Your idea for an mmo

[teknoarcanist]

So basically I want to hear the ideas you all have secretly in the back of your minds. The ones that make you say to yourself 'If I had an entire development team enslaved to my whim, I could totally make the best game ever.' Leave talk of practicality and technical limitations at the door.
Individual ideas too, ie 'this is how I would make mages work'

Here's mine:
An online game which is massively dynamic. The game starts, you join one of three nations as usual, bla bla bla. Then, suddenly, a world war breaks out. Not triggered by a quest, not started by talking to X_npc, but just suddenly and globally. Players from nation one are thrown into war with players from nation two. Every fallen player contributes some minuscule fraction to the war effort, so that the actual victor country is determined by the players. So you can go to war against your friends from various other nations, or abandon the draft and run to the hills.
After the war, the entire world becomes a single global government, who hunts down these renegades in the hills.
Players can organize an assassination attempt on the king, while other players guard the castle stronghold. If the king is killed, the world goes into anarchy.
And so on and so forth. Basically the world is posed a continuous narrative determined by mass player action.
This could be made even better with different mini-servers going up all the time, starting at various points in the world's story (ie, a second chance to take the world a different way, or for new players to experience the world from the beginning). Maybe a special item would allow players to transfer their characters, ie jump to a different parallel universe where some past war went differently.

So?

edit: No complaining about large posts

 

[HeartagramMan]

hmmm i like it.
the thing i hate about MMO's is that they all revolve around the same thing, with the same fantasy setting and the same bloody character classes. i would sugest someone come up with somthing new for once.

ok my idea. i would like to see a game where the experience is tottaly different for everyone, it seems no matter what most plots in MMO's are linear no matter what class of character you are. id like to somthing where every plot is varied only cross on occasions so you do get the feeling of being in someone eles life. new quests, adventures etc should be posted weekly and fufilled in groups of the ppl who take upon this quest. remember this would be if i had "an entire development team enslaved to my whim".

hmmmm well i can dream

 

[teknoarcanist]

Well that one might even be possible if an engine were created that allowed players to create quests for other players. So maybe once you reach level 20, you visit X_npc in X_town, and he says 'hey, I'm tired of asking for monster bits. I have a pile of wombat tails over here rotting and shit! it's gross! Help me think of some newbie quests?' or something like that

 

[Anarchemitis]

Imagine:
Team Fortress 2 equivalent balanced units.
Map is 2Fort except 200 times bigger.
350 players on each team
Rounds last 96 hours.
Go.

The most awesome Capture the flag ever.

 

[geldonyetich]

So?

I take it you're inviting critique?

Well, three-way PvP with wars that start and end are pretty old hat, really. Dark Age of Camelot and RF Online to name a couple. Although, you're going a little further in terms of actually allowing the players to lose, and I can appreciate that because it's a level of a dynamic content that most people will kick and scream to actively prevent. The thing is, people generally don't like to have all the work they invested in their characters and virtual soveriegn nations thrown away for what basically amounts to a massive popularity contest where the nation with the most players win, and that's a pity because any open-PvP MMORPG is always just that.

What I'm really more concerned about is not this big sweeping external aspects but rather playing a MMORPG that's genuinely fun on the GUI level. If people would start doing that, maybe MMORPGs would actually start being fun again.

So there's my dream MMORPG. One that's as much fun on the inside (individual player level) as it is the outside (massively multiplayer level), with a nice tie-in between.

 

[meatloaf231]

So basically I want to hear the ideas you all have secretly in the back of your minds. The ones that make you say to yourself 'If I had an entire development team enslaved to my whim, I could totally make the best game ever.' Leave talk of practicality and technical limitations at the door.
Individual ideas too, ie 'this is how I would make mages work'

Here's mine:
An online game which is massively dynamic. The game starts, you join one of three nations as usual, bla bla bla. Then, suddenly, a world war breaks out. Not triggered by a quest, not started by talking to X_npc, but just suddenly and globally. Players from nation one are thrown into war with players from nation two. Every fallen player contributes some minuscule fraction to the war effort, so that the actual victor country is determined by the players. So you can go to war against your friends from various other nations, or abandon the draft and run to the hills.
After the war, the entire world becomes a single global government, who hunts down these renegades in the hills.
Players can organize an assassination attempt on the king, while other players guard the castle stronghold. If the king is killed, the world goes into anarchy.
And so on and so forth. Basically the world is posed a continuous narrative determined by mass player action.
This could be made even better with different mini-servers going up all the time, starting at various points in the world's story (ie, a second chance to take the world a different way, or for new players to experience the world from the beginning). Maybe a special item would allow players to transfer their characters, ie jump to a different parallel universe where some past war went differently.

So?

edit: No complaining about large posts

So you are basically talking about a more refined, expansive, medieval version of Planetside.

Totally awesome. The problem is that people are idiots. Everyone wants to be the best assassin and kill the king or the best X at doing Y. There would be no cooperation because there would be no teamwork. People just don't work like that.

 

[Booze Zombie]

My idea for an MMO:

The story is that 5 different countries are looking to expand their borders and want to take control of the country Indigo. The five invading forces are Red, Blue, Yellow, Green and Tan, their uniforms, vehicles and buildings coloured respectively.

The countries invading want to make the war cost-effective so their armies must construct command centres, buildings, weapons, vehicles, boats and aircraft from local metals and the few factories still standing.

Coal and iron mines must be captured and players must then drill said mines to get the ores contained within them, the ores needing to be delivered to smelting works to be refined into usable metal. The metal then being delivered to factories to be turned into parts for weapons, buildings, boats, aircraft and vehicles.

Which makes supply lines important in the game, by the way.

Tactics will be important in the game. For instance, it would be better to build a hidden base in a forest to observe your enemy, than just charging into an enemy base blindly and risk your side being slaughtered. Though, the parts would have to be moved in covertly to build the base.

Radio support plays an important part in the game, allowing squads of soldiers to relay important information to one another. For instance, if a soldier is on a hill and he spots the enemy side building a factory, he could radio for artillery fire or a bombing run on map coordinates x, y.

The gun fighting would be like Rainbow Six meets Far Cry 2 (with weapons breaking and jamming). Soldiers would have certain roles, such as various members of the group being medics, mechanics or heavy support, etc.

Vehicle combat would be like the Battlefield series and mechanics would be tasked with re-attaching pieces of vehicles that have come off, putting out fires, fixing engines and fixing vehicles enough to make it to a repair station for a proper repair job.
In a similar manner, mechanics can put out fires on boats, bail water, patch leaks with a spot welder and fix engines.
Aircraft can crash land and mechanics can stop them from blowing up (if they're badly damaged enough), restore the aircraft to basic functionality and repair minor structural damage.

Control of an area is really held by bases, patrols and how secure your supply lines are, not by designated territory on a map. A side defeated by another has all of it's players captured by that side joining their ranks and their factories, mines and buildings are left abandoned for anyone to take over.

That's my idea, in a nutshell.

 

[geldonyetich]

The problem is that people are idiots. Everyone wants to be the best assassin and kill the king or the best X at doing Y. There would be no cooperation because there would be no teamwork. People just don't work like that.

I don't think "people" is the problem. I think "poor incentives that motivate people incorrectly" is the problem. Most MMORPG developers don't think that far - they don't design games that teach people to cooperate. They underestimate that people are learning creatures, and if the shortest path to the reward is to grief other players, they'll do it. Some will have more restraint than others, but it'll happen.

 

[Usige Beatha]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. nuf said. But with a bigger game area and more creatures and factions etc...

Also, NO CHARACTER CLASSES. Just use your gun and shoot.

 

[HeartagramMan]

Imagine:
Team Fortress 2 equivalent balanced units.
Map is 2Fort except 200 times bigger.
350 players on each team
Rounds last 96 hours.
Go.

The most awesome Capture the flag ever.

dude i like your thinking

 

[Sylocat]

I'm still waiting for that Firefly MMO we've been hearing about for years. But oh well. Sociolotron is fun too, but it's not for everyone.

As for my ideas for an MMO:

I'd try to make an original MMO by rooting out the problem with computerized RPGs in the first place. CRPGs reproduce all the most tedious aspects of real RPGs (level grind, rigid character classes) while preserving none of the good elements (organic story growth, character-driven missions), the only reason they're even called "RPGs" is because they preserve the stat mechanisms of D&D, not the element that gives it the term "Role Playing Game."

So I'd try to design an MMO with the following qualities:

1. I wouldn't just do away with character classes, I'd do away with the level system as well. All character customization would come through weapons and spells.

2. User-submitted content would be a must. Provide development tools for players to create their own content. Obviously, it wouldn't be unmoderated, unregulated user-submitted content is the kiss of death for any website (look what happened to Encyclopaedia Dramatica, a site that once was entertaining until their open-door policy let the retards run wild). Perhaps once you'd made your own armor/expansion pack/whatever, you'd submit it to the GMs for evaluation.

3. Replace the NPCs with PCs. Offer incentives for PCs to set up shop, say as tavern keepers, merchants, etcetera. The fewer NPCs, the better. Maybe offer a lot of people the chance to set up their own little houses or apartments.

4. Have several different worlds. One a medieval fantasy landscape, one a modern-day society, one a space station, etcetera. Maybe a central hub that leads to four different worlds.

5. Each of the four worlds would have its own combat mode. Laser battles and dogfights in space, sword and sorcery in the fantasy world, guns and melee weapons in the "realistic" world, etc. The one thing I would insist on is real-time combat, no turn-based stuff. I'm okay with turn-based combat in a single-player RPG, but with other players it's just boring. The central hub would be mostly puzzle-solving.

6. A decent ARG tie-in is always a good thing. But good ARGs are hard to pull off.

 

[Landslide]

One of the fundamental challenges with a MMOG is size. Pure and simple. The reason so many seem derivative is because they have to be by necessity.

Take a single player game like Grand Theft Auto 4. GTA4's total development included a little over 1000 individuals, 3.5 years and about $100million dollars. No small feat. I, and most people I know, beat it in about 30 to 40 hours of play time.

Now let's take your average MMOG player, who expects to be able to play their favorite massive online game for not 40 hours, but for a year. And it'll be that long before the first expansion, at least. Note the disparity between entertainment expectations.

MMOGs are developed using a formula, because that formula has proven itself capable of delivering acceptable levels of entertainment over very prolonged periods of time. Just how many hours have you sunk into a kill or collection quest? How many hours into collection quests in general? Do they represent 25% of your play time? 50%?

It's not that these developers lack new, fresh, interesting ideas. It's just that there are very, very few ideas they've been able to come up with that are low cost to develop, and bring that many hours of gameplay to the table. Those will always be the main bread and butter features (content) in an MMOG.

The only two other models for MMOGs I can think of offhand that 'work' are purely combative (PvP/Territory control), and 'Sandbox' games (UO, Second Life). Both of those have higher barriers of entry for people, so they tend to have fewer subscribers.

Lemme put it another way. If a GameDev Company managed to secure a decent budget to develop a competitive MMOG - let's say 30-50MM - then whoever owns that money is going to want to make damn sure that the game is developed as closely as possible to the most successful models in the industry. Just enough 'innovation' will be put into the game to add some box copy, and marketing hooks.

I love good ideas, but the best ideas are going to be the ones that bring something new and fresh to the table, but keep the bottom line firmly in sight. Honestly, this procedural development stuff that some people are working on (Will Wright - Spore, and Carmack has a new engine) might be the ticket. Ideally the method will help cut down on content costs, and also increase the opportunity for emergent gameplay (Which, in my opinion is the holy grail of online gaming).

 

[Carne]

A few things, 14 classes. 50 levels, you can have two classes at the same time as you level your classes are x/0 until you hit 50 where you start leveling the second one. You can switch the order of the classes with a spell that has rather long cool down.

So for instance a level 50/25 Healer/Tank can switch and be a 50/25 Tank/Healer.

All armor and weapons are slotted based on your level and have no stats. By filling the slots with removable items you can have any armor, or weapon, you want with stats fitting someone of your level.

Weekly quests will offer unique looking armor and weapons to everyone who completes them. This wouldn't be a problem because a the selection of weapon models and skins would be easily interchangeable.

A lackey system similar to the one found in CoX.

Instances that scale to the number of players entering allowing solo play.

Pickpocket would be useful increasing humanoid boss drop rates by between 100 - 33%.

Class pets grow as you level up. Certain pets can later become mounts which can be sold to other players.

There would be no useless weapons, like fist weapons or the unarmed skill.

You can gain quest items before starting a quest.

Wolves drop wolf pelts!!!

Some steam punk would be nice. Also a class involving scythes and another which uses revolvers.

I could go on, but I won't

 

[Squarewave]

First I would get rid of the auto-attack then wait for cooldown/global cooldown on skills interface that's pleaged them seance EQ1. No other game type has this horrible system it made sence when people had 28.8 modems still do to lag, but its time to move past it.

It would be a class/skill hybrid system like morrowind/oblivion but less easy to exploit/screw up. If someones playing a mage class and gets bored with it they should be able to pick up a sword and train to be a fighter but would take longer to skill then his mage based skills do to his class

I would make the quest system more 'realistic' for a game that's supposed to be a virtual world. By that I meen a NPC is not going to ask for rabit hides from every single person that talks to him, but rather if the NPC is a leatherworker he will ask each person for a random leatherworking related material. Quests to kill a specific person will use a random name generator to avoid that 'why should I kill drak the destroyer he'll just respawn' feeling that breaks immersion in MMOs for me

I would encourage grouping by making kills give the same exp/skill in a group as they do solo, but sence your in a group you kill faster and get more exp/skill over time. None of this 200 exp if your solo but 30 in a group that just encourages people not to group

 

[Limos]

I have an idea.

If you have ever read the Nightside books by Simon R Green this would probably make more sense.

The Nightside, a pocket dimension set in the secret heart of London, where it's always 3 a.m. and gods walk the earth. Super science and old magic coexist in a city with no laws and nothing even approaching morality.

There would be no levels, but you would have an infamy rating which would come into play later in the game. This would be based on kills, total environmental destruction and other sorts of havoc. (churches burned, graveyards despoiled, demons banished etc. etc.)

The characters would start out as humans but everything about your character would be customizable, skin tone, facial features, lengths and shapes of limbs. Basically the spore creature creator for humanoids. The longer you play the less strict the limits on your character would become.

Everything would be skill based. At the beginning of character creation you will be able to choose your major skills which will make up your character. All skills chosen will receive a level boost. Later on you will be able to train up other skills as needed. All attacks and abilities will be custom hotkeyed to any key on your keyboard. Gaining skill levels will raise your infamy rating. Skills will range from assorted types of magic, to psychic abilities, and firearms prowess.

One of the main features of the Nightside series that made me want it as an MMO is the Street of the Gods. Anything that has inspired enough faith, infamy, or fear can become a God. (In the book series they are reffered to as Powers and Domination.) Once you become a Power the customization will be completely unlocked. You will be able to change your character in any way you want. To limit the number of powers you will require a Church on the Street of the Gods which will be limited in space. If a Power is killed their infamy rating reverts back to a pre power status and they resume mortal form. Also their church is destroyed. ((This is to encourage assasination and chaos among the major players seeking to become Powers.))


Different weapons, magic objects, super technology and items of power will be limited in number according to their power. At times there will only be one of each item of power. (This will be limited to objects that grant dramatic powers. Like tearing holes in dimensions or otherwise being overpowered.)

Unlike most MMOs I would want death to be catastrophic. I want immersion. When you kill someone you can loot the body of everything they have on them. If someone stashes their stuff in their house you can break in and steal it. Likewise you can summon demonic entities from beyond space and time to devour would be thieves.

Mostly this would be a game almost devoid of grind. The game will be more about fucking over your fellow man/alien/elf/god/thing than it is about raiding the dungeon for the umpteenth time. Of course if you kill someone or steal their stuff you can expect them to come after you with their friends.

The health would be a little different too. Rather than a health bar where you are healthy and fine right up until the point you suddenly keel over and die. The health bar would end at wounded and then you would have a chance to escape rather than continue fighting. Of course if you ignore the warnings and continue fighting you will die and people will loot your body.

Even though you would lose all your stuff it would have those deus ex machina tubes and their magical equivalent. Just you would lose everything you were carrying and most of your infamy.


It would take some balancing, but I think it would be a great game where your competition is more about the other players than it is the computer.

 

[teknoarcanist]

Totally awesome. The problem is that people are idiots. Everyone wants to be the best assassin and kill the king or the best X at doing Y. There would be no cooperation because there would be no teamwork. People just don't work like that.

Well that kind of thing could be regulated. the devs (and special people playing for the devs) could be extremely powerful. ie, they protect the rebel leader/king/etc. try to kill him, they fuck you up. it's not impossible to kill him, of course...but it would require massive cooperation

And the war thing was just one aspect I meant as an example. I just mean it would be nice to see a huge mmo world that doesn't revolve around the players, but instead has massive dynamic events which involve them. I want to see a world that progresses and changes, rather than just remaining static.

 

[teknoarcanist]

@geldonyetich
Amen, brother. Squarewave brought up a good point about how combat in MMO's came to be; it's time to move past that, and I definitely think it's possible. Champions Online seems to be taking a step in the right direction, though since it's not out yet, I guess we'll have to wait and see

@boozezombie
What you described reminds me of some game I read about in game informer a while back...like a faction-driven MMO-RTS.
Sort of sounds like the idea I've heard before of combining a close first-person shooter with a broader real-time strategy game. Like there would be the basic players running around doing shit, and then there'd be the bird's-eye-perspective guy who's basically playing an RTS. There's the trouble that players might not listen, but that could be easily fixed; enhancements if you follow the leader's orders, npc's amidst your group that would follow the leader's orders no matter what (encouraging you to stick with the group), and of course the fact that the guy would have a broader view so he could say 'they're coming from that direction', and it would be in your best interest to listen to him.
Big maps would be a must in a game like this; if you tried to run off and ignore the leader, you'd end up running around lost in some random corner.

@ limos
that would be pretty awesome. In that sort of universe though, for death to be catastrophic, it would have to be infrequent or it would lose its effect. There would have to be a very well-developed battle system, so that when another player set out to annihilate you, rather than feeling like a quick match on halo, it would feel like an epic Final Fantasy boss fight. By the time you were at the god level, these would take place in the sky over the city, with massive formless entities hurling energy at one another. At the lower levels, the battle system would be a lot more personal, as well as offering means to escape; I imagine crazy fantasy-style parkour across weird gothic rooftops. but that's just me

@ squarewave
that sort of makes me think it would be neat for an mmo world to be really integrative, like every npc has their place. if you break into a workshop and kill a leather-worker, it should affect the local market. if you kill all but a small group of leather-working npc's, the price in the economy would soar. if you worked this in with players as well, it could get interesting. someone in your guild would go 'alright, my leatherworking is capped. anybody wanna party w/ me and make a raid on (insertnation) and assassinate the head of their leatherworkers' union?' Basically an extension of the player-controlled-economy idea

@carne
What you describe towards the beginning sounds like ffxi's job system. basically your have two job slots; one is its full level, the other is that by half. so if you have a 30 thief and a 10 whm, and put your whm as your primary job, the thief gets gimped to level 5 and becomes sort of a support system. It's a good idea in theory, in that it's supposed to increase replay time. In practice, since leveling every job is kind of exactly the same (go to the dunes, kill shit) it feels sort of repetitive. But hey man, scythe/revolvers ftw.

@anarchemitis
You will doom us all.

@sylocat
Lots of amazing ideas there. I've always believed the first step to a really good MMO would be to eliminate NPC's and facilitate their replacement with players. Imagine the following scene: a bounty hunter confronts his mark in a tavern. In this ideal imaginary hypothetical mmo, there would be someone who owns the tavern, who upkeeps it and earns money from it in a sim-tavern sort of way. there would be the random heroes in the tavern, who could suddenly get offered (by the tavern-owner) x amount of gold to get this bounty hunter riffraff out of here. there'd be the bounty-hunter, a character on a quest to find a wanter player (ala Galaxies). and then there'd be the wanted player himself, who could approach the scene any number of different ways.
THAT is what 'role-playing' in an MMO should be. Offer players the ability to take on diverse roles, not differing formulaic variations on the same idea.

@landslide
Well yeah, that's why I said leave talk of practicality at the door. I understand why it's difficult to make an innovative MMO, but at the same time, there are a lot of possibilities for the genre/medium and it's fun to discuss ideas. Worst case scenario we're a bunch of nerds in a forum. Best-case scenario, someone dilutes a bunch of these ideas and slaps a game around them.
There is definitely developmental progression in the mmo genre, it's just a lot slower than in others; it's the same with sports games, I think, and both for the reasons you've listed. MMO's have made the amount of progression in ten years that action games, for example, might make in two, because it's less financially risky to try out a new concept in a one-shot console game.

Holy crap, it's nice to find a forum with discussions of game philosophy with intelligent people @_@ I <3 the Escapist

 

[Limos]

@ limos
that would be pretty awesome. In that sort of universe though, for death to be catastrophic, it would have to be infrequent or it would lose its effect. There would have to be a very well-developed battle system, so that when another player set out to annihilate you, rather than feeling like a quick match on halo, it would feel like an epic Final Fantasy boss fight. By the time you were at the god level, these would take place in the sky over the city, with massive formless entities hurling energy at one another. At the lower levels, the battle system would be a lot more personal, as well as offering means to escape; I imagine crazy fantasy-style parkour across weird gothic rooftops. but that's just me

I was thinking a little more cloak and dagger to start. But yes, once you get upper levels gods in the mix we should probably see some entities duking it out in the sky. But not just fantasy, the whole point is that your characters can become really really weird. I want werewolves fighting robots while fallen angels rain brimstone upon a horde of gunmen.

One thing I forgot to mention would be the relationship system. More like feudal servitude than grouping. Stronger players sign up lower players to act as their minions. The stronger players will be able to warp in their minions to help out, and the minions will be able to summon their stronger ally in times of need. Once the chain gets long enough imagine two lower level players summoning successively more powerful players until we have an all out war with players of every level duking it out in the streets.

If they limit the amount of space and resources, no respawning resources, no unlimited sources of wealth. Then add a horde of selfish egotistical players with superpowers and weaponry into the mix. Warzones will be breaking out at the drop of a hat. It would be epic.

 

[teknoarcanist]

It would be interesting too if those areas could be somehow contained within a larger world. Maybe during 'peace times' the controlling local power would get a huge bonus, like accruing wealth at a crazy pace. So on one hand it would encourage peace, and on the other it would sort of act as a catalyst to fighting because everyone would want to be that controlling power. Add in the ability for players/groups to merge, form alliances, etc, sounds like a pretty badass, pretty balanced system.

 

[Limos]

It would be interesting too if those areas could be somehow contained within a larger world. Maybe during 'peace times' the controlling local power would get a huge bonus, like accruing wealth at a crazy pace. So on one hand it would encourage peace, and on the other it would sort of act as a catalyst to fighting because everyone would want to be that controlling power. Add in the ability for players/groups to merge, form alliances, etc, sounds like a pretty badass, pretty balanced system.

Exactly, the Powers are encouraged to maintain the Status quo. As long as they are in control they gain power and wealh at a crazy pace. Lower players are encouraged to create chaos because that is the only way they can rise up through the ranks, by destroying those above them. Higher level players will be constantly looking for a chance to take down the Powers because that gives them a chance to be a power. Other Powers will want to take down their rivals because that increases their own power.

The power structure would be in a constant state of flux with players rising and falling through the ranks.

I'm sure goody goody players will try to play nice and make groups. All the better then, the more interplayer relations there are the more people get pulled into each conflict.