Not related to P&P gaming: Problems with MMO Gaming

[Judging__Eagle]

Note: this isn't done, but it's something that came into my head like a stormhead an hour or so ago.

So, I'm thinking of someday either fobbing off this idea for a game design and either getting some people together to make it or going with some actual company to get them to do it.

Basically the idea is that it's an MMO, that solves most of the problems that most MMOs have.

For instance:

Big Problem #1: "Farming"

People farm monsters to get items in-game to sell for cash:

Ways to solve it:

-Make playing different;
-I've got a few other ideas, but they tie in to other problems

Big Problem #2: "Getting a group"

Even on a relly fvcking big server you can seldom find the people that can fill out your group; level differences, class differnces etc. all add up to some groups never getting who they want and some players never getting groups.

Ways to solve this:

-Every player can get extra 'character' NPCs to join their party.

No seriously, if all the crappy warriors could always rely on getting a healer and a blaster to back him up, then they wouldn't bug everyone else, nor would they sulk b/c they have to solo in some crappy area.

How you get NPCs is based on your level and you can get more NPCs as you get more levels using the following chart as an example:

Column A - Level of your Character
Column B - # of NPCs you can get
Column B - Level of NPCs that you can have access to

A B C
1 1 1
2 2 1
3 3 1
4 4 1
5 1 5
6 2 5
7 3 5
8 4 5
9 5 5
10 1 10

So, as you go from one tier of NPC bots to an other, you get progressively more; however, when you hit the next Tier you can only get one NPC bot of that Tier.

Of course, there has to be a down side; so each NPC counts as 1/2 a PC for XP sharing; so you're getting a bit less XP if you're with your NPC buddy, but you can level at better areas, so it's a so-so situation.

On the upside you get to keep all of the loot.

Downside, you are not allowed to enter the cool areas/dungeouns; you need at least 2 players to enter them, 1 player and 3 NPCs won't let you in. This is meant to restric farming. The types of areas that you can enter would be 'resource' farming areas.

So, chinese farmers will probably never enter here b/c 1. they are competing for cash and 2. legit players can enter an area utterly full of resources for them to level their 'crafting' skills off of.


Big Problem #3: "Getting level appropriate gear in a completely non-random fashion"

When your guild raids a boss with 40 people for the... 40th time and you still are getting the same crappy items, that's utter bullshit.

Big Problem #4: "Having your character actually look cool, but not look like other people"

It's hard to be a hero when you look like the dude just at the other side of the main trading city; or you and the other girl in your group are wearing the same damn ugly outfit b/c it's really good for stats.



Big Problem #5: "Being able to make a suit of armour or a weapon is completely useless, since players can kill for better gear"

-Best thing I can think of: Since your faction is at war with other factions; every item you hand in earns you War Material Points (WMPs or Wimps as they'll probably be called). Better items that you trade in equals more Wimps, for you to get yourself better gear.

Which leads into the next section:

Big Problem #6: "Being able to make a suit of armour or a weapon is completely useless, since you don't get anything except for cash"

Being a Grandmaser Blacksmith should be actually worth something.

-You can trade in stuff you've made in order to get XP, and your title changes to reflect the fact that you're an Apothecary (potion maker); Armourer, Arms Smith; Engineer or Supreme Grandmaster Bandagier on your server.

This results in people who want to hang out in town crafting stuff and chatting can still level up in an appropriate manner.


Oh, to the Admins and anyone else who reads this; I'm not sure this goes here or somewhere else; but these are some ideas that I'm hashing out and I showed parts of this to someone else today and he says that I'm freaking nuts for saying some of the stuff I'm saying here.

Thanks for any and all comments and concerns

-Tito

[PhoneLobster]

I'm seeing a list of minor quibbles rather than a hard look at the truly major limitations underlying MMOs.

I personally see there being just a few very very BIG problems with the damn things.

1) Lacking in originality
They're all still basically Rogue or whatever it was called with a prettier GUI and more dicks cluttering the landscape speaking in acronyms.

Beyond that they still seem to be tiny variants on each other, EVERYONE seems to be the same lame farming, anonymous hackfest, guilding crafting dump that everyone seems to have been since Everquest and before.

New MMOs need to grow a pair and actually break the mold. And break it HARD.

2) Social issues
MMOs want you to socialize because in actual fact the only part of the game that really makes you come back is the other people (after all the rest of the game tends to be a rather inferior version of single player RPGs).

SO they try and reward socializing. Or punish the lack of it.

Which is nice and all but it REALLY sucks if you HAVE to be part of a damn guild (or even a party) to play, or play with full access to the games features, or play without the game sucking EXTRA hard.

3) Lack of Content
MMOs lack content. This is their biggest fattest nastiest problem.

They can have teams of people working day and night putting more content in the game and its NOT ENOUGH.

Because its all scripted material and there aren't enough script writers for all the players. There probably aren't even enough script writers to make the game world appear as "Massive" as they like to pretend for even one or two players.

And doing the same quest over again sucks.

Doing unexciting quests that have objectives like "Kill 60 fricking wolves" suck, one wolf is enough a small pack is exciting, 60 all at once in a zany horde scenario, maybe, but churning through 1 or 2 at a time 40 or so times... (especially when a level appropriate fight is generally considered to be a tedious and drawn out process)

And they do that sort of 60 wolf junk to hide the lack of content. But its not good enough.

The only game on the horizon looking to TRY to solve this sort of content problem is Spore.

Its nice to see one big games designer out there wrestling the content problem and bringing back some of the old techniques that actually made for big content games in the past (ie how Daggerfall was a bigger game than its successor Morrowind).

[Neeek]

Note: I have ever only played Guild Wars and the beta version of City of Heroes.

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Big Problem #2: "Getting a group"

Even on a relly fvcking big server you can seldom find the people that can fill out your group; level differences, class differnces etc. all add up to some groups never getting who they want and some players never getting groups.

Ways to solve this:

-Every player can get extra 'character' NPCs to join their party.

Guild Wars did exactly this, and which NPC-aids were available was based on what difficulty level you were entering.

Big Problem #4: "Having your character actually look cool, but not look like other people"

City of Heroes solved this problem with a appearance desgin engine. It worked pretty well.

[Username17]

The problem with MMORPGs are, to my mind at least, the following:

1. Grind.
   Being level 60 in WOW or level 75 in FFXI is a matter of putting in a certain amount of work into the game. The game itself therefore becomes "work" and work =/= fun. Seeing that someone has a level 60 Shaman or a level 75 White Mage doesn't mean that the person isn't a douche - it doesn't even mean that the guy is good at the game. It's an entitlement that comes from having played the game a certain amount. And that means perversely that there actually isn't anything for you to accomplish.
   
2. Power Discrepency.
   Directly related to the grind requirement is the fact that since we don't all keep the same schedules, we won't all have grinded the same amount. The net result is that you can't play with your friends because they are almost always a different level from you and the game punishes you severely for trying to adventure together.
   
3. Lack of Goals
   Let's face it: in a MMO, you can't accomplish anything. Seriously, you can't beat the Horde, in most games you can't even make a house that you can show to other players. If you kill the Black Prince Telroth, he'll respawn in a few minutes. And more than likely, you'll go back and kill him again - assuming that your group is still able to adventure with you by then.
   
4. Lack of Relevance[/size]
   Because you can't accomplish anything, it doesn't really matter what you do. You could just kill boars until you hit level 60. Or whatever. Noone else really cares what you're doing because they know it doesn't mean anything in the larger picture. If a group of Dark Elves are invading human lands in their Christmas themed underwear... you don't have to do anything or even take notice because it won't actually change anything.
   
5. Lack of Discovery
   The pregenerated quests are just that... pregenerated. The explanations of how to do them are online, and people simply download instructions to complete each one. There's no sense of wonder, no thrillof the hunt... because absolutely everything your character ever does could be done by a robot that could read the unofficial questFAQ.

That's what's wrong. The entire exercise is one of futility and irrelevence. You don't save princesses, you kill the same corrupt gnoll guards over and over again. And when the little green text tells you that you have to do something else... you kill corrupt ogre guards instead. \/\/00+!

sigh

---

OK... you want to make a MMO that actually might hold my interest for thirty seconds? Try the following:

• No Advancement.
  That's right. Your skills don't level up. Your character doesn't level up. You're like Mario or something, and slaying a giant demon turtle is a matter of skill in the game, not time in the game world. Suddenly you can go chimera hunting with your friends and not feel like a tool because you can slap the weaker players onto less dangerous roles (like archers) and noone is missing out on "XP" anyhow.
  
• Diverse Ability Management Systems.
  I don't want to sit there and press [W] every time my ability refreshes until the monster is dead - that's a waste of time. I want to have something to do to use my abilities. Something like Puzzle Pirates for stuff like picking locks or casting spells, and something like Unreal Tournament to waste people with my crossbow. By giving a number of different kinds of skills a place to shine, people with and without twitch reflexes can adventure together and value each other and not feel like total idiots.
  
• A Plotline and a Timetable
  Every MMO has a beginning, a middle, and an end. I don't know that anyone cares about UO anymore, and Asheron's Call receded when they made a sequel. You should plan for that. Write a storyline. And have content move forward until the servers come down in seven years time (or whatever). Everyone knows that they are renting the game rather than purchasing it, so you might as well make that explicit.
  With the plot actually moving forward and events actually taking place, individual players could actually contribute to things and have a sense of accomplishment.
  
• Persistent World: Instance Quests
  OK, Instance Dungeons are dumbtastic. But generated caravans that needed saving or barbarian encampments that could be raided could be pretty cool. With a constant rain of "stuff" to do, players could actually discover something. Be part of something. Take something home that was uniquely theirs.

As is, the genre is so completely vapid that I don't care. I like fantasy and kvetching to people online as much as the next guy, but damn. The MMO genre has less progress than a Robert Jordan book.

-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

1171077257[/unixtime]]Note: I have ever only played Guild Wars and the beta version of City of Heroes.

1171072355[/unixtime]]
Big Problem #2: "Getting a group"

Even on a relly fvcking big server you can seldom find the people that can fill out your group; level differences, class differnces etc. all add up to some groups never getting who they want and some players never getting groups.

Ways to solve this:

-Every player can get extra 'character' NPCs to join their party.

Guild Wars did exactly this, and which NPC-aids were available was based on what difficulty level you were entering.

Big Problem #4: "Having your character actually look cool, but not look like other people"

City of Heroes solved this problem with a appearance desgin engine. It worked pretty well.

Yeah, GW and CoV had those elements, but, if they had both; that would be cooler.

CoV (and CoH) were cool in that you could be a energy rifle using midgit cyborg in the same game that you could be a pyschic-using 9 foot tall horn-covered demon.

As for GW, I was thinking that you can pick from any PC class as your NPCs; but having no more than one of each class as an NPC is probably a good idea.

So, you could have a party full of your NPC PC-class 'pets' (which is really what they'd be).



On Grinding; yeah, it's a complaint, a big one. Especially if you know what you're doing, and you have to do it over and over for 5 or 10 hours to make it no longer worth doing b/c now you have something new that you have to do over and over for the next 5-10 hours.

Also, I was thinking of a potentially different levelling mechanic.

You can't level unless you complete a level and class appropriate 'encounter'.

Heck, you should be able to hit 60 if you can achieve all 60 quests in a row.

Seriously.


Maybe completely eliminate gear altogether. As you level you get 'gear points' (sort of like in CoH) that you can assign to stuff; like armour, or having a better rifle or napalm staff.






Also, I was thinking of dividing each servers 'world' into as many as 12 different 'factions'.

Dwarves are a team, Elves are a team, Humans are a team, etc. etc. etc. heck, we'll even make some of the monster races 'teams' that people could play.

Then, put them all in a tiny starting area and have them play a giant game equivalent to capture the flag for all the territories remaining.

Having a mechanic for allowing peace treaties between factions that could only be arranged by the most skilled players (aka, the players who got the highest scores on their "leveling" tests, not the ones who leveled the longest).

Or, a vote. If two 'skilled enough' players offer their factions the option to team up their factions; and enough players who are part of their side vote yes, then boom, instantly you can go back and forth between human and hobgoblin land so that you can fight the dwarf/giant armies in the mountains.

Having the option for people to build castles and guard towers and houses in the wilderness would help people defend their 'territory'; if you and your guild are logged off, your guild's guard tower overseeing goblin land will have your NPC allies stand in and hopefully kill stuff before the goblins wipe you all out.



So, elements of Shadowbane; but I'm not sure how successful the castle building part of that game was.


If any one nation combines with all nations, or all the 'remaining' nations team up; or one nation beats up everyone else....

You can start invading other servers. You've learned planes-hopping spells now. Happy Birthday, your human/giant/bugbear/elf coalition can take over an other server.

This also means that if you want to join a server where the Elves got wiped out. Try a different server. That or join the Humans or Hobgoblins or something.


Just some more ideas.



I'm not too clear on how CoH/CoV does gear aquiring, it's only those power-up point tokens, right? A method where that is tied into being able to complete tests might work.

[Username17]

National Race Relations
If WoW has taught us anything, it is that a good solution to the fact that different races have different levels of mass appeal (hint: races with nice boobs have more appeal) is to group multiple races into the nations. To go a step farther, it would be easy enough to have more than two nations and have each nation present a different racial make-up, thereby allowing the servers to automatically arrange for roughly equivalent numbers of players for each country by automatically assigning each new character to the potential country with the lowest population.

So the nation where its Orcs, Elves, and Bugbears would get the first Elf character made if it was the lowest population amongst nations with elves, the first bugbear made if it was the lowest among the bugbear nations and so on...

On Static Quests:
Static Quests are bullshit. People look them up on line, and then we're all very sad. People just look at you as if you're retarded because you haven't done the "pick up all the squid quest" cause it's easy and crap. That's crap.

Static quests are like a tutorial. It's fine if they are actually a tutorial, but making players go through them over and over again for their alts is just a cock slap in the face.

No. The only kinds of quests that should exist are:

• Instance Quests
  These quest types are spawned and appear at taverns or something, and the first person who grabs them off the job board gets the map. These have stuff like "rampaging manticore" and "kidnapped little girl" which are quests for a single hero, but they also have things like "there's a caravan that is under attack by orcish ninjas!" that will stay on the job board for lots of people to grab because it's a big battle and one player is not expected to do it alone.
  
• Plotline Quests
  These quests are overarching things that lots of people participate in. The Mad Baron Torg has raised the Ram's Head Standard in the Black Keep and now he's got himself an army of ogres that are going to conquer the world or something. That's a big involved thing that has a lot of stuff for lots of characters to do. Ther are a bunch of road blocks that are manned by Ogres, and each one is sort of a mini-raid. But get this: once each one is down, it's actually been destroyed and stays down. Also there are a finite number of Ogre Patrols, and then a bunch of stuff has to be done to cut off the castle, and eventually the outer walls can be taken, and so on. When it's all over, the Baron himself gets taken down in a cut scene that everyone who participated can see. And the people who did the most get their characters rendered into the climactic battle movie.

And that's it. No default "kill forty winos at the tavern" - because that's really creepy. If you don't want to go take on the Ogre Hell Hound Kennels, you don't have to. There's still a constant rain of generated content that you can interact with.

On Different Servers.
All of the servers should be different places in the same world, rather than being different copies of the same world. This allows the world to be a fvck tonne bigger, and also allows people to play with their friends easily just by moving around.

Transfering characters between servers should be a "boat ride" or something, rather than misto-magical bullshit.

On Equipment
Equipment, while it should exist, shouldn't be an ever-expanding arms race. That's dumbtastic. The vast majority of equipment should be pretty normal. Chainmail protects you more than leather does but you move slower. It's better in some circumstances and worse in others. A bow reloads faster than a crossbow, but there's a whole Tiger Woods style pull-back game that you do in order to get yor arrows where you want them, while a crossbow is just point-and-shoot. Thus, more experienced players may switch to the longbow, and inexperienced archers man arbalests, but not because the longbows aren't readily available.

Special equipments, on the other hand, should certainly exist. It's a fantasy setting. In addition to different areas having various equipment that uses different energy resistances or something (silver swords in Vanheim, Blacksteel in Ulm), there could also be outright magical items. These things should have some actual disadvantages. Furthermore, they should be pretty much unique. Most people shouldn't have a magic sword at all, it cheapens the magic if it is otherwise.

And those magic swords shouldn't be overwhelmingly good - just interesting.

-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

I'd also throw in that when designig your character, you use something that's a combination of Star Wars Galaxy (where, you can actually make a human that looks like you, or josef Stalin, or Mahatma Ghandi) and City of Heroes/Villans where you can be a giant dwarf, or a really short human.

Frank, what you said on weapons is good; what if you had 'weapons' but the 'abilities' that you gain from them are something along the lines of how CoH upgrades your abilities?

So, if you pick up the "attack with weapons really fvcking fast" power-up tree you will always attack faster than average; but the guy who picked up the "attack super freaking hard" or "do magical fire and ice damage" will do those instead. So, you could pick up any weapon and that tree applies.

Retraining your training should be an option, but it has to be a mission that you have to do; which shouldn't take more than an hour.


Really though, leveling should be based on player skill; you have to go in with your NPC ally and you have to do something; clear out a tower, cap some guy who your guild or city doesn't like. If you beat the mission and you get back you level.

Extra quests or killing enemy players that are your level or higher should net you extra power-up points.


How you said that 'factions' should have more than one race; what if we have each server have a random mix of races?

So, elves and humans and demons are on one team on one server; while angels, orcs and goblinoids are a team on that same server; while intelligent neutrality golems, dwarves and lizard folk are one team.

Each 'team' is based out of a city and to get 'new' cities or territory the players of each city will have to expand and conquer enemy villages on their frontiers (that then are populated with citizens of their own faction).


Basically, the best way to describe it would be warfare between multiple city states, with the players being the freebooters and elite mercenaries that do the bulk of the fighting and raiding.

An option that I'd like would be for the 'city' council of NPCs to be able to be swayed by players into doing certain things.

So, say you want your faction to hold onto a region full of monsters that you could eventually press-gang into being shock-troops for your faction (and heck, you could have rabid owlbears as bonus pets b/c you helped your faction secre this territory), you'll have to tell your factions NPC of War that you want to hold that territory and start improving defenses.

If you're a Grand High Warpriest of your city, the NPC will say that he'll try to do his best (and might move troops (aka, NPC soldiers) of your faction to that region to build new forts and towers and kill other PCs of other factions). If you're a journeyman armourer, the NPC might instead tell you to head out to that region and help the local commander get more equipment (aka, trade in armour you've crafted to build up that region's troops armour values so that they can do their job better and maybe get more troops assigned there).

All just ideas.

Really though, the best way to keep a whole campaign world 'fresh' would be to treat it like the giant 40-man "capture the control nodes" game. Except, you have everyone on the server participating, and if your faction grabs enough land, you're gonna eventually grab the whole server.


Frank, what you said about 'each region' being it's own server would work and tie directly into this.

Eventually servers would come under one factions domain and they'd start to invade the servers 'closest' to them (that is, you can't go from your server to just any server, you have to go to the ones that would be contiguos wth your own server's portion of the world).

Unless your servers high wizards find an NPC that will teach them spells that will allow them to make big magical gates that will allow them to access any server. Of course, this NPC should actually be a few NPCs and they are always on the move, never taking 'direct' routes, they wander along the borders of regions and if a PC talks to them they'll reveal that they're looking for powerful wizards (unless the PC is already a wizard) and they'll tell them to kill someone in the server (a player perhaps? :hmm:) to get this wicked spell).



Some other things; when your faction captures a formerly non-allied city, the NPCs might be the ones that 'survived' the initial attack (before your team killed their mayor or chief guardsman) will remain; and new NPCs from your faction will replace those that were killed.

Of course, generating new names will be a bit tricky; however, you could simply use players own names from all servers to generate NPC names.

So, you might get people named stuff like Snarf or SherKhan; but I think that it's better than always seeing the same guard with the same name always surviving in a region, when you know that he's been killed at least once or twice by your faction's enemies.

If we use randomly created models using an SWG and CoH style creation tool, then NPCs would never look like the guys they were replacing either; and the 'new' troops that your faction eventually raises will all look like themselves, not like every other one of each other.

And, yeah, war should be the focus of such a game. Eventually the PCs will lead their factions troops against enemy territories and will start wars of conquest. however, they'll have to be careful and having a good amount of spell casters and healers to keep your factions armies alive while in the field will be crucial.

Perhaps populating the world with a PCs NPC allies while a PC is logged off so that the allies can beef out an army in the field will make it so that a player won't have to be logged on all the time while your teams army is on the march. You will want to log on while your faction prepares to strom an enemy faction's fortress or fight an enemy force in the field.

[Catharz]

If you're going to make anything a rare commodity, it will become desired. It might even become currency.

So there will be people who do nothing but seek out magic swords to trade.

Because the swords aren't any more powerful than their mundane brethren, this isn't a balance issue (like it was in Diablo2). However, you've got to determine how you want them to 'drop.' This could totally change the feel of the game for some people.

1) 'Lady of the Lake': You randomly get a magic item when you're the first guy to walk pasy the right place after the right time. There's a short cut scene, and some damp hottie pops out of the water and gives your character the weapon, as well as saying something complimentary or cryptic. Alternatively, you come across a sword stuck in a stone.
You can still sell the item (or can you?)
So people wander around and hope to get lucky. Condusive to exploring, but somewhat anti-social.


2) 'Lady Luck': Every so oftern somebody happens to have had a magic sword. When you kill them and take it (or steal it), it's yours. This seems to be the standard model. It also leads most to "farming."

3) 'Major quest reward': Everyone in that 'kill the evil baron' cut scene finds themselves with a shiny magic item from the baron's treasury. This encourages players to participate in major plot events, but it means that casual players may never see a magic item.


As for the 'cohort' issue, I'd go the route of Diablo2. Give everyone the option of having one AI friend, either hireable from a list, or gainable through some kind of ability (ranger's Animal Friendship, priest's Command Undead, wizard's Call Familiar, etc). The cohort doesn't have to 'advance' with you, if you're using Frank's model. Give it some limited EQ slots (based on it's body type) which you can fill up.
IMO having more than one cohort is silly, having a cohort that doesn't advance with you is silly, and not being abl to have them in a party is an unneccesary restriction.


One last thing:
Frank, some people who play MMOs seem to appreciate them over, say, Half Life because the MMOs require hard work rather than skill to get powerful an effecctive. So although you want a nice Unreal-ish combat system, it would be advisable to give at least one or two character types auto-target abilities which allow a player to actively contribute to combat while having the reflexes of a drugged zombie.
It would be ironic, I think, if mages were the 'no-skill' characters.


All that said, I'v never actually played a true MMO, so take it all with a grain of salt.

[Username17]

It would be ironic, I think, if mages were the 'no-skill' characters

Not "no-skill" - different skill. Like Warioware or something, casting spells should bring up mini-gams that are won or lost on different criteria. Want to play a Bard? Well, you get to play Guitar Hero to get your magic off. Want to play an Elven Star Mage? You get to do various star-themed puzzles like connect-the-dots and dr. mario type stuff to get magical effects to happen. Want to be an Orcish Huckster? Well, you get various card games to play to get magic effects like Memory Match or Spider.

In short, it's totally fine if being a Necromancer involves you not particularly running around trying to press the stab button just when the ogre is vulnerable and then running away when the hammer comes down - but you should still be doing something to raise your army of the dead that reflects a real skill with the game on your part rather than a certain degree of player grinding.

If your actual character gets faster and more resilient over time when playing the game, then you can't play with your friends. And that's tragedy.

-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

I'd do the Lady Luck thing a bit differently.

You can obviously see that an enemy has a weapon and you can loot it off of them after you kill them.

This way people will go around in no-man's land looking for potentially non-aligned NPCs; or maybe even enemy guards and troops.

Looting other players bodies of that PCs gear is not allowed however; you get a token instead and you can trade it in to your faction HQ for power up points.

I'd also have the 3) option different.

You all pick up items that are worth a pile to someone who will let you pick an appropriately powerful item from a list.

Giving random items is never a smart move in an MMO, it means that people will have to keep repeating raids to get something that they want.

WoW has recently gotten past this problem by instituting a Raid Points system.

Normally, if you can't do the 40 man raids, you can never get level appropriate gear. Instead what they do now is that you get an arbitrary amount of points when you complete a dungeoun raid (in the example I'm using, we'd have "how many enemy troops did you kill" or "how much did you do to build a fortress/improve and existing fortress" or "what equipment did you donate or craft for the war effort?").


Those points are traded in for gear or training.

[Username17]

Giving random items is never a smart move in an MMO, it means that people will have to keep repeating raids to get something that they want.

Giving random items for repeatable quests is never a smart move. But honestly, giving out desired items at random is probably the best way to do it.

The key is that the quests that give you chances at items should themselves be generated as instances. So you wouldn't be doing the same raid over and over again - but if you participate in raids then sometimes you get stuff. The raids themselves should never repeat, because that's really ghetto.

WoW has recently gotten past this problem by instituting a Raid Points system.

No, that just institutes the Grind firmly into even the equipment. Grind long enough and you'll have the belt buckle that you need to be taken seriously. That's the worst thing I've ever heard.

If you want to take grind out of equipment, what you want is a system in which the general equipment is in fact super easy to get. Every single Black Legionaire shown with halberd, half-helmet, and ringmail has... a halberd and a half-helm. And they would all have ringmail or "damaged ringmail".

That way people can get the kind of equipment they need just by running around a battlefield looting corpses. And if the vast majority of equipment that people are using is mundane, that's fine.

---

If you make the monetary rewards for quest completion an order of magnitude larger than the money you get for looting the equipment off of bodies, and you make the outright magical and special equipment straight-up only acquired during cutscenes - you eliminate the whole looting gambling scenario that is so vexxing in so many MMOs.

The whole idea of "level approrpriate equipment" has got to go. An axe should hit harder and attack slower, making it favored by some players and not favored by others. A bow should have a faster RoF than a Crossbow but involve extra micro-management, making it unsuited to some players. Etc. etc.

Equipment should be just available for people. And characters who have radically different equipment should be everywhere while characters who have radically better equipment should be extremely rare.

-Username17

[Catharz]

1171145064[/unixtime]]

It would be ironic, I think, if mages were the 'no-skill' characters

Not "no-skill" - different skill. Like Warioware or something, casting spells should bring up mini-gams that are won or lost on different criteria. Want to play a Bard? Well, you get to play Guitar Hero to get your magic off. Want to play an Elven Star Mage? You get to do various star-themed puzzles like connect-the-dots and dr. mario type stuff to get magical effects to happen. Want to be an Orcish Huckster? Well, you get various card games to play to get magic effects like Memory Match or Spider.

In short, it's totally fine if being a Necromancer involves you not particularly running around trying to press the stab button just when the ogre is vulnerable and then running away when the hammer comes down - but you should still be doing something to raise your army of the dead that reflects a real skill with the game on your part rather than a certain degree of player grinding.

If your actual character gets faster and more resilient over time when playing the game, then you can't play with your friends. And that's tragedy.

-Username17

I wasn't implying that some characters should get better and some should rely on you getting better. My intended meaning was that some characters shouldn't rely on hand-eye coordination or speed.

That said, I totally agree with you. Having the option of playing Myth: The Fallen Lords with your friend who is playing Quake II would be amazing.

Two problems:
1) That's a huge amount of coding. So much work it would have to be a Blizzard folly (i.e. good game which sells a billion copies and still had too much work put into it), or something open source.
2) It would be difficult to keep the minigames on the same time scale.

[technomancer]

My biggest problem with all the MMOs I've played is that as you level up, you get weaker, at least, that's the perception I get.

Take FFXI for example: At first level, you can kill stuff that's even 4 levels higher than you, by 10th level, you pretty much have to team up to kill even-level monsters. By 20th level, you have to have a good team to kill even level monster.

I liked the City of Heroes/Villains approach, which was basically, lower level guys have fewer abilities, and higher level guys have more abilities. So you feel more powerful, because you get to use all sorts of neat abilities (and the enemies use all sorts of neat abilities on you), which lets you take on more people at once. In fact, when teaming up in missions, the game ups the difficulty by increasing the number of mobs signifigantly (solo: 2-3 .mobs, full group of 8, 20-30 mobs), and slightly increasing the mobs levels (like +2 for a full group of 8). Plus, the damage is all formulaic based on level difference. So things that are +3 level to you simply take less damage, and get hit less often, plus they hit you harder, and hit you more often. This leads to a situation where something thats +5 to you is very, very difficult to kill, and something that's +10 to you is essentially impossible to kill (so much so that you get 1 xp for it if you do kill it, since you couldn't have possibly killed it on your own -- your accuracy is floored, you do 5% damage to that beast and it's accuracy is maxed and deals enough damage to kill you in one or two hits).

------------------

My idea for factions and changing political alliances is ripped out of a rather fun space shooter called "Freelancer." Basically, if you kill someone in the Goblin faction, the Goblin, Hobgoblin and Bugbear factions would hate you just a little bit more, and the Human and Dwarf factions would like you just a little bit more. There would be at least 3 catagories of relationship: Opposed, Neutral, Allied. The overall faction alignment would be based on the actions of all individual players in the faction, so if a big guild decided they wanted to go to war against the goblins, they could. Just kill a bunch of goblins (or their allies) and eventually the Goblins would be at war with the faction, allowing goblins to raid faction, and giving the faction raid missions against the goblins.

The trick is to have enough factions with complex enough faction relationships to allow you to kill something for long enough, and the goblins like you again. Maybe the goblins really don't like Undead, so killing a ton of skeletons will help your human-goblin relations (while making the Undead and Necromancer factions not like you).

As an incentive to changing the faction relationships from "They Hate Us" to "They Love Us," one could have faction-specific equipment or other character customization options.

[Draco_Argentum]

1171145064[/unixtime]]If your actual character gets faster and more resilient over time when playing the game, then you can't play with your friends. And that's tragedy.

Vanguard has solved this by letting groups of people decide to split xp evenly amongst themselves, even when you're offline.

[RandomCasualty]

Definitely I agree with Frank about ditching the idea of character advancement. That just leads to grinds. It's going to make the game seem a lot more like a MMOFPS than an MMORPG but that's probably a good thing. I was thinking maybe having limited advancement, but advancement should go away when you die, and advancement should happen fast.

Equipment similarly should be something you can buy, but something you lose when you die (that the next guy can take from you).

Though i would add the following:

Player Foes

MMOs don't need NPC dumbass monsters. We have hundreds of players who can fight each other. So if you're going to have orcs attack the village, then by all means, have orc PCs attack the village and force human PCs to defend it.

There's just no reason you should ever be facing NPCs. NPCs can be your shopkeeps and your other BS support characters, but your main foes should always be PCs. Everything from roadside bandits to the orc army should consist of PCs.

Mutable Civilization
Towns can't be the Everquest behemoth with level 80 respawning guards that protect them all the time and form a total standoff. The world needs to be conquerable. The orcs should definitely be able to go into a village and enslave the populace and then the humans have to rescue that village. While you hold a village you could get various bonuses to your side, so that individual team would want to protect the village, and the other side would want to take it back. If all your villages and cities have been taken over, then you should spawn in some new refugee camp with totally limited equipment and no real home to go back to until you take one back.

Of course, to ensure that wars aren't entirely one sided, you've got several nations. So as you conquer one nation, you'll open yourself to attack on more fronts, creating a two front war or something similar.

I would even think it cool if the rulers of each nation were a group of PCs, possibly decided by votes (so you could have elections and stuff), and they decided who to ally with and what wars to get into and other things.

Also, economics should be dynamic. If bandits are hitting your caravans hard, then costs of your goods should go up. Plate armor may not even be available anymore, and so on.

[Neeek]

RC, you plan seems to be a very quickly deteriorating situation. I can't imagine a scenario where having advantages from taking more territory, as realistic as that maybe, that won't lead to one side overwhelming all the other sides fairly quickly.

[technomancer]

Well, Planetside has a massive 3-way territory grab, and it does sometimes get rather one-sided. That's why the world 'resets' every day with the server. Of course, the only times it gets really one-sided is when one faction has basically zero showing (which is a disadvantage of all PC combat). The more territory you grab the more places you can be hit.

Of course, in planetside you don't have NPCs -- the closest to that are wall turrets that track and shoot any vehicle thats medium or heavier (not the light aircraft, nor the buggies/atvs, but everything else). That's it. And you do get slight benefits from controlling continents, like slightly boosted landspeed or a slow regeneration.

And you don't have to buy gear, you just have to be certified for it, and a newbie character can almost hit battle rank 5 just doing the tutorials, which gives you enough certification points to do anything you want. The advantage of being a high rank is that you can do more things without having to go re-cert.

[RandomCasualty]

1171168640[/unixtime]]RC, you plan seems to be a very quickly deteriorating situation. I can't imagine a scenario where having advantages from taking more territory, as realistic as that maybe, that won't lead to one side overwhelming all the other sides fairly quickly.

Well, this is why you have multiple sides. So that empires eventually start fighting a two front or three front war and get overwhelmed by sheer numbers. The advantages won't be so large that they create RPG situations where a level 15 beats on a helpless level 1. It'll be more like a guy in an FPS who happens to have double your hp or something, where a group of lesser guys can take him down.

Well, Planetside has a massive 3-way territory grab, and it does sometimes get rather one-sided. That's why the world 'resets' every day with the server. Of course, the only times it gets really one-sided is when one faction has basically zero showing (which is a disadvantage of all PC combat). The more territory you grab the more places you can be hit.

Of course, in planetside you don't have NPCs -- the closest to that are wall turrets that track and shoot any vehicle thats medium or heavier (not the light aircraft, nor the buggies/atvs, but everything else). That's it. And you do get slight benefits from controlling continents, like slightly boosted landspeed or a slow regeneration.

And you don't have to buy gear, you just have to be certified for it, and a newbie character can almost hit battle rank 5 just doing the tutorials, which gives you enough certification points to do anything you want. The advantage of being a high rank is that you can do more things without having to go re-cert.

Yeah, planetside was a cool idea, much more workable than most MMORPGs.

[Tokorona]

I'll add something in.

Please, no Extra Mode

For those of us who play PSU online, you know that your normal operation is to grind. Because .. yeah, the Story missions are HARD.

(Ironcially, PSU Offline doesn't share sthis.) But in PSU Extra? Blech. No story. It's why I like parts of RC's idea, but I'd like there to be an ovearching plot possiblity, that the players can choose to aid, if they wish.

[MrWaeseL]

I wish it wasn't so easy to die in MMORPG's. In WoW, if you are fighting against more than one enemy or attempt to run away from a single one, you die no matter what. It's so frustrating.

[Judging__Eagle]

1171489512[/unixtime]]I wish it wasn't so easy to die in MMORPG's. In WoW, if you are fighting against more than one enemy or attempt to run away from a single one, you die no matter what. It's so frustrating.

It's realistic though. Maybe, it's one of the few realistic things though.

At that point, any excess realism is pointless.

Blame EQ for that in WoW.

Also, running away takes some degree of skill, especially if you're a solo-priest in WoW.

Poor armour, low mana, limited damage potential and other stuff, like low HP and no way to hide makes you one cautious mofo.

Heck, I'd refuse to heal people in parties if I thought they were a liability to my being able to play "lazy healer" (seriously, tanking and pulling are the hard jobs; DPSers just need to sit on their butts and wait until enough damage has been done by the main tank).

[RandomCasualty]

1171489512[/unixtime]]I wish it wasn't so easy to die in MMORPG's. In WoW, if you are fighting against more than one enemy or attempt to run away from a single one, you die no matter what. It's so frustrating.

Yeah, MMORPGs do all they can to make you not feel like a hero. At all.

Like technomancer said, as you level, you get relatively weaker and weaker. It becomes harder to solo stuff, and you have to group to take out even single monsters. Try to fight more than one monster at once solo (*gasp*) and you're totally boned.

As far as not being able to run, it's part of the MMORPG model of boning tactical abilities. Nobody is going to run away and cast spells on stuff or do manuevers resembling skillful combat, because that'd be wrong. IF you don't stand stationary and repeat the same attack over and over. it's just not a MMORPG.

It's another reason why NPCs don't work especially well as primary foes.

[MrWaeseL]

I don't think MMORPG's are supposed to be epic. They're glorified multiplayer slot machines. And that's fine. They did get me, after all

[PhoneLobster]

They did get me, after al

Thats not Wierd Al, again, is it?

[CalibronXXX]

1171498607[/unixtime]]Yeah, MMORPGs do all they can to make you not feel like a hero. At all.

Like technomancer said, as you level, you get relatively weaker and weaker. It becomes harder to solo stuff, and you have to group to take out even single monsters. Try to fight more than one monster at once solo (*gasp*) and you're totally boned.

As far as not being able to run, it's part of the MMORPG model of boning tactical abilities. Nobody is going to run away and cast spells on stuff or do manuevers resembling skillful combat, because that'd be wrong. IF you don't stand stationary and repeat the same attack over and over. it's just not a MMORPG.

That's not true in all cases, for example the Necromancer, who doesn't even have to worry about down-time if his player is half competent, in Everquest can solo multiple enemies, even level appropriate ones, by using tactics, as can the Shaman; I think all the other classes are more or less boned though. A similar class in WoW, the Warlock, I believe is capable of soloing single level appropriate enemies or multiple weaker ones.

MMORPGs really aren't my thing.