A new mmorpg

#1 I think its called EvE online :)

#2 Have you ever played FreeLancer? I think we should build a galaxy with similar features, with many systems and gateways connecting them with each other. There should be governments and guilds and parties too (i mean REAL political parties). Really i dont think an arnachy will do good. The player will be a pilot (freelancer at first), with a spaceship and he can start working to get money and fame and eventually buy better ships and weapons and even join a guilds/party or work for a government. That's only my idea, but i think it would look like a copy of FreeLancer so we should make some differences. I will think more about this. Thanks for reading my opinion.

#3

Quote:massive galaxy for you to roam free!

People can get bored if it's too big...

#4 I wonder when the first in-game MMORPG will appear... a MMORPG within a MMORPG, seems to be the next logical step to me...

To be perfectly honest though, I do wonder why so many people are in such a rush to design these mammoth games. It would be much better to come up with a completely new type of game or an original spin on an existing concept. Probably have more chance of financial success than spending years and years on a massive game, creating the content and infrastructure to cope with it.. only to join the ranks of other similar MMORPG's fishing for the same players. Given the amount of time players tend to dedicate to these games, I'd say that unless the game can tap a completely new group of customers, it will have an extremely tough time on its hands. The sci-fi MMORPG market looks to me like it's flooded. Who has the time to play all of them? Can new ideas truly compete with Eve-Online, Starwars Galaxies, City of Heroes/Villians to name a few?

Just my opinion. Take it or leave it.

#5 I have to agree with Jason Farmer. More and more MMORPG's are being developed. Perhaps it will be the next Match-3... IMO, create more small, smart and innovative games, and leave the big worlds to the big guys.

#6 I'd actually go the complete opposite as Anders and Jason on this one. The reason I want to build an MMO isn't because I'm in love with MMOs or anything like that. I want to because EVERYONE is doing it wrong. WoW is so damn popular because they do the LEAST wrong and have an incredible storyline and a damn good set of graphics. They still don't do it 100%. SWG, one of my all-time favorite MMOs did so damn many things wrong I can't even count them anymore. I want to build an MMO that takes all the good and none of the bad. And I'm talking about gameplay and in-game related stuff, not backend type stuff

#7 Really i have to agree with you guys about the overflood of MMORPG game nowadays. But it is not very clear that another game of the same type will bore the customers. Yes fighting monsters and even players day to day is boring, but we can flip to some other aspects. As you can see although every MMORPG has a story of its own, the players rarely stick with it. Instead they just creat an account to fight and fight to obtain a high level and after that compete with other players. I mean the story line has little to do with what the players actually do. Up until now, i have played Ragnarok online for about 4 months and yet i dont know what the heck our characters exist for in that world (sorry for my impolite word). So we should place our players in a environment cooperative with the story line or the background of the game. And we should focus more on social activities and relationships to make the players feel that they are really living in a fantasy world rather than an ordinary game environment. Sorry if my English is not sufficient to express the idea. Thanks for reading my opinion.

#8

Quote:I want to build an MMO that takes all the good and none of the bad.

@Jonathon

Unfortunately, what you say is wrong with most of the OTHER MMO's, is mostly your opinion. Now, maybe you have a good eye for gameplay, and are a very respectable person in terms of what is fun and what is not. I don't know that. At this point though, it doesn't matter. (Don't take me as being rude, i'll explain...)

What you find wrong, other people may (read: will) find right. You could make the best MMO that you've always wanted to play, and maybe only one other person will like it. Personally, i agree with you on all of your points. Blizzard must have done something right, because WoW took off like a bat out of hell. However, i still don't like it. It's still just not a game for me. Again, SWG sucked at first. I loved it.

There will never be an MMO that has all of the good, and none of the bad... in everyones eyes. If you can catch a majority of the population however, i think you've done well. By the way, i want to hear some of your ideas Jonathon.

#9 I think the biggest problem with current MMORPGs is that the world is stable. Nothing you do generally makes much of a difference. You do missions here and there, upgrade your character but it doesn't really affect the balance of power.

The only one that actually appears to have a free form universe where the players can actually shape the political landscape is Eve-Online. Massive corporations made from many many players control lawless space and dictate what happens there. There are constant wars, civil wars and occasionally, peace breaks out. New technology is constantly pumped into the game to keep the older players interested while offering a depth for newer players I've never seen before in any other game.

I'd be interested to hear peoples opinions on the gameplay elements of COH and COV as well as SWG.. but my impression is there're far too focussed on character advancement and less on player experience.

Take a FPS like Halflife or something, a tight story where you actually make a difference. Defeat the bad guys or die. Now inject that kind of thing into a MMORPG, an AI force which has the power to take over sectors and be driven back by the players. A REAL war with the possibility to win.

Even in Eve, fighting the NPC characters was a simple case of killing a spawn, wait for it to respawn and kill 'em again.. they'll still be there tomorrow no matter how many you kill. Never made an ounce of difference how many you kill to the AI corporations who they were supposed to belong to. Just cannon fodder.

Make a MMORPG similar to the X universe complete with management, constuction, trade and fighting.. actual dogfighting and you're on to a winner. Have a real menacing badguy who can be defeated. Then let player wars take over for a while... let them get comfortable fighting eachother then introduce a new Big Bad for everyone to fight... people will make alliances and fight adding a refreshing air of trust and mistrust to the mix. Keeps it fresh, instead of Go see this guy, Do a scripted mission... repeat till bored.


But I still believe that a MMORPG on this scale is WAY out of the league of an indy company. There's just too much work to do.

#10 These MMO discussions are always interesting.

I've played SWG, EQ2, Lineage 2, Ryzom, EVE, AO, DAOC and am still playing World of Warcraft.

In all of these games, I still don't see a reason to have thousands of others in the world. I personally don't like to spend my personal free time associating with anonymous users of the internet who could care less how they interact with their fellow gamers. I play primarily as a learning tool for myself. I enjoy examining the artwork and how they've put things together.

It's my belief that the real reason for the "Massive" in MMO is just due to economy of scale. Squeeze more dollars out of what you have. In the case of WoW its strange because they have servers that are supposedly low-population but they keep installing new servers.

It's true that games like WoW have certain content that requires a large group (40-man raids) but why is this necessary?

Of course, this is just an observation I have as a consumer of MMO games. I have no real game industry experience to back up what I say.

Steve

Edited a few spelling errors that I noticed.

#11 Another opinion is that the experience systme is sometimes unfair. I mean the more you play, the stronger your character is. In most of MMORPG game i have played, the game hardly requires player's skills but tricks and union. You just fight even the monster of the low levels all day all month and eventually you will be the strongest.
So i think we need an online game where players can show (off) their skills and talents, like a tactical battle based game: players will creat an account (or a general of their own), and then have some cash in the beginning. They start buying (recruiting ) troops of different types and experience/skillfulness (the better the more expensive) and then fight each other in single battle or multi-allied battle. And the army will be organized in large scale battalion so the players will just have to focus on the general tactics to win and the battle become organized and not just a "meat to meat" battle where the one with more boys win.
Above is just one idea coming to my mind. I would be very happy to contribute further thoughts if anyone interested. Thanks for reading my opinion.

#12 @Hawkie,

I think there is room for both styles of experience systems.

I think one good aspect of the current games where you kill 1000 bats and get a skill increase is that it makes the playing field somewhat level. You are basically trading your time for skill. The more time you spend , the more skill and items you'll receive. Of course you have to be careful with that aspect as well because some people don't have that much time to play and some have lots of time.

I think there is room for games that favor the real players skill instead of their characters skill, but lets face it, I pay $14.99 a month just like the next guy, I don't want to be the loser always because he's better at twitch type game play.

I think you'd alienate a lot of people if all the games went that route.

I'm not sure a game can be everything to everyone. Take WoW for instance, the so called "casual" players are mad because they don't have as much time to spend as the "hardcore" game players and so can't get the Epic gear that they do. How do you get around this? Lots and lots of what ifs.

I don't know about anyone else, but I want to escape the real-world when I play video games. Any shortcomings I might have in real life don't necessarily apply to the virtual world.

Again, my opinions only.

Steve

#13 Oy im sorry if my idea offends you. And really i dont know the meaning of "alienate" ^_^.
Yes we all pay the same money so it would be somewhat fair. But my point is we need games which feature the real skill of the players and not the time those players spend. I myself want to live in an imaginary world too (though sound a bit like mental problem). But this is about the games and the players in the real world.

#14 @Hawkie,

No, you didn't offend me by your post. I'm just exchanging views with you.

My use of the word "alienate" refers to this:

To cause to become unfriendly or hostile; estrange

I was just saying that I'm glad most games don't rely on the real gamers skill because I wouldn't be doing to well! :)

Steve

#15 One thing that always bugged me about persistant online worlds is the concept of Death, or the lack of it and the Gung Ho attitudes it brings sometimes, not to mention the abuses.

Eve dealt with player Death by using Clones. Not a bad idea, You purchase clones and they are activated in the event of your untimely demise. The quality of the clone determined the number of training points your character retains.

It never really sat well with me though. pPeople would abuse the clone system to jump their character from one remote place to another, they'd buy a clone in the remote place then get a friend to kill them so they'd wake up somewhere else. Obviously, clones aren't free but a suitably wealthy player could create a high level clone with little or no financial worry.


So how about this... Death of the character = Death of the character. Add some realism to the proceedings.
Now before people jump up and down shouting NOOOOooo!!!... here's the idea and forgive me if it's already been done before..

The character dies and leaves all of his/her worldly posessions to an heir. Sounds like cloning, but not really. Heirs are in limited supply and may or may not be scattered in random places. So when the character dies, the Heir would be activated, they would receive a letter saying that unfortunately Great Uncle Bobsisname has passed on, leaving you with all of his posessions. You could then choose to avenge the death of your Great Uncle or start afresh with the resources you've been given.

This could mean that instead of players selecting the exact look of their characters, they would choose traits and genetic specialisations. These Genes would be common to most of the players family tree. Some genetic mutations would mean that some members of the family are better than others at some things.

You could start with the Oldest Brother, he dies and then the next brother in line is activated until there are no more brothers. Then you start on the cousins. The family would grow over time so that the player always has a relative to fall back on, but the age and quality of the heir would be reduced if the player kept dying.

Each family member would have been living a psuedo life too and be in a potentially random state.. good or bad fortune.

Just some random thoughts. I don't think this would work with something like Eve, but we're not talking about Eve, this is the Game Ideas forum ;-)

#16 @Jason,

These heirs, so they would just get your money and items then right?

It is a creative design. But I still think people won't like investing so much time in their character and then "boom" lose all that skill. My highest character in WoW is around level 30. I've been playing off and on for quite a while now. Even though I'm half way to 60 I'd hate to lose my levels and have to start over. The items, yeah, no biggie, I can get stuff again.

It's like playing a coin-op game from the past. You have a really good run going on and then "boom" your dead. Time to start over from the begining. I never liked that :) Maybe its just my personality.

Again I think its one of those some will like it some will not. Hey, we just have to make our games for our target markets anyway, right?

Steve

#17 @M-theory,

Heirs would get money and items minus some sort of inheritence tax and maybe a delivery charge.

I agree about the losing XP being a total pain. Which is why it might be an idea to create a MMORPG which does not rely so much on XP or leveling up. People become obsessed by leveling up their character, It's a little crazy if you ask me. In real life, we don't level up after we've done something a few times, Walked to the shops a couple of hundred times, suddenly become Shopper lvl 2.. I jest. There has to be some sort of character advancement, but that could be something else...

How about respect? You could gain respect from people and that could affect how you're perceived in the game by NPC's and players alike. If the game relies more on player reactions and intelligence to solve problems, the real levelling up happens on the other side of the monitor.. the player actually gets better. This the player can take with them from Heir to Heir... Respect for the person who was lost can open doors to the heir, in essence some of the respect passes to the Heir.

I'd just like to see an end or at least a reduction in the reliance of Killing monsters for XP as I find it rather dull and there has to be more point to a game than let's see how high I can get my character before Real Life drags me away.

If the market is saturated with Level-up games, then perhaps this is the chance to create something new. Something which doesn't require endless nights of playing to be any good at.

#18 @Andrew:

I can't imagine people who would think certain things are 'right' if I firmly believe they are wrong. I do consider myself a gameplay connoisseur. I understand that there will be things some people either have no problem with or may even like that I consider 'bad' in a game, but for the most part, I believe that I know what the GENERAL public wants out of an MMO. Player housing (SWG, CoH), player-run-economy (SWG), battelfields/grounds (WoW), Item rarity highlighting (WoW), Mount Options (SWG), and so on. There are so many GOOD ways to do things that it's dissapointing when no one seems to do them all.

Blizzard did several things right. The fact that they had an INCREDIBLE following for their warcraft series is probably the #1 thing that has made WoW what it is today. Then, they hired VERY talented artists to bring the world alive. They have an INCREDIBLE GUI setup that allows you to use XML to customize and build GUI tools. They use color coded items to determine their rarity in-game. They allow you to mail MONEY and ITEMS through their in-game mail system.

Now, they also do several things BAD. You can't mount ANYTHING until like level 40 or something like that (sorry, I'm a little rusty since I quit quite awhile back). They have an 'honor' system but it doesn't really stop jerks who are level 60 from killing a level 10 just for the fun of it. This is REALLY discouraging to lower levels. Especially ones who have no clue what's going on or why this person can eliminate them in half a second (and then camps your body so every time u respawn, they re-kill u). They eliminate the ability to talk across factions (horde to alliance) which is COMPLETELY stupid.

A game should have a good player run city/housing system. A good player-run-economy system. A good mounting system (I don't want to f'in run for the first 6 months of the damn game). Both a combat level system AND a profession system so that I don't HAVE to power level to build a good character, but if I want to power level, I still can. I should have EVERY ability POSSIBLE to talk to/search for/find other players in-game. Voice chat is a MUST. Group chat a MUST, guild chat a MUST, etc. etc. I should have an outlet where if I feel like doing some major PvP, I don't have to go halfway across the galaxy deep into enemy territory and try my luck at who knows how many enemy players I will find (battlegrounds).

#19 @Jason,

I definately see what you mean about the heirs. If you could pass on to them something like "status" or your families "prestige". I agree, it gets boring level after level of just killing stuff for XP.

@Jonathan,

I think the points you listed in your post are what a lot of people look for in a MMORPG these days. We just have to be careful we don't envision ourselves out of the ability to maintain all those complicated systems though. Look at the fiasco with SWG and the NGE. SOE is basically admitting that the game they designed way back when is not maintainable.

Oh, I don't like one of your suggestions though, voice chat. I can't stand to read some of the stuff people do in these internet games I can only imagine (and I've heard the stories) of what people do on voice chat in games :)

Also, if its a RP game, voice chat is out. How are we supposed to play a female character ;)

I think we small fry developers could design and build these types of games. We aren't worried about making millions and betting the farm and so can take a chance, maybe not an MMO though. How about just a multiplayer game with some persistence.

Incidently, has anyone been watching the new MMO game called "Seed"? No combat in that game. It looks promising. Check it out at www.seedthegame.com.

It has a nice (my opinion) comic book style to it. It's definately different.

Steve

#20 The in-game voice chat wouldn't be required, it would be optional. You could mute/unmute, join voice chat channels etc. Just like you have normal chat. YOu'd have a group chat, and a group voice-chat channel. you could drop in/out of any chat channel, etc. you could even make your own channels if you had like 2 groups who were working together, yet weren't in the same actual in-game group, they could all create a joint channel so they could all talk/hear each other.