If those guilds exist, then that makes for great competition between the guilds who do it what you seem to think the 'right' way and those who leech, no? Keep in mind that servers have a limited number of players. If the entire server is made up of those who just hit a boss once then the bosses won't ever go down.
---------- Post added 2012-11-14 at 07:48 AM ----------
Do you mean that each skill has a cap or that you can only gain so many skill points? For example, 1h ability capping at 1000, 2h ability capping at 1000, etc. and you can max those and every other skill. Or do you mean that you can only level all skills for a total of 10,000 times?
That is the goal.As long as you avoid ghost servers, smaller is better.
This is an excellent question and one of the reasons I'm gathering feedback. The idea is that more people = faster kills. You clear a dungeon quicker with a friend than solo. Do you not think that efficiency is enough to do this, along with the "having fun playing with other people" aspect of games?Could work but needs development so people have to work together. The holy trinity thing is there to force people to work in a group. Besides having more people why would people work together in this mechanic setting?
---------- Post added 2012-11-14 at 07:56 AM ----------
Yep, I know! I wish I was able to provide more information. Unfortunately, brainstorming is just that and I don't like tossing out information that can chance on a day by day basis.
Last edited by Tankitbetter; 2012-11-14 at 07:50 AM.
Nope, I wouldn't.
Just because of no level system. It could be a perfect MMO but without that, I wouldnt play it for more than a month. No level system and catch up systems are deal breakers for me. Ideally designed MMO would never make anything easier unless it's a balance issue that's being fixed. Instead they should just provide content for every level player or make most things have fairly low requirements but being above them would decrease the number of players needed for it and the time needed to complete it.
Almost everything draws some kind of similarity between SAO and your design but what stood-out are:
1. The community part about "A living, breathing world community" which is very similar to what SAO appeared to be. Almost everything is controlled by players. In addition, in SAO players choose combat or non-combat (crafting, gathering, baking etc...) roles similar to your "be anything you want".
2. The part about if you pvp a lot your indicator turns red.
3. The death penalty is similar to the new part in SAO where they're not trapped in there.
4. The way skills levelled although most famously used in TES series is also used in SAO.
5. The way you described everything screamed SAO at me for some reason.
Has no one else seen that this sounds like GW2+D3? I have never even looked at SAO, so I can't comment...but abilities, PvE, everything sounds like a hybrid between ARPG and GW2.
It would be interesting, but probably a mess to play.
Stopped reading here and voted "NO," sorry.Each account may only have 1 character per server
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.
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The problem i see with this, are the trolls. Or those who only would like to kill a boss using XXX amount of people rather than the expected amount, just for bragging rights. I don't believe a throng of players would be happy having to sit and wait, and vice versa i don't think the smaller group would be too happy if a giant group just jumped in and started killing the boss they are trying to kill in a more challenging manner.
I guess with Dynamic scaling it wouldn't matter, you could 5 man or 1,000 man, and the boss would feel exactly the same.
I gotta say though, an MMO focused much more on the community would be far better than what we currently have. I played WoW from Vanilla to Cata. The biggest issue i had was watching my server go from amazing people, to the dredges of society. Are you considering any sorta of infraction system, or punishment system that truly makes people think twice about ruining the flow of the server, or the other players experience?
Last edited by Kathandira; 2012-11-14 at 06:36 PM.
From just the first half, no way in hell.
Take any MMO design philosophy out there, sprinkle in some nice graphics and smooth gameplay, and you will capture an audience. It's no coincidence that in the past decade MMOs (both A+ titles and smaller almost unheard of ones) pop up just about every few months.
I like some of your designs OP, specially the no levels and leveling up skills insteads. I loved that part in FFXI. But what makes an MMO truly successful these days seems to depends on how broad an audience you can go. And how many features you can put in there that will not alienate a part of your potential player base. WoW for instance has sooooo many features we all love, but it's quickly overshadowed by dailies that "feels" manadatory. Again, just 1 feature. Or even just that 1 boss your guild can't kill will cause people to quit, leave, etc etc.
-With no alts allowed, you killed alt-a-holics interest. FFXI seemed to have no inherit reason to make alts for instance, except for crafting limitations and maybe racials. But I still found myself making different races, different looks, and different names all on the same server so that I could continue to play with friends.
-With lack of instancing, you killed the game for those who have lag issues in any kind of decent looking game (my fps drops on sha for instance even on medium settings). I would dread seeing the server "community" come together for a world boss, and would try to monopolize the spawns with around 10-20 guildies who I know could perform. Remember your bosses scale down to that level. Why have 1000 people who may or may not do their job, when you can have 10 that you know will.
-All the players who dream of being archers in MMOs also have no place now. If you can have ranged casters why could you not have archers?
-Players who have may or may not take breaks because of RL stuff will find it harder coming back, even with a faster way to catch skills up. The only reason I've played WoW as much as I have is because when I come back, everyone is on equal footing again. Games like Eve and FFXI it was almost impossible to enjoy the game again after a long break. My friends were miles ahead of me and I couldn't see a quick way to catch up.
Thats just a few of my complaints, but you get the idea. Even with all this though, there is nothing stopping your MMO from reaching 50,000+ players.
Last edited by Lefrog; 2012-11-14 at 06:54 PM.
There will always be content for lower tiers. However, being able to play with friends is rather important, no? Or perhaps your friends need a new sword and board person and you're interested in doing it. There are many reasons to have a catch up system.
Why is no level system such a deal breaker?
---------- Post added 2012-11-14 at 07:39 PM ----------
These type of leechers would be come pariahs, assuming that we designed bosses where it's possible to attack a boss then run far enough way to keep a tag and not be within its attack ranges.
These type of people would be banned from towns, guild areas, etc. Players wouldn't trade with them. Players wouldn't buy or sell items to them. The community would deal with these kind of people.
---------- Post added 2012-11-14 at 07:40 PM ----------
Okay, thanks I was just curious. I will point out the first one was first attempted by Vanguard: Saga of Heroes but was poorly designed and implemented so players ended up hunting anyway.
Are these punishments assumed? or enforced?
What i mean is, are you assuming the players will ban trolls from town/guild areas and no trade buy or sell with them? Or would there be GM's who would enforce these things by disabling their ability to perform these actions? Assuming faith in a community could be dangerous, normally a community needs to be developed first before you see how it will behave.
It's assumed
If a community is willing to feed its bad players, that's completely its choice. However, they have the options to ostracize those players. It's just fine that a group of players who are willing to attempt to take it the easy way and become a guild of pariahs band together, build their own town, and focus on being a group of, essentially, player villains. It sets up great conflict between the "good" guilds and players, and these players. That's what being a living, breathing community is all about.
So if a group of greifers decided to band together make a huge town and work together to destroy a server and ruin the game for, say 800 people, this would be allowed?
I guess in the end you could go inactive for a month and then transfer to another server. But if you invested a ton of time into a server and community only to have a group of really well organized trolls ruin it, it would make for some very unhappy people.
What are your thoughts on such a situation?
If the 800 people couldn't band together to stop a much smaller group, then that's fine. Although, I'm not really sure how one can "destroy a server" :P
Interference ruins this type of interaction. It's not griefing - it's competition.
edit: And it's way too early to start talking about server transfers and such, as a side note.
---------- Post added 2012-11-14 at 10:11 PM ----------
Successful is such an odd word. Is it successful when you reach 100,000 subs? 500k? 10 mil? Is it successful when it gets rave reviews or when you get a bunch of beta testers? Is it successful when you start making enough money to justify more patches for it?
These are all good points except for the last one. A higher level friend can play with a level 1. Just throw on a different weapon type, play around with magic, etc. and you're set to go.-With no alts allowed, you killed alt-a-holics interest. FFXI seemed to have no inherit reason to make alts for instance, except for crafting limitations and maybe racials. But I still found myself making different races, different looks, and different names all on the same server so that I could continue to play with friends.
-With lack of instancing, you killed the game for those who have lag issues in any kind of decent looking game (my fps drops on sha for instance even on medium settings). I would dread seeing the server "community" come together for a world boss, and would try to monopolize the spawns with around 10-20 guildies who I know could perform. Remember your bosses scale down to that level. Why have 1000 people who may or may not do their job, when you can have 10 that you know will.
-All the players who dream of being archers in MMOs also have no place now. If you can have ranged casters why could you not have archers?
-Players who have may or may not take breaks because of RL stuff will find it harder coming back, even with a faster way to catch skills up. The only reason I've played WoW as much as I have is because when I come back, everyone is on equal footing again. Games like Eve and FFXI it was almost impossible to enjoy the game again after a long break. My friends were miles ahead of me and I couldn't see a quick way to catch up.
Thats just a few of my complaints, but you get the idea. Even with all this though, there is nothing stopping your MMO from reaching 50,000+ players.
Catch up system of any kind is bad for so many reasons.
1) It cheapens the achievements
2) It forces you to keep playing to stay relevant
3) It heavily contributes to only the latest content being relevant. Just look at WoW. There are tons low level content, thousands of quests, yet every place is a ghost town. Why do something that doesn't matter at all at level cap?
4) Lower tier content already gets easier due to people getting better at the game, more gear stacking on the market and even because it's just easier to do it with later tier gear.
5) It heavily takes away from player driven world and sandbox - this one is not necessarily bad but personal preference.
So in short, less to do, everything becomes meaningless if you can just wait till it gets handed to you and it forces you to play since taking breaks would mean you have to start all over again from the beginning.
So if you really want to play with someone, boost him/her or start new alts together. A token benefit is not worth ruining the whole game for.
As for leveling system. Thats personal preference. I only play MMO's that are RPG with classical RPG elements and levels are pretty important there. But after re-reading your post, I guess you mean something like Skyrim or Runescape? It's still levels then and of course that wouldn't be a problem. I just don't like action MMO's with only a few RPG elements.
[quote]2) It forces you to keep playing to stay relevant/quote]
That sounds like a good thing, not a bad thing :P
This is bad?3) It heavily contributes to only the latest content being relevant. Just look at WoW. There are tons low level content, thousands of quests, yet every place is a ghost town. Why do something that doesn't matter at all at level cap?
The rest of your points essentially the same thing - "low level content needs to be relevant." I'm not sure how much I agree. As pointed out by others, playing with friends is a huge part of the game. Not allowing those players to catch up with their friends is worse than lower level content being near-empty. Also, keep in mind that with only 1 character per server, the average level of players is going to stay roughly the same. A player who picks up an empty spot on an older server will be very far behind. He will have to work hard to catch up - and 20% less per skill point still means he'll need to spend 80% of the time the original players did.
It needs to stay relevant because then you could play the whole (usually massive) game, with a big, live world, instead of grinding one stupid dungeon for 3 months till the next update comes. So yes, it is really REALLY bad because killing off all the content other than the 2 latest tiers kills the world. And in an instant, you would get a lobby game where you sign up for games with 5-25 randoms or friends instead of an MMO.
And yes, forcing players to keep playing like that is bad. Instead of punishing (if you take a break for a few months your gear will decline at least one tier..) a game should reward players and make them want to play. For example very high level caps lets say something like D3 paragon levels but with minor benefits etc.
The sandbox elements. Plain and simple. Right now these features are both mismanaged and fragmented in various MMOs. There's no single fantasy MMORPG that consolidates them. EVE Online has them, but spaceships are on a different level.
Yeah, I'd play it. I just can't get into current fantasy MMORPGs, because they just aren't sandboxes. Your concepts overall are what I like and am looking for.
Things that stand out the most for me:
A living, breathing world community will exist via player houses, guild territories, etc. - Totally nailed it.
Players can be purely craftsman based - yes YES!!!!
Skills, No level system. - Yup, nice.
A completely non-instanced world. - Can't do without.
Also, a portion of the negativity you're getting is over some little, obnoxious details like the alt thing. If I were you, I wouldn't present such details alongside the fundamental basics. But hey, it's your thread.