The real Breakthough that MMO-market needs

[Deleted]

Here's the catch - MMO market has become stagnant with the conveyor belt MMOs being pushed out every half a year. "innovations" like voiceacted dialogue and "just like WoW (everquest, ultima online..the list goes on) but better". We need a new jesus-MMO that'll rip the market apart. An innovation, a mailstone of internet games, truly creative work, like minecraft...yeah, creativity here is the word.

Minecraft's success is based on a simple foothold: players could create whatever they wanted, but only out of simple boxes. It Allowed loads of creativity nonetheless. Gamers love to create things, and minecraft proves the rule.

If creativity and ability to construct things were to impletend into a MMO it would be a world wide success for a long, long time.

Now, let me just list a few points I've come up with while thinking of this:

-EvE-online would be heavily copied off. For instance, there would be just one server.

-The scale of the world would be huge. Either 1/3 or 1/2. Eitherway, damn huge. The whole world would be generated by a polished generator, and then worked out by human hand if needed.

-As realistic as possible

-Loads of skills to develop. For example, woodcutting. You can either do it manually via slash and hack (the trees would be realistically hard to hit down), OR you could set your character to do it automatically (EvE-online again) and continue even if you go offline. The catch do actually do it manually instead of going automatic all the time are the various, good bonuses you can gain by chopping them manually.

-Now here's the big one. When you log off your character actually stays in the world. You can create a daily routine for the character to go on by, just like your normal schelude. So basically almost everything of the tiresome leveling could be automated up. Your character also has to get certain amount of sleep, can tire out needs food and so on. The hook to stay online and do everything by yourself are the various bonuses like mentioned earlier. I don't really have any specifics, this is just a caricature of an idea.

-The biggest feature would be building. Unlike minecraft, the buildings and stuff aren't made from blocks, but from the developer made shipped in the release. Textures and models could also be designed by players with some easy to use interface and then submitted to developers where they are checked and added to the database if suitable. This would cause the item flow to sustain itself since, well, players love to create.

-Building itself would take time. First you have to plan the building up and after that set your character to build. The building times aren't as long as in real world, but biggest things like huge castles could takes a few months even with other players helping.

-You can hire other players to help to, for example, build your house by putting a note up to the server's always visible for everybody note system. You would have to pay them just like the regular workers, but during the (automated) building process their characters aren't avaivable for use.

-Travel times are so long that you'll actually have to think if you really want to cross that ocean or not. It's as big change as it was for immigrants in the real world. An ocean trip as big as from Britain to USA could take weeks. During that time you would only be able to hang on the ship itself, but you can develope a few skills there too, so it is not completely wasted times. And gamble.

-The world wouldn't be filled with houses because the world would be so big. Also, to limit up buying whole continents the plot up from certain sizes would take so much to buy that even a guild of gold sellers would have to farm for months to buy it up. And that size wouldn't even be really big, so the world would never ever get crowded.

-Of course there would be some slash and hack fighting, defending your herd against bears and such. Your skills in sword would go up just like in your regular MMO, but there's a point that prevents characters from being all-powerful. Rather low cap tbh.

-If you die you'll just be reverted back a week, like Prince of Persia's sands of time revert system. Or you can pay the master of underworld some pretty high sum and get back instantly.

.PvP would be very strict. Everybody knows what happened in Ultima Online's free pvp servers...I haven't really given much tought on this yet, but there would be some player-established countries that could wage a war on each other. To keep little countries to be crushed there's always an AI controller super-regimeé that would beat up those who bully the little. It also repairs up the buildings damaged by the wrongfully attacking country.

Otherwise PvP would be allowed if somebody steals something from you. Everything is stealable, and that's why it's for the best to get a dog for start, and stay close to your home. Later on you can get some guards etc. The more powerful you are the bigger your status is. If some high level slug harasses the poor and newcomers by stealing their stuff the world police will be after them in no time. It's really effective and also posts the stuff back to the real owner.

-Loads of ways to keep players from harassing each other.

-Ground could be formed by players also, but not much. Little ponds could be possible.

-You cannot just walk into the wilderness to make your house to some no-one knows where place at first. You have to stay within people and level your skills up first to be able to survive in the wild. Also, the greatest villas and castles are rather hard to make in the most hidden wilderness since you gotta have an access to the material too. You can bring the materials up from where other players are selling them, but it is just as slow as a horse carriage is.

-Graphics would be enough to server you up. Clean but effective, the nature and height-differences would play a big part. Decreaseable enough so that even an old comp could run it up.

Sorry, it's rather a tought-list than actual pointer diagram, but I hope it served it's purpose. The goal would be to mimic minecraft's creativity, absorb the non-grindy skill system of EvE-online and add the ageless graphics like in WoW to the equalization. And make stuff for casuals and the HC's.

The real goals would not be defeating some big troll in the mountain, sitting on a fat stash of gold, but to create instead. I've said this before, but Minecraft showed us that creativity attracts and addicts people.

Use that scheme in MMO and it'll be a damn big success.

[schippie]

The problem with your "suggestion" is that if you can build the whole world:
- The amount of player per world is gonna be smaller (your suggestion to make one giant world would make rendering the damm thing almost impossible)
- A travel time that is extremely long as you put it would make the game alot less interactive (and the MMO feel would decrease)
- the pvp thing well that would mean people rather all stay in small communitys rather than grow large so mr super computer can help them out.
- Load of skills like runescape? I dont like it tbh
making it happen automatic more or less means we are a NPC. The complete feel of i am important to the world is then well gone.

To me it almost sounds like anno 1404 mmorpg style.

Tbh its a nice idea and i give you credit for writing it all down but the 1 big world idea will never work either split it up into alot smaller chunks and use some sort of loading screen everytime you exit a "country" and enter another.

[Deleted]

The problem with your "suggestion" is that if you can build the whole world:
- The amount of player per world is gonna be smaller (your suggestion to make one giant world would make rendering the damm thing almost impossible)
- A travel time that is extremely long as you put it would make the game alot less interactive (and the MMO feel would decrease)
- the pvp thing well that would mean people rather all stay in small communitys rather than grow large so mr super computer can help them out.
- Load of skills like runescape? I dont like it tbh
making it happen automatic more or less means we are a NPC. The complete feel of i am important to the world is then well gone.

To me it almost sounds like anno 1404 mmorpg style.

Tbh its a nice idea and i give you credit for writing it all down but the 1 big world idea will never work either split it up into alot smaller chunks and use some sort of loading screen everytime you exit a "country" and enter another.

Will number these in the order you wrote them:

1. As far as I know in the games like Oblivion the developers fixed that problem by adding a quick loads at certain points, so the whole world would never be loaded at once, but huge amount would be still. The catch is that the engine would be rather lightweight.

2. Travels would be completely automateable like almost everything else. During the travel you can log in and do a few chores while traveling. Like play some learning minigames and such. I don't have any concrete propositions, but I'm sure it can be made interesting. On the other note, long travel times make your think if you really want to move out of civilization or make otherwise long journeys. The ocean-trips would be the longest ones though, so normal travels by carriage etc would take just a day or two.

3. The catch would be, that claiming other country's land in the war is the quickest way to gain ground. Otherwise it has to be bought up, and that costs alot. By gaining more areas you get more bonuses and the country grows the same time.

4. Mhm, the skills could also be limited to sub-classes like Woordwork and Food Supply (which could include things like butcher, cooking, hunting).

5. The creativity, ways to express yourself would be the main hook, like in Minecraft. If you want power you can establish a control by leading a succesfull country. I think that by keeping your character showing all the time, doing things automatically in a schelude makes the world feel more alive.

Anno 1404? I gotta check it out.

The open large world has it setbacks yes, but nothing has came to my mind what couldn't be worked out. Technically it shouldn't be a prob at all.

Thanks for your take. =)