are one thing that you should realistically be able to claim almost all of the time (I suppose there is a chance you maim the bear so bad that its ass is no longerusable), but if you're suppose to be getting an item that not all of the enemies would have to logically carry (I dunno... A humanoid enemy wearing a bear-tooth necklace or something) then it can be excused.

A) I would much rather prefer if I had to track down, then fight a specific human with a bear tooth necklace, then having to get it by repetitvly slaying random humans until I`ll get lucky.

TheSummoner

2011-05-18, 12:58 AM

That`s a point against bad achievements. I`m not talking about achievements like "kill 10,000 mice", I`m thinking of things like "beat a monster 10 levels higher then you alone", "Defeat boss monster X", etc. Achievements people could actully brag on.

Brag to who and why do you need an ingame record to do it?

Even with the ingame record, how do you prove that you killed this monster 10 levels higher than you legitimately? Maybe someone outside of your group did most of the work and you just got credit for landing the first blow and claiming it. Maybe you manipulated the environment in such a way as to make the kill mindlessly easy. Maybe you picked an enemy who self-destructs or has particularly low HP for its level making the feat much less impressive than it sounds.

If these things truely matter, there are much better ways of proving it (video comes to mind. Screenshots also work, though these are easier to doctor). Further, why are these important in the first place? You killed an enemy 10 levels higher than you... So what? That guy over there 20 levels higher than you is killing them dozens at a time. You killed the boss... Ok, who does this matter? Either enough people have done it that is nothing special or you're part of a group ingame well known enough that people would know about it even without the achievement saying so.

I would much rather prefer if I had to track down, then fight a specific human with a bear tooth necklace, then having to get it by repetitvly slaying random humans until I`ll get lucky.

Fair point. Though there's no reason both can't be used in certain cases. Variety is good, though the "kill random humans" method would have to be handled more carefully.

Anasazi

2011-05-19, 03:25 AM

Spinoza

2011-05-19, 08:26 AM

I'm curious how you will separate yourself from WOW or Rift or DDO or Eve or the cornucopia of MMOs that are already out there.

For the most part WOW has taken the genre to its logical conclusion. They have a problem with the new feeling but pretty much there the 800 pound gorilla.

Garwain

2011-05-19, 09:41 AM

You are building a MMO and you actually want my advice? Great, here I go, you asked for it:

First, I'd like to point you to an article about player types (http://mytruthandsomelies.blogspot.com/2011/03/four-types-of-fantasy-players-fantasy.html). Not everyone wants the same in a game. So either focus on one types, or give everyone a cookie. Not everyone the same cookie, but different cookies for different players.

With that said, I'll admit that I'm an Explorer and a Gatherer (if this does not make sense, read the above referenced article). This means that I'll only give suggestions of things I like in those 2 fields:

Explorer:
- Xp based on discovering map areas. I know that quest chains try to send you to every corner of the map, but those areas you would normally not go, should still reward the players who like to discover.
- Make sure that on the otherwise lower populated areas the terrain stays interesting.
- Eco culture depending on actual hunting. Meaning that some creatures that are over hunted, also are rare to find. Maybe scale xp of the "collect x quests" on the abundance of the creatures.
- monsters that are obviously lower lvl than you should not be agressive. Nothing more irritating that trecking through unknown territory and be harressed by harmless creatures.
- monsters that are a threat: Make them act naturally. Not attack on sight as many MMO, but give the player a warning: An aggressive stand and a hissing sound from a jungle cat should first give you the option to back away of danger instead of being attacked, killed and bye bye the exploration.
- travel time reduced by path finding and idling. Just click the map, and your character travels there via the common roads. No danger, but can be done afk.
- easy transportation to previously visited areas (does not need to be instant and a certain cost is acceptable)
- challenging areas to reach (eagles nest, hermit cavern, ....) but a nice view as reward.
- I'm attracted to combine the exploring also with gathering materials for a profession, so that I return from the trip not only with some xp, a sense of satisfaction, but also some usefull items.
- a Heartstone. When in difficulties, just teleport out.
- Death is annoying as it is. Don't punish us with collapsed gear and a tedious journey back.

Gatherer:
- Gear that comes in tiers, and can be modified by a) inserting gems that add some properties or b) upgrading the parameters of the gems (with failure rate). The online game Dragon's Call has done that very well. The only thing I didn't like was adding paying content in a way that upgrading your gear at higher level essentially means griding untill you are so bored, or paying. Nono, upgrading gear should always be fun, and add to the tactical aspects, not your purse.
- professions as discussed above
- Achievements and Quest. Yeh, I just like those. Except the 1% drop rate quest. Those become boring very quickly.
- In game economy. Essential for players like me who are not to fond on grinding and want to earn their money through the ingame market. Not through schemes, but through market analysis.

General thoughts:
- don't punish those that can't commit to 8h game day, but are doing 8h working days. XP boost to catch up (partially) is balanced by the lack of items harvested anyway
- Once again I'm referring to Dragon's Call. The option to list yourself as a mercenary for dungeons is appealing to non all day players. Sure you're not in charge and you someone else decides what loot you get, but at least you have some loot, some xp and a bit closed to another achievement.
- Be gentle with the difficulty curve. I've played Maestia for 10 levels and still didn't understand what all the different stones, gems, shards etc where for. There is a tutorial but after half an hour I'm no longer interested.

I decide to spoiler my wall of text. Sorry if there are no concrete examples, only game mechanics. Here are some more explicit ones:

- fighting on the head of a giant
- the ability to swing ropes, chandeleers
- bonus to cool moves
- bear wrestling with bare hands
- unique finishing moves (like streetfighter or manhunt)
- grappeling an Eagle's Claw
- a ground floor starter's area, and an advanced area in the treetops of that area. Surprise!
- scrying well to scry your online friend
- crocodile back river crossing
- giant snake that squeezes you which turns your screen red/black before you pass out.
- Spider man's 'freeze' before incomming danger.

If that's all added from a to z, I'm buying a copy! :smallsmile:

Garwain

2011-05-19, 09:56 AM

1) the idea of having sub-effects to common styles of attack, ie a slight stun to targets (say .25s) to targets hit by melee, and a slow duration to targets hit by ranged (say .5s).
2) class based systems vs non-class potential jack of all trades style
3) required aspects to a User Interface, things like minimap, skill list, etc,

After my previous Chinese Wall of text, I'd like to address your own topics:
1) Would the sub-effect be typical for your character (i.e. magic wielders give slight burn on impact, bludgeoning gives a stun, ranged = immobilized? I can see a sort of feat system to upgrade that subeffect. On the other hand, it might get in the way of the principal effect.
2) I prefer the idea that everyone can spec into everything. Let's say that I'm trained in ranged attacked. Why would my intelligence not be sufficient to learn some magic tricks or wield a big sword? Your stat points would obviously puch you in a certain direction, but not necessarely bar you from the other options.
3) minimap definitly, spell/ability shortcut keys, back pack pop up that authomatically arranges itself besides the character overview. (I don't get that they let those window overlap on pop up, while most of time those windows will interact. A visual status bar (how bad am I hurt? am I dazed or poisoned?) Ideally nothing should be more than 3 clicks away from eachother.

TheSummoner

2011-05-19, 05:59 PM

There's an extent to it, but I can discuss some of the things we're NOT doing.

Achievement systems are nothing more than the industries way of extending the life of already created content, regardless of which achievement you're going after you've been literally instructed to follow a certain path to achieving it, with a list of things to do and clear rewards. Its our belief that this goes against the very fundamentals of the genre, MMO worlds are meant to be massive and open, even sandbox-esk. Not to mention that most achievements bring even further light to the world being one that regenerates itself. This isn't us, nor is it our project.

*cries tears of joy*

Finally, someone who sees the truth! Finally, someone who understands!

I'm curious how you will separate yourself from WOW or Rift or DDO or Eve or the cornucopia of MMOs that are already out there.

For the most part WOW has taken the genre to its logical conclusion. They have a problem with the new feeling but pretty much there the 800 pound gorilla.

*eyeroll*

Please, WoW is not the be all end all MMO, nor is it the logical conclusion. It may be a 800lb gorilla, but that is because the gorilla got lazy and fat and started watching TV and chowing down on his banana hoard rather than fighting all those kremlings to prove hes the true king of the jungle.

Lets look at Rift... Now, granted I haven't played it yet, but from what I've heard, its really good and theres a good deal of talk that it may dethrone WoW (they said the same of Warhammer Online though, so only time will tell). The fact that theres talk of this sort at all should be an indication that if nothing else, WoW is not invulnerable. It is certainly a rather large hurdle to overcome (even fat, lazy monkeys can still throw barrels), but it isn't an impossible one.

As for WoW being the logical conclusion... Maybe you can't see further possibilities (and I'm not saying any of my ideas or Anasazi or anyone else's ideas for where the genre can go are automatically a step in the right direction), but that is a far cry from there being nowhere to take things at all.

invinible

2011-05-20, 03:52 AM

Now here is something that ruins many games: Bad Controls.

Spinoza

2011-05-20, 09:38 AM

*cries tears of joy*

Finally, someone who sees the truth! Finally, someone who understands!

*eyeroll*

Please, WoW is not the be all end all MMO, nor is it the logical conclusion. It may be a 800lb gorilla, but that is because the gorilla got lazy and fat and started watching TV and chowing down on his banana hoard rather than fighting all those kremlings to prove hes the true king of the jungle.

Lets look at Rift... Now, granted I haven't played it yet, but from what I've heard, its really good and theres a good deal of talk that it may dethrone WoW (they said the same of Warhammer Online though, so only time will tell). The fact that theres talk of this sort at all should be an indication that if nothing else, WoW is not invulnerable. It is certainly a rather large hurdle to overcome (even fat, lazy monkeys can still throw barrels), but it isn't an impossible one.

As for WoW being the logical conclusion... Maybe you can't see further possibilities (and I'm not saying any of my ideas or Anasazi or anyone else's ideas for where the genre can go are automatically a step in the right direction), but that is a far cry from there being nowhere to take things at all.

I didn't really say WoW is the end all and be all of gaming. There will be little new things that come that might make things a little different. WoW now is the dominant position like Microsoft or the Borg. What ever new thing comes out they will copy / re-image/ improve. Just cause there is talk of them being dethroned doesn't even come close to mean its going to happen or happen anytime soon.

Let me quote a review I found from these very forums

"I played a teeny bit of Rift, and I can honestly say it was like WoW reskinned. Yes, there's a shift in atmosphere and graphic style and it is prettier, but the basic idea is the same: set target, press button until dead. In the meantime collect quest items.

I'd put it like this. If you're bored of WoW, you will be bored of this game too. If you're not bored of WoW, well, play WoW."

Last I think there is an obvious improvement / next step to the genre that WoW will not be be able to imitate with out radically changing there whole MMO. (Hint it involves removing the first M from MMO)

Kislath

2011-05-20, 10:11 AM

Mark & Recall spell!!! WoW's Hearthstones are fine, but what if I need to go back and forth to some other specific place a lot for a quest or somesuch? Why can't we get a hearthstone for every inn we visit, for that matter?

TheSummoner

2011-05-20, 10:19 AM

However, you did imply it was, atleast as far as MMORPGs go. New MMORPGS will have some similarities by definition purely because the same genre, but that does not mean then have to be a mere copy / re-imaging / improvement of it.

As for that review, if "set target, press button until dead. In the meantime collect quest items" is the problem, then that is something that could be done differently and better. Not a copy, but something entirely different. Item collection is ingrained so deeply in not just MMORPGS, but most game genres in general, so I dunno how much of that can be dealt with, but "set target, press button until dead" can be done differently by anyone willing to take the chance to do something new rather than rehashing the same boring thing that is known to be safe.

And I would say the first M is probably the most important letter in the genre... Other players can be considered a large part of the game content. Obviously not an excuse for developers to get lazy, but the possibility of interacting with different people with different play styles during group content can keep things from getting stale. The risk of PvP means there is always an element of randomness to the game world... a threat that keeps players on their toes.

Erloas

2011-05-20, 10:42 AM

Last I think there is an obvious improvement / next step to the genre that WoW will not be be able to imitate with out radically changing there whole MMO. (Hint it involves removing the first M from MMO)

So what you are saying is that WoW is the conclusion of the games like WoW and we aren't going to see anything different get big until something completely different really takes off?

WoW, as far as I'm concerned, was always fairly bad. The main thing is that it was the first time most people had seen it so they didn't realize the bad parts about it. But of course they get pulled into the same things that the first generation of MMO players did with UO, and EQ. Its just that the life cycle got longer because the population got larger and it takes longer for that life cycle to go through. Everyone I know that quit WoW after playing for long periods of time quit for all the same reasons people quit the MMOs before it. They quit for the same reasons I didn't like the game in the first place, the difference was that I recognized those defects from early on and they had no point of reference to see the problems from. WoW did virtually nothing new or innovative, they simply had the backing and brand name to get the ball rolling and the timing to tap a quickly spreading internet explosion. And of course they had stuff a bit better polished and working then their competitors (and it was no where near as perfect at release as some people act like it was).

I think EVE is a great example of how WoW isn't the only model to be used. Other then both being MMOs, the two games have almost nothing in common.

I think a lot of it comes down to the genre of the game (not the MMO genre part). Even in single player RPGs there isn't a huge change in combat or design from your run of the mill MMO. There is only so many ways you can make sword and sorcery combat work with our technology level. I actually can't think of the last fantasy based game that I really liked the combat in. Even Dragon Age was much the same thing.

And really, until you can change the combat system, its hard to make any changes that don't seem mostly superficial.

There is the more twitch based combat, but its really hard to make that stay twitch based and not result in quick deaths on both sides. Because if you slow things down to make fights last longer then you are by necessity taking a lot of the "twitch" out of it. But even more reactionary and twitch like combat in fantasy would help. I thought that was one thing that made DAOC's combat better then a lot of other games, but only if you were playing the right class, some where highly reactionary to be powerful while others weren't, and of course ranged classes weren't reactionary at all. But even then there are a lot of other genres stuck in twitch based combat and it would be hard to change to twitch based and not start just looking like them.

I think a Mechwarrior/Battletech or ship based combat is where things need to get back to in order to start seeing something newer (ironically). Mostly because it completely changes the believable ways combat can work. Its also a genre that has almost completely been forgotten about. I think it gives the option of more twitch based combat while still keeping fights from being too short. I think it gives the options to seeing different character designs, as even shooters have gone to the healer/tank/dps character designs. I also think having a universe size world makes it easier to have lots of players and also having a sort of evolving world while keeping areas suitable for all levels. I think its also an easier way of doing away with level based progression.

Really I think I want some sort of cross between Battletech and EVE.

Triaxx

2011-05-20, 01:35 PM

WoW turned into the giant it has, because it's not gamer centric. Like the Wii it's targeted to everyone. You don't have to have a dedicated, super powerful gaming computer to play it. As long as you have fast enough internet to handle it, the specs are sufficiently low that you can do it with a modest laptop, unlike say... Lord of the Rings or Warhammer Online. Or even Age of Conan.

TheSummoner

2011-05-20, 03:25 PM

Adding to that, WoW also had the benifit of a preexisting fanbase. That alone gave it a rather large bump in the beginning.

Anasazi

2011-05-20, 03:32 PM

going to condense this a bit with spoiler tags as i know its a pain to read through wall of texts and i do have a tendency to write them.

WoW turned into the giant it has, because it's not gamer centric. Like the Wii it's targeted to everyone. You don't have to have a dedicated, super powerful gaming computer to play it. As long as you have fast enough internet to handle it, the specs are sufficiently low that you can do it with a modest laptop, unlike say... Lord of the Rings or Warhammer Online. Or even Age of Conan.

the future of mmo's:
Triaxx stumbled upon a bit of truth here, but its an element thats going to hit hard when it actually does. There's been discussion as to where the mmo market might be going and its progression is much like the worlds net resources. If you've ever heard of cloud computing then you know that the days of needing high end machines to pull off amazing amounts of processing is coming to an end. With the world becoming further and further integrated into the wireless net, more and more people open themselves to becoming potential gamers that were never before. Building a worldwide connected net that requires only a signal and basic speeds and video rending speeds is all that will be required to play in the future mmo market. As for how close we are to these days, that depends entirely on how fast the companies begin moving their toys around and who takes that first leap into producing this massive level of gamer connection, outputting to desktops, laptops and phones (or other mobile devices) alike, make no mistake... it is the way things will go.

on World of Warcraft:
Yes, WoW is the 800lb gorilla, side note- thanks for helping us with that very specific visual, we intend on adding said gorilla to our game world and name it WoW.
Irony aside, history is pretty well documented why the rise of WoW came, like all giants it was built in the twilight of another dwindling giant, EQ. It's time was paramount and it brought with it a combination of all that the market offered, something at which it still tries to do to this day. They've adapted to the community over the years after developing its massive numbers and continue to bring much of what the market wants in one place. That is its value, that is its appeal. Lets not forget that before WoW came along the largest game in the world had a few hundred thousand gamers.
Make no mistake though, history has proven that there's still a decent chunk of players who currently play WoW, or other mmo's, that are still looking for the next thing. Opening month purchases of new mmo's to the market are still pretty decent, its their continued play that suffers as they cant live up or dont bring what the gamers want to the playing field. Will current games replace wow on the ranks... no, our attention span to allowing new games is literally right around that month, if the game doesn't make a big enough splash within that time to entice the mass majority of the gamers to leave their wow, then its never going to compete on the level it needs to to kill such a large entity.
Whatever you may think of WoW, it did set a precedent in gaming history, and remains to do so to this day. If you think its nothing more than a fluke then you're clearly ignoring the market share that the game has and I'd suggest you go look for yourself. Lets just say, the last time an official census was taken, wow had 62% of the mmo market share, which means ALL of its competitors make up that 38% (thats counting free mmo's btw).

Now, as stated, the industries direction is not something my team enjoys, and with wow leading the charge that means that theres much of wow that we dislike also, but those are still insane numbers.

on sub/main genre:
Erloas- while much of your topic i agree with, the theory that the future of the mmorpg genre is expanding into sci-fi is something I'd have to disagree with. Fantasy is the paramount subgenre of the mmorpg genre, its easier to pitch and sell game worlds built around fantastically magical things than it is to base a world on fantastical science.
Don't misunderstand, I'm an avid collector of sci-fi as its my favorite genre, and the only reason why my team even began working on this project was because Stargate Worlds fell through and I saw the next step in gaming slipping through the hands of the world. But historically, fantasy has always done better and sold more than sci-fi. Thats not to say there arent amazing successes within the field of sci-fi, numbers and accomplishments that make some of the fantasy content look pathetic, but from the standpoint of numbers and development, produces prefer to focus on fantasy first. Besides, most of the time the market uses sci-fi as an upgrade to current tech, adding in bits and pieces here and there to re-skin worlds, like battlefield 2142. Sci-fi giants like Star Trek and Star Wars have taken their shot and fallen short of developing a large following, thats not to say that their fan base isnt loyal. Sci-fi fans tend to be some of the most loyal consumers on the planet, but they still fail to pull off the numbers and thats what production companies look at when considering what games to finance and which ones to not.

Its a sad state of affairs when even Indie arms of large companies cant produce unique and inspiring games that succeed like no other, but such is the pain of working in the MMO market. Its my opinion that some of the other markets are more forgiving. Biggest example is rts' and sci-fi, those two are like peanut butter and jelly.

Erloas

2011-05-20, 04:46 PM

Nibleswick

2011-05-21, 02:37 AM

The MMO that I would like to see is a space flight sim. One where you had an entire galaxy to explore as the pilot of your very own ship. You could be an intergalactic merchant, a pirate, an Imperial peacekeeper, or a Rebel patriot. As you are successful as a pilot you gain access to better ships and weapons, or the opportunity to join more prestigious wings, more lucrative trading opportunities come your way, or induction more infamous pirate clans.

The engine I would base it on is the one that Lucas Arts used in the X-wing series. They are the most fun space flight simulators I have played. I would want this to be a game that rewards real skill as a pilot. The better you are at not getting shot and shooting your opponents the faster you will advance through the ranks.

Just imagine for a moment traveling through the immensity of space, there are stars all around you, and it is glorious. You kick in your hyperdrive and there is a new world before you shining like a giant gem. An alarm sounds, you are under attack! Dirty pirates are after the cargo of the convoy you are guarding. Looks like it's time to do what they pay you for.:smallbiggrin:

That's what I'm looking for in an MMO. As awesome it is, I doubt it will ever happen in my life time. :smallfrown:

Anasazi

2011-05-21, 06:04 AM

I guess I would start with saying that I'm under no illusion that a game has to be innovative or unique to get really popular. In fact most of the most popular games were all just refinements on existing games introduced to new audiences.

What I meant was that for an MMO to feel new and innovative its probably going to have to leave fantasy to do it because even single player fantasy is having a hard time being innovative and new. I wouldn't say its not possible, just very difficult.
And as mentioned a long time before, a squad based character design might just do it, blending a bit of RTS into the MMO/fantasy scene.

As for the WoW numbers, I don't think its anywhere near that much of the market share, maybe if you compared WoWs total numbers to the other primary western, ie NA/Europe, games then it probably would be. I've heard that in asia there are a number of F2P MMOs that handly beat or at least match WoWs numbers, but given the nature of F2P there is no good way of actually counting the number of players. Which wouldn't be too surprising considering that China has 1/5 of the world's population.

I think the road to success in MMOs right now is smaller niche games rather then "compete with wow" games.

I'm not going to start a linkstorm to prove what I've researched, I suggest that you take a look at the numbers and reports yourself, I think you might find the facts surprising. Afterall, 12 Mil subscribers dont just pop out of nowhere.

Anywho, if you want yourself a squad based mmo, go look into Sword of the New World, that game has you control up to 3 characters at a time and has been around for awhile. Personally, I think they did a decent job but the numbers prove that the niche that wants that level of character control is rather small. I will admit though, it did have some of the best MMO music that I've ever heard, 'Beyond the Mountain' is still my ringtone to this day.

There was a downside with that game design though, if you were a good player rarely did you need support from other people, that goes against what we hope to accomplish with our game, and while we will support a certain extent of 'squad play', ours isn't intended to replace other players, nor will it be something players are forced into.

Invin- bad controls are rather mute when it comes to pc games, as most games let you re-keybind. Ours is no exception. A good point though, some games straight out fail because of bad keybindings, fortunately that potential is lessened with each game thats released.

Nible- I tend to agree, you probably wont see that anytime soon, but to say that you wont see it in your lifetime, thats a bit on the negative side, unless ofcourse the crazies are right and today really is the end of the world :P but we've all got dream games like that... mine would be a gundam game setup like armored core, both in building, customization, and play style.

Lets try something new...
here's the challenge: you have to rank 'types' of powers so that a conversion chart can be created. Think a basic 1-10 scale, decimals included. theres 6 different general lumps of power types: 1)Enhancements (ie transformations and buffs), 2) attack powers (ie straight damage dealing powers, ranged and melee are lumped together to avoid favoritism), 3) agro powers (both increases and decreases), 4) summons, 5) status effect powers (ie slow, stun, silence, etc), and 6) regen's (heals or bumps in regeneration to both health and mana).
now, the powers dont have to balance eachother or end up on an even or whole number or anything silly like that, but they do have represent the strength of said powers in your mind. For example, if you feel that status effect powers are far more powerful than standard attack powers then you might put attacks at 1, and status effects at 4, you might feel that buffs are just below status effects and put them a 3.5. Keep the focus on ranking these powers in the general sense, ignore specifics. as for a reference point in powers, just list the mmo(s) that you're thinking of when you respond to this. Theres no wrong answer to this, just list your thoughts.

Triaxx

2011-05-21, 06:39 AM

Cloud Computing is a great dream. But it's not going to happen. Not only are you not going to get people to give up the ability to compute without being online even if they have the bandwidth, but modding is too popular to allow for it to take over. And on top of that, you've still got to have a computer at the end user to translate all the data into something usable. On top of that, you're massively increasing data being transmitted, and even on the fastest connections, that pushes lag to a point that no user is going to accept.

I think the proper way to go is to try and minimize the amount of data being pushed through the connections.

Kislath

2011-05-21, 06:48 AM

Something unique I'd love to see:
Players being able to train other players. Got a high skill in something? Sell that knowledge to others!

invinible

2011-05-21, 08:05 AM

This is the order I prefer to change my guys up in:

regens
summons
attack powers
Enhancements
status effect powers
agro powers

Erloas

2011-05-21, 09:57 AM

I'm not going to start a linkstorm to prove what I've researched, I suggest that you take a look at the numbers and reports yourself, I think you might find the facts surprising. Afterall, 12 Mil subscribers dont just pop out of nowhere.
I have looked at the numbers, which is why I think you are wrong. Not that Wikipedia is the best source, but at least the numbers have some sources linked to them. Puts the total players of MMOs at 43M, 12M going to wow, or about 25%. Runescape is just under WoW at 10M. Just WoW vs Maple Story would just barely put WoW at 70% market share. And I know that list is incomplete because its missing numbers for 1/3 or more of the games on the list. And it is by no means a complete list, one almost entirely asian game, Yulgang isn't listed on the list but its page shows 600k concurrent users at peak, so even if we assumed a 50% logon rate (highly unlikely) thats 10% of WoW's population there.

Anywho, if you want yourself a squad based mmo, go look into Sword of the New World, that game has you control up to 3 characters at a time and has been around for awhile. Personally, I think they did a decent job but the numbers prove that the niche that wants that level of character control is rather small. I will admit though, it did have some of the best MMO music that I've ever heard, 'Beyond the Mountain' is still my ringtone to this day. I'm not actually looking for an MMO. But I was thinking more RTS style squads and more commonality between units of the squad, so they squads keep with a specific role in a class design sense while still having more utility options.
I also wasn't thinking you would actively control each aspect of the squad, but that in many ways they would function as a single character, but with more logic to the range of abilities, and damage systems that could be applied to a player.

I also think niche is the way to go. When you consider that even 100k subscribers will pay for a lot if you don't have a massive development budget. I also think niche is where you gather the most loyal fans and the easiest way to develop a good community. I also think it makes it a lot easier from the development side, because unlike WoW you are less likely to get into a situation where making changes to anything is likely to make half of your players mad because so many parts of your community want completely different things out of the game.
And as a player at this point I am much more interested in a focused game then a popular game and the number of players is only a concern if it makes it too hard to find groups or find opponents.

Lets try something new...
here's the challenge: you have to rank 'types' of powers so that a conversion chart can be created. Think a basic 1-10 scale, decimals included. theres 6 different general lumps of power types: ...

... For example, if you feel that status effect powers are far more powerful than standard attack powers then you might put attacks at 1, and status effects at 4, you might feel that buffs are just below status effects and put them a 3.5. Keep the focus on ranking these powers in the general sense, ignore specifics. as for a reference point in powers, just list the mmo(s) that you're thinking of when you respond to this. Theres no wrong answer to this, just list your thoughts.

Now I think what you mean here is what *should* those be, rather then what they are, because what they are is meaningless without a game. There are some games where buffs/enchantments make maybe a 5% increase in damage, there are others where its more like 80-100% increase in damage. Some summon abilities are simply graphically represented DOTs, where as others can be very powerful. And I really think you need to separate out ranged and melee damage and abilities in this because I've never seen a game where they are equal or even that comparable.

Health regens obviously need to be more powerful then at least the majority of your damage abilities, especially since you'll probably have 3-5 damage dealers for each healer. Mana/power regens can be a lot weaker, especially since if they aren't controlled well it can lead to massive jumps in fighting power and can make the power/mana conservation part of skill balancing almost meaningless.
Status effects can go either way too. Generally defensive effects (such as reduced damage from an opponent either used on them or on yourself) can be a lot higher, but of course strength depends also on duration. However sleep ones are always powerful if they are for any decent length of time and they are very annoying in a PvP setting. Stuns even more so because they don't break on damage and can so often lead to people dieing without ever being able to do anything.
Attack powers, about the same. If they can be spammed they should be fairly weak, if they are situational, especially if it is a hard situation to get into, then they need to be higher. I also think in general melee should be more powerful then range because I have not seen many game designs that didn't favor ranged more often then melee, especially in group situations.
Aggro powers mostly come down to PvE design, and as such I couldn't see any real way for them to be very powerful.
I don't think enchantments should ever make much more then about a 10-15% increase in damage and/or survivability because otherwise they becoming too mandatory and really stratifies a community between the haves and have-nots. Less of an issue in PvE then PvP.

Anasazi

2011-05-21, 04:09 PM

triaxx- actually, mobile gaming is already a huge thing, one of my coworkers already plays an mmo on his phone. If you take a look at where technology is focusing in recent times and where the financial market is interested in receiving its more important updates, you'll find mobile devices are at the top of the charts. We're not just talking phones here either, we're talking pads too, Asus just released one of there pads that doubles as a home pc. and cloud computing is already massive in the world. As for the expansion of games into it, I wasn't referring to the changeover coming soon, but it will happen. Not too long ago a world record was set, first person to tweet from the top of Mt. Everest. Now, that might not seem like a big thing due to there being a cell tower at the summit, but it should prove that eventually the world will be entirely covered in wireless. Mobility will be a huge aspect in the future, as we're already seeing those tribes form. 4G devices run at about 2Mbits, but are technically tested up to 6. speed wise thats a bit reminiscent of legacy wireless. Even still, you have the influx of wi-fi hot spots throughout the world, wireless phone might not even be the resource that's used in the new world.
As far as modeling goes, people will purchase what they can get their hands on, and no doubt there will be a rush in demand for more video proficient mobile devices, many of them can already game at ps2 graphics. as a side note, cloud computing doesn't mean you remove the computing power from the machines themselves, it means for certain resources, the workload of the request is done remotely, not locally; search engines function this way.

kis- another amusing idea, keep them coming.

invin- would you mind sharing the 1-10 scale with us on those? i appreciate them in sequential order but unless we have what you feel is the balance for each power is, then we cant really get a basis on how powerful you think each ability is. thanks

erloas- you're right, wikipedia isn't a good source for that info... since the numbers its referencing are 3 years old. Besides, market share isn't determined by the number of subscriptions, or even the number of people playing the game on a high pop night, like some researches will lead you to believe.
'Market Share' refers to how much a company financially controls out of the available funds invested into the overall field. Reports aren't ignoring your free to play games, they just dont even make the financial cut to be considered, mainly because item malls dont gross as much as you might believe.
Having a good community isn't a bad thing, but profits are what keeps a game running. Most people who play free to play mmo's dont have the money to keep an influx into a game, and thats where item mall based mmo's get hurt. Between server costs, bandwidth, gm's and development teams, running games is expensive. Even in niches, theres going to be a difference of opinion, which means there will always be those disgruntled with changes... or lack there of. Thats not to say that I dont agree with niche gaming being the way to go, our project fills a very specific niche, but that doesnt mean that I expect any niche game to compete with the massive games that offer a bit of everything to everybody.

Now I think what you mean here is what *should* those be, rather then what they are, because what they are is meaningless without a game.

^ exactly why I asked people to list the mmo's they're thinking of when they respond. We can't give you all the balancing details about our world for a reference point so we might aswell let people pick whichever reference point they want.

We appreciate the feedback everyone, keep the opinions rolling in. And if you can, hit us with your opinion on Challenge 1 (ie the balancing act of powers).

JoeSkull

2011-05-21, 04:12 PM

Triaxx

2011-05-21, 06:18 PM

I guess we have different looks at the way cloud computing works. But my guess is that cloud is NOT the future. The more powerful capabilities of Wireless are something else.

Right now to get good speed you've got to pay, up to $75 a foot to run Fiber Optic. If we can simply go wireless, then you've eliminated the bandwidth problem. The thing is, that you're still incurring lag, and lag is killer. I feel that client end tailoring is the best way to go. If you're building it so only the most essential data, attack calculations and such, those that could be interfered with to cheat, on the server side, so you've got the end user determining what they're seeing, you're going BEYOND the PC. If you build a game that isn't trying to tell the client side system what it MUST display you can work with the graphics of just about any system.

Ideally the game should be playable on a Pentium 2 with 64MB of RAM and integrated video. On Dial-up. But be upscaleable all the way up to the latest bleeding edge system with a 6 core i7. By building with the lowest possible denominator in mind, you can guarantee the widest possible audience. Which means you can have people playing MMO's on a phone at the same time others are playing on PC's or even consoles. That's the reason none of the newcomers have been able to tip the scales and really cut into the existing games. Too narrow of a base.

Even if you're going after Star Wars fans, or Lord of the Rings fans, or even Warhammer fans, you've got two problems. One is keeping the game to those story lines which have been so thoroughly written, and the other is that the true fans, the ones who are going to form the core of your user base, have other things to spend money on than the latest and greatest hardware.

I suspect you won't have that problem, coming from a unique mythos and not having to deal with pre-existing continuity. And no, what Blizzard does by simply over writing old continuity is not the best approach, because they do it willy-nilly, unlike say, Bungie who out right stated that new over-writes old, entirely, instead of confusing people by picking and choosing. I suggest a combination of the Stardock customer-centric, and Bungie simple straight forward approaches.

Xondoure

2011-05-21, 09:40 PM

I've always like the idea of "Frontier zones" for explorers. Places with fewer enemies, but who are individually tough fights. With lots of difficult areas to reach and explore. Zones with no set quests or tie ins to the main plot for explorers to just go to town.

[QUOTE=Anasazi;11036649]Lets try something new...
here's the challenge: you have to rank 'types' of powers so that a conversion chart can be created. Think a basic 1-10 scale, decimals included. theres 6 different general lumps of power types: 1)Enhancements (ie transformations and buffs), 2) attack powers (ie straight damage dealing powers, ranged and melee are lumped together to avoid favoritism), 3) agro powers (both increases and decreases), 4) summons, 5) status effect powers (ie slow, stun, silence, etc), and 6) regen's (heals or bumps in regeneration to both health and mana).[/QOUTE]

Well this depends entirely on how they are handled. How about I post a cool way for these powers to work instead? (Or at least in my opinion)

1. Enhancements:
Buffs: I always thought combo buffs could be a lot of fun. Heck combos in general are always a good thing. Magicka esque combination of powers is just awesome. As an example say you have a buff that increases fire damage, and a buff that increases crit. Individually the fire buff adds an additional +5 fire damage and the crit buff increases the chance to land a critical hit by 5%. If you cast them both they don't stack, but instead all attacks that deal fire damage on their own get a 15% crit increase, or only critical attacks gain +15 fire attack.
Transformation: On a similar vein it would be cool to see a transformer with a few different abilities in each form, and a few core abilities they always have access to but that act differently in different states. Such as a leap attack that has different ranges in dragon or lion form. Also a "favored" form based on what form you take most often. Say if a player spent a certain amount of time in cheetah form they would unlock a passive ability that granted a small bonus to speed regardless of which form. Basically blending the forms together a bit more to have a more cohesive fighting style. If health was kept the same in every form you could even have mid fight transformations. (Start in troll form, health drops low enough so switch to lion form, losing the battle so switch to owl and try to flee) Which makes for interesting ability combinations.

2. Attack Powers
Give people options. It would be awesome to see burst damage, aoe, steady dps, and multi opponent, ranged, and close quarters abilities all on the same character. Specialization is necessary in order to differentiate characters but at least give everyone a few abilities that cover the bases.

3. Aggro Powers
Trinity is annoying, and it doesn't have to be there. Having characters who specialize in dealing with different enemies, and can combo abilities with members of different classes can encourage diverse grouping on its own. That said its not evil, and it can be a good way to make classes work together, there are just other less overused concepts.

4) Summons
Depend entirely on how they are handled. Personally I like variety here. Each summon should have a unique function that helps in different scenarios. A swarm of bees could be used to form walls of death or released to scatter across various enemies. Skeleton guards who will follow me or a fellow party member and protect them with their lives. An underground mole that digs pitfall traps to catch unsuspecting foes. A dragon that swoops down and scourges a stretch of the map with fire. A ghost that haunts one enemy until it dies before moving onto the next/dissappearing depending on the spec.

5. Status Effects
CC sucks the life out of pvp. That said status effects can be fun. Burn damage, curses that inflict damage back on the target when it attacks, heal blocks, staggering opponents, blinding effects, even stuns (as long as they are never guranteed, rare, few, and short lived) are all interesting ways to make the battle more than just a slug fest. Healers should have tools to deal with all of these, and allowing too many to stack can be disastrous.

6. Regen
There should be a place for healers who love to heal, but not a necessity for players who like to heal without them.

MechaKingGhidra

2011-05-21, 11:41 PM

Specifically we're looking for things like terrain elements (volcanos, valleys), elements of more humanoid nature (structures of towns, ie big dark scary castles, deep dungeons, clouds of pure white), and all around things people enjoy, or really hate, that are popular in video games (for example we hate simple collect x quests and thus we will not throw those into our game, we also hate the handholding that online games give so ours will not be easy).

I will give my top 3 list of things I would like to see more of in video games alongside the more generic things people tend to do instead of the former.

1)

The Good

I like NPCs better when they show some level of emotion. Even if you are unable to have sound clips with horrible wailing in pain and agony, substitutions within the quest text and other basic dialogue in the form of a simple *sob*, *groan*, or other indication of the condition which they are in is better than nothing.

The stance in which the NPC takes such as kneeling with one's head in their hands can also accomplish this task equally well.

The Bad

Emotionless robots make for very poor subjects in regards to sympathy.

What's that? Your house was scorched, your children missing and there's an arrow lodged in your shoulder? Funny, you seem to be standing upright, not slumping or anything, and you are asking me to help you in the manner of which I would ask my neighbour for a cup of sugar.

No thanks, I'll just ignore your so-called "plight" and go loot some goblins.

2)

The Good

I enjoy being challenged to associate items with clever placement.

a) A coastal village has been ransacked by pirates and their food stores pilfered. One of the items required to make some potion to continue the story are eggs.

Well, where do you look? Simple, go to the harbor and fight your way through the pirate ship and upwards...to the crow's nest.

What would be a nice bonus is if you had the pirate up in the crow's nest throwing eggs at you once you get part-way up the pole.

b) Need to find a monstrous spider? Go to the old abandoned church and look up at the rafters (no, not just a basic ceiling, actual rafters). Use an item that burns the webbing or the like and have it appear, drop down on the floor and you can get down to killing the little(?) bugger (pun intended).

The Bad

a) While perfectly reasonable and not necessarily "bad" like the other things, if I have to go digging for turtle eggs or follow seagulls to their nesting area one more time, I think I'll scream.

Oh well, it sure as heck beats killing pirates and taking the dang things they had crammed in their pockets. Seriously, what were they doing with a single egg in their pants?

b) Having a set of stairs that lead to it just being on the actual floor of the uppermost level is a bit bland since most of the time you can see the bloody thing just staring blankly, waiting for you. Even a side-room would be preferable to the most obvious location based on symmetry.

3)

The Good

I like looking for minor to moderate changes in nature to indicate basic happenings.

a) Searching for a druid gone AWOL? Well, go into the forest and look to see where the foliage gets abnormally thicker than elsewhere. Maybe look for animal trails. More? Less? Depending on what the druid is like, you'll need to judge where he/she is based on the amount (or lack thereof) of animal activity.

b) The grass is a bit thicker in completely random spots on an open plain? Well, old lady Martha walks her dogs when she takes a stroll on nice days and was doing that when she lost her favourite...whatever it was.... (yes, I went there, just not how WoW does it, thank goodness)

The Bad

So you're telling me that a wizard is compiling an army of the damned and the ground is COMPLETELY UNAFFECTED?! What, did all those skeletons, zombies, and other undead just phase through the dirt like ghostly apparritions?

Mounds of earth scattering the area would be nice to see considering I don't believe magic just sweeps up ALL the details under the rug.

Garwain

2011-05-23, 03:14 AM

Lets try something new...
here's the challenge: you have to rank 'types' of powers so that a conversion chart can be created. Think a basic 1-10 scale, decimals included. theres 6 different general lumps of power types: 1)Enhancements (ie transformations and buffs), 2) attack powers (ie straight damage dealing powers, ranged and melee are lumped together to avoid favoritism), 3) agro powers (both increases and decreases), 4) summons, 5) status effect powers (ie slow, stun, silence, etc), and 6) regen's (heals or bumps in regeneration to both health and mana).
now, the powers dont have to balance eachother or end up on an even or whole number or anything silly like that, but they do have represent the strength of said powers in your mind. For example, if you feel that status effect powers are far more powerful than standard attack powers then you might put attacks at 1, and status effects at 4, you might feel that buffs are just below status effects and put them a 3.5. Keep the focus on ranking these powers in the general sense, ignore specifics. as for a reference point in powers, just list the mmo(s) that you're thinking of when you respond to this. Theres no wrong answer to this, just list your thoughts.

I based my ranking of powertypes with the straight forward Attack powers as baseline because they are easy to understand and straightforward for every type of player to use. It makes you hit harder.
Other types of powers that require more thought, more situational awareness, more cunning, deserve a higher rating and more power because it encourages to not simply "whack with the biggest stick you found". My insight based on playing Dofus, WoW, DDO and Dragon's Call.

The ranking:
3 - Enhancements: While certainly an important aspect of the fun, enhancements should give the experienced/tactical player that edge which a normal player doesn't have. Not gamebreaking, but just that bit more.

4 - Agro Powers: A bit lower rated than attack powers as controlling the aggro is a subtle play that can affect the outcome of a battle, but shouldn't be decissive. Yes, you need a way to get out harms way or protect your friends, but that's only situational.

5 - Attack Powers: As a xplained above. Rated 5 as basis.

5.4 - Regens: I assume here that you mean all self preservation powers like heals, health regen, mana regen, damage reduction, armor or magic shield etc. Managing your resources (health-mana-ammo) is important in battle and can lead to failure if not done properly. While certainly powerfull, I would rate the defensive side not necessarily higher than the offensive side.

5.6 - Summons: Summons ofthen increases your effectiveness, but requires more complex instructions. Player should be rewarded in effectiveness for managing more complex situation.

7 - Status Effects: The overall effectiveness of status effects can be decissive. It's the strategical tool that seperates the good from the very good. A small status effect might not seem worth it for the regular player, but will be valued highly by the seasoned player.

Yardo

2011-05-24, 07:41 PM

Let me list a few thing of games I have played in the past.

The first MMO I played was UO, and the system where you did not have levels and could change you character to what ever class you liked, was really nice. It removed the need for alts, mostly. Also, the idea that crafting was really important, not something of a time waster. Player crafted items were really good, if not the best you could get. Then there was the volunteer team, where they gave a group of players extra tools, so they could make world events etc, that was really great.

Then there was DAoC. What I liked of that was the large group actions there were. It took a lot of people to do Legion or Dragon runs. That gave it a real MMO feeling. And the RvR part of it was also really good.

Anyone remember Horizons? Where you had to work together, gathering recourses, to rebuild parts of the world, towns, bridges, etc? Something to work together and give you an idea that your actions have an effect on the world.

Spinoza

2011-05-25, 11:52 AM

Anasazi - I'm actually shocked the percentage was that low. I was under the impression it was closer to 80%. Nevertheless if you control 62% of the money spent on a particular market then your definitely king of the hill. Thanks for confirming that Anasazi.

Erloas - There is a game called 'Eve' you might want to check out

I'm being needlessly obtuse so I'll try to remedy that. RPG's basically come down to slaying the dragon and finding the treasure. The more interesting you can make that experience the better off you will be. The problem with MMO's is that the first M dooms the combat to become boorishly repetitive. So the next big thing in MMO's is to marry an actioney combat system like in the latest Devil May Cry or God of War or Soul Calibur to a persuasive RPG system and tie it to together in an interesting new World to explore. The problem is you can't have a 1000 people on a server all able to interact and incorporate that with a twitchy actioney combat system. There's just too much lag to make it feel like a God of War or Ninja Gaiden experience. The solution is to remove the first M. That doesn't mean you can't have a massively multiplayer game. You just can't have them all sharing the same server at one time. I'll leave it up to the game designers to create a massively multiplayer experience while not having everyone on the same server but the problems of doing that and the problem of creating that new world experience when you’re not all on the same server seem to pale in comparison to trying to create interesting actioney combat on a server that incorporates 1000’s of people.

So to answer your question Anasazi...give me good actioney combat with a good RPG system. I have yet to see it done on a massively multiplayer scale.

(There have been some recent notable attempts at this. DDO..DC Universe come to mind but still come no where near getting the feel of actioney combat right.)

Kislath

2011-05-25, 12:13 PM

I don't like lengthy escort missions, especially when escorting slowpokes and idiots. Missions where I have to don a disguise ( losing all my magical bonuses with my own clothes ) aren't exactly my favorites, either.

Xondoure

2011-05-25, 09:11 PM

Spinoza

2011-05-26, 06:10 AM

Xondoure

2011-05-27, 12:16 AM

Thanks for the info Xondoure...I checked it out and it does seem to suggest that actioney combat. It begs the question how is the backend of the game setup?

How is the game balance. Class balance becomes even more difficult when DPS depdends largely on player skill. Can you dodge or block attacks? Is the combat system use random numbers at all or is it..if your aim is on target then you hit.

Have you played Demon Souls? Can you compare combat between the two?

I have not played Demon Souls, and I only played early levels as a mage. But I can say this: you move slightly slower than in most games to account for lag although there is a speed stat and I think archers move faster. You can dodge enemy attacks and in fact sort of have to if you aren't playing a healer or a tank because you don't really regenerate health outside of towns and abilities. There is a bit of a random number thing but its not as huge and damage depends more on setting up killer attacks when the enemy reveals a weakness (after a charge for instance) or you have time to charge an attack for devestating effect. Around 4th level I got an energy ball I could charge for up to three seconds which was hugely helpful against these swarms of wild boar as one shot would take out half and leave the rest to drop like flies.
Anyways the game is already out in Korea and has gotten solid reviews. My only issue with it is the world is very unoriginal and other than the combat it brings nothing engaging. Of course, the combat might be enough but I'll have to play it more first.

Anasazi

2011-05-27, 01:42 AM

kis- yet another great addition, we're with you on the escort missions.

spinoza- I know what you're saying about bringing back the rpg element into the fold, I whole heartly agree that the mmo market needs that. However, to remove the massive world element, large realms, and the ability to hook up with players from all over the world doesnt solve any problems within the MMO genre, it mearly redirects whatever you're putting together into a different genre altogether. removing the mentality of the development staff that mmo's have to be strung out with stories and characters that only exist on the surface is the thing to take away from there. In that regard, we're right there with you and agree thats one of the things the market needs.

yardo - thanks for your thoughts, we're curious to hear your outlook on our 'challenges'. also, we remember almost everything :) horizons had some great music, although the whole dragon thing was a bit on the overhyped scale, we were not fond of the eq quality graphics though. theres so many things that can either make or break a game, any development staff working on an mmo has to be extra careful.

mecha - like all things there are do's and dont's of the gaming genre, to be honest, i dont think any development staff gets together and says 'hey, lets creating some boring npc's for the pc's to talk with', but time is an element thats hard to measure until in the thick of creation. after a certain point, retcon'ing older conversations go overlooked by the fanbase and tend not to be worth the time. great clear points you made there and we appreciate it.

garwain- thanks for participating in our first thought challenge. some of my team used standard attacks as the base value also.

Alright, lets hop to 'Thought Challenge 2':
Where and when do you think its functional, appropriate, enjoyable, annoying and destructive to generate different base speeds for players? (such as player x moves at 1.0, while player y moves at 1.2, and player z moves at 0.5; is there change because of carrying load, class, etc? what makes sense, what hinders gameplay? what else is important in the matter of player movement speed? what other modifiers would make an enjoyable or hateful presence?)

Eldan

2011-05-27, 05:23 AM

I think different base movement speeds would be a problem whenever an entire party has to travel overland to one objective. After all, if, say, the Ranger can run to the Caves of Certain and Quite Horrible Death with Spikes Everywhere in half the time it takes the fighter, no one will want to take a fighter along.
Perhaps use a kind of sprint mechanic instead, where some classes can run faster for a limited amount of time, say, to run away from an enemy?

ShinyRocks

2011-05-27, 05:41 AM

Erloas

2011-05-27, 09:24 AM

Base movement speed needs to be the same for all players.
As already mentioned, anything else doesn't work in PvP because its impossible to balance. You might, just might, be able to balance with ranged classes being a little bit slower then melee classes, but it would also mean its opposite of what everyone expects, with the lighter armored people being slower. The other way around and melee classes would be kited forever and never have a chance to win against a reasonable player.

As for PvE, in combat against monsters its not going to make an appreciable difference, I couldn't see it being worth the effort to do. And no one is going to want to wait around for the slow guy because he picked the short race or the armored class. Its already hard enough to keep groups together over long distances. It might work strictly in PvE if you had a mount early on that standardized travel speed and had different movement speeds for combat.

Weight, and bag limits in general, are just annoying. I've never found a game in any genre* where carry limits enhanced the game play. If you don't want players carrying around piles and piles of junk, don't make enemies drop piles and piles of junk, find a more fitting means of wealth generation. The only time weight limits I felt worked reasonable well was in DAOC because it was never an issue except with crafting (which didn't require much movement anyway) and siege weapons and it was specifically done so pretty much only certain classes could carry siege and to limit the amount of siege that could be in a raiding force.

*the only genre it works is with space sims because then its part of the trading mechanics of the game, and trading simply wouldn't work without limits on carry capacity

Spinoza

2011-05-27, 09:59 AM

I have not played Demon Souls, and I only played early levels as a mage. But I can say this: you move slightly slower than in most games to account for lag although there is a speed stat and I think archers move faster. You can dodge enemy attacks and in fact sort of have to if you aren't playing a healer or a tank because you don't really regenerate health outside of towns and abilities. There is a bit of a random number thing but its not as huge and damage depends more on setting up killer attacks when the enemy reveals a weakness (after a charge for instance) or you have time to charge an attack for devestating effect. Around 4th level I got an energy ball I could charge for up to three seconds which was hugely helpful against these swarms of wild boar as one shot would take out half and leave the rest to drop like flies.
Anyways the game is already out in Korea and has gotten solid reviews. My only issue with it is the world is very unoriginal and other than the combat it brings nothing engaging. Of course, the combat might be enough but I'll have to play it more first.

Xondoure: I’ll definitely check it out some more but the fact that you said they slowed things down so you can’t feel the lag does not sound promising to me. Even with actioney combat you need to have a good character development system and an interesting world to explore. So your other comment doesn’t sound all that great as well.

Anasazi : Hmmm…you’re really not getting what I am saying. Essentially what you are doing is competing against WoW on their own paradigm. You’re not going to win that fight. Unless you’re backed by Sony or Microsoft or Apple or some other deep pockets organization slight improvement over the WoW experience is not going to drive a significant number of players to your game. You have two choices at that point shift the paradigm that you are competing with them with on or go for a niche.

This is the next logical next step in the MMO paradigm, go play Demon Souls..go play Soul Calibur, make an MMO where combat is the marriage of those two systems. That’s a huge paradigm shift than what we currently have in MMOs. Right now in MMO’s are essentially a sim where control of your character is like flight instrumentation. I can easily show a person how to control his avatar then cover up the top half of his screen and have him engage 2 or 3 mobs and very easily defeat all of them simply by using the display below. Contrast that with combat in Demon Souls. If I covered the top half of the screen and engaged two creatures in Demon Souls I would be ripped to shreds. Once you have a game engine that is capable of creating that type of actioney combat then build your MMO world and system around that. Then you have something new that has a chance of becoming king of the hill.

I also understand the gravitas of what I am saying to you. I’m essentially telling you to scrap your current game architecture and start over. I understand how you’re invested in what you have now and it’s unlikely
you would start over. I could suggest how you can achieve actioney combat but since starting over is so unappealing I’ll leave it with this. Despite what I said RIFT recently came out and does seem to have gathered a significant player base. They did essentially what you are doing. Basically challenge Blizzard by making a slightly improved experience. If they can keep that base remains to be seen but it seems like the market does have room for more than one pay to play MMO.

Kislath

2011-05-27, 11:08 AM

*ugh* This is what I mean. Already the PvPer's are calling for a nerf. I say let armor, agility, strength and class actually mean something for a change. A rogue should be able to outrun a warrior, but he can't take the warrior's hits.

ShinyRocks

2011-05-27, 12:02 PM

Ha! I'm miles from being a PVPer. I'm just not convinced that different base speeds are a good idea.

Ooh, here's an idea. I'm assuming that on level up, you get to distribute points rather than WoW style (for example), 'You gain this many points in whatever'.

It could be the case that some classes - rogues and archers say, gain more speed for each point spent than do, say, warriors and clerics. Every point spent gives 1 speed rating for a warrior, but 1.25 for a rogue. So rogues tend towards speed but it puts the control with the player.

And of course, a warrior would get 2 hit points for every point spent, as opposed to one for the rogue.

Obviously the scales are to be determined, but I've convinced myself as I post. Classes should benefit more from investing in some areas than others, but the choice is ultimately the player's.

Triaxx

2011-05-27, 01:40 PM

First of all, let's define base speed. That's default speed for walking one mile of game distance for a character considered to have no encumbrance what so ever. So a character wearing a basic shirt and pants.

12 minutes to walk a mile is a rather enthusiastic estimate, but it's possible for a fast walker.

That's the base speed.

Now, if some classes are faster than that, yes, they'll want to rush ahead and no one will want to bring the slower ones along. On the other hand, if some classes are slower those that travel at base speed aren't going to want to bring them along.

So you'll have to decide if you want base speed and combat speed to be separated. Having everyone reaching the fight at the same speed and then moving at differing speeds once the fight starts is fine.

I'd have the option to reach certain destinations by unified travel method is helpful. Say wagons to reach the Cavern of New Warriors.

Kislath

2011-05-27, 03:10 PM

That doesn't sound so bad, actually. I honestly think, though, considering how much people beg for tanks to join them, that cloth-wearing mages and rogues will be willing to wait for the slowpokes. Armor skill would raise speed, too.

Erloas

2011-05-27, 03:42 PM

The main question I have with different movement speeds is: why? What are you gaining by changing the speed? Not to mention that in most cases the person wearing heavy armor is probably also the person in the best shape and could probably outrun their less physically active cohorts even when in said armor. (I know I can outrun my brother with or witout armor, and yes, with me in armor and him out; and how the armor fits has a much larger impact on how fast I can run then anything else, though most people don't have armor on much to know that sort of thing).

In an strategy game I could see it making a gameplay difference that is tangible. In an RPG, not so much. In PvE I couldn't see how it would change how you fight individually or as a group. Maybe in a twitch based game where speed and size make it harder to be hit but at the expense of being weaker in offense and defence.
In cases of traveling, I can see it as nothing but a source of complaints. For the slowest classes on an individual level and by all the faster classes having to wait around for the slower classes in a group setting. From an exploration setting, its just going to lead to people complaining about only being able to explore as class X because they move faster then everyone else.

edit:
I think it would also lead to a very quick class population imbalance. Want to make sure a class isn't played much? make it slower then everything else.

Partysan

2011-05-27, 05:00 PM

Alright, lets see what I can come up with here. I'll start with general things, then go into your specific questions.

Quality instead of Quantity is a motto you can apply on a huge number of things in a game. A lot of my suggestions are based on that. Also, for simplicity's sake I will use standard fantasy examples, you will have to port them yourself.

1. Terrain
I personally have a certain affinity to the faux-underwater style of exotic terrain. Strange plants in exotic colors, flying jellyfish, I think it makes for a kind of mysterious alien beauty. Also interesting are changing or mobile terrains, eg with moving ground parts.
Generally different areas shouldn't be there only to contain different parts of enemies.

2. Real-world vs. Fantasy
Not talking about genres but styles here. Often what already exists might be nicer than what people think of. A good example for this are martial arts in animation. You find a lot of media where the martial artist jumps and whirls around delivering some kind of flying kicks, or where all you can see is flying fists or cuts. This can be cool for a few times, but it will never surpass the sublime beauty of the real arts. Just watch the episode "The Firebending Masters" of Avatar and see how simple basic movements can be beautiful. Heck, watch the whole show.
This also goes into the exotic terrain aspect. The real world provides examples of things utterly alien to us. Lovecraft's monsters are partly based on mollusks. The mixture of familiar and alien, and of reality and fantasy, is what makes things cool.

3. Crafting
I have a soft spot for crafting. But I utterly dislike the way it is handled in WoW and its derivatives. Searching for ore veins or similar things isn't what bugs me. I like that. When I'm on an errand and spot ressources on the way I'm always happy. But the endless repetition and the exclusivity of materials are horrible.
Yes, I know that in the real world you have to practice something very often to master it. But we play games because we want to have fun. Farming ressources for weeks, then crafting 1000 copper short swords to reach the next level so I can craft 3000 bronze short swords (that are all completely worthless and I have to sell them to the NPC for 1cp each) isn't my idea of a nice crafting system. Nor do I think it acceptable that I am a grandmaster of axe-blade forging but can't even make a simple handle for it, and not only that, I have to buy the handle from other players, because I am strictly forbidden to learn anything but my one and only crafting skill and NPCs of course can't sell anything that players can make.
Instead of wildly assigning specific weapons to specific levels of crafting there should be actual meaning in the differences. Continuing the weaponsmith example, a weapon could have different types of blades. curved blades could have better criticals, or inflict bleeding. Straight blades could have better armor penetration or parry better. Then different handles could have different qualities. Extras like barbed hooks are possible. Of course the player has to journey and learn all those from the masters, or find ancient weapons to study. Then maybe they can be improved or even combined. Quests might give access to special blade/handle/etc forms. In the end there are different kinds of weapon parts that have properties and are combined together to make a weapon which is suited for a specific purpose, perhaps against a specific enemy, for dueling, against shields or what have you.
And of course materials will matter a great deal. Different metals have different properties. Maybe even the wood and coal for the fire will influence the outcome (temperature, but let's not overdo it). Rare metals have better properties, but you have to find the veins. Maybe you can make alloys to combine different metals. Of course some are special, maybe allowing to attack incorporal enemies.
In short: give it a meaning! Levels are just numbers. Choices matter.

4. Fighting
While it is the most convenient to program, fighting by wittling down HP is not the most interesting. Much more exciting (and realistic) is having the actual hits being what counts. Active defenses should be more important. Just standing there and activating your abilities until the HP is gone can only go so far, even if there are stuns and DoTs and you have to dodge the firebreath from time to time. Why not run around the giant and cut his tendons? Why not use fire to blind him?
Why not have a duel consist of parries, feints and dodges, counters and ripostes? Why not make hits matter?

5. Emcumbrance (your question about speeds)
I don't think speed should be a matter of class, I don't like classes anyway. It might however be a matter of encumbrance or stats. Armor vs Speed is a valid tactical choice to make and having people in heavier armor be slower is generally not unthinkable. There are some things to ponder, though. What if the fast ranged combatant meets a heavily armored one? Is the slower one without chance? Or can one not hurt, the other one not reach the enemy? If players will generally specialize in one way to go about in skills and equipment such things can be more problematic than one would think. But I'm not opposed to the idea.
Now about encumbrance by carrying a lot of stuff in your backpack, how about NOT making us carry a lot of stuff? All these worthless items dropped by whatever monsters filling up our inventories for some silver pieces, then the weak weapons and armor pieces, I already said it: make things matter and reduce their number.

Anasazi

2011-05-28, 02:24 AM

Spin:

Anasazi : Hmmm…you’re really not getting what I am saying. Essentially what you are doing is competing against WoW on their own paradigm. You’re not going to win that fight. Unless you’re backed by Sony or Microsoft or Apple or some other deep pockets organization slight improvement over the WoW experience is not going to drive a significant number of players to your game. You have two choices at that point shift the paradigm that you are competing with them with on or go for a niche.

This is the next logical next step in the MMO paradigm, go play Demon Souls..go play Soul Calibur, make an MMO where combat is the marriage of those two systems. That’s a huge paradigm shift than what we currently have in MMOs. Right now in MMO’s are essentially a sim where control of your character is like flight instrumentation. I can easily show a person how to control his avatar then cover up the top half of his screen and have him engage 2 or 3 mobs and very easily defeat all of them simply by using the display below. Contrast that with combat in Demon Souls. If I covered the top half of the screen and engaged two creatures in Demon Souls I would be ripped to shreds. Once you have a game engine that is capable of creating that type of actioney combat then build your MMO world and system around that. Then you have something new that has a chance of becoming king of the hill.

I also understand the gravitas of what I am saying to you. I’m essentially telling you to scrap your current game architecture and start over. I understand how you’re invested in what you have now and it’s unlikely
you would start over. I could suggest how you can achieve actioney combat but since starting over is so unappealing I’ll leave it with this. Despite what I said RIFT recently came out and does seem to have gathered a significant player base. They did essentially what you are doing. Basically challenge Blizzard by making a slightly improved experience. If they can keep that base remains to be seen but it seems like the market does have room for more than one pay to play MMO.

Actually Spin, I did get what you were saying, but you seemed to have missed several of the pieces of information that I've dropped about the project, such as the fact that we are in fact shooting for a niche, and we're not going for a slightly modified version of wow. With that said though, regardless on if you're shooting for a niche market, you're still competing with the other games in the genre. This is specifically true to mmo's as their fundamental shared point is the ability to connect to large groups of people at any time regardless of where you are. People only have some much time/money to invest in such things and thus tend to limit their playing experience. You might have 50 games for your console but there’s a pretty good chance that you're not paying subscription fees more for than 2 mmo's at a time.
As far as the next generation that you're suggesting, you're actually referring to a subgenre. You see, what many refer to as the mmo market is actually the genre of mmorpg. that second half, the 'rpg' is crucial to the conversation. now, not all mmo's are rpg's, but the vast majority of the ones that remain popular are and that’s why the slang has stuck. That genre of mmorpg indicates the game as a massively multiplayer online version of role playing games. Comparing a mmorpg to a fighter like soul cal isn’t exactly a good basis for reference… comparing them to demons souls is doable because that is an rpg. Every game has its own style of combat system; most of the mmo's share some basis with each other because history has taught the production companies that if you want to succeed in the online community you need to work on things like that so long as you're bound to the mmorpg genre. even further than that is the subgenre of the mmorpg, ie action-adventure like wow, or space sim like eve online. this is a reference point to illustrate style of play. so eventually their might exist an mmorpg-fighter... knowing how many mmo's the koreans pump out I'd be surprised if there wasn’t already one, but I certainly don’t think that’s the next generation that I'm talking about.
Next generation in the past has always meant advancement in technology. Video technology and upgrades has almost always been an indicator of which generation of games you're playing, as video graphics is a good measure of how fast technology grows. But more than that, with updated graphics comes other updated hardware; motherboards with new sockets, ram and processors with faster clock speeds, new standards for data transfer methods and speeds, etc etc. technologies like cloud computing are leading the way in allowing high end processed combined with low end client end parts, even advancements in VR(which is pretty much a stand still these days) and more common advancements like 3D are becoming the next stream of advancements. In fact, I'd be surprised if the next gen mmo's dont account for the 3D software and hardware functioning that nvidia and ati are starting to throw into their devices. Its all about player emersion when it comes to the 'next generation.' and thats just what the public gets to hear about, step behind some closed door board meetings of technology companies and you'll hear some truly fantastical things.

Now, we know our game won’t compete with wow on its numbers; we were never delusional to think it would. The fact is, it’s not up to the competitors of Blizzard to take over its rein. WoW was an overnight success because there was a high demand for someone to pick up the pieces that SOE had just dropped. The fact that it had its own fanbase ready to hop on the boat didn’t hurt either. These days, there’s exactly 2 demands on the market... 1) the demand of the players that are content with wow and to keep it going, and 2) the group of people who can’t afford or dislike wow altogether and continue to look for new games. Until the real demand for the people in group 1 become members of group 2, its unlikely that wow will be dethroned unless they either screw up royally, or in a few years after they finish the next (and final according to blizzard) expansion and the fanbase begins looking at transferring to wow2 or onto other things. This set of outcome is pretty easily to spot; major fanbase projects have already taken their shot at the king and failed. Star Trek, Star Wars (and by the end of the year Lucas will have attempted it twice), DC, LotR, DnD, SOE... all failures.
As for RIFT... we've seen this before, it’s the shiny new toy on the market and all the kiddies must have it. It’s in your minds and on the tip of the tongue of every non-wow gamer... oh yes… we've seen this before.

Awesome responses everyone, we love hearing everyone’s unique perspectives and they've been the cause of some lively debates between my team and I. Let’s keep it going with another Thought Challenge, just remember that there’s nothing stopping you from answering an older TC with a new opinion.

Thought Challenge 3:
Let’s really delve into the thick of it... What keeps you returning to your favorite games? Maybe it’s not even your favorite game, and you have no reason to keep returning to playing it, and yet… you still do. What games seem to have that hold over you, the ones that you could put down for a few years and then return to and enjoy it just as if it was day one again? and why?

Triaxx

2011-05-28, 05:55 AM

@Erloas: The reason for the differences in speed is the flow of combat. A thief who's two jobs are kiting the enemies and doing lots of damage, needs more speed than a tank who needs to absorb as much damage as possible, but can use ranged taunting abilities to do it.

A thief who can run in, cause a lot of damage, and then lure the enemy into striking range of the tank so the tank can take off the heat is a very dangerous one.

A mage might need more speed than the tank, but can gain it through temporary means, such as magic. So they might stay at base speed, but move faster through use of spells to get them out of reach of enemies that they've aggro'd by dropping massive damage on them.

The cleric doesn't really need speed unless he's got only touch range healing/resurrection, in which case the mage can probably give him a boost.

A druid might go all three ways. Faster in a DPS form, slower in a tank form, and average in a normal human form.

All of this affects the flow of combat. Do you want to bring the fight to the enemies, or bring them to you. If your tanks have found a place to set up where the enemies can't get through, then you'll want to bring the fight to you, so you need fighters fast enough to out run the enemies.

If you can't find a place to set up, you need some warriors that you can slowly advance behind.

TC3: Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, Fallout Tactics, X3:Terran Conflict, Freelancer, Baldur's Gate 1&2, Icewind Dale 1&2.

Why these? These are games that are simple to get into. They don't require a lot of heavy thought to start playing. But they have hidden depths, unplumbed by the casual player.

But as you explore deeper, and deeper into the game you find layer, after layer, after layer, after layer of meat.

Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander for example, simple way is simply to build. En Masse. More and more and more units. Just fling them by the thousands into the breach.

Then you find that if you do that, you'll eventually get killed by such tactics as going around the stream of units. And you'll learn. Then you'll see that dividing that huge flow of units can easily make getting around them a real frustration. Then the tactics to counter it change. The enemy sends those same huge groups back at you so you have to alter your tactics.

Each layer uncovers another.

Kislath

2011-05-28, 09:55 AM

AH! You finally asked the REAL question! Here's the answer--> replayability.
I have a LOT of ideas for this one, but can only make tiny posts like this one. One BIG one? Make quests solvable in different ways so each class can do something in its own way.

Xondoure

2011-05-28, 12:11 PM

The Mass Effect series. The third one hasn't even come out yet and I can gurantee I'll be playing all of them several times over because the story is so compelling. The combat is loads of fun in the second, and is what got me hooked to begin with, but even though the firsts combat is lacking (imo) it ties into the greater story arc so that I feel compelled to play it through. If you guys can create characters and narrative arcs that the player cares about, and especially if there is more than one resolution to these story arcs you'll capture a lot of interest. That said a skip button or something equivalent is necessary for those players who just like to hack things up.

Interesting gameplay of course makes the whole game more appealing, and its how you make yours stand out in a positive way from the rest that not only has people coming back but new people joining.

As for MMOs that I find replayable... to be honest one has never grabbed my attention in that way. I came back to WoW a few times but only because I had friends playing it, and I could never stick with it. Hopefuly either TOR or TERA will change that for me, for either Bioware level writing, or actual action combat. A few things that could help would be to make the leveling process interesting and fun so that no one gets burnt out just making it to endgame. And including lots of alternative paths such as exploration and crafting that offer a more horizontal progression.

MechaKingGhidra

2011-05-30, 09:18 PM

Alright, lets hop to 'Thought Challenge 2':
Where and when do you think its functional, appropriate, enjoyable, annoying and destructive to generate different base speeds for players? (such as player x moves at 1.0, while player y moves at 1.2, and player z moves at 0.5; is there change because of carrying load, class, etc? what makes sense, what hinders gameplay? what else is important in the matter of player movement speed? what other modifiers would make an enjoyable or hateful presence?)

My personal summary is pretty bland but here it is:

1) Character Wealth: When not using a banking system, I used to be of the opinion that all that copper, silver, gold, and platininum would make sense to hinder one's movement.

However, it just got depressingly tedious after a while, even with pen-and-paper RPGs like D&D. The barter system does NOT work so well in MMOs due to the clearly outlined fact that people will use varying amounts of base materials for such an array of reasons that money is (arguably) the only thing which is solid and dependable, regardless of artificial inflation.

So...yeah, monetary wealth plus accounting for weight/speed values is a big no-no.

I understand that this first point many, if not most, would deem it quite obvious. However, I felt I'd elaborate on the 'why' of me feeling this way. Some people honestly forget exactly what it is about certain things that they take one stance or another on the topic. :smalltongue:

2) Armor Class Categories: I may be very well stuck in the opinion that D&D handled this exceptionally well.

a) Different types of light, medium and heavy armor affecting movement because of the imagined amount of flexibility they would provide (chainmail versus full-plate and the like) is a time-honored tradition and for good reason. It works.

b) Another thing I loved was the material components used to craft armor. Mithril (should it exist in one's setting) is better than steel, a rare beast's hide greater than your run-of-the-mill wildlife's, etc. While admittedly it can influence a game's economy if used in excess or for items obviously superior (as stat correlation is pretty typical territory to share with rare materials in regards to armor), if used in moderation it can be fun.

If someone simply cannot get ahold of the materials needed, they shouldn't have to feel "punished". Minor movement convenience and *maybe* (I stress that oh-so-very-much) a very tiny stat bonus should be able to be largely ignored if the player so chooses without thinking along the lines of 'what could have been....'

It's these qualities that I love the D&D system for simply because of the flexibility involved. There will always be trade-offs while using such ideas and in an MMO I feel that it would provide more reasons to not go for a, more or less, carbon-copy clone of the next person of 'x' class. :smallconfused:

3) Carrying Capacity Performance: Movement being slightly hindered based on sheer weight of equipment and carried goods is really the only exception I can honestly make for D&D having a difficult time converting to MMO standards.

I believe that weight impeding speed potential should be capped at a certain point. One-quarter of one's average speed with nothing impeding them would be my cut-off point, however I know some people who would say to limit it to one-half of maximum speed. It all comes down to what exactly that base land speed is in the first place.

Also, as long as I still have it in my head, try to base fights with speed in mind. No one likes having to dodge a one-hit KO attack when their playstyle more or less depends on them greatly limiting their speed as a trade-off for whatever else they wanted to accomplish.

Or, rather, don't base TOO many things on it. It's really difficult to try and judge ideas like this when we don't know as much as we'd like to on your basic design plan but oh well, that's too bad for us, eh? :smallwink:

4) Movement of Classes: Err...shaky territory for me to venture out to discuss upon but I can give it the ol' college try (though I've never BEEN to college....hardy har har :smallamused:).

I want to say everyone should be on even footing at the start, regardless of if they play a cleric, battle-raider, engineer, or whatever else you may have planned.

But...umm, not sure how to put this without seeming one too far one way or the other. Specializing *within* those base classes should probably be something to take concern of. A mage who spends all of their time holed up studying a special type of magic isn't going to be as capable as another mage who is not stressed with learning whatever taboo magic that the other one is and actually has free time to meander about as they wish.

Hey, not the best example but I did say it's shaky territory for me.

Edit:

5) Terrain: The lay of the land and you. Be it trekking through the bush, climbing a rocky mountain trail, or just running across the plains, I cannot believe I honestly forgot one of the most important aspects to moving.

While in MMOs it is not as great to include something like this, it's still something that I believe should have use made of for specific quests, fights, or even just travelling to areas you otherwise shouldn't be at unless you really want to rough it without the use of flying mechanics.

Example:
Swampy areas would bog people down (sorry for that one, my day has been quite pun-ny) if they didn't want to take the winding path already cleared out.

Also, while we're here, a bonus would be creatures waiting for people to do this before attacking. While aggro radius is a complicated thing to really administer because there are certainly limits, games like WoW which have monsters run up to you while you're on a well-travelled bridge is plausible but more annoying than anything. An alligator is typically not going to chase you when you haven't set foot in the water unless you are really close to the edge or has a good chance of making you panic and flee into a different (but nearby) body of water that it can easily take advantage of.

Sorry, kinda got distracted on that last point there, but it was there in the back of my head.

MechaKingGhidra

2011-05-30, 11:56 PM

Thought Challenge 3:
Let’s really delve into the thick of it... What keeps you returning to your favorite games? Maybe it’s not even your favorite game, and you have no reason to keep returning to playing it, and yet… you still do. What games seem to have that hold over you, the ones that you could put down for a few years and then return to and enjoy it just as if it was day one again? and why?

Well, re-playability is one of those things that can be interpretated a multitude of different ways so I'm just going to go over merely a few of them.

Some people think of it as you can make deliberate choices on the same or new characters you create because you thought 'hey, wouldn't it be neat if...?' and then find they can keep themselves entertained with experimentation.

Some people go with the 'it doesn't get old' in that doing the exact same tasks is comforting because what they did the first time around is well-balanced or otherwise to their preferences.

1) I like to go with the ideal of people having their personal taste change over the years. I used to be all about smashing heads with a giant mace and now I tend to favour the 'make it up as I go along' magic tactics. A few years down the line it might be buffing people from the sidelines and raining arrows in-between for all I know.

With this personal taste changing, it would be necessary for a game to have a deeply constructed system of how one can go about playing their class/role.

Example:

Maybe a tinkerer that can choose from making and maintaining a single large golem for pseudo-tanking and/or damage-dealing purposes, constructing a small array of more balanced personal guards, or amassing a fleet of tiny machinations which hamper enemy movement, blinding them to reduce accuracy of attacks, and/or whittling away at their health slowly but surely until destroyed by Area-of-Effect attacks or de-activating relatively quickly due to low battery life.

Salvaging parts could be a part of it so long as you recover the components quickly enough before exposure renders them useless. Afterwards, setting up (not the outright construction) new ones *during combat* would be a nice change of pace from games which frown upon even the smallest of time between attacking, healing, kiting, etc.

The point is that, again, there should be enough to a single type of playstyle that it's not just a quick glance and then immediately determining whether or not you'd like it or not based on other aspects of the game you have taken notice of through your previous experience.

Huh... I thought I had a LOT more to say on this but I think everything else I have to offer can just be tied into my one point in some way or another and I don't want to repeat myself any further than I'm sure I have already by this point.

*****((Sorry for the double post. I just haven't kept up on this thread and when I noticed the third thought challenge after going back through this thread, I wanted my thoughts separated from one another more clearly so I could better see things in case I made a train-wreck of a mistake as well as not have everything just blend in together as a sea of paragraphs.))*****

Partysan

2011-05-31, 06:00 PM

Kislath

2011-06-01, 06:36 AM

Oh, and it would be nice to have a player house. We could use a place to store our extra stuff that we know we'll need someday but don't want to clog bank slots holding.

TheSummoner

2011-06-01, 10:31 AM

Oh, and it would be nice to have a player house. We could use a place to store our extra stuff that we know we'll need someday but don't want to clog bank slots holding.

Yeah, sounds nice on paper. Then you're forced to either devote obscene areas of ingame space or instance it, begging the question of how 603,218 houses can all fit on the same plot of land.

It may well in a singleplayer or even small scale multiplayer game, but it is a terrible idea in a MMO. Its really nothing more than a money sink anyways, and not even a subtle one.

Erloas

2011-06-01, 11:01 AM

I thought DAOC's housing was fairly well done. It wasn't instanced, but it wasn't normal game area either. And while it was technically a money sink, it wasn't really that big of one. In fact I had left money on my house to pay rent and it was something like 2-3 years after I quit paying before I finally got the email saying my house didn't have enough money to pay rent. Of course I had the smaller house size.

The individual houses were ok as extra storage and as a place to sell stuff (I found the static merchant system 100x better then auction houses... I hate auction houses) but they tended to not get a lot of use. Guild houses however were great. It gave the guild a quick and easy place to meet and I thought a much better feeling of community and made the guild seem like more then just another chat channel. It was also great when the guild could put up a new (and fairly rare) trophy. It actually meant something when there was only maybe 6 dragon head trophies on the server and your guild had one of them.
And having all of the stuff necessary to craft was nice because a crafter could log on and make something for another guild member in a reasonable amount of time rather then having to run all over the place to find the merchants and items necessary to craft.

And money sinks are a good thing, especially when they are voluntary and mostly superficial, because game inflation is always a problem. The term MUDflation has been around longer then the term MMO, and yet the problem is still happening in every game, some are just worse then others.

Xondoure

2011-06-01, 12:54 PM

Housing is fun, and a lot of MMO players live for it. Instancing it is probably for the best though.

TheSummoner

2011-06-01, 01:48 PM

ShinyRocks

2011-06-01, 02:28 PM

Well, you could always have it instanced as The Residential District or something; it's instanced, but the conceit is that you go straight to your house when you enter the district. Just a slightly more sensible way of doing it.

Seerow

2011-06-01, 04:01 PM

Yes, money sinks are necessary in MMO's, however I believe they should be fairly subtle and in my experience, player owned housing isn't. I also can't stand the fridge logic that comes with thousands of players being able to have a home on the same plot of land due to it being instanced (and not instancing it is even worse for obvious reasons).

What's wrong with something in the middle though? For example you have something like a couple hundred stand alone houses scattered throughout the game in suburbs and such, that only one person at a time can own, they start off with some really high cost, and after that can be bought and sold between players (if a player buys a house then doesn't log in for X time, it goes up for auction automatically), but then for the rest of the people you have apartments set up in major cities, where you can have hundreds of people in a single apartment building, which is instanced. You still want to have more than one apartment building per city, but having say a 5-10 in every major city, and maybe 1 in the smaller cities, should be doable. That way you don't have to suspend disbelief to think "Holy **** there's 5,000,000 houses here", but everyone can have some form of housing if they want it, and indeed has a strong potential to make a city feel alive.

Speaking of making the city feel alive, that sort of thing feeds back into the idea of a living evolving world I mentioned several pages back. Say as players buy more houses in a city, NPCs start moving out, and going to other cities, because it's getting too crowded. Or cities actually get bigger and more impressive, the more people who make their home there. It also kind of addresses the "There's only like 10 houses in this whole damn city, how is this a city?" problem that pretty much all video games ever face.

Basically there's a lot more cool stuff you can do with the concept than just "I want to decorate a house and have some extra storage space"

TheSummoner

2011-06-01, 06:35 PM

What's wrong with something in the middle though? For example you have something like a couple hundred stand alone houses scattered throughout the game in suburbs and such, that only one person at a time can own, they start off with some really high cost, and after that can be bought and sold between players (if a player buys a house then doesn't log in for X time, it goes up for auction automatically)

Thats even worse... NEVER introduce items of finite supply into a system where money is in infinite supply. Do you have any idea how much inflation those hypothetical houses would experience?

Lets say the average gold of an endgame player is 100. And before the players all buy them, before they are all owned, the game sells these houses for 1,000... or 10,000... or 100,000 any amount, take your pick. Because money is theoretically infinite, as soon as the initial supply of homes has been bought out (and regardless of price, it will happen eventually), the owners can charge any ridiculous amount they want for them. And. They. Will. Get. It.

Player X buys a home for 10,000 gold when they're being sold by the game. Two or three years later, he decides he doesn't need it anymore. It's just a novelty afterall... Or maybe he wants to buy some super powerful and rare item and needs big money fast... He'll just sell the thing for a few hundred million gold and he can buy anything he wants.

...but then for the rest of the people you have apartments set up in major cities, where you can have hundreds of people in a single apartment building, which is instanced. You still want to have more than one apartment building per city, but having say a 5-10 in every major city, and maybe 1 in the smaller cities, should be doable. That way you don't have to suspend disbelief to think "Holy **** there's 5,000,000 houses here", but everyone can have some form of housing if they want it, and indeed has a strong potential to make a city feel alive.

Speaking of making the city feel alive, that sort of thing feeds back into the idea of a living evolving world I mentioned several pages back. Say as players buy more houses in a city, NPCs start moving out, and going to other cities, because it's getting too crowded. Or cities actually get bigger and more impressive, the more people who make their home there. It also kind of addresses the "There's only like 10 houses in this whole damn city, how is this a city?" problem that pretty much all video games ever face.

Basically there's a lot more cool stuff you can do with the concept than just "I want to decorate a house and have some extra storage space"

I suppose it depends on setting... I was assuming pseudo mideval fantasy world, where such a thing would feel out of place (IMO). In a more modern or futuristic setting, apartment blocks are a reasonable way to work it. Still, doing it that way would have to limit the size of the homes to justify them actually being apartments...

As for cool stuff you can do with the concept other than "I want to decorate a house and have some extra storage space," I'd like to hear a few... From the perspective of what does the player get from it in particular...

(Oh... if it was a space setting, you could just have it be the inside of the player's ship... That would justify there being hundreds of thousands of them I suppose...)

Triaxx

2011-06-01, 07:45 PM

I suppose it depends on the game. A high-sci game can get away by using a transporter to take to a piece of real-estate not in the game world.

Fantasy games can use a magic portal to take you to a pocket dimension.

Instancing is all in the presentation.

Xondoure

2011-06-01, 07:56 PM

Kislath

2011-06-02, 12:45 AM

If not a house, then please at least give us some form of massive storage space. Another cool thing-- NPC merchants who offer for sale everything they bought from everyone, but for a short time. It's jarring to see a vendor having only what I sold him in stock.

TheSummoner

2011-06-02, 01:08 AM

Banking systems tend to be fairly standard =P

Kislath

2011-06-02, 10:20 AM

Spinoza

2011-06-02, 11:50 AM

Thought Challenge 3:
Let’s really delve into the thick of it... What keeps you returning to your favorite games? Maybe it’s not even your favorite game, and you have no reason to keep returning to playing it, and yet… you still do. What games seem to have that hold over you, the ones that you could put down for a few years and then return to and enjoy it just as if it was day one again? and why?

1. Interesting World. There is something about exploring an interesting new world that draws you in and makes you want to keep seeing more. This is hard to maintain though but initially this will keep me glued to a game. If you can find the guys who do the art work for Warhammer Chaos...steal'em

2. Interesting Story and Quests. Mass Effect series is an excellent example of this. I hope you have a good writer.

3. Awesome Loot ala Diablo series. Always adventuring to get the bigger better sword of ownage.

4. Interesting game system that is also well balanced. I'm definitely a min/ maxer so this one hits home for me. The system needs to be complex enough that everyone isn’t automatically doing the same thing and balanced enough that one way of doing things isn’t overly better than all the other ways of doing things. It’s really tough to create a system like that so my hats off to anyone who comes up with a good system.

5. Game balance- Let’s just say that if one tactic totally stomps everything else I quickly lose interest in the game.

6. Good gameplay. If you look over the history of video games I'd say the one unifying thing 95% of them has is good gameplay. Pac-man - Super Mario brothers - Sega Hockey - Diablo - Gran Turismo - Call of Duty. I have been stressing this because I think it’s the one area that MMORPGs can have a very large improvement.

Just wanted to say that I didn't get from your previous comments that you are looking at a particular niche market. That kind of changes things, sorry about that. You can't drop a hint at which niche you’re shooting for?

I pretty much agree with everything you said. The only disagreement I think we have is that you see the next gen being achieved by better graphics and sound through new technology. Where is I think better gameplay through more fluid action will be what creates the next level of immersion.

I'm also very curious about your last statement. You say you’re not delusional about competing with WoW on its numbers but then go on to say Star Trek Online, DC, and DnD are all failures and that RIFT is just a shiny new toy. What's your definition of success? What do you hope to happen once you release your game and how many paying customers are you defining as a success?

TheSummoner

2011-06-02, 12:17 PM

Yes, standardly woefully inadequate.
Before we had professions we didn't need much, but now, with runaway auction house prices, we need to be able to hang on to our materials once we find them for extended periods. We need more storage space.

Seems more like you're having issue with a specific implimentation (WoW? Some other game?) of it and not the idea itself.

Kislath

2011-06-02, 01:25 PM

Yeah, that's the case, alright.
Exploding barrels! We gots ta have 'em! They're fun. I don't care if they're rain barrels.
Some mystery & wonder about the world itself is always nice. Today I met a Titan ( in WoW ) for the first time and was totally enthralled, happy to do her evil bidding.

Anasazi

2011-06-03, 01:44 AM

Just wanted to say that I didn't get from your previous comments that you are looking at a particular niche market. That kind of changes things, sorry about that. You can't drop a hint at which niche you’re shooting for?

Its cool, I wish I could drop a hint but there’s no way to hint without going out and saying it, and as indicated, I'm restricted from doing such things.

I'm also very curious about your last statement. You say you’re not delusional about competing with WoW on its numbers but then go on to say Star Trek Online, DC, and DnD are all failures and that RIFT is just a shiny new toy. What's your definition of success? What do you hope to happen once you release your game and how many paying customers are you defining as a success?

Each of those examples was trying to be the 'next big mmo'. Everyone who enters the market tries to make the same claim, with some exception within the free to play submarket mainly because they know they cannot compete with such things financially. I consider each of those failures in the regard that what they set out to do was in fact dethrone the king and take his place. I think of the major ones listed there STO was the only one who knew going into it that they wouldn’t compete (mainly due to the very different fan based markets they share). None of them succeeded in their ultimate 'conquer the mmo world' goal. They're all individually great games. Everything on the market brings a new piece of the puzzle to the world, its what developers do with the information of what the public did with that piece that determines which direction the genre is going. There’s plenty of free-to-play mmo's that I consider successful in what they did, p2p games tend to be more semi focused in their goal so its not really my own measure that I'm rating them on but theirs.
As for what the group hopes to do with this project... you never really can tell what the final goal of a project will be until you finish said project, but you can enter it with a premise and hope to direct the project in that direction. Each of my team has their own premise they're pulling the game into, as do I, so I can't speak to what the project will become. What I can say is that each of my team signed onto the project with the hope that we'll be introducing something new to the market, something it hasn’t seen before, and that that something is already integrated into our project.

To the rest of you:
a) we already have the housing/guild hall/banking system setup so you're welcome to keep discussing it if you'd like, but it wont have any impact on our project.
and b) an addendum (or clarification if you will) on Thought Challenge 3... we're looking for the names of the games that you're referencing also. Thanks to all those that have provided us with their thoughts and keep it up.

Wardog

2011-06-03, 05:31 AM

A random assortment of things I like (or would like to see) in MMO/MUD/CRPG-type games:

NPCs who seem like real people.
In Baldur's Gate, most NPCs could be spoken to, and had a random selection of comments to make - some of which gave clues to quests, or gave background information about the area or world.

In contrast, when I first played WoW, I found the almost complete lack of interaction with most NPCs to be somewhat an immersion-killer. Even more so when I encountered camps of my faction with no interactable NPCs at all, and realized they served no purpose but to be killed by the other faction.

NPCs with their own personalities and conversations (randomized or procedularly generated in the case of the more generic ones) and their own behaviour patterns would make the world a more immersive and interesting place.

(I also find the ability of Joe Noob to wander into the throne-room and start chatting with the King to generally be unrealistic and potentially an immersion breaker. For most rulers, you ought to have earn the right to an audience, either through specific quests or through reaching a sufficient level, otherwise you would be barred entry / dismissed / executed depending on the personality of the ruler).

A crafting system that doesn't require you to make hundreds of useless objects
I don't want to have to make multiple spanners (when I only need one), or multiple weapons of a type that won't sell because they're inferior gear from normal drops or quest rewards, just so I can get my crafting skill up.

I also don't want to have to devote so much time to material gathering that I end up with a lower level and worse gear than if I hadn't bothered trying to craft.

I can think of a few ways round this. Lean-by-doing advancement for crafting skills should be abolished, and either gain "crafting talent points" as you level up, or spend xp or money to increase your crafting skill.

This way you would only have to make things someone actually wanted, and the market wouldn't get so flooded with items that they were worth less than the materials they were made from.

WYSIWYG drops
If a mob is wearing plate armour and carrying a zweihander, then there ought to be plate armour and a zweihander on his corpse when I kill him. Maybe not always (perhaps there sould be a random chance of getting battered plate armour or a broken zweihander that are only useful as vendor trash). But in general, if I see an enemy wielding something I like the look of, I should be able to kill him and take it from him.

No slow stealth
One thing I dislike is stealth modes that reduce your speed. I suppose it may be justifiable on "realism" grounds (you have to tread carefully to avoid making a noise), but I find anything that reduces speed in a game to be annoying. (It's also not necessarily required for realisim - as a lot of stealth will require moving quickly to get past a guard when his back is turned).

If the game has a stealth mode, then it should not impose a speed penalty.

Non-combat stealth options
A lot of stealth-based characters in MMOs and modern CRPGs seem desigend pirmarily for melee combat, but where you use your stealth (or the tank's taunt) to get behind your enemy.

I'd like to have the option for stealth characters to avoid combat entierly. If you need to steal an item that's hidden in the back of a castle, rather than walking in the front like a warrior with a slightly different combat style and killing everyone you meet, you should have the option to sneak past the guards (or climb up the wall, or crawl through a drain or ventilation duct) and bypass all the fighting.

Of course, to avoid getting left behind in loot and xp, you would need an another source instead or as well as simply killing. Maybe the main (or only?) source of xp would be from exploration and completing quests (as in Deus Ex, or the original Witch's Wake mod for Neverwinter Nights).

This could be combined with my earlier suggestion about WYSIWYG loot - you kill someone if you need him dead, or if you want what he has, but otherwise there is no advantage to doing so if you can sneak/bluff/sleep your way past him.

Zones with content for multiple character levels
So you have a reason to return to places you visited previously.

A dynamic world
WAR did this well from a PvP perspective, with forts that could be captured by one side or the other, and which then became quest hubs.

For a PvE version, maybe if the mobs and local bosses in a particular area are killed frequently enough, then they leave to somewhere else (that has seen less player activity), and their former home becomes more civilized. Over time, that area could become a prosperous town and major quest / travel hub. So prosperous that it attracts the attention of increasingly powerful enemies (dragons, giants, etc) that will trash it and return it to its original state unless beaten off by the players.

A day and night cycle that is out of sync with the real world
WoW has a 24-hour day/night cycle. One of the MUDs I used to play on a lot had an 8-hour day/night cycle (so you got three MUD days to one real day).

In both cases, this meant that if you could only play between 9 and 11pm, it was always night in the game (which could be particularly problematic in the MUD, as some areas became too dark to see in, and/or infested with dangerous monsters).

A day and night cycle that is out of sync with the real world would mean that if you could only play at certain times of day, you would be able to experience different aspects of the game world. (How significant this would be would of course depend on what effect the day and night cycle had on the game).

Partysan

2011-06-03, 08:25 AM

Erloas

2011-06-03, 10:11 AM

Each of those examples was trying to be the 'next big mmo'. Everyone who enters the market tries to make the same claim, with some exception within the free to play submarket mainly because they know they cannot compete with such things financially. I consider each of those failures in the regard that what they set out to do was in fact dethrone the king and take his place.
While I think its kind of true, I don't think it is really true. I think its mostly just that that sort of talk is what is expected from any development group. Its hard to get the sort of funding you need for a large project like an MMO if you don't tell the production company you expect it to be really big. You don't get fan interest and buzz by admitting that you are aiming for what may be an interesting game, but ultimately one that isn't better then your competitors, because if your game is better then in theory you should get a better share of the market. Those sort of claims are expected by the people funding the project and the fan base, so developers say them. Ultimately though, if they make a decent profit then they are successful, even if they don't make the most profit ever made by a game of their type. Its really the same with movies and any other form of entertainment.

an addendum (or clarification if you will) on Thought Challenge 3... we're looking for the names of the games that you're referencing also. Thanks to all those that have provided us with their thoughts and keep it up.
In an MMO it always comes down to the people and the community. The MUD I played for years it was because I found some friends and knew both the people to work with and the enemies to watch out for the most. In playing AC, LOTRO, DDO, WoW, EVE (the first time), and WAR I always left because there was never a feeling of community, there was no reason to learn the best people to group with, the enemies (in the case of PvP) to avoid and to cheer over managing to beat. EVE was much better the second time I tried it because I found a good group of people to work with, and a big part of that had to do with it being a 0.0 corp that was part of the large alliance wars as opposed to the safe area corps where working together wasn't necessary to succeed. DAOC I stayed with for 3-4 years all because of the community, because you had to group with people and get to know them in order to advance in the game. You got to learn fairly quickly who were the people you enjoyed working with and who wasn't. Then the rivalries that developed with opposing players, people you would be gunning for first in an encounter and who to avoid. You learned who was likely to give a good fight and who would just sit and camp the zone in points. PvP was vital to keeping the game interesting and to keep things happening. Even going to the same zone at the same time and facing many of the same enemies it was still different from day to day. I just don't think its possible (at least at this point) to get PvE to have the variability of PvP. I also think the expectations change, no one expects to win at PvP all the time, but they do at PvE. In fact if you did manage to make PvE as variable and difficult as PvP is I don't think it would go over very well because people don't want to, and don't expect to, loose very consistently to PvE encounters. I also think one of the things that hurt DAOC later was the fact that with so many buff options it was too easy to advance sololy by having a bot and just grinding out the levels, and while the PBAOE groups weren't the greatest, at least they got people working together again.
As far as I'm concerned MMO = community. Without community and MMO is nothing. And you don't develop a community by allowing people to advance quickly and easily by not working together. Its one thing to be able to grind out levels on your own (questing, exploring, fighting, whatever), its entirely different for that to be the best or even close to the best way to do it. Yes, there is inherent issues with having to work with other players, thats why the bonuses for working with them should out weight the potential issues. In DAOC you might have one day where you get a bad group and spend more time waiting and changing things and re-setting up to where in that one day it may have been better to solo, but then you get other days that are well worth the effort and you get more done with that good group then you could ever hope to do solo (or even with just 1-2 friends, thats another great way to isolate parts of the community, by letting very small groups excel in all situations and never expanding who they interact and play with)

I can think of a few ways round this. Lean-by-doing advancement for crafting skills should be abolished, and either gain "crafting talent points" as you level up, or spend xp or money to increase your crafting skill.
I suppose if you had specific skill points for crafting, and only craft, that this would work. Because it doesn't work (in most games at least, I could see it working in some very specific ones) when you have to pick between crafting and combat when you have a finite amount of skill points to work with. The only problem with that is that then everyone crafts and you'll probably end up with a glut of crafters and make it useless. Maybe if you have a huge number of potential (and probably rather specialized) crafting types then you could have everyone craft and not have too many of any given type.

No slow stealth
One thing I dislike is stealth modes that reduce your speed. I suppose it may be justifiable on "realism" grounds (you have to tread carefully to avoid making a noise), but I find anything that reduces speed in a game to be annoying. (It's also not necessarily required for realisim - as a lot of stealth will require moving quickly to get past a guard when his back is turned).

If the game has a stealth mode, then it should not impose a speed penalty.
This is 100% a balance issue. If there is no combat downside to stealth, and when stealth is only really useful pre-combat or trying to escape combat, then speed is the only thing that really matters, then stealthers will always have the advantage. The point of the speed reduction is usually because you aren't supposed to be sitting in stealth mode for huge amounts of time. Its supposed to be a tactically utilized skill, not just one that you use all the time because you can. And without a speed decrease there is no tactical reason not to use stealth all the time. Its especially important in PvP, but even in PvE if one person has to fight their way through an encounter and someone else can just stealth and run through without a problem at all then the stealther will greatly out pace non-stealth classes in terms of quests, and the leveling, item collection, and wealth collection that comes with it.

Seerow

2011-06-03, 10:53 PM

Thats even worse... NEVER introduce items of finite supply into a system where money is in infinite supply. Do you have any idea how much inflation those hypothetical houses would experience?

Sure, there would be a huge inflation in the value at the start, and people who buy them early will make profit in the long run. But them selling that house isn't producing that money from nowhere. Someone else already had that money in the game to buy it. So you're not wrecking the economy, just transferring what one person has to another. An early entrant into the game will have the advantage in that respect... but there are few games where that isn't the case, and within the first year would more or less normalize itself.

You could even turn that into a money sink though. Throw in 10-20% of the sale price as a closing cost fee, and you actually take out a potentially sizable chunk of money from the game anytime these change hands. Either way, I'm not seeing the problem here. Novelty/Status items are the sorts of things that should be limited to a few.

I suppose it depends on setting... I was assuming pseudo mideval fantasy world, where such a thing would feel out of place (IMO).

Maybe, but boarding house style arrangements have been around since forever. I find it easier to believe a large building housing lots of people than I do 50 small buildings making up the living space of a large city's population.

In a more modern or futuristic setting, apartment blocks are a reasonable way to work it. Still, doing it that way would have to limit the size of the homes to justify them actually being apartments...

Well, I was thinking you have a couple different styles of apartment, the dirt cheap tiny apartment that most people will get (1 or 2 rooms), and a nice mid-size type deal (your typical 1-2 bedroom, cooking area, sitting area, maybe a window overlooking the city), that costs a bit more. Maybe a larger luxury style thing with a cost that increases the more people who have it (to represent demand, while still keeping it unlimited), but that is probably leaning towards to anachronistic. Though in a futuristic setting, definitely a penthouse suite type deal that is basically a whole floor of a building works.

As for cool stuff you can do with the concept other than "I want to decorate a house and have some extra storage space," I'd like to hear a few... From the perspective of what does the player get from it in particular...

I was thinking more from the world building/immersion perspective, like I mentioned cities becoming more prosperous the more people who live there, NPCs picking up and moving elsewhere because a city is getting too crowded, or because another city is doing better business. From the player perspective I can actually see that being somewhat irritating if the NPCs who are moving are important in any way, or if quests get altered based on how developed a given city is... it would definitely be more appealing to a RP-centric player than someone who plays just to grind out their levels.

TheSummoner

2011-06-04, 02:37 AM

Sure, there would be a huge inflation in the value at the start, and people who buy them early will make profit in the long run. But them selling that house isn't producing that money from nowhere. Someone else already had that money in the game to buy it. So you're not wrecking the economy, just transferring what one person has to another. An early entrant into the game will have the advantage in that respect... but there are few games where that isn't the case, and within the first year would more or less normalize itself.

I never said it was creating money from nowhere. The point I was trying to make was that if homes (or a certain type of them) are finite and money is in theory, infinite, then the prive of these homes (or any other finite item) will rise exponentially. Players can (and will) charge any ridiculous amount of ingame cash for the sale of them. Prices will only continue to rise as the amount of total money in the world continues to rise and the number for sale (due to decreasing numbers of players who both have such items and are willing to sell them) decreases.

You could even turn that into a money sink though. Throw in 10-20% of the sale price as a closing cost fee, and you actually take out a potentially sizable chunk of money from the game anytime these change hands. Either way, I'm not seeing the problem here. Novelty/Status items are the sorts of things that should be limited to a few.

There is a difference between an item being limited to few relative to other similar items and an item being in finite supply. Finite items should never be part of a system where currency is infinite. Either Novelty/Status items should be rare relative to other things but still theoretically infinite or they should not be part of the game economy (make them untradeable).

No comment on the rest.

Wardog

2011-06-04, 12:30 PM

I suppose if you had specific skill points for crafting, and only craft, that this would work. Because it doesn't work (in most games at least, I could see it working in some very specific ones) when you have to pick between crafting and combat when you have a finite amount of skill points to work with.

Agreed. That's what I meant by "crafting talent points".

The only problem with that is that then everyone crafts and you'll probably end up with a glut of crafters and make it useless. Maybe if you have a huge number of potential (and probably rather specialized) crafting types then you could have everyone craft and not have too many of any given type.

Maybe the "crafting talent points" could be expanded to cover more than just crafting. You would have your "class talent points" for improving/customizing combat and the other core abilities of your class, and a separate pool of "profession" talent points for crafting and any other non-core abilities.

In WoW, you are restricted to two crafting/gathering professions, but there is no limit to how many of the other professions you can learn. However, this needent be the case. If you have to choose between being able to make your own weapons, and being able to treat your own wounds or create buffing food, then people are going to make different choices.

This is 100% a balance issue. If there is no combat downside to stealth, and when stealth is only really useful pre-combat or trying to escape combat, then speed is the only thing that really matters, then stealthers will always have the advantage. The point of the speed reduction is usually because you aren't supposed to be sitting in stealth mode for huge amounts of time. Its supposed to be a tactically utilized skill, not just one that you use all the time because you can. And without a speed decrease there is no tactical reason not to use stealth all the time. Its especially important in PvP, but even in PvE if one person has to fight their way through an encounter and someone else can just stealth and run through without a problem at all then the stealther will greatly out pace non-stealth classes in terms of quests, and the leveling, item collection, and wealth collection that comes with it.

True. Possible solutions:
* Stealth isn't free - being in stealth mode (or moving while stealthed) drains energy/focus/whatever.

* Stealth isn't invisibility - you still have to be aware of where you're standing, what sort of surface you are moving across, light levels, which direction an enemy is looking, etc. Stealth will still generally be "slow", but because you have to watch what you (and your enemies) are doing, not because to get a speed debuff.

* If you can stay stealthed all the time, you will need to stay stealthed all the time. Super-stealth is gained at the expense of combat ability - you can't use it to become an invincible ninja of doom; in PvP, you're main role will be scouting, not combat; in PvE, if you can sneak past all the guards in the dungeon, you better make darn sure you don't accidentally break cover, or you won't survive the ensuing beatings.

* Rewards depend on how you solve problems. If you use stealth to solve quests, you get more rewards that help stealth. If you fight your way through, you get rewards that help with fighting. If fighting and stealthing are enjoyable enough in their own right, players will chose the style of game play they enjoy the most, and ultimately that is the real reward.

Related to that last point, one thing I dislike about the MMOs I've played, compared to the MUDs I used to play, is the extent to which you are expected to play in a specific way. "Kill things (or help others kill things); get better at killing things (or at helping others kill things); make sure you optimize properly (if you chose sub-standard equipment that looks better, you're a n00b), and if you somehow manage to get into a zone outside you level range, none of the NPCs will talk to you, and the GMs may accuse you of cheating)”.

I miss being able to explore at leisure (for a given value of "leisure"), not being judged if you decided to equip your warrior with just clothes and a rapier, areas and objects designed solely for you to discover and marvel at the descriptions; weapons and armour that didn't state the damage / armour / accuracy ratings so you had to work out what was the best equipment through trial and error; quests that required thought to solve rather than just "go here and kill things"; and where the player base was small enough and mature enough that you could have global chat channels.

Triaxx

2011-06-04, 12:45 PM

Stealth was one of the things that Oblivion did well. In and out of it was as easy as pressing one button. The speed loss was acceptable, because you could go from slow moving stealth to full on sprint speed with the touch of a single button.

It meant that a light, fast, stealthy character was viable, because if you got caught, you could jump up and run away and then stealth again when you were safe. You didn't have to wait for stealth to recharge, just break detection, which could admittedly be a long distance, and stealth again.

Anasazi

2011-06-06, 07:09 AM

Alrighty, since I know you've all been waiting for it, how about...
Thought Challenge 4: Favorite/Least Favorite Dungeons
What have been your favorite/least favorite dungeons/MUD's/instances/raids, what game(s) were they from, and what specific events lead them to becoming such a cherished/hated memory? (lets try to avoid examples that were tarnished because of fellow players)

ShinyRocks

2011-06-06, 10:41 AM

Well, my frame of reference is fairly limited, because the only MMO I've played to any great extent is WoW, and I didn't even run dungeons that often in that.

That said, I loved, and still love, the Scarlet Monastery. Partly because of the story, partly because of the enemies. Also because I thought that splitting it into segments was very effective. Do an entire monastery run over a couple of hours, or do a graveyard in 20 minutes. Plus you found out secrets at the end. Plus the drops were really good. Plus the difficulty was pitched just right.

So yes: engaging, part of a bigger story/setting, not impossibly difficult but not a walkover, and Phat Lootz.

I also wondered what it would be like to have instances that didn't respawn once you finished them. Nope, you've killed everyone in there, sorry. No going back. That said, if players can self-res, then I guess Named Enemies can too.

One thing that I pretty much demand, not related to instances, is re: escort quests. If you must do them, please oh please have them phased. Once I've rescued Princess Bear from the cage and got her safe home again, don't make her be back in the cage again a day later, but impossible for me to interact with because I've done the quest. It's demoralising.

Triaxx

2011-06-07, 05:27 AM

I don't play MMO's, but outside of those, my favorite dungeons are always those that require real teamwork to complete. And not just: I'll bring the enemies to you so you can kill them.

Like having areas where of say, five players, two have to go stand on switches to open the doors. Behind the doors are enemies, who will come through. And if you don't stay on the switches, the doors will swing shut behind you. So you can either leave three members in the middle to fight the enemies, or have them hold just long enough to open the doors enough to run through before they close behind you. But if the party gets cut off, better hope they can survive, because now they're trapped past the door until help arrives.

Legend of Zelda has always had great dungeons, and my favoriteis have always been the water dungeons. Ocarina of Times great multi-level water temple.Yes, it could be annoying if you didn't know about the spare key under the main tower. But Dark Link was a perfectly awesome mini-boss.

Majora's Mask had a cool water temple, though I could wish I'd known the proper use of the Zora form the first time through. Switching water flows back and forth to alter the direction of the water's flow was FUN.

Twilight Princess water temple was fun too, though hanging from the clawshot over the Abyss was NOT fun. Nor was trying to catch the moving target from a moving target, because you couldn't reach it from most of the other platforms. (There is a way, but it's really, really hard.)

Gimicky dungeons have to have FUN gimicks. Escort the retarded NPC so he can activate the magical control panel is not a fun gimick. Escorting one who has an automatic b****stomp radius is, since newbies can hide in close, and experienced players can simply retreat if they get overwhelmed.

deuxhero

2011-06-07, 07:33 AM

Pressing a button in Dragon Age 2. :)

Garwain

2011-06-07, 07:50 AM

Thought Challenge 2
Look at RIFT. The choice in your character races are an interesting but at higher level minimal extra stat boost and a unique movement boost out of combat. An aura that makes you walk 30% faster? yes please. Other MMORPGs have the same system of small boosts at low levels and increasingly interesting mounts when you level up.

Don't make encumbrance depending on STR, the mage and his reagents wants to carry something as well. In fact, don't make encumbrance as well. Limited slots ok, limited weight, not so.

Thought Challenge 3
I replay most of the games where I still feel that progression does not become a drag. I like obtaining achievements, completed quest, advancing even if it is in a small thing. I want to have the impression that playing for 2 hours did bring me closer to any goal whatsoever.

Also, I think you'll have to add new content once i a while to stay compelling. For all the reasons above.

Thought Challenge 4
Oh yes, I remember the heroic efforts, I remember when I went to sleep in the late hours with a smile due to the fantastic loot. Anyway, the biggest issue is not so much the dungeon but finding a good group. Introducing guild systems is a must. Awarding extra xp for random LFG groups as in WoW or RIFT is a good idea as well.

The actual design of the dungeon doesn't matter that much to me. As long as there is a feeling of progress. I hate bosses that become immune for 2min and then give 10 sec to dish out some damage because you managed to kill the alt, destroy the crystals and opened 15 valves. It would be more enjoyable if that sequence of side actions would result in some epic move: riding a falling stalactite into the monster for some serious damage, breaking throught an ice floor and while landing dodge the falling ice shards (which the BBEG can't avoid because, you know, it's size). Epic things that contribute.

TheSummoner

2011-06-07, 09:37 AM

Extra experience means nothing if the dungeon is designed for max level characters. Hell, it means nothing at less than max level unless dungeons are an effecient way to level up (in most games, quests and grinding are better...). I suppose you could offer extra loot, but whats to stop people from composing a "random" group made up of their friends and people they know to be competent? (I have not seen how WoW or Rift handle this).

Erloas

2011-06-08, 03:28 PM

Thought Challenge 4: Favorite/Least Favorite Dungeons
What have been your favorite/least favorite dungeons/MUD's/instances/raids, what game(s) were they from, and what specific events lead them to becoming such a cherished/hated memory? (lets try to avoid examples that were tarnished because of fellow players)
DAOC's Darkness Falls. I've already mentioned it a few times. It takes the community working together to get it open. It had areas for level 20ish to max level, large scale raids. Which meant that if you went in solo or with a group you could find something to do. Go in solo and pick up a group you can move up to more difficult things and if your group looses people you can move to easier areas. Obviously this wouldn't work with the "elite" mobs that so many games have went to (as mentioned, I find the elite method of advancing mobs without increasing their level is the result of poor level scaling and a concept I really don't like).
Given that there was stuff to do for all levels, as well as the possibility of PvP, and in general a good place to make money or just get exp, it meant there was always people there and always something going on.
It was also reasonably located so that it didn't take too long to get a group there.

Dungeons that are empty of players, and ones that take too long to get there and don't scale well to not having the ideal group (either being too easy or too hard) are the kinds I don't like.

akma

2011-06-08, 07:49 PM

Alright, lets hop to 'Thought Challenge 2':
About movement speeds

What about this: everyone moves fast. You can run indefintly. You don`t need to run to a place to get to it, you could skip the road (it could be tiresome to go through a wilderness when you are in a hurry, no matter how compelling the wilderness is).

Thought Challenge 3:
Let’s really delve into the thick of it... What keeps you returning to your favorite games?

Difficulity.
I tend to not play games anymore after I finish them in the hardest difficulity, and tend to go back to those I haven`t finished so I could have closure. The most recent exemple for me is touhou 13 - I played the demo about 500 times (not exaggarating, the game keeps track) and only a few times I managed to get to the last level on hard difficulity (and that`s not even the highest difficulity level. And again, I feel the need to remind that it`s just the demo).
But if a game is so hard that I get stuck in the beggining, I`ll quit it pretty quickely. If the beggining is so easy it`s trivial (very likely after playing a lot), then it might become boring. I solve this by standing realy close to the enemies in the parts that would be trivial otherwise.

Either way, I'm not seeing the problem here. Novelty/Status items are the sorts of things that should be limited to a few.

Then people can get a huge advandage simply by starting to play earlier then other players. It`s unfair.

Garwain

2011-06-09, 05:20 AM

ShinyRocks

2011-06-09, 10:23 AM

Now that I think of it, there is one thing about quests that I really appreciated in DDO, which is the 'spirit' you could summon to turn your quests in. Not applicable for the quest types like 'deliver message/goods', but certainly for 'kill X or Y'.
Nothing more meh when you return to the NPC to cash in the completed quest and receive the follow up quest that plays in the same area you just came from.

This is specially true when, like in WoW (though no specific instances I can recall right now), there's a quest, to, say, kill 15 guards of a camp. So you go off and kill them, report back and get a quest to kill 3 lieutenants. Who you have to fight through guards to get to, because they've respawned. And then you report back and they're like, great, now kill the Chieftain. Who you have to fight through guards AND lieutenants to get to, because they've respawned.

If I could just call them on my mobile, or scry with my magic mirror, or summon an avatar and say, yo, while I'm here, anyone else you want me to brutally slaughter just because they set up a camp near your house?, that'd be much easier.

Hyudra

2011-06-09, 11:22 AM

I had an MMO concept I've long discussed with a friend. The core idea was:
No classes.
Players unlock abilities from gained equipment or are bought off a list of every skill with experience. Learned abilities can be plugged into your character at any point with no real restrictions, up to a limit of AP and VP (see below). As such, you build your own class/ability set to your tastes.
AP is 'ability points', a flat value with a hard maximum you can equip. More powerful abilities are more expensive. So 'Dragon Slash' might take 45 of your 200 AP, while 'Tweak nipple' might take 15. AP values for skills are adjusted by the developers.
VP is 'value points', and is again, a flat value with a hard maximum you can equip. This hard maximum incorporates both equipment and skills, and is adjusted by the game on a weekly basis, according to what's most used and what's most used in serious gameplay (by PVP victors, tournament winners, etc). If ~everyone~ is using Dragon Slash, it becomes more expensive VP wise, meaning that if you want to continue using it, you may have to opt for less than optimal skills or equipment.

For NPCs, bosses and the like, the goal was a similar 'building block' design. Rather than make a Fire Lizard boss and a Ice Yeti, it would involve making a fire template (with 3-4 randomized abilities from a short list) and an ice template (ditto), a lizard boss and a giant monkey boss, and have the game mix and match. This keeps stuff fresh and unpredictable, and promotes reaction and studying the boss in the course of the combat encounter rather than searching a wiki for builds/approaches.

Just food for thought.

Answering the questions:

Thought Challenge 2: Movement speeds.

Movement speed is very valuable to players. I think the answer to this lies in another perspective:

What makes a player stop playing?

I think one major thing is when a player says "I couldn't have done anything there." In relation to movement speeds, if you're attacked by a stronger enemy who you just can't escape from because they're just faster than you, you're liable to get aggravated.

I would go so far as to say that base movement speed shouldn't be tampered with, unless you're offering equivalent tradeoffs. For example, in the MMO concept I started my post with, the general idea was that there would be several weight classes of armor. Having heavier armor granted great defensive benefits, but lighter armor gave you more movement speed and agility. The tradeoff for being heavier, in addition to the defensive benefit, was that heavier characters are harder to push around and recover faster from some conditions (such as being stunned).

A case in point: TF2 handles (handled?) it fairly well - the 9 core classes have different move speeds, but slower classes are tougher. They made a mistake, I feel, in having two of those slower classes have high maneuverability - so even though the soldier walks at 80% speed, his ability to rocket jump makes him arguably faster and better at accessing locations to ambush enemies from than the 100% move speed pyro.

Thought Challenge 3: What keeps me coming back.

My most played games are Final Fantasy Tactics, Team Fortress 2 and Guild Wars.

The common element between these is freedom in how I can adjust my characters. In FFT and Guild Wars, my character build is eminently customizable and I can change it at any point I'm outside of battle. To a lesser degree, TF2 lets me swap out what weapons I'm using for a very different playstyle.

To a lesser degree, it's aesthetics. I like freedom to customize my appearance to much the same extent that I customize my build. If I feel like I'm playing the same warrior that 10000 other people are, though, that's not going to be enough.

Thought Challenge 4: Favorite, Least Favorite Dungeons.

Favorite: The Catacombs in Guild Wars, pre-searing. It was this expansive, atmospheric, underground network of caves and rooms and temple shrines that were buried in some long-ago collapse. It was beautiful, eerie, serene, and the best part of it was that it was so isolated. Since everything outside of towns in Guild Wars is instanced, you're pretty much alone in there, and there's no other players wandering about. Couple that with the fact that there's no major quests really leading you into the catacombs (and since it's the starting area of the game, you aren't obligated to explore it for the cartography achievements), and you really feel like you're discovering something vast that most people don't do more than stick their toe in (A monk and necromancer class quest, IIRC, ask you to go in there, but you only see a small fraction of the place). Guild Wars is great for these little nooks and crannies and secret areas that you discover.
Images: 1 (http://images.mmorpg.com/images/galleries/full/512008/109a8e14-9673-4ff1-9d0d-c5a4d4dd4a15.jpg), 2 (http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff179/silkynflame/WOW%20and%20Guild%20Wars/catacombsedited.jpg?t=1242025534), 3 (http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20060910121103/gw/images/archive/0/03/20070204122700!The_Catacombs_1000x800.jpg), 4 (http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/0/0d/Guild_Wars_Screenshot_061.jpg).

Least favorite? La Mulana. I have a love-hate relationship with this game, which features an indiana jones style explorer inside one massive dungeon (or you could interpret it as a dozen different dungeons all mashed together). Features annoyances such as:
Guide Dang It Moments: Stuff which you wouldn't know without a walkthrough. There's an instance about 4/5ths of the way through the game where a massive block falls if you step on it. Once it falls, you can't access the area to the left of it again. There's no indication the block could fall, and if you jump to the left as it does fall, but lack the key, then you're boned.
Obscure stuff that would never occur to you. You have a laptop that you can combine ROM chips inside. You need certain ROM combinations to transform the dungeon. Given there's dozens of ROMs, mixing and matching and identifying the necessary combinations is impossible without wiki searches.
Stuff like that, I find aggravating. I love La Mulana for what it is, but as a dungeon, it's not enjoyable. In brief - I hate dungeons/bosses/quests where the solution involves looking online for the optimal way to go.

snusnumrik

2011-06-11, 07:59 PM

ok
i registered after seeing this topic XD
im not a major mmo player (i never played wow or war or any most famous mmorpgs previosly mentioned). Still i as evry one dreamed at least once to make my personal mmo that would be more awesome that evrything else.
The thing that usualy make me drop an mmo is the ripetitivness, if high level quest are the same as low level with just improved graffics - then the game suck.
IDEAS FOR TERRAIN:

Giant head:
a realy gigantic giant was beheaded centuries ago and hi head is still lying in the mountains. You can visit the head (say it like 5 km high) climb it expolre a forest made by hair, fight gigan louses or such. Otherwise you can enter his ear and expolre the maze inside the gigantic brain. There you could fight Gigantic ideas: like bad idea, good idea, madness ecc....

Moving stuff:
terrains that shift like in tha ability games: amrio's platforms ecc. Possibly make the falling off them not deadly.
Flying cities actualy fly moving themself in the map.

Eternal tornado:
in a desert area there is one big tornado moving in regular patterns. If a player encountres it, and he isnt fast enough to escape, he gets sucked into it and gets to the eye of the cyclone. There is a big tower that moves with the tornado and the only way to get out is a teleport (a room inside the castle or with your own scrol/magic).
To enter the tornado a player should know where and when the tornado passes - so more interacting with the community.

Maze:
make the usual dungeon not a striaght line from entrnace to the boss, but something inside which you can be lost (maybe with minibosses waitng at dead ends).

Unusual stuff:
like evryone said put some thing uncommon: jungles with floating jellifishes, underwater palaces, mushroom forsets, a giant fish that swims into the desert sand with a pyramid(that you can visit) on his back, maneating plants, alice in wondeland crazy stuff ecc...

SECRETS:
they are awesome
So far i have seen them only in 2 games.
Your character has a shovel that he can use on the ground below his feet. Usualy this will get him nothing, but in some particular places he will be bale to dig a hole to discent into. There he could find monsters and treasures.
The clues where to dig will be hidden inside NPC comments.
Its increadibly revarding solve the puzzle and find such an area yourself ;)
Or the secret area could be on the top of a tree where you can get only after jumping on half a forest.
Otherwise there could be certain places you can enter only after finishing a really difficult feat (like 3 different 1% drop items from different bosses)

SKILLS:
make skills as thoose in platformer games:
increase the jump height,
The double jump is an ability you have to learn instead of strting with it
Tripple jump - increadibly hard to learn.
wall jump
dash
speed
speed on climbing on a rope
endurance (shadow of colossus)
make flying impossible or nealry impossible to obtain.

CURSES:
a type of equioment:
you have a slot for hat, for armor and for a curse.
basicly the course will give you some stat boost (or speed/jump height increas) but will have also side effects as mana decrease.
Some Curses give you the ability to activate them, for example once activated it gives you attack bonus of 20% but drains your health.
Or a curse can be activated for 60 seconds during which the character has doulbe damage but afeter the use it drains 30% of haracter total health, this way you could kill the enemy but die anyway due to side effects.
The difference with other equipment is that the curse cant be removed at will but it needs particular items or conditions (higher the curse level higher and tougher the conditions). (the idea was from nauto demons)

Also make the travel or instant with teleport or any automatic way that can be done even while the computer is closed.

Enemy grafics:
to make enemies look less the same you could use a randomly generated apperance: this type of enemy can have 4 different hats and 3 different cloaks, making it 12 different lloking enemies. (each time an enem is respawned it randomly choose its look).

Another cool this in games are the cinmeatic trailers on youtube, make them cool XD.

since somebody was asking for a warhammer artist i found this guy http://daarken.deviantart.com/ maybe he know other artists.

pretty much this is all (if i didnt forgot anything).
The only thing i hope now is that i didnt waste 3 hours of my live by making this post and somebody will read this and possible make good use of it. ;)

edit:http://www.aq.com/ one of the best games in my opinion.
it is 2D so the devolpers add new content evry week and most of the areas are jokes or parodies on famous moives or books.

Partysan

2011-06-11, 11:16 PM

Someone has been reading too much Captain Bluebear recently...
But I agree, those would be fun in a game.

snusnumrik

2011-06-12, 03:45 AM

Someone has been reading too much Captain Bluebear recently...
But I agree, those would be fun in a game.

exactly XD (i still need to finish it)
more things to add:
make the branches of some tree big enough to jump on them.
and as more people already said make the combat take in consideration the ability of the player to press buttons on keyboard.

PS:
ASCENDING
when you reach max lvl you can complete a quest to start from the beginning, but still possesing your items some of your skills and being able to choose a different class to play with.
games of the past had it among MMO only ragnarok seems having it.
it could be fun to have it but it will eventualy create overpowered players

Another thing i often wished to have is the ability to repeat one time quests, you dont get exp of items for redoing them you just can face that boss and save the princess again.

Zetapup

2011-06-13, 12:44 AM

I don't play many MMO's but I can probably still give my opinion about videogames in general.

Variety: One of the things I disliked about WoW was how when you started in a certain environment, it would take a long time to get out of it. Seeing a snow covered tundra is cool and all, but the same environment is just meh after long enough.

xp: I like the ideas about awarding experience for exploring and other such things that normally wouldn't be done in an MMO. It gives a good incentive to climb to the peak of the mile high mountain other than to enjoy the view.

Terrain: Magma covered wastelands are awesome, but it would also be nice if the placement made sense. For example, the blight winds in Morrowind made adventuring near the Ghostgate dangerous because you barely see 20 ft. in front of you. The blight winds were caused from Dagoth Ur's intervention, not just because it was something the designers wanted to put in the game.

Question #2: I figure some classes-like rogue or ranger- should have a higher speed even if it's only a slight increase. The armor classes affecting speed I like, because the warrior wearing plate can just go in light armor to travel to the Big Bad's Lair, and then equip it there, and still keep up with most of the other party members.

Question #3: Hmmm, games that I can replay. Morrowind is definitely at the top of this list, because of the environment, quests where you weren't led by the hand every step of the way, and monsters that could actually threaten you at level one. A few cave rats can kill you in a combat if you aren't careful. Of course, cliff racers were extremely annoying (Although they were fun to snipe later on). I suppose Prototype is also on this list because of the freestyle playing and the awesome powers you would have. Flying above the city in a helicopter or just gliding both give an impressive view.

Question #4: I haven't played many dungeons, but it is annoying when you don't have a map showing where you've explored in a maze. Dungeons where you can use the terrain against the opponent are nice.