I second the SciFi idea. But please, don't be lazy and just stick to "it's scifi because the vehicles hover". Take the fun parts of Shadowrun / Bioshock plasmids and design your metaclasses with that in mind.
You want to improve accuracy? Sure, just buy a helmet with an on-board targetting system. Or, install bionic eyes. Or, replace your eyes with organic superhuman eyes. You want to go faster? Get a bike, but forget using it in combat. Or, install cybernetic legs and hope noone tosses an EMP grenade if you don't have proper shielding installed. Or, replace them with manufactured digitigrade legs for the lolfurry factor. Heck, install extra limbs, an extra eye, replace lumbs with weapons, I don't care, just do something interesting.
Hey, how about crafting? Different tiers for human, metahuman and cyborg body parts. Design regrowth nanites or construct cybernetic limbs.
Factions? "We love humans!" "We hate cyborgs!" "No shirt, no 3rd eye, no service!". Maybe a diplomacy type ability/minigame that allows you to take quests from factions that would ordinarily not be available. Or perhaps a holographic disguise so they don't notice you're a brain inside a metallic shell?
You want pets? Sure, build yourself a robotic army, just make sure you have the control system powerful enough to allow you to use them. Heck, build a large assault bot and sit on its shoulder as it rains destruction on those around you.
Stealth? Better avoid those EMP bursts. Or a more Deus Ex like system, where you can hide from either organic or electronic sensors, but not both.
If brute strength is your passion look no further. Either replace your limbs or pump yourself so full of drugs you won't even care about that gaping wound in your side. Bionic limbs getting blown off? Who cares, just get them repaired. Organic limbs getting blown off? Well, you could die, but if you modify your genome for rapid regeneration you just need to make sure you never dip too low and you're golden.
No more Starship Trooper SciFi plz. The future can be more than "today, with chrome and neon equipment".
I've been holding onto a rediculously good idea for a while now....
The MMO is basically based off two factions hating each other.
PvP is only available at early levels thought the following mechanic (*later levels bring more options)
Early PvP mechanic:
High lvl characters are allowed to "take over control" of lower-lvl zones. They are given 1-1 player control over a set choice of NPCs that are the leaders of the usual farm mobs.
(*IE they become the King Kobold of a low lvl Kobold grinding area)
They are allowed to wage a Strat RPG like battle against any appropriately lvl'd players. They are able to control multiple low lvl frunkies as needed. (*all on the usual respawn timers)
The King Kobold is limited in exactly how they can engage the player (they just can't run out of their castle and slaughter anyone who approaches...but they can control the NPCs on the approach to the castle within a leeshed boundry)
Basiclaly the zone announces the presence of the player who is allowed to non-obscenely taunt with zone wide messages (report mech inplace for problems/obscenity). the lowbies are encouraged to actually engage by doubling or trippleing rewards and a "Dead or alive" wanted quest for the King Kobold.
The high lvl player is penalized slightly if he chooses to just let noobie friends farm him, yet rewarded in the faction and able to take control of more zones if he successfully holds out the King Kobold and his forces against the noobies
The best part about this, is allowing the controling players the ability with one-days notice to game GMs (auto form) to script NPC speach, quest text, and zone-wide announcements along with pick which NPC he's assualting with.
(*OMG its a Zombie invastion...OMG its an orc invastion, OMG the pallidins are invading our den of sin, *)
The hardest problems in this game would be keeping enough level appropriate players around in a zone AND meanwhile limiting the access to the invasion mechanic to the better higher lvl players at it. If that part could be handled well this thing is pure gold.
Frankly all someone needs to do is take the Homeworld space concept and make that into an MMO, maybe with some mechanic of promotion within your faction letting you command bigger fleets etc.
I had an idea for a more pulpy style MMO. Like say, Tomb Raider/Indiana Jones/whatever. It would work like a normal MMO, but with more realistic combat. Maybe an MMOFPS. But it would be structured like the opening of Final Fantasy 7 (keep going with me, here) and you're stuck in a big city. This city would be huge and full of zones all on its own. All different kinds of NPCs and neighborhoods. I'm imagining a sort of post-apocalyptic setting, with people hanging onto the past in blown out skyscrapers, people trying to forge new lives out of the remnants by farms on the outlying lands, etc.
The main zones around the city would all be detailed, right? But after a certain point you'd have to take transportation to get places. (My setting involves said apocalypse happening around the depression, so trains are key.) You'd be able to interact with the train engineers to get yourself tickets, passes and whatnot. And once you get to the destinations, they're all outposts. Since the majority of life is left back in the city. All the terrain outside the objective would be instanced and randomized. You would have to find the places you were looking for. Once you got to the objective you would enter another instance and literally have to compete with other characters to finish your goal. Quests could be competitions. (That's why I said Indiana Jones or Tomb Raider.) You couldn't just complete them all regardless.
But then, I imagined this with a Guild Wars-esque levelling model. Where the level cap is fairly low, and you don't gain too much in power after that. I would prefer it to be all immaterial rewards like reputations and things like that. I also imagined a bounty system to help you deal with rivals and stuff.
In addition, each character would have a profession and instanced housing in the main city. These professions would earn the character a base income and give them different trade skills. You could be a doctor, engineer, adventurer and other such ideas. The doctor would have access to medicinal skills to help save lives, since combat would be alot more harsh. Adventurers would be able to make maps or something similar.
I'm actually working on making this a sort of table-top RPG for my friends to play. I have a bunch of material on it, and I'm working on my own rules system instead of adapting White Wolf or DnD.
Other than that, what Glal said about Sci Fi stuff piques my interest.
I've only read the first page of this thread, so I apologize if my ideas have already been brought up.
I've wanted to make a futuristic space-based MMO for a long time. Eve is a step in the right direction, but here's my take on it:
There are three main factions:
1- The Corporation: basically what might happen if Microsoft and Google fused together, and started assimilating all the other corporations, until they became their own country. Everything is arranged on a corporate structure, and the leader is President and CEO. Tends to attract egomaniacs and sociopaths who are good at manipulating other people. The ultimate form of capitalism.
2- The Collective: people all have their brains connected through a network, Ã la The Borg, except that the network is imperfect, and doesn't completely submerge individual personalities. Tends to attract more docile people who don't like to rock the boat. The ultimate form of communism.
3- The Freedom Coalition: A loose organization of individuals who tend to overvalue personal freedoms, the rights of minorities, and human lives (in the views of the other two factions.) Also attracts egomaniacs, but these tend to be more of the "holier-than-thou" persuasion. The ultimate form of democracy and liberalism.
The core of the game is based around piloting spaceships of various sizes, from single-seat "fighters" and "scouts" to huge starships. The spaceship piloting component comes with the basic version of the game, and can be played for free, but only out in space (no atmospheric flight) and only within a certain part of the game world.
You can then buy new components that snap onto the main game, which let you:
- do atmospheric flights
- land on planets and explore on foot (and meet other characters, PC or NPC) as well as use basic hand weapons
- use more sophisticated weapons, such as advanced guns, and become either a mercenary or perhaps a soldier in some army
- drive ground vehicles
- dock with large space space stations and partake in the activities offered there
- start a business within the game world (where you can actually offer paid missions to other players, and buy and sell items or offer special services, including having other players as your employees.)
- unlock new areas of space or new, detailed planetary environments (or more impressive space constructs, such as a ringworld/halo or Dyson Sphere.
- an engineer module, where you can create new ship designs, modify existing ones, and eventually buy and sell ships (or be employed by another player with the business module)
...and so forth.
Each one of these components would be sold separately, but none except the starting one would be needed to get into the game.
Instead of leveling, there are two ways that players can progress: one is to amass a fortune (this will appeal more to the grinders) and another one is to attain notoriety for your actions within the game (notoriety can be positive or negative!) Also note that you can become notorious for your fortune, but you can't directly buy notoriety. And notoriety doesn't directly make you rich, but it can help.
One last thing is that each of the three factions will have some of their member player members doing missions that help research progress, so that the more players from one faction work towards that research, the faster some tech will become available to the players in that faction, so that the game on a particular server would seem to progress, change as more tech would get discovered.
There are a lot of good ideas in here, but I think the real change will come with procedural generation.
One of the real problems with MMOs is that the world doesn't feel alive. Dynamic worlds would go a long way to make you feel a part of something, especially if the player can impact the world. The trouble here is keeping a dynamic world from imploding. For instance, (and not to pick on Zombiemambo)
Life-like eco system - Plants grow. Animals migrate. Areas become inaccessible at times due to weather. Certain creatures could even go extinct.
Emphasis mine. It would be a terrific experiment in ecology if it were just responsible players like Zombiemambo, but this is a nightmare from the perspective of maintaining a playable server. Open to the general public, the entire server would be a lifeless wasteland within a month.
For my idea:
As far as MMO types, I'm eager for a fighting-game-like MMO. Imagine how much fun grinding would be if it played like Soul Calibur or Ninja Gaiden. Unfortunately, this is probably only feasible in countries like South Korea, who have fan-fucking-tastic Internet infrastructure.
As others have suggested, character progression would not be level based. Instead, you learn new moves, rather than massive stat gains. You learn basic skills as well as new techniques to add to your fighting style. You start with a few points to learn the basic slashes, punches and/or kicks, which unlocks other skills which have those as a pre-requisite. E.g.: in order to learn "Karate Reverse Ki Palm" you need to know "Karate Reverse Palm Punch" and "Inner Strength", which may in turn require "meditation".
Since you can balance moves based on fighting game and RPG conventions (stamina cost, magic cost, wind up, recovery, guard crush, etc.), even the basic moves can stay useful until the end game. A high-level dueller might use all basic techniques, since their stamina/magic costs are low enough to keep his strength up for the entire match.
Emphasis mine. It would be a terrific experiment in ecology if it were just responsible players like Zombiemambo, but this is a nightmare from the perspective of maintaining a playable server. Open to the general public, the entire server would be a lifeless wasteland within a month.
I think it could actually lead to a world where the players are careful to manage the resources they have if the ability to raise plants and animals is included. For example, while a lot of the wild life will quickly be depopulated, there will be players who have tamed those animals and now own them. This would prevent the animals from going extinct, and the value of those animals would give an incentive for people to raise those animals. Eventually, those animals will be quite common as a farm animal. If the developers add in the option of releasing these animals into the wild, they could even prevent the animal from going extinct in the wild, especially if there was an advantage to not farming animals. It would also help if players could buy in game property. This would let them protect their animals on the property, and any player who kills animals on the property would be considered a poacher.
I want an RPG where you are forced to play both good and evil. You get 1 hero that is good and one character that is bad. For every 3 hours that you play your good hero, you must play atleast 1 hour on your evil character. XP from playing either is shared by both.
Your good hero plays out like any other MMORPG.
Your evil character is not a single entity per say , but that's not to say they couldn't be. A low level evil charcater can choose to be a rat or spiderling or other such and as they level up they can choose to increase their numbers and play as a swarm of spiderlings. Or you could choose to become something a little more powerful but at the cost of having less numbers. So as the evil person progresses they have choices as to what they want to be all the time and can choose to play as a single, all-powerful evil dude or command a giant army of evil weaklings.
KingMoo on
![▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓]!
!!!!▓▓▓▓▓Gravy?▓▓▓▓▓!!!!!!
!!!!!!▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓!!!!!!!!!
of doom
Since you can balance moves based on fighting game and RPG conventions (stamina cost, magic cost, wind up, recovery, guard crush, etc.), even the basic moves can stay useful until the end game. A high-level dueller might use all basic techniques, since their stamina/magic costs are low enough to keep his strength up for the entire match.
templewulf, I have maintained this premise throughout my psuedo-development. I can't stand the idea of never using an attack again. I can't stand the idea of doing a basic fireball at level 9,000, either. I've always thought that there should be some tactical skill involved, but I want it to be alot more customizable than on a by-class basis. That's why I don't like WoW. For you to be an effective Hunter you need to have a good "shot rotation". What? A shot rotation? I had always hoped raiding was going to be more involved than that.
Edit: Oh yeah, as a wrestler/martial artist, I don't think the auto-attack thing makes sense. I want every action to do something. Whether that's set me up for a combo, or what, I don't know.
I see what you're saying, and I would really enjoy the game that you and Zombiemambo are talking about, but I don't think that'll happen were it open to the general public. People don't even take care of their own real planet; I doubt they'll reverse their attitudes for a virtual world. Don't get me wrong, if it were all populated by PAers with an interest in role-playing and virtual economies, it would be fantastic. I just don't think the average MMO player would leave any animal un-killed. You'd probably have to add in-game mechanisms to remind them that the animal could become extinct, and even then some jerk will kill them just to be a jerk.
Oh yeah, as a wrestler/martial artist, I don't think the auto-attack thing makes sense. I want every action to do something. Whether that's set me up for a combo, or what, I don't know.
I think auto-attack "makes sense" in that it's a very abstracted way to deal with fights. If you're not willing to deal with being that far removed from combat, I can't blame you. When you spend the majority of hundreds of hours on a MMORPG watching identical fights, it fatigues you.
I realize that my solution of playing it like a fighting game appeals only to the unique subset who enjoy both MMOs and fighting games, but it would solve a number of common problems.
EDIT:
I should also add that I agree with Toothy. It always bothered me in Diablo or Everquest when you get an ability (say, fireball) that is identical to previous abilities (firebolt) but with better damage/range. Why should I invest points in a lesser skill, then? That's basically wasted content.
You can create moves from smaller parts that you can learn/buy. (Much like the system in Ryzom) At character creation you can chose a variety of starting 'feats' that would determine blood line traits and affinities. The tutorial would consist of your years at the academy and last till you grow to a reasonable lvl (the equivalent of ~lvl 10 in WOW).
The game would have different ranked missions as quests. Ancient dungeons for rare artifacts and allow players to found new ninja cities and battle for control of influence that would determine what missions were available from that city.
I'm not sure if i'd make it like a tactical mmo or real time. I can see advantages to both.
There are a lot of good ideas in here, but I think the real change will come with procedural generation.
One of the real problems with MMOs is that the world doesn't feel alive. Dynamic worlds would go a long way to make you feel a part of something, especially if the player can impact the world. The trouble here is keeping a dynamic world from imploding. For instance, (and not to pick on Zombiemambo)
Life-like eco system - Plants grow. Animals migrate. Areas become inaccessible at times due to weather. Certain creatures could even go extinct.
Emphasis mine. It would be a terrific experiment in ecology if it were just responsible players like Zombiemambo, but this is a nightmare from the perspective of maintaining a playable server. Open to the general public, the entire server would be a lifeless wasteland within a month.
Yes, I took that into account. Three solutions -
1. Only certain species could go extinct. Like dragons, or unicorns. Things that are already in danger of going extinct anyway.
2. It would be very, very, very hard to wipe them from the planet. Players would actually have to try to kill them off, and it would take many guilds to do it.
3. Server resets. Every three months or so, the ecology is completely reset, and all damage done reverted, but players get to keep their stats and gear and all of that.
EDIT:
I should also add that I agree with Toothy. It always bothered me in Diablo or Everquest when you get an ability (say, fireball) that is identical to previous abilities (firebolt) but with better damage/range. Why should I invest points in a lesser skill, then? That's basically wasted content.
D2 updates resolved this with 'synergies'. Points in lower skills gave bonuses to higher skills.
Tostitos on
The internet gives me a native +2 bonus in Craft (Disturbing Mental Image).
If we're getting into games with functional ecologies, how about a game that's focused on genetic manipulation? Animals would wander around the world eating things and breeding, but you would have the ability to capture them and train or breed them, and possibly eventually directly modify their genes? With a bit of effort you could create beasts that are capable of massive slaughter, but you would have to put more effort into training them and keeping them fed. Creatures could often escape or being released into the wilderness, but their survival would be dependent upon whether they could find a niche to fill. A species could easily go extinct and be gone forever, but eventually another one would evolve into its place or be created.
You can create moves from smaller parts that you can learn/buy. (Much like the system in Ryzom) At character creation you can chose a variety of starting 'feats' that would determine blood line traits and affinities. The tutorial would consist of your years at the academy and last till you grow to a reasonable lvl (the equivalent of ~lvl 10 in WOW).
The game would have different ranked missions as quests. Ancient dungeons for rare artifacts and allow players to found new ninja cities and battle for control of influence that would determine what missions were available from that city.
I'm not sure if i'd make it like a tactical mmo or real time. I can see advantages to both.
My friends and I have envisioned a different kind of Naruto game. In character creation, you choose your home village. This limits your elemental alignment and the groups of skills you'll be able to learn. You'll still be able to learn attacks of other elements and combination techniques, but you'll obviously make quicker progress in your assigned element according to village.
From there you start out doing missions for your village according to rank. After B level you can take missions outside the town and start traveling the world and to other villages. How many missions are available in other ninja villages would be based on your village's current relationship with your home village, and each player can affect that affinity through his or her actions (doing each others' missions makes them like each other, attacking people from their village makes them hate each other, etc).
We had a lot more, but I forget most of it. I thought it was a pretty cool concept though, and would give a really cool view of the world since you could start in the Mist, or Sand, or Stone villages.
Edit: now I remember!
You not only chose your starting village, but you also chose your starting clan/family, which affects which tree of techniques you learn. Choose Aburame for Bug, etc. You could choose the puppet family in the Sand, for example. Becoming a medical ninja would require a pledge to a certain clan, and would limit how many offensive techniques you could learn, replacing them with healing and buffing techniques.
I see what you're saying, and I would really enjoy the game that you and Zombiemambo are talking about, but I don't think that'll happen were it open to the general public. People don't even take care of their own real planet; I doubt they'll reverse their attitudes for a virtual world. Don't get me wrong, if it were all populated by PAers with an interest in role-playing and virtual economies, it would be fantastic. I just don't think the average MMO player would leave any animal un-killed. You'd probably have to add in-game mechanisms to remind them that the animal could become extinct, and even then some jerk will kill them just to be a jerk.
You can say the same thing about players in games with PVP. If poachers were treated the same as people who steal from other players in MMORPGs with stealing. The killing of animals in wild areas could be reduced by making it so that players couldn't easily kill the animals. Most animals are either really hard to kill without some training. This would make it so that the only people who would be a problem are the the normal douchebags, but they are a problem in every MMORPG.
I was directed here by my partner, after he reported nine pages of ideas that our great game not only had, but has a three year head start on implementation.
I have spent countless hours attempting to explain the game, and even more attempting to train new coders, and I'm not going to do it again and certainly not on this board. So in one sentance I will explain the game.
All of the ideas posted here by the initial poster, including many of the innovative ideas replied by others--all 100% of them--are current ideas, and half of them are already implemented.
D&D players can more quickly grasp the entirety of this game by simple words, other people simply cannot fathom the entirety without experiencing it. Take D&D 3.5, and imagine 99.9% of it coded to accuracy. Yes, the complex grappling system, yes, metamagic casting, COMPLETE ACCURACY. Flush your doubts down the toilet.
I didn't come here to tease you all, so down to the point, we could use more coders, always.
Most of all, coders that know C and are beyond the intermediate level. They must completey understand datastructures, mappings, complex inheritence, overloading functions, mastery of parsing strings, recursion, object-oriented coding and understanding, file input/output, and artificial intelligence theory knowledge a plus.
Also helpful, coders who know interfacing and can create a GUI. This will cause us to launch Alpha more quickly if we can get a couple of these coders.
Economics graduates or geniuses. PhD's and Masters even better. We need professional input on how to structure the universe's economy. You'll be dealing with regional economies and the effects of extradimensional travel and the impact on economies when materials are passed between the planes.
Poison experts. Must understand the differences between injested, contact, injury, and inhaled poisons. Particular knokwledge wanted on crafting poisons and the materials needed.
Psychology and Artificial Intelligence Theory experts. At the least, must understand the id, ego, and superego because we intend to partition monster AI on that level at the very basic. Monsters will be hunting, laying ambushes, traps, expanding and spreading to other lairs, manipulating inventory, selling, buying, crafting, parleying, using formations in combat, calling for backup, casting spells, etc etc.
If you wish to assist, you'll be interviewed if you contact russianenforcer9 on AIM.
I'm predicting a bunch of questions on the game itself, so here's the website.
Because we still haven't coded a GUI, and we're still pondering between 2d flat and 3d graphics engine, the game is loaded onto a standard MUD interface, but it still uses the 3d gridded system in DnD, and thats long been coded.
D&D players can more quickly grasp the entirety of this game by simple words, other people simply cannot fathom the entirety without experiencing it. Take D&D 3.5, and imagine 99.9% of it coded to accuracy. Yes, the complex grappling system, yes, metamagic casting, COMPLETE ACCURACY. Flush your doubts down the toilet.
Well there goes any hope of balance right down the toilet.
I see your website mentions the need for artwork for some of your classes and races. I'm no professional but I have a decent amount of talent at that sort of thing. If you want I can whip something up for you and you can decide if you like it.
Shadowbane was the closest thing to my dream MMO ever...to bad it had so many problems.
Player built cities? CHECK
Open ganking on anyone? CHECK
...even your own guild/faction/whatever? CHECK
Ability to steal anything in a players bag at any time? CHECK
Sieges? CHECK
Super fast and easy leveling to highest teir? CHECK
Multifaceted and customizable classes through runes? CHECK
To bad the graphics where crap, cities were hard and boring to upkeep, and general performance issues.
Still, it was a great start to my dream MMO...
P.S. That shit is free now a days.
PaperPlate on
Minecraft: PAPRPL8
League of Legends (your friendly neighborhood support): PAPRPL8
I enjoy the current model of MMO's with minor tweaks and fixes to alleviate the boredom associated with "downtime" that seems all but required. I'm thinking of WoW mostly when I offer these new and insightful suggestions, but it could apply to any current-gen MMO worth anything.
My suggestions: Rest EXP. Good idea! Let me log out anywhere, though. Quick leveling alternate characters - make an option that if you have a max-level character, your EXP rates are doubled for the new characters (totally optional to do so). Respec costs - Remove the costs at max-level to promote PvP *and* PvE play whenever you feel like. I don't want to farm for gold to participate in another aspect of the game. Unique character classes - WoW has a pretty good balance of playstyles in their classes, and while they somewhat overlap, playing a Holy Priest is much different than playing a Resto Shaman, for instance. PvP - Balanced from the get-go! I want to be able to level my guy doing PvP exclusively if I so choose, as well. I'm waiting for Warhammer to see if they've done PvP right, but I've got high hopes. Guild Wars also had a really cool "pick 8 skills and make your deck" type of system that I really enjoy as well (but GW does little else correctly in my books) for the metagaming and varied strategies you have to employ. Guild vs Guild combat is really cool also. Never make us pay for power - Don't let people obtain the best stuff through paying you real life monies. That sucks. However, I'm all for paying premiums for shinies, pets, and cosmetics. Balance travel time - WoW is doing it right in that you have to spend SOME time travelling, but the balance isn't there. There is way too much traveling and mucking around that is NOT fun. Guild Wars is doing it right in that there's no traveling downtime. Travel time really does make the world seem bigger, though, so strike a balance or provide in-game entertainment while we watch our guys fly from town to town etc. Minigames - I'd have loved a designated "casino" to gamble for in-game gold or tokens or something. Poker, slots, wack-a-mole, rhythm game/music creation, ANYTHING to break the monotony once in a while. Allow us to play chess while we are LFG, and I'd suck yo &#$%. Raiding - I like to see this as the definitive end-game content, but one should also be able to raid/instance through the game to max level as well. Expansions - Get rid of them and release the content as patches, but since that won't ever happen, allow us to quickly get to the "old" max level (double EXP or something) so that we can play with everyone else. I'm thinking of WoW and why I recently quit: Azeroth was deserted and I was solo through the entire game because nobody ran low level instances, nobody ran low level quests, nobody World PvP'ed, nobody was ANYWHERE besides in the outlands. Blah. Leveling speed - WoW has the pace mastered, IMO.
Anyways, I could go on forever, but those are the big things I would like to change with current MMO's (WoW in particular - great game, a COUPLE major barriers for me).
If we're getting into games with functional ecologies, how about a game that's focused on genetic manipulation? Animals would wander around the world eating things and breeding, but you would have the ability to capture them and train or breed them, and possibly eventually directly modify their genes? With a bit of effort you could create beasts that are capable of massive slaughter, but you would have to put more effort into training them and keeping them fed. Creatures could often escape or being released into the wilderness, but their survival would be dependent upon whether they could find a niche to fill. A species could easily go extinct and be gone forever, but eventually another one would evolve into its place or be created.
I totally thought of a Jurassic Park MMO when you said this. Maybe not the Jurassic Park IP, but dinosaurs wrecking people's shit in Los Angeles or something. Dammit, I'd play this if it were GTA with dinosaurs.
D&D players can more quickly grasp the entirety of this game by simple words, other people simply cannot fathom the entirety without experiencing it. Take D&D 3.5, and imagine 99.9% of it coded to accuracy. Yes, the complex grappling system, yes, metamagic casting, COMPLETE ACCURACY. Flush your doubts down the toilet.
I'm not much on D&D myself, but that takes an impressive amount of dedication.
Most of all, coders that know C and are beyond the intermediate level. They must completey understand datastructures, mappings, complex inheritence
C doesn't have inheritance. You might want to have a programmer gloss over your ad postings before you hit submit. I'm guessing you probably just forgot the "++", but some people might pass you by for a thing like that.
Psychology and Artificial Intelligence Theory experts. At the least, must understand the id, ego, and superego because we intend to partition monster AI on that level at the very basic.
Taken as is, this sounds like you're overcomplicating things. Not to mention that a good deal of people think Freud was sort of a quack. Traditional software development lays out the requirements of what it ought to do first, then implementation details come later. It doesn't matter what your creatures' brains look like as long as they do what the designer expects of them.
Because we still haven't coded a GUI, and we're still pondering between 2d flat and 3d graphics engine, the game is loaded onto a standard MUD interface, but it still uses the 3d gridded system in DnD, and thats long been coded.
If you're going to put D&D amounts of content into this game, you probably ought to go 3D. Each model requires a greater time investment, but it's much easier to reuse 3D assets, especially for animation.
I totally thought of a Jurassic Park MMO when you said this. Maybe not the Jurassic Park IP, but dinosaurs wrecking people's shit in Los Angeles or something. Dammit, I'd play this if it were Shadow of the motherfucking Colossus with dinosaurs.
My suggestions: Quick leveling alternate characters - make an option that if you have a max-level character, your EXP rates are doubled for the new characters (totally optional to do so).
This is actually a bad idea for some MMO's- for example, in DAOC once you had a 50th level character you could level your alts straight to 20. Which was cool and all, but it really fucked over anyone new trying to get into the game-when you came in you really didnt have that many people to adventure with, because most people /levelled to 20 and completely ignored the new players. In the end it really kind of fucked over the community.
Anyway, some things I'd really like to see in an MMO-
Some fucking customization options for appearances. City of Heroes had the right idea, but the problem with that game I had was that you looked the same all the time(might've been changed, I havent played since release, so) I'm more talking hairstyles, facial features, how tall your character is, stuff like that. I get annoyed with MMO's when I start and look like another player.
The biggest one for me, though, is the crafting. I want to have complete control over the look and design of my crafted items- I want different weapon types with a lot of different weapon models, so I can make, say, my broadsword look awesome. You could have different models open up at different tiers of item creation to make it seem like you're actually progressing, too-say you can make copper and bronze weapons, for example. The copper being the lowest tier, you can only have 4 different types of models for a copper broadsword, but when you get to bronze you can make 5, and iron 6, and so on. I want my player crafted items to be completely customizable.
Anyway, that's my dream.
edit: Oh, and god damn it. Put some fucking love into your animations, like KOTOR2 Levels of love into your combat animations. If I'm killing goblins for awhile I tend to get bored with my character when he's doing the same goddamn two or three animations over and over.
Shadowbane was the closest thing to my dream MMO ever...to bad it had so many problems.
To bad the graphics where crap, cities were hard and boring to upkeep, and general performance issues.
Yeah, my favorite part was their "hey, our game isn't using 3d cards to accelerate graphics....whoops" statement that came after the game had been out for like two years.
Posts
no, u
You want to improve accuracy? Sure, just buy a helmet with an on-board targetting system. Or, install bionic eyes. Or, replace your eyes with organic superhuman eyes. You want to go faster? Get a bike, but forget using it in combat. Or, install cybernetic legs and hope noone tosses an EMP grenade if you don't have proper shielding installed. Or, replace them with manufactured digitigrade legs for the lolfurry factor. Heck, install extra limbs, an extra eye, replace lumbs with weapons, I don't care, just do something interesting.
Hey, how about crafting? Different tiers for human, metahuman and cyborg body parts. Design regrowth nanites or construct cybernetic limbs.
Factions? "We love humans!" "We hate cyborgs!" "No shirt, no 3rd eye, no service!". Maybe a diplomacy type ability/minigame that allows you to take quests from factions that would ordinarily not be available. Or perhaps a holographic disguise so they don't notice you're a brain inside a metallic shell?
You want pets? Sure, build yourself a robotic army, just make sure you have the control system powerful enough to allow you to use them. Heck, build a large assault bot and sit on its shoulder as it rains destruction on those around you.
Stealth? Better avoid those EMP bursts. Or a more Deus Ex like system, where you can hide from either organic or electronic sensors, but not both.
If brute strength is your passion look no further. Either replace your limbs or pump yourself so full of drugs you won't even care about that gaping wound in your side. Bionic limbs getting blown off? Who cares, just get them repaired. Organic limbs getting blown off? Well, you could die, but if you modify your genome for rapid regeneration you just need to make sure you never dip too low and you're golden.
No more Starship Trooper SciFi plz. The future can be more than "today, with chrome and neon equipment".
The MMO is basically based off two factions hating each other.
PvP is only available at early levels thought the following mechanic (*later levels bring more options)
Early PvP mechanic:
High lvl characters are allowed to "take over control" of lower-lvl zones. They are given 1-1 player control over a set choice of NPCs that are the leaders of the usual farm mobs.
(*IE they become the King Kobold of a low lvl Kobold grinding area)
They are allowed to wage a Strat RPG like battle against any appropriately lvl'd players. They are able to control multiple low lvl frunkies as needed. (*all on the usual respawn timers)
The King Kobold is limited in exactly how they can engage the player (they just can't run out of their castle and slaughter anyone who approaches...but they can control the NPCs on the approach to the castle within a leeshed boundry)
Basiclaly the zone announces the presence of the player who is allowed to non-obscenely taunt with zone wide messages (report mech inplace for problems/obscenity). the lowbies are encouraged to actually engage by doubling or trippleing rewards and a "Dead or alive" wanted quest for the King Kobold.
The high lvl player is penalized slightly if he chooses to just let noobie friends farm him, yet rewarded in the faction and able to take control of more zones if he successfully holds out the King Kobold and his forces against the noobies
The best part about this, is allowing the controling players the ability with one-days notice to game GMs (auto form) to script NPC speach, quest text, and zone-wide announcements along with pick which NPC he's assualting with.
(*OMG its a Zombie invastion...OMG its an orc invastion, OMG the pallidins are invading our den of sin, *)
The hardest problems in this game would be keeping enough level appropriate players around in a zone AND meanwhile limiting the access to the invasion mechanic to the better higher lvl players at it. If that part could be handled well this thing is pure gold.
The main zones around the city would all be detailed, right? But after a certain point you'd have to take transportation to get places. (My setting involves said apocalypse happening around the depression, so trains are key.) You'd be able to interact with the train engineers to get yourself tickets, passes and whatnot. And once you get to the destinations, they're all outposts. Since the majority of life is left back in the city. All the terrain outside the objective would be instanced and randomized. You would have to find the places you were looking for. Once you got to the objective you would enter another instance and literally have to compete with other characters to finish your goal. Quests could be competitions. (That's why I said Indiana Jones or Tomb Raider.) You couldn't just complete them all regardless.
But then, I imagined this with a Guild Wars-esque levelling model. Where the level cap is fairly low, and you don't gain too much in power after that. I would prefer it to be all immaterial rewards like reputations and things like that. I also imagined a bounty system to help you deal with rivals and stuff.
In addition, each character would have a profession and instanced housing in the main city. These professions would earn the character a base income and give them different trade skills. You could be a doctor, engineer, adventurer and other such ideas. The doctor would have access to medicinal skills to help save lives, since combat would be alot more harsh. Adventurers would be able to make maps or something similar.
I'm actually working on making this a sort of table-top RPG for my friends to play. I have a bunch of material on it, and I'm working on my own rules system instead of adapting White Wolf or DnD.
Other than that, what Glal said about Sci Fi stuff piques my interest.
I've wanted to make a futuristic space-based MMO for a long time. Eve is a step in the right direction, but here's my take on it:
There are three main factions:
1- The Corporation: basically what might happen if Microsoft and Google fused together, and started assimilating all the other corporations, until they became their own country. Everything is arranged on a corporate structure, and the leader is President and CEO. Tends to attract egomaniacs and sociopaths who are good at manipulating other people. The ultimate form of capitalism.
2- The Collective: people all have their brains connected through a network, Ã la The Borg, except that the network is imperfect, and doesn't completely submerge individual personalities. Tends to attract more docile people who don't like to rock the boat. The ultimate form of communism.
3- The Freedom Coalition: A loose organization of individuals who tend to overvalue personal freedoms, the rights of minorities, and human lives (in the views of the other two factions.) Also attracts egomaniacs, but these tend to be more of the "holier-than-thou" persuasion. The ultimate form of democracy and liberalism.
The core of the game is based around piloting spaceships of various sizes, from single-seat "fighters" and "scouts" to huge starships. The spaceship piloting component comes with the basic version of the game, and can be played for free, but only out in space (no atmospheric flight) and only within a certain part of the game world.
You can then buy new components that snap onto the main game, which let you:
- do atmospheric flights
- land on planets and explore on foot (and meet other characters, PC or NPC) as well as use basic hand weapons
- use more sophisticated weapons, such as advanced guns, and become either a mercenary or perhaps a soldier in some army
- drive ground vehicles
- dock with large space space stations and partake in the activities offered there
- start a business within the game world (where you can actually offer paid missions to other players, and buy and sell items or offer special services, including having other players as your employees.)
- unlock new areas of space or new, detailed planetary environments (or more impressive space constructs, such as a ringworld/halo or Dyson Sphere.
- an engineer module, where you can create new ship designs, modify existing ones, and eventually buy and sell ships (or be employed by another player with the business module)
...and so forth.
Each one of these components would be sold separately, but none except the starting one would be needed to get into the game.
Instead of leveling, there are two ways that players can progress: one is to amass a fortune (this will appeal more to the grinders) and another one is to attain notoriety for your actions within the game (notoriety can be positive or negative!) Also note that you can become notorious for your fortune, but you can't directly buy notoriety. And notoriety doesn't directly make you rich, but it can help.
One last thing is that each of the three factions will have some of their member player members doing missions that help research progress, so that the more players from one faction work towards that research, the faster some tech will become available to the players in that faction, so that the game on a particular server would seem to progress, change as more tech would get discovered.
Check out my new blog: http://50wordstories.ca
Also check out my old game design blog: http://stealmygamedesigns.blogspot.com
One of the real problems with MMOs is that the world doesn't feel alive. Dynamic worlds would go a long way to make you feel a part of something, especially if the player can impact the world. The trouble here is keeping a dynamic world from imploding. For instance, (and not to pick on Zombiemambo) Emphasis mine. It would be a terrific experiment in ecology if it were just responsible players like Zombiemambo, but this is a nightmare from the perspective of maintaining a playable server. Open to the general public, the entire server would be a lifeless wasteland within a month.
For my idea:
As far as MMO types, I'm eager for a fighting-game-like MMO. Imagine how much fun grinding would be if it played like Soul Calibur or Ninja Gaiden. Unfortunately, this is probably only feasible in countries like South Korea, who have fan-fucking-tastic Internet infrastructure.
As others have suggested, character progression would not be level based. Instead, you learn new moves, rather than massive stat gains. You learn basic skills as well as new techniques to add to your fighting style. You start with a few points to learn the basic slashes, punches and/or kicks, which unlocks other skills which have those as a pre-requisite. E.g.: in order to learn "Karate Reverse Ki Palm" you need to know "Karate Reverse Palm Punch" and "Inner Strength", which may in turn require "meditation".
Since you can balance moves based on fighting game and RPG conventions (stamina cost, magic cost, wind up, recovery, guard crush, etc.), even the basic moves can stay useful until the end game. A high-level dueller might use all basic techniques, since their stamina/magic costs are low enough to keep his strength up for the entire match.
Your good hero plays out like any other MMORPG.
Your evil character is not a single entity per say , but that's not to say they couldn't be. A low level evil charcater can choose to be a rat or spiderling or other such and as they level up they can choose to increase their numbers and play as a swarm of spiderlings. Or you could choose to become something a little more powerful but at the cost of having less numbers. So as the evil person progresses they have choices as to what they want to be all the time and can choose to play as a single, all-powerful evil dude or command a giant army of evil weaklings.
!!!!▓▓▓▓▓Gravy?▓▓▓▓▓!!!!!!
!!!!!!▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓!!!!!!!!!
of doom
templewulf, I have maintained this premise throughout my psuedo-development. I can't stand the idea of never using an attack again. I can't stand the idea of doing a basic fireball at level 9,000, either. I've always thought that there should be some tactical skill involved, but I want it to be alot more customizable than on a by-class basis. That's why I don't like WoW. For you to be an effective Hunter you need to have a good "shot rotation". What? A shot rotation? I had always hoped raiding was going to be more involved than that.
Edit: Oh yeah, as a wrestler/martial artist, I don't think the auto-attack thing makes sense. I want every action to do something. Whether that's set me up for a combo, or what, I don't know.
I think auto-attack "makes sense" in that it's a very abstracted way to deal with fights. If you're not willing to deal with being that far removed from combat, I can't blame you. When you spend the majority of hundreds of hours on a MMORPG watching identical fights, it fatigues you.
I realize that my solution of playing it like a fighting game appeals only to the unique subset who enjoy both MMOs and fighting games, but it would solve a number of common problems.
EDIT:
I should also add that I agree with Toothy. It always bothered me in Diablo or Everquest when you get an ability (say, fireball) that is identical to previous abilities (firebolt) but with better damage/range. Why should I invest points in a lesser skill, then? That's basically wasted content.
You can create moves from smaller parts that you can learn/buy. (Much like the system in Ryzom) At character creation you can chose a variety of starting 'feats' that would determine blood line traits and affinities. The tutorial would consist of your years at the academy and last till you grow to a reasonable lvl (the equivalent of ~lvl 10 in WOW).
The game would have different ranked missions as quests. Ancient dungeons for rare artifacts and allow players to found new ninja cities and battle for control of influence that would determine what missions were available from that city.
I'm not sure if i'd make it like a tactical mmo or real time. I can see advantages to both.
Pearl: 3780-6330-8673
Yes, I took that into account. Three solutions -
1. Only certain species could go extinct. Like dragons, or unicorns. Things that are already in danger of going extinct anyway.
2. It would be very, very, very hard to wipe them from the planet. Players would actually have to try to kill them off, and it would take many guilds to do it.
3. Server resets. Every three months or so, the ecology is completely reset, and all damage done reverted, but players get to keep their stats and gear and all of that.
D2 updates resolved this with 'synergies'. Points in lower skills gave bonuses to higher skills.
My friends and I have envisioned a different kind of Naruto game. In character creation, you choose your home village. This limits your elemental alignment and the groups of skills you'll be able to learn. You'll still be able to learn attacks of other elements and combination techniques, but you'll obviously make quicker progress in your assigned element according to village.
From there you start out doing missions for your village according to rank. After B level you can take missions outside the town and start traveling the world and to other villages. How many missions are available in other ninja villages would be based on your village's current relationship with your home village, and each player can affect that affinity through his or her actions (doing each others' missions makes them like each other, attacking people from their village makes them hate each other, etc).
We had a lot more, but I forget most of it. I thought it was a pretty cool concept though, and would give a really cool view of the world since you could start in the Mist, or Sand, or Stone villages.
Edit: now I remember!
You not only chose your starting village, but you also chose your starting clan/family, which affects which tree of techniques you learn. Choose Aburame for Bug, etc. You could choose the puppet family in the Sand, for example. Becoming a medical ninja would require a pledge to a certain clan, and would limit how many offensive techniques you could learn, replacing them with healing and buffing techniques.
or Brawl. 4854.6102.3895 Name: NU..
Yes. It's a poor game with a decent concept.
I have spent countless hours attempting to explain the game, and even more attempting to train new coders, and I'm not going to do it again and certainly not on this board. So in one sentance I will explain the game.
All of the ideas posted here by the initial poster, including many of the innovative ideas replied by others--all 100% of them--are current ideas, and half of them are already implemented.
D&D players can more quickly grasp the entirety of this game by simple words, other people simply cannot fathom the entirety without experiencing it. Take D&D 3.5, and imagine 99.9% of it coded to accuracy. Yes, the complex grappling system, yes, metamagic casting, COMPLETE ACCURACY. Flush your doubts down the toilet.
I didn't come here to tease you all, so down to the point, we could use more coders, always.
Most of all, coders that know C and are beyond the intermediate level. They must completey understand datastructures, mappings, complex inheritence, overloading functions, mastery of parsing strings, recursion, object-oriented coding and understanding, file input/output, and artificial intelligence theory knowledge a plus.
Also helpful, coders who know interfacing and can create a GUI. This will cause us to launch Alpha more quickly if we can get a couple of these coders.
Economics graduates or geniuses. PhD's and Masters even better. We need professional input on how to structure the universe's economy. You'll be dealing with regional economies and the effects of extradimensional travel and the impact on economies when materials are passed between the planes.
Poison experts. Must understand the differences between injested, contact, injury, and inhaled poisons. Particular knokwledge wanted on crafting poisons and the materials needed.
Psychology and Artificial Intelligence Theory experts. At the least, must understand the id, ego, and superego because we intend to partition monster AI on that level at the very basic. Monsters will be hunting, laying ambushes, traps, expanding and spreading to other lairs, manipulating inventory, selling, buying, crafting, parleying, using formations in combat, calling for backup, casting spells, etc etc.
If you wish to assist, you'll be interviewed if you contact russianenforcer9 on AIM.
I'm predicting a bunch of questions on the game itself, so here's the website.
Because we still haven't coded a GUI, and we're still pondering between 2d flat and 3d graphics engine, the game is loaded onto a standard MUD interface, but it still uses the 3d gridded system in DnD, and thats long been coded.
http://afalconi.genesismuds.com Click ABOUT THE GAME.
The game is locked, you will not gain access without communicating with my associate or myself.
Well there goes any hope of balance right down the toilet.
We're having a grand ol' time!
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=30499
It's not the prettiest/polished game (as it's free), but it's the most fun I've had in an MMO pretty much ever.
I see your website mentions the need for artwork for some of your classes and races. I'm no professional but I have a decent amount of talent at that sort of thing. If you want I can whip something up for you and you can decide if you like it.
Player built cities? CHECK
Open ganking on anyone? CHECK
...even your own guild/faction/whatever? CHECK
Ability to steal anything in a players bag at any time? CHECK
Sieges? CHECK
Super fast and easy leveling to highest teir? CHECK
Multifaceted and customizable classes through runes? CHECK
To bad the graphics where crap, cities were hard and boring to upkeep, and general performance issues.
Still, it was a great start to my dream MMO...
P.S. That shit is free now a days.
League of Legends (your friendly neighborhood support): PAPRPL8
http://www.aschulze.net/ultima/stories7/story188.htm
Stories like these are pretty awesome.
Short version: Undead and other monsters invade cities and villages while players unite to drive them out.
My suggestions:
Rest EXP. Good idea! Let me log out anywhere, though.
Quick leveling alternate characters - make an option that if you have a max-level character, your EXP rates are doubled for the new characters (totally optional to do so).
Respec costs - Remove the costs at max-level to promote PvP *and* PvE play whenever you feel like. I don't want to farm for gold to participate in another aspect of the game.
Unique character classes - WoW has a pretty good balance of playstyles in their classes, and while they somewhat overlap, playing a Holy Priest is much different than playing a Resto Shaman, for instance.
PvP - Balanced from the get-go! I want to be able to level my guy doing PvP exclusively if I so choose, as well. I'm waiting for Warhammer to see if they've done PvP right, but I've got high hopes. Guild Wars also had a really cool "pick 8 skills and make your deck" type of system that I really enjoy as well (but GW does little else correctly in my books) for the metagaming and varied strategies you have to employ. Guild vs Guild combat is really cool also.
Never make us pay for power - Don't let people obtain the best stuff through paying you real life monies. That sucks. However, I'm all for paying premiums for shinies, pets, and cosmetics.
Balance travel time - WoW is doing it right in that you have to spend SOME time travelling, but the balance isn't there. There is way too much traveling and mucking around that is NOT fun. Guild Wars is doing it right in that there's no traveling downtime. Travel time really does make the world seem bigger, though, so strike a balance or provide in-game entertainment while we watch our guys fly from town to town etc.
Minigames - I'd have loved a designated "casino" to gamble for in-game gold or tokens or something. Poker, slots, wack-a-mole, rhythm game/music creation, ANYTHING to break the monotony once in a while. Allow us to play chess while we are LFG, and I'd suck yo &#$%.
Raiding - I like to see this as the definitive end-game content, but one should also be able to raid/instance through the game to max level as well.
Expansions - Get rid of them and release the content as patches, but since that won't ever happen, allow us to quickly get to the "old" max level (double EXP or something) so that we can play with everyone else. I'm thinking of WoW and why I recently quit: Azeroth was deserted and I was solo through the entire game because nobody ran low level instances, nobody ran low level quests, nobody World PvP'ed, nobody was ANYWHERE besides in the outlands. Blah.
Leveling speed - WoW has the pace mastered, IMO.
Anyways, I could go on forever, but those are the big things I would like to change with current MMO's (WoW in particular - great game, a COUPLE major barriers for me).
I totally thought of a Jurassic Park MMO when you said this. Maybe not the Jurassic Park IP, but dinosaurs wrecking people's shit in Los Angeles or something. Dammit, I'd play this if it were GTA with dinosaurs.
Worked very, very well for WoW.
C doesn't have inheritance. You might want to have a programmer gloss over your ad postings before you hit submit. I'm guessing you probably just forgot the "++", but some people might pass you by for a thing like that.
Taken as is, this sounds like you're overcomplicating things. Not to mention that a good deal of people think Freud was sort of a quack. Traditional software development lays out the requirements of what it ought to do first, then implementation details come later. It doesn't matter what your creatures' brains look like as long as they do what the designer expects of them.
If you're going to put D&D amounts of content into this game, you probably ought to go 3D. Each model requires a greater time investment, but it's much easier to reuse 3D assets, especially for animation.
This is actually a bad idea for some MMO's- for example, in DAOC once you had a 50th level character you could level your alts straight to 20. Which was cool and all, but it really fucked over anyone new trying to get into the game-when you came in you really didnt have that many people to adventure with, because most people /levelled to 20 and completely ignored the new players. In the end it really kind of fucked over the community.
Anyway, some things I'd really like to see in an MMO-
Some fucking customization options for appearances. City of Heroes had the right idea, but the problem with that game I had was that you looked the same all the time(might've been changed, I havent played since release, so) I'm more talking hairstyles, facial features, how tall your character is, stuff like that. I get annoyed with MMO's when I start and look like another player.
The biggest one for me, though, is the crafting. I want to have complete control over the look and design of my crafted items- I want different weapon types with a lot of different weapon models, so I can make, say, my broadsword look awesome. You could have different models open up at different tiers of item creation to make it seem like you're actually progressing, too-say you can make copper and bronze weapons, for example. The copper being the lowest tier, you can only have 4 different types of models for a copper broadsword, but when you get to bronze you can make 5, and iron 6, and so on. I want my player crafted items to be completely customizable.
Anyway, that's my dream.
edit: Oh, and god damn it. Put some fucking love into your animations, like KOTOR2 Levels of love into your combat animations. If I'm killing goblins for awhile I tend to get bored with my character when he's doing the same goddamn two or three animations over and over.
Yeah, my favorite part was their "hey, our game isn't using 3d cards to accelerate graphics....whoops" statement that came after the game had been out for like two years.
We are talking about innovation though, not how to create the biggest cash cow.