Originally posted by Mr.Kujo What do this 'developer' consider oldschool? Because depending on his age it might be Meridian 59, Colossal Cave Adventure, or WoW... I would like to know before I start my creative process, if developer wants tedious text typing mmo, or graphical mmo with no classes, huge empty space, monsters with autoattack, and thousands of bugs and server crashes.
The developer and the publisher have picked you to design it. Their assumption is that you know.
That would just mean we could design whatever we liked, though? What if the chosen designer said, "Ok, I define "old school" as all games published before 2001. So as long as all the features I want are found in a game before that point, at least in prototypical form if not fully developed, they count as old school." Surely someone would be unhappy with that. I could have fun designing a game with that guideline though.
They would need a little more detail.
Okay, what kind of detail? Detail like this? "The goal design must be an MMORPG; the example games from before 2001 (and we can add that they should also be from after 1984) do not need to be MMOs but must be computer/video games?" There's an assumed definition of MMO and another of RPG in there somewhere. Is it allowed to be an RPG-something else hybrid, hopefully? Or, did you mean something like a specific list of example games might as a useful detail? Then, as the feature list was developed, each feature could be accompanied by a citation of the example game(s) that inspired it. Or, what other kinds of detail would be needed, and where would they come from?
I want to help design and develop a PvE-focused, solo-friendly, sandpark MMO which combines crafting, monster hunting, and story. So PM me if you are starting one.
Old school MMO people are like grouchy move critics.. Almost everyone new movie sucks for some reason that they pick out - so they recommend you skip almost all new movies. A couple old movies were great - but they already saw them.
Originally posted by GuyClinch Old school MMO people are like grouchy move critics.. Almost everyone new movie sucks for some reason that they pick out - so they recommend you skip almost all new movies. A couple old movies were great - but they already saw them.
This is sadly true haha..
What I would do is MONSTER PLAY, Make the players run the Monsters, you sign your account as a monster player, and you level up your Dungeon in the (vally of mist). You do monster quests and gather materials to make your lair bigger. You put in trapps and lesser "servent" monsters, that you set on patrol paths. And you can't log off if some player group comes to find you.. You do however play a big ass deadly monster and you will do your best to PAWN the shit out of them, and stop them from taking you down.... It should take alot of time and effort to get your little dragon to GRAND Dragon status, so no side game you need to be fully commited... To stop griefing of the system, you should have a clear reward system. The longer you can stay alive, or stop people from killing your monster(defeating group after group of little adventurers) the better Maths you will drop...And who will say your monster will ever be defeated??. Once a month their should be weekend mayham were the monster players can go out of the "vally of mist, working tittle), and Rampage the local countryside...
This will result in a system that runs itself.. and put alot less pressure to design new AI content to keep the players interested...
Also evrything is Crafted, no item drops... " okey if you want dragon armour you need dragon scales etc"..
Harsh death penelties.. If you take your legendary sword with you to kill the dragon(monster player) and he kills your group, he loots you of your gear and puts it on his mount of gold... and can brag on the forum about how he pawned your little group and made you all cry, when he took your epics...This will breed hate and fear for some monster players, who are really though and stay alive a long time... Beating group after group...
Well, first off, I know nothing about the various costs of things related to mmo development so I'm just going to throw that to the wind and talk about design aspects.
Inspirations are coming from Asheron's Call, Shadowbane, EVE, and Tera (really just the combat from this one). If you haven't heard of the first two, I highly recommend you look at them to know the history of the genre if nothing else.
Servers: Multiple servers. Partly to allow separation between normal and hardcore pvp rule sets, partly because of dynamic elements in the world to be explained later.
World Size and Features: Land area must be large enough to allow Player built structures without crowding. Preferably multiple continents with varying biomes.
-Dynamic events that change aspects of the world triggered by player action or random chance. Different events and different outcomes on each server provide points of divergence. A tiny village on one world may grow to be a thriving metropolis on another.
Example 1: Clan X builds a fortress and starts hunting the elk nearby for leather to outfit npc hirelings. If enough elk are killed, the local value (nearby towns and npc vendors) of their hides will increase and spawn rates will decrease. If hunted to the extreme they may stop spawning entirely in the area for a time, with a rate of return based on population numbers in neighboring regions.
Example 2: The random event generator has a barbarian tribe attack a village. Several scenarios may play out based on player involvement in the fight and the current economic state of the village. Npcs could die, and it would take time for them to be replaced. The village could be destroyed and turned into a ruin, or taken over by the invaders providing different options for the players based on faction affinity.
-Full range of player owned structures (houses, walls, forges, shops, banks, barracks, etc.). Range of hireable npcs (guards, bankers, smiths, bowyers, shopkeepers, etc.).
-No "easy" fast travel system. There would be a network of portals across the world allowing large hops of distance, though not always conveniently close. Limitations on the transport of matter through portals means armies and trade caravans will have to hoof it. Combined with the fact that not all resources will be available in all areas, this means trade and control of trade routes will be important in the economy.
-Balanced economy with regulation. There will be a limited number of ways to create more currency in circulation, and an appropriate number of currency sinks to balance. On the large scale, trading of goods will happen more often than trading of coin. Liquidation of assets will not be easy; you may have enough lumber to make you rich, but you have to find someone to buy it all first.
Dungeons: Some open world, usually smaller or within surface structures. Larger dungeons will be public with channels by default (limitations to channel switching to prevent exploitation), with option to craft a consumable item that will make a private instance when you enter.
Characters and Combat: Exp is earned through successful actions, part goes to the skill used and part goes to a pool you can use to increase skills/attributes as you see fit. All exp counts toward levels.
Attributes- Characters have 6 attributes: Strength, Endurance, Dexterity, Speed, Intelligence, and Willpower. These attributes effect the fundamental aspects of your character such as: carry weight, health/stamina/mana pool, crit chance, movement speed, and some resistances.
Skills- All skills are available to all characters, base value for each skill has a formula usually dependent on 1 or 2 attributes. All skills fall under 4 categories: Specialized (bonus to base value and exp gain), trained(gains exp through use), untrained (usable at base value), unusable(set to 0 until trained). Points given at character creation and level ups used to train and specialize skills. Each skill has its own specialization tree unlocked by skill level, giving tradeoffs like: lower crit chance for higher bleed damage on knives. Combat skills will each have their own lines of abilities/spells/stances.
Combat would be much like Tera. Yes, you will have to aim and manually dodge, and positioning matters.
Power differential between max and min levels will be reasonable in pvp. It won't be easy, but a new player could hop into a siege with high levels and still be useful.
Questing: This will probably be a point of contention for some people. NO quest log, NO waypoints, NO "!" over npcs, and NO fetch quests . Quests aren't even "given", they are hinted at. Listen to a rumor at the tavern where someone saw strange things a couple klicks south of town, maybe you should investigate. The town crier tells you in passing that a lord in an adjacent province in hiring all the mercenaries he can find, your purse is feeling a little light. Find the dungeon before someone asks you to? No prob, find narrative elements in the environment, maybe a lost journal or a message scratched on the walls. When is it over? That's up to you too. You found a long lost sword belonging to a prominent family; use it, mount it above your fireplace, return it for a reward, your choice.
The big thing is giving you a reason to want to participate, whether that's through a deep narrative, a desire to explore, vanquish evil doers, or just filling your pockets.
PvP and Death: Most of this I'll be ripping from Asheron's Call because i think its a great system. Personally I would make the penalties much steeper (lock out the character for a period of time after death and maybe full loot ) but I know most people wont go for that.
Death: When you're about to die, you are magically transported to your bind point. In exchange, some money and a number of items (based on level) are randomly (weighted by value) selected to be left behind. This can include what you have equipped or entire stacks of resources. For a period of time only you or your killer can loot the items, after that period its open to all. Additionally you receive a temporary debuff to your stats which stacks with additional deaths. You can either wait out the timer or gain exp to remove the debuff.
PvP: On normal servers, complete a short quest to flag yourself for pvp. You must wait a period of time (lets say 4 days real time or 6 hours in game, whichever comes first) before you can complete another quest to un-flag yourself. Both players must be flagged to fight, unless its a duel. Certain areas may be FFA pvp natively or made into pvp areas for a time by players. Players on either side of an active war declaration may freely attack each other.
On hardcore severs, all FFA all the time. Town guards may have something to say about it, if you don't kill them first. Maybe make more items drop than normal if the players want it.
Crafting: Can be done manually or through hirelings. Character bonuses only apply to manually crafted items, hirelings have their own specializations and can continue while you are offline.
Harvesting can be done in small amounts by hand, or you can invest in something like a mine or a lumber mill that will be more efficient, but can be raided, destroyed, or taken over by your enemies if you're not careful.
Not all resources will be available locally. Work those trade routes.
Narrative: An ongoing, well written narrative that evolves and interacts with the community. I don't want to have people just experience the next chapter as the story unfolds, I want thousands of people making non-arbitrary decisions about the outcome. I want live GM events where entirely unscripted things could happen. I want to be able to make an offering of 10,000 bunny carcasses to the evil antagonist of the plot just to see how the GM responds. Maybe i get a unique title, or he whips up a "Sword of the Bunnyslayer", or maybe he makes me the general of his army for the attack he's about to make a capital city. Just a little bit of that roleplaying fun we use to have with pen and paper campaigns can go a long way.
So that's the kind of game I would make, anyone wanna give me a job?
Winning a discussion is not what it's about. If you could pass insight to someone or learn something from it in return - noone can really loose, can they?
OVERALL PICTURE: I would have a combination of influences from old AD&D, TES, EQ, Thief, and other older systems. I am looking at possibly a 10 year development cycle. I have no clue about cost, though, so my budget may go to hell
After about 30 minutes of thought, this what I'd come up with: Players per server = about 10,000
World size = unknown - Details - 18 starting cities (levels 1-5) - 3 zones for levels 5-20 connected to each of the starting cities - 3 zones for levels 21-35 connected to each of the previous zones - 3 zones for 36-50 (Max level at start) connected to each of the previous zones connecting to the Capital Cities - Each zone has at least 2 dungeons, including starting cities (like sewers for these) - 18 capital cities for higher level characters
Races - Humans group 1 (good) - Humans group 2 (neutral) - Humans group 3 (evil) - Dwarves group 1 (good) - Dwarves group 2 (neutral) - Dwarves group 3 (evil) - Elves Group 1 (good) - Elves group 2 (neutral) - Elves group 3 (evil) - Half-elves group 1 (good) - Half-elves group 2 (neutral) - Half-elves group 3 (evil) - Ogres (evil) - Kobolds (neutral) - Half-humans (good) - Arachnae (evil - spider like race that lives in an anarchist society, mostly in dark woods and caves) - Cho-Xo (neutral - Ant like race that live in hives - Apologies to Ray Feist, author of The Riftwar Saga that had an intelligent ant-like race called Cho-Ja) - Centaur (good - race that live in clans in the wilderness)
Character Classes = Yes - Melee Fighters -- Warrior (Sword and Board melee) -- Beserker (2-Handed melee) -- Monk (unarmed or quarterstaff and unarmored martial artists) -- Soldier (pole arm specialist - excels in groups)
- Mage Classes -- Elementalist (controle the elements of fire, water, earth, and air) -- Necromancer (controls the dead) -- Arcanist (manipulates the Arcane magic that surrounds us all) -- Witches/Warlocks (wild magic users)
- Cleric Classes -- Priests (the conduits between the Gods and mortals - can be good, evil, or neutral) -- Paladins (the holy warriors of the good Gods) -- Anti-Paladins (unholy warrios of the evil Gods) -- Druids (holy warriors of the neutral Gods, ie: Nature)
- Thief Classes -- Rogue (basic thief with usual theiving skills) -- Assassin (specialized in stealth and quick strikes) -- Fence (specialized skills for buying/selling goods)
- Hybrid Classes -- Bards (Musical maestros that manipulate sound to their needs - light or no armor only - good range of weapons) -- Rangers (nature lovers whose main weapon is a bow - animal affinities - some nature based spell use) -- Mage (a priest of the God of magic) -- Duelist (duel wielding stealth character with some thief skills) -- Battlemage (sword wielding magic user) -- Witch-hunter (ranged specialist with a few spells good for hunting witches/warlocks)
Player Progression = Strictly Skill System - no general XP, ever Skills: - Fighting -- 1-handed -- 2-handed -- Blunt weapons -- pole arms -- Unarmed -- Unarmored -- Light armor -- Medium Armor -- Heavy armor -- Bows
- Clerical -- Spells -- First Aid -- Medium armor -- Heavy Armor -- Shields -- Blunt weapon use -- Some control abilities -- Tracking -- Staves
- Thieving -- Sneaking -- Lockpicking -- Backstabbing -- Pickpocketing (useable on PC and NPCs) -- Alchemy - Poisons -- Light Armor -- Short blades -- Tracking -- Bows
How Do Players Advance? = By using their skills - Trainers necessary to advance - No auto skill appearances
Quests = Yes - How Implemented = Chatbox with NPCs [keywords] - players have too look for them, interacting with the NPCs - Overarching Stories = Yes - Quests that have mutltiple parts are common place and change depending on the choices made in previous quests - Choices In Quest Completion = Yes - Personal Character Stories = NO
Dungeon Style = Open World
PvP = (This is a tough for me. If I could, I'd leave PvP out of the game.) If I HAVE to have it included, maybe something like: - Open World PvP WITH Consequences - Ganking is controlled with bounties and faction reactions - no looting of defeated players (take away the temptation, the ganking goes down) - When 2 or more groups want the same dungeon, they can duke it out - When players are crafting or engaged in a fight already, they are immune to PvP attacks (except for faction reaction NPCs) - Unkillable City Guards
Crafting Plays A Large Role = Yes - Best items come from crafting - Animals do NOT drop weaponsarmor - NPCs drop what they use in a fight
Additional Features - Combat - Tab Target, random number generated with character (not player) skills factoring into the equation - Attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, Luck) - Writable Journal for quests and notes - Maps covered by Fog of War until character either explores it, or purchases a player made map. MNotes CAN be marked on map for POIs or general area notes - Learnable languages - Grouping bonuses - Factions galore (source of many, many quests - fighter, mage, thief, church crafting guilds, city factions, racial factions, ) - Reputation - Kill on Sight (KoS) brought back - Cartography is a skill that players can have to create and sell maps of the local areas/zones - bought maps get integrated into the purchaser's UI - No Add On support - Adjustable UI - Subscription Model (9.99/month = 2,497,500/month income) - NO Cash Shop - FREE Expansions and Updates - NO Voice Acting! - No Cut Scenes
Am I over budget yet? LOL It is just a rough idea, right now, with LOTS of holes.
Have at it. Point out all the deficiencies and terrible gameplay ideas
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
I would offer to the investor that I just take $5 million and take him out to the alley and kick him in the balls. He would then get to keep half the money since there is no way this would turn profit.
Now, since we are pretending there is an audience for such a thing and this audience isn't really looking for a flux capacitor to go back to the mid 90's... I would have to assume that this audience is likely jobless masochists who want to play continuosly til their eyes bleed. By play I mean things like spawn camping a monster that shows up once every three days with a .001 % chance to drop a moderately better piece of gear.
I would have full loot pvp but that wouldn't matter because there would also be perma death. Or if you play on the carebear servers, like a pussy, then there would be corpse runs, but the bind spots would be hours and hours away from any action and there would be a 97% chance your body would be unrecoverable because it would fall down a bottomless chasm. Also, when you die we would send thugs out to your house to beat you to a pulp for dare dying in our fantasy world. Good items would all come from crafting but the kicker is the materials needed to craft the items are impossible to find. The absolute pinnacle item would be found on some kind of monster chieftan, but the thing is, there is no monster cheiftan. Dungeons would all be open, no instancing, but we would pay in house players to wait in every dungeon and spawn camp all the bosses, so players would never be able to complete them.
I feel like some people aren't getting into the spirit of the thread, so to speak. Which is fine. This is not unexpected. Suggestions to take the money and run, kick the developer or publisher in the nads, split the money and play the stock market, etc. are all possibilities, but the consequences would be fairly dire and would not result in the game getting developed, so those suggestions would not work.
Anyway, the only thing I would say right now about most of the designs that people actually thought up is that I don't think it would be possible to complete them with the available budget. There may need to be a plan put in place to implement features as possible initially, and then space the remaining features out in one to three month update intervals. I'm not sure what features would have to be implemented first, and which would have to wait. A complete world is necessary, but at the same time, the possibility of expanding the world post release would both allow other features to be more fully implemented and give players something new to look forward to later.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I don't see why it would have to be an expensive project. Sure it would be if you are going to form a company and pay everyone the standard salaries (overpriced these days) in the gaming industry.
Lets think of how most games were made by people in the old days when they first started coming out. Usually they were made by people who had a passion for games and weren't being paid much or at all to make them. They were just trying something new that they liked and would see if someone would buy said product. Wasn't facebook made in a similar way years later? I'm pretty sure a lot of original software is made this way. There are products like 7 zip and VLC media player that work great and have always been free short of donations.
Now lets say you got a group of passionate people who have free time and a way to exist while working on the game. They could theoretically spend very little on making the game. That would mean anything they got in return would be pure profit that they all shared. It's not something you would see from a triple AAA company unfortunately, but it could happen.
The main problem I see is few kids these days are into D&D stuff like in the old days. They don't have the same passion for fantasy and exploration. They are probably more likely to make some indie game that is a variation of pokemon or animal crossing. What was the latest experiment I saw in the news? It was something like twitch pokemon.
- This is what I'd like to see in an MMO
- Exploration (no fast travel or GPS)
- High level or skill mobs in every zone (something that can sneak up on you and one or two hit you if you aren't paying attention)
- All mobs respawn in dungeons (you have to fight your way in and fight your way out)
- Nasty traps in dungeons (you have to be careful/alert or your dead)(Examples fake floors/walls, slippery ledges, lava, trip wires, multiple paths to follow inside dungeons)
- Racial/Class factions (you will be killed on site if your faction is low with another) (it is not possible to be high with multiple opposing factions at the same time)
- Experience/Skills will decrease a certain amount if you die
- Ghost form (when you die you enter a ghost world which contains it's own things that can be done) (you have to find a NPC priest in the real world to bring you back to life)
- No experience for quests (you can get items/rewards for quests, but not experience)
- Class/Skill Quests (there will be certain quests as you progress for your class) (for a mage this quests may be a trial to learn a certain new spell) (for a fighter this quest might be to overcome a trial to learn a skill or advance a skill past a certain point or gain a fighter item[same for a thief type]) (during said quests specific class skills will be heavily tested to advance further)
That's all I can think of off had and I'm still not completely decided on even those things. I have a lot of ideas for a level/skill system, but when I write it down on paper I begin to think of flaws and start rewriting it. I think it would be great to a system where you can advance in any class a certain amount with one character. The main problem would be balancing it. One thing I am against though is getting hp/mp or any kind of gain each level. You should have to choose what you want to increase per level like ESO. This keeps the high level people more in check and allows for more balanced content/exploration IMO.
Originally posted by lizardbones Anyway, the only thing I would say right now about most of the designs that people actually thought up is that I don't think it would be possible to complete them with the available budget. There may need to be a plan put in place to implement features as possible initially, and then space the remaining features out in one to three month update intervals. I'm not sure what features would have to be implemented first, and which would have to wait. A complete world is necessary, but at the same time, the possibility of expanding the world post release would both allow other features to be more fully implemented and give players something new to look forward to later.
That thought crossed my mind as my list grew and grew and grew. I don't know where I would start with the implementation, though. I suppose the upper level cities could wait, with them being hinted at throughout the game.
I don't want to be adding classes/races later on, though, as players who want to play those classes/races will have to start all over. That is my HUGE gripe with the way Wizards of the Coast is releasing D&D these days. New books come out with new classes/races and players have to start again.
Additions, in my mind, should be for game world only, not the characters. Every aspect of the character should be available from the outset, so the players know what they are getting into.
Maybe some dungeons could be put off, too. I just do not want to pull back too much on upper level content as some players will get there quicker than expected and will need something to do. No matter how devs plan, players will muck it up
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Okay, what kind of detail? Detail like this? "The goal design must be an MMORPG; the example games from before 2001 (and we can add that they should also be from after 1984) do not need to be MMOs but must be computer/video games?" There's an assumed definition of MMO and another of RPG in there somewhere. Is it allowed to be an RPG-something else hybrid, hopefully? Or, did you mean something like a specific list of example games might as a useful detail? Then, as the feature list was developed, each feature could be accompanied by a citation of the example game(s) that inspired it. Or, what other kinds of detail would be needed, and where would they come from?
Lacking further input, I guess I'll move forward a bit with this on my own, because it seems like an interesting challenge. It's practically an invitation to reinvent the MMO genre in an alternate-history kind of way, since I decided I'm only going to look at single-player games from the period in question.
So, first I made a list of all my favorite games from the 90s. The Sims, Sim City, Harvest Moon: Back To Nature, Final Fantasy 7/8, E.V.O.: The Search For Eden, Warcraft II/Starcraft, Myst/Riven, Lighthouse, Sanitarium, Jewels Of The Oracle, and Tamagotchi and other virtual pet games. I figured I would only go earlier than that if there was something I wanted that I couldn't find a 90s example for. Then I looked at the gameplay in my list of favorite, grouping games or parts of games by genre; the point of this was to start designing the MMO around the types of gameplay I wanted to include. I decided that I wanted a game which takes place in a simple 3D engine with a square grid, and the player has the ability to rotate this grid relative to the camera. So it's basically isometric, but you're normally looking at the flat side of the chessboard, not a corner, and feels more like a platformer than most isometric games. Art-wise, I'm thinking 2D high-res sprites in some kind of anime/cartoon style. Something that isn't little-kid-ish.
The goal MMO is specified to be an RPG, so I'm going to take that to mean that there's going to be some kind of story told through NPC dialogue and/or narration. In particular 90s games were often about identity, with some philosophy and psychology in there, so those might be good themes for the goal MMO's story. Fantasy or science fantasy. Being an RPG I also take to mean that there's going to be an avatar character the player uses to explore the world and kill monsters. Among all the examples, the kind of combat that struck me as still being exciting was arcade-style/platformer. I like tactical combat too, but I'm just in the mood for something faster today.
I also definitely want animal racing in there somewhere (specifically like the chocobo racing in FF7, but multiplayer and with added jumping). But any long game can use some slow gameplay to provide breaks between the fast-paced stuff, and for that I want adventure game puzzles. Many of my most vivid memories of gaming in the 90s are from working on adventure game puzzles. Puzzles are also one of the elements that made 90s sRPGs more awesome than modern sRPGS, in my personal opinion.
And finally, I also want some sim/RTS gameplay in there, probably for the farming and crafting. (Specifically I mean a non-combat RTS, something like Harvest Moon or Sim City.) Also something like The Sims or Tamagotchi and other virtual pet games.
So, the challenge is to organize these types of gameplay into a design that isn't schizophrenic. Racing is an obvious candidate for an arena minigame. Anything virtual pet related would be a single player activity, unless collaborative breeding is a possibility; mainly it would be a domestic activity associated with the player's home within the game, whether that was an instanced ranch or a tent that the nomadic player could temporarily pitch in the game world.
Sim/strategy play and combat are probably not going to be happening on the same screen. I see two major options here - either the main world is primarily for combat and the sim/strategy play all happens "at home", or the main world is split into monster inhabited areas and monster-free crafting areas. Probably further development of the design will make one of these obviously the better choice. Portable tent-like homes that have to be temporarily planted in the world for crafting to take place are a pet idea of mine though.
Adventure game puzzles, the player should discover or unlock one occasionally as a treat. But the player should not have to work on them right when and where they find them, because they might be in the middle of trying to play alongside a friend. So adventure games could either be attached to portable objects, like puzzle boxes, or they could be internal to the avatar character, serving to unlock new spells or abilities.
So... there's my initial concept for an "oldschool MMORPG". Someone tell me what's not oldschool about it.
I want to help design and develop a PvE-focused, solo-friendly, sandpark MMO which combines crafting, monster hunting, and story. So PM me if you are starting one.
* How many players per server? One server with all the players, or 10k players per server?
Eve style world (one large-scale map, but the actual zones are temporary grids generated around points of interest). If you attempt to wander through the empty wilderness from one town to the next, you will be playing in an emphemeral bubble of procedurally generated forest with a few random encounters as you go and the details of the map might be different every time you attempt the trip.
* How large will the world be?
Since the world is only generated in local fragments as needed, there isn't a fixed answer to this. It's more about the density of points of interest and the longevity of those instances rather than any overall size.
* Will there be character classes?
* Will players progress using a skill system, level system or something different?
* How will players accumulate experience or skill points? Logged in time, finding skill tomes/points in the world, combat, or what?
A template of starting abilities rather than rigid classes. No levels, but you can learn abilities that were outside your starting template to increase your options of what to put on your action bar. The traditional idea of levels and experience would be rolled into the quest system where you will build up quest progress and unlock plotline-specific abilities/buffs (for example, a quest to take down an orc chief may allow you to build up a confidence buff vs that specific chief by fighting his minions, allowing you to choose how long to nibble around the edges of his lair before you feel comfortable going in for the kill).
Different actions may have different preparation gameplay attached to them (eg: a club may simply have a smash ability you add to your action bar while a magic system might have a complete spell-design minigame that lets you construct complex spells that you can then drag from your spellbook to your action bar).
* Will there be quests? If so, how will they be implemented? Over arching quest "stories", simple quest chains, repeatable bounty quests or what?
Simulation-centric world. For example: a rat's nest spawns in the world. Initially it's a secret dungeon. However, it's presence will add rats to the random event tables of nearby areas. As a player encounters these rats and kills them, they accumulate "plot points" that eventually unlock the discovery of the existance of the rat's nest itself and the ability to search for a key that will reveal/unlock the nest instance. Clearing the rat's nest instance will complete and close the plot. If the rats nest spawned because of some larger story, the player will gain plot points towards unlocking information about that larger plot.
* The developer expects some sort of dungeon style content will exist and play a role in the game. Will dungeon style content be instanced, open world, or some combination of the two?
A boss creature spawns in the world wrapped in a procedurally generated lair and a procedurally generated plotline that lets you unlock access to the dungeon. If you want content aimed at people you just want to do dungeons rather than long open-world quest chains, include a class of dungeons where the "quest" is simply to pick up a key at the local adventurer's guild. The default is that dungeons are semi-open - if two people complete the questline to get a key to the dungeon, they may both be attempting it at the same time. However, it's easy to add private dungeons by just having unique keys..
* The developer expects PvP to play some role in the game's design, even if the PvP is instanced into battlegrounds, or isolated to specific areas. Will PvP be optional, required, based on server or something else?
The instanced-based nature of points of interest means that entire different simulations can be overlaid the same map. A PvP game can be created with capturable resource nodes are the points of interest instead of dungeons. A PvE player may see the colours of banners changing in villages, but otherwise be oblivious that there is a PvP game going on around them, and similarly, a PvP-only player might see that a village has randomly disappeared without seeing the entire zombie invasion plotline that was only available to PvE players.
* Will crafting play a large role in the game?
Yes, but focused more on a layer of mundane economic supply-and-demand simulations rather than making powerful magical gear. Foraging and crafting are simply other actions that can be learned and form part of the landscape of opportunities and quests spawning out of the simulation. The game would handle a mineral vein spawning in a similar way it would handle a rat's nest - minerals get added to the random prospecting tables of the surrounding area, with prospecting giving you plot points accumulating as you harvest leading to unlocking the ability to search for the motherload dungeon (and perhaps whatever elemental brought the minerals up with it).
Remake Dark Age of Camelot in a modern engine. Boom. Done. Wait that's already kinda being done.
Remake Ultima Online in a modern engine. Boom. Done.
I was going to comment that what people had done so far was to pull elements of old school games, but to also include their own design features, updating some aspects of the games for a modern audience, even if they were fans of old school games. I was going to mention that the one thing that had not been done was someone saying to "Rewrite game {x} and be done with it." Kind of glad I did not post that. :-)
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I was going to comment that what people had done so far was to pull elements of old school games, but to also include their own design features, updating some aspects of the games for a modern audience, even if they were fans of old school games.
It feels horribly inefficient to try communicate an idea to a knowledgable audience without making reference to any existing systems they are familar with.
If we went back a decade, we'd be talking about what MUD and MUSH elements these new-fangled MMO-things were using.
I was going to comment that what people had done so far was to pull elements of old school games, but to also include their own design features, updating some aspects of the games for a modern audience, even if they were fans of old school games.
It feels horribly inefficient to try communicate an idea to a knowledgable audience without making reference to any existing systems they are familar with.
If we went back a decade, we'd be talking about what MUD and MUSH elements these new-fangled MMO-things were using.
My comment wasn't a qualitative sort of thing. I just thought it was interesting that so far, nobody has really just redescribed an existing game. I think given the opportunity, most people would try to make something unique rather than just an exact retread of an existing game. Even the suggestion to "remake Ultima Online" involved remaking it with a new game engine, which would change several things about the game such as the zone boundaries and things like that.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Originally posted by lizardbones I just thought it was interesting that so far, nobody has really just redescribed an existing game. I think given the opportunity, most people would try to make something unique rather than just an exact retread of an existing game. Even the suggestion to "remake Ultima Online" involved remaking it with a new game engine, which would change several things about the game such as the zone boundaries and things like that.
Well, many of the "old" games have emulator servers that can be accessed for the actual game, if players want to go that route.
Technology has advanced. Wouldn't it be silly to ignore it? What many of us "old school" players dreamed of way back then was increased technology and what could be done with our current games. Back when we played, dial-up was the norm at about 56k. Now, basic cable modems give about 5-10MB. Graphics cards now have more memory than our system did back then. Engines have improved over the past 10 years. Polycounts for modeling have increased a great deal.
Why on earth would I create a 1999 version of game with 1999 technology?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Originally posted by AlBQuirky Why on earth would I create a 1999 version of game with 1999 technology?
It make me wonder how old games will turn out with 2014 technology.
Better graphic with action combat and more stuff , break old restrict with new tech.
It don't sound bad ,
keep the gameplay (with some change) but create new story and new game world since old game's world and story ready used up to it limit.
Tell the true that i tired of sequels that don't hold any spirit of the original ,
if the developers want to make sequels for MMORPGs then better created a complete new game instead of ruined the name of series. Because the MMOs are long term games and the fans hardly jump to new one if it don't better than the old.
I don't think i interest to post the design because the limit of 10 million are pretty stupid when said about design style (in this case is old school).
The cost of making now major drop in graphic and voice acting aren't part of gameplay design.
More like talk about fund manage than design work .
I think the key is old school thought process more than old school features. I would build a game that is a living, changing world. A game where social interactions were key and where you really felt like you were making a difference in the world. Where character progression took time and had multiple layers to it. A game that offers a lot of challenges from the environment as well as from other players. The big things that would be a no no for me are heavy instancing, special PvP zones and quest based leveling. Quests are fine as part of the game, they shouldn't be the whole game. I'd probably want to add a good bit of procedural content so the lack of instancing didn't cause problems and I'd definitely have an AI like EQN is suggestion where the world itself was fluid and not so static.
A lot of the suggestions above are really good ones.
The new school design is throw down some linear content, give them some cookie cutter character progression and then have an end game in a box and PvP in a box. Make sure that people never have to compete against each other for anything and that nothing is ever too difficult for the weaker players. Games like FFXIV, Wildstar etc are a pox on the genre at this point.
Why on earth would I create a 1999 version of game with 1999 technology?
It might have been intended as a dig at the mobile market where you get a lot of outright cloning of existing games?
Or perhaps it was a comment about people talking nostalgically about old games but not actually wanting the old game?
I haven't quite been able to decrypt Lizardbones' thinking on this one. I fear.
I was just curious at what people would come up with. I challenged someone else in another thread to create a thread like this, and that the result would be many different game designs, not one, unified "Old School" design. I thought about it for awhile, and I thought it would be more interesting to see the designs, what people would come up with than it would to start the thread to try and prove a tired, beaten to death point in an argument that's been going on for years.
AND
The whole point here is to see the designs themselves. What happens when people take something old in their heads, and make it new? I recently started playing Doom2, Hexen and Heretic on my Linux laptop with the DoomsDay engine to run the games. Basically I have all of the game content, but with an updated control scheme, joystick support, updated lighting (that my laptop cannot handle), etc. I am having a blast. I wanted to see what kind of things would get created if people looked at MMORPGs the same way the DoomsDay people looked at Doom.
Those are the two, main drivers behind creating this thread. It's not nefarious and if there is a hidden agenda, it's that if I win the lottery, I might read this thread and threads like it to make a vanity game for my rich self and lord it over all the nerds I work with before I quit my job. I won't win the lottery, but still.
**
In this thread, if I said something is interesting, it means I read the post or posts, and thought to myself, "That's interesting, or unexpected." That's all.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
After reading through some of the other few responses, I'll give a more general scope of the game I'd like to see.
I like maplestone's questing idea. The changing reasons for the rats being in an area is nifty idea to me.
sunandshadow's animal racing idea is another great idea and fun activity for players to partake in the game.
Flyte27 had a cool idea for death and dieing with the "ghost form" idea.
Tried another go at making a post not so lengthy. I failed...
There is just so much to cover in an MMORPG that is not "easily" explained
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Comments
Okay, what kind of detail? Detail like this? "The goal design must be an MMORPG; the example games from before 2001 (and we can add that they should also be from after 1984) do not need to be MMOs but must be computer/video games?" There's an assumed definition of MMO and another of RPG in there somewhere. Is it allowed to be an RPG-something else hybrid, hopefully? Or, did you mean something like a specific list of example games might as a useful detail? Then, as the feature list was developed, each feature could be accompanied by a citation of the example game(s) that inspired it. Or, what other kinds of detail would be needed, and where would they come from?
This is sadly true haha..
What I would do is MONSTER PLAY, Make the players run the Monsters, you sign your account as a monster player, and you level up your Dungeon in the (vally of mist). You do monster quests and gather materials to make your lair bigger. You put in trapps and lesser "servent" monsters, that you set on patrol paths. And you can't log off if some player group comes to find you.. You do however play a big ass deadly monster and you will do your best to PAWN the shit out of them, and stop them from taking you down.... It should take alot of time and effort to get your little dragon to GRAND Dragon status, so no side game you need to be fully commited... To stop griefing of the system, you should have a clear reward system. The longer you can stay alive, or stop people from killing your monster(defeating group after group of little adventurers) the better Maths you will drop...And who will say your monster will ever be defeated??. Once a month their should be weekend mayham were the monster players can go out of the "vally of mist, working tittle), and Rampage the local countryside...
This will result in a system that runs itself.. and put alot less pressure to design new AI content to keep the players interested...
Also evrything is Crafted, no item drops... " okey if you want dragon armour you need dragon scales etc"..
Harsh death penelties.. If you take your legendary sword with you to kill the dragon(monster player) and he kills your group, he loots you of your gear and puts it on his mount of gold... and can brag on the forum about how he pawned your little group and made you all cry, when he took your epics...This will breed hate and fear for some monster players, who are really though and stay alive a long time... Beating group after group...
Well, first off, I know nothing about the various costs of things related to mmo development so I'm just going to throw that to the wind and talk about design aspects.
Inspirations are coming from Asheron's Call, Shadowbane, EVE, and Tera (really just the combat from this one). If you haven't heard of the first two, I highly recommend you look at them to know the history of the genre if nothing else.
Servers: Multiple servers. Partly to allow separation between normal and hardcore pvp rule sets, partly because of dynamic elements in the world to be explained later.
World Size and Features: Land area must be large enough to allow Player built structures without crowding. Preferably multiple continents with varying biomes.
-Dynamic events that change aspects of the world triggered by player action or random chance. Different events and different outcomes on each server provide points of divergence. A tiny village on one world may grow to be a thriving metropolis on another.
Example 1: Clan X builds a fortress and starts hunting the elk nearby for leather to outfit npc hirelings. If enough elk are killed, the local value (nearby towns and npc vendors) of their hides will increase and spawn rates will decrease. If hunted to the extreme they may stop spawning entirely in the area for a time, with a rate of return based on population numbers in neighboring regions.
Example 2: The random event generator has a barbarian tribe attack a village. Several scenarios may play out based on player involvement in the fight and the current economic state of the village. Npcs could die, and it would take time for them to be replaced. The village could be destroyed and turned into a ruin, or taken over by the invaders providing different options for the players based on faction affinity.
-Full range of player owned structures (houses, walls, forges, shops, banks, barracks, etc.). Range of hireable npcs (guards, bankers, smiths, bowyers, shopkeepers, etc.).
-No "easy" fast travel system. There would be a network of portals across the world allowing large hops of distance, though not always conveniently close. Limitations on the transport of matter through portals means armies and trade caravans will have to hoof it. Combined with the fact that not all resources will be available in all areas, this means trade and control of trade routes will be important in the economy.
-Balanced economy with regulation. There will be a limited number of ways to create more currency in circulation, and an appropriate number of currency sinks to balance. On the large scale, trading of goods will happen more often than trading of coin. Liquidation of assets will not be easy; you may have enough lumber to make you rich, but you have to find someone to buy it all first.
Dungeons: Some open world, usually smaller or within surface structures. Larger dungeons will be public with channels by default (limitations to channel switching to prevent exploitation), with option to craft a consumable item that will make a private instance when you enter.
Characters and Combat: Exp is earned through successful actions, part goes to the skill used and part goes to a pool you can use to increase skills/attributes as you see fit. All exp counts toward levels.
Attributes- Characters have 6 attributes: Strength, Endurance, Dexterity, Speed, Intelligence, and Willpower. These attributes effect the fundamental aspects of your character such as: carry weight, health/stamina/mana pool, crit chance, movement speed, and some resistances.
Skills- All skills are available to all characters, base value for each skill has a formula usually dependent on 1 or 2 attributes. All skills fall under 4 categories: Specialized (bonus to base value and exp gain), trained(gains exp through use), untrained (usable at base value), unusable(set to 0 until trained). Points given at character creation and level ups used to train and specialize skills. Each skill has its own specialization tree unlocked by skill level, giving tradeoffs like: lower crit chance for higher bleed damage on knives. Combat skills will each have their own lines of abilities/spells/stances.
Combat would be much like Tera. Yes, you will have to aim and manually dodge, and positioning matters.
Power differential between max and min levels will be reasonable in pvp. It won't be easy, but a new player could hop into a siege with high levels and still be useful.
Questing: This will probably be a point of contention for some people. NO quest log, NO waypoints, NO "!" over npcs, and NO fetch quests
. Quests aren't even "given", they are hinted at. Listen to a rumor at the tavern where someone saw strange things a couple klicks south of town, maybe you should investigate. The town crier tells you in passing that a lord in an adjacent province in hiring all the mercenaries he can find, your purse is feeling a little light. Find the dungeon before someone asks you to? No prob, find narrative elements in the environment, maybe a lost journal or a message scratched on the walls. When is it over? That's up to you too. You found a long lost sword belonging to a prominent family; use it, mount it above your fireplace, return it for a reward, your choice.
The big thing is giving you a reason to want to participate, whether that's through a deep narrative, a desire to explore, vanquish evil doers, or just filling your pockets.
PvP and Death: Most of this I'll be ripping from Asheron's Call because i think its a great system. Personally I would make the penalties much steeper (lock out the character for a period of time after death and maybe full loot
) but I know most people wont go for that.
Death: When you're about to die, you are magically transported to your bind point. In exchange, some money and a number of items (based on level) are randomly (weighted by value) selected to be left behind. This can include what you have equipped or entire stacks of resources. For a period of time only you or your killer can loot the items, after that period its open to all. Additionally you receive a temporary debuff to your stats which stacks with additional deaths. You can either wait out the timer or gain exp to remove the debuff.
PvP: On normal servers, complete a short quest to flag yourself for pvp. You must wait a period of time (lets say 4 days real time or 6 hours in game, whichever comes first) before you can complete another quest to un-flag yourself. Both players must be flagged to fight, unless its a duel. Certain areas may be FFA pvp natively or made into pvp areas for a time by players. Players on either side of an active war declaration may freely attack each other.
On hardcore severs, all FFA all the time. Town guards may have something to say about it, if you don't kill them first. Maybe make more items drop than normal if the players want it.
Crafting: Can be done manually or through hirelings. Character bonuses only apply to manually crafted items, hirelings have their own specializations and can continue while you are offline.
Harvesting can be done in small amounts by hand, or you can invest in something like a mine or a lumber mill that will be more efficient, but can be raided, destroyed, or taken over by your enemies if you're not careful.
Not all resources will be available locally. Work those trade routes.
Narrative: An ongoing, well written narrative that evolves and interacts with the community. I don't want to have people just experience the next chapter as the story unfolds, I want thousands of people making non-arbitrary decisions about the outcome. I want live GM events where entirely unscripted things could happen. I want to be able to make an offering of 10,000 bunny carcasses to the evil antagonist of the plot just to see how the GM responds. Maybe i get a unique title, or he whips up a "Sword of the Bunnyslayer", or maybe he makes me the general of his army for the attack he's about to make a capital city. Just a little bit of that roleplaying fun we use to have with pen and paper campaigns can go a long way.
So that's the kind of game I would make, anyone wanna give me a job?
If you would make me a MMO with:
the battle system of Grandia 1
the story of Final Fantasy XI
the difficulty of Dark and Souls and
the crafting system of SWG
im gonna throw money at my screen.
Winning a discussion is not what it's about. If you could pass insight to someone or learn something from it in return - noone can really loose, can they?
OVERALL PICTURE:
I would have a combination of influences from old AD&D, TES, EQ, Thief, and other older systems. I am looking at possibly a 10 year development cycle. I have no clue about cost, though, so my budget may go to hell
After about 30 minutes of thought, this what I'd come up with:
Players per server = about 10,000
World size = unknown
- Details
- 18 starting cities (levels 1-5)
- 3 zones for levels 5-20 connected to each of the starting cities
- 3 zones for levels 21-35 connected to each of the previous zones
- 3 zones for 36-50 (Max level at start) connected to each of the previous zones connecting to the Capital Cities
- Each zone has at least 2 dungeons, including starting cities (like sewers for these)
- 18 capital cities for higher level characters
Races
- Humans group 1 (good)
- Humans group 2 (neutral)
- Humans group 3 (evil)
- Dwarves group 1 (good)
- Dwarves group 2 (neutral)
- Dwarves group 3 (evil)
- Elves Group 1 (good)
- Elves group 2 (neutral)
- Elves group 3 (evil)
- Half-elves group 1 (good)
- Half-elves group 2 (neutral)
- Half-elves group 3 (evil)
- Ogres (evil)
- Kobolds (neutral)
- Half-humans (good)
- Arachnae (evil - spider like race that lives in an anarchist society, mostly in dark woods and caves)
- Cho-Xo (neutral - Ant like race that live in hives - Apologies to Ray Feist, author of The Riftwar Saga that had an intelligent ant-like race called Cho-Ja)
- Centaur (good - race that live in clans in the wilderness)
Character Classes = Yes
- Melee Fighters
-- Warrior (Sword and Board melee)
-- Beserker (2-Handed melee)
-- Monk (unarmed or quarterstaff and unarmored martial artists)
-- Soldier (pole arm specialist - excels in groups)
- Mage Classes
-- Elementalist (controle the elements of fire, water, earth, and air)
-- Necromancer (controls the dead)
-- Arcanist (manipulates the Arcane magic that surrounds us all)
-- Witches/Warlocks (wild magic users)
- Cleric Classes
-- Priests (the conduits between the Gods and mortals - can be good, evil, or neutral)
-- Paladins (the holy warriors of the good Gods)
-- Anti-Paladins (unholy warrios of the evil Gods)
-- Druids (holy warriors of the neutral Gods, ie: Nature)
- Thief Classes
-- Rogue (basic thief with usual theiving skills)
-- Assassin (specialized in stealth and quick strikes)
-- Fence (specialized skills for buying/selling goods)
- Hybrid Classes
-- Bards (Musical maestros that manipulate sound to their needs - light or no armor only - good range of weapons)
-- Rangers (nature lovers whose main weapon is a bow - animal affinities - some nature based spell use)
-- Mage (a priest of the God of magic)
-- Duelist (duel wielding stealth character with some thief skills)
-- Battlemage (sword wielding magic user)
-- Witch-hunter (ranged specialist with a few spells good for hunting witches/warlocks)
Player Progression = Strictly Skill System - no general XP, ever
Skills:
- Fighting
-- 1-handed
-- 2-handed
-- Blunt weapons
-- pole arms
-- Unarmed
-- Unarmored
-- Light armor
-- Medium Armor
-- Heavy armor
-- Bows
- Clerical
-- Spells
-- First Aid
-- Medium armor
-- Heavy Armor
-- Shields
-- Blunt weapon use
-- Some control abilities
-- Tracking
-- Staves
- Thieving
-- Sneaking
-- Lockpicking
-- Backstabbing
-- Pickpocketing (useable on PC and NPCs)
-- Alchemy - Poisons
-- Light Armor
-- Short blades
-- Tracking
-- Bows
- Magical
-- Spells (fire, water, air, earth, arcana. nature)
-- Research (fire, water, air, earth, arcana, nature)
-- Spellcrafting
-- Enchanting
-- Alchemy - Potions/Poisons
-- Unarmored
-- Staves
--
--
- Miscellaneous
-- Smithing
-- Tailoring
-- Fishing
-- Languages
-- Jewelcrafting
-- Cooking
-- Cartography
-- Lore
How Do Players Advance? = By using their skills - Trainers necessary to advance - No auto skill appearances
Quests = Yes
- How Implemented = Chatbox with NPCs [keywords] - players have too look for them, interacting with the NPCs
- Overarching Stories = Yes - Quests that have mutltiple parts are common place and change depending on the choices made in previous quests
- Choices In Quest Completion = Yes
- Personal Character Stories = NO
Dungeon Style = Open World
PvP = (This is a tough for me. If I could, I'd leave PvP out of the game.) If I HAVE to have it included, maybe something like:
- Open World PvP WITH Consequences
- Ganking is controlled with bounties and faction reactions - no looting of defeated players (take away the temptation, the ganking goes down)
- When 2 or more groups want the same dungeon, they can duke it out
- When players are crafting or engaged in a fight already, they are immune to PvP attacks (except for faction reaction NPCs)
- Unkillable City Guards
Crafting Plays A Large Role = Yes
- Best items come from crafting
- Animals do NOT drop weaponsarmor
- NPCs drop what they use in a fight
Additional Features
- Combat - Tab Target, random number generated with character (not player) skills factoring into the equation
- Attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, Luck)
- Writable Journal for quests and notes
- Maps covered by Fog of War until character either explores it, or purchases a player made map. MNotes CAN be marked on map for POIs or general area notes
- Learnable languages
- Grouping bonuses
- Factions galore (source of many, many quests - fighter, mage, thief, church crafting guilds, city factions, racial factions, )
- Reputation
- Kill on Sight (KoS) brought back
- Cartography is a skill that players can have to create and sell maps of the local areas/zones - bought maps get integrated into the purchaser's UI
- No Add On support
- Adjustable UI
- Subscription Model (9.99/month = 2,497,500/month income)
- NO Cash Shop
- FREE Expansions and Updates
- NO Voice Acting!
- No Cut Scenes
Am I over budget yet? LOL It is just a rough idea, right now, with LOTS of holes.
Have at it. Point out all the deficiencies and terrible gameplay ideas
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
I would offer to the investor that I just take $5 million and take him out to the alley and kick him in the balls. He would then get to keep half the money since there is no way this would turn profit.
Now, since we are pretending there is an audience for such a thing and this audience isn't really looking for a flux capacitor to go back to the mid 90's... I would have to assume that this audience is likely jobless masochists who want to play continuosly til their eyes bleed. By play I mean things like spawn camping a monster that shows up once every three days with a .001 % chance to drop a moderately better piece of gear.
I would have full loot pvp but that wouldn't matter because there would also be perma death. Or if you play on the carebear servers, like a pussy, then there would be corpse runs, but the bind spots would be hours and hours away from any action and there would be a 97% chance your body would be unrecoverable because it would fall down a bottomless chasm. Also, when you die we would send thugs out to your house to beat you to a pulp for dare dying in our fantasy world. Good items would all come from crafting but the kicker is the materials needed to craft the items are impossible to find. The absolute pinnacle item would be found on some kind of monster chieftan, but the thing is, there is no monster cheiftan. Dungeons would all be open, no instancing, but we would pay in house players to wait in every dungeon and spawn camp all the bosses, so players would never be able to complete them.
Old School HELLS YEAH!!!
Help support an artist and gamer who has lost his tools to create and play: http://www.gofundme.com/u63nzcgk
I feel like some people aren't getting into the spirit of the thread, so to speak. Which is fine. This is not unexpected. Suggestions to take the money and run, kick the developer or publisher in the nads, split the money and play the stock market, etc. are all possibilities, but the consequences would be fairly dire and would not result in the game getting developed, so those suggestions would not work.
Anyway, the only thing I would say right now about most of the designs that people actually thought up is that I don't think it would be possible to complete them with the available budget. There may need to be a plan put in place to implement features as possible initially, and then space the remaining features out in one to three month update intervals. I'm not sure what features would have to be implemented first, and which would have to wait. A complete world is necessary, but at the same time, the possibility of expanding the world post release would both allow other features to be more fully implemented and give players something new to look forward to later.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I don't see why it would have to be an expensive project. Sure it would be if you are going to form a company and pay everyone the standard salaries (overpriced these days) in the gaming industry.
Lets think of how most games were made by people in the old days when they first started coming out. Usually they were made by people who had a passion for games and weren't being paid much or at all to make them. They were just trying something new that they liked and would see if someone would buy said product. Wasn't facebook made in a similar way years later? I'm pretty sure a lot of original software is made this way. There are products like 7 zip and VLC media player that work great and have always been free short of donations.
Now lets say you got a group of passionate people who have free time and a way to exist while working on the game. They could theoretically spend very little on making the game. That would mean anything they got in return would be pure profit that they all shared. It's not something you would see from a triple AAA company unfortunately, but it could happen.
The main problem I see is few kids these days are into D&D stuff like in the old days. They don't have the same passion for fantasy and exploration. They are probably more likely to make some indie game that is a variation of pokemon or animal crossing. What was the latest experiment I saw in the news? It was something like twitch pokemon.
- This is what I'd like to see in an MMO
- Exploration (no fast travel or GPS)
- High level or skill mobs in every zone (something that can sneak up on you and one or two hit you if you aren't paying attention)
- All mobs respawn in dungeons (you have to fight your way in and fight your way out)
- Nasty traps in dungeons (you have to be careful/alert or your dead)(Examples fake floors/walls, slippery ledges, lava, trip wires, multiple paths to follow inside dungeons)
- Racial/Class factions (you will be killed on site if your faction is low with another) (it is not possible to be high with multiple opposing factions at the same time)
- Experience/Skills will decrease a certain amount if you die
- Ghost form (when you die you enter a ghost world which contains it's own things that can be done) (you have to find a NPC priest in the real world to bring you back to life)
- No experience for quests (you can get items/rewards for quests, but not experience)
- Class/Skill Quests (there will be certain quests as you progress for your class) (for a mage this quests may be a trial to learn a certain new spell) (for a fighter this quest might be to overcome a trial to learn a skill or advance a skill past a certain point or gain a fighter item[same for a thief type]) (during said quests specific class skills will be heavily tested to advance further)
That's all I can think of off had and I'm still not completely decided on even those things. I have a lot of ideas for a level/skill system, but when I write it down on paper I begin to think of flaws and start rewriting it. I think it would be great to a system where you can advance in any class a certain amount with one character. The main problem would be balancing it. One thing I am against though is getting hp/mp or any kind of gain each level. You should have to choose what you want to increase per level like ESO. This keeps the high level people more in check and allows for more balanced content/exploration IMO.
I don't want to be adding classes/races later on, though, as players who want to play those classes/races will have to start all over. That is my HUGE gripe with the way Wizards of the Coast is releasing D&D these days. New books come out with new classes/races and players have to start again.
Additions, in my mind, should be for game world only, not the characters. Every aspect of the character should be available from the outset, so the players know what they are getting into.
Maybe some dungeons could be put off, too. I just do not want to pull back too much on upper level content as some players will get there quicker than expected and will need something to do. No matter how devs plan, players will muck it up
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Lacking further input, I guess I'll move forward a bit with this on my own, because it seems like an interesting challenge. It's practically an invitation to reinvent the MMO genre in an alternate-history kind of way, since I decided I'm only going to look at single-player games from the period in question.
So, first I made a list of all my favorite games from the 90s. The Sims, Sim City, Harvest Moon: Back To Nature, Final Fantasy 7/8, E.V.O.: The Search For Eden, Warcraft II/Starcraft, Myst/Riven, Lighthouse, Sanitarium, Jewels Of The Oracle, and Tamagotchi and other virtual pet games. I figured I would only go earlier than that if there was something I wanted that I couldn't find a 90s example for. Then I looked at the gameplay in my list of favorite, grouping games or parts of games by genre; the point of this was to start designing the MMO around the types of gameplay I wanted to include. I decided that I wanted a game which takes place in a simple 3D engine with a square grid, and the player has the ability to rotate this grid relative to the camera. So it's basically isometric, but you're normally looking at the flat side of the chessboard, not a corner, and feels more like a platformer than most isometric games. Art-wise, I'm thinking 2D high-res sprites in some kind of anime/cartoon style. Something that isn't little-kid-ish.
The goal MMO is specified to be an RPG, so I'm going to take that to mean that there's going to be some kind of story told through NPC dialogue and/or narration. In particular 90s games were often about identity, with some philosophy and psychology in there, so those might be good themes for the goal MMO's story. Fantasy or science fantasy. Being an RPG I also take to mean that there's going to be an avatar character the player uses to explore the world and kill monsters. Among all the examples, the kind of combat that struck me as still being exciting was arcade-style/platformer. I like tactical combat too, but I'm just in the mood for something faster today.
I also definitely want animal racing in there somewhere (specifically like the chocobo racing in FF7, but multiplayer and with added jumping). But any long game can use some slow gameplay to provide breaks between the fast-paced stuff, and for that I want adventure game puzzles. Many of my most vivid memories of gaming in the 90s are from working on adventure game puzzles. Puzzles are also one of the elements that made 90s sRPGs more awesome than modern sRPGS, in my personal opinion.
And finally, I also want some sim/RTS gameplay in there, probably for the farming and crafting. (Specifically I mean a non-combat RTS, something like Harvest Moon or Sim City.) Also something like The Sims or Tamagotchi and other virtual pet games.
So, the challenge is to organize these types of gameplay into a design that isn't schizophrenic. Racing is an obvious candidate for an arena minigame. Anything virtual pet related would be a single player activity, unless collaborative breeding is a possibility; mainly it would be a domestic activity associated with the player's home within the game, whether that was an instanced ranch or a tent that the nomadic player could temporarily pitch in the game world.
Sim/strategy play and combat are probably not going to be happening on the same screen. I see two major options here - either the main world is primarily for combat and the sim/strategy play all happens "at home", or the main world is split into monster inhabited areas and monster-free crafting areas. Probably further development of the design will make one of these obviously the better choice. Portable tent-like homes that have to be temporarily planted in the world for crafting to take place are a pet idea of mine though.
Adventure game puzzles, the player should discover or unlock one occasionally as a treat. But the player should not have to work on them right when and where they find them, because they might be in the middle of trying to play alongside a friend. So adventure games could either be attached to portable objects, like puzzle boxes, or they could be internal to the avatar character, serving to unlock new spells or abilities.
So... there's my initial concept for an "oldschool MMORPG". Someone tell me what's not oldschool about it.
Eve style world (one large-scale map, but the actual zones are temporary grids generated around points of interest). If you attempt to wander through the empty wilderness from one town to the next, you will be playing in an emphemeral bubble of procedurally generated forest with a few random encounters as you go and the details of the map might be different every time you attempt the trip.
Since the world is only generated in local fragments as needed, there isn't a fixed answer to this. It's more about the density of points of interest and the longevity of those instances rather than any overall size.
A template of starting abilities rather than rigid classes. No levels, but you can learn abilities that were outside your starting template to increase your options of what to put on your action bar. The traditional idea of levels and experience would be rolled into the quest system where you will build up quest progress and unlock plotline-specific abilities/buffs (for example, a quest to take down an orc chief may allow you to build up a confidence buff vs that specific chief by fighting his minions, allowing you to choose how long to nibble around the edges of his lair before you feel comfortable going in for the kill).
Different actions may have different preparation gameplay attached to them (eg: a club may simply have a smash ability you add to your action bar while a magic system might have a complete spell-design minigame that lets you construct complex spells that you can then drag from your spellbook to your action bar).
Simulation-centric world. For example: a rat's nest spawns in the world. Initially it's a secret dungeon. However, it's presence will add rats to the random event tables of nearby areas. As a player encounters these rats and kills them, they accumulate "plot points" that eventually unlock the discovery of the existance of the rat's nest itself and the ability to search for a key that will reveal/unlock the nest instance. Clearing the rat's nest instance will complete and close the plot. If the rats nest spawned because of some larger story, the player will gain plot points towards unlocking information about that larger plot.
A boss creature spawns in the world wrapped in a procedurally generated lair and a procedurally generated plotline that lets you unlock access to the dungeon. If you want content aimed at people you just want to do dungeons rather than long open-world quest chains, include a class of dungeons where the "quest" is simply to pick up a key at the local adventurer's guild. The default is that dungeons are semi-open - if two people complete the questline to get a key to the dungeon, they may both be attempting it at the same time. However, it's easy to add private dungeons by just having unique keys..
The instanced-based nature of points of interest means that entire different simulations can be overlaid the same map. A PvP game can be created with capturable resource nodes are the points of interest instead of dungeons. A PvE player may see the colours of banners changing in villages, but otherwise be oblivious that there is a PvP game going on around them, and similarly, a PvP-only player might see that a village has randomly disappeared without seeing the entire zombie invasion plotline that was only available to PvE players.
Yes, but focused more on a layer of mundane economic supply-and-demand simulations rather than making powerful magical gear. Foraging and crafting are simply other actions that can be learned and form part of the landscape of opportunities and quests spawning out of the simulation. The game would handle a mineral vein spawning in a similar way it would handle a rat's nest - minerals get added to the random prospecting tables of the surrounding area, with prospecting giving you plot points accumulating as you harvest leading to unlocking the ability to search for the motherload dungeon (and perhaps whatever elemental brought the minerals up with it).
( anyway, just my brainstorming $0.02 )Remake Dark Age of Camelot in a modern engine. Boom. Done. Wait that's already kinda being done.
Remake Ultima Online in a modern engine. Boom. Done.
The engine is not what's preventing a UO modernization, it's the lack on consensus on exactly what UO was in the first place.
I was going to comment that what people had done so far was to pull elements of old school games, but to also include their own design features, updating some aspects of the games for a modern audience, even if they were fans of old school games. I was going to mention that the one thing that had not been done was someone saying to "Rewrite game {x} and be done with it." Kind of glad I did not post that. :-)
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
It feels horribly inefficient to try communicate an idea to a knowledgable audience without making reference to any existing systems they are familar with.
If we went back a decade, we'd be talking about what MUD and MUSH elements these new-fangled MMO-things were using.
My comment wasn't a qualitative sort of thing. I just thought it was interesting that so far, nobody has really just redescribed an existing game. I think given the opportunity, most people would try to make something unique rather than just an exact retread of an existing game. Even the suggestion to "remake Ultima Online" involved remaking it with a new game engine, which would change several things about the game such as the zone boundaries and things like that.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
uh ... what?
Are you from Zynga or something?
Technology has advanced. Wouldn't it be silly to ignore it? What many of us "old school" players dreamed of way back then was increased technology and what could be done with our current games. Back when we played, dial-up was the norm at about 56k. Now, basic cable modems give about 5-10MB. Graphics cards now have more memory than our system did back then. Engines have improved over the past 10 years. Polycounts for modeling have increased a great deal.
Why on earth would I create a 1999 version of game with 1999 technology?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
It make me wonder how old games will turn out with 2014 technology.
Better graphic with action combat and more stuff , break old restrict with new tech.
It don't sound bad ,
keep the gameplay (with some change) but create new story and new game world since old game's world and story ready used up to it limit.
Tell the true that i tired of sequels that don't hold any spirit of the original ,
if the developers want to make sequels for MMORPGs then better created a complete new game instead of ruined the name of series. Because the MMOs are long term games and the fans hardly jump to new one if it don't better than the old.
I don't think i interest to post the design because the limit of 10 million are pretty stupid when said about design style (in this case is old school).
The cost of making now major drop in graphic and voice acting aren't part of gameplay design.
More like talk about fund manage than design work .
It might have been intended as a dig at the mobile market where you get a lot of outright cloning of existing games?
Or perhaps it was a comment about people talking nostalgically about old games but not actually wanting the old game?
I haven't quite been able to decrypt Lizardbones' thinking on this one. I fear.
I think the key is old school thought process more than old school features. I would build a game that is a living, changing world. A game where social interactions were key and where you really felt like you were making a difference in the world. Where character progression took time and had multiple layers to it. A game that offers a lot of challenges from the environment as well as from other players. The big things that would be a no no for me are heavy instancing, special PvP zones and quest based leveling. Quests are fine as part of the game, they shouldn't be the whole game. I'd probably want to add a good bit of procedural content so the lack of instancing didn't cause problems and I'd definitely have an AI like EQN is suggestion where the world itself was fluid and not so static.
A lot of the suggestions above are really good ones.
The new school design is throw down some linear content, give them some cookie cutter character progression and then have an end game in a box and PvP in a box. Make sure that people never have to compete against each other for anything and that nothing is ever too difficult for the weaker players. Games like FFXIV, Wildstar etc are a pox on the genre at this point.
I was just curious at what people would come up with. I challenged someone else in another thread to create a thread like this, and that the result would be many different game designs, not one, unified "Old School" design. I thought about it for awhile, and I thought it would be more interesting to see the designs, what people would come up with than it would to start the thread to try and prove a tired, beaten to death point in an argument that's been going on for years.
AND
The whole point here is to see the designs themselves. What happens when people take something old in their heads, and make it new? I recently started playing Doom2, Hexen and Heretic on my Linux laptop with the DoomsDay engine to run the games. Basically I have all of the game content, but with an updated control scheme, joystick support, updated lighting (that my laptop cannot handle), etc. I am having a blast. I wanted to see what kind of things would get created if people looked at MMORPGs the same way the DoomsDay people looked at Doom.
Those are the two, main drivers behind creating this thread. It's not nefarious and if there is a hidden agenda, it's that if I win the lottery, I might read this thread and threads like it to make a vanity game for my rich self and lord it over all the nerds I work with before I quit my job. I won't win the lottery, but still.
**
In this thread, if I said something is interesting, it means I read the post or posts, and thought to myself, "That's interesting, or unexpected." That's all.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
After reading through some of the other few responses, I'll give a more general scope of the game I'd like to see.
I like maplestone's questing idea. The changing reasons for the rats being in an area is nifty idea to me.
sunandshadow's animal racing idea is another great idea and fun activity for players to partake in the game.
Flyte27 had a cool idea for death and dieing with the "ghost form" idea.
Tried another go at making a post not so lengthy. I failed...
There is just so much to cover in an MMORPG that is not "easily" explained
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR