The Ultimate MMO!

[Deleted]

long time reader, first time poster here! thought I'd start off with a bang

Disclaimer: This is a long post. Don’t say TL;DR. A lot of these ideas are based on other games. These games include (but are not limited to): Magicka, Rift, Minecraft DC Universe Online, and even Crysis and Fallout. These are games I played / seen videos of. There might be games with even better profs etc., you’ll have to enlighten me on that part . Some of these ideas might not be feasible. I’m writing this because I’m extremely bored.

And now I shall describe what would be the perfect MMO for me! It is mostly improved expanded upon WoW. Please bear with me on this. If you have any thoughts on my ideas or would like to add your own, feel free to post constructive criticism. Don’t be shy to add your own crazy ideas :>
Please do not flame etc.

Professions

As with WoW you can get 2 primary professions, one gathering and one crafting,
and all secondary ones.

Gathering:
The gathering professions should still be mostly in the open world while lvling. If you separate it completely from lvling (e.g. you have to go inside a real mine...)
people will prefer to continue lvling instead. But you shouldn't get ALL your mats from the open questing world. At the end of a zone, in order to lvl up your crafting profession you will need to gather some mats from a mini-dungeon exclusively for that purpose (e.g. defeat a boss and mine him, do some puzzles, etc.).

Also, a cool way for an enchanter to gather stuff would be to kill spirits in a spirit world or something, next to the mats you get from disenchanting mats.
I always found it odd that you had to destroy items to lvl it up.


Crafting
It would be fun to see a bit of the Minecraft system. Let’s say you’re a leatherworker. For this you need several crafting tables (made by a carpenter). You will then need to find recipes in the world which explain to you how to make something. E.g. you find a recipe for a pants. You have to put the items in the right order and shape in the crafting table. After that you unpluck the hairs of the leather, salt it, etc…

Blacksmiths would have to smelt the metal, cool it, put it in a shape, …

You have to do things in multiple steps, instead of mindlessly making 150 bronze pickaxes after you gathered all the mats.

Another nice thing is being able to really choose what you make. Say you're a blacksmith. You learn some patterns from the trainer but have to find others in hidden chests, quest rewards, ... You have patterns for certain parts of a weapon and then can choose which form, type, stats (maybe from enchanter ?) etc. on the weapon you have.

So you want a axe with a long back, a dragon handle, and some spikes? No problem, as long as you got the individual shapes from patterns, you can make the weapon you find coolest, while still having nice stats.

It would be a longer process BUT you won't have to do it nearly as much as in WoW and there would be simpler plans (e.g. engineering parts...)

Blacksmiths will be able to reforge items and enchanters can move stats from one item to another (so you can keep the armor you like !)

Customizations:

Menu screen
On the menu screen you’ll choose you’re race and class as always. Your faction will be moulded around your choices in the game. You can adjust height and buffness. You can choose tattoos, starting gear, skin tone etc. and completely customize the face. You can also choose the personality of the character, affecting what your character will say and how he’ll stand when he’s not in combat. (Like the stance thing from DCUO)

[U]Guild housingU]
For quite a high price, you can buy a guild house in one of the cities. There will only be 2 or so houses per city, as they will be phased anyway. Anyone that you got in your party can enter your house and you can connect your house to someone else’s to be able to visit it at anytime.

In this house you can put profession stuff, equipment, furniture, accomplishments (e.g. a boar’s head) to decorate it.


Gear stats from one item can be transferred to another item by an enchanter for a small fee. This way you can keep the gear on you like most.

Gear can be dyed by the profession according to you gear type e.g. leather -> leatherworker.


Spells and talents

As in Diablo, DCUO or other hack 'n slash-y games, when you right click you will perform your regular ability (sword swing, fireblast, …) If there is no enemy in front of you, you will still do it. This makes the game more open for stuff like dodging fireballs, strikes etc. It's more action-reaction instead of best rotation. You can also pick up barrels etc to throw ‘em (like DCUO) And this also opens up a LOT of possibilities with bosses.

You can choose your class as always. While your lvling, you will be able to choose the abilities you want to learn from your trainer, say you get to lvl 5 and you can then choose: 1 offensive (dps), 1 defensive (tank) and 1 supportive (healing, buffing, cc…) ability. These cannot be changed.

What you can change are your 'perks'. You can choose like 5 or 6 perks (maybe more/less) to specialize yourself into a role (pvp, pve, offensive, defensive, ...) , and put in some class mechanics (like ignite, ...) while still retaining your unique abilities. You can then swap these out like talent trees.

e.g.: mage perk 1; your fire abilities cause ignite / your frost abilities slow other units down / you run faster when you cast ability X


Gear

There should be gear stats but they should be very minor. This way, skill is more important as someone who just got to top level can still beat someone who has done most of the dungeons, while the guy in better stats can still show that he’s got skills/dedication. Because the difference is so small, there shouldn’t be made a difference between PvP and PvE gear.

The only reason they are separated in WoW is because of this: if there wasn’t you could rush through the PvE content and get geared up, and thus pwn people in PvP without actually having any PvP skill. I like to do some pvp while I'm bored and can't raid, but in WoW I don't see the point in doing that since I'm behind so much in gear.

People can still be rewarded with titles, mounts, points, and better looking gear, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Quests and levelling
These are based off of Rift public questing system and WoW chains.

When you enter a zone, you can choose which chain(s) you do. Chains will be smaller, and all the collect/kill X are outside of these. You will have to do these sometimes but they will be between chains / optional within chains.

If you run into ordinary quests that aren't part of a chain, you can choose which ones you do
(sometimes can only do one!) between multiple others.

I think this way players get the most freedom while still having interesting chains.

There can be phasing but you should be able to see other people as much as possible.

Each zone is interactive, as in Rift, e.g.: the castle you need to destroy at the end of the quest chain keeps sending attacking forces and have to be fought back. Boss fights will be big and require most of the players in the region (they’re scaled). Also, there will be group quests or mini-dungeons like in Vanilla, which you would need to do with 2 to up to 5 people.

One big thing that should be added as well are puzzles and platform-ish mini-games. A good example of this is the Deadmines event. These could be implemented in the mini-dungeons or at the end of the main quests of a zone.

E.g.: Your in badlands and you finished most quests. You must now defeat a boss with a fellow player, but to get to him you must climb the side of the mountain, littered with boobytraps, falling platforms and pull levers and whatnot.

Each zone will also have several caves/dungeons which you will NOT be appointed to by quests, but will have a sign or so to indicate that you can explore it without a quest ( ‘do not enter’ or something). In here you get more rewards then usual for exploring and it gets harder the deeper you go. This will make you want to explore stuff on your own.

There should also be race, class and profession-specific quests. These were very fun in Vanilla and made you feel unique.

Also, when your top level, why should questing, one of the parts that can be most fun, end? At top level your skills would be tested with various quests which will climb in difficulty while you progress. These quests would involve: dungeons (see below), pvp, world pvp, race/prof/class quests, raiding, open PvE… These would then provide gear and cool lore moments, thus encouraging you to do all kinds of content.

PvE

Dungeons

Dungeons should feel more interactive. Each dungeon will have it’s own separate little storyline, much like other chains. Say you get a quest to go venture into a dungeon. There will be dialogues, scripted events (e.g. get out of a burning building), different objectives (e.g. plant flags, explode a door, whatever) and puzzles, just like all the cool quest chains in WoW.

The mobs should also be interactive. You might have to sneak past mobs through some tight corridors, use a special potion you get from a quest, fight waves, ambushes and whatnot. You might have to cc some mobs but definitely not all.

The dungeon should be huge but do not distress, you will only have to do it once AND you can logout with your mates at special checkpoints to continue on a later date. You can also continue with other players who are just as far as you are or further. The endboss should take a while and be hard, as you will only need to kill him once. The goal is to complete the quest, not the dungeon.

The only reasons the do a dungeon again is for achievement runs or collectibles. (no bloody badges!). The reason people hate to do the daily dungeon right now or find it too hard/easy is because they have to do it for the 56115616016’th time! It’s better to make it a one-time thing but make it harder. People do like to do raids again because they haven’t killed the endboss yet.

You could implement some kind of ulduar-style hardmodes into the achievements. For me they were the best type because there was so much variety and it was actually fun to see how for example changing the kill order of a certain boss would affect the difficulty. There shouldn’t be on ‘on/off’ switch. They are just another way of killing a boss.

Also not all dungeons should be 5 mans. As mentioned above, there should be 2/3/5-man dungeons as well, as these are places you can go with mates. Raiding however should have 1 or 2 fixed styles like with BC.

There will also still be invasions with bosses etc (riftstylez) in the levelling zones (but phased from low level players) which will be encouraged within the quest chains. As the zones are phased they could become massive battling stages against mobs and other factions.

Raids
Well, after you’ve done the pretty long and hard dungeons, there is, of course, raiding. As gear isn’t too important, raid tiers could be gated with quests etc (but not as strict as some of the systems in BC). You will be rewarded with better looking gear, titles, mounts, cool spells etc.

There should be multiple layers of dual raids, like in BC. This kind of progression makes you want to continue to see the next raid, like when I was doing Kael’thas, I was looking forward to Black temple and MH and held on to it.

Ulduar-style hardmodes integrated as achievements would be lovely. They shouldn’t however be considered as an extra raid tier

PvP

There is ofcourse instanced PvP and world PvP. As your raid gets bigger you will get less honor per kill. This means that if you kill someone alone in open world (not attacking, not afk and above 80% hp) you will get a lot of honor, thus being an incentive.

World PvP
There are world pvp objectives. For completing these you will be rewarded at least as good is with instanced PvP. Other factions can take over a town (it’s phased to lvlers so they can level calmly) thus giving them more territory. The more territory a faction has, the more honor and gold they get from quests and kills. Also each zone will have something of interest for players to capture e.g.: mines, vendors, quest npcs, dungeons etc.

The more you participate in these, the higher your PvP rank, which is for world pvp only. Having a high rank doesn’t bathe you in gear but makes you eligible for certain vehicles and better looking gear.



Battlegrounds
Instanced pvp will be much like WoW but with an old-school AV style BG (a massive fight), deathmatch, team deathmatch, place the bomb, …

There would be rated battlegrounds with teams divided into leagues, like in SC2.


And with a good vehicle-based BG, e.g.:
You have 2 bases. The more you kill and capture the higher your rank (this resets every bg) the higher your rank, the better vehicle you can buy. These vehicles are used against other players or vehicles (not bloody walls -__-) while players can counter with sticky bombs etc. the last vehicle can bombard the other base. (This is based on a crysis online map)

Also, since there are multiple factions, there can be 3-way battles! BGs with PvE mobs involved (dota ?) would be cool as well.

Other

Dailies
Though these are annoying in WoW, they are a great addition for people who need gold or rep and can be made way more fun. Lets say there’s an island with a faction base on each side. The middle of the island is occupied by mobs, which will attack. Each base gets daily quests that rotate and involve: killing hordes, kill mobs, capturing points. These quests should be short, with a big variety and should be FUN. The more quests you do the more you unlock (isle of quel’danas style) and the more you capture. At the end it will be a full on battle between factions, while PvE mobs try to retake it.

Factions
It’d be cool if you had to choose your factions while questing, instead of befriending EVERYONE. You would have to choose the faction based on your preferences. Some factions may encourage a certain type of play more. You shouldn’t however choose a faction based on the rewards.

This would be another feature that would make the game feel more dynamic and responsive to your actions.

Collectibles
As in Rift, you can collect randomly spawned chests and recipes, but also spellbooks. These will contain spells specific to a class, and can be harmful to the caster himself. They can only be used outdoors and are meant as fun spells. (e.g. a tornado, lightning storm, meteor storm)

Another thing you can do is go to a viewpoint, which is on the map but may be difficult to reach. You would then get a small cinematic like in Assassin’s creed. (on a mountain top or so)

So what can I do at endgame?
-Raids
-Invasion/World bosses who drop loot and need a raid to get vanquished
-You can go defend / attack against PvE invasions to get more (invasion specific) mats, gold, etc.
-You can do PvP in BGs (no arena’s, too hard to balance together with PvE)
-You can join in on world PvP and gain some titles.
-You can continue your specific quests.
-You can make an epic sword.
-You can explore hidden dungeons.
-You can collect randomly spawned spellbooks, chests, recipes.
-You can go to a viewpoint.
Etc..

Give you criticism / ideas ^^

[Future]

Ultima Online.

r.i.p.

[Elite Peon]

Seriously if you took over ghostcrawlers job I would probably like wow again and not be looking for ANY other decent MMO to get away form the crap wow is right now

[Patchwerk]

With pvp, I would like a world filled with fortresses, caves, castles etc for clans to capture and use to gain advantage in wars versus other clans. No traditional X faction with some races vs Y faction with some races. Any races could team up if they wanted to and build their own kind of army. Owning more bases would mean more resources and basically mean a bigger threat. So either other clans on the server could stand up against this huge threat or simply surrender to their forces and maybe form an alliance consisting of all clans on the server! Also there should always be opposition from enemy npcs. So lets say the whole server is teamed up, there could still be huge armies of monsters trying to take the bases so there always is action going on. This would be highly unlikely to happen though

[Narghile]

3-5 factions to choose from - best idea evar

[SushiMonster555]

I like the fact that in Oblivion you can go into random caves, mines, etc and be able to find useful things while having a good time going through it. In WOW they have all these caves, mines, etc. but they are only good if you have a quest for that place. I want to be able to explore the world, find caves and go into them to have a chance to find a quest in there or just clear it out in the hopes of discovering a special item. Now that would be fun

[Deleted]

OP, have you checked out guild wars 2 yet? thers some gameplay videos on youtube and some stuff on the official website about game mechanics and stuff. They have some great ideas you may be interested in.

[Deleted]

With pvp, I would like a world filled with fortresses, caves, castles etc for clans to capture and use to gain advantage in wars versus other clans. No traditional X faction with some races vs Y faction with some races. Any races could team up if they wanted to and build their own kind of army. Owning more bases would mean more resources and basically mean a bigger threat. So either other clans on the server could stand up against this huge threat or simply surrender to their forces and maybe form an alliance consisting of all clans on the server! Also there should always be opposition from enemy npcs. So lets say the whole server is teamed up, there could still be huge armies of monsters trying to take the bases so there always is action going on. This would be highly unlikely to happen though

Nice thinking . it would be quite cool to have recourses etc afffect gameplay a bit. Forming of clans would also be quite nice but I don't know how devs would implement that though

as for guildwars2, I'll take a look at it

[Specops]

Mortal Online

[LoLHellcy]

Im not a fan of your gear idea tbh.... Yes it makes it more skill based, but that also means you could easily have mass-boredom issues since neither PvE or PvP are actually required at max level....

there are some good ideas to be had, however.

[splifone]

proffesions, no for god sakes no, proffesions=grindfest for mats

[Darios]

sounds gimmicky

[Patchwerk]

I like the fact that in Oblivion you can go into random caves, mines, etc and be able to find useful things while having a good time going through it. In WOW they have all these caves, mines, etc. but they are only good if you have a quest for that place. I want to be able to explore the world, find caves and go into them to have a chance to find a quest in there or just clear it out in the hopes of discovering a special item. Now that would be fun

Yea totally agree! In my MMO, the caves would be similar to the style used for Oblivion. Stuff like that made Oblivion live on forever I mean, instead of idling in a city, why not go out and explore some mysterious caves and kill stuff? The thing with this kind of stuff in WoW is that it's not at all an effective way of gaining money or xp.

[Stanton Biston]

I like your idea very much. You should continue your development and update us on the progress of your game.

I would also like to help in the beta phase. I have a lot of beta experience and feel I could be very useful.

It seems the popular thing right now for developers is to start a blog. Maybe you should too?

[Deleted]

The reason why the oblivion system is horrible is because everything scaled. Sure, you could go explore caves, but why? The gear you get from them depends on your level so it's better to wait a few levels so you actually get good loot there. Of course, there was no need to do that since the normal enemies dropped the best loot in the game if you're at max level.

Because of scaling, Oblivion was probably the game where exploring was the most useless. Morrowind though, THERE we have good incentives to explore.

[Deleted]

I like your idea very much. You should continue your development and update us on the progress of your game.

I would also like to help in the beta phase. I have a lot of beta experience and feel I could be very useful.

It seems the popular thing right now for developers is to start a blog. Maybe you should too?

Thanks, though I'm not a developer (wish I was ), just giving my ideas for a perfect mmo as I was kind of bored

What do you guys think a perfect mmo should have ?

[Deleted]

I made some improvements again, especially on: classes, professions, lvling