Building a better MMO

[Melfena]

There are a lot of things wrong with MMO's, WoW included. So let's go hog wild and make up a new one, an improved MMO. Story won't be an issue unless it plays upon the gameplay mechanics (CoH/CoV style play would not work for WoW, UO style pvp would not work in games that have no reason to kill other players, etc...)

So I ask you, what would your perfect MMO include?

[Potpie]

So I ask you, what would your perfect MMO include?

WoW. I love it & am accepting of its minor faults. ;)

[Beagle]

Hrmmm I really love the post apocoliptic RPG's like Fallout and Deus Ex so something in that sort of setting would rock :D
-be

[Beagle]

Age of Conan is looking pretty sweet too. I really enjoyed Oblivion which is what it kinda looks like.
-be

[Byomage]

I loved real world PvP objectives, like the dungeon you could only enter if your faction controlled the forts in DAoC. So throw that into our "Perfect MMO". And I liked cross-class training, like being a Warrior-priest, maybe not the best healer, but good with a sword. It allows for some individuality, not pigeon holing into a raid spec, or a heal spec, or a tank spec. I kinda wish Blizz had gone "Hero class" and gave a tree that was way outside of the normal class description. Casters with a fist weapon tree, Tanks with a combat nuke tree, Hybrids with a specialization tree. Anything to offer some uniqueness to your character... there's a thread around here for mage specs, and they all had very similar specs, all wanting to be the best they can, but all having to be the 'same' to be the best.

[Redgar]

Hrmmm I really love the post apocoliptic RPG's like Fallout and Deus Ex so something in that sort of setting would rock :D
-beThere is a Fallout MMO in progress.

[Beagle]

There is a Fallout MMO in progress.
OMGOMGOMG Quoth the BE!!!
-be

[Aessina]

SW:G's tradeskills and class system.

Exact opposite of everything else in SW:G :)

[Shizma]

/ agree with PP about WoW, with a few minor alterations (sincerely how I view them - I enjoy the hell out of the game)

1. The ability to have guildhouses for your guild, and the ability to hang trophies (like Ony's horns or such) a la UoL.

2. Constant, stable effort and rep rewards that don't change every other day. If the designers make a mistake, live with it.

3. Graveyards conveniently located to dungeons and quest objects to reduce dead-run time. Even in IRL people TRY to live close to work.

4. A.I. sensing drop replenishment so that commercial farmers couldn't find a market IRL for camping on quest drop NPC's. If something is needed for a quest, it should be available within a realistic amount of kills or harvests, w/o having to wait for replenishment after being farmed out. It should not take every evening for a week to farm enough mats to make one craft item, for instance.

5 A bit more photo-realistic appearance to player toons.

6. Player and NpC capabiities that are more reasonably scaled (I.E. a noob lvl 1 player has life=100. Razergore has life = what... 4 million? Even an elephant dies with one well placed shot.

7. Instances that are designed with more technique / capability required, and less contrived goofiness (personal complaint - grew up in a time when the best things were the simplest things. My training as an engineer taught me phrases like "elegant simplicity")

8. More evenly distributed damage-dealing and damage-taking capability. Obviously magic is magic, but logically should a player clad in cloth be able to take the same damage dealt by a player wearing high-grade steel, while dealing out 4-5x damage?

9. At least TRY to make the weapons appropriately scaled to the characters... my po Zin'Rok gets dull dragging two feet in the ground.

I don't know. Make it interesting, challenging, enjoyable, family-and-friends friendly, visually rich, technically diverse. Make it a joy to play. Not a burden. A good game should never IMO elicit the words "painful grind". Make it an enjoyable passtime full of action, adventure, mental stimulation. Not :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

[Melfena]

Now that I've gotten some responses, my MMO would include an open system of pvp, but steep penalty for ruthlessly ganking everyone in your path. It would be a bounty system put into place by the game, and for each kill you perform, you are then worth more cash when killed. The player themselves are not losing money, but instead is generated on the body when the player is killed by the game. Their death would also cause a loss of influence to their group.

So why would people gank in the first place, knowing the results of those actions? Because this game is not the normal "players vs 'A GREAT EVIL'" or some nonsense like that, but the players are shoved into a game where you live in a city run by major crime syndicates. Social interaction and player run economy would be encouraged, with safeguards to prevent one syndicate from growing too powerful. One of those is a hit system, in which NPCs or other players (once a faction has grown in power) will take out contracts on the leaders (players) of the other factions. Killing a leader would reduce that factions influence on the city. Taking the role of a hitman will expose you to the dangerous retribution system, but the rewards are also much greater for taking those risky jobs. There would be player run shops that could be pressured for protection money, influence gained by your faction would earn you more freedom to perform crimes in town, and law enforcement to deal with.

It would take a lot of work to get the game to work properly given the active nature of the gang warfare, but I think it would be very fun. There would also be NPC police that would be after players who kill each other to prevent too much ruthlessness, but given enough influence, police can be bought, judges can be bribed, and generally, you can get away with it as long as you stay in power. A young upstart wants to make a name for their guild? Take out the leader of another! Killing a leader would give you a large amount of influence, but would also draw mistrust from others. With an active world like this, all players would remain persistent in the world, logged in or not, and when not logged in, the players would remain in a safehouse somewhere within the city. Syndicate houses would provide guards, but there would be a large amount of risk to the players that are playing as the leaders of each gang. These risk even out by gaining more wealth, having control over what sort of crimes would be committed, and other benefits I can't think of right off hand. it would be worth being a leader, even with the risk.

[Shizma]

That sounds really interesting, actually! A little bit like Sin City with NPC's.

When you were younger, did you ever read a short story called "The Tens Club"?

[Redgar]

I have to say that houses are something that no MMO has gotten right. UO got so bad you could be walking along and all of a sudden there was a castle. SWG tried it too, and it got just as bad. It lags so much when you all of a sudden get in range and a 100+ objects have to be drawn in.

[Beagle]

Yar killer idea Melf!! Let me know when I can log into yer crime game
k thnx
-be

[Melfena]

Yar killer idea Melf!! Let me know when I can log into yer crime game
k thnx
-be
give me funding and a dev team, and you got it. I couldn't code my way out of a paper bag.

[Gorrack]

Shadowbane's premise... was flipping awesome. There was really no story, everything was player run, including the cities. and the PVP. There were quests but it wasnt really THAT structured. however the game mechanics and interaction reminded me a lot of like diablo 2, and was a little more cumbersom than should be. I enjoy the idea that the servers population controls the destiny of the world. Leveling and loot was pretty easy to come by also, but like i said, the combat system and mechanics were pretty cumbersom.

DAoC was awesome in that, the PvP was dedicated to certain areas so you didnt have to worry about getting Ganked unless you really wanted to. DAoC however, the graphics were ok, but lacking for what we have now. Its controls were a little cumbersome also. However, i adore the combat system. I love the fact you can do combos, i love the fact that as a warrior, you can bust out with a sheild, and block a shitload of blows coming in, you can block things for people in your group. I also liked how a warrior could protect the healer and any aggro generated by the healer went to the warrior. intercept and block was awesome too, really made you feel like you WERE the tank that saved everyone. I enjoyed teh concentration based buff system. My shaman was aug/cave, and well lets just say that endurance buff was the shizzney.

EQ2 was basically Guildwars that you had to pay for, I did not enjoy EQ2 1 ioda. EQ1 was to me then, what WoW is to me now. eCrack.

All in All i think WoW really so far has done it right. They have ballanced the classes as best they can. Have made world drops and player made items equally as good. the quests are awesome, and you can track them easy enough ( no more 200 page notebook at teh computer desk) I enjoy the fact that they lump all the quests together in teh same area generally.

I did have a problem at first with the cartoony graphics, but all in all, its a minor hinderance.


Vanguard is probably going to be the next thing i look at, I got into the closed beta, but havnt had a chance to play as my PC isnt powerful enough. They are working on improving framerates and performance however on lower end machines.Zul has been betaing it for me, and she really enjoys it. However, I am still really enjoying WoW, and am looking forward to BC.

[Potpie]

This was advertised in my latest issue of Games for Windows magazine (formerly CGW-Computer Gaming World).

http://www.lotro.com

Uh oh...

[Maelc]

Echoing PP here... WoW sets the standard. However, since develpment means building off of the best I would very much like it if WoW let me customize more. Even a tool to make my own color schemes would be nice. What kind of tailor/leather worker would not be able to choose red vs black dye? The guild houses Shiz mentioned would be awesome too. Anything that lets us/me personalize.

[Shizma]

Dittoes to Maelc.

Being able to scale the characters within racial norms, adjust hue on armor etc. wouldn't overburden the network and could be saved locally, loaded during boot.

Also uh-uhs for PP and Maelc. WoW is truly the 800 pound gorilla at the moment. the LotR release looks like they've moved the bar. Better graphics (if not taken from cinematics), better character models, also possibly better melee poses/postures from the more real swordcraft-looing positions of the players in the pix. I have to believe the enhanced setting will strain most 2-3 year old systems, but wow.

[Melfena]

I have to believe the enhanced setting will strain most 2-3 year old systems, but wow.
The problem with realistic graphics is that they age VERY badly. For a very easy comparison using the same hardware, look at the difference between Super Mario 64 and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Mario 64 is older, but because it uses cartoonish graphics, it still isn't bad looking today. Compare that to OoT, with it's grainy fuzzy textures and close fogging, and you can see just how well a game ages if it doesn't go for the top of the line machines. EQ2 looks nice, but compared to games that have come out after (Oblivion comes to mind, just to compare art styles) it's losing a lot of it's shine, while WoW, originally blasted for it's non realistic graphics, still looks good. Art direction is a big thing in a game's long term appeal, and Blizzard knows it. Style goes a lot further than top of the line eye candy.

Also, LotR doesn't scream to me MMO. The world is static (you can't deviate from the books, or you lose the main draw you have) and you can't do any of the epic things that made the books so popular. You'll never carry the ring, and that turns it into a game of playing a grunt. Who wants to play a grunt that can NEVER get more powerful than an extra on the set. The battles are gigantic in scale, you being there isn't going to change how they end. Gameplay could be the best thing in the world, but with a static world and a strict story that can't be added to, deviated from, or modified, you end up with a stagnant game that no one will play for more than a month. Basicly you're stuck in a pretty world that you have no hope of changing.

[Potpie]

I love the stylized look of WoW.

I'm a big time Tolkien fan -- and that game looks interesting, but the more I read on that site the more I was like 'meh'.

[Kawht]

as much as i hate blizzard for their games being insanely addictive, they make some amazingly good games. i think when the arena's come in the expansion, this game will be much closer to perfect. ability to obtain high level gear without devoting your life to the game was my only real gripe with the game. ( except lox , but thats another thread ;p)

[Sol]

I love the stylized look of WoW.

I'm a big time Tolkien fan -- and that game looks interesting, but the more I read on that site the more I was like 'meh'.


the artwork in WoW is awesome. I love what they do with class armor and architecturally the art is just amazing.

[Tohkra]

DAoC was awesome in that, the PvP was dedicated to certain areas so you didnt have to worry about getting Ganked unless you really wanted to. DAoC however, the graphics were ok, but lacking for what we have now. Its controls were a little cumbersome also. However, i adore the combat system. I love the fact you can do combos, i love the fact that as a warrior, you can bust out with a sheild, and block a shitload of blows coming in, you can block things for people in your group. I also liked how a warrior could protect the healer and any aggro generated by the healer went to the warrior. intercept and block was awesome too, really made you feel like you WERE the tank that saved everyone. I enjoyed teh concentration based buff system. My shaman was aug/cave, and well lets just say that endurance buff was the shizzney.


Yar, take DAoC (or any Mythic game's) RvR/PvP sytem, & throw it into the mix.. also I like their spec system a little better then WoW's...they were more diverse, of course with 3 factions rather than 2 there were twice as many screams for "nerf" & "balance"... ie. Smite Priests, anyone?

[Sol]

i think it was the alb smite clerics? Daoc designers had a love of AOE stuns and Sleep spells that was just uncool. Plus they gave all the hibernian casters a stun spell, so dueling a hib caster was never a fun thing to do.

Wow PVP is a very well evolved version of daoc's pvp. Oh, I am sure most DAOC PVP'rs will recall what it was like to get up at 4am inthe morning so you could raid relics while the other side slept! Since very little progress happened when it was Zerg v. Zerg.

[Thwak]

Anarchy Online if only it was done well. Much potential and customization in that game. Lots and lots of numbers and ways to trick out your lowbie character to obscene amounts. Decent world PvP that also afforded you protection for your first 75 levels (of a total of 200 at the time I played, more now). Flying transportation!! The ability to actually loot stuff from people you kill in PvP... nothing on thier character, or in their backpack (of which they had 1) but you could loot from their general inventory. Mostly consumables and possibly a new piece of armor that they just got from a quest and were going to sell. Never anything they were wearing. A sci-fi theme.

What I didn't like about it was there were a ton of technical glitches and issues that I had with the game where it would hard lock my machine at seemingly random intervals. The quests, while instanced, were very repetative when I played and got to be very boring. No real raid instances... though I believe they eventually came out with some. Overall being in a team wasn't very neccessary which is good in some ways but contributed to the repetitious solo grinding. They royally screwed up healing in PvP in that all damage in PvP was halved however healing was not. This in turn meant that a lot of top PvP'ers were Doctors running around with sniper rifles. Also you could only redo your talents a couple of times (5 or so max at lvl 200 I think). This wouldn't be an incredibly huge deal except that they would make huge balance changes to weapons or abilities that would nerf those that had taken the previously uber talent. Also people would spend their points towards the skills to equip a specific weapon and then that weapon would get nerfed to hell so the points they had spent are all but worthless.

oh... I also liked that level had basically no bearing on anything other than it meant you had more points to spend crafting your character. To a degree you could make a character that ran super fast, jumped super high, swam super fast but could basically do nothing else well. ;) While like in every game there are going to be some clear winner builds Anarchy Online allowed people to stray from them more than any game I have played and create some truly unique characters that could occasionally make people go "wtf?!?!".

I also would like to see a Planetside 2 though I'd like to see a different developer behind it and perhaps a different name to disassociate it from the first one.

[Thwak]

I have to say that houses are something that no MMO has gotten right. UO got so bad you could be walking along and all of a sudden there was a castle. SWG tried it too, and it got just as bad. It lags so much when you all of a sudden get in range and a 100+ objects have to be drawn in.

That's another thing I think AO did pretty well. The apartments that you got were just basically a door in a building that would instance you into your apartment. Someone else could go in the same door and go to their apartment but if you made a copy of your key and gave it to them then they could go to yours. houses weren't unique though that avoided the castle in the middle of the road type of thing as well since the developers defined where the apartment buildings were.

[Thwak]

Dittoes to Maelc.

Being able to scale the characters within racial norms, adjust hue on armor etc. wouldn't overburden the network and could be saved locally, loaded during boot.


Modifying how visable certain armors are would be exploited if it was clientside.