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Your ideal mmog

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  • MadodeMadode Member Posts: 58
    Originally posted by Dreneth

    Originally posted by Madode


    Can you describe how the gamers listed above ruin it for all the rest?  Is it because someone who has more time on their hands, and likes to be the first, actually has the audacity to BE the first person on a server to complete some quest or obtain some item?  Before you, the grouping, social-butterfly, casual player can spend 1-2 years getting to that level to get the items or...Fame?
    Sure, people who buy characters don't actually earn the characters or items or gold in-game.  But perhaps it's because of their focus on Real Life that allows them to successfully make enough Real World Cash to spend on In Game Items/Equip/Characters/Etc.  So who's the harder worker?  Who deserves the stuff more?  Hardcore PL'ers or Successful-At-Life Casual Players?
    In the end it all comes down to whether or not you can find enough reasons to outweigh your displeasures with a company or game (SoE or WoW perhaps) - so you can enjoy what you are paying to play.  And if you're not paying, they why are you bishing?
    Mado



    Actually, I would say the person who deserves the in-game items are the ones who work IN-GAME to get them.  End of story.

    My ideal MMO would include various ways to prevent the secondary market ( black market ) from taking hold.  My ideal MMO would be run by people with the testicular fortitude to do everything within legal rights to take care of business.  Perma-ban em all.

    That would sure be nice.  I doubt we'll ever see a developer turn people away for an assumed infraction.  I think the only true way to know if someone is selling and buying, vs. donating to a new person or a person in guild, is to actually setup a site to catch buyers in the act.  But that would be time consuming and expensive.  Hell, I'm surprised some of the larger MMO's aren't doing what the F2P MMO's are doing.  Selling in-game items for RL money.  They're missing out on a lucrative market.

    Legitimize the market of in-game items, undercut the 3rd parties selling in game gold, and kill off the market the third parties own.  Then we see less "farmers" and more "players".  Or perhaps it ruins the game market all together.  I mean how many accounts in any give MMO belong to third party companies?  How much profit does an MMO stand to lose by eliminating the third party customer?  Or the customer who buys an account or twelve to farm in game gold to sell it to a third party company?

    In the end, I think the person who can afford the items - either via having enough time to camp a mob, or having enough RL money to buy it - deserves the items. 

    ...And sadly, I fall into neither of those two categories.

    Mado



  • SkartakSkartak Member Posts: 3
    Star Wars Galaxies where kinnda the best out there before SOE fucked it up.

    Knasarh

  • ToeBToeB Member Posts: 3
    Nice thread



    The ideal MMOG for me would most likely be impossible to develop until, say, 5-10 years from now, when the computing power of the average computer has increased quite a bit. This is because one of the basic principles of that game would be total player interaction with the game world. To explain what I mean with this, I'll use an example:



    The player is given a task to visit a mage, who happens to live at the top of a rather large hill. The only road up the hill is guarded by a pack of vicious *insert typical-fantasy creatures here* and the other sides of the hill are to steep to walk. Now, in any of the games today, you would have but one option: to charge right in and fight the monsters that are in your way. However, what I would like to see is a game that gives you a few more options. In this example, I would like to be able to either climb the steep sides of the hill, or bring some tools and create stairs up the hill. To take it one step further, why not make it so that you can dig a tunnel under the monsters and end up at the top of the hill?



    This is what I mean with total player interaction with the world; the only rules are the laws of physics, however they may look in that specific game world. If you want to build a bridge, cut down a few trees, transport them to where you want your bridge and start building. No artificial limitations, no specific locations for player interaction. This also ties into the neither-FPS-nor-turn-based gameplay I wish to see, where once again, the only rules are the laws of physics. I fully realize that this may be extremely hard to implement, but this is a thread for the ideal MMOG, right ?



    Now, that's only the first part of the game. The second one would be AI. I would like to see a game where you have different competing AI factions, where both NPC and player actions leave a lasting effect upon the game world. The AI should have different goals, that would change depending on what the other AI factions do. For instance, say that faction A is besieged by faction B. It has almost no resources left, and needs help from players. Faction B has a powerful artifact that could turn the tide of the war, so faction A creates a quest for anyone interested to get the item from faction B's capital, where it is kept in a well-guarded castle. Simultaneously, faction A wants to ask faction C for help, since A and C are good friends because of some other events earlier in the game's history. However, none of faction A's messengers have managed to get through to faction C, so the call goes out to the players for help. When the player's succeed in getting the artifact, faction B creates a quest for players friendly with that faction to retrieve said artifact. Combine this with the first part, and I think that you could have a really interesting quest system, with unique quests all the time.



    Now, the final part is player characters. I would like to see a non-level based system. New players should not start out completely useless, as I think is the case in many games today. I'd rather see a system where a new player, for an example, goes to battle as one of the soldiers at the frontline. A more experienced character would maybe act as a general and command the whole army. One on one, the new character would still stand a fair chance against the experienced character, given the same equipment, although the older character would likely win due to superior skills. The AI would also recognize this and give the most important quests to more experienced/famous characters. A new character wouldn't be given a quest to say, save the kingdom unless the AI had no other options. An experienced character, however, may even be the one issuing the call for help; with enough influence and no artificial limitations, there's nothing preventing a player from ruling one of the factions previously controlled by AI. The AI would then be under the player's control instead of the other way around.



    Now, that was a rather long post, I believe. If anyone want's me to elaborate further on any of the topics, please let me know 
  • TsukihimeTsukihime Member Posts: 5
    My ideal mmorpg? I have yet to find one even close but have thought deeply into it and have come up with a list of what it should be l ike, unfortunatly it is far too long and I'm too tired to list it.



    So, basically, my ideal mmorpg would be The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind/Oblivion except online with other players.
  • retrospecticretrospectic Member UncommonPosts: 1,466
    Earthworm Jim: Online



    Cow as a playable race.



    /groovy
  • nattynatalianattynatalia Member Posts: 4
    Oh wow, hey? All the creative energy crackling around this thread is brilliant!



    I actually made a thread recently (which at the moment is a bit unloved, if anybody would like to suggest something :3) asking for some game recommendations appealing to some of my ideals, namely, an established creature system in one way or another. It's not something particularly innovative, I suppose: I am absolutely adoring some of the ideas above about making, say, permanent changes to the environment, like by building a bridge from the surrounding materials and having that bridge /there/ for other players to use (although it would be interesting to see how, if such a game did exist, all the different players choose to change the environment. Especially regarding the source of resources: you can't have infinite resources, else the game would completely clutter up, but if trees grew at the normal rate of... well... trees, then you'd find yourself quickly running out of vegetation. Perhaps if they were able to incorporate a kind of deterioration rate *if you don't maintain that bridge it'll rot away* then you'd be able to overcome some of the clutter but... hmm. Very interesting idea), but I think that, increasingly, games are getting more and more of a human or humanoid bent. Even 'monsters' a term typically used to describe beasts or other creatures, is losing that connotation to some extent: for example, zombies could be considered monsters, but you don't think of zombie cattle rather than zombie soldiers, does that make sense?



    So I'd say that an ideal game for me would really develop monster (creature) systems, much in the way that a lot of people are indicating their ideal games would have developed crafting systems (which I am also very agreeable towards, it's just such a fantastic method for alternate gameplay). I have a huge interest in designable monsters, the idea that thus far in life, all the creatures appear as they do because of how they've evolved and adapted, increasingly through science progression we are able to manipulate that ourselves, artificial breeding, genetic modification, perhaps in the future we'll have enough knowledge to start from scratch; have some kind of base template, perhaps and work from that.



    If a game could somehow be comprehensive enough to integrate that (perhaps this is along with that limited-by-the-laws-of-physics idea in terms of mind numbing hugeness) that would be absolutely fantastic. You could create a whole new monster raising system, whereby you can have a somewhat mendelian system of characteristic pass-over, whether simply within a species (although one musn't forget that even within one species HUGE variation can exist, like between dogs) or using technology to artificially incorporate traits cross-species, and be able to design creatures (presumably to fight with, work with, play with, look at and admire/show off, etc.) within certain regulations and restrictions and the like. It'd be potentially limitless, but you'd start off on such a small scale, with a limited pool of resources (eg. you might not have the money to do cross-species manipulation, or you might only have three *insert monster type here*) and you'd work your way up.



    The idea is that you'd 'design-raise' your creatures to be optimum at a specific task, and that even though the creatures are themselves a huge part of the game, in a way it's only to 'do those tasks' ie. get by in the game in  however way you'd like. So, you might breed bigger and bigger creatures to do grunt work like carrying loads between towns of goods to sell. You might go for lightweight creatures with streamlined builds that pick up their speed and train them (ooo man, training, another potentially huge extension to the idea) to run as messenger things, compete in races, or just get you where you want to go quickly. You might make something small and adorable just to keep with you and look pretty while you play, or painstakingly construct a balanced fighter and go out fighting monsters or other peoples. They could be used everywhere: you could bring in 'intelligence' into the game, design 'smart' creatures with dextrous hands that could weave or tailor, or heck, many critters in the animal kingdom have their own built in musical instruments, so why not build a band out of the creatures you've designed and go perform? There could easily be quest systems constructed that'll fit any of these (send news of a ceasefire, help clear out a rat's nest, have a creature with xx beauty to pose  for this fashion shoot *'beauty' could be similar to 'intelligence'*)



    Of course, you're not just raising beasts 'on the outside' as it were, I already suggested the implementation of somewhat abstracted concepts like beauty and intelligence (beauty, for one, would be somewhat interesting to see how it could be implemented. How does a game decide what's fugly?) but things such as personality and loyalty are also huge 'what ifs'? So now that you've bred yourself a pretty thang, you need to raise it just right: how you treat it (eg. keeping it hungry, physical discipline or isolation) would affect such things as agression, (so if you want to raise a guard dog type thing, cuddling it would make it not a very effective defender) etc. etc. or training it (minigames ahoy!) would raise its skill at certain tasks. Even things just like exercise, or fighting, which ups its 'stats' on top of its genetic 'build'. Nature AND nurture combined in one game, boo yah!



    It's such an amazingly huge idea, one gets giddy thinking about all the different paths it could take. But I think we're slowly approaching a stage where we can actually do it! For example, Spore is promising to be absolutely fantastic. Your creatures are designable (and even though the design is in some ways more artificial, there is still attempts to bring in that idea of 'gradual' change, of evolution) and there are programs which calculate the nitty gritty things, like how your creature walks, dances, attacks... and if that half hour walkthrough developmental video was any indication, also things like their level of agression and social behaviour!



    Hahahah, sorry, I'm getting really excited here. This is just the kind of ideal game that I've been abrooding over for a very long time (yeeeaaars), and it's actually /happening/. :3
  • PunkMonkPunkMonk Member Posts: 483
    Originally posted by retrospectic

    Earthworm Jim: Online



    Cow as a playable race.



    /groovy

     

    Perfect. Sir, I think you are the greatest man alive for thinking of this.

    image

    image

  • dddzdddz Member Posts: 60
    Originally posted by nattynatalia

    Oh wow, hey? All the creative energy crackling around this thread is brilliant!



    I actually made a thread recently (which at the moment is a bit unloved, if anybody would like to suggest something :3) asking for some game recommendations appealing to some of my ideals, namely, an established creature system in one way or another. It's not something particularly innovative, I suppose: I am absolutely adoring some of the ideas above about making, say, permanent changes to the environment, like by building a bridge from the surrounding materials and having that bridge /there/ for other players to use (although it would be interesting to see how, if such a game did exist, all the different players choose to change the environment. Especially regarding the source of resources: you can't have infinite resources, else the game would completely clutter up, but if trees grew at the normal rate of... well... trees, then you'd find yourself quickly running out of vegetation. Perhaps if they were able to incorporate a kind of deterioration rate *if you don't maintain that bridge it'll rot away* then you'd be able to overcome some of the clutter but... hmm. Very interesting idea), but I think that, increasingly, games are getting more and more of a human or humanoid bent. Even 'monsters' a term typically used to describe beasts or other creatures, is losing that connotation to some extent: for example, zombies could be considered monsters, but you don't think of zombie cattle rather than zombie soldiers, does that make sense?



    So I'd say that an ideal game for me would really develop monster (creature) systems, much in the way that a lot of people are indicating their ideal games would have developed crafting systems (which I am also very agreeable towards, it's just such a fantastic method for alternate gameplay). I have a huge interest in designable monsters, the idea that thus far in life, all the creatures appear as they do because of how they've evolved and adapted, increasingly through science progression we are able to manipulate that ourselves, artificial breeding, genetic modification, perhaps in the future we'll have enough knowledge to start from scratch; have some kind of base template, perhaps and work from that.



    If a game could somehow be comprehensive enough to integrate that (perhaps this is along with that limited-by-the-laws-of-physics idea in terms of mind numbing hugeness) that would be absolutely fantastic. You could create a whole new monster raising system, whereby you can have a somewhat mendelian system of characteristic pass-over, whether simply within a species (although one musn't forget that even within one species HUGE variation can exist, like between dogs) or using technology to artificially incorporate traits cross-species, and be able to design creatures (presumably to fight with, work with, play with, look at and admire/show off, etc.) within certain regulations and restrictions and the like. It'd be potentially limitless, but you'd start off on such a small scale, with a limited pool of resources (eg. you might not have the money to do cross-species manipulation, or you might only have three *insert monster type here*) and you'd work your way up.



    The idea is that you'd 'design-raise' your creatures to be optimum at a specific task, and that even though the creatures are themselves a huge part of the game, in a way it's only to 'do those tasks' ie. get by in the game in  however way you'd like. So, you might breed bigger and bigger creatures to do grunt work like carrying loads between towns of goods to sell. You might go for lightweight creatures with streamlined builds that pick up their speed and train them (ooo man, training, another potentially huge extension to the idea) to run as messenger things, compete in races, or just get you where you want to go quickly. You might make something small and adorable just to keep with you and look pretty while you play, or painstakingly construct a balanced fighter and go out fighting monsters or other peoples. They could be used everywhere: you could bring in 'intelligence' into the game, design 'smart' creatures with dextrous hands that could weave or tailor, or heck, many critters in the animal kingdom have their own built in musical instruments, so why not build a band out of the creatures you've designed and go perform? There could easily be quest systems constructed that'll fit any of these (send news of a ceasefire, help clear out a rat's nest, have a creature with xx beauty to pose  for this fashion shoot *'beauty' could be similar to 'intelligence'*)



    Of course, you're not just raising beasts 'on the outside' as it were, I already suggested the implementation of somewhat abstracted concepts like beauty and intelligence (beauty, for one, would be somewhat interesting to see how it could be implemented. How does a game decide what's fugly?) but things such as personality and loyalty are also huge 'what ifs'? So now that you've bred yourself a pretty thang, you need to raise it just right: how you treat it (eg. keeping it hungry, physical discipline or isolation) would affect such things as agression, (so if you want to raise a guard dog type thing, cuddling it would make it not a very effective defender) etc. etc. or training it (minigames ahoy!) would raise its skill at certain tasks. Even things just like exercise, or fighting, which ups its 'stats' on top of its genetic 'build'. Nature AND nurture combined in one game, boo yah!



    It's such an amazingly huge idea, one gets giddy thinking about all the different paths it could take. But I think we're slowly approaching a stage where we can actually do it! For example, Spore is promising to be absolutely fantastic. Your creatures are designable (and even though the design is in some ways more artificial, there is still attempts to bring in that idea of 'gradual' change, of evolution) and there are programs which calculate the nitty gritty things, like how your creature walks, dances, attacks... and if that half hour walkthrough developmental video was any indication, also things like their level of agression and social behaviour!



    Hahahah, sorry, I'm getting really excited here. This is just the kind of ideal game that I've been abrooding over for a very long time (yeeeaaars), and it's actually /happening/. :3











    Its happening??? which game is this??
  • nattynatalianattynatalia Member Posts: 4
    Originally posted by zombietrp

    Originally posted by nattynatalia

    [Snippy snipped for longness]



    Hahahah, sorry, I'm getting really excited here. This is just the kind of ideal game that I've been abrooding over for a very long time (yeeeaaars), and it's actually /happening/. :3











    Its happening??? which game is this??
    Ahahah, my bad, I knew that bad wording was going to bite me in the butt sooner or later XD'  "it's starting to happen" is probably a more valid statement, nothing quite to the level of awesomeness I am envisioning is out yet, but  Spore comes pretty darn close. It's got the customisation and evolution thing down pat, definitely worth a look-at (I know that link is some 35 minutes, but if you don't come out of those 35 minutes thinking 'omg' for shame! Just check out that programming that figures out how the little guys move!)
  • AntiocheAntioche Member UncommonPosts: 132
    Wow this thread got away from me while I was checking out LOTRO! Really great ideas folks. It's good to see that others are thinking about this, and that we all want to see some pretty amazing ideas come to life in virtual worlds. Right now it seems like the mmog industry is making fairly small steps, but hopefully it'll start taking some larger strides. :) I have some more ideas I wanted to post, but I ran out of time reading through everyone's stuff.

    It is pathos we lack, and this lack of pathos makes the worlds we explore quite stale.

    http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Antioche

  • AntiocheAntioche Member UncommonPosts: 132
    Originally posted by Kesemen



    skill trainers: these people are reqired to learn skills. who teaches skills to skil teachers is another question though.  a warrior goes to a trainer and learns skills for money. there are good trainers and not as good trainers. so good ones will be sough after. learning a skill from a good trainer must have an advantege such as slighly better stats in that skill at the cost of paying more money of course.



    since playing an MMO - or any other game- is all about power -making a more POWERful char or beating your opponent in chess- it sounds hard to imagine it to be fun teaching skills to people. I mean teaching skills will not give most players the same satisfaction as doing 2000+ damage to someone. because there is no "owning" or, more generally, "power" involved. still the power parameter can be implemented on a non fighting character in the form of money. the best skill teachers will make lots of money -maybe more than any soldier- and they will have better houses, maybe can buy castles, and can hire NPC guards maybe, and it will take lots of poor soldiers to kill one rich "skill trainer".(or other non fighting char).



    Perhaps everyone could be a skill trainer. For instance if there are no npcs that even teach skills in the first place. It would be up to the players to figure out how to use a sword, and as a player uses his/her sword more he/she becomes more adept with it. Then some other player might come along and want to learn how to use a sword, but instead of doing it the way the first player did it he can study under the first player who is now a master with the sword, and this would make it a lot easier/faster to learn. I think there was a mud that did this, dragonrealms or something. It allowed players to teach each other skills they had learned through raising them. Obviously you could flesh this idea out quite a bit more, but I'm just responding off the top of my head after reading part of your post.

    It is pathos we lack, and this lack of pathos makes the worlds we explore quite stale.

    http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Antioche

  • AlverantAlverant Member RarePosts: 1,319
    Drawing on my experience with City of Heroes and Earth and Beyond, my own ideal MMORPG...



    Well first it would be a sci-fi game. Every zone is its own world and once you reach a high enough level to go to the next world, there's no reason to go back. In fact if you do go back, you're temporarily de-leveled until you go back. Each zone has it's own areas oriented to a section of that zone's level range. You'd have your water area, wasteland area, urban area, and so on.



    There would be a limited set of basic equipment and weapons, but you can customize extensively. With the right attachments your basic firearm can become an automatic sniper rifle with acid bullets. Attachments come in two varieties, permenant and temporary. Temporary attachments can be switched at will. Permenant attachments can't be swapped out without a large fee (OK so it's not really permenant but this allows you to undo your mistakes), but they're more powerful and allows you to attach more temporary attachments. Gear works the same way and it covers everything else from storage to movement to protection.



    Combat would handle like a FPS but with the option to either do standard damage and auto-aim or do the aiming yourself and do damage dependant on where you hit. You can switch between the two at will without penality.



    It would have an extensive craft system. With enough skills you can go from raw materials to finished product. Very little would be for sale that wasn't user-made. The in-game economy would adjust to supply and demand. Without proper resource management at the game level, mines can be exhausted, creatures can go extinct, and technology lost. There would be a lasting effect of the player's actions on the world at large.



    Vehicles, you would have vehicles as customizable as the character. Land, sea, air/space and there would be areas in each zone where you get to use them. In fact, you pretty much have to use them, if only as a transport.



    You would be reward for taking your time and enjoying the journey to max level. As you gain levels your combat ability improves. But you can do side quests that give you skill points that let you make things, bargin at shops, and even gives you a small bonus in combat. Sure you can charge you way through each zone, but someone taking their time will be much better off.



    PvP combat would be restricted to certain areas and there mostly to see who better. But it would also be in areas when a resource is in danger of vanishing from the game. Players can take a job to assist the police. If a player wants to try and raid the last pod of spacewhales, other players and the police can act to enforce the laws. If the offending player wins, well that's life.



    More importantly, there would be PvP games. Everyone is equal (in-house gambling, dice, board games), winning depends on skill not who has the best loot.



    Quests aren't just killing. You can protect, hunt, deliver, and craft. In theory, you can make your way across the worlds and not fire a shot. You can even set up a business and have employees of other players and NPCs (hey, players are fickle). Quest difficulity depends on your own ability. A mission when you just have a simple starship transport is easier than one if you had a fully armed spacecruiser.



    The goal of the game is to grant you the most freedom to specialize or generalize as much as possible. It would appeal to hardcore players who just want to "win" to hardcore players who can spend dozens of hours in the first zone maximizing their character to casual players who take the central road.
  • bonobotheorybonobotheory Member UncommonPosts: 1,007
    The ideal game would vacuum my apartment, cook me dinner, and pay me fifteen bucks a month to play it. There would be no elves and no gnomes, just humans, dwarves, and monkeys. Green monkeys from outer space, with eyes the size of dinner plates. And guns, big goddamn guns. Saying "lol" or "noob" or "this game is a wow clone" would disconnect the player, delete his characters, and cancel his account. It would contain the word "motherfucker" somewhere in the title, like "Motherfucker Online," or "World of Motherfucker." Everything would be fully destructible - not just the environment, but characters too - a well-placed kick could send a player character's spleen flying out through a hole in his back, where it might be picked up and eaten by a stray dog or other wandering monster, resulting in not just a corpse run, but multiple severed body-part runs.
  • DethlyBladeZDethlyBladeZ Member Posts: 106
    Originally posted by Antioche

    I was thinking, a scary thing I know, that we spend a lot of time complaining about how this game or that game sucks, and how the mmog genre is just producing the same banal boring uninventive trash, for the most part. So it would be great if people would think of what their ideal mmog would be like. Be as descriptive as you want, or be as brief as you want. If it's just one aspect you'd like to see, or a specific feature you think would be great to have in these games just write about that. The point of this thread( which will most likely die quickly as it seems that there is a good reason people only complain instead of attempting to move in a positive direction) is to be CREATIVE and remain focused on that concept. This is not a thread to flame other mmogs, so please make your own thread for that, or use the countless other threads that exist for it. I'll refrain from adding my own ideas in the op. Hopefully people respond well to this.
    Yes your opinion doesn't matter at all.. and we should not care At All..
  • AntiocheAntioche Member UncommonPosts: 132
    I appreciate the worthlessness of the above post. I thought I'd try to revive this thread. Who knows someone might be bored and wanted to rant.

    It is pathos we lack, and this lack of pathos makes the worlds we explore quite stale.

    http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Antioche

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