Would you play this MMORPG?

[Tankitbetter]

Would you play an MMORPG with the following features? Why or why not?

BASICS:

Skills: The game has a huge list of skills that are leveled via use. Everything from cooking and house building to one-handed weapons, two-handed weapons, shield use etc. Think similar to Elder Scrolls system in terms of progressing skills. As time goes on, to help newer players catch up, earlier levels of the skill will level faster. This is to prevent an eve-type thing where new players are at such a disadvantage that it's nearly impossible to catch up. Without setting anything in stone, it'd be something like "When a player reaches 101 skill rating, level 1-2 goes 10% faster. When a Player reaches 102 skill rating, level 2-3 goes 10% faster." Etc. Don't say no purely on the numbers - it's guesstimates.

Small servers Each server can only host 2500(500? 1500? 5000? Not sure) players. Each account may only have 1 character per server with a maximum of 3 characters, so no need to worry about alts flooding the system. If a player does not log on for 1 month, he is removed from the server and put in to a floating pool where he may go to a new server, allowing newer players to enter the server.

No level system. You can't inspect other players skills. You can inspect their items/non-combat-strength-based achievements etc. Each player stands on his own legs and the reputation he builds within his server. Remember when WoW first came out and you saw that warrior in full tier 1 on an epic ground mount? Yeah.

A completely non-instanced world. While player houses and such can be deemed off-limits to other players, they are still within the main world. All dungeons are non-instanced.

To compliment #4, random events and dungeons can be generated within the world. One day, you're walking down a road that yesterday nothing was going on. Now, there's a war band of lizardmen marching down it, or a group of bandits with a boss mob ambushing you. A previously undiscovered cave has opened up for exploration. Think Diablo-style (not D3, but like d1/d2) dungeons generated.

COMBAT:

Magic: Spells can be bound together to create interesting effects. Use a waterfall spell to get your opponent wet and then hurl lightning at him to electrocute him or use a frost spell to freeze him solid. Put the target to sleep and use a nightmare spell that can damage him while he's cc'd and you focus on other monsters. Hurl two spears at two separate opponents then cast a chain spell to link them together. If they break the chain, the spear is pulled out causing extra damage. Any number of combinations you can think of.

A thought is to have elements only as basic spells. Fire, for example. Then, combine fire with an orb modifier to create a fireball while earth would be a big stone fist. Combine water with a flow modifier to create a waterfall while fire with a flow modifier would be a slow moving torrent of fire. A lance modifier would create spear-like abilities, a rain modifier would make it an aoe thing from the sky or an earthquake, a trap modifier would make it a trap etc.

Non-magic: Physical combat has no auto attack. Instead, your abilities change based on the weapons that you're using. Dual wielding has its own combos that are vastly different than 1h/shield that are vastly different from 2h, with each subtype weapon available in the game using different combos. A mace can smash in enemies armor, reducing its effectiveness until repaired. A sword can weaken an opponent, making them slower as their blood gushes from their body. Polearms and spears have longer range and can be wielded like quarterstaffs for great defense and offense. There are no ranged weapons.

Support skills exist that can do minor heals and buffs and can do things like helping chain combos with their friends. However, no dedicated healing class exists. You are responsible for your own survival, through potions, items, or abilities.

Raids exist but share tags with all players, even those not in a raid group. However, for each player in combat with the boss, he scales accordingly. Bosses will have to be designed with the idea that there could be 10 people attacking them or 1000 attacking them. This would mostly be done with dynamic spawning of adds, high-damage aoe abilities that are avoidable (think Will's devastating combo), and other similar things. Raid leaders for their respective raids can set loot measures - if they want to get a huge loot list and assign them or have those pieces randomly distributed to the raid. If you are a small group or solo player who tagged along, it'd go LFR style-loot (except a much higher chance, due to the epicness of it).

COMMUNITY:

A living, breathing world community will exist via player houses, guild territories, etc. Players can choose to clear entire fields or forests and create their own town. Elected mayors or governors can set weekly tax rates for gold that will be set in to server-held storage for further development of the city. Guilds can build massive castles that can then spawn monster attacks that siege the walls or dragons that fly in from above.

Players can be purely craftsman based - have hunter friends bring in materials from bosses in dungeons or raids and create weapons or go get them yourself if you want to mix it up. Become the one guy on the server that can do a specific design of pillar that a guild wants for its guild leader's mansion. Be the master weaponcrafter that can charge incredible fees for the items you make. Be the cook that everyone comes to because your items provide the best regeneration or buffs.

PVP

There would of course be PvE servers with only dueling, but PvP servers would allow full-scale PvP outside of the safe city zones.

What you gain from pvping: all of your opponents potions and other consumables such as teleport crystals below x gold cost. If the tag is split on the target, the items are split evenly. You loot 5% of the gold the target is carrying at the time. You gain skill rating from attacking your opponent but you may only gain so much skill on a single target per 72 hour period to prevent farming. In addition, for each unique person you kill in a 72 hour period, you may gain gold or have a rare chance at an item.

Neutral: If you are a major pvper, your name turns red and you have a slight red glow around your body to warn players you are not to be trifled with.

What you lose from dying in pvp: you lose all consumables. You are sent to closest town, player-built or not, that is friendly to you. Your items take a durability loss. You lose 5% of the gold you were carrying at the time.


EDIT: Here is a basic world background as requested by Narna.

It feels as if your soul has been freed. You look around and it seems like you've been sitting in Feldrar, the city of Civilization, and doing nothing your entire life. No one leaves the surrounding area. The worst fight in living memory was a 3-way drunken brawl at the Sheared Sheep, the local tavern. And now, all of a sudden, an urge to explore the world overwhelms you.

Feldrar only has a few surrounding square miles mapped. No one goes much past the Misty Forest to do some hunting or chop down a few trees for lumber or past the fields at the Wheat Plains to the north. You realize there is an entire world out there and yet not a single soul has ever left Feldrar to see it.

...Until now. Wanderlust has finally come to Feldrar. As you begin walking out of town, you realize that you are not the only one. Hundreds of others are walking the same path as you.

[Nurabashi]

What company are you from?

Mechanics in game aren't everything, for me at least, I need to know about story, background, art, etc.

[Baloneyz]

Depends on the story elements like nations involved or races and pretty much the setting on the world itself.

And no bows/crossbows ( physical ranged weapons ) is kind-a weird but could work.

Don't know, maybe i would play it. It's quite interesting, a lot of sand-box material and that's always great. But with the games becoming more and more heavy on the time you need to be more stronger, this would be the motherload of that type of games. ( WoW Vanilla )

[Tankitbetter]

What company are you from?

Mechanics in game aren't everything, for me at least, I need to know about story, background, art, etc.

Sorry for the delay in responding. This is the only information I can provide at the time, sorry.

It feels as if your soul has been freed. You look around and it seems like you've been sitting in Feldrar, the city of Civilization, and doing nothing your entire life. No one leaves the surrounding area. The worst fight in living memory was a 3-way drunken brawl at the Sheared Sheep, the local tavern. And now, all of a sudden, an urge to explore the world overwhelms you.

Feldrar only has a few surrounding square miles mapped. No one goes much past the Misty Forest to do some hunting or chop down a few trees for lumber or past the fields at the Wheat Plains to the north. You realize there is an entire world out there and yet not a single soul has ever left Feldrar to see it.

...Until now. Wanderlust has finally come to Feldrar. As you begin walking out of town, you realize that you are not the only one. Hundreds of others are walking the same path as you.

[Dezerte]

What kind of combat system would it have?

[Rukh]

Sounds like an old time MUD. That's not an insult, I have some really fond memories of a MUD and I've long thought exactly what parts could possibly translate over to a graphic MMO.

[Ferocity]

1 character per account, arcade based combat, taxes, 1 month downtime penalty, meh. And what is described is closer to 3D action/Arcade, not RPG. Random events sound like one of the things which made me never bother with UO (e.g., logging on your character in inn to get massive lag due to invasion, dc, die and lose everything you had on that character forever). What about group of mobs with boss ambushing crafter on the formerly safe road? With 1 character per account, if someone would choose to be crafter, he'd want to do something more than to sit in his house/inn day and night.

[Deleted]

Making players lose gold (and items) from dieing takes the joy out of the game for most people. This is one of the reasons more and more MMORPG's are stepping away from death penalties. I've played a fair share of MMORPG's, and the worst death penalty I've seen was Archlord (even though they removed it recently) where you actually lost 3% XP every time you died (you can't level down). Then there was RoM's death penalty, which basically was a death debt, taking away x% of your HP until you've payed your debt. Last and even worse was runescape in which you just lost everything in your inventory.

Those things made dieing in these games extremely annoying, and I was happy to see that a lot of newer MMORPG's actually followed WoW in the spiritwalker thingy (thinking about rift), which is a FAR better solution then taking away gold, XP or items. Yes it adds challenge, but dieing is a big part of MMO's and making the penalty too big will annoy players.


For the magic part, I like the idea. Don't make it too complicated though, a couple of elements (I'd suggest 4-6) paired with 3-4 modifiers should be more then enough. Don't make it too complicated, and make it as fluent as possible.

For the combat, I don't know whether you've decided on real action or more traditional WoW-style combat. I'd say that action-oriented seems better for the ideas you have.

Player housing is a great idea, and so are guild building, though placing them in the world itself seems rather odd. It would technically be possible if you really allowed a low amount of players per realm, but even then it would seem weird to just spam the entire map full of houses. I'd make both guild and player housing instanced, or at least the "town center" where you can build a house be a separate instance.

No leveling system is OK, but make sure the player feels he's progressing enough. In runescape your level was calculated based on the level your separate skills had. That might be a good idea to give the player the feeling he's progressing, which is extremely important.

The election system looks like a good idea, except that it's not by any means skill based. I love the idea of having a "boss" (Archlord has it, the guy whose guild takes the castle in a raid becomes "boss" of the server and has some abilities like changing weather, his own mount, spawning adds to protect him,...) but I fear that when gold is involved, big guilds can take over the server by always having the mayor.

Lastly, I'd say get rid of servers. I'm a bigger fan of big servers with different "sub realms" in which you can switch around. This, of course brings quite a few changes to previous mechanics but is something I'd like to see more in MMO's.

[PuppetShowJustice]

So. Your story is "No one in the land had ever gone on an adventure. And then one day everybody decided it was time to change that." I don't mean to sound nasty but that might be the least intriguing thing I've ever read.

Your PVP model promotes the worst aspects of PVP. Mindless gank squads.
Your raid model sounds like an absolute trainwreck. What reason is there to be a raid leader (or even have people flagged as such) when you cannot possibly hope to organize everyone effectively? At best you're going to have an environment that favors zerg tactics with a little bit of having to dodge stuff every now and again. You can't tune an interesting encounter that accounts for anywhere between ten and a thousand players.

Oh, and the PVP goon squads can wreck the people trying to do the raids because nothing is instance. Sounds like a frustrating mess for absolutely everyone.

[Deleted]

Here's my feedback to your ideas...

Skills - sounds great to me, although it's worth noting that the elder scrolls online MMO has designed what seems so far to be a very promising skill-levelling customisation based system.

Small servers - no. I want large servers with as many of my friends as possible. I do not want penalties. No alts = massively limiting my game. Being penalised for not logging on is a horrible design to me. People play MMOs over single player games for the added social atmosphere, the server structure here seems to inhibit that.

No level system = Fine with me.

A completely non-instanced world - I guess I see why you'd need small servers. I don't like instance systems that much but I would far prefer instances + being able to play with my friends than tiny servers + fully open world.

Random events and dungeons - great, BUT nothing is truly random. Think Diablo Style? They are random from a very small pool, if you played diablo for long you saw pretty much every random combination. The problem with putting a lot of effort and resources and emphasis on a random world is that you're unlikely to pull it off unless you're talking on a massively random basis. GW2 touted a lot of the "random events2, but just 3 months into the game I feel like I've done all the DE's multiple times.

Story - an MMO needs to be pretty big, for it to be big, it needs a really solid storyline and world behind it, one that makes sense with a lot of lore. The story would be a hinging point. If it ends up just being an open world sandbox where the story is a generic fantasy world where you go on adventures and slay random creatures, I probably wouldn't have a lot of interest for it personally.

[Tankitbetter]

There seems to be a lot of misconceptions. Maybe the post wasn't clear enough or people aren't comprehending well enough so I'll go down the list of responses.

1 character per account, arcade based combat, taxes, 1 month downtime penalty, meh.

1 character per server, not account.
If you choose to live in a city where your mayor can tax you, yes. You are welcome to not build a house at all or take a risk and build it in the wilderness where it's just you. Or to join a city where the mayor promises no taxes at all and instead asks for contributions to help the city's defense.

And what is described is closer to 3D action/Arcade, not RPG. Random events sound like one of the things which made me never bother with UO (e.g., logging on your character in inn to get massive lag due to invasion, dc, die and lose everything you had on that character forever). What about group of mobs with boss ambushing crafter on the formerly safe road? With 1 character per account, if someone would choose to be crafter, he'd want to do something more than to sit in his house/inn day and night.

Crafters have to go get materials, too. They won't do 0 damage - they'll have weapon skills as well. But as they spend a lot of time focusing on gathering and crafting and selling, they will likely have lower combat skills than the guys who spend their entire time out their killing things.

---------- Post added 2012-11-13 at 06:01 PM ----------

Making players lose gold (and items) from dieing takes the joy out of the game for most people. This is one of the reasons more and more MMORPG's are stepping away from death penalties. I've played a fair share of MMORPG's, and the worst death penalty I've seen was Archlord (even though they removed it recently) where you actually lost 3% XP every time you died (you can't level down). Then there was RoM's death penalty, which basically was a death debt, taking away x% of your HP until you've payed your debt. Last and even worse was runescape in which you just lost everything in your inventory.

Those things made dieing in these games extremely annoying, and I was happy to see that a lot of newer MMORPG's actually followed WoW in the spiritwalker thingy (thinking about rift), which is a FAR better solution then taking away gold, XP or items. Yes it adds challenge, but dieing is a big part of MMO's and making the penalty too big will annoy players.

The death penalty is from PvP...as specifically stated...

If you don't want to join a PvP server, don't, and these things are not to be worried about.

For the magic part, I like the idea. Don't make it too complicated though, a couple of elements (I'd suggest 4-6) paired with 3-4 modifiers should be more then enough. Don't make it too complicated, and make it as fluent as possible.

For the combat, I don't know whether you've decided on real action or more traditional WoW-style combat. I'd say that action-oriented seems better for the ideas you have.

Yes, action-oriented. MMOARPG? I'm not sure of the classification.

Player housing is a great idea, and so are guild building, though placing them in the world itself seems rather odd. It would technically be possible if you really allowed a low amount of players per realm, but even then it would seem weird to just spam the entire map full of houses. I'd make both guild and player housing instanced, or at least the "town center" where you can build a house be a separate instance.

No leveling system is OK, but make sure the player feels he's progressing enough. In runescape your level was calculated based on the level your separate skills had. That might be a good idea to give the player the feeling he's progressing, which is extremely important.

If a level system was implemented, it would be similar to this, and would be completely hidden from all other players. It would just be there to let you feel like you're progressing.

The election system looks like a good idea, except that it's not by any means skill based. I love the idea of having a "boss" (Archlord has it, the guy whose guild takes the castle in a raid becomes "boss" of the server and has some abilities like changing weather, his own mount, spawning adds to protect him,...) but I fear that when gold is involved, big guilds can take over the server by always having the mayor.

Lastly, I'd say get rid of servers. I'm a bigger fan of big servers with different "sub realms" in which you can switch around. This, of course brings quite a few changes to previous mechanics but is something I'd like to see more in MMO's.

The election system would require a player to have a house built in the city in order to vote. If this is a guild city, then no problem. If it's a public city, then you can actually see real elections inside the game. Will players bribe others to vote for them? Will different players promise different things, such as lower taxes or better walls or special in-game events just for members of their city? Of course. That's the fun.

As for server, the whole idea is that a person stands on his or her own two legs. His or her reputation is what makes the player worry about the consequences of his or her actions. Each server is a living, breathing community.

---------- Post added 2012-11-13 at 06:07 PM ----------

So. Your story is "No one in the land had ever gone on an adventure. And then one day everybody decided it was time to change that." I don't mean to sound nasty but that might be the least intriguing thing I've ever read.

Sorry you don't like it. Unfortunately, I can't really say much more than that. Of course, you're assuming that there was no reason that the town basically stood still...

Your PVP model promotes the worst aspects of PVP. Mindless gank squads.

World PvP is World PvP. If you aren't interested in diehard PvP, there are plenty of PvE servers to join

Your raid model sounds like an absolute trainwreck. What reason is there to be a raid leader (or even have people flagged as such) when you cannot possibly hope to organize everyone effectively? At best you're going to have an environment that favors zerg tactics with a little bit of having to dodge stuff every now and again. You can't tune an interesting encounter that accounts for anywhere between ten and a thousand players.

Why can't you organize things effectively? Why is it not possible to make an announcement than on November 30th, 2012, at 7pm, the Guild PuppetShowJustice is going to be raiding Archavon the Stone Giant and that if you would like to come along, please send its guild leader an in game message. Then, organize your raid. Hundreds of people can use in-game (or out of game) voice chat with the raid leader leading. Explain the strategy you are going to use and then execute it.

Large-scale raids have been done before, where a few people lead hundreds.

Oh, and the PVP goon squads can wreck the people trying to do the raids because nothing is instance. Sounds like a frustrating mess for absolutely everyone.

On a PvP server, yes. Similar to how you can do it currently in World of Warcraft on Galleon or Sha, for example :P

---------- Post added 2012-11-13 at 06:22 PM ----------

Here's my feedback to your ideas...

Small servers - no. I want large servers with as many of my friends as possible. I do not want penalties. No alts = massively limiting my game. Being penalised for not logging on is a horrible design to me. People play MMOs over single player games for the added social atmosphere, the server structure here seems to inhibit that.

When your main can do everything - literally, everything - what point is there in an alt on the same server?

The server structure is intended to do the opposite - to encourage a social atmosphere. With a smaller server population, everyone can know everyone or as close to it as possible.

No level system = Fine with me.

A completely non-instanced world - I guess I see why you'd need small servers. I don't like instance systems that much but I would far prefer instances + being able to play with my friends than tiny servers + fully open world.

Non-instanced does not mean small. The reason for limited server populations is due to the community not due to a lack of instancing.

If you'd like to play with your friends, you can create a new character on a fresh server with them.

Random events and dungeons - great, BUT nothing is truly random. Think Diablo Style? They are random from a very small pool, if you played diablo for long you saw pretty much every random combination. The problem with putting a lot of effort and resources and emphasis on a random world is that you're unlikely to pull it off unless you're talking on a massively random basis. GW2 touted a lot of the "random events2, but just 3 months into the game I feel like I've done all the DE's multiple times.

Agreed! It's a tough challenge. Truly, massively random dungeons are not easy. It's worth a shot though, right?

Story - an MMO needs to be pretty big, for it to be big, it needs a really solid storyline and world behind it, one that makes sense with a lot of lore. The story would be a hinging point. If it ends up just being an open world sandbox where the story is a generic fantasy world where you go on adventures and slay random creatures, I probably wouldn't have a lot of interest for it personally.

Thanks. That seems to be consistent with all responses. I do find it interesting that players are 100% focused on what story the game is providing you rather than the stories that you and your friends will tell in game.

I've heard very few people say "OMG, can you believe it!? The aspects lost their powers and Thrall's going to be a daddy!" I've heard literally hundreds of stories about that rare spawn they killed right as they died or the death knight who was able to solo the last 3% of a raid boss or that feeling that a group got when they first killed Sinestra.

[Deleted]

Untill I got to the pvp part I honestly thought you were reading my mind. The pvp in your game sounds boring. What I would do is first of all give no choice between pvp or pve servers. Having pvp servers only where the pvp is like in EVE online is what you really need. The penalty for dying would be immense if you are a player in good gear and almost non existant if you are a new player. For that to work all gear or a majority of it would have to be crafted so that destroyed items could be replaced very quickly.

How would mandatory pvp work? Basically have an optional pvp toggle system like in TERA where players with pvp on can attack and be attacked by other players. When I played TERA I barely ever got killed in PvP unless I was the aggressor simply because going red would attract every player in 200 yards.

I am asuming you only have 1 faction, or multiple factions where faction does not decide your who your friends can be (oposite of WoW/same as in EVE). If you do have a faction system like in WoW I would advise you to get rid of it as its nothing but a pain in the ass.

[Tankitbetter]

Untill I got to the pvp part I honestly thought you were reading my mind. The pvp in your game sounds boring. What I would do is first of all give no choice between pvp or pve servers. Having pvp servers only where the pvp is like in EVE online is what you really need. The penalty for dying would be immense if you are a player in good gear and almost non existant if you are a new player. For that to work all gear or a majority of it would have to be crafted so that destroyed items could be replaced very quickly.

How would mandatory pvp work? Basically have an optional pvp toggle system like in TERA where players with pvp on can attack and be attacked by other players. When I played TERA I barely ever got killed in PvP unless I was the aggressor simply because going red would attract every player in 200 yards.

I am asuming you only have 1 faction, or multiple factions where faction does not decide your who your friends can be (oposite of WoW/same as in EVE). If you do have a faction system like in WoW I would advise you to get rid of it as its nothing but a pain in the ass.

It's an interesting idea but not really a system that would fit, I think.

[N-7]

Someone has been watching Sword Art: Online recently...

[Deleted]

Someone has been watching Sword Art: Online recently...

I'm in love with that anime atm...I would suck at SAO though, I hardly am fit enough to handle real combat for long. xD

[N-7]

I'm in love with that anime atm...I would suck at SAO though, I hardly am fit enough to handle real combat for long. xD

I'd probably stick to the town of beginners :P

[Tankitbetter]

Someone has been watching Sword Art: Online recently...

I personally have read the Sword Art Online light novels but I am curious how you draw similarities between what I posted and SAO?

[Asmalya]

Enjoy raids where 100 people just hit the boss once in awhile and dont offer anything else to the group but to make the boss harder for the other 100 htat actually want to kill it.
Sorry but people are assholes if they are allowed to.

[Tankitbetter]

Enjoy raids where 100 people just hit the boss once in awhile and dont offer anything else to the group but to make the boss harder for the other 100 htat actually want to kill it.
Sorry but people are assholes if they are allowed to.

In a game where your reputation matters, this seems unlikely. Become a pariah and you won't be welcome in towns, groups, guilds, etc. People won't buy your items. You'd be left solo'ing.

[Detheavn]

Sorry you don't like it. Unfortunately, I can't really say much more than that. Of course, you're assuming that there was no reason that the town basically stood still...

On a website, where your content is more dynamic, something like this may work, but if that would be the text on the back of a DVD case in a store, I'd put it down and label it as uninteresting. Since that's basically all you gave us here, I can understand why people are not that enthousiastic about the 'story'