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If You Were an MMO Game Developer
MyTabbycat
Member UncommonPosts: 316
The Scenario:
You just landed your dream job as a lead developer of a new or existing MMORPG. You have a huge budget to work with. You have the following options:
1. You can remake an existing MMO, or create its sequel. (Please indicate which you are doing.)
2. You can remake an MMO currently in development (including beta).
3. You can completely make a new game from scratch.
The Challenge:
Present enough information about your game to get other players interested in purchasing your game. Your goal is to create a successful MMORPG.
Alternatively you can simply critique other players ideas. Would you buy their game? Why or why not?
Please remember to keep it nice and friendly (no hate, trolling or name calling). This is just a fun thread to see what everyone can come up with and what the community is looking for in a game.
Comments
To be honest you will not get a lot of answers. Too vague, too tedious and result is obvious: Flames or nothing at all.
What do you mean by saying 'successful'? Financially successful? Low player churn? High population per server? Lots of ingame PvPing? Pushing MMO technology forward? High player satisfaction? High publisher satisfaction? My own satisfaction as a developer or private investor?
Whom do I make the game for? The broad mass of casuals? A certain niche? A niche game will not be considered good by the masses. Do you consider a high quality niche game with 10k players a success? Or only a game with the sub numbers of WoW?
Also the answers on this forum are very predictable. Theme parks will be shot down, sand boxes will be liked. If you are looking for what sand box enthusiasts want you are at the right place. If you want to know what the common Joe wants you are definately at the wrong place.---
Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Yeah, wrong place for what the "common Joe" wants. The same "common Joe's" that aren't sticking with the Themepark games that have been released since WoW, and just end up going back to the best "Been-There-Done-That" game made... for lack of anything better.
Working on a reply, but getting hammered with more important things at the moment, heh.
Once upon a time....
Design wise, I'd start and follow through like this:
- Start with as much playable realism as possible.
- Add Fantasy. Not high fantasy, more along the lines of Dungeons and Dragons.
- UO like customizable construction, but add a need for laborers (NPCs and or Player)
- NPC labor, guided and owned by Players. Skills based on the Player Owner's skills, suporvision, and training. Food and drink requirements as well as wages. These laborers would be for everything, crafting, guards, shop and tavern and temple keepers, construction. The food/drink/wage requirements would be a limiting factor and large numbers more easily handled by guild/faction organizations, who can also take them on just like a single player. See "Organizational Social Structures".
- "Organizational Social Structures" would basically be guild like entities that can be formed as guilds, factions (religions or otherwise), cities, alliances. These would have powers to affect players (and others for management) granted to elected officials by a subset of elected "councilmen". Keeping it as simple as possible, the idea being to give powers to communities while requiring multiple "signatures" of elected officials to sign off on those powers.
- These powers would include taxation, guard management, resource management, construction management, warfare, and a "Justice" system to manage "crime" and keep it down though punishment of "criminals" that affects them in a meaningfull way (stat loss (perma-death for the worst), jail time).
Player Characters and MOBs (functioning the same way, except MOBs would be done in bigger chunks at growth stages):- No extreme advancement, no godmode. Mostly in a 100 percentile range.
- Pure skill system, with limits based on stats. Including a limit to numbers of skills learnable by Intelligence.
- Direct use of Stats as well as modifying skills. Use Strength to push or break heavy objects, use Agility to leap and climb, etc. Also modify skill results with stats as commonly done (except no godmode bonuses).
- Stats limited in advancement, something along the lines of 1.5x original created stats.
- Size matters, start with average, + size= +Str+Con and -Agility-Dexterity, and reverse. Hit Points based on Size as well as Constitution. MOBs work the same way. Large Size is easier to hit and reverse. So a huge Dragon is easy to hit, has a lot of HPs, but does a lot of damage due to strength. While a humming bird is very hard to hit, but dies easily and does little to no damage. Can create a powerfull but less agile and slower warrior, or the reverse. All of this is modified by point allowance within range at creation. Said warrior can be more Agile if less Intelligent, for example (but remember the limits to skills learned).
- Perception skill (see pets too). Use to detect stealth and hidden (including traps and secret cubbyholes).
World:- Very interactive. Lots of moving, pushing, pulling, jumping, climbing, of all sorts of objects and circumstances. Dungeons/Ruins full of traps, tricks, moveable objects and hidden things. World too, where applicable.
- Huge open world.
- Construction anywhere, but can be damaged and torn down, or repaired too. Guards or magical defenses needed. Makes cities have value here, while allowing expansion into the world.
- Swimming and diving, with underwater MOBs and resources (pearls and the like). Fishing and boats.
- Lots of hidden stuff to discover and including use for said discoveries. Examples: secret shrines with powers, shortcuts for travel, lost crypts, caves, etc.
- Resource centers (mines, groves, fields), players can claim ownership, players can "war" said ownership for control.
Lore:- Deep lore based on multiple past eras and ancient cults.
- Lots of mystery. Answers hidden in the world. Multiple answers together can solve mysteries and lead to possible rewards of great value (treasure or special knowledge, skills or magic). Many smaller mysteries for small rewards. Answers can also lead to knowledge of ancient cults still active (secretly), giving insight into their activities and plans.
Mysteries and discoveries of all sorts can be added as the game ages.GM's active in the game world to keep things moving and interesting. Instead of always adding new levels, this game would add new experiences. GM played antagonsists, and recruiting players, working within the world for some goal.
Pets:
- Yes.
- But not overly powerfull, more along the lines of aids (hunting, gathering, watchdog, bloodhound, combat).
AI:- MOBs with advanced AI both individually as well as group. Wandering MOBs, growing MOB communities able to "spawn" off new Wanderers and new communities. Seeks territorial control, hunts area, etc. Will seek habitats that allow for greater "spawns", such as ruins or caves, based on species. Think "recruitment" here.
Magic:- Wide ranging. Most common, some very rare and to be discovered in one use readings of ancient tomes, or secret glyphs hidden in the world. Some would be kept very rare.
Well, I guess that's enough for a rough idea.Once upon a time....
My own from scratch.
Theme: Memory Wipe
Nobody knows who they are. The entire world awakes within whatever kingdom they used to reside. It's anarchy. People claiming that they were king, claiming that they owned this and that, etc. Mild order is restored. However, nobody knows who they really were.
Quests: No personal quests. Instead, I'm offering quests that must be completed by large numbers of people, e.g., we need 10 tons of meat in order to feed the people through winter, etc.
Classes: No classes. Only skills. There are 1,000 detailed skills. Skills range from Two-Hand Sword usuage to Mineral collecting. A player can progress up to 30 skills at a time.
Factions: 5 Factions all fighting each other over the resources of the land. You can, however, break off and either go rogue or form your own faction.
Social Atmosphere: Cantinas / Inns with player gambling and card games. Players can wage money and bet via gameplay. Bounty Hunter Terminals for real player bounties, LoTRO-style musical instruments with constant "Battle of the Bands" contest hosted by the devs, horseback racings, inner-city gladiator combat tournaments (not esports), player shops within the city (expensive to rent one of the limited city huts - reserved for the best crafters in the game).
Housing: World Housing
World Size: Vanguard's world would equal one map.
Gore: Decapitations etc.
PvP: No Battlegrounds. All World PvP...with proper sactions.
I would create a prison mmorpg.
Break out of prison and play in the world, pk or break the law and you go back to prison.
"Don't tell me what to do! , you're not my mod"
Saying invented by me.
If I've learned anything about this industry in the last year it's that job security is nil. I used think about how awesome it would be to work on MMO's as a career, but fuck that! If I were an MMO developer I'd be looking to switch careers lol. I don't know how guys and gals with families can do it. Insane amount of crunch, and if things don't go swimmingly, you lose your job in a "reorganization." Sounds like a recipe for a nervous breakdown for me.
I will only write about the core features of a game I would like to see:
General stuff
Survival Coop + Faction PvP in a fantasy world with some alien technology. You can join a guild. The guild can join one of five factions. PvP rewards are dependend on your guilds performance in working for their faction. Rewards are everything from resources over items to skill updates.
The game world consists of 30 "zones" connected by teleporters. Yep, zoning. The zones will have a huge amount of space for guilds to build their outpost. A guild can also build several outposts and connect them via teleporters. All players of their faction can use the teleporters, so basically every faction has their own traveling infrastructure.
Every zone will contain one or two area archetypes (forest, volcano, sea, swamp, jungle, underground,...). Every archetype will have its own natural dangers. A volcano will have fire resistant monsters, lava streams, eruptions with poisonous hot gas, a cliffy terrain and a red dragon flying around spitting fire on everything that moves. You get close to a lava stream? dead. You get caught by a gas cloud? dead. A flying rock from an eruption hits you? dead. Only specialized players who know the zone well should be able to survive.
Character builders paradise.
No levels but you have to travel to acquire skills by performing hard unlocking quests. Unlocking a single skill should be an achievement worthy of bragging about. You can only have 5 active skills at one time + main attack 1 + main attack2 + block. You can collect up to 30 skills of the 500 skills available.
Skilled PvPers paradise.
Combat: FPS / Third person like TERA / skyrim / dark souls. No tab targeting but I will add a little twist: Players have low hp and can get killed from 2-4 hits from an offensive skill. To counter the players can use defensive skills that completly negate the damage (shield block, dodge, magic shield for 1s, heal, ...). Combat should be about timing your defensive skills against your opponents offensive skills or trying to find a hole in the opponents defence to hit him with a skill. It is about tactics, observation and timing. As a bonus this makes aoe skills very potent. I want the pvp to be about small groups not zergfests.
Explorers paradise.
Every now and then rifts to new randomly generated zones will open up. Players can travel through the rift and start an outpost for their faction / guild somewhere. Add a teleporter and the faction has a new zone to play with. Once the rift deforms and all teleporters are disabled the zone implodes and is lost forever. A new zone will have new resources, treasures and maybe new skills to fight over.
Crafters paradise
Crafting: Like SWG but more specialized. Additionally there are no central market hubs. Every outpost has their own hub. Items also decay over time: Items start with a max endurance of 100. If the endurance gets under 50 the item will have a debuff. If the endurance is 0 the items is broken and must be repaired. On death the max endurance is reduced by 1. As for the skills:
Skill "Weapons Crafting" = create any level 1 weapon. You can then learn skill "Pierceing weapons crafting" = create level 2 spears. Then you can learn "Dragon spear crafting" and you can craft level 3 dragon spears (there are 10 different spears in the game). You can craft anything you want as long as you learn the corresponding skills. Don't forget the 30 skill limit per player.
You can also learn "Elemental enchantments" = Add +1 elemental (fire, ice,.. ) damage to a weapon. Then you can learn "Fire enchantments" = Add +2 fire damage.
If you have "Dragon spear crafting" and "Fire enchantments" you can learn the skill "Red dragons spear" = an expensive and very unique weapon.
Add in different resources, item slots and weapon experimentation (see SWG).
---
Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
I feel the same way about Everquest. I spent 5,000+ hours playing it; and someone who starts brand new today can surpass my characters in a couple weeks. ROFL
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit