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Developers, lend me your ears!
Binny45
Member UncommonPosts: 522
I've been playing MMO's for sometime now. And don't get me wrong, most of what has come out to date has been spectacular, however it is time to move to the next generation.
The next generation my friends, involves the end of character levels. Gone should be the days when a person cannot group with others simply because of a number. Gone too should be the "class" the person has been hammered into at the beginning of the game. Skill based play my friends, far more realistically represent what we could do in real life if we were ever to end up in these fantasy or sci fi settings.
I've had an idea for an MMORPG for sometime now. I'd have hoped and prayed that eventually I'd get the chance to talk to a dev at some point and time regarding my ideas, but to no avail. So I'm going to post it here. I don't care if any or all of it gets used. Some people might look at this and say "Who does this guy think he is?", well, let me tell you. I'm a guy that's probably into MMO's more than he should be hehe.
So without further adeu, some ideas for a future MMO.
1) Skill based system.
(**NOTE** keep in mind, this is a rough draft, it was never put to code nor tested). With a skill based system of play, a person need not worry about levels, therefore eliminating the need to group with others of simliar level.
My particular skill system has three tiers: Primary, Secondary and Tertiary.
Think of the skill system like you would your own Real Life skill set. You have a small amount of skills you are REALLY good at. These generally involve things you do on a daily basis. This could be something as exciting as flying fighter jets to something a little more mundane like baking really good food (nothing wrong with it, just an example!). By practicing these skills all the time, you achieve a proficiency in them that someone doing them as say a hobby (secondary) would not necessarily reach, thereby granting you extra abilities with that skill.
Secondary skills would be like your hobbies (as mentioned before). These are skills that you still use somewhat frequently, but not daily. For example, you might be a great cook during the day, but once or twice a week you fix cars. You're probably pretty good at it, but you certainly are not the same as a full time mechanic. Follow me?
Tertiary skils represent skills that we once learned and still retain, yet have gotten "rusty". For examply: Riding a bike. You will never forget how to ride a bike, however if you picked one up after a few years, or even a few months, you'd probably wobble and teeter a bit as you start to remember your riding skill. You would most certainly not be any competition for a professional biker!
So, how do we do this? Does a person have unlimited skills? Yes and no.
Primary skills - 10 - Max skill value 300. You can have 10 skills at the Master Level. These give you Tier 3 abilities with said skills. If the skill is a martial art, then certain movies/techniques become available that would otherwise be unknown to a Journeyman.
Secondary skills - 20 - Max skill value 200. These are your hobbies. Again, I'll use martial arts. Obviously someone who does martial arts twice a week for years is quite proficient, however I would hardly consider them competition against someone who lives and breathes their art.
Tertiary skills - 40 - Max skill value 100. Yes it's a definitive number. It could be unlimited if you wanted to, it's up to the devs really. To use the martial arts example again. Say you spent your first bit of the game working your skills up to be a Master Martial Artist. Eventually you achieve this, and when it comes to hand to hand combat, few are your equal. Then you decide to take on another skill, say Healing. So in your new fround profession, you still practice some of your kata's, but you certainly do not spend hours upon hours of everyday practicing like you used to. What happens? Your primary martial arts skill slips to a secondary slot (provided all the primary slots are still full with other skills you use more often) and though you still retain some of your abilities, you've started to forget the more complicated skills.
Eventually you start to focus more on reasearch on top of your healing (Medical Doctor lets say), so you start focusing both your Primary and Secondary skills towards those fields, then your martial arts drops to the Tertiary slot. It's still at the max skill in the Tertiary slot, but will stay there until you start to practice more.
The whole skill system is designed to be dynamic. Why? Because there is nothing worse than leveling a character up to a high level, and then having to play an alt to start playing a new, fresh experience. Why do this? Even in Star Wars Galaxies (Pre-NGE), they had blocks of skills, but there was still a class system limiting and restricting players.
By keeping the system dynamic, the players skill set adjusts to the players play style, instead of the current trend, which is to grind whatever to achieve an etched in stone skill set. To clarify, if a person no longer wants to play a soldier type, and wants to be a merchant, instead of creating a new character, they can simply start doing various merchant related skills. As these increase passed 100, they will displace the least used Secondary skills (putting these older skill into the Tertiary area), as they exceed the 200 mark, the least used primary skills will be bumped down to secondary and so on. Basically, if you are sick of the way you are playing your game, there is NO NEED TO REROLL! You simply stop doing what you are doing and then do something else. The game will take care of the rest. This is designed to be max flex, allowing you some room to be able to go back to previous skill sets, while enabling you to enjoy an entirely new type of game while keeping the same, UNIQUE character you have developed.
Now, keep in mind, this is an idea. I'm sure there are others out there that would take this and massage it. Go for it! It's why I'm posting this. If you see value in this, use it.
2) One server, one world.
EvE Online has done it right. Keep it one world and make it H-U-G-E!!! Make players feel like they are truly part of an online world, not a smaller copy of many worlds. The game I had in mind was a third/first person game based on a VERY future earth. It was my hope that with three very unique factions, that each one would have a starting point. The land would be vast and would require exploring and settling. Give the players the blank slate! Provide some content and allow the players to create their own as well, but I'll get to that in a bit. Main thing is, make exploration worth a damn. Spoiler sites spoil games! Being the first to discover something new should be worth a damn!
3) More than two sides.
If you are gonna have an online experience, you have to have some form of PvP. If you speak to anyone, two sided PvP sucks. Why? Because one side always ends up being bigger than the other. With three different factions, it allows for two smaller factions to work against the larger, allowing for a more level playing field. It won't ALWAYS happen like this, but it's better than nothing.
My game idea had three unique race groups and game styles. In fact, they were going to be three seperate games being played in the one world. To play each type of group, you had to purchase each of the three box sets. Hey! You gotta make money at this! 
First group were the Terrans. Earth has changed a lot in 2 million years and these people are only now coming out of Cyro sleep. Their society is technologically based. Think of a Cyberpunk type of deal, complete with cybernetic modifications, and modern weaponry. This type of gameplay could favor either the FPS player or the RPG player. This faction was based in modern day North America.
Second group were an Anthromorphic type of race. I had some name ideas, but they were really silly, so feel free to name em whatever ye like. They were a Canine based race, something across between a human and a bear. There was also a Feline race that was half man, half jaguar. This type of society is magic/psionic based. When humans disappeared, Gaia granted these animals the gift of free will and moved them along to the next stage of evolution, hoping that these races would not squander the gifts the Humans had recieved, abused and had forgotten where they had received it in the first place. These people could be modified through spiritual tatoos and totems. Their technology is powered through nexus lines and magic. This type of gameplay would proabably favor a more third person type of gameplay. This faction is based in modern day South America.
The Third group were an insect like race. Again, names came to mind, but none that really stood out as good ones. These guys are all about colonization. They are aliens and they are here to take over! They are augmented through the biological harvesting of their prey. Kinda different, but thought it'd be neat and different. Though not mindless, they are very agressive and often will proceed blindly to achieve their goals. Their technology is very bio-chemical. These guys would probably be the most fun using an FPS point of view. This faction is based in modern day Europe.
There is a fourth faction however. When you come into this game world, you are automatically spawned into the society you've chosen (depends on the box you buy). You are automatically susceptable to attack from the other two factions. This fourth faction is a peaceful faction. They are the merchants and scholars, entertainers and sages. I was thinking of something like "The way of the tree" or something peaceful like that. Basically, the player gives up their right to PvP while being one of these guys. They will not be KOS to the other factions as they conduct trade or pass on information, however they gain no benefits either. They are looked upon with mistrust and will often be merely tolerated in any settlement. The price of being flexible. 
These can be any of the three groups.
Now, despite each type having their own type of technology, they are interchangable.....it's just that the person who is human who wants to study magic, not only has work to do convincing these people that they are not evil, that person has one HELLUVA walk/run/ride to get to the other side, at least until the population expands and players start building towns/cities.
4) Why can't we all work together?
What do I mean by this? Well, I hear quite often people talking about Hard core gamers, RPer's, Merchant types and simply people who just want to sit and chat (ala Second Life). Some people want to shoot stuff up. Some people want to carve stuff up. Some people want to make stuff and sell it. Others want to sell services. Some people want to Roleplay. Some people want to do a bit of each. My question is this: Why not?
A lot of games out there tend to lean towards one of these groups whlie neglecting the rest. A game is either PvP focused, or PvE focused or RP focused. Why not have it all?
Hard core and even casual players like to hunt stuff and do quests. RPer's like to create and further storylines. Some people are just content to be an "extra" in the scene while chatting with their cyber buddy. Why not have the RPers help provide content for the other players to complete? I've met a LOT of RPers that are quite the writers! Let them design quests for others to perform. Heck have the merchants do the same so they may get the materials they need! Some folks simply want to open a disco and party all night. Makes for a great spot to offer up some content. 
My main point is this: There's no reason one game cannot cater to all types of players. Give people the ability to create content. Give people the ability to create property, cities even. Give people the ability to govern. Give them the chance to massage the game as they see fit.
5) Player advanced technologies
Sure, there should be lots of Game Dev content developed as far as skills and tech go, but what if a player has an idea? Say the Terrans have advanced battle tanks and this particular player has it in their head that one day, they will engineer a walking mech. Sounds like fun! But it's also going to be work on the players part.
A player who would want to accomplish this would have to ensure that the current technology would support such an endeavor. This would be through correspondance with the game staff (GM's). Through working together, they could eventually achieve the players goals, provided the player is professional and dedicated enough. Once the technology is developed (through many resources and hard work), then that player would have exclusive rights to that tech before it became public domain.
Why might you ask I would do such a thing? Simple. I firmly believe in NEVER telling a player no, they cannot have something. BUT! I am also a believer that they must be prepared to work for what they want. I'll never say no, but I'll never give a free gimme either. Let the players mold their world.
6) Player made factions
At the beginning, players will start with their respective factions. As they guild together, and form their own communities, upon reaching a certain number of people, they could elect to be their own country and faction. This would seceed them from their original faction, but would have it's own benefits (IE: Tax dollars from building upkeep going to the guild bank). The new faction could choose to align themselves with their former country, they could elect to be neutral, or could even go over to an enemy faction. As the game grows, so does the political intrigue.
Wow, it's 1:45 AM. I've been writing this for almost 1 and 1/2 hours and I'm very tired. My apologies should I have some mispellings, however I just wanted to get this out there. There's many games waiting to happen. I believe something like this could work with some TLC from the right company. Please, discuss, pull apart, critique, and add on. Hopefully one day we'll see something similar to this come to light. A truly virtual world, offering many styles of play, for all of us to enjoy.
When I come home tomorrow I'll see if there's anything I want to add.
Thank you for reading.
Comments
thank you for posting , very nice to read.
Guild - http://lightness.goodforum.net/
Blog - http://www.pierrecarlier.com/
Definately a nice read. Love seeing others opinions on this stuff, and can relate to alot of things you mentioned. Very intersting ideas. You are right tho, we got to get to the next generation of MMOs, someones got to take the next step. Seems Age of Conan is sorta taking that stride, but still isnt enough yet. Seems like its going to be eternity until we see the real next generation of MMOs because nothing has really been brought out to get past this era were stuck in, then figure atleast a few years of development. But once again, nice read. I enjoyed it and like your ideas.
I am a developer and entrepreneur who has played lots of MMOs and will hopefully be starting one once I get the VC together sometime next year... so I have spent lots of time thinking about everything on your list but haven't had to deal with any of them for real (yet).
Skill based systems are generally hard to balance. You need to make less developed skills useful at "endgame" without making those skills relatively over powered for pre-endgame characters... which is not exactly easy. Also you have to balance (most likely reactively) every possible combination of skills. Extra work means extra cost, and players tend to not like reactive balancing (aka nerfing).I like the idea of skill based advancement and have some ideas on how to make it work and catch the egregious skill combos before players do. Unfortunately I can't share any of these just yet.
EvE makes this work by having a huge world with generic content. There are only a few factors that determine which agents will give you which missions, which are more or less identical where ever you go. IMO the EvE universe feels relatively flat and homogonous because of this. This works out alright in EvE because the PvE content is not really the draw of the game.VG tried to do a massive world without generic content. Though others will undoubtedly disagree, my impression of VG was that it was an (annoyingly) huge environment that was more or less lifeless. Had VG gone to release with one continent with three times the content creation resources it would have IMO been much more enjoyable game.
My plan is to focus on making a relatively small, but polished and content rich, environment and to grow it as needed. This will require either instancing of public areas or multiple servers. I am leaning towards instancing public areas, but am not really sure which would be perceived as worse by players.
Having more than 2 sides doesn't help balance (see NC in Planetside or Alb in DAoC) and making neither does making it hard to change factions. What you should really be thinking about is how to get players to self balance. This is another area where I have some ideas... but can't discuss them ATM.One Word:Budget
It costs at least 10M$ to make an MMO, and for AAA title that cost is more like 50M$ or more. As an MMO developer you want to get the most bang for your buck and that, for good or ill, means identifying your target market and catering to them.
Every feature has a cost associated with it and often this cost is not fully understood going into development. The cost of over-reaching is disappointing everyone instead of WOWing (no pun intended) your target audience.
This is one of the areas where I think there could be a lot of improvement over the current state of the art. But the creation process needs to be structured to maintain balance and not require GM intervention to remain profitable. User created items is also area where balance is tricky (see Oblivion invis+DoT spells).Works better on paper than it does in a game (see Shadowbane). Some player driven factionalization can work, but I doubt that complete freedom can be granted here without disastrous side effects.There are lots of things that people would like to see in MMOs, but unfortunately they are ultimately all businesses that are trying to stay as profitable as possible.
1)
Many have tought before you that the "skill based" system is the end all of the problems of MMorpg. Let me tell you. it ain't. The differences between class and skill system, while great on the surface, eventually ends up to be not so great. You lose a lot of sense of power on one hand (most skill based systems have the gap between newbies and maxxed to be drastically reduced) and you gain a certain degree of freedom on the other hand.
Considering one system intrinsically superior to the other is wrong. they are different, they accomplish different things, don't make the mistake I did for years to consider level based systems "bad" or "noobish". look at the P&P market. there are plenty of skill based and level based systems around, for all level of complexity. from simple to ultra-complex.
also grind exist in both system as rising your skill usually involved doing something related to that skill, ie killing baddies for rifles for example.
2)
Sorry. no can do.
EVE is also a very unique approach to the genre. with huge universe spanning loads and loads of star system. This is good for a SPACE game. A LAND based game cannot work like that.
Look at Vanguard, THEY have a huge world and not even they could pull the "one" server dream. Place 120 000 people in a single world and you will have several problems of A) content and
EVE avoid this thanks to their structure (A) there is not much content, most of it is dynamically generated and about the same. Space is awfully big so players can do their stuff withouth overcrowding, a land based game does not have the Z axis as much as a space game. you would have 20 000 people standing in the newbie area trying to do something and crashing the server all the time. even if that is not gonna happen, how they can do anything with so many competition? Have you ever seen WoW newbie areas at launch? tought those were overcrowded? now imagine if there were ALL the players in one world....)
3) nothing to comment here
4)there is ONE reason why a game cannot cater to all player type. Time and Resources. Making a game to cater PvPers require different content and guidelines to pull off than one based on PvE. having a game for BOTH risk to alienate your customers AND require 1.8x resources and time. If you find a company that is available to give you 150 millions of dollars troughout a 10 years development process, be my guest and go ahead.
5) again. sorry no can do.
Good idea on the paper but think of this a moment. How many people are gonna play this game? 100 000? and how many feel special? exactly. all of them. How can you handle 100 000 persons ALL wanting to implement their technologies? the GM CANNOT do that, they are much less and their job is not that.
to pull it off you will need a team of dedicated "technologists" in the dozens if not hundreds. And you risk again alienating much of your customers because "I had a better idea than him, but he is the GM's cousin"
Plus, you also need a secondary dev team to handle this technology. test them? what if they are not balanced for your game? and so on.
6)this is good and is a foundation to great pvp games already.
Final: I'm sorry for all my critics. I wish i could say more good about this. I do like your ideas, they are the dreams i had too sometime ago. then the reality kicked in and I realized, with the help of my wife, they are unfeasible. Some nowaday and some, sadly, also for the forseeable future.
Have a nice day
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
VG tried to do a massive world without generic content. Though others will undoubtedly disagree, my impression of VG was that it was an (annoyingly) huge environment that was more or less lifeless. Had VG gone to release with one continent with three times the content creation resources it would have IMO been much more enjoyable game.
My plan is to focus on making a relatively small, but polished and content rich, environment and to grow it as needed. This will require either instancing of public areas or multiple servers. I am leaning towards instancing public areas, but am not really sure which would be perceived as worse by players.
1 world is actually easy to implement. You just have to "re-create" zones & cities to fit all the players. Example: Ironforge12, Ironforge115, etc. If you want to meet up with someone just tell them "I'm in Ironforge115" If you don't care which zone # you enter then it gets selected at random. Seems confusing but it's really not.
City of Heroes has already does this to a LIMITED extent.
There is still contention for shared resources, complexity associated with dynamic instancing, and other design issues. Also what happens when the horde decides to attack ironforge #42? Do you let them take up all of the "slots" in the instance? do you let defenders zone in until the zone crashes? Do you keep half of your capacity unused when the horde is not attacking?It is all solvable, but by no means simple. IMO criticism is much more valuable than praise. When you are creating something you dont really need to be told what you are doing right, you need to know what you are doing wrong before you find out the hard way and if you are right it forces you to think through the justification for your idea (which is always a good thing). Hopefully the OP feels the same way.
Ahh... this age old thing. Know what those "Auto-Raising Skills" are? They're mathmatical formulas that sit in the backround that you don't have to look at the number representing your level.
It's a comon misconception... very. Your level is still represented, whether the number shows or not. You can still have levels and skills based system, even WoW has that.
What you want is a more open ended system, or "classless". You probably have a desire to couple it with a "more realistic" "twitch combat" style system. Want to know what you just described?
...a FPS...
How about something more akin to DP like in the old Table Top games? As you earn experience you earn DP, and that gets you points to spend in whatever skill you desire. There are quite a few systems out there like this.
You also mentioned "Skill Attrition", as in the act of declining skill if unused. This, is a good idea on paper... less so one in practice.
Ow. My brain hurts from just reading that little phrase. MMOs aren't easy... actually they're really really complicated. Making 1 huge seamless world takes time... zones that break it up allow for multiple server loads.
You mentioned EVE, in EVE, each solar system in the Galaxy is a different Server. The zoning is just very very quick. Zones allow for more people on the server.
There's also good reasons to break up the server. Not everybody enjoys a RP environment... how often have you heard a story of the RP police sitting in the middle of a town waiting to jump down somebody's throat because of a mistell or something? Whether you agree with RP games or not, it's a fact of gaming life at this point.
You can also allow for different server rules, such as a more "Carebear" environment for those who are not "Hardcore" enough.
Breaking up the servers breaks up the monotony in so many ways. Zones are awesome... hands down.
What does more then 2 sides give you? I'm going to ignore your Furdom and just point out that a well designed game only needs 1 side for players to stand on... they'll create their own drama without you enforcing artificial blockades.
Look at BSG (watch that show? I love it...) or really, any show. Even people on the same side create their own internal drama and wars. We do that here on Earth... we're all fighting the evil opression of Global Warming and Fatness and disease, but man we can stop to fight each other for any given occassion, can't we? I'm not even talking about wars with soldiers, just look at the UN or any given court case.
I believe I just answered that. ahh... the age old question of "Why can't I invent this?!?"
Keeping an eye on everything ingame allows the Developers more leeway to add parts. I suggest if you want a MetaVerse you go play There. That's what the game is designed around. There's that...SecondLife...thing... too.
I see no reason there can't be player made factions. After all, this sort of dynamic content where you make your own city is easy to fix for a Developer. Hurricanes, tornados...meteors... man, I could come up with a dozen ways to wipe out a pesky player and call it part of the game world. Earthquakes, that's a good one... swallow up all the players AND their rebirth point... Roll a new character boys. MUAHAHAHA!
Thank you for posting your opinions. I suggest if you believe in them firmly that you start writing out a full fledged design doc on your computer. Perhaps you can get some friends together and start working through the programming phase of some of this stuff... find yourself a publisher and we'll see your game.
Just remember, there's nothing like doing it yourself if you're unhappy with the current crop. That's how we better ourselves in the world, we don't like the situation and we move to change it. Otherwise we'd still be swinging from trees!
...I take that back... we shouldn't improve ourselves... the tree thing sounds fun...
EDIT: I cannot lend you my ears... it's payday weekend and I'm sure my little employees will be screaming their little hearts out expecting money so they can eat. Yeah, like I want to give them money... sha, right.
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title.
"When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
Wow! Awesome responses one and all!
With regards to some of the comments though, I think I might have miscommunicated a little.
With regard to the one server issue, I agree you would have to have zones. Right now the technology is just not there for such a large undertaking. You can however have only one world, just break it up into little chunks. I can certainly appreciate what Vanguard is trying to do, but even having multiple servers it's still hard on the bandwidth.
With regards to the skill system, I will admit EvE, SWG and my favorite P&P RPG Shadowrun inspired me, however I did not copy them. The majority of these have skill systems that take time, but eventually you could infact learn everything at one skill level.
My system is different in that it is supposed to adjust to your play style. Depending on if you wanted to make it unlimited or not would be entirely up to the dev. The skill would never be forgotten, but depending on how often it was used it would be relegated to "Everyday Use" (Master), "Hobby" (Journeyman) and "Occasional" (Apprentice). At anytime, a player could relearn those skills, thereby allowing for endles play potential.
Wtih regards to the world itself, I had planned expansions with the other continents (Asia, Africa, Antarctica and Austrailia), the Moon and maybe even beyond. Lots of room for future development and expansion.
I believe that players can be productive contributors to a game. I think there are a LOT of players that crave this type of thing. I think it would help develop a more involved community, which can only benefit the game. People are less likely to leave a game if they've invested time, money and hard work into it, even more so if they've left their mark on it.
Now, with regard to player developed tech and skills, I stand by this. There should be a form available online that a player can submit thier ideas on. Keep in mind though, the information would have to be very detailed. Simply saying "OMG! I WANT R ROBOTECH ROBOT MOTERCICLE!! VROOM! LOLZ!" will simply not do. I would personally request what the person could see as the required skill tree for such a technology to come into fruition, starting with technology that already exists and working from there. What materials would be needed? What skills would be required to use it? Repair it? There's a lot of thought that would go into developing something new like this, and the process would reflect the amount of time and work required to achieve this. The reward? World wide fame and fortune of course! Your tech/skills would be named after you and you would have every crafter in the game gunning for your secret, offering riches for your creations and hoping to one day learn how to create something that you built from the ground up.
With regards to more than two sides, i feel this is a must. It helps keep things off balance, at least at the start. After that it's up to the players hehe.
My ultimate goals is this: If one developer looks at this and sees something, ANYTHING good in here and uses it, then it's mission accomplished. My goal is to help make these types of games better by helping them to evolve into the next generation. It is my true belief that one game can infact, provide enterainment value to any and all customers, it just hasn't been made yet.