/v/ - Video Games

>>15568244

>What are the exact reasons MMO are shit

Because they've been thoughtlessly copypasting the same formula ever since WoW invented it 14 years ago.

The fundamental of the problem is that rather than designing the game around the most appealing part of MMOs - player to player interaction - they're making set pieces for players to "play through".

An mmo based around typical WOW-esque quests but with choices and Time Travel as a mechanic. It would be a Simple system where you would be instanced into different locations based on your choice and wouldn't be able to come back until you finish the storyline for your timeline. Each location would have a neutral, dark and light versions. The storyline is based on The idea that due to a Time anomaly every player character is an alternate reality version of the same hero.

>>15568244

>What are the exact reasons MMO are shit?

The two biggest problems with MMOs are the community and the developer Both are filled with drooling retards the makes playing the game unbearable just for different reasons. The community makes the multiplayer part horrible and the developer makes the game part horrible.

>>15568244

>What are the exact reasons MMO are shit

Traditional questing is dumb trash and should die already. 'Kill 20 rats' isn't fun and doesn't engage the players in any meaningful way.

The main part of MMO gameplay, combat, is brainless garbage with no real player choice other than 'do your optimal rotation'.

At its core, the problem is that the most important part of video games, player agency, is usually close to rock bottom in MMOs. In most parts players have no genuine choices and no real consequences. They're straight up skinner boxes.

>solutions

Make combat deeper and more situationally varied, possibly even with analog parts to raise the skill ceiling.

Have a mix of sandbox and themepark elements, possibly relying on players to create goals for other players (EVE is a formidable example of this)

server code is open to public from the begining of games lifespan

oh wait that's every genre

>>15568244

>MMO ideaguy thread

Idea guys are cancer, just look at the recently departed Wild Star and Carbine Studio, a fucking decade working on one game because the nepotistic bullshit on upper management who don't know how to budget and reach a deadline, how they managed to get more money and extensions is a fucking mystery.

MMOs are shit because people are shit, you can't have massive and you can't have multiplayer, hence all the themepark garbage you see going around.

If you get rid of the shit people the market would make a good game after a while, you just have to commit a normalfag genocide. Get rid of the people who report you for saying penis or nigger, all the fat whales driving the p2w shitwagon and all the pozzed soyboys and feminazis who keep on corrupting every single form of entertainment from within.

Focus more on gameplay that supports social interaction rather than a singleplayer RPG with additional players that you can just drop like a rock simply because they have a single statpoint lower than what you prefer. Even a VR ERP MMO would do better than a WoW clone now, because of how tired people but the most diehard of that kind of gameplay.

>>15568334

While I agree the server code should be eventually open, delaying it a few months or even a year may be a good idea. If anyone can mirror the official server from day one, the official server would probably die soon if it has a subscription model or any feature players can get for cheaper in any other server.

Either that, or distribute the server code without the official maps, quests, scripts and maybe different mechanics from the main server so only through sheer autism the community can compete on a serious level.

Make a virtual MMO tabletop board game.

For an MMO I like the idea of a day/night system, with 7 in-game days and different things happening depending on the time. For example, mobs that get buffs during the night, or only come out during the day. And on the 7th day, a "blood moon" that not only resets mobs (like Zelda), but makes them even tougher throughout the night. Super bosses also show up during this time.

Basically, making your world seem alive without any direct input from devs.

>>15568244

> sometimes, I miss Erin…

>>15568508

Problem with day/night cycles or realtime weeks is that some people may miss on much of the content due to only being able to play at a certain time. Most devs solve this by making day/night cycles extremely fast, but I think it may be better to have two real time days as daytime and two real time days as nighttime, then using 8 days long weeks so people can eventually play everythingn regardless if the real time days they play

>>15568244

>>15561980

>>15568244

An MMO with terrain destruction, gore, and environmental destruction, incentivize players to rebuild by rewarding them with bonus experience and EXP.

>>15568508

I'd further build on this by having an apocalypse appear every seven days which can wreck everyone's shit, and players need to prepare in those seven days by gathering supplies, finding gear in dungeons, establishing organizations and bonds to form things like trade guilds or mining operations, and so on. Should the demons of the apocalypse overrun the capital of the island, then everyone is fucked and has to escape the island to another randomly generated one, where the process can repeat itself. If you die you lose all your skills and gears and are respawned in the capital, but if you escape during an apocalypse you get to keep all your junk and stats in the next game, which can create some amusing RP situations where people have a reason to turn tail and escape when shit goes awry. Though there is a bank with limited capacity for storing items inbetween games.

If players survive the apocalypse, then they survived and have another seven days to prepare themselves, but for each time they ward off the apocalypse it will only come back stronger each time. However, the longer they can defend an island, portals to other lands can start appearing around the island which grants access to even better loot.

Since the goal isn't keeping the hamster wheel turning by leveling up forever, you cap out fairly quickly, and other players can give you items or potions to permanently boost your stats, which can further encourage teamwork.

Players can also be selected at random by the forces of evil, where they can choose to give in to evil to gain extra powers, and have to complete missions granted from below to sabotage player organizations by assassinating the NPCs vital for producing resources, instigating drama, building backdoors in defenses, and playing through guerilla warfare. There's always more than one agent of evil, and you always know eachothers' whereabouts. If you don't cause a minimum amount of mayhem in a short timespan, then the contract you have signed with the forces of evil may kill you and permanently lock you out of the role of evil agent for the game.

Things can also get mixed up by changing the starting conditions of the game. Like perhaps the island you're on has two warring kingdoms of NPCs you need to convince into focusing on the Apocalypse first, or perhaps there's different biomes, and so on.

Basically it's a week-long round of SS13.

>Lost Planet 2 MMO

>Basically a Snow Pirate simulator

>Create or join a Snow Pirate faction

>Have to steal all your weapons and VSs during raids/missions

>Extort local settlements while defending them from Akrid and NEVEC

>Construct a fortress and place defenses

>Raid other pirate's bases, have your base get raided

>Customize your weapons and Vital suits

>Fight NEVEC and Hunt Akrid

>PVP turf wars

>>15568244

An MMO where everyone fucks Erin. Simple.

>>15569682

>The only main issue I could see is balancing the two teams to not lose too much money on the overhead and the cost of servers, which honestly I still have no idea if that is the main sink for a game company making multi-player games or if it's having too many of people on the team, which can be its own set of issues

The main money sink is the employees if we don't take into account the Chinese overlords. Don't get me wrong, servers are expensive and no indie team could host something the size of WoW without a poofy money cushion just in case, but their cost is probably the same as a full employee team or two. You need a programming team, a modeller team, an art direction team, a music team, mappers, game designers, marketing, sysadmins, gamemasters/moderators… and they all add up.

So, if you have efficient teams, they may be small, but the main issue is companies overbloat their teams to the point they can't work any faster. Take Telltale, for example: it probably didn't need more than 20 employees per game, but they had 400 employees at one point. It was only logical they would eventually go bankrupt.

>>15568276

>time travel

I like it.

Imagine having a past and future version of the overworld, which you can travel between at will, that players can change based on some big world events/raids.

>enough players beat past raid

>future world gets changed, unlocking new areas, raids, etc

or

>future world constantly in danger of becoming dystopia

>have to travel to the past to save the future

>ITT post a wall of text and receive zero (0) (You)s

>>15569991

Dumbest post of the year. Here is your (You).

>>15570002

more

I'll play along. Never had a chance to share this idea I came up with a few years ago. Every now and then I think of it again. Was pretty excited about it at one point, and always said to myself that if I had enough money I would work on getting it developed.

Basically the idea is a real-time civilization builder. I played a lot of Civ back in the day, as well as other GSGs (like EU4 etc), and love the idea of nation building. Civ is great for that because you get the experience of growing your nation and discovering things along the way (frankly, I've always thought that Civ gets a bit boring a repetitive after a while; I like most the randomness generated at the very start of the game, like start location and geography formation). EU4 and similar games are nice and come with an increased difficulty level, but are complex almost to a fault; plus, there isn't the real feeling of creating something new, like what you get, at least in part, with Civ.

So the idea is to develop a fully fleshed-out world: landscapes, flora, fauna, geological conditions that are highly random yet logical, meteorological systems that impact survival conditions - the whole shebang. Players are placed random across this massive landscape (and I'm talking HUGE, like an equivalent surface area to the Earth or something) and have to band together and create nations. This all happens in real-time, or at least as close to it as possible; and time doesn't stop when the game is turned off, obviously. It is always progressing, and the tasks you set in motion continue after you leave. In a way, it is sort of like Dwarf Fortress in this regard. At any rate, you are randomly placed according to pre-determined conditions (to be explained below), and it is up to you and those closest to you to survive and grow a huge empire, or small state, or whatever. When it comes down to it, I envision very limited restrictions on what players can and cannot do, as everything will largely occur through verbal or written agreement. Just like with RL nations, if you break the rules there are repercussions. I leave it to the players to determine what those punishments are.

As for the player character: I keep coming back to the idea of each player being assigned thee different characters from three different social classes, or something like that. But this is fraught with a number of problems. For one, I don't want to pre-determine such things as class for players: perhaps the society they create will only have two classes, or fifteen. How is the game engine to determine how to assign the player's characters if, for example, someone joins the game a year after launch and a fairly fully developed nation, with a set hierarchy, exists? So I'm actually not sure how to do this. Perhaps players can have up to three "characters" (also, there would only be one server worldwide, another important point) who are living at any time, and they are tasked with climbing the social ladder if they so choose. But then, perhaps it is beneficial to the player to have a character not rise above a wealthy merchant class, esp. if that character is able to hook things up with the player's aristocrat character. At any rate, this is a problem that is as yet unresolved.

>character placement

Characters will be placed in pre-selected locations decided upon in closed alpha and beta testing (more below). By the time of launch, much of the world's pre-history, things like linguistic traditions, cultural associations, etc, will have been determined by the developers. Thus, players will have a large opportunity to uncover remnants of the past if they choose. If not, they still are given the chance to create their own society and culture, but one influenced by certain irremovable barriers. For example, certain geographic locations on the map will be home to characters speaking one language, which will be a part of a larger language family. There may be some mutual intelligibility with another group of players located nearby; and the farther away you get, the more difficult it will be to understand. The game will have a built-in language processing feature that will intentional obfuscate communication efforts, to simulate the experience of coming across native peoples in the wild. These ethno-linguistic clusters will be concentrated around certain geographic formations, like valleys, mountains, deserts, and other real-world barriers that typically separate peoples across space and time.

>>15570128

>user experience

Ideally, I would like players to be able to participate in this game from the perspective both of God and human; in other words, I'd like them to be able to look out over their stretch of earth and see things like charts, history logs, and so on, similar to what you would see with EU4 and Civ. But I'd also like them to be able to "zoom in" to the ground level and have an immersive experience where they can control their character's sprite. I'm not sure this is going to be possible, since, as I mentioned above, much of the game's mechanics will take the form of Dwarf Fortress or EU4 (set things in motion and watch them play out in real time). It might through a wrench in this if players were able to jump into their player's skin and walk around like they were in Skyrim or something.

However, I do think it would be a fun and exciting mechanic if players were able to control armies and the like. Much like the Total War games, you have the map-based experience of controlling chess pieces across a grand board of action, and then jump down to the field of battle and control units in real time (although in this case, you wouldn't be able to pause the game). So perhaps that's the solution to this problem: only allow for ground view when in battle. However, it would be fascinating to be able to zoom all the way down and see, from the streets of your city, the work accomplished by you and your friends.

>building a nation

Like a mentioned above, much of the game's mechanics will be up to the player. How do players want to assemble themselves? How will they pool their resources to build a temple or other important building? Who will they choose as leader, and why him? What are the repercussions for being an asshole and murdering your neighbor for no reason? Decisions needs to be important and have meaning for players; the force of law, or the point of the sword, needs to be felt. This is partially why I conceived of a limit to the number of "lives" you are allowed to have open at one time: all progress is lost if you are killed, and this includes being put to death by your peers if they elect to do so.

As an example of the hands-on nature of the game, there can be any number of ways for empires to expand or shrink. It can be through warfare or treaty, subversion or marriage-alliance. I leave this to the players playing the game. How they choose to order these decisions, and keep track of them, will require a flexible and responsive UI that represents their decisions accurately and faithfully. But, of course, there will always be room for mischief.

>>15570174

>alpha and beta stages

I envision a lengthy period of development, since the game is pretty complex (that or I just don't actually have a solid idea of what I want yet). During this period, there will be a number of testing phases where things like mechanics are worked out, obviously. But these pre-release stages will play the unique role of determining, as I mentioned above, certain unchangeable characteristics about the world that players will have to deal with, namely things like history, cultural practices, languages, and so on. Much of this will be decided by the development team beforehand; but afterwards everything will be completely up to the players.

For example, the linguistic subclades mentioned above would be more or less determined during these phases, and players would eventually be sorted into these groups. By the time the game launches, perhaps it is at the end of a great civilizational cycle, and some players will be fortunate enough to find their character a well-to-do trader or farmer in the final stages (or even early stages, who knows) of their nation's history. These players will be at an advantage, and if they play it smart they will be able to conquer nearby peoples with ease. At the same time, this burden of history will, hopefully, compel those at the fringes of the pre-existing empire to band together and overthrow their masters…etc etc. What I am striking at here is the idea that by the time the game launches, a significant amount of history will be built into the game that will result in an extremely uneven playing field with highly random results. It won't be an equal distribution of players across the map: many players will end up in a lush, fertile valley that likely saw the rise of a nation during the alpha or beta stages; and only a few will wind up on the outskirts of a massive desert, the tribal leaders, perhaps, of a minuscule population that shares certain cultural, religious, and linguistic traditions. Each case will have its own opportunities for development.

I imagine these stages occurring over years, and that they will lend a substantial amount of h y p e to the game. The final stage will be a closed beta, with those lucky enough to be selected having the opportunity to help shape the starting conditions of the game's global launch - after which point everything will be left to the players who join in (also, the players in the closed beta will not be able to continue playing as their characters after launch; a significant amount of time passes between this last development stage and launch). There will be a lot of lead up, and people will get to see some pretty cool things along the way; the influential impact of the closed beta players will entice people to play at launch, since they, too, will have the opportunity to influence so massive a world, etc etc.

>time

This is a big component of the game. At first I thought that time shouldn't progress except as slowly as time in reality, but I don't think this is a workable idea. Nobody has 250 years to build a pyramid, after all. So time will have to move at an increased rate (and this is another barrier for the "zoom in" idea, both for single characters and even armies, sadly). Regardless, time does not stop EVER in the game, and players will have to deal with what is happening to their colony when, and if, they can. Being attacked by the neighboring tribe at 3AM local time? I hope you're ready to log in, because otherwise you might find yourself somebody else's property when you connect to the server tomorrow morning.

>>15570215

I should also mention that players will have an extremely limited field of vision, so to speak. Until they advance enough culturally and technologically, the fog of war will cover much of their horizon. And even then, I would like the game to make it difficult for players to truly understand their surroundings. I want players to have to converse with each other and then, in real life, draw maps based upon a local trader's uncertain report of his journey from across the nearest mountain range. There should be a lot of built-in features that make the game challenging for players outside of super aggro monsters, for example. I want communication and the transfer of information to be the real bad guy in this game; this is the most important enemy to conquer in your quest to build your nation.

>summary

Basically EVE Online but on a super large world map that begins in the "classical age" (think Greeks and Romans, in terms of technology).

>>15569658

I demand more white korra

>>15571122

That sounds like Minecraft to be honest. With unrestricted multiplayer things can be exactly like that.

>>15568265

>player to player interaction

To further expand on this idea, consider the thing that MMOs and vidya are trying to copy: Tabletop RPGs. These are games where exploring and traveling are fun, where you can waste hours or days dicking around town, getting into trouble, interactive with NPCs, and doing things the GM didn't plan for. Furthermore, the general creative freedom of tabletop games allows for inventive and unexpected uses of powers and magic spells.

Compare this general concept to MMOs now where you get a canned slab of text from an NPC who gives you a carefully formulated pile of money and loot after you kill a handful of enemies that are not challenging at all, and then deliver their severed anuses back to the NPC.

>>15569847

Well it's good that I sort of had an idea that both were expensive I guess although I definitely wouldn't want to send any work out to third party programming companies out that way If I fondly recall, Andromeda was worked on by Indian third-party devs wasn't it?

I figured something not WoW sized for the first game's scope. At least not in the idea of, "My MMO is going to make trillions!" which we have all seen crash and burn more times than we would prefer. More like, "We need a small group of people who have a simple goal of using this game to create a cushion of money for the second game". I'd say focus heavily on challenging mechanics for raids, not "gotcha!" mechanics, but things players actually have to learn before moving on to the next challenge. Essentially building up to progressively harder fights but at the same time creating means for the devs to recycle the moves and attacks for new bosses by adding them to the list of moves they would be able to use. Attempt to make it a good game in terms of it still being a theme park MMO, don't try to sell the game as a sandbox game that comes later, use it's difficulty to appeal to people looking for a challenge, etc.

Then once that's all set up and we have a simple crew of people handling the projects over there with some creative freedom as long as they don't make it obscenely pay to win but continue focusing on new clothes and content we move onto the next step create a comfy sandbox game where group play is the main way of doing things, with support classes and non combatant classes, and with professions and a comfy crafting system that would give a wurm private serbs a run for it's money

has this thread fucked Erin yet?

>>15571483

Yes, post more lewd erins!

One of those space games like elite dangerous, except instead of the vast boring emptiness of space, it's a planet, and instead of ships, you have mechs

Planetside 2 except without the shit gameplay, art direction, and universe

An entire MMO that's essentially just a front for a card game, so instead of loot box bullshit, there's an actual world with shit to do and collecting cards actually means something

Shit, a multiplayer yu-gi-oh game based on duelist kingdom could cash in on the battle royale trend and would rake in all the autismbux you'd ever need

>>15568489

Monetising permadeath is an interesting idea, but you have to take into account that anything online attracts a certain amount of assholes - you'll need to balance the game one day, some weebs die, and you'll be blamed as "corrupt" as they'll use the changes as an excuse for why they died.

>>15568489

I like all of this except for:

>If the demon subjugation is failed, it'll temporarily destroy and disable a part of the city or something.

If that were the case then players would feel the need to babysit it, which makes it a chore. I think the lost opportunity at loot and exp, in addition to feeling shitty for failing, are enough. It will probably be camped regardless, but that just makes that portion of the city inconsistent since it can't be camped 24/7. I could easily imagine logging in and planning on trading X currency to Y NPC or whatever only to find that the demon wasn't subjugated and I'll have to wait an hour, or any amount of time really, to carry on. I imagine it'll also make it difficult for a new player to find a place in the fight and get credit.

Ideally it's just be a really cool lowbie quest so it can still be naturally found and completed with an impromptu group.

Also:

>Permadeath, characters cost $1 each.

This is pretty creative, but it sounds annoying. I'd instead have it go towards pets or retainers or the like. They could get you mats or fulfill other functions, but if you don't equip them right you could sent them off to get killed.

Evolution MMO. You start in a drop with other players and have to work, grow and evolve until you can rise up to live in a puddle, leave the puddle, etc. This represents the leveling process and new areas to play in. Only instead of going distance, you are going "sizewards" and layers of environmental niches.

You can develop your character (creature) by evolving new organs, shapes and abilities that you then use to further your progress and base new shapes of a higher stage on. This represents the skill, equipment and level progression.

I suppose the best MMOs are a might rules the world scenario. It's player versus player anything goes. You have one life. Lose the game, permaban. Players will have to coordinate and establish rules among themselves to survive pure anarchy and be top ruler of the world. Some will grow their bands into kingdoms or empires. At least until the big nosed social parasite worm their way into the dev team itself and turn the game into another WoW clone and ruin the game.

An mmo that's good

so basicly make it a single player game

>>15568244

Just fucking get rid of all quests that only personally affect the player and nobody else. Why does a persistent world with other players to interact with need to have a npc that only exists to ask you to lay waste to an infinitely spawning mess of bears 10 feet away?

If quests have to exist as an xp/loot subsidy, why not just put the loot and xp on repeatable actions like hunting for treasure, stolen goods, bounties, and just killing tons and tons of monsters because it's fun to kill them?

Also ideas like 'tagging' mobs are gay, lame, and shit. If someone else loots the orc brigand of his jewelry and coinpurse before you did, work it out with him or cut him down for 'stealing' from you.

If someone else is punching wild dogs for 20 hours while you stand next to them afk, you shouldn't go up in any power level either.

Increase the scope of the game world by a lot.

Mining should be something where you set up a camp and hit rocks, assay, hit more rocks for hours and hours at a time.

Stacking up a ton of waste material to bring 50lb of rich metal home in your saddlebags will give a world gravity and potential for player interaction.

For that matter, spread out important world objects and make them so big and slow to process that anyone who plays as a miner will inevitably be working with 4-5 other prospectors or miners on it before they even lower the richness of the deposit.

If gatherers, crafters, and other 'carebears' have no disincentive or even small rewards for camping up together, the game will feel much more alive.

This is also cheaper in development resources than trying to make an endless pipeline of scripted multi-combat bosses.

Encampments and small towns should also create natural content for pkers and other combat oriented players, especially if world monsters could be scripted to attack player encampments, towns, and caravans. Intensity and scope of npc action could increase with the value, distance from settled territory, or the 'noisiness' of player resource extraction.

A multiplayer online game should always strive to bring players towards each other, especially with events that cross over between the roles and gameplay of different personalities of players.

For monetization, npc lackeys or alternate characters could be hired out to stand watch, make camp, hunt and cook for you, and carry/move your cargo.

F2pers can have a reduced lackey count, higher minimum wages, least preferential access to workers, and only get the suckiest and least skilled npcs to work for them. F2p lackeys should never surpass even a novice player in any gameplay role, and all lackeys should never surpass a specialized player, especially in combat.

>>15574769

So going with your idea it just hit me. What if we had a fantasy MMO where there were no villages or guilds and players have to master their professions? Even if it isn't a massive online RPG a smaller scale party RPG where players have both adventurer roles and non-adventuring roles can be fun. I mean anyone can pick up a sword, swing a sword, and get stabbed but not everyone has the skills to master an artisan craft.

Also to make this system work we may have to sacrifice magic and MP type systems in favor of hard medieval alchemy.

>>15574807

Gay shit.

I think that NPCs are absolutely necessary to explicitly prevent situations where players are told to do simple menial item harvesting in infinitely huge stacks a la runescape or rust for 10 hours at a time.

Designing gameplay to encourage (require) group play for all modes of play, including gathering, hauling, and working resources should softly introduce antisocial modern gamers to player interaction - even if it begins by delegating tasks to a npc.

Two non-pkers should always be happy to see another player arrive at their jobsite so they can share the high activity tasks and give hauling to their lackeys instead.

Two pkers should always be happy to have their squire or servant to hold all their shit while they duel it out at 0% encumbrance.

Your lackeys could even run away with your horses, money (if not your loot), and whatever personal equipment they were holding for you.

NPC towns or cities offer a natural starting point for new players and can have natural protections to mitigate pkers from destroying them. Like in runescape, the npc-owned part of the world could be the only part of the game that free to players can interact with, and only have the lowest quality / value resources in abundance to encourage players to fan out and make their own settlements and stories.

>>15568244

I feel like Erin exists solely to be lewded, because the majority of images I see of her are lewd

As vague as I'll be, I'd be happy if there's a mmo like Spiral Knights but with more and better fleshed out mechanics and without the gay missions and other shit that made it even more casual and solo friendly (like the shitty revival rework and gear change stations in almost every floor), even though its more of a dungeon crawler with mmo features and a decent combat.

>>15574888

Have you considered the crafting/harvesting process can also be a skill based game in itself? Like an RPG battle system but with commands for crafting? Core stats can be applied to jobs as well. Strength deals melee damage and affects your encumberence. However strength modifier also can apply to unskilled strength jobs like plowing by hand, sprinting as a courier (running and jumping are strength, tumble is dexterity), and as synergy to skill based jobs like blacksmithing. We can make pseudo battle systems that players can learn to play to affect the quality of rewards given. Yes this means crafting and jobs canbecome more tedious. However instead of waiting for time to pass for the crafting process and pray RNG doesn't fuck you, making items is engaging. If you mess up it's your fault. Yes you have to get/buy resources again but you do that any time you fail a dungeon. Before you say "but battles, not crafting, are the real fun of MMOs…" until you set up macros and auto-battle away at the grind until max level before soloing quests because everyone plays end game raids only (the WoW problem). Repetitive battles to level grind are tedious work. We have to remember to set up the core gameplay loop of both fighting and crafting to be engaging and not so tedious.

As for why I insist on giving players NPC roles: Every player has different tastes and niches. As an MMO I'm counting on players to rotate their work shifts on when they want to adventure vs when they want to fish, make things, or lounge around. Essentially the game can be a comfy fantasy life simulator for fun.

The one fault of Runescape I can think of is with enough time you can do everything. That is something we will have to figure out at the end game. And really I don't have an easy solution other than leave these events to the players. Let players host in game tournaments and other festivals so long as they don't disrupt others having fun. If this means player clans have to wage wars that could alter the landscape then it may make for interesting lore later.

A Warhammer 40k MMO. Three armies available upon release: Space Marines, Imperial Guardsmen and Orks. Space Marines are available only with a premium account on a monthly subscription Guardsman are free-to-play unless you want to play as an officer, or have access to vehicles which is part of a separate, but not as expensive as Marines, account. Premium Marines account gives access to all Imperial Guardsmen content. Orks are completely free with absolutely no microtranscations of any kind either. Catch is that every ork you play has permadeath. So you need to start from nothing every time you die. It is piss easy to get back into play though, and the only way to get bigger (level up) is to fight. The only way to get any real currency for bigger and better items is also to fight (passive income from your own teeth is really only enough to cobble together a basic shoota or choppa).

Marines are persistent because of the gene seeds. You just gotta arrange your guild mates to retrieve your body (and gene seed) to be back where you were before. Imperial Guardsmen work more like a CoD where you play to unlock since every soldier is just as replaceable as he last. You can die, but are just back to where you were before. The longer you survive, and keep fighting as an ork, the bigger you get. The bigger you are, the more you can bully other orks and force them to follow your orders, or you take their currency (teeth) from them in return. Get so big and dangerous and get a mob of other orks under you that you can be a real menace. Space Marines are overpowered to all hell, but someone who has got gud with an ork and got big enough can be a real danger.

Orks can also loot stuff from what they kill and make their own stuff to go into battle with. Space Marines level up and unlock equipment. Imperial Guard you buy access to things like the ability to use a tank. Pay to play as an officer and start your own company with other likewise players and call in artillery and make your own bases. Orks spend almost as much time fighting one another for dominance while Empire troops try to keep the ork population culled before they get well geared and big enough. Also want to take out players who get big enough to form massive warbands from fellow players whipped into battle because the biggest ork player gets to say what goes, or if denied will have so many teeth to have such gear looted and crafted to go on a rampage anyways.

Game releases with just one planet with several continents to fight over. Space Marines and Imperials have their stronghold, but can be taken by orks and be forced back into orbit. Then they have to re-invade and try to take back territory. Orks cannot be wiped out because they spawn from spore and can always come back in on errant asteroid impacts.

Release more armies and planets in the same system to fight over if the game is successful.

Just take any singleplayer game with a huge world in it like Dungeon Siege 1 & 2 and allow for 2000 players to join a match.

Simple.

The level design in a singleplayer adventure action and RPG game is infinitely better than any garbage mmo where you go into 1 location touching every wall and expecting something to happen only to wake up to nothing but another generic farming area. It was especially disappointing when reaching the end of a dungeon and not finding a boss despite the area looking like it was ready for a much more creative execution.

>Runescape, WoW, GW, Puzzle Pirates, any typical mmo.

I abysmally hated the empty chests, the low drops, the expensive gear from NPCs, the "dungeons", the horrible characters and stories I give no fucks about and I'd rather choke the NPCs to death rather than help them. Same for a lot of players.

And the fact you can never easily KO medium level enemies and handle hordes of enemies in MMOS in a quick and smooth manner.

Dungeeonering was true streamlined gameplay, rather than going to 1 location and grinding for months.

The wilderness was good, but could have been far better. Often the " rewards" from it weren't worth it.

The inventory management was a bitch and nothing but a waste of time.

Most of the skills were useless or had no business being separated like fishing with cooking, woodcutting with fire making, mining with smithing, melee accuracy and strength.

Oh and clans are gay.

>>15575114

I think that adding too much pointless micromanagement to gameplay systems in mmos (especially combat rotas) is just a bad idea.

Microgames or puzzle games to manually take control on tasks to improve outcomes or maximize efficiency could be a good idea for non-combat.

I would recommend looking at puzzle pirates, even if you don't care for any particular aspect of it.

Mashing out a lame rota to hit rocks is a bad idea, but maybe it would be good for the final task in the production of finished goods?

I think the best solution would involve manually playing microgames for crafting for specific, high value items like assembling armor, cutting gems, or brewing potions, but maybe not having grand complexity for every step before those too.

Some parts of the game really should feel relaxing and easy.

I agree that players should be able to take on the same roles as a npc, and do them masterfully, but that is not an excuse to force players to do all menial tasks themselves.

Most carters and shitty-goods-peddlers should be npcs. Some players might want to use the tools for high level trade and transporting valuable cargo to sell potions to newbies, and that should be permitted, but not required.

Okay so my perfect MMO would be ZOIDS.

You can travel the vast, planet Zi, explore ruins, customise your Zoid's decal, armour, weaponry, colour, mode etc. Purchase a garage to store more Zoids. Purchase those giant Zoids/vehicles to transport your Zoids over large distances. Participate in real-time combat where you can fight in melee or at range. Massive tournaments. Form squads and roam the wastes. The setting is ripe.

>>15575114

FF14 does have a skill-based crafting and harvesting system complete with gear, desired stats, and strategies. Though to a far lesser extent for harvesting.

It's not bad, but all their crafting classes play the same and the harvesting classes play the same.

>>15575291

Ah, except fishing is slightly different.

MMO are shit because they are online. The level of latency involved prevents any sophisticated gameplay.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon MMO.

>>15575260

The way I see building items is a step by step process. Item crafting would ideally be a management puzzle game for the non-combat crowd with it's own meta separate from combat.

First you mention hittng rocks. That's not too complicated from normal gameplay. You equip a pick axe and "attack" the ore vein. You can attack the ore vein with inefficient tools and risk destroying your weapon to get less ore. Mining can be implemented in environmental destruction. Simple stuff. Whether or not the grind are instanced to the server our client is up to the devs.

Now running a smelter means you have to keep your temperature hot to melt your ore. So you need to feed coal. You also need to vent your smelter if gas and ash builds up. And then when your mixture it's ready you break the slash and mold the ingot. You will either succeed in creating a clean ingot or fail and make scrap. Quick short simple game for consumeable materials anyone can learn to do.

The high skill engagement comes with forging the ingot into parts. We will start with the blade. That has a game of watching the metal temperature stay red while you pound it into shape. This is the fun and engaging part because the better your blade shape is to blueprint the less time you will have to wait grinding your blade for the finished product and risk lowering the build quality the weapon will be. Sometimes you need to add flux. Sometimes you wet forge with a wooden hamner. Sometimes you sand cast and if you mess up the casting exploded. There's an entire meta deticated to blacksmithing alone that can be it's own class. Cooking is essentially it's own class of chemistry. Carpenter and sewing are their own trades with their own meta. Don't get me started on the autism of enchantment.

The blade may be done but it is not complete until you fit it. The guard's and pommel's complexity will alter properties of your weapon. So you will have a variety of parts with different properties to fit and put together. How long the weapon lasts depends on how long players are willing to spend money to repair your good gear. Or if it looks nice as furniture it'll hang in someone's house.

>>15575291

I play Monster Hunter. Not an MMO I know. But my brother plays FFXIV and he says craft classes are the most boring outside of healslut. For my ideal game I'm thinking your character is your core abilities first, feats, skills, and favorite weapon last.

how would you make an MMO that avoids being trapped within MMO metas by data miners within a week? I get the appeal of wanting to play in and explore a world with other people but it always boils down to raid grinds it seems

>>15568276

phantasy star online 2 kind of had that idea going with its first 3 episodes. though instances only supported 16 players outside of hub areas.

you were a time traveller and each story quest was connected through branching paths. npcs in the hubs would change depending on which chapter of the story was active for you. replaying story quests was presented as your character time travelling to redo that event. some choices in quest lines would not become available unless you had certain information gained from side events. one of the main enemies was you from a fucked timeline and you can discover the origin story of the dark you by actually making the choices that lead you to become them bosses actually die in lore and recurring raids are presented either as time loops or clones made by one of the main bad guys that specializes in cloning. there is actually an event where you can get captured by that bad guy and cloned then your clone will begin to attack other players on the server. if you find your own clone and kill it you will get a reward.

>>15575384

I feel that you generally have the right idea.

Ideally the complexity of the task would encourage mining in small groups of players to make it easier to juggle all the different tasks involved in extraction and processing.

It would also be nice if there were some special unlimited wellsprings of material resources to encourage players to contest them, build towns over them, and pull players to specific views, locales, or plot important locations in the setting.

>>15574872

>>15574879

Post more, Erin just BEGS to be fucking impregnated

>>15575384

>>15575291

>>15575114

I think the trick of going with a skill based crafting system (which I'm perfectly fine with) is to make it so player crafted items are tougher to make, but at the same time make it so you aren't trying to craft a trillion rock vases to max out a profession. Have it so they are different, but still fun. Sure some things might be tedious, but the combination of harder to make items, but also flat out better quality compared to regular items (including dungeon based shit implying there would be dungeons) with a helping of some RNG (just a little better or worse quality or enchantment modifiers ) but mainly based on materials could be the way to go for it

>>15575384

I had a bit of fun dabbling with them, but overall they are pretty boring. I merely wanted to point out that there is a game with a similar system to what anon describes. In fact people in the comments section of the video I linked to point out exactly what InfernoPlus could have done to finish the synthesis. Specifically he used Careful Synthesis, which has a 100% success rate, but 90% efficiency when he had the CP and a turn of Steady Hand left to use Standard Synthesis which has a 90% success rate, buffed by Steady Hand to 100%, and 150% efficiency.

Of course these classes don't go off of your core character attributes like you two want. Since they are their own classes it doesn't help to be a Warrior, Paladin, or similar classes with high strength for blacksmithing or whatever. Instead you just have Craftsmanship and Control for crafting and two similar stats I don't recall for gathering. The only way to be a better crafter is to level up all the crafting classes so you have gear with those stats in every slot. Or buy them for dosh on the market. This is where the real boredom sets in since it triggers autists like me who like to make everything for themselves to level all these different classes that all play the same and generally aren't very challenging.

>>15575462

Agreed. That's my problem with what I just described above about FF14. My autism tickles me into leveling all the crafting classes, but since they're all indistinct and not difficult it makes grinding them an absolute chore. Remove the grind and have the focus be mainly on trying to make HQ items; which is the only fun part of FF14's crafting.

Personally though I'd like to see a crafting system similar to Legend of Mana in an MMO. Something seemingly straightforward, but absurdly opaque that requires the Scientific Method to figure out. Being a successful crafter lies in understanding the nature of the material you're using and the items you temper it with. You could actually be a legendary crafter capable of making things no one else can because you're the only one that figured it out. Its not like it could be datamined either since even if you know the specific values of all the items the trick is knowing how to put them together meaningfully.

Sean Kelson pioneered the Keslon Method of crafting in LoM and wrote guides on how to make items that did specific things or weapons with every element at level 6 on them. However even then it wasn't until the official LoM Ultimania guide came out years later with a method to make weapons with all elements at level 10 was revealed.

>>15575605

post oral imagery is powerful

>>15575447

The mines will also be dangerous and full of hostiles. Which is why harvesting ore is simple. Same with botany and fungi. There's other factors that are a threat to you in that environment.

>>15575462

It's going to be tough because we have to make an entirely new game around it. Hell if I had my way I'd make an MMO solely based on competing artisan trades. But that don't work too well with modern skinnerbox addicts.

>>15575548

Core abilities should be the basis of everything you do in gameplay. Not everyone starts out strong, smart, or fast. But over time player skill, experience, and 'the power of friendship' will overcome these weaknesses. Not saying you cannot increase core stats, but role-playing games are more interesting of characters have a virtue and a vice. The question is how to apply these skills without one feeling too overpowered or weak? That's details that cannot be answered until play testing.

I want to try something a little different. And focus more on the PvP aspect.

1. Instead of infinite resources, there are resource spots that run out permanently once drained. New ones will spawn occasionally but in unknown locations.

2. There is an "Ascension quest" which once completed will reset the server. The winner will get a small permanent bonus.

3. There are hidden classes that unlock based on choices you make during quests, by stumbling onto a secret item or by being told how to join by someone in the secret society. They would be stuff like disease cultists who have a different ascension quest.

4. Player made towns and economies. Players would also have needs like hunger to ensure the market always has a need for craftsman of some kind. Town creation also encourages mining towns when resources are found and the abandonment of said town when resources dry up which leaves an empty town perfect for player bandits to take over.

It's not that mmos are shit, it's that mmo communities are all shit and mmos are only worth a damn because of the ability to play with or against others. The only exception might be mabinogi but it's been years since then.

>>15575647

I agree. The core stats should be the foundation of how you interact with the world. Unfortunately many MMOs do not do this.

>>15568265

Blaming theme parking as why mmos failed is retarded when the top mmos outside wow are all theme park mmos themselves. Face it, they wouldn't do this shit if it wasn't profitable and what people really wanted but it is and it shows. People are the problem, people with terrible tastes and the terrible community they create. It's over.

>>15575746

Design the game to keep shitters from advancing or progressing. They will either learn to gut gud or quit. Curate the quality of players, not quantity. Quality players pay subs for a good community. Course every MMO is too busy trying to be a WoW killer that they become a clone, then free2play pay2win Nexon cancer, and shut down.

MMO brothel. There's your multi-million dollar idea. You're welcome.

an mmo designed for non repetitive progression with enough unique and non repetitive activities to keep all of the players on a server occupied for at least a year after launch and increasing with updates. design the game to encourage player progression into new areas with boss permadeath and ever changing spawns. again its designed to keep the playerbase busy for a long time so even if there is some permadeath on enemies there will be other things for players to progress towards. this type of design would keep the game from devolving into a raid loop as a lot of current mmos do.

>>15568244

just star wars galaxies. that's all. pre-NGE experience/class model, add in JTL space content and i'd buy that shit so fast.

>gain xp in particular skills by using said skills

>use/learn certain skillsets to combine them into a class, eg Master Rifleman + Master First Aid = Combat Medic

>completely 100% player-run economy

>crafting system based around materials versus strict recipes: to make a blaster you simply need metal, wood and electronics, and the higher quality material you use the higher quality end product you receive

>buffs are critical to all classes, making completely buff-based support classes eg Doctor or Entertainer extremely important

i really do believe that SWG was the pinnacle of the entire genre and i'm genuinely, truly shocked that we've never gotten anything even remotely close to it again

>>15575391

>metas by data miners

I've though about this a lot and I don't think there's a way out of it. The best I could come up with is an "RP" server where players "promise" not to look at wikis or something and talking about wikis/tutorials/walkthroughs is banned. It's effectively just a way to encourage like-minded people to play together.

The only other option is somehow randomizing the content so you can't properly "datamine" it, but then you're getting into a weird territory where it's hard to design a good game because everything is RNG'd.

>it always boils down to raid grinds

You're playing a fundamentally flawed MMO that's copying the WoW formula just like all the rest. That's not a player problem, that's a problem with the game.

>>15575763

People play theme parks because there's nothing else out there with proper effort put into them. If you want to play a MMO your options are theme park, theme park, theme park, theme park, theme park, theme park, theme park, that buggy laggy convoluted badly designed piece of turd, or a theme park.

>>15576053

>that buggy laggy convoluted badly designed piece of turd

I'm curious which game this is.

>>15576120

I've been playing on and off for a while now, and it's not that buggy honestly, and the new UI they made is great.

And what do you mean by badly designed?

>>15576136

he's a wowbaby that needs quests to tell him what to do

>>15576120

>Finally find a game where I can just be a sorcerer and shapeshift into a spider and do actual roleplaying and adventuring instead of "hey yes I would like serving of D&D without the roleplay please" and its the dodgiest piece of crud I've ever tried to play.

Why can't we have nice things?

>>15576136

>And what do you mean by badly designed

It's been quite a while since I last played so some of this may not apply anymore, but it was the kind of game that makes it incredibly obtuse what you're meant to be doing. There's no clear goal or direction, and by direction I mean literally anything. When I ended up in the starting town I had no idea whatsoever about what I could be doing. Harvesting resources? Crafting items? How do I go about to do those things? CAN I even do those things? I had no idea. And then what, it didn't even feel like there's a reason to do anything and nothing made me want to do something. I just wandered around talking to random NPCs who didn't give me any more of a direction. I wandered around in the surrounding area but didn't find anything of note.

The gameplay itself and it's feeling didn't inspire me to play more either, there's 15 year old games that feel better and more engaging to play. To be fair the game doesn't have many developers working on it (I heard it's 2 people?), but that isn't a reason to like the game more.

>>15575347

What are you talking about? His last patreon post was three days ago and his last tweet was six days ago.

>>15576128

Doesn't BDO have that? Or was that Archeage?

>>15576188

That's what I like about the game actually, you have almost no directions, I had to explore the world by myself, talk with all npcs to get any clues, there's like 50 crafting skills that can help some of your combat skills, there's a lot to do actually, I had a lot of fun making money by skinning animals and leatherworking, the nice thing about this game is that all the best gear can be playercrafted and there's A LOT of ways to change and upgrade gear, also it's the same with potions and other useful stuff like drugs, don't know I have fun playing it, more than I do playing Guild Wars 2 for example.

I'm the same guy you were replying to, had to reset my router.

>>15574879

>>15575605

Please remember to spoiler your porn pics.

>>15576216

I don't mind it either if you don't have a solidly defined direction, but the game needs to make you feel like there is a direction you can take. Gorgon made me feel like there's some random things in random places without much meaning to them.

It's a bit hard to describe the exact thing the game was lacking without summarizing it as "game design". Even if there's the best rollercoaster of fun ever made in the game and that's what makes the game fun, it's ultimately meaningless if the player is given and told nothing and not led that way at all. I can see some more /tg/-minded people getting into it, but for someone who just likes to play videogames it seems like a bunch of boredom and nothingness.

You need to ease the player into the experience by giving them something and then hinting where/how to find more. You don't need to give things in a silver platter and quest markers, but you need to give something.

If I were to try to "fix" Gorgon in terms of design, I would remove the starting island entirely. Instead I'd add a simple quest that tells you to craft some item, and then the resources for it require you to do various things, including visit a dungeon/tower/something in the map, maybe craft/obtain armor before you go, or ask different NPCs about how to solve a certain problem and they all have a different solution. The point of that quest would be to get you into the right mindset about the game and teach you how to go about doing things, what's generally the process if you want to do something (e.g. if you want to learn a skill you need to find someone to teach it) and that there's many ways to accomplish the same task. In the way to that dungeon/tower you see other things among the way and in the distance that you can then visit later, and they'd expand upon what you learned during that quest except this time you're on your own. Maybe they'll also have info about similar/related things in the world (e.g. the tower has a book/npc that mentions some other place with something in it) so you know there's more to find out there. That would get you started and engaged with the game and teach you roughly what to do if there's something you're interested of, and even give you an immediate followup direction if you don't already have your own idea of what to do.

>>15576301

Well, there's that in the island, one of the npc's feels depressed and you have to cheer him up so he will let you read his book, so you get out of his shack and go to the first thing that calls your attention, a lighthouse that's near, there you learn you can make a potion that can help with his depression, so you have to go around the island picking the ingredients. Maybe it's just not for you, anyways if you bought it you could try to go to their forums and have a discussion there, also you got to remember that the game is still really early and there are a lot of quests and lore that need to be fixed, give it a try in a few years. If it is still alive.

>What kind of monetization models

Costumes. All of them. Your tank can wear power armor if he wants while your healer is a loli in a micro bikini. Or do it the other way around.

Allow limited futher customization with paintable surfaces on costumes and a pool of decals the community can add to.

>>15576213

Archeage came close, a common means of earning money was transporting packs of trade goods from one area to another, and naturally those packs would drop on death, or could be taken from vehicles transporting them and what not. Other than that not really.

BDO I'm not largely familiar with but I'm pretty sure there's no form of stealing in it.

>>15576356

You mean like this?

>>15576369

Going by the tbumbnail, aye. Can't watch it right now.

It may be dumb but it sells and doesn't fuck with actual mechanics or causes p2w.

Hell, loli swimsuits are the reason TERA still exists.

>ideaguy

Never do this. Post more Erin to atone for your shitposting.

>>15575647

I think it would be okay for npc-owned zones to have hostiles in them, but it would be even better if player created mines would never have enemies or combat inside them.

unless you dig too deep and too greedily?

If someone wants to clang on rocks all day as a rock clanger let them have fair warning that marauding bugbears or rape bandits are eyeing them up. If a random encounter is due, you might as well be able to call for player character help for it, or even run away if the player isn't that interested in risking their life for any amount of lignite.

The obvious final goal for this, of course, is for all of a player's characters to exist at the same time in the game world, executing whatever simple order they were last left with. This also means player thieves, pickpockets, and murderers can have player-sized goals to work on. It's still sort of strange to me that people accept 'persistent worlds' where the player character can drop in and out of existence indefinitely and never be affected by time, neglect, or the world leaving them behind.

Take .hack//gu with its combat system and instanced dungeons.

Make it an actual mmo and not a simulated one

>>15576641

I'm starting to wonder if there even are any non lewd images of her

>>15576672

An entire webcomic's worth

>>15576681

Is that thing still going on? I haven't seen any new ones in the LOL threads.

A sandbox fantasy mmo that favours arcade brawling mechanics over rpg stats. What Black Desert Online was supposed to be.

>>15576709

oops didn't mean to spoiler that one

>>15576709

did somebody else take it over? I thought they went on to "Erin Dies Alone"?

>>15576709

Poor erin, id adopt her.

>>15576716

Nah Erin Dies Alone got canned. I think it's still the original people doing Critical Miss, but I could be wrong. The art style is different from Erin Dies Alone.

>>15576738

> I'm going to go teach science to children.

Fuck the children, they are all gays anyways, post more erin.

>>15576767

Are you telling me that ouya-tan and toaster getting together isnt cute as fuck?

>>15576775

It's cute, but they should stick to handholding or headpatting

No any sort of leveling cash boosts and make the leveling take time.

Give even normal leveling dungeons optional hardmode areas/bosses, which give greatly increased exp to make them worth it for the leveling if you know your shit, plus somewhat better equipment drops too.

Fill the world with obscure, but useable shit that may be more or less useful to the player. Secret merchant npc:s with interesting items that are hard to come by otherwise. Lots of rare and uncommon spawns, events that only happen occasionally. Areas that are dynamic and changing, like moving npc settlements and natural events which can change the landscape to a degree, also possibly affecting what kind of natural resources and enemies are spawning there. Constantly moving npc war fronts and shit.

Make the environment not seem so barren and lifeless overall. If I'm adventuring in some sort of cliffy rainforest with monsoons and floods, then make the terrain interesting to navigate. Give lots of stuff to explore and make it so there is more than just rushing along with questing.

Make the natural resources of same leveling brackets vary, instead of giving the same mineral and herb spawns everywhere. Make it matter that you are traveling the world.

Make the loot tables more random and have more equipment with cool effects, like Diablo II.

>>15576120

honestly project gorgon is fun, just needs more updates and more content

>>15571456

>and doing things the GM didn't plan for

underrated comment of the year. This could make or break long-term commitment in an mmo for me

I want more games where both sides have the same races but they're 'mirrored' as in typical Good vs Bad or more preferably Living vs Dead.

Like if WoW were just everyone else against the Forsaken/undead and we'd have shit like undead Taurens, orcs etc to play as.

It feels that WoW and other mmo's with sides to pick try to avoid making them stray too far towards "good" or "evil" making them just feel shallow and boringly gray.

>>15577188

>archeology

>science

AHAHAHAH

Last I checked, STEM didn't had a "fanfiction of planet Earth" degree!

I hope the kids call you the Dinosaur Man otherwise that degree is perfectly useless

>>15576563

It's a natural life cycle. When the mines are young they will be filled with undiscovered ore and monsters. Naturally players working mines will clear them of monsters as they work. But as time goes on and more and more players work the mines the mines produce diminishing returns as they cannot resupply as quickly. Thus players will abandon the mine. Monsters will then use the space to make a new home. Even to the point of possibly a powerful monster taking over the mine. The abandoned mine then becomes a new hunting ground for monsters with new resources to harvest from monsters. As players hunt the monsters instead of mine the game will spend time resupplying ore nodes to mine. They won't be as abundant as before but players will eventually learn the natural cycle.

Except the mines near spawn. Those will always be fucked due to newbs constantly raiding them.

So while the game can have larger settlements it encourages rotation and a nomadic lifestyle. Depending on server it also encourages raiding other settlements of players to steal their gear. For a PvPRP server weaker new players may want to line with friends until they can budy up or take out the old corrupt rulers. I'll even have a permadeath server with a 30 day limit where if you die once you cannot play again for 30 days when the world resets.

I'm not making an MMO in mind with WoW's player base. 1 million at once spread through multiple servers would be ideal. This is the elite role playing fantasy life game for 8chan, not reddit. Enjoy loli and Erin.

>>15577430

I like the idea of abandoned player settlements turning feral. Didn't immediately think of it myself for some reason.

It would be nice to have a large MUD or small MMO (100-1000 concurrent player servers max) that was focused on long term cyclical gameplay.

Mineral veins go dry, fields must be left fallow, tracts of forest must be replanted and left alone. Over weeks (months?) the disused sites can slowly renew and become combat focused adventurer targets.

This would also be nice because it would force player owned towns to have a wide reach of resource sites carting in raw goods to stay productive, so you could have shitty makework for low level players no matter what. Guarding npc or pc caravans for small payouts and skill progress in perception and combat skills and other stuff like that.

I also really like the idea of having boring tasks that npc 'heroes' could work on in their personal progress as adventurers. I kind of wish I could see a persistent gameworld where some npcs do the same kind of tasks and live the same kind of lifestyle as player characters - so the player experience feels less special and out of context.

>>15577372

>implying physics isn't fanfiction of reality

>>15577622

That's one problem I always see MMOs fall into: over abundance of resources. I get it, you want replenishing resources to keep players grinding. In return the material and coin cost of manufacturing items is so extreme that most MMOs just put in cash shops to make money because nobody wants to waste time grinding for 5 million gold to craft a level a pair of level 1 pair of shoes. Abundant resources devalue player labor in manufacturing cost. I think to fix this problem we need a world of scarce resources but plentiful yet cheap artisan labor. All resources have to be replenished until the server reaches a kill date when the world goes into an apocalypse.

I suppose one could open a can of worms and have players raise NPC families with other players but this would be it's own genre of game. I thought about how players could marry virtually and have NPC children. However the technology is simply not there. And if it was then we would have bigger political problems in the tech sector. Which is a topic for another thread on another board.

Memes aside, one could say most players roles are NPCs to other players games.

I have posted this many times before.

A few years ago Jagex released an experimental custom server for runescape 3, called Darkscape. The core idea was that Darkscape was just Runescape 3 but completely free to play, with members mainly getting a greater XP bonus and the Grand Exhange abolished. In Darkscape you can PVP anywhere with very few restrictions (though guards in cities are super powerful and will kill you if you attack someone)

Darkscape was a good idea but that's all it was. Because it was just an altered Runescape 3 server it wasn't all that great.

Here's how to implement the best ideas of Darkscape, I guarantee it would be a killer MMO.

>PVP combat should be dangerous and common but not omnipresent.

Players need a place where they can relax and grind in peace.

In order to achieve this the only place where PVP is enabled is a Wilderness that would be much larger (2/3 the size of the original world map, and should separate various kingdoms as a no man's land. So areas called kingdoms, roughly the 40% to 300% the size of the free-to-play zone in Runescape, would be separated by this dangerous wilderness that players must navigate fairly regularly.

>the world map must be all-new

The same old landscape of Runescape is charming, but stale. The new game will not flourish if the setting is the same. The same feel should be carried over but not the map itself. The new map would look vaguely like a flower, where the central part is the wilderness and the kingdoms are like the petals branching out from it.

>the game engine must be all new

Runescape does not play in the way a game like this needs to. Character movement is too stiff, which means there is a very low ceiling for player skill. Stats and equipment are way more important than whether you are actually skilled at combat. While these things are very important, player skill needs to matter more. I imagine combat in the new game would be a little more like ASSFAGGOTS. The ability to flee from opponents in the wilderness is very important.

>Grand Exchange

There wouldn't be one.

Maybe one or two kingdoms would have their own but since you cannot connect to them from the bank or anywhere outside that kingdom they would be less useful and thus not as centralizing.

Also kingdoms would function as banking districts, the goods in one bank are only shared with banks in that same kingdom.

For the business model I was thinking a service like patreon (but propietary so the platform Jews don't take a cut) where the main server is crowdfunded and the amount of development on the game depends on how much is being donated. Basically, the servers run as long as the company's most basic needs and the server's needs are being paid for. If there's extra cash that goes partway into your pocket and the rest into development. There would also be tiered cosmetic rewards for backers that are tradeable.

This way free-to-play exists (and thus the game doesn't die) while also not being super Jewish.

If anyone uses these ideas please credit me somewhere as Leeroy R (Just because it's nice to know whether someone used them).

>>15568265

FPBP.

>>15574888

>I think that NPCs are absolutely necessary to explicitly prevent situations where players are told to do simple menial item harvesting in infinitely huge stacks a la runescape or rust for 10 hours at a time.

There is nothing wrong with such concept. Just don't call it quest. Call it … "work".

>>15577797

I think that there are ways to sink absolutely enormous amounts of resources. If you actually have to supply friendly npc militants and town guards with decent mail, pikes, and boots, you're dumping low-end player-made gear out of the game economy with every wave of npcs that you respawn into the game world.

Just having 2-3 ingame nations or factions that can tussle with each other (and deplete tons of gear, wealth, and population) would be enough.

You could also stage world events that seriously fuck with the neutral npc factions (and even player factions and towns) if the world starts to get too prosperous.

Just 2-3 dragons could wipe out a month of shitty chainmail pawned off to vendors and armories without a serious requirement to wipe the entire game world over and over again.

If players kill the dragons and start to make illustrious enchanted kit only PCs or nobles will ever wear, even better.

If most of the game world only exists as a background economic simulation and actors are popped into the playable game as needed it could be a lot more manageable.

Only noble npcs, master craftsmen, and whatever npcs are personally relevant to what a player is doing need to exist at any point in time anyways.

>>15577906

The problem with having super monotonous crafting is that if combat is even slightly more detailed and involved to play, developers will decide to give better rewards for combat than for crafting.

There's no cure other than to commit to the same level of detail in gameplay for combat and non-combat.

Just look at melee armor in runescape from combat compared to level 99 smithing making midlevel platebodies.

>>15569682

It's called adventure quest 3d

>>15577635

Physics is the gayme theory of reality, history and paleontology are fanfiction

>>15577925

The other thing you do have to keep in mind is that if there are permanent NPC run settlement that cannot be usurped by the player then there is always an NPC faction that is literally the force of god (i.e. the kingdom that all developers and game moderators join to run the game). Which means no matter the tension between factions all sides must bow down before the god emperor or forever be outlawed from the economic alliance.

I suppose another concept is instead of a world police force the universal god faction is the ultimate enemy. Now we're starting to hit politics closer to home. But think: The world control faction by design has unlimited power and resources. They have a globalized economy controlling all 3-4 main factions. They have the military to crush any nation that opposes them. And one in a while they start wars between their allied factions over petty bullshit to keep themselves in power and to make sure anyone else never prospers to develop the means overthrow them.

You can never defeat the bad guys in this world because the real bad guys already rule it. That's if you want to make the goods that rule the world whom create these cataclysms lore. Otherwise players will just say the developers are assholes for ruining their world and they feel entitled. Yeah I went there. And they should feel entitled if the rules of the game suddenly change without reason that makes sense within the context of the game world.

>>15577971

As long as both non-combat and combat gameplay paths feature both "work" and "fun" this approach is fine.

>>15578054

Why not just do all that without the economic stranglehold being mandator? Sure after a few months all the noobs will dump XYZ chainmail into the stores of the invulnerable npc faction, but who cares if you are also using the entire world is pvp idea from above.

>>15578054

Why not just do all that without the economic stranglehold being mandatory? Sure after a few months all the noobs will dump XYZ chainmail into the stores of the invulnerable npc faction, but who cares if you are also using the entire world is pvp idea from above.

an mmo where you play as monsters terrorising a human npc empire with pvp across monster groups and a food chain sytem that determines what your monster type can kill to gain exp

you obtain monsters through a gacha system and they have permadeath. the lowest tier gacha is free and is full of your typical grunt types but they can level up and evolve. you can form guilds within monster families and higher ranking guild staff positions within guilds of certain size and rank unlock access to higher tier monster gachas. with much effort in game points can be earned to be spent on all gacha tiers. real money can also be spent on gacha but paying players would still need to achieve appropriate guild ranks for access to top tier gacha. gacha whales could become bosses that many player groups would try to kill. in one of the gacha tiers you have a chance of becoming a human capable of being a hero for the npc kingdoms with a more traditional rpg experience except most of the enemies are player controlled monsters. maybe at top rank a rare human player could become a ruler over an npc territory and coordinate npcs to develop and defend his land like some civilization game.

Apologies for the double post, I did not read your post before my last and post deletion failed (?).

>>15578054

I believe that there should be non-usurpable npc factions but that the will of the server operator should not be in line with them.

Whatever kingdom the players start in must thematically suck and be a place that they do not like and want to flee from in order to make their own lives.

The GM (server operators) must generally agree with the players on how the game is run, or else the game cannot sustain a playerbase.

Players who get off on attacking the established order should have kingdoms they might slowly ruin with banditry, opportunities to ravage and conquer outlying settlements and towns, and so on.

Any limits on messing up npc empires should be in place only to stop retarded autists (such as goons in other sandbox mmos) from destroying the source of fun for all other normal players.

Remember there are also players that want to feel like they are a morally good contributor to a society they can agree with, and those players should be allowed to police and enrich npc provinces too.

It is crucial to have npc factions that players can choose to get along with instead of just unassailable super evil empires.

Without this, 'goody-goody' prosocial mmo players cannot easily reach critical mass to go forth and make their own prosperous or at least net-positive settlements.

If prosocial mmo players do not have enough leeway to create advanced content for antisocial pkers and griefers to chew on, all pk content would have to be scripted by the GMs, and then it isn't even pk content.

>>15578075

"Work path is fun" is for grils and it is called Sims, anon.

>>15578094

I like the idea of not having NPCs at all and just have players scavenge and rebuild. For a starting point I have is you start in a destroyed castle with all the tools you need to get started building your own gear before adventuring. That also presents the problem of high level PKers spawn camping for fun. So maybe that's not the best way to start a game.

>>15578152

I agree that devs and mods should keep their egos out of the game lore. That said having an in game explanation for why sometimes world events fuck up the game as part of the expected rules set makes more sense. It also opens the door for a different rule set for PVE. But then I suppose that the best MMOs are pure competition about who can be the biggest dick rule and Care Bear PVE servers are cancer.

Still I just don't like unlimited access to NPC vendors at all. They're often free gold and the number 1 cause of inflation. And unless you que them up they can be abused very quickly. I suppose a lulzy result of having limited NPC vendors with very limited access would be if two Japanese hikkikimori NEET Samurai get into a death match over the love an honor of the qt baker girl waifu only to be cucked by her NPC bard boyfriend proposing marriage the next day.

>>15578037

i wanna impregnate erin

>>15578410

The problem with "player only pvp everywhere" games is exactly as you said - high level pkers will crush every single person they meet in stacked fights until all pro-social players have boiled away and left for other games.

I have seen many attempts to create extreme turbo full anarchy hardcore games and they all end as empty graveyards.

Whatever prosocial players that ought to naturally be forming tight knit groups to defend against pkers and rebuild after losses are all griefed away.

Whether carebear washouts form their own pve only servers or quit for more forgiving games, the pvp playerbase still loses no matter what.

Multiplayer pvp games must have players to build the sand castles that other players want to kick over.

I don't believe that I can say anything useful about world events.

However, I do not think that having pve content within a pvp world would subvert the fundamental pvp nature of a multiplayer game.

As long as pve factions exist mostly as objectives for players to fight over and around (as sources of political legitimacy for settlements, labor force, markets for banal goods) they might work as tool to help carebears integrate into a pvp game system.

This might sound retarded, but I believe that the endgame of player trade would be the direct exchange of valuable world assets that cannot be bought from or sold to npcs.

Rare magic gems, hides from skinned demigods, metals only player metallurgists know how to make in bulk for armor.

Npc markets could also have diminishing returns on coin paid for sales and materials bought from npc coin the more they are relied on to encourage player economy.

If npc factions suck value out of every trade made with them through taxes, trading with npcs could be made to be a bad bargain no matter what.

>>15578037

>Second one

THANK YOU

Was looking for that one for some time now.

the problem with player run sanboxes is bad fanfic tier shallow lore and usually fragile settlements built for exploitative functon with severe lack of comfy devolving into battle royale

>>15578914

Don't forget Poe's law opens up for poz.

>>15578542

End game probably won't matter as much to the new casual player if the core trade games are fun enough to play. And they'll more than likely find a veteran mentor if they aren't complete shitters.

>>15578914

This is the problem devs have making mmos. It's always muh freedom and muh lore but you can't fucking have both.

>>15579138

The best you can do, imo, for a Sandbox mmo is give a general background, or if there are races, backstory enough so that anything big, "happened far into the past, beyond even mortal memory, this new chapter is open to you and every fag and autist on your server to pitifully scrawl all over, until someone burns the book". If there's anything I've learned from playing warm its that players will build their own culture Broschwitz forever and those that flock to it will eventually assimilate or cry, break off, and try to build their own. There is really no need for a deep lore unless you want some mild world building, which, thinking about it, if you went with let's say traditional western fantasy races, you could have them specialize in making racial housing and buildings. You're perfectly fine if you want to being in multiple races for a gaudy looking, mismatched city, but no one is also stopping you from making an Elven tree village, a implying these wouldn't just be enemies Gothic styled town with plenty of perches for gargoyles to live on, or a dark, dusty cavern home to a Dwarven city.

Otherwise you pretty much toss the players a few deities to worship, a hidden possibility to reach godhood, and you're pretty much set.

>>15582411

Umm… I hate to point this out but HITLER'S GHOST THOSE RUN ON COMMAS!!! I get what you're saying. Sandbox MMOs are meant to be built upon by the player. And to an extent so are adventures in good theme parks. I can't stand Final Fantasy MMOs, XI or XIV, because they force so much exposition onto you. That takes away the fun of exploring the world as you want to, whether through arbitrary road blocks or instanced dungeons.

>>15583875

Yeah the commas are a problem for me. Nothing kills an mmo for me quicker than the whole, "You're da chosen one, special customer #6945". I know the shit is supposed to suck the player's dick so they can feel they are going to move the story along somehow as a central character, but it still irks me that it's often the norm and not the exception.

To date, the only technical MMO which could have topped this was fucking Defiance. I couldn't get far into it, because the damn game had your character get essentially used to move the story along by having you constantly spoken over by everyone. "We might need someone to head down there, interested?" "Of course they're interested! Why wouldn't they be? C'mon let's head down to X to find some Y" It was semi funny at first but got old once you realized it was to cover for the fact your character didn't speak. I can live without character voicing in an MMO but it'd probably be easier to just use cutscenes to fill in background and text boxes for general quests instead. Might have been to satisfy voice actor contracts though, because I guess the game itself was also based on some sci fi show apparently

bump

anime like made in abyss and sword art online (aincrad) have really interesting world design concepts that would be great for mmos. with the community of players starting in one area and then progressing into unexplored territory to eventually reach a final goal. with the journey taking a long time, at least a year, with the whole community working together. and then once the final goal is finished the server resets and it all starts over. of course conflict between players could pop up and I think server permadeath would be great for a game like this. you die and you are forced to respawn into a new server unable to return to servers that you died in, even with other characters. for monetization you could pay for checkpoints so that when you die and then respawn on a new server you can recover your old character's stuff on the new server when you reach the same checkpoint. this solves the problem of player killers respawning, power leveling from respawn in the case of a character reset, and continuing to be a nuisance while also letting them otherwise pk freely until they themselves are killed. this type of system would also need some kind of player cap on servers before joining the server is locked to prevent newbie area griefers from just spamming new accounts. this creates an in game population that can drain with death which can create a very unique and interesting atmosphere. friends will get separated by this type of system though but if they really want to play together they can all die and spawn on a new server together. respawning on new servers is free, only recovering old stuff from checkpoints would be premium. maybe also have a payed option to start secondary characters on servers that dead friends have spawned on.

i feel like fast travelling should be eliminated from mmo design and adventuring on long treks across the map can be made much more interesting

>>15584256

Could give players no role other than the ones they make for themselves. A fallen yet rebuilding kingdom would be an ideal scenario. There are NPC elders that will help you get started but it's up to the players too figure out the mystery of what happened to these lands based on the remnants of the lost civilizations you find. It's also up to the players to set up their own economies and grow their own kingdom together.

>>15589531

Fuck (((kabam)))

>>15569958

I was thinking about some kind of PvP system where high-level players get singificant debuffs when entering a high-level location, and has to fight with lower level player doing a certain storyline. The players will get a significant EXP boost when they kill him, and once he's killed, he is locked out doing this type of PVP for a long time. The thing is, if he does that he can stop the players from changing the future of that particulal location as well as gaining good bonuses for himself.

Hitler moustache as a facial body hair option in character creation

remake swg. there, we did it. swg was forgiving for the casuals while still offering depth for the hardcore. it was the perfect sandbox

>>15593204

As for an explanation, it de-trivializes death for all parties. If you're into griffing, you can get away with it if you're skilled but then you will have NPC's and players coming after you. Furthermore, if you're a goody two shoes and don't do any murdering or stealing, you won't have torturous hell demons keeping you in hell so you can just run for an exit and avoid other players. Since it's an MMO, you can't just log out or force close your game to avoid death either - which makes you actually be cautious and work in teams instead of going lone asshole.

I see a lot of people on here complain about random level generation whenever they see it mentioned, but I think it would go pretty well with the mmo genre. It's really fucking dumb that in the average mmo you need to know the content and its glitches like the back of your hand before parties will bring you along. Party finding systems alleviate that a bit, but they destroy the community in the process. I feel like it would be pretty great if you had a dungeon system that was based on being random. You only need to know how to play your class and what enemies are capable of to come to the table, and once you're there it's all about improvising and figuring out the optimal rather than just doing it from memory. You can then add in enemies that will do things like hide in ambush, and they become a real fear rather than a known encounter. I also think that if you gave players a wide variety of rare loot, made loot specific to each dungeon, and implemented a way to revisit dungeons based on seeds (probably at an extra charge) it would provide a really good sense of exploration. If you're exploring an rng dungeon with your guild or friends and find one that's brimming with rare shit, then you guys can keep that location to yourselves and get rich hanging out there. I also think having a large variety of dungeon types and content in the system would keep things interesting. Make it so the dungeons can be things like lava filled caverns, graveyards, and floating islands (just a wide range of interesting environments). Add in special rare encounters like traveling merchants and lucky seeds that lead straight to one time only treasure vaults. If you get all that in, it might also be a good idea to have systems that provide a sense of ownership over the places you find. Depleting the resources present if too frequent attempts are made at the dungeon would mean that your group has more incentive to keep really good seeds private, and it stops a meta list of best seeds from being made which in turn lets new players explore more for themselves. Perhaps you might even make the dungeons shared space rather than instanced and allow players to build houses/guild houses inside of them. The worlds of mmos all feel pretty generic as it is, so you may as well embrace it and just have it go on forever while letting players attach their own value to the land.

>>15593340

Dungeons suck. Having special designated places that are the only parts of the world to matter is a trick to get people to ignore very weakly produced backdrops.

You probably want "npc towns" and "fortresses manned by PCs and NPCs hostile to the player party" more, but are too mentally dominated by the mmo orthodoxy to even ask for it.

>>15593204

So when you die you go to Valhalla (heaven)?

>>15593402

I've reread this a few times, but I'm still not entirely sure where you're coming from. How are you defining "dungeons" here to say they suck? Are you talking about private instances, enclosed areas filled with monsters, environments the player didn't makeor something else? What exactly is it about them you dislike, and why would a fortress make a better environment/instance? I'm also not entirely clear on how you got from what I was saying to this. Are you saying that the idea about randomly generated dungeons would be better suited to building forts instead of dungeons or that hostile forts would better accomplish the positive aspects of my idea?

I definitely mentioned being able to build houses and such, but my idea was more about the land you're building it on. I'm not sure if this is what you're talking about, but having the game generate a seed for large forests or plains to have players buy the rights to, name, build stuff on, and then invite the public could also be interesting. I definitely think having the entire game world be procedurally generated would be taking it too far though. You'd want some hand made environments to go along with it all. However, having a world that goes on to infinity and simultaneously letting players dictate where the game is played seems like it would strike a nice balance between huge traveling times over vast expanses of nothing and a small world with way too much stuff cramped in.

>>15593527

Basically, except it is hell themed (whiel there'd be a lava pit, but it'd be including pagan hell themes too, like endless mazes of dark caves, or a dungeon of blood a la corpse ripper and stuff) and the goal is to leave. Diehard PVP fags can just stay if they want, which means less griefers in the overworld. Two birds with one stone.

>>15593402

My thoughts were to have an overworld with roving bands of mobs (so no theme park I-stand-here-until-you-hit-me), and then you can go to "dungeon like" locations for some quests which are literally just instanced areas (of various themes) as opposed to global. That way you avoid the "everyone is farming this boss already" problem.

>>15593470

>take life insurance policies out on players

>then kill them by giving them seizures

>>15593610

Inflationary fountain of endlessly respawning xp, gold, loot.

It's lazy and bad for the game world if the most rewarding combat encounters are endlessly pumped out of the exact same place, whether instanced or accessible to all players at once.

Fort would mean "just like a castle or town friendly to player" if you didn't understand.

Big, purposely defended, and might be impossible to attack without a siege or very large body of players. Exists in the economic landscape of the world.

Isn't just a hole in the ground that mints endless money from thin air in the pockets of magically appearing goblins.

Shouldn't economic value (and player power) come from pulling materials from rocks, trees, soil?

If there's even a choice of strangling effluvient tourmaline dragons (greater) to loot randomly dropping rare crafting material, it devalues all of the parts of the world that aren't part of the endless combat treadmill.

>>15595255

Remember that resource rotation we were talking about? I suppose that concept could be applied to a fortress settlement. An active fort needs to have resources funding it (food, equipment, etc.) to keep it alive as a military operation. Forts are structures of defense. They are built to defend something within their walls. Whether that's a supply depot or a refuge of weaker villagers I cannot say. But I can say that forts if balanced correctly need to be expensive to run, expensive to maintain, and expensive to lose. Forts need manpower as guards, laborers, and caravans. Naturally men need food, water, armor, weapons, baths, and hobbies to keep them from not going insane or bored and leave. Second, fortresses get damaged all the time. Stone is not indestructible. It's cheap and heavy, but can break and burn. And you need wood for scaffolding. Which naturally needs paints and creosote for curing and direction.

These supplies need either currency to buy with or resources and services to exchange. The fortress as a service can exchange man power or rent real-estate for coin or other physical goods. However, the fort needs resources of their own first to get it built and running so they can exchange their service and real-estate for profit. If the fort cannot manage it's resources properly then people will quit the fort, or the fort will not have the means to defend against a raid and thus will fall. If a fort falls in a raid then the victor can choose to reclaim the fort's resources and move on, rebuild the fort, or destroy the fort and leave the ruins to rot.

Like the mines having a life cycle after it's ores have been exhausted and becoming a hunting ground over time, the fortress too has a life cycle of birth, death, and rebirth into a new environment.

For a fantasy setting I created a hunting ground based on what happens to the once thriving castle town after a mad sorcerer five hundred years ago summoned a meteor to turn it into a crater. As time passed nature simply reclaims the ruins by flooding the crater with shifting rivers. The crater filled up and became a lake. Soon trees sprung around the once fertile farmland and become a forest. Which in turn became a habitat for forest wildlife like boars, fairies, and wyverns. The castle ruins still remain at the side of the crater of the lake, but the castle is now flooded. Because of the castle's natural traps that still kinda work underwater it became the choice nesting place for a young black dragon looking to stash her second treasure hoard after losing the first one. And now that black dragon has grown to be a fine beautiful wyrm whom often swims around the lake to see what the adventurers on the surface are up to snatching what shiny treasures they drop as they flee her.

>>15595280

Did… Did her fucking nose GROW!? I remembered seeing her with a smaller nose. What the fuck!?

>>15595657

It would be nice to have abandoned settlements, ruined castles, magic-poisoned wizard towers that are bad for your health, etc.

Playing through even short vignettes with that much underlying history would make for a very comfortable roleplaying game.

It's a shame that worldbuilding and roleplaying were ignored in crpg development and all we got were class systems, murder hobo playstyles, and tons and tons of dice rolling and tables.

>>15595657

Jews are by their nature ugly both inside as well as outside. Even the best looking ones that are usually heavily mixed with white genes are only able to fool the soyest of goys but even they're easily distinquishable by several physical factors ranging from rat ears to nose to simply having those soulless eyes befitting a kikess.

Chosen like Scarlett Jewhanson or Natalie Portman have only been able to "break through" because they've been heavily pushed forward by the other kikes and most importantly have clearly gone under the scalpel to try and hide their jewish traits.

>>15596090

>I'm guessing that most women should be like 8 heads.

On average, both men and women are approximately 7.5 heads.

>I'm about 8 1/2 heads tall

The good news is that you've been genetically gifted with the proportions to look like a classical god or superhero. The bad news is that if you haven't dedicated a large portion of your life to fitness, then you're probably an awkward lanklet. If you're not already, you should start lifting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_proportions#Basics_of_human_proportions

MMORPGs should be based around partying and discussing which NepNep you would fug.

>>15595968

The kids who didn't grow up with UO decried RPing as fake and gay but it was fun and funny as fuck. You could roleplay as the biggest incompetent or typing completely in olde english simply to fuck with other players before robbing the fuck out of them or putting up bounties for inane reasons such as someone not addressing your character with a "Sir" or proper honourific eventually they will message you demanding to know what your problem is only to explain your retarded reasons and they will bend the knee to your foolishness. MMOs are called MMOs for a reason now, the RP is gone. Only RPing left in any game is probably tabletops. Fucking min-max retards had to ruin everything. Nothing is about fun, the world, or the interaction in MMORPGs anymore just soulless numbers and BiS bs. And it doesn't even feel like a game anymore either, just numbers and spreadsheets. No fun allowed.

>>15596095

Portman turned on her tribe like Mark which was hilarious. And Scarjo is infamous for going under the knife for fucking everything with her nose in particular and even then the pics of her without her make-up. Jesus.

an oregon trail mmo where large caravans of players attempt to survive the journey west together

>>15607053

Would this be a realistic fictional world frontier or a reset of the US landscape?

What do you lads think about the MMO called Crowfall thats in the makings? Looks cool if all they are advertising is true, lots of idea I would have myself.

>>15608903

Pointless feature creep. Why does adding 20 different minute skills improve the game?

Just make the defense skill influence the average size of a hit instead of whatever ass-backwards damage calculation RS did.

>>15608942

To this day all the defence skill actually does is lower the chance of someone hitting >0 on you and doesn't effect the outcome if the hit is >0. Armour bonus just increases the defence value. So to say it's ass-backwards is an understatement.

But I don't like that defence level is some arbitrary force that protects the player, armour or not. It makes more sense, for example, to divide defence into: the players skill with a shield and their skill fighting in armour (both of which boost armour and shield absorbtion from a baseline but are useless naked) as well as their ability to dodge attacks (this is where 0 comes in). Each subskill could be neatly tucked into defense as a formula for calculating its level. This gives more variety without feeling like a feature creep.

>>15568244

Design like this:

Open-World Environment. Instanced Cities, Instanced Dungeons. Cities are essentially open-world as well, just separate worlds, while dungeons are party-based.

Equipment is roughly static. You gain lots of skills and such as you level up, but your HP don't raise a huge amount (max Lvl = ~5x more). Magic items are desirable, but very rare, showing up only in dungeons.

Instead of traditional quests, the developers put quests up each day, and assign rough difficulty levels to them. When quests go live, things spawn out in the open world. They don't re-spawn. Killing things doesn't give XP, money accumulated does - You need to pick up quests, but can take only one at a time. Groups can go on a quest together. Not every quest goes up at once - there's a large dump at one time, and a few more trickling in as the hours go on.

Monsters don't just drop treasure and shit. You can't just go out and grind - You have to go on quests. Powerful monsters are designed with consumables in mind, so you have to be smart in taking the right resources, and a good party. Speaking of resources, HP doesn't recover unless you're in town, unless you drink potions or get healing magic used on you. Spells are limited to a certain number of castings per outing.

Dungeons have locked doors and traps and shit all over - you need someone who can skill-monkey. Treasure is hidden in chests and shit. Monsters are tough, and you'll need people who can fight or use spells to really get through. When the game updates, rather than new dungeons being added frequently, the present ones get expanded upon, becoming wider and deeper as time goes on. The deeper, the more dangerous, but the better the treasures down below.

You can PvP people in the overworld to take their shit. If you do that, they can post a bounty on you within a certain time period. If there's a bounty on you, then you can't enter most cities, and are left out in the boonies. In these places, PvP can take place in the actual cities. If you have a bounty on you, and get killed, you can't put a bounty on your killer. Bounties go away after a month or so. You can also turn yourself in and go to jail, and take a huge hit to your XP because of wasting away in a cell.

>>15609032

I'd rather the shield be classed as a weapon type or fighting style instead of armor. I know this sounds weird but a shield realistically is a board you hold or strap onto your arm. While it can be a piece of armor you wear it's not using the shield to it's fullest potential. While a shield primary use is defense it can be used aggressively as well to unbalance, trip, push, and sometimes kill your opponent. So if a shield skill exists then give the shield actions that complement a one-handed weapon. As for using one weapon with a free hand or even two-handed weapons implement some grappling techniques.

I like to see more games where melee tanks have their roles as "blockers". They hinder, block, and disable enemies from getting to your squishies. I know aggro is an abstract of this. But it'd be neat for tanks to be strong enough to throw enemies to the ground so the rogues can get a quick death stab. Or even throw enemies into other enemies to disrupt their formation.

>>15609248

You're basically describing something like 2E Advanced Dungeons & Dragons right down to gold-as-experience overlaid on the framework of Dragon's Dogma Online, plus true open world fields rather than instanced ones between dungeons, and I like it. But beside modest leveling progression and skill selection focus, how's the rest of the gameplay go? Is it tab targeting? Is it action based with 1:1 hitboxes? Is it a wonky hybrid like WildStar with its half-circle swing attacks and all that? When you say equipment is 'mostly static,' do you mean loadouts simply don't change, or that the distance between bad, good & better items isn't nearly so great- ala the modifier system in Mount & Blade- compared to the yawning gap from better to best in magic items?

How does skill monkeying work; a series of skill based minigames that you invest points into the relevant skill to make it easier/(more) feasible, a flat DC check, or a rolling system that you put bonuses on through investment? Are skills something you get capped out on per character, or can you grind into a jack or master-of-all just by putting the time & effort in? Or something inbetween, like FFXI's persistent interclass weapon skills that cap based on what Job you have? And is a skill an active ability that may or may not be tree grouped with others, an Elder Scrolls/FFXI gradual mastery bar, or both at once?

For that matter, does the game use aforementioned Job system to change character role in certain areas, is it Star Wars Galaxy classless, or do you rigidly select a class on character creation and stick with it? If static, what is the general range of classes available and how much do they overlap? Are we sticking to basic archetypes or plunging headlong into splatbook variety hell? With this system, is being a solo spelunker in high content viable if you really have your shit together, or are there points passed where you simply have to group up? I'm interested in your further thoughts, though I have my own preferences.

>>15578335

"Work path is fun" is commodities trading in Eve.

>>15609385

fuck this gay earth, but in a good way

the abs don't look really good though

>>15609257

>I'd rather the shield be classed as a weapon type

I agree strongly, not to mention it'd possibly be easier to implement a customizable dual wielding system too.

And while at it, why not being able to guard with other weapons like shields too? Of course those should be less effective at blocking attacks than the latter to an extent, depending on the size and sturdiness of the weapon. Even explosives could be used to block attacks, or at least to try to stop smarter enemies from beating your ass with a sword lest they want to get blown up to smithereens too.

>>15569958

Codefag here. Time travel propagation even of this sort is a nightmare to code and balloons all the resources to keep track of it.

Simple instances that don't reflect in real world, well that's just shitty instances where the flavor text says, "this is the past" and is a shitty idea.

>>15609910

If your going for historical accuracy then blocking is an exclusive feature of the shield because it's a board you hold up to your face. As a literal solid slab of matter it can widely block attacks differently than most weapons. Shield can even catch arrows. As a game mechanic, if you mean hold guard with a defensive stance to parry with your weapon then that can be your dedicated block button/stance.

Now we're getting into individual properties of weapons based on the weapons' form alone. Some pole arms can sweep but they leave you open, which is why they are focused on thrusting or vertical chopping. Sword are versatile killing edges with many killing angles but are easily blocked. Daggers are hand length but are easily concealed and thrown. Axes and clubs are easy to use but hard to master as they have predictable killing blows. Bows use ammo that can be expensive if you're shit at aiming and are fragile themselves, with arrows being blocked by full plate and tower shield. Crossbows pierce plate but take forever to load and are expensive to replace. Etc.

As for gunpowder, just make it alchemical elemental bombs. If you have a wizard class and no MP system then make them alchemists that use chemistry to cast magic spells. Clerics can be herbalists and nurses really good at surgery.

>>15609843

Every game that has a "tank class" I've seen has an aggro mechanic where it's better to assault one enemy than a group. When in reality monsters would turn to whichever they see is the weakest target and kill them right then and there. I need to make a JRPG style system from scratch with simple numbers to prove this concept. But I want change the concept of a tank from "slow moving meatshield" to interceptor.

An example of two tank classes with different roles: one character is a full plate sword and board paladin; the other Conan the Barbarian. Sword and board pally on foot is rather slow compared to fleet footed fighters, but the guy is near indestructible and immobile. Barbarian is a brute, high health, low defense, but fast on foot with the strength to push enemies as heavy as pally. Pally is the wall. Nothing passes him. Nothing gets around him. Anything in his way is pushed back. Pally is first and last line of defense for squishy wizard. Barbarian is the sheep dog. He needs the sheep of enemies in a group for the wizard to nuke. Any stragglers that get separated from the ambush gets picked off by the ranger. Those that don't get shot get back stabbed by the rogue when they run. Barbarian is also the interceptor who runs in to block fast monsters pally can't keep up with and rips monster's head off before they rape cleric-chan. Only barbarian can rape cleric-chan.

And as customizable classes are you can make variants for different roles depending on the play style of your party. I'd rather have a dozen mediocre characters with unique builds and different ways to play the game than a dozen characters with identical min-maxed stats that all play the same.

Open PVP everywhere except a few cities. Drop tables / economy engineered to encourage trade between them. Permadeath except for payfags.

Hmm… So if I were to implement a fantasy role playing life game where there's fun with trading and adventuring then how can I balance it out? I know rotating scarce resources can help to get people to adventure. But what happens to those in the faction that join too late and can't do the thing they want to do. Will they simply have to do things they don't want to do to survive the will of the economy later on or move out and try to claim a stake to a new settlement of their own?

>>15611031

Runescape did something like this. Search up darkscape. Every content was free as in free beer buy you can be killed and get to kill anyone literally everywhere and it was fun as fuck. Too bad only a handful of players liked it and was closed down early.

From what I know, it takes like five years just to develop an MMO on average. Requesting crazy features will just push it back even further and when it's released it'll fuck up like bless online did when its outdated poorly optimised game engine.

>>15611031

>>15612444

The vast majority of players in mmos are pvers so it's not hard to understand why it wouldn't work for long.

>>15609394

> how's the rest of the gameplay go?

Beta-era BDO modified by Guild Wars, adjusted by Dragon's Dogma. Enemies are smarter, so you can't just Korean Grindfest them, and tend to have lengthy ability layouts of their own, so it's a lot tougher. You have a lock-on option for certain abilities, but others it's a matter of aiming your attacks.

>When you say equipment is 'mostly static,' do you mean loadouts simply don't change, or that the distance between bad, good & better items isn't nearly so great

Something like Guild Wars (Factions, specifically): You can get the best gear in the game extremely fast, and it's so dirt cheap once you hit max level, you can replace it with no problem. Die in PvP, no big deal. Except the gap is smaller - if GW used from 5/15 to 60/80 as its scale, this uses a scale that starts at 30 or so for starter gear up to ~60, we'll say.

>How does skill monkeying work; a series of skill based minigames that you invest points into the relevant skill to make it easier/(more) feasible, a flat DC check, or a rolling system that you put bonuses on through investment?

Invest points into skills as you level. You hit Skill 99 in Pick Locks, you have a 99% chance to open any lock in the game. That's the theory: In practice, when you enter an instance, the game rolls the difficulty of each chest/trap/whatever, and determines the minimum value to open it. So if you have two thieves, one with skill 52 and the other skill 78, and the dungeon determines that skill>55 to open a specific chest on entry, that's how it would work. I imagine that would be the easiest way to code it. But, it would be random upon each entry into the place.

The game would let you take a primary class, and it's fairly rigid. You can take a secondary class, and get limited access to its abilities, but at a cost. You are generally better off just being in one class, but it's sometimes useful to have another use of detect magic or whatever. You could solo if you were smart, but you really want a group for dungeon delving. No one person can do all the fighting, and find all the traps.

The general theory:

>Fighter. High HP, High DEF, High Saves, Medium Damage. Reliable.

>Thief. Low HP, Med DEF, Med Saves, Medium Damage. Can do spikes of damage situationally. Skills that have a chance of failure, and can be used an infinite number of times.

>Mage. Low HP, Low DEF, Med Saves, Low Damage. Has access to spells. Spells are guaranteed to succeed, and can do a lot of things: High damage, open a chest, etc. The problem is they're a finite resource.

Could potentially spit these into multiple types, with slightly different flavor and ability unlocks (i.e. Mage => Illusionist, Battle-Mage, Healer) or just keep them all together. Probably the latter option.