Would you play this MMO?

[Dasani]

Would you play a MMO that had these features?

-Permanent Death: Character would have 100 or 200 lives (not finalized on the numbers) and after the last death, was basically deleted forever giving death meaning and something to be avoided and feared as it should be.

-Interactive world: Where you can grow plants and trees, cut them down, build structures out of the wood that exist in the persistent game world. Walls, homes, shops, etc.

-Player ran economy: All items in the game are craftable. No "epics" as modern MMO's envision them, there would just be different types of items that varied in quality and effectiveness based on the skill of it's craftsman and the materials it was made out of.

-Balance not revolving around every race being equal: We think it's silly that a little goblin can become as strong or even stronger than a being many time's it's size and with muscles larger than the goblin's head. Would you like to play a game where each race had different advantages and disadvantages to balance them out instead of having them all basically have the exact same stats, stat growth, and stat potential where the only real difference is what they look like?

-No Classes: A game with many skills in many areas that you raise by using them with no artificial systems to prevent you from using any kind of armor or weapons you wanted and instead having advantages and disadvantages to each armor type instead so you can choose the one you prefer to suit your playstyle.

-Magic Is Overpowered: Imagine for a moment that 75% of every player or character you encounter doesn't have magic power such as the case in modern MMOs. Magic would consist of multiple subskills and be very difficult to raise and almost impossible to master. It would also be dangerous, not only to your enemies, but to your friends and even yourself as well. Spells also don't come from mundane spellbooks that everyone has access to, you would craft the spells yourself by combining different components. You could cast with varying combinations of mental components, physical components, and words of power. However, you couldn't simply look at a website like wowhead or mmo-champion to convenient get the combinations for each spell, because they would be unique to every character created meaning you would have to actually spend time dedicated to learning and experimenting with magic to truly unlock it's mysteries. However, such dedication would be rewarded by wielding extreme power that a non-magic user could never achieve.

-Mounts that are actual creatures: Buy a horse and ride it where ever you wish to go. When you get off of it to fight something, the horse remains there where you left it. Maybe it'll even wander off if you don't tie it to something because it got bored or hungry. No more carrying hundreds of mounts in your bottomless back pocket. Mounts are something you must protect and take care of, maybe even form a bond with. Players who are skilled in the ways of animal taming could even provide mounts to other players, for a fee if they wished, for anything from mundane horses to much more rare and unique creatures. Some that may even be powerful enough to help you fight in combat. It should be noted that some races can also act as mounts for other races, and that the only mounts capable of flying will be other players.

-Skill Based Archery: Instead of simply right clicking an enemy and autoshooting, archery would require a player to actually aim the weapon. The arrows would be extremely deadly against unarmored foes, but much more difficult to use.

-No faction restrictions: Rather than having a couple or a handful of predetermined factions you must be a part of and completely not allowed to interact with opposing faction members, imagine a world where you make and follow your own rules. You choose who you want to play with and who you don't. Develop friends and enemies naturally through your own experience instead of being drafted into a conflict you couldn't care less about.

-Player Cities: There would be only a few NPC cities in the game that exist mostly as a starting point for new characters, the majority of them in the game would be crafted, owned, and ran by players. You might choose to live alone in your log cabin in the woods, or maybe instead you'd rather help forge a pioneer town out in untamed and undiscovered country and perhaps over time with enough people joining your settlement it may grow into a bustling city or even be the heart of an entire kingdom. It is entirely up to the players.

-Hirelings: You can hire NPCs to work for you, dress them however you like to suit any kind of uniform your guild, town, or kingdom may have or equip them with weapons and armor and make them act as guards for your city. They will follow any orders you give them provided they are compensated for it. It allows protection and security for your settlements or perhaps just an artificial companion or two to help you explore the world and fight off enemies should you desire and be capable of affording it.

-Your character is what you make it: You won't find any "You are the hero, savior of the entire world!" quests and nonsense here. No pre-scripted and linear plot you must follow. Your character could be a humble blacksmith or miner at the beginning and just enjoy running his shop and supplying your city with fine arms and armor. Or maybe when business is slow, or if you're just itching for a little more excitement, you could begin to dabble in swordsmanship and perhaps go out with other citizens to secure the outlying areas around your settlement or perhaps explore a dungeon. Your character will get as much or as little combat as you want. You can survive entirely as a craftsman, trader, or even diplomat if you wished without ever having to fight. You could also be a warrior, either alone, or perhaps some day lead armies of other players against rival kingdoms or against powerful foes. You don't need to pretend to be the hero at the center of the story to have fun, especially when you know every other player is the exact same supposed hero and has done all of the same quests, events, and killed the same people. In this world, your actions matter. You might live in obscurity if you wanted to but you might also accomplish some feats worthy of being known and remembered. It is all in your hands.

-Deities: Although arcane magic is extremely limited, there will be a handful of gods that each have different spheres of influence in the world at large. A player can build a shrine to any of these deities and become a priest in their service. However, such power does not come lightly or automatically. Other players must declare which shrine is their place of worship and for each additional player that worships at your shrine, the more potent blessings your deity will grant you. This creates an organic pyramid of power to also limit the divine power players have access to so not every single player can be a priest either and it keeps power limited to a small percentage of the total playerbase. If you were truly dedicated to being a priest, you could be, but it is not a path taken lightly by someone who just wants "magic powers". Players will be inclined to choose a deity to worship because it will provide some passive benefits to them for doing so but it is by no means required. Players must also visit this shrine periodically to maintain their benefit, for example perhaps once a week. This encourages them to support their local priests because it's more convenient. A priest will function more like a classical spellcaster, they will have more predefined abilities in the form of blessings and miracles they can cast and the abilities they have, their potency, and how often they can use them, are all based entirely on the number of players who declared their shrine as their primary place of worship. The priests themselves can also choose a shrine that is not their own as their primary place of worship, this empowers the owner of that shrine with the combined total of all of that priest's followers as well. This opens up the possibility for political power within the priesthoods of each deity at the higher levels, although, once again, it is entirely optional to go this route. The most powerful priest with the most number of supporters, both direct and indirect, is the Hierophant of the religion. This gives them additional abilities unique only to them. The only way to dethrone a hierophant (other than permanent death obviously) is by having another priest obtain more followers. Since followers must "refresh" their place of worship periodically, this prevents a single player from ever ruling forever (especially if they were to stop playing) because any single priest has the potential to become the hierophant of a given religion, they just need support from the masses to do so.

-Passion: A game created by people who made this game out of passion and drive to create a game they wanted to play. Not conforming to any norms or standards set by others, but making up their own rules to make the game their own vision. Developers and staff who prioritize the game's quality and vision above all else, even profit. A game that is NOT DESIGNED TO APPEAL TO EVERYONE. It is fully realized to be a niche game that not all people will enjoy, but even with only thousands of players instead of millions it is enough to pay everyone's salaries so they can continue developing it and improving it and providing more dynamic content to experience. Also, WOW's millions of players are spread across countless hundreds of servers. A single server with thousands of active players has the potential to be more densely populated and full of more people than any WOW server or comparable MMO you will ever play, it is about relativity. The total number of subscribers doesn't matter, it's about having enough to make the world feel alive and always having people to interact with.

I could go on, but I think i'll stop there. Would anyone be interested in playing such a game? I just want to get a general idea.

[Schmittay]

Yes except the perma death thing. I don't play a game to invest huge amounts of time just for some fktard to perma kill me.

Otherwise sounds like an awesome MMO!

[mickybrighteyes]

Halfway through the list it sounded like you were listing off Darkfall's attributes mixed with some DDO. Perma death is a bit harsh really.... and having a toon deleted upon reaching a certain death toll is a bit over the top. Not saying it couldn't work, but when people want to play all games like they play WoW it doesn't work in the slightest.

change "perma death" to something like Eve's system and I'd look at it.

one last thing. Is there stealth of any sort? This makes or breaks a game in my eyes.

[Hanto]

Sounds good less the perma death thing. Yes it should be feared, but someone putting their heart and soul into their character after a year or two of doing their best to avoid such lethal repercussions would probably just stop playing after that last life gave out.

[Haizer]

-Hirelings: You can hire NPCs to work for you, dress them however you like to

This would make me happy!

OT: Yeah, a game like this would be awesome imo. The limited amount of lives would make people think before they do something stupid, like kill themselves to bother your game play. As an atheist I find the deity thing kinda dumb imo, but it's a game with many mythological features(no flame intended) why not.

[lukz]

Is there cheesedip? Nice post, but hell, use your return key and make paragraphs! Wall of text = 99% of this forum and most other will just ignore it!

[Idontlikeyou]

I sort of like the perma death feature. To many people that play games these days dont care if they die. Its just become a feature that people think it is just a time sink. "Oh, I just died. I now have to retrieve my body. It is just a game, Har Har!" I think that if anyone that played that game would have a better understanding and compassion towards their toon, and would be less likely to do stupid things to grief other players. They would run to much of a risk at losing their own.

If anything, it would keep a certain mindset out of the game. I would currently find that very refreshing.

[Deleted]

Yes except the perma death thing. I don't play a game to invest huge amounts of time just for some fktard to perma kill me.

Otherwise sounds like an awesome MMO!

Lose the perma-death and I'll bite. While death should have penalties, you shouldn't lose your character over it cause that would really suck when you've invested hundreds of hours in it.

I think what works best would be no death at all so it wouldn't make the player characters special and immortal compared to NPCs. But instead, when your HP goes to zero, you get wounded or knocked unconcious or something.

[Viradiance]

A lot of this sounds like Minecraft.

Or the Fallout/Elder Scrolls serieses.

[Whitcher]

This game sounds like it would be designed specifically for the hardcores who would spend an exorbitant amount of time in-game.

I think I'd stick to WoW.

[Synaxis]

I stopped reading as soon as I saw the words 'permanent death.'

[Deleted]

DDO has NPC hirelings for dungeons.

But yeah, I'd love to play a game like this. Too bad it's too "hardcore" and no dev would DARE trying to make a game this complex.

This kinda reminds me of Runescape.. which looks like crap:P But it is pretty hardcore and I think it's second to WoW based on the number of subscribers. Last I checked it had 2 or 3 mil.

[Aired]

Sort of like oblivion online...

[MortalWombat]

This doesn't sound like a hardcore game at all, just a very unbalanced one. It will be impossible to balance anything in this game so you will have those people who just take the most OP of everything and then run around destroying everyone else.

And perma death is never going to be a great idea for an MMO. It works for single player games but for an MMO you need to have something that is meant to kill players a lot before they succeed. If this game had that then no one would bother wasting time on it, who wants to risk it?

[rektbrah]

What i want in a game is to be able to kill whoever i want and make my own base. Pretty much runescape game with wow gameplay etc.

Love the town idea and the kill anyone aspect, perminant death is not a good idea, instead make it so you lose all your items and the other guy can pick it up. Would love to run around killing nerds who make a house on their own with a group if mates and take all their stuff

[Izin]

sounds in many ways like eve online (but in an other universe ofc), and I think eve actually solved the death thing pretty well. When you die the first time you will lose your space ship (ie you have to buy a new one) which can cost a fortune if you got a good one. When your space ship is destoryed you spawn in a capsule that has no weapons or anything and if this one gets blown up YOU die and all your abilities (which in this game is like leveling) will disappear. You can "save" the abilities though by cloning your self so if you die you can go back to this clone, but having a clone can be expensive and you need to keep updating it when you learn new stuff.

Anyway some greate ideas some less greate in an mmo like that, but I would prolly try it out

[Weightless]

Sounds like a second life, but with magic.

Sounds cool, I'd look at it.

[Deleted]

Sounds a lot like you'd be playing real life except for those magic things >_>

Aaaand me being blind I was beaten to it by a couple of minutes :G

[ungar]

Would you play a MMO that had these features?

<snip>

I used to play a game with a lot of those features. it was called gemstone 3-4. it was a text based MUD, but MMO nonetheless. your character's progression was based on training skills like "edged swords" or "blunt maces" npcs and mobs had defensive skill based on their level, and players did too. every time you leveled up (by gaining 5 skill points, which are progressively harder to earn you get a stat point in "intel, stamina, strength, discipline, etc" these make your character stronger at types of abilities. you also had "magic devices skill" and with high enough skill you could use powerful artifacts.

there was permanent death, but you could choose to not die by buying "Favor" with your aligned god. so you do a task and get an orb with gives you extra lives, etc. you only used your lives if you "departed" and left a grave, not if you were ressurected.

lots of other good stuff if you're looking for a balanced and fun MMO to play or if you plan on creating one. check out the games by simutronics. only problem was those games were text based, and 3D games killed the market. also, gemstone 3 (lots of people loved) died out when the level cap went over 100. so there were level 120+ characters and it got wonky. at least for the player's grasp, I guess we like level 100 to be max level. so they revamped gemstone 3 into gemstone 4 and crunched down the levels, and they messed up because strong characters who were level 120 were now like level 80, and it was weird. I guess they weren't as strong anymore because a lot of people quit.

going to go back and read the whole post because I just skimmed it but wanted to share the idea of those games. awesome games and ideas. mostly adults played, probably because it was text and not pretty pictures. I also liked that about it. WoW caters to 12 year olds (yeah it kinda bugs me)

[Dasani]

Permadeath is always pretty controversial, but without it, there is no real consequence for dying. People just charge into fights against overwhelming odds rather than using proper strategy or tactics. They are reckless, they don't plan ahead, they aren't as observant.

And it isn't like Diablo hardcore mode where you just die and it's over, you have a hundred or more lives to go through so even if you die a few times to carelessness or lag or whatever, there are plenty of spares.

There are also some advantages to permanently dying which I did not list here but to summarize without making another huge post, basically that is how the game's "legendary" items are created. When a character of yours dies for the final time, you can choose to leave behind an item that it possessed and sort of imbue it, in a sense, with extra bonuses making this type of item the most powerful in the game but also, as you might imagine, the most rare. They wouldn't be gamebreakingly unbalanced but definitely an advantage in whatever bonuses they provided. The strength of these bonuses would be based on just how developed the character was. So if you just made a character one day with the intention of getting him killed 100 or so times specifically to make such an item, it would not work. Once you reached certain thresholds in the game it would sort of advance this feature when it finally became available in your last death.

Character development rate is also one of the factors in choosing a race. Some races learn skills more quickly than others and have an advantage in that respect, however they are typically less hardy or powerful. Most skills and skill caps wouldn't be restricted by race, but the stats themselves would be as I mentioned about the goblin. He could be just as skilled as a warrior as a human, but he wouldn't have near the actual physical strength or endurance. He would have to rely on a multitude of skills in unison to defeat his stronger foe rather than purely his swordsmanship. This rate of development difference between races also serves as a kind of buffer against perma-death with the faster developing races being a bit less penalizing for having to start over and those that do take significantly longer would also end up being a lot harder to kill. Of course it's all subject to balancing, but the balance concepts are based around this general idea rather than all races being equal in strength, intelligence, dexterity, etc because that's silly.

And I know there were places I could've spaced it out a bit better, but I like keeping similar thoughts from the same vein together and not space them out.