MMORPG feature(s) of your dreams?

[Deleted]

What would it or they be? What would you love to find in a MMORPG? Be it a brand new title or a existing one, doesn't matter.


I'd love to see a truly living world. With new, small events added every 1-3 days. With unique rewards (unique abilities, titles, summon-minions, unique weapon/armor model, unique housing decorations etc.) and a kind of newspaper tab in game where you can find breaking news (<Player's name> defeated <Boss name> and earned <Item's name> / <Player's name> opened the golden gates leading to a mysterious location and earned a title of <The Golden>! Hurry up and discover hidden treasures because the gates will remain open for 3 hours only!).
Opening the gates would require finding 4 golden books that could be hidden anywhere in the world. Of course these items wouldn't tell you "collect 3 others and take them to <Location's name>, you would have to discover it on your own.
No wiki & stuff, just every day discovering (would be hard with data mining I guess...). It would be a great opportunity to make people feel unique. But this would also be a great thing to discuss on forums. You could share your discovers with others and think how to make the puzzle work together.
Such system would work in Guild Wars 2 for example (During pre-launch phase, I was thinking that dynamic event would be changed every few months or something...) Single-completion dynamic events chains awarding something unique.

A non-class character creation would be lovely too. Instead, you would choose characterstics of your toon (physical strength, will power, magic aptitude etc.) and their "power" in 1-10 scale and then you would gain starting skills based on them [Everyone would be a half Summoner tho. Because I'd love to see a game where you collect different minion summoning abilities, where you can upgrade your existing minions, give them weapons and armors etc.]. You could also write a short bio of your character that would be auto-upgraded every time you complete / achieve something (with dates, kind of diary in your bio that could be "inspected" by other players). This with addition of one-time events only awarding unique skills (could be a slight particle change, totally different particle or a completely new skill with both unique particles & effect), unique minions, unique skins and so on would result with no two the same characters.


Continuing the theme, I'd like to see a real archeology. You could dig anywhere in the world to find something cool that nobody else has. In-game shop would offer digging-time reductors, detectors that would make a sound whenever you step on an artifact etc.
This would work in GW2 too.

The perfect game, containing all these features would probably be a sub based. It wouldn't be cheap to made.

I know that making such a game would require A LOT OF WORK, money, people, time and that I'll possibly never witness it in my life but dreams are dreams. So, what are yours?



EDIT: I repeat the last part of my comment from the 2nd page to make things clear:

VRMMORPG (Sword Art Online etc.) - well, I don't mean such "feature" in this thread to be discussed. I think we have a thread about it here anyway.

Maybe, if this therad turns out to be popular, I (or someone else, willing to do so, like Fencers? :3) will post a "recap-summary" of the most popular ideas from here. That would give us a brief vision on what the next truly succeful MMORPG would need to look like.

[Rukh]

I want to see the idea of a single zoneless world be done away with. : P Use maps like Mass Effect. When you're making a single zoneless world, you have to do all sorts of cheats in order to not have nonsense boring areas where nothing happens, or cities with miles of just houses. But the tradeoff is your "metropolis sized city" is 5 buildings. Instead, run mass-effect like zones through a city district. Make center hubs for players to meet and interract and then take missions and go on these mission maps.

[Dilbon]

I would like to have a single zoneless world where things just happen without quest logs. A bit like GW2 without maps and hearts. Also no shoulder slots and no stat stick gear.

[Deleted]

The ability to log on to the MMO and just join the action with your friends or guild, without having to care about parties and raids, without having to think about asking for an invite or whether there's a spot for you or whether the people want you with them or anything like that; you're in their group of friends, you're in their guild, they're in the action, you join the action, that's it. Also, the ability to leave the action without hurting anyone, as well.

Some people may call this casual, I call it obvious. This is how gaming should be. This is how chatting has been forever, for example; you join an IRC channel and you join the conversation. That's how gaming should be, it should be an ongoing conversation that you can just pick up and leave at will.

[Deleted]

I like the way GW2 does things, but I think it errs too far into the unstructured side of things, whereas WoW goes too far into the theme park side of things. In my ideal MMO, PVE content would be structured thusly:
- Quests would send you off with a broad objective, allowing you to complete it in multiple ways, and complete side objectives.
- Additionally random events of various sizes would trigger about the world. Each questing area would have say a dozen assigned smaller events, with perhaps 3 of those happening at any one time. So there would be a huge variety of permutations. Larger events would be less frequent.
- The world would be updated periodically. Each zone would have multiple phases, new ones being unlocked the progress of the entire player base. Each new patch would update a few of the old zones with new chapters to be unlocked.
- Additionally the world would be filled with collectibles and secrets, little hidden bosses and caches of treasure.
- Solo content would exist, similar to GW2's personal story. But the main PvE content would be unapologetically multiplayer. MMO's these days are too afraid of actually requiring players to work together. It defeats the point of an MMO when you can solo everything. Sometimes group work should be required.
- No levels. Different zones would have different difficulties. But things would be much more fluid. You would progress via the story.

[Fencers]

I would like an MMORPG with these type of systems:

- No character levels. Replaced with a "renown"-type system whereby one's accomplishments contribute to a score which indicates the capability of an individual.

Inspiration: Ultima Online, The Secret World

- No character classes. Free-form, labor dependent access to skills and capability. Use a longsword long enough, unlock more longsword related skills, use a bow, etc, etc. The more varied one becomes in skill usage, the more difficult to advance additional skills. Thus mastering all skills available would be very difficult, and functionally impossible.

You are what you do, and if you want to be very good at what you do [naturally and organically] it will limit your capacity to do everything.

Inspiration: Morrowind, Gothic

- Determinant crafting & random loot drops. Most loot will be randomly rolled similar to Diablo or Path of Exile. However, one could craft any item to their exact desired specifications given enough ability and effort. Though this would be at trade off, to craft an item requires the destruction of some aspect of randomized loot.

For example, if one wanted to craft a sword with +Str and +End enchantments, it will require the player find items with existing +Str and +End and destroy these items by siphoning the desired +Str & +End enchantments. Which sacrifices the item and whatever other modifications other than those desired. This sacrifice would result in a currency item we will call here "rune stone".

Every item can have a maximum of 5 enchantments. Enchantments are placed on any given item in one of two ways: random drop or crafted. To craft the item you would need a "blank" item of a desired quality; let us suppose any item has 10 various tiers of quality. With each successive tier adding or subtracting an implicit statistical modifier. Such as a tier 1 sword having more damage but less attack speed, a tier 2 more attack speed and power but lower critical chance, etc.

Having a "blank" [a non enchanted item] item one can add various enchantment containing currency called "runestones" to this item. Up to five enchantments. The catch being that an item may not have any two "runestones" of the same name.

Thus one must weigh the value of items/gear against a variety aspects that may or may not benefit their goals. This also keeps items/gear of all ranks relevant to all players and all content whilst still providing the endless, compulsive "chase" mechanism of other MMORPGs.

Inspiration: Path of Exile, Diablo 2, Runes of Magic

-Directed story based questing. The only linear and structured questing in the game would be story based. Fully voiced, natch. The early part of these quests will introduce various gameplay elements progressively, while later parts will be designed to inspire players to explore and travel the game world. This can be ignored entirely or started/dropped at any point whenever & wherever the player desires.

Inspiration: Star Wars: The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2, Age of Conan

- Dynamic, local and public event driven zones. All non-story content will be based on public, open events that affect a local area of any particular zone. These are participated in by players for "renown", "loot" and fun. Events scale with player participation, but are generally stratified in three brackets; lesser, greater and catastrophic.

Lesser, greater and catastrophic events are not indicators of difficulty but of complexity. Difficulty is raised relative to the number of players involved.

Each strata of event represents a rise in complexity to satisfy an event to completion. Lesser events are simple and straight-forward with only a few goals needed for participating players to satisfy to complete. Greater events are larger in the area they effect, have more varied conditions to complete and require relatively more complicated conditions for players to complete than lesser events. Catastrophic events are huge, zone-wide and have the most complex criteria for players to satisfy than lesser and greater events.

Inspiration: Guild Wars 2, Warhammer Online, Rift

- Scaling instanced dungeons. Dungeons scale for 1 to 5 players. More players, higher difficulty and complexity. Solo bosses have fewer and less punishing mechanics, group bosses have more mechanics and more punishing aspects. More players also increases the reward gain for any given dungeon.

Dungeons have leaderboards for solo and group completion.

Inspiration: Rift, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Guild Wars 2

- Scaling instanced raids. As dungeons, but interpreted fro groups exclusively. Sets of 10 or 20 players. Offering the steepest difficulty in the game for the greatest reward gain.

Inspiration: World of Warcraft, Everquest

- No gold economy. All trading is player to player and based on the perceived value of any item.

Inspiration: Path of Exile

- Open world grouping & sharing. Any individual player or group of players are automatically placed into a meta-group during events where each individual receives reward based on their contribution vs. the length of time participating in an event. Each player also shares in the world automatically; eliminating mob steal, resource node stealing, etc.

Inspiration: Guild Wars 2, Rift

- Free-to-Play. No purchase necessary. All content freely available.

Inspiration: Rift, DOTA 2

- Non-gameplay micro transactions. The cash shop is limited to the following types of MTX: skill, weapon & armor skins, mounts, housing items, housing plots, added bank pages, added character slots, non-combat pets, combat pet skins, realm transfers, character gender changes, emotes, race changes, grab bags of any of the previous.

Inspiration: Path of Exile, League of Legends



I anticipate a general theme and setting that is based on Modern life such as the The Secret World; or a somewhat modern "steam-punk" theme similar to Torchlight 2 or Arcanum. With a high emphasis on mature, humanistic story telling.

[Keile]

Basically...another MMO that was like Ultima Online.

There were no classes, and there were on levels. What your character was was entirely up to you and what skills you went after (up to a MAX of I think 700 between all).
Hell, you didn't even have to be an adventurer...I was content to stay in Minoc and mine all day and sell my ware to OTHER people.

Of all MMOS out there, this one had the most "freedom", and it made it actually feel like an actual WORLD.

[Valstorm Warsong]

I would want an MMO with real human like artificial intelligence for all NPC's and enemies. That way everything would be organic, and random, and the world would be believable. The AI would have to not know that it is in a game, it must believe the world it lives in is real. That would be my dream game, the world and your action would feel meaning full, and the story would unfold naturally.

[kail]

Pretty much everything Fencers said except the no gold economy. That and B2P is entirely fine by me.

To add, I'd like the auction house/trade hubs to be location based so travelling has an extra benefit of potebtially making a profit. If I travel to location x to post some item in that AH, only players in that area will be able to buy it and pick it up.

Inspiration: EvE Online

[Fencers]

Pretty much everything Fencers said except the no gold economy. That and B2P is entirely fine by me.

To add, I'd like the auction house/trade hubs to be location based so travelling has an extra benefit of potebtially making a profit. If I travel to location x to post some item in that AH, only players in that area will be able to buy it and pick it up.

Inspiration: EvE Online

This is an excellent concept but you would need to create an counter balance to prevent any particular area from becoming the defacto or major trading post.

There either has to be some arbitrary limitation to the posting of any particular auction house or post. Or there has to be some inherent risk/cost to travel that makes local or expedient trading more desirable than taking your goods to the largest or most profitable market.

[Madeupfriend]

Honestly, I have no idea how to put my idea on paper but I would love to see an MMO with a political system instead of factions. Everyone is on the same team but they may not have the same political views.

- Quests and personal story would differ according to what political party you were apart of but they wouldn't differ so much that group questing with other political party members would be ruined.

- The player bases actions according to their party affiliation would change the world and world story in some way. Cities would be changed, officials would lose and gain positions, the kings/queens orders may change to help the political parties goals. Things that wouldn't make the development of patches and expansions be slowed to a severe degree but do enough to make the player base feel like their actions have meaning.

- Daily hubs/pvp zones would have their outcomes determined by what party gave more effort into it.

- You can report other political parties after witnessing a crime and have a bounty out for them by your party to bring them in(If there is even a crime system in place). World PvP would be more of a consequence kind of thing instead of gankers running around attacking lowbies.

I'm sure there are plenty of flaws in my ideas but I would love something pretty close to this feature.

[May90]

I would like a MMO with a really brutal difficulty. Now, I know that MMO developers have to appeal to the crowd, so the game cannot be totally unforgiving. But, in case of, say, WoW, I think they would do well by implementing a system of difficulties varied between servers. Like, there would be "Very easy" servers (questing mobs are as they are now), "Easy" (require some very basic care in order to survive), "Normal" (require a decent skill to get through), "Hard" (content of your level is challenging, you die frequently if you aren't great), "Very Hard" (you die frequently regardless of your skill) and "Insane" (difficulty akin to that of heroic raiding). Today almost all MMOs, except for late endgame parts of them, are a total joke in terms of difficulty, you can get through the whole content half asleep.

Other than that... No "kill N dudes" and "collect M petals" quests, make good story-based quests instead, with adventure, plot reveals and such. But that is a dream that probably will never come true.

[Arbs]

Mine is a very heavy Medieval theme MMO.

1. Player Run Kingdoms/Empires - Allow Players to control lands & conquering other lands from players or unobtained lands to increase their Kingdom or Empire. Players can join any Kingdom or Empire. You can be overthrown in multiple ways, Anyone & everyone can make a difference in the game weither new or a veteran.

2. No Levels

3. Player/Guild Bases - They can be attacked, pilaged, captured or destroyed by other players/guilds. Add a spice to the World & a nice base to building that future Kingdom or Empire.

4. World Events - They are every changing the world & are never repeatitive. Even Npcs can make a difference or not.

5. World Bosses - They aren't just a Tank & Spank they can & will destroy everything if they aren't stopped. Basically Deathwing on Steroids

6. Player made Faction - Factions are based on Player Kingdom / Empire Alliances that can change based on preference.

7. Custom Made Races - Customize your gene pool & backstory.

8. Bloodlines - If your character dies you can have the choice of continuing that character or play a new character that is from your Bloodline. (Basically like the King dies & his Son or Daughter takes over, If your King still or not is up the final outcome, but you also gain the ability to summon your old toon to fight by your side for short amount of time.).

9. Aggressive Tribes - If you push into Ogre territory they will fight back & attack your settlements & other Kingdoms / Empires can join in to help defend or take over your land.

10. Seasons, Climate & Day/Night can be factored in how we see everything.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Virtual reality MMORPGs

More of a genre than a feature, but I'd love so much to actually be in Azeroth and walk around in and be a hero who fights the dragon.

[melodramocracy]

Basically a hybrid of a few games we have now. Without going into a thesis about it (and I could, rather easily)

-huge landmass, no zoning
-no truly set class restrictions, but a point allotment that can be invested in various specializations (ala Asheron's Call)
-1 character per account. No name changes.
-no levels, but power is gained / maintained through various other means.
-big emphasis on crafting and building professions, to assemble functioning rivercraft, airships, catapults, other ground-mount propelled siege engines.
-players have to decide on career paths between full on combat or full on tradesman.
-faction resource management, defense, capturing.
-lots of 'QOL' features of modern MMO's would be absent here.
-no tab targeting.

[kail]

This is an excellent concept but you would need to create an counter balance to prevent any particular area from becoming the defacto or major trading post.

There either has to be some arbitrary limitation to the posting of any particular auction house or post. Or there has to be some inherent risk/cost to travel that makes local or expedient trading more desirable than taking your goods to the largest or most profitable market.

Major hubs would probably be unavoidable. A safe zone of a convinent location will have the trading density of the NYSE.

As for travel risk, players would be the logical route. Tough mobs would make sense too. There will be zones that compare to nul-sec or Runescapes "wild" where there is high risk with high reward.

[chuck123]

Many of these ideas once were part of wow and a large proportion of players did not like most of them.

"Free questing, different AHs, Weaponskill etc"

[Jiggity]

I want an MMO with:
1. different feeling classes that bring different benefits to a group as well as a wide variety of races all having unique benefits.
2. 4 roles in a group: Tank, DPS, Healer, Support.
3. PVP being second to PVE meaning all balancing is done on the PVE side only. (I play pvp games for pvp)
4. Not so quest based leveling, I like the idea of having a main story quest line like FF14 however.
5. Rare spells and abilities should be dropped and located throughout the world, rare drops, or rare mobs, or from raid bosses or queslines.
6. Many world bosses/world dungeons this means there will be more guild interaction
7. Alternatives to tier gear
8. More proc based items, items that can alter gameplay
9. Ability to fast track alts. This means once your main is keyed for a raid, your alt also has that key, this also means the ability to gain some account bound raid gear
10. once max level is achieved there is another form of character advancement, eg/ increasing AOE radius, spell range, types of dmg, etc .These stats would eventually become extremely slow to level and start requiring raid bosses to gain exp.

[Clockwork Pinkie]

As long as it has duty finder, I'm alright with it. Finding a group in lfg is very outdated, nostalgic fun yes, but outdated, and takes a lot longer than just pressing one button, waiting in a group while you do other things.

[BloodSense]

Action RPG style, like zelda or the witcher where gameplay skill is far more important than gear or RNG rolls.