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Suggestions for ground breaking MMO design
Gamer54321
Member UncommonPosts: 452
Not sure where this will lead but the point of it all should be clear enough.
What would be considered ground breaking features in a future MMO?
I suggest: Unique monsters & NPCs, where no one monster or NPC look the same
Comments
And how exactly does making uniquely looking mobs or NPC improve my gameplay experience? Why waste dev time, money and effort on such a gimmick, just in the name of doing something pointlessly groundbreaking? Do you seriously think a game touting the "Uniqueness of there mobs & NPCs" on the box, would actually draw players, when the rest of the game is mediocre.
Would have been interesting if you suggested something regarding AI behaviour instead of looks, but oh well.
Scalable dungeons by party size and level.
Seriously? Seriously? Seriously?
I understand small differences and that should be fairly easy enough to implement but...That is hardly ground breaking o.o Now how about monsters and npcs looking the same but theyre actually different? See that harmless npc with a giant shield and a sword? WATCH OUT!! ITS A GLASS CANNON CASTER! o.o
I can see the slight appeal of this but Ill have to say scalable dungeons by party and level size would be ground breaking o.o
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**This bunny was cloned from bunnies belonging to Gobla and is part of the Quizzical Fanclub and the The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club**
. There are many mmos out there that try to change the rules. The problem is the big companies who invest millions into their mmos arent willing to take risks on features not already tried and tested, only the smaller companies are willing to do this and mosty of you arent willnig to accept bugs or minor inconveninces in the hopes of a game that is doing something special.Well the current mmo i am playing is quite groundbreaking and is trying to do things differently so heres a list of its unique features that set it apart from the crowd
1.Eating, were eating food actually matters and sleeping is also an everyday routine within the game, both sleeping and resting to restore your characters atribute pool. Eating to remove penalties for being undernurished and gaining / loosing weight depending on what you eat or drink and how often;
2. A crafting system that lets you combine a variety of weapon heads/blades with any hilt/handle you desire, combined with any material for the head/blade and core/grip of the blade/handle. This results in over 1.2million combinations of weapons possible to craft, this system goes even further with armour allowing you to adjust density as well as choose base and support mateiral types. So if u want a mace head on a pole you can, or a mace head on a 2handed sword hilt you can, or a 3 headed spear on a short pole you can.
3. a taming and mount system were your monut acts like a living creature, the smarter your steed the easier it is to control, think shadow of the collosus when it coems to mounts. Both feeding and bandaging your monut as well as keeping it happy. Being able to ride your mount beyond its normal means potentially risking killing your mount to save your own life.
4. pickables and gatherables exactly as seen in elderscrolls oblivion, find ingredients and pick them from trees, bushes and the ground to use in both cooking, alchemy and magic.
5. extraction, mine ore, train up the skills to use aparatus that can extract the ore, experiment with a variety of catalysts and aplliances to find and discover different mateirals that can be extracted, Create alloys such as steel from iron whilst combining it with other materials.
6. Kill creatures in the field, then move their carcass back to town. Find a butcher to turn you carcass into usable resources such as hide leather bone meat etc.
7. Fight live and play in first person view only. PVP is kinetic, were you swing is were you hit, from hitting locations such as the head arm legs or torso to hitting them with the right part of your weapon handle or blade. Combat feels exicting, non of that stand next ot each other and charge up abilities or button mash seen in most mmos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goBSceblHpY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01p4M-SKB_g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIOxCjqASr4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yieynaHOc1I
there are 2 types of mmo, imitators and innovaters.
Mortal Onlines concepts still aren't groundbreaking, even though I am glad someone mentioned simulation/sandbox aspects rather than things I care very little about. There are games that did such things before MO.
whilst some of them have been done previously in an mmo, they mgiht not be ground breaking but having to worry about body temperature and wearing the right equipment for the climate your gonig to, or sleeping, or having to eat and drink and it actually having a meaningful purpose, or gaining and loosing weigh tare certainly first for the genre, along with monut system whilst similar to shadow of the collosus it is a first for an mmo.
guess it depends on what you call ground breaking,i would call infinity's planet to space seamless transition ground breaking or its over 1 million star systems ground breaking but that game is such a long way off.
there are 2 types of mmo, imitators and innovaters.
I haven't played MO's expansion so maybe I shouldn't have been so quck to speak but not all the specific features you mention and call first are indeed first for the genre.
In wurm online you gain and loose weight based on how much you eat (even though you aren't visually aware of it) and it has consequences. Roma Victor planned to have clothes and climate affect body temperture although I don't think they ever got around to it. You do get sleep bonuses in many games so that is sort of covered too.
That said you are right, it depends on what you call ground breaking. The way in which something is implemented could be considered ground breaking so even if it isn't a first it could still be considered ground breaking. What ground breaking is, is very subjective.
Not to add to the flaming you're already getting here OP, but do you have a sense of what it takes, labor and mechanics-wise, to do that without being limited to a rather small total number of mobs in the world? Or that even if your mobs can be generated with a random appearance it won't really matter because their stats will have to be generated the same way? Hey! A purple thing with a horn! Look! A blue thing with two horns and rubber pants! Yay!
Your shovel has not only failed to break ground, it gave the grass on top of it a miss.
Greystaff Legends RPG
DYNAMIC COMBAT AND EVENTS!!! BOO-YAA!
I will give a single suggestion i already gave during few development now.
Give some personality to the monsters and stop thinking about them as if they were mobs (mob stand for mobile because they can actually move
). I mean why does an orc have to be just the same as a goblin for god sake? Shouldn't those have totally different behaviors? Maybe try that for this envied ground breaking mmo design. *Goes away laughting like an idiot*
Ho my you beat me on this...
bring MULTIPLAYER back into MMO:D
The thing about a lot of the suggestions I've seen in the 1st pages is that sure they sound interesting and a bit more immersion to the game, they just lack mass appeal. Stuff like having to worry about body temperature and eating 3 times a day (like we're supposed to do in the real world) just doesn't appeal to the average gamer who plays games to escape the contrainst of the real world. They just seem to appeal towards a niche within a niche and that's what's holding these companies back, from in investing time and money into a product that is almost garaunteeed to fail (financially).
The biggest success we'll likely see, when it comes to innovative ground-breaking features, will be Guild Wars 2 (if the game doesn't release in a buggy state). Mainly because major innovative (I won't say ground-breaking) features still have that sense of mass appeal. A game that the average gamer can pick up and play and not be hugely inconvenience, when they want to have fun.
I personally would like to see a PvP system build around a persistent, ever changing, map. A type of conquest type map where one faction can dominate, if they so choose. In doing so, they would set the laws of the land, etc. Those opposing can build resistance groups and such to fight back the oppressors.
Think battlefield but on a more persistent level. Of course, there would need to be some safe zones, but you get the point.
It would also be cool to have each person control a "squad" much like Brother's in Arms.
I dunno... just a massive persistent, non-instanced world that is ever changing by the PvP...
Yeah... early here, so thoughts are so collected.
Social Achievements: We all know that MMO's are the alternative of facebook addiction.
- Gotta Catch Them All: Collect more than a 100 / 1000 / 10000 friends.
- The Contributor: Get 10 / 100 / 1000 comments on your thread.
- The Giant Douche: Get ignored by 10 / 100 / 1000 people.
- The Social Hero: Become friends with someone who has no friends yet.
The points you get could be spend in a special shop where you could customize your avatar, lettertype, size, put hearts on top of your i and many more other obnoxious and useless stuff. My personal favorite would be the random smiley generator earned by responding to 100 topics with nothing more than a smiley. I expect this ground breaking MMO design to be implemented in facebook and other social platforms very soon.
This is downright epic lol''/\/\'' Posted using Iphone bunni
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**This bunny was cloned from bunnies belonging to Gobla and is part of the Quizzical Fanclub and the The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club**
There's nothing wrong with some sort of social meta-game. MMOs are (were?) social games, after all. But yeah, if the idea were implemented how you've outlined, it would be a terrible, obnoxious mess.
1.Eating, were eating food actually matters and sleeping is also an everyday routine within the game, both sleeping and resting to restore your characters atribute pool. Eating to remove penalties for being undernurished and gaining / loosing weight depending on what you eat or drink and how often;
Realism does not make a game more fun. Eating and sleeping are really bad ideas in any game for 2 basic reasons:
Players won't enjoy it...
Instead of wasting development cycles on sleeping and eating, developers could spend their time on other worthwhile and fun concepts.
2. A crafting system that lets you combine a variety of weapon heads/blades with any hilt/handle you desire, combined with any material for the head/blade and core/grip of the blade/handle. This results in over 1.2million combinations of weapons possible to craft, this system goes even further with armour allowing you to adjust density as well as choose base and support mateiral types. So if u want a mace head on a pole you can, or a mace head on a 2handed sword hilt you can, or a 3 headed spear on a short pole you can.
Not enough info, what you propose could be fun, but out of any context it's hard to say.
3. a taming and mount system were your monut acts like a living creature, the smarter your steed the easier it is to control, think shadow of the collosus when it coems to mounts. Both feeding and bandaging your monut as well as keeping it happy. Being able to ride your mount beyond its normal means potentially risking killing your mount to save your own life.
Again what you propose is very realistic, but ask yourself, is it FUN? If it's not the vast majority of players will see it as time consuming, keeping them from the game they really want to play.
4. pickables and gatherables exactly as seen in elderscrolls oblivion, find ingredients and pick them from trees, bushes and the ground to use in both cooking, alchemy and magic.
Not sure how this is really that innovative, but ok....
5. extraction, mine ore, train up the skills to use aparatus that can extract the ore, experiment with a variety of catalysts and aplliances to find and discover different mateirals that can be extracted, Create alloys such as steel from iron whilst combining it with other materials.
This just sounds really complex. I'm not saying it's impossible to make these ideas work, but you have to keep them simple or they won't be adopted.
6. Kill creatures in the field, then move their carcass back to town. Find a butcher to turn you carcass into usable resources such as hide leather bone meat etc.
Do you know why MOB's drop coin? It's not because they are carrying them, it's because the coin represents the value of what you might get if you did exactly what you just proposed. This idea demonstrates that 99% of the wish lists that gamers ask for ignores one very fundamental force in all games where there are goods and services and a medium of exchange to trade with. What do you think would happen if every player could drag the carcasses of their kills back to town to use as raw materials? The answer is the markets would be flooded with more raw materials then players could ever hope to use making the ritual of killing creatures and dragging there carcasses back to a useless waste of time. Why? Look up supply and demand.
7. Fight live and play in first person view only. PVP is kinetic, were you swing is were you hit, from hitting locations such as the head arm legs or torso to hitting them with the right part of your weapon handle or blade. Combat feels exicting, non of that stand next ot each other and charge up abilities or button mash seen in most mmos.
In principle (for me at least) this is the closest thing to a good idea you've had so far. Having said that, the design decision to go first person is going to alienate 30% conservatively and as much as 60% of players who will never give an MMO in first person a chance. Now I admit I pulled those numbers out of my a$$, but if you polled I think you would find I'm right. Darkfall intended to go FP, but I think they realized what I just said and decided they couldn't afford the handicap. You could have a small portion of the game that is played in FP, that might be a good start.
As far as hitting locations on other players. Another idea with potential, but lag issues and synchronizing players all over the country will lead to players complaining they hit first but were killed by someone else. The server can look at the time each player pressed his button to attack and the server can send back the real results, but that's not always what you see on your client. Most people don't understand this and they will cry that others are cheating which will lead to people quitting....
All and all your ideas are overly complex and do little to add to the fun of an MMO. While arguably they do lead to realism and one could argue that realism leads to immersion, I would argue there are better ways to accomplish the goals of immersion without drowning players in boredom or complexity.
I hope that my (rather harsh) assessment of your ideas was helpful. I wasn't trying to be a jerk. Keep trying but keep in mind what others want, not just your own personal wish list. Think about what would make the fgame more fun!
Presentation for new MMORPG economics concept http://www.slideshare.net/talin/mmo-economics-concept-v-10
How about bringing back the business game? How about a single currency that all players can trade in to purchase anything in game they want?
The reason that there aren't MMO's like this anymore is because MMO's in thier current state have evolved from a failed model. Failed if you enjoy player to player interaction. The solution employed by developers has been to limit what players can purchase with the currency that players can use to trade with each other. Think of all the the goods and services you can't buy with "gold" (or whatever the currency of a game is called). This is so developers can control your progress.
Time has become the players currency and as a player you are spending most of it to the game itself, thus limiting player to player interaction.
In almost all modern MMO's you compete in parallel with other players.
Think about a games like golf, down hill sking, figure skating and any sport where you cannot impede the progress of your rivals. You simply compete by spending your time to the game and use the spoils of that time to impove. Even when you're playing other players, your spending your time to earn "points" (just another form of currency) to purchase items or services or skills). The winner is the player with the most time.
EvE, Darkfall, MO being some of the glaring exceptions, but they have other problems I won't get into here.
If you want a little more insight follow the link in my sig for my solution.
Presentation for new MMORPG economics concept http://www.slideshare.net/talin/mmo-economics-concept-v-10
Ground breaking design?
Embed design on a wrecking ball
Drop wrecking ball repeatedly on the ground
???
WIN!
''/\/\'' Posted using Iphone bunni
( o.o)
(")(")
**This bunny was cloned from bunnies belonging to Gobla and is part of the Quizzical Fanclub and the The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club**
Kinematic combat would be a big win, but not real time combat. In my opinion, rushing around swinging weapons like crazy in real time as in a shooter is not going to have broad appeal to the RPG crowd. The combat would have to be slowed down considerably, with characters moving in slow motion while in combat, transitioning to normal speed when away from combat. With slower combat, every nuance could be brought out for the average player.
Involving player skill would be another big win, particularly in crafting. Instead of my character knowing how to make a sword by virtue of having made 1000 daggers, I would have figured out how to use the game controls to hammer out a blade, guard, pommel and handle. Perhaps another player spends his time etching patterns on blades or just makes ornate guards. It would all take a lot of time, but that's what crafters would be doing.
Bringing the multiplayer back to MMOs is the most important change that should be made. We have two ends of the spectrum today: solo or joined at the hip for hours on end. Examples of being joined at the hip include grouping in EverQuest, fleet actions in EVE Online, or raiding in World of Warcraft. If activities were available where players could simply join in and help as long as they cared to, then left when they wanted to without causing a serious problem for others, I think we'd have a much better MMO community.
One problem. if a player is in slowmotion combat with another, what happens when a player from outside attacks? What would a player in real time see when looking at players in slow mo?
Presentation for new MMORPG economics concept http://www.slideshare.net/talin/mmo-economics-concept-v-10
^ Just more proof that people do not think critically before posting.
City of Heroes: 2004.
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Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
I've always wished for a truly dynamic questing system, where no 2 people would ever be given the same quest by the same quest giver. Tied to that, once a "boss mob" is dead, it's dead forever.
Talk about replayability - every time you roll a new character, the experience would be truly different and absolutely unique. No more "oh, I did this quest already, I remember exactly where/what to do". Instead you'd get (1) no more cheat sites with lists of quests and solutions, (2) more immersion when you realize that once you've done something, nobody else is going to be coming behind you to do the exact same thing... once the princess has been saved, why does she need to be saved again?, and as I already mentioned (3) replayability to the extreme... no more quest fatigue...
Having said that, I can't imagine how this could actually be pulled off, mind you... but you asked for "ground breaking" so there you go!
(And no, I don't consider the promise of dynamic world events that games like GW2 are claiming to offer as the same thing... first I'll be interested to see what they actually deliver, but I'm not just talking about world events here... I'm talking about me walking up to an NPC and getting a quest, and that quest getting marked off of a "master list" so that nobody can ever get that same quest from an NPC ever again!)
Dynamic world progression.
Towns and settlements grow if players stimulate it's economy, or shrink if they're neglected. If they're left unprotected they're pillaged, occupied, or even destroyed completely if left long enough... the more active the town's economy is, the more attention it attracts.
Resources become scarce or drop in quality if over harvested in an area, requiring players to seek out new sources until the current area replenishes. Of course this can cause a cascade of events as well... such as clear cutting a forest could result in soil quality dropping which negatively effects growing crops, and in turn raises the cost of food for that area if not outright causing famine.
Players work together to fight hostile NPC empires that actually fight back tactically and try to take over player friendly lands as much as players try to take land from the NPCs.