Honestly, my perfect MMO would basically be EVE with TIE Fighter controls, and no gaining skills over time-everyone maxed out. Just based on who can afford what. Change around details like sov and removing capships, but overall that's all that would be needed.
I'd keep cap ships but make running them inter-changeable with piling multiple players into them.
God, why make a Firefly MMO? It'll be wrecked by both the developers trying to cater the perceived audience and the audience itself. Just use the idea of the universe as a basis and then invent a new IP and make a game that's good. If the gameplay is good it doesn't need to be based on Firefly.
In my TL;DR section, I was trying to get across the idea that it was Space Cowboys with that array of game mechanics that was important, not the IP - and yet the IP is so damn rich, I'd still love to see it. But it was late and I was sleepy, and as you can see I rambled quite a bit.
And I just have to lament: How unfortunate is it nowadays that as soon as we hear about a popular IP being turned into a game, the first thing we expect is that the devs are gonna butcher it? I know, it's not without precedent, and I don't even necessarily disagree, but how bad does that suck, though? I mean, if they announced a Batman MMO right now, I really wish I could be thinking "Oh sweet, I get to punch out thugs/be a thug in Gotham City!" and not "Oh God, what are they gonna do to my shiiiiiiiit?"
That's the thing, every game made from a show or movie, has generally been a piece of shit (there are a select few exceptions). Since most MMO's are shitty anyway, combine that with a show IP or whatever and you have twice the shit and double the expectations which causes a train wreck.
My friend and I were discussing an idea for an MMO a while ago. We realize that the way we plan it it would cater only to the hardest of hardcore, so it probably wouldn't sell very well... but we thought it was itneresting.
It featured a family system where your character name is your family name (ala, Granado Espada) but you only play as one person at a time. The setting is a mixture of feudal Europe and Japan. The biggest thing about our game is that money would be backed by a gold standard that actually existed in the game as an object: bank vaults would be full (could be robbed, shaking the economy) and moving money from one place to another would actually require a transport and take a while.
In addition to the real money standard, one of the stats your family has is wealth. There are lots of ways to build wealth, but since the economy would be mostly player based, you'd have to secure trade routes, build a large real estate portfolio, or own more than one successful shop.
More wealth obviously means you can do more things by simply paying other people to do them. For example: a samurai character needs some money. His family isn't rich, so has a low wealth stat. Instead, he's trained in martial arts, so he's a good fighter. The samurai can take a quest posted by a very wealthy player character who needs his caravan of gold protected as it travels from one vault to another. The wealthy player wouldn't need to be online for this; he can submit the quest and another player can take the quest for themselves through a quest bulletin board system.
Of course, there's little stopping the samurai from turning around an killing the caravan and taking the money, assuming he has other people around to help him carry all that gold back home. This is where the news system comes in. News travels fast, but not instantly. Fame/infamy would travel only as fast as the fastest horse could ride. So let's say you steal a lot of gold, obviously you wouldn't be safe in the neighboring towns for too long. However, if you're only a small time crook, news doesn't travel as far since the crime wasn't as important. You could, theoretically, move your family to another town far away and live out the rest of your days completely happily. Just don't go back to your original town, or you (or your descendants) would probably be throw in jail.
Speaking of descendants, that's how your character develops. Traits you raise are kept as family traits: if you're good with a sword, your children would gain a natural talent with the sword. Spoiled rich kids would be hindered in this way: they'd be worse off at gaining physical skills, but since they can pay for lessons, they can pay more money to gain more strength. However, a son of a samurai would always be stronger than the son of a rich kid, just for balance's sake.
When you die, you're dead. Your equipment can be looted by anyone around. Since you can't bring your dead self back to life, you continue your adventure as your son/daughter. This is where the suspension of real time begins, since kids grow obscenely fast for the sake of you always having one ready to go upon your death.
The only items you'd want to keep really safe (and are therefore not worth carrying around with you) are heirlooms. These provide bonuses based on what kind of heirloom it is (an heirloom sword would decrease the amount of time needed to train in sword arts, etc). These should be kept in your house (or a vault) and provide a boost for you no matter where you are... you needn't carry them around.
Obviously, kids aren't as strong as their parents, so you're weaker every time you die. However, since you're the son/daughter of a famous samurai, you grow faster. The point is to make people be really careful since actions affect other actions. The point of this game isn't so much to get stronger and beat the game, but to build a user generated economy in which real economic principles are taken into account.
Of course, I don't play MMOs anymore, but we thought it was cool. Dear god, that was long. Sorry about that.
My friend and I were discussing an idea for an MMO a while ago. We realize that the way we plan it it would cater only to the hardest of hardcore, so it probably wouldn't sell very well... but we thought it was itneresting.
You see that phrase right there? It's using that phrase that made me stop reading what you wrote. WHAT DOES HARDCORE MEAN? IT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING. It's an ill-defined derogatory or complementary term, usually used to justify shitty game mechanics.
My friend and I were discussing an idea for an MMO a while ago. We realize that the way we plan it it would cater only to the hardest of hardcore, so it probably wouldn't sell very well... but we thought it was itneresting.
You see that phrase right there? It's using that phrase that made me stop reading what you wrote. WHAT DOES HARDCORE MEAN? IT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING. It's an ill-defined derogatory or complementary term, usually used to justify shitty game mechanics.
In the context of an MMO, "hardcore" usually refers to a prohibitive time investment, or in general the level of bullshit you're required to put up with to play the game. For example, a long level grind or harsh death penalties would be hardcore mechanics.
Looking at your sig, I'd think you'd love things that are HARDCORE, electrictylikesme.
And it's not a hardcore mechanic unless it involves permadeath and no restrictions on pking anyone anywhere.
edit: The whole family inheritance thing with 'real economy' but then completely shoehorned mechanics is honestly pretty silly.
How's this for an MMO idea:
Ultima Online, pre-trammel. No skilling up, you just select what you want whenever you want, with, say, a 5 minute cooldown so you can't flip around midbattle. Permadeath. No 'permadeath BUT WAIT FAMILY INHERITANCE'. Real Permadeath. And get rid of the NPC market-all sales go to other PCs.
My friend and I were discussing an idea for an MMO a while ago. We realize that the way we plan it it would cater only to the hardest of hardcore, so it probably wouldn't sell very well... but we thought it was itneresting.
You see that phrase right there? It's using that phrase that made me stop reading what you wrote. WHAT DOES HARDCORE MEAN? IT DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING. It's an ill-defined derogatory or complementary term, usually used to justify shitty game mechanics.
In the context of an MMO, "hardcore" usually refers to a prohibitive time investment, or in general the level of bullshit you're required to put up with to play the game. For example, a long level grind or harsh death penalties would be hardcore mechanics.
I find a difference between harsh death penalties and a long level grind but agree with your assessment that it's bullshit. To cite EVE again, there are too many whiny idiots complaining it's not hardcore enough because it's too easy to replace ships. This is of course, only true if you've got your shit together, don't die to often and are setup to make ISK easily.
That you can do this is what makes the game worthwhile, I don't want to play some bullshit where it's always a pain in the ass to get a new ship/recover my stuff/rebuild my character etc. Because it's still sitting in front of a fucking computer.
I've said it before in one of these threads, but here goes:
Just take the metroidvania system, (mostly from the portable castlevania games) and put it online. Instanced dungeons where you can gain special abilities to explore more of the world (double jump, etc) perhaps multilayered-but-still 2-d world to handle towns as in Tomba or Valkyrie Profile. MANY different kinds of weapons, basically just look at the 2-d Castlevanias: so much potential there. Imagine fighting a gigantic 2-d boss with your friends, jumping all over him, attacking different pats of it's body at the same time to hurt it! A combat system that rewards actual skill as well as player level and equipment, seeing who has the best skills at jumping around trying to hit a moving target, and avoiding attacks. It's a genre is generally very easy to get good at: platformers, I think it could actually be very marketable.
I'll probably post a very long, drawn out explanation of what I've been thinking about later, but I feel like writing up a quickie.
The basic premise of the game is that its a modern-day MMOFPS, for the most part. It takes place on a different land/world/whatever, but people would speak english, run around with AK47's, etc. The storyline, to sum it up, is that a few years before the game begins, a group of people figured out how to use magic. Not being the most altruistic of people, they used it for evil purposes; they were eventually defeated, but it took huge armies to do, and anarchy quickly broke out afterwards.
All players are mercenaries, starting for one of a few different corporations. With the collapse of any real standing government, except for a few strongholds, corporations control most of the land in the world. Thats where you come in. See, its in the best interest of corporations to keep their land under control, without turmoil, etc. A happy consumer is a good consumer and all that. So they provide you with training, weaponry, and most important of all, a personal defense unit. The PDU is one of the creations that came after the finding of magic, Using magical... abilities... it allows you to take alot more damage than your regular human(I haven't thought of a good explanation for it yet).
I could keep going on about the story, but I think that gives the gist of it. Basically, my idea is to make a hybrid MMO. The only two MMOFPS' I can think of are WWIIOL and Planetside. Planetside felt like unreal with way more people, while WWIIOL felt like... Operation Flashpoint MMO. Basically, FPS games with huge servers and persistant maps. There's not exactly something wrong with that, but its not really an MMO as we think of them now.
This game would be more like taking an MMORPG, and changing it into an FPS basically. You would be one character throughout the whole game, you would level up like in a normal MMO, you would get your awesome gear. There would be guilds, raids, instances, PVP(both instanced and world). It wouldn't be like playing a game of BF2 for a really long time on one server, with lots of people playing with you. The way the other MMOFPS' are.
I'm only going to go into a few of the larger features I've been thinking about, the ones that define it. The first one I want to talk about, is instances. While there would be a lot of non instanced combat, especially PVP and endgame, a good amount of the game would be instanced, combat wise. The idea is that going on a quest/mission would feel like going through a level in a regular FPS(I know, I sound like I'm contradicting myself a bit), as opposed to grinding through units to get X kills or Y items. I didn't play City of Heroes that much, so I may be making myself sound retarded, but what I remember of it is kind of how this game would work. You and a party could go into an instance and do a mission, or maybe just you, if its an easier mission/solo mission. On the other side, you can go into the main world, and get some money, some experience, etc.
There would be world pvp, without hard level restrictions. The idea is that in starting areas and larger cities, NPC's maintain a strong enough presence to stop pvp in peaceful areas. PVP would mainly be corp vs corp, although you would be allowed to renounce affiliation if you wanted to(leveling up unaffiliated would be viable too, by being a criminal). There would be large areas of very little NPC interaction, where players would be able to roam. The main reason to go to these areas would be things like oil fields, mineral deposits, etc.
To expand on that a bit, crafting and currency would play important roles in the game. Instead of being able to learn a crafting skill or two, regardless of class, being a crafter would be a class all in its own. They would be able to create some of the best equipment in the game, depending on their level, and access to materials. In the early game, they would get most of their materials by scavenging off of enemy corpses(dogtags, left over magazines, metal things could be melted, then repoured to make bullets, gun parts, etc. Leather/various materials for additional armour, etc). While this would be possible late game, it would be a better idea to control key mineral points for access to better quality, more readily available materials.
As for cash, it would play a very important role. Crafters wouldn't be able to create everything. At lower levels, one would need to buy better guns, repair their guns, buy ammunition or better ammunition, armour, etc. At the higher levels, where PVP would have a larger focus, cash would be able to buy a number of things. A guild could buy guild buildings, defenses for their mineral sites, things like this.
This probably doesn't sound very cohesive, but its the best summary I could give without going on and on. It works really smoothly in my head... but so does everyone's game ideas, right?
Man, a Stalker MMO would be neat. Expand the hell out of The Zone, make artifacts worth an asston more (and make their purpose more like the artifacts of A Roadside Picnic; not so much for the player to use, than to collect and return to the civilized world) and a lot rarer, "dungeons" being places like Agroprom and the X## labs plus whatever else is in the area. Hell, drop Stalker and go with the Roadside Picnic universe, with its multiple zones and whatnot.
Doesn't anyone else think that Valhalla would make the perfect MMO? Norse mythology has already set up an entire concept for any old game company to just come along and pick it up. Simply have the game start off with the honorable death of your character in battle, cut to the character creation screen and away you go!
Of course, it'd need to be modified to make the game more fun and complex, but the fundamentals of setting and gameplay are still all there.
I've always wanted a realistic post-apoc first-person MMO... And I mean really realistic: almost no HUD; food, water and shelter are necessities; player-built towns/cities; perma-death (but inheritance)... A few other things I had in mind but can't remember now... The problem would of course be getting it (mostly the perma-death part) to work, but when I was thinking about it it seemed to make sense: because bare necessities would be stressed, any potential griefers would have to find their own ways of getting what they need (food, water, shelter, etc.) outside of law-abiding society... Something that would take a lot of time and effort, weeding out the "13 year old asshole" element (hopefully), and something that would also have to be done while evading whatever police forces lawful player societies end up making, in their more comfortable atmosphere. PvE wouldn't be deadly, for the most part... And players with plenty of friends/power would have no problem with the perma-death, as they'd foreseeably be able to protect themselves from griefers and whatnot.
Yeah, it's ambitious, but I would probably play that game and never stop... Sorry for the rambling nature of my description. I'd like to develop the idea more for the hell of it, so feedback would be cool if you have it.
I've always wanted a realistic post-apoc first-person MMO... And I mean really realistic: almost no HUD; food, water and shelter are necessities; player-built towns/cities; perma-death (but inheritance)... A few other things I had in mind but can't remember now... The problem would of course be getting it (mostly the perma-death part) to work, but when I was thinking about it it seemed to make sense: because bare necessities would be stressed, any potential griefers would have to find their own ways of getting what they need (food, water, shelter, etc.) outside of law-abiding society... Something that would take a lot of time and effort, weeding out the "13 year old asshole" element (hopefully), and something that would also have to be done while evading whatever police forces lawful player societies end up making, in their more comfortable atmosphere. PvE wouldn't be deadly, for the most part... And players with plenty of friends/power would have no problem with the perma-death, as they'd foreseeably be able to protect themselves from griefers and whatnot.
Yeah, it's ambitious, but I would probably play that game and never stop... Sorry for the rambling nature of my description. I'd like to develop the idea more for the hell of it, so feedback would be cool if you have it.
I like this idea alot, but do away with the inheritance thing please. Maybe have "save spots" or cloning vats where you could save a clone of yourself at a pretty high cost, of course any items not at the bank would be lootable. Since it would be more of a simulator than a game per se, it would probably not be that hard to come to terms with perma death. Also, we need MMO's with a developed social system.. like Fallouts peacefull quest solving made really good. I Guess Vanguard was on it's way with it's diplomacy. Free PvP everywhere with a karma system in place for griefers becoming KoS in cities pretty fast.
Fighting radiation and addiction in the wastes, finding small outcast player formed PK communities..
Whenever people say they want permadeath, what they REALLY mean is that they want permadeath for OTHER PEOPLE. Because if THEY lose their Level Infinifuck character, they're going to just up and quit before rolling a new one, because new characters get the shit beaten out of them routinely by the Coalition of Jackasses that inevitably will form.
Oh, and actual new players? Yeah, they're going to die, like, twice, then realize that the game exists solely to bend newbies over and rape them until they bleed. Because that's what people mean when they say they want open PvP: they want the ability to beat the shit out of newbies for no reason.
Just to chime in on the little discussion regarding the definition of "hardcore" that I used in my lengthy post: when I say hardcore in that post, it's because I recognize that the game design I posted would require a huge time investment due to the fact that it's a completely player-based economy with a real, gold-backed money standard, so money is incredibly valuable.
As far as the permadeath thing, I don't want people getting attached to individual characters in my game design. Rather, I want it to be about building a legacy associated with their family name. Of course, when someone dies in a powerful family, more people hear about it and it has a greater effect on the family.
Because that's what people mean when they say they want open PvP: they want the ability to beat the shit out of newbies for no reason.
They have good reason; they were ganked as lowbies themselves, that means they deserve to take revenge on totally different people's lowbies now (I assume this hurts the original gankers via PVP magic).
How does backing fictional money with fictional gold suddenly make that fictional money VERY VALUABLE?
Very valuable in the game. If your gold is backed by an actual object in the game, then transporting it and storing it become incredibly important. Controlling money is more important than actually having it, especially if it's possible to steal and trace (via imprinted serial numbers, like in the real world) stolen gold.
Edit: my problem with money in games is that it's this magical, formless entity that just exists. My concept makes it a physical thing, tied to actual objects in the game world and, like a real economy, there can't be any more money in circulation as there is gold in the governing body's vault. This would also allow villages to compete with each other for resources, allowing cities to arise where more money is actually held.
Me, i'd like to be able to found and build your own, completely player-run city wherever you wanted. Design it completely originally with a powerful city-building engine. Thousands of NPCs would populate it, even migrate to it. You could command your own armies and conquer other cities, leading them on the battlefield as your normal character. Of course, if that was in a MMORPG, there'd probably be thousands of Minas Tirith and Ironforge rip-offs so it'd be a bit of a double-edged sword.
I'd also like naval combat in an MMORPG. Not modern stuff like in Navyfield, but actual triremes, ramming, flights of arrows through the sky, boarding actions. The whole deal.
I don't exactly like the idea of carte blanche open PVP, but I was thinking: what about "open" PVP with jurisdiction? You select a certain group of the game's population using a set of designations, like race, class/profession, guild/association, equipment choice, and so on, and harrying these people earns you only the standard PKing ire (notices on town "wanted" lists, NPC interaction refusals, easier identification, so on); on the upside, if you stick with only those types of people you've selected, you gain bonuses when dealing with other people who have the same kind of selections as you and can identify them easily out in the wild. Start going willy-nilly on the killing, though, and you start facing repricussions of at least an earthly and possibly divine nature.
And how about some non-lethal takedown/looting systems? I'm averse to killing people at random for shits and giggles: I'm not to wailing on them with a sap/shooting them with a tranquilizer and stripping them of things of value or interest, and with most games it's either stealthy pickpocketting or full-blown murder. I am better than the blood-stained rabble, damn it!
Just to chime in on the little discussion regarding the definition of "hardcore" that I used in my lengthy post: when I say hardcore in that post, it's because I recognize that the game design I posted would require a huge time investment due to the fact that it's a completely player-based economy with a real, gold-backed money standard, so money is incredibly valuable.
As far as the permadeath thing, I don't want people getting attached to individual characters in my game design. Rather, I want it to be about building a legacy associated with their family name. Of course, when someone dies in a powerful family, more people hear about it and it has a greater effect on the family.
It's still a good idea to have open, hardcore pvp as an "option" like an alternate server. Because it at least seems to pull the most assholish elements of mmo players away.
How does backing fictional money with fictional gold suddenly make that fictional money VERY VALUABLE?
Very valuable in the game. If your gold is backed by an actual object in the game, then transporting it and storing it become incredibly important. Controlling money is more important than actually having it, especially if it's possible to steal and trace (via imprinted serial numbers, like in the real world) stolen gold.
Edit: my problem with money in games is that it's this magical, formless entity that just exists. My concept makes it a physical thing, tied to actual objects in the game world and, like a real economy, there can't be any more money in circulation as there is gold in the governing body's vault. This would also allow villages to compete with each other for resources, allowing cities to arise where more money is actually held.
If money can be easily taken, won't that just lead to megacity wars, with anyone who tries to strike out on their own immediately stripped of their wealth by someone who can hide their stuff behind hundreds of guards? Normally that kind of banditry would be discouraged by the risk of being killed by doing it, but even with permadeath, characters are merely disposable instead of immortal.
How does backing fictional money with fictional gold suddenly make that fictional money VERY VALUABLE?
Very valuable in the game. If your gold is backed by an actual object in the game, then transporting it and storing it become incredibly important. Controlling money is more important than actually having it, especially if it's possible to steal and trace (via imprinted serial numbers, like in the real world) stolen gold.
Edit: my problem with money in games is that it's this magical, formless entity that just exists. My concept makes it a physical thing, tied to actual objects in the game world and, like a real economy, there can't be any more money in circulation as there is gold in the governing body's vault. This would also allow villages to compete with each other for resources, allowing cities to arise where more money is actually held.
That could also be useful for controlling the players. For example, they could have a bit of gold "discovered" in a few areas if they want people to stop congregating at a certain area. Didn't Asheron's Call have a problem with too many players congregating in a certain area?
What about a Lost/Lord of the Flies kind of MMO? When you start, your character washes up on the shore of some tropical island with nothing but the clothes on their back and one piece of gear like a gun or some matches or something. When the server starts there is absolutely nothing. No gear shops, no places to buy or sell loot.
It would be up to the players to work together to develop a shelter and a system of bartering. Experimenting with objects and stuff laying around would be the only way to create crafting recipes. Players would have to work together to find food and defend themselves from savages and animals. There would be all kinds of natural disasters and things so that players couldn't just build one big city and live comfortably. Maybe the severity of the disasters could relate to the size or age of the settlement. And if it gets too big then it would constantly be under attack by tribes of savages trying to conquer it.
There would also be a huge potential for PvP. Think about it, numerous player controlled cities waging war with bamboo spears and those twirly things with the 3 rocks (I forget what they're called) over who controls the only freshwater stream in the valley.
What about a Lost/Lord of the Flies kind of MMO? When you start, your character washes up on the shore of some tropical island with nothing but the clothes on their back and one piece of gear like a gun or some matches or something. When the server starts there is absolutely nothing. No gear shops, no places to buy or sell loot.
It would be up to the players to work together to develop a shelter and a system of bartering. Experimenting with objects and stuff laying around would be the only way to create crafting recipes. Players would have to work together to find food and defend themselves from savages and animals. There would be all kinds of natural disasters and things so that players couldn't just build one big city and live comfortably. Maybe the severity of the disasters could relate to the size or age of the settlement. And if it gets too big then it would constantly be under attack by tribes of savages trying to conquer it.
There would also be a huge potential for PvP. Think about it, numerous player controlled cities waging war with bamboo spears and those twirly things with the 3 rocks (I forget what they're called) over who controls the only freshwater stream in the valley.
Could be cool, but I think it would work best if it had a low limit on the number of people per server.
I'm still not understanding how having money backed by omgold is going to make it any more or less valuable in the game. What intrinsic value does gold have, and why can't money just have that intrinsic value?
Whenever people say they want permadeath, what they REALLY mean is that they want permadeath for OTHER PEOPLE. Because if THEY lose their Level Infinifuck character, they're going to just up and quit before rolling a new one, because new characters get the shit beaten out of them routinely by the Coalition of Jackasses that inevitably will form.
Oh, and actual new players? Yeah, they're going to die, like, twice, then realize that the game exists solely to bend newbies over and rape them until they bleed. Because that's what people mean when they say they want open PvP: they want the ability to beat the shit out of newbies for no reason.
Obviously, that's not what I meant at all. I firmly believe that a properly implemented permadeath system, with NPCs, possibly controlled by GMs, would work incredibly well and lend an incredibly different dynamic to a MMO than any seen before. Heck, if there's no levelling, permadeath doesn't even matter that much besides losing gear/wealth.
I'm still not understanding how having money backed by omgold is going to make it any more or less valuable in the game. What intrinsic value does gold have, and why can't money just have that intrinsic value?
Gold has a limited supply. In real life, the supply of paper money can be limited. However, in games, the money supply and the things it causes like inflation cannot be controlled like in real life. Backing it with gold would reduce inflation.
Another way that gold would help would be if it weighed a lot like it does in real life. You wouldn't be able to carry around a ton of money like in most MMORPGs. This could give rise to people whose job it is is to see that the gold is safely delivered between places.
A well done bounty hunting system is something I've always dreamed of. Players of great notoriety have bounties attached to them that may be collected upon their death. The bounty decreases after every kill until that player is no longer a valuable target.
Players can choose to join a bounty hunting faction or choose to go it alone, both of which have their own pros and cons. For one thing, the guild requires monthly pay to be a part of and a portion of the bounty is given as royalties, they however can provide clues and likely locations that enemy targets may be at.
Players on the hitlist, can achieve a sort of legendary status if they manage to evade their hunters and even defeat them in combat, increasing their bounty and perhaps giving some special items or temporary stats boost.
A well done bounty hunting system is something I've always dreamed of. Players of great notoriety have bounties attached to them that may be collected upon their death. The bounty decreases after every kill until that player is no longer a valuable target.
Players can choose to join a bounty hunting faction or choose to go it alone, both of which have their own pros and cons. For one thing, the guild requires monthly pay to be a part of and a portion of the bounty is given as royalties, they however can provide clues and likely locations that enemy targets may be at.
Players on the hitlist, can achieve a sort of legendary status if they manage to evade their hunters and even defeat them in combat, increasing their bounty and perhaps giving some special items or temporary stats boost.
A well done bounty hunting system is something I've always dreamed of. Players of great notoriety have bounties attached to them that may be collected upon their death. The bounty decreases after every kill until that player is no longer a valuable target.
Players can choose to join a bounty hunting faction or choose to go it alone, both of which have their own pros and cons. For one thing, the guild requires monthly pay to be a part of and a portion of the bounty is given as royalties, they however can provide clues and likely locations that enemy targets may be at.
Players on the hitlist, can achieve a sort of legendary status if they manage to evade their hunters and even defeat them in combat, increasing their bounty and perhaps giving some special items or temporary stats boost.
EVE has a system similar to this.
And it's a joke because podding yourself once your bounty gets high enough is usually quite possible.
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Steam: pazython
In my TL;DR section, I was trying to get across the idea that it was Space Cowboys with that array of game mechanics that was important, not the IP - and yet the IP is so damn rich, I'd still love to see it. But it was late and I was sleepy, and as you can see I rambled quite a bit.
And I just have to lament: How unfortunate is it nowadays that as soon as we hear about a popular IP being turned into a game, the first thing we expect is that the devs are gonna butcher it? I know, it's not without precedent, and I don't even necessarily disagree, but how bad does that suck, though? I mean, if they announced a Batman MMO right now, I really wish I could be thinking "Oh sweet, I get to punch out thugs/be a thug in Gotham City!" and not "Oh God, what are they gonna do to my shiiiiiiiit?"
Give me that as an MMO plz.
3DS: 1650-8480-6786
Switch: SW-0653-8208-4705
That's the thing, every game made from a show or movie, has generally been a piece of shit (there are a select few exceptions). Since most MMO's are shitty anyway, combine that with a show IP or whatever and you have twice the shit and double the expectations which causes a train wreck.
It featured a family system where your character name is your family name (ala, Granado Espada) but you only play as one person at a time. The setting is a mixture of feudal Europe and Japan. The biggest thing about our game is that money would be backed by a gold standard that actually existed in the game as an object: bank vaults would be full (could be robbed, shaking the economy) and moving money from one place to another would actually require a transport and take a while.
In addition to the real money standard, one of the stats your family has is wealth. There are lots of ways to build wealth, but since the economy would be mostly player based, you'd have to secure trade routes, build a large real estate portfolio, or own more than one successful shop.
More wealth obviously means you can do more things by simply paying other people to do them. For example: a samurai character needs some money. His family isn't rich, so has a low wealth stat. Instead, he's trained in martial arts, so he's a good fighter. The samurai can take a quest posted by a very wealthy player character who needs his caravan of gold protected as it travels from one vault to another. The wealthy player wouldn't need to be online for this; he can submit the quest and another player can take the quest for themselves through a quest bulletin board system.
Of course, there's little stopping the samurai from turning around an killing the caravan and taking the money, assuming he has other people around to help him carry all that gold back home. This is where the news system comes in. News travels fast, but not instantly. Fame/infamy would travel only as fast as the fastest horse could ride. So let's say you steal a lot of gold, obviously you wouldn't be safe in the neighboring towns for too long. However, if you're only a small time crook, news doesn't travel as far since the crime wasn't as important. You could, theoretically, move your family to another town far away and live out the rest of your days completely happily. Just don't go back to your original town, or you (or your descendants) would probably be throw in jail.
Speaking of descendants, that's how your character develops. Traits you raise are kept as family traits: if you're good with a sword, your children would gain a natural talent with the sword. Spoiled rich kids would be hindered in this way: they'd be worse off at gaining physical skills, but since they can pay for lessons, they can pay more money to gain more strength. However, a son of a samurai would always be stronger than the son of a rich kid, just for balance's sake.
When you die, you're dead. Your equipment can be looted by anyone around. Since you can't bring your dead self back to life, you continue your adventure as your son/daughter. This is where the suspension of real time begins, since kids grow obscenely fast for the sake of you always having one ready to go upon your death.
The only items you'd want to keep really safe (and are therefore not worth carrying around with you) are heirlooms. These provide bonuses based on what kind of heirloom it is (an heirloom sword would decrease the amount of time needed to train in sword arts, etc). These should be kept in your house (or a vault) and provide a boost for you no matter where you are... you needn't carry them around.
Obviously, kids aren't as strong as their parents, so you're weaker every time you die. However, since you're the son/daughter of a famous samurai, you grow faster. The point is to make people be really careful since actions affect other actions. The point of this game isn't so much to get stronger and beat the game, but to build a user generated economy in which real economic principles are taken into account.
Of course, I don't play MMOs anymore, but we thought it was cool. Dear god, that was long. Sorry about that.
or Brawl. 4854.6102.3895 Name: NU..
I like this idea. It should be combined with my weird idea from two pages back. We'd have the ultimate unmarketable MMO!
In the context of an MMO, "hardcore" usually refers to a prohibitive time investment, or in general the level of bullshit you're required to put up with to play the game. For example, a long level grind or harsh death penalties would be hardcore mechanics.
And it's not a hardcore mechanic unless it involves permadeath and no restrictions on pking anyone anywhere.
edit: The whole family inheritance thing with 'real economy' but then completely shoehorned mechanics is honestly pretty silly.
How's this for an MMO idea:
Ultima Online, pre-trammel. No skilling up, you just select what you want whenever you want, with, say, a 5 minute cooldown so you can't flip around midbattle. Permadeath. No 'permadeath BUT WAIT FAMILY INHERITANCE'. Real Permadeath. And get rid of the NPC market-all sales go to other PCs.
I find a difference between harsh death penalties and a long level grind but agree with your assessment that it's bullshit. To cite EVE again, there are too many whiny idiots complaining it's not hardcore enough because it's too easy to replace ships. This is of course, only true if you've got your shit together, don't die to often and are setup to make ISK easily.
That you can do this is what makes the game worthwhile, I don't want to play some bullshit where it's always a pain in the ass to get a new ship/recover my stuff/rebuild my character etc. Because it's still sitting in front of a fucking computer.
Just take the metroidvania system, (mostly from the portable castlevania games) and put it online. Instanced dungeons where you can gain special abilities to explore more of the world (double jump, etc) perhaps multilayered-but-still 2-d world to handle towns as in Tomba or Valkyrie Profile. MANY different kinds of weapons, basically just look at the 2-d Castlevanias: so much potential there. Imagine fighting a gigantic 2-d boss with your friends, jumping all over him, attacking different pats of it's body at the same time to hurt it! A combat system that rewards actual skill as well as player level and equipment, seeing who has the best skills at jumping around trying to hit a moving target, and avoiding attacks. It's a genre is generally very easy to get good at: platformers, I think it could actually be very marketable.
OK, rambling over. tl;dr: Castlevania 2-d mmo!
The basic premise of the game is that its a modern-day MMOFPS, for the most part. It takes place on a different land/world/whatever, but people would speak english, run around with AK47's, etc. The storyline, to sum it up, is that a few years before the game begins, a group of people figured out how to use magic. Not being the most altruistic of people, they used it for evil purposes; they were eventually defeated, but it took huge armies to do, and anarchy quickly broke out afterwards.
All players are mercenaries, starting for one of a few different corporations. With the collapse of any real standing government, except for a few strongholds, corporations control most of the land in the world. Thats where you come in. See, its in the best interest of corporations to keep their land under control, without turmoil, etc. A happy consumer is a good consumer and all that. So they provide you with training, weaponry, and most important of all, a personal defense unit. The PDU is one of the creations that came after the finding of magic, Using magical... abilities... it allows you to take alot more damage than your regular human(I haven't thought of a good explanation for it yet).
I could keep going on about the story, but I think that gives the gist of it. Basically, my idea is to make a hybrid MMO. The only two MMOFPS' I can think of are WWIIOL and Planetside. Planetside felt like unreal with way more people, while WWIIOL felt like... Operation Flashpoint MMO. Basically, FPS games with huge servers and persistant maps. There's not exactly something wrong with that, but its not really an MMO as we think of them now.
This game would be more like taking an MMORPG, and changing it into an FPS basically. You would be one character throughout the whole game, you would level up like in a normal MMO, you would get your awesome gear. There would be guilds, raids, instances, PVP(both instanced and world). It wouldn't be like playing a game of BF2 for a really long time on one server, with lots of people playing with you. The way the other MMOFPS' are.
I'm only going to go into a few of the larger features I've been thinking about, the ones that define it. The first one I want to talk about, is instances. While there would be a lot of non instanced combat, especially PVP and endgame, a good amount of the game would be instanced, combat wise. The idea is that going on a quest/mission would feel like going through a level in a regular FPS(I know, I sound like I'm contradicting myself a bit), as opposed to grinding through units to get X kills or Y items. I didn't play City of Heroes that much, so I may be making myself sound retarded, but what I remember of it is kind of how this game would work. You and a party could go into an instance and do a mission, or maybe just you, if its an easier mission/solo mission. On the other side, you can go into the main world, and get some money, some experience, etc.
There would be world pvp, without hard level restrictions. The idea is that in starting areas and larger cities, NPC's maintain a strong enough presence to stop pvp in peaceful areas. PVP would mainly be corp vs corp, although you would be allowed to renounce affiliation if you wanted to(leveling up unaffiliated would be viable too, by being a criminal). There would be large areas of very little NPC interaction, where players would be able to roam. The main reason to go to these areas would be things like oil fields, mineral deposits, etc.
To expand on that a bit, crafting and currency would play important roles in the game. Instead of being able to learn a crafting skill or two, regardless of class, being a crafter would be a class all in its own. They would be able to create some of the best equipment in the game, depending on their level, and access to materials. In the early game, they would get most of their materials by scavenging off of enemy corpses(dogtags, left over magazines, metal things could be melted, then repoured to make bullets, gun parts, etc. Leather/various materials for additional armour, etc). While this would be possible late game, it would be a better idea to control key mineral points for access to better quality, more readily available materials.
As for cash, it would play a very important role. Crafters wouldn't be able to create everything. At lower levels, one would need to buy better guns, repair their guns, buy ammunition or better ammunition, armour, etc. At the higher levels, where PVP would have a larger focus, cash would be able to buy a number of things. A guild could buy guild buildings, defenses for their mineral sites, things like this.
This probably doesn't sound very cohesive, but its the best summary I could give without going on and on. It works really smoothly in my head... but so does everyone's game ideas, right?
3ds friend code: 2981-6032-4118
Of course, it'd need to be modified to make the game more fun and complex, but the fundamentals of setting and gameplay are still all there.
Yeah, it's ambitious, but I would probably play that game and never stop... Sorry for the rambling nature of my description. I'd like to develop the idea more for the hell of it, so feedback would be cool if you have it.
I like this idea alot, but do away with the inheritance thing please. Maybe have "save spots" or cloning vats where you could save a clone of yourself at a pretty high cost, of course any items not at the bank would be lootable. Since it would be more of a simulator than a game per se, it would probably not be that hard to come to terms with perma death. Also, we need MMO's with a developed social system.. like Fallouts peacefull quest solving made really good. I Guess Vanguard was on it's way with it's diplomacy. Free PvP everywhere with a karma system in place for griefers becoming KoS in cities pretty fast.
Fighting radiation and addiction in the wastes, finding small outcast player formed PK communities..
Post apocalyptic experience simulator MMOFPS
Basically whatever makes that work would be gold to me. Also look at STALKER for that kind of atmosphere.
Oh, and actual new players? Yeah, they're going to die, like, twice, then realize that the game exists solely to bend newbies over and rape them until they bleed. Because that's what people mean when they say they want open PvP: they want the ability to beat the shit out of newbies for no reason.
As far as the permadeath thing, I don't want people getting attached to individual characters in my game design. Rather, I want it to be about building a legacy associated with their family name. Of course, when someone dies in a powerful family, more people hear about it and it has a greater effect on the family.
or Brawl. 4854.6102.3895 Name: NU..
Very valuable in the game. If your gold is backed by an actual object in the game, then transporting it and storing it become incredibly important. Controlling money is more important than actually having it, especially if it's possible to steal and trace (via imprinted serial numbers, like in the real world) stolen gold.
Edit: my problem with money in games is that it's this magical, formless entity that just exists. My concept makes it a physical thing, tied to actual objects in the game world and, like a real economy, there can't be any more money in circulation as there is gold in the governing body's vault. This would also allow villages to compete with each other for resources, allowing cities to arise where more money is actually held.
or Brawl. 4854.6102.3895 Name: NU..
I'd also like naval combat in an MMORPG. Not modern stuff like in Navyfield, but actual triremes, ramming, flights of arrows through the sky, boarding actions. The whole deal.
And how about some non-lethal takedown/looting systems? I'm averse to killing people at random for shits and giggles: I'm not to wailing on them with a sap/shooting them with a tranquilizer and stripping them of things of value or interest, and with most games it's either stealthy pickpocketting or full-blown murder. I am better than the blood-stained rabble, damn it!
It's still a good idea to have open, hardcore pvp as an "option" like an alternate server. Because it at least seems to pull the most assholish elements of mmo players away.
If money can be easily taken, won't that just lead to megacity wars, with anyone who tries to strike out on their own immediately stripped of their wealth by someone who can hide their stuff behind hundreds of guards? Normally that kind of banditry would be discouraged by the risk of being killed by doing it, but even with permadeath, characters are merely disposable instead of immortal.
That could also be useful for controlling the players. For example, they could have a bit of gold "discovered" in a few areas if they want people to stop congregating at a certain area. Didn't Asheron's Call have a problem with too many players congregating in a certain area?
It would be up to the players to work together to develop a shelter and a system of bartering. Experimenting with objects and stuff laying around would be the only way to create crafting recipes. Players would have to work together to find food and defend themselves from savages and animals. There would be all kinds of natural disasters and things so that players couldn't just build one big city and live comfortably. Maybe the severity of the disasters could relate to the size or age of the settlement. And if it gets too big then it would constantly be under attack by tribes of savages trying to conquer it.
There would also be a huge potential for PvP. Think about it, numerous player controlled cities waging war with bamboo spears and those twirly things with the 3 rocks (I forget what they're called) over who controls the only freshwater stream in the valley.
Could be cool, but I think it would work best if it had a low limit on the number of people per server.
So yeah, everyone who doesn't want permadeath is a whiny little baby who just wants to play a graphically improved ProgressQuest.
Ahhhhhh , that feels much better, and greatly contributed to this thread.
edit:
Obviously, that's not what I meant at all. I firmly believe that a properly implemented permadeath system, with NPCs, possibly controlled by GMs, would work incredibly well and lend an incredibly different dynamic to a MMO than any seen before. Heck, if there's no levelling, permadeath doesn't even matter that much besides losing gear/wealth.
Gold has a limited supply. In real life, the supply of paper money can be limited. However, in games, the money supply and the things it causes like inflation cannot be controlled like in real life. Backing it with gold would reduce inflation.
Another way that gold would help would be if it weighed a lot like it does in real life. You wouldn't be able to carry around a ton of money like in most MMORPGs. This could give rise to people whose job it is is to see that the gold is safely delivered between places.
Players can choose to join a bounty hunting faction or choose to go it alone, both of which have their own pros and cons. For one thing, the guild requires monthly pay to be a part of and a portion of the bounty is given as royalties, they however can provide clues and likely locations that enemy targets may be at.
Players on the hitlist, can achieve a sort of legendary status if they manage to evade their hunters and even defeat them in combat, increasing their bounty and perhaps giving some special items or temporary stats boost.
EVE has a system similar to this.