- Joined
- Jul 10, 2007
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So, after lots of discussions (interviews with players in mmorpgs, talking with partners in project, and interviews with people familiar with mmorpgs), this is currently what I have come up for as the concepts for building one type of a good mmorpg.
The more localized a quest is, the lower level it tends to be. Higher level quests means that the quest has more influence on the world means that players will come from all over to do it means that it is not as local.
Example: killing a local troll lord vs stopping an undead horde from ravaging the city (undead horde may also be hitting several other cities). The source of the horde is unknown to the player, but it happens to be a very powerful lich.
By making all areas have combinations of low, middle, and high level quests, it encourages player to travel to all areas. The higher they are, the more likely they are to travel all over the world. This means that players won't feel like they are going through linear progression, field 1 being for lvl 1-15, field 2 for 15-30, etc. It'll make the world more real. One great thing about older MMOs is that they had higher level content (secret areas) in generally lower areas, like a lvl 40 area inside of a lvl 20 field, or lvl 60 monsters on an island in a lvl 1-10 field. This takes that and pronounces it even more. Of course, these quests will not be kill so and so monsters, they will be about solving problems, so you will have to find the root of the problem and eliminate it, making for very interesting and unique quests.
Deserts vs Northern vs Tropical etc
One of the greatest things I have seen in modded MMORPGs are ones that have acts to them, where you have to kill some boss to progress to the next act. These acts allow you to explore new sets of areas.
To keep in line with a wide persistent world, a combination of opening areas (not places on the actual continent, more like dungeons, other planes, and perhaps even other continents) and timelines (different versions of the same areas) will be used.
Consider a main city. That city may have 3 versions across 7 different acts on a timeline. The player, depending on the act they are on, can choose which version of the city they wish to go to. The first city may be the regular city, the next a ravage one under war, and the third one that is being rebuilt. When the player is going into the field, they may have 3 options (if they are on act 7) for which city they want to go to : ).
One of the big problems in MMORPGs is the idea that enemies are fodder. Players essentially fight their way for the bosses, and kill the bosses in order to clear content. The monsters just happen to be in the way. In fact, it is better to just have the bosses and remove the monsters from the game altogether. The monsters just detract from current mmorpgs.
In order to solve this, a few things need to be done. Firstly, the environments that the monsters are fought in need to be more interactive and more challenging. As the game progresses, the challenge of these areas progress. These challenges may include traps, moving platforms, puzzles, and other interesting things. While in these areas, you will be fighting monsters, so you have to deal with both the challenges of the environment you are fighting in as well as the monsters themselves, and the monsters will be well adapted to that environment, making that environment serve to their advantage. Of course, not all fights will have crazy moving environments. The fight could take place in ruins, thus giving a theme to the fight. However, just placing it in some generic wtf forest is no good : P.
Furthermore, the monsters need to be varied. You shouldn't see 10 or 20 of the same type of monster wandering around an area and there shouldn't be spawn camps. There should be very many types and they should be more realistically placed, not wandering all over. They may ambush as a result of a trap or they may be clustered in groups.
Monsters will always be clustered in groups to reach the half the difficulty of a local mini-boss.
The more intelligent/powerful the monsters are, the smaller the groups will be. Consider a large horde of mindless zombies clumping together vs 2 giants that try to flank the players.
Monsters will be reused from area to area. It is realistic to have the same types of zombies across 10 different areas with even the exact same levels of power (ranging from low to high level quests). Reusing monsters is ok, but they need to be highly limited in a given area (lots and lots of variety). Having too much of one thing is never good : P, but spreading that one thing out is fine.
Some monsters may be using gear that the player can loot and others may drop materials for various things, adding rewards for killing said monsters. Of course, they would also give xp. However, it should be more fun to progress through the monsters and these very interesting/challenging fights than to kill them for the rewards =).
PVP can be fun, but without rewards that will benefit the player, most players won't want to partake. Therefor, to address this, cities can have colosseums with that host tournaments with level range requirements and various awards. The rewards will always be different and the rewards will always be known for a given tournament. The better the reward, the higher the levels required.
Tournaments will be a mix of npcs and players. Even if 0 players partake in the tournament, the tournament will still happen between NPCs. Players can also watch the tournament and bet on the winners.
Tournament rewards will be rewards that can only be gotten through the tournaments or by buying them from players that got the rewards from the tournaments. There will be many reward types, so the chances of a player being able to somehow farm all of them is just unrealistic. The rewards can range from antiques for the home to special types of novelty gear crafted by local blacksmiths to legendary items that were part of private collections from ancient fights/wars. They can even be keys to new unknown areas with incredibly tough beasts.
Stats don't increase the character's power, they just make more things possible. Consider techniques that require enough speed to pull off, or armor that may be too heavy for the average character to use. Spells may require more intelligence to learn and more mana to employ. Health won't raise for characters, defense won't raise for characters, only the capability to use gear. Obviously, agility will increase speed and strength will increase power for a weapon. Mana will also increase the power that can be pooled into a spell. In this regard, players do grow more powerful, but that power is nowhere near the power that can be gained from actual gear/spells as a result of increased stats.
Nothing will have requirements. If a player attempts a technique and is not fast enough, that technique will have openings in it, allowing the enemy or other player to respond. If a player tries to use gear that is too heavy, they will use up more stamina while attacking/moving and possibly attack slower/move slower. If a player tries to learn a spell that is too complicated for them, the spell will have a very high chance of fizzling or exploding in failure (more intelligence it requires and less intelligence the player has, the higher the chance). If they try to use a spell with not enough mana, it'll just fizzle out.
All gears and spells are always useful. Beginner gear/spells can be used all the way to the end of the game if the player desires. Gear doesn't necessarily increase in power, although some gear can. Gear increases in the maximum energy they can store/use, the minimum energy required for use, and their efficiency in energy usage. For non-magical items, their efficiency and potency for enchantments can change. However, the player and character need to have the skills in order to use said enchantments on weapons or to utilize the weapons in their entirety. Because of this, beginner character's won't necessarily benefit from a legendary weapon because they won't know how to use it. If it was the legendary sword of dark flames, it'd likely just be an ordinary sword to them: they wouldn't know what it was or what it could do. It might be more durable and sharper than a regular sword, but that'd be about it.
Staffs can store much more energy than wands, meaning that spells using more mana can be cast with them w/o exploding/damaging the staff. Staffs have less efficiency than wands and higher minimum mana usages than wands (spells fizzling out due to not enough mana spread throughout the staff).
Wands specialize in efficiency, but can't utilize as much mana as a staff.
Higher spells are more efficient than lower spells. There may be 2 different versions of a fireball spell, each employing different techniques. The first may have a minimum mana cost of 20 and may get more powerful at a rate of 100 mana per 10 power. A higher level one may have a minimum mana cost of 2000 and may get more powerful at a rate of 15 mana per 10 power. The lower one can always be used, but a high end character would be better with a higher level fireball spell.
Rather than increasing damage/stats for enemies, the difficulty of the enemies should be increased. Consider a massive stone golem and an angel of vengeance. The stone golem will be slow, but will dish out incredible amounts of damage in very large areas whenever it hits. The angel of vengeance will be extremely fast, may dish out less damage per hit, but will be much harder to avoid and to hit. The golem is less difficult than the angel although it deals more damage. In terms of levels, the golem may be level 10 and the angel level 60.
A higher level player would probably be 1 hitted by the golem w/o defenses up (like spellshield enchantment on shield) and 1-5 hitted by the angel. With defenses up, a very powerful shield enchantment may be able to take 3 hits from the golem and 12 hits from the angel. A higher level player will have an easier time defeating the golem than a lower level player because they have more options open to them. A caster will have more powerful spells that they can utilize. A melee player will have more ways to defend and more ways to attack. It's not about scaling damage, but rather opening options up to players and monsters as the levels progress. The players will have to know when and how to use these new options.
When a player kills a boss, they will be able to pick "1" item of their choice. This item will be of legendary status and will likely be useful for the remainder of the game. They are only ever guaranteed that one item. Farming a boss later will only get the player materials for special gear, furniture, foodstuffs, etc. The chances of them finding another item are 0. In this way, it's not really worth it to farm a boss. Furthermore, these special things using these materials will require many other materials, meaning that the other materials should be bought from or sold to other players, not farmed. You can certainly buy other legendary gear from other players, but the prices will likely be extremely high. Legendary gear can include equipment and spells. Your character is then defined both by its stat progression, its skill progression, and its equipment/spells. You can certainly progress it forever, having infinite stats and skills as well as all equipment/spells in the game, but doing this is simply not really feasible due to time and in-game currency requirements.
Learning spells gives you the combinations required to cast that spell, similar to Guitar Hero but without the rhythm. You go through that sequence as fast as you can in order to get the spell out as fast as you can. Opposing casters can attempt to unravel your spell as well as they can see your spell. Allied casters can also help cast the spell. Lines of combinations are split among the players so that the spell is cast faster. Furthermore, the players can all pool mana into the spell, making it possible to cast epic level spells that require enormous amounts of mana. In this way, spell combat become more of a reality: you are no longer just clicking on an ability and watching the effects.
To be decided. It needs to be a system that gives the player a lot of control and is very open and also has to support control of players that may dual wield weapons. The only thing I could think of was using motion controllers, but that is out of the question as nobody would want to buy motion controllers. They were a flop for PC Games.
Heknar was originally a general of Astrea - corrupted by Heknar
Astors, ruler of dragons - created the world and sent dragons to watch over it, most died
in war to banish Heknar
Deimos the bringer of Chaos - thrown out god, turned into chaos
Nimhdu the Infinite - self proclaimed head of the gods
Daolin - the gods, or rather self proclaimed. From another world. There are many interconnected worlds. They
commissioned Astors to create their own world and then locked it off from all others. Astors can be thought of as a
forger of reality. Astors then sent dragons to protect the world from the group and limit their influence. Deimos was
against the group's idea of creating new worlds, so he was cast out and turned into an element of chaos, bringing
conflict wherever he went. He went to the world to try and help them reconnect with the rest by finding the heart of
the world. He worked with Heknar to do this. When Heknar came in contact with the heart, he became corrupt, with the
help of Deimos' presence as well. He then led a war on the rest of the planet. The dragons responded and cast him out
into another plane on top of the world, a subspace forged by Astors to lock Heknar up. Deimos gave up and went back
into the astral space around the planet. Tens of thousands of years later, Heknar accrued enough power using the heart
of the world to break out of the subspace. He began to invade the world once again. There were few dragons left to stop
him, so it is now up to the planet to defend itself. The Daolin could care less, they actually find it interesting,
using Deimos as a catalyst to start such events.
The planet eventually defends and destroys Heknar. Deimos is known as a legendary evil demon lord that had once thrown
the entire world into chaos. Deimos comes down and the planet attacks and destroys him. They then learn the truth about
the daolin as the chaos given by Deimos is no more. They travel to the subspace of the Daolin and defeat them, thereby
reconnecting the world with all of the others.
The storylines of the world (the many starts to the many areas) form backstories for the various characters and in their own ways develop the main storyline. Eventually, all in their own ways, they start to focus on Heknar. With their own perceptions, goals, and origins, the players move on Heknar together. This type of storytelling is essentially about weaving many stories together into one large world story ; D.
The current solution to endgame stuff is to just make players wait for expansion packs. If you have a better solution that doesn't include repeating tons of previous content through farming/grinding, I'm open to them.
If you have better ideas or ways to expand the above ideas or see problems in them, please let me know ^_^.
Also, I don't know if the above was apparent, but the storylines would eventually converge on to common acts with perhaps minor difference in viewpoints, sources, and overall goals. The first 3 acts may setup the player's background and the remaining ones be major stories seen through the unique perspective of the player coming from where they come from. For example, an unknown force invading the world form another plane would likely entail every player on every storyline, hence why it would be a global quest ^_^. Acts are broken down into quests for each act. These quests can be a set of different stories that are all related to one cause. You could complete these stories in whatever order, but you'd have to complete all of them to get to that final quest or set of quests, like perhaps a thieves guild storyline. You may have to do various things against the thieves guild before you can actually invade it and take it down, but the order of the things before the invasion don't matter. It'd be really cool if you could have 10 quests and only have to complete 3-5 of them and then a main one, but that'd be cost prohibitive
.
The more localized a quest is, the lower level it tends to be. Higher level quests means that the quest has more influence on the world means that players will come from all over to do it means that it is not as local.
Example: killing a local troll lord vs stopping an undead horde from ravaging the city (undead horde may also be hitting several other cities). The source of the horde is unknown to the player, but it happens to be a very powerful lich.
By making all areas have combinations of low, middle, and high level quests, it encourages player to travel to all areas. The higher they are, the more likely they are to travel all over the world. This means that players won't feel like they are going through linear progression, field 1 being for lvl 1-15, field 2 for 15-30, etc. It'll make the world more real. One great thing about older MMOs is that they had higher level content (secret areas) in generally lower areas, like a lvl 40 area inside of a lvl 20 field, or lvl 60 monsters on an island in a lvl 1-10 field. This takes that and pronounces it even more. Of course, these quests will not be kill so and so monsters, they will be about solving problems, so you will have to find the root of the problem and eliminate it, making for very interesting and unique quests.
Deserts vs Northern vs Tropical etc
One of the greatest things I have seen in modded MMORPGs are ones that have acts to them, where you have to kill some boss to progress to the next act. These acts allow you to explore new sets of areas.
To keep in line with a wide persistent world, a combination of opening areas (not places on the actual continent, more like dungeons, other planes, and perhaps even other continents) and timelines (different versions of the same areas) will be used.
Consider a main city. That city may have 3 versions across 7 different acts on a timeline. The player, depending on the act they are on, can choose which version of the city they wish to go to. The first city may be the regular city, the next a ravage one under war, and the third one that is being rebuilt. When the player is going into the field, they may have 3 options (if they are on act 7) for which city they want to go to : ).
One of the big problems in MMORPGs is the idea that enemies are fodder. Players essentially fight their way for the bosses, and kill the bosses in order to clear content. The monsters just happen to be in the way. In fact, it is better to just have the bosses and remove the monsters from the game altogether. The monsters just detract from current mmorpgs.
In order to solve this, a few things need to be done. Firstly, the environments that the monsters are fought in need to be more interactive and more challenging. As the game progresses, the challenge of these areas progress. These challenges may include traps, moving platforms, puzzles, and other interesting things. While in these areas, you will be fighting monsters, so you have to deal with both the challenges of the environment you are fighting in as well as the monsters themselves, and the monsters will be well adapted to that environment, making that environment serve to their advantage. Of course, not all fights will have crazy moving environments. The fight could take place in ruins, thus giving a theme to the fight. However, just placing it in some generic wtf forest is no good : P.
Furthermore, the monsters need to be varied. You shouldn't see 10 or 20 of the same type of monster wandering around an area and there shouldn't be spawn camps. There should be very many types and they should be more realistically placed, not wandering all over. They may ambush as a result of a trap or they may be clustered in groups.
Monsters will always be clustered in groups to reach the half the difficulty of a local mini-boss.
The more intelligent/powerful the monsters are, the smaller the groups will be. Consider a large horde of mindless zombies clumping together vs 2 giants that try to flank the players.
Monsters will be reused from area to area. It is realistic to have the same types of zombies across 10 different areas with even the exact same levels of power (ranging from low to high level quests). Reusing monsters is ok, but they need to be highly limited in a given area (lots and lots of variety). Having too much of one thing is never good : P, but spreading that one thing out is fine.
Some monsters may be using gear that the player can loot and others may drop materials for various things, adding rewards for killing said monsters. Of course, they would also give xp. However, it should be more fun to progress through the monsters and these very interesting/challenging fights than to kill them for the rewards =).
PVP can be fun, but without rewards that will benefit the player, most players won't want to partake. Therefor, to address this, cities can have colosseums with that host tournaments with level range requirements and various awards. The rewards will always be different and the rewards will always be known for a given tournament. The better the reward, the higher the levels required.
Tournaments will be a mix of npcs and players. Even if 0 players partake in the tournament, the tournament will still happen between NPCs. Players can also watch the tournament and bet on the winners.
Tournament rewards will be rewards that can only be gotten through the tournaments or by buying them from players that got the rewards from the tournaments. There will be many reward types, so the chances of a player being able to somehow farm all of them is just unrealistic. The rewards can range from antiques for the home to special types of novelty gear crafted by local blacksmiths to legendary items that were part of private collections from ancient fights/wars. They can even be keys to new unknown areas with incredibly tough beasts.
Stats don't increase the character's power, they just make more things possible. Consider techniques that require enough speed to pull off, or armor that may be too heavy for the average character to use. Spells may require more intelligence to learn and more mana to employ. Health won't raise for characters, defense won't raise for characters, only the capability to use gear. Obviously, agility will increase speed and strength will increase power for a weapon. Mana will also increase the power that can be pooled into a spell. In this regard, players do grow more powerful, but that power is nowhere near the power that can be gained from actual gear/spells as a result of increased stats.
Nothing will have requirements. If a player attempts a technique and is not fast enough, that technique will have openings in it, allowing the enemy or other player to respond. If a player tries to use gear that is too heavy, they will use up more stamina while attacking/moving and possibly attack slower/move slower. If a player tries to learn a spell that is too complicated for them, the spell will have a very high chance of fizzling or exploding in failure (more intelligence it requires and less intelligence the player has, the higher the chance). If they try to use a spell with not enough mana, it'll just fizzle out.
All gears and spells are always useful. Beginner gear/spells can be used all the way to the end of the game if the player desires. Gear doesn't necessarily increase in power, although some gear can. Gear increases in the maximum energy they can store/use, the minimum energy required for use, and their efficiency in energy usage. For non-magical items, their efficiency and potency for enchantments can change. However, the player and character need to have the skills in order to use said enchantments on weapons or to utilize the weapons in their entirety. Because of this, beginner character's won't necessarily benefit from a legendary weapon because they won't know how to use it. If it was the legendary sword of dark flames, it'd likely just be an ordinary sword to them: they wouldn't know what it was or what it could do. It might be more durable and sharper than a regular sword, but that'd be about it.
Staffs can store much more energy than wands, meaning that spells using more mana can be cast with them w/o exploding/damaging the staff. Staffs have less efficiency than wands and higher minimum mana usages than wands (spells fizzling out due to not enough mana spread throughout the staff).
Wands specialize in efficiency, but can't utilize as much mana as a staff.
Higher spells are more efficient than lower spells. There may be 2 different versions of a fireball spell, each employing different techniques. The first may have a minimum mana cost of 20 and may get more powerful at a rate of 100 mana per 10 power. A higher level one may have a minimum mana cost of 2000 and may get more powerful at a rate of 15 mana per 10 power. The lower one can always be used, but a high end character would be better with a higher level fireball spell.
Rather than increasing damage/stats for enemies, the difficulty of the enemies should be increased. Consider a massive stone golem and an angel of vengeance. The stone golem will be slow, but will dish out incredible amounts of damage in very large areas whenever it hits. The angel of vengeance will be extremely fast, may dish out less damage per hit, but will be much harder to avoid and to hit. The golem is less difficult than the angel although it deals more damage. In terms of levels, the golem may be level 10 and the angel level 60.
A higher level player would probably be 1 hitted by the golem w/o defenses up (like spellshield enchantment on shield) and 1-5 hitted by the angel. With defenses up, a very powerful shield enchantment may be able to take 3 hits from the golem and 12 hits from the angel. A higher level player will have an easier time defeating the golem than a lower level player because they have more options open to them. A caster will have more powerful spells that they can utilize. A melee player will have more ways to defend and more ways to attack. It's not about scaling damage, but rather opening options up to players and monsters as the levels progress. The players will have to know when and how to use these new options.
When a player kills a boss, they will be able to pick "1" item of their choice. This item will be of legendary status and will likely be useful for the remainder of the game. They are only ever guaranteed that one item. Farming a boss later will only get the player materials for special gear, furniture, foodstuffs, etc. The chances of them finding another item are 0. In this way, it's not really worth it to farm a boss. Furthermore, these special things using these materials will require many other materials, meaning that the other materials should be bought from or sold to other players, not farmed. You can certainly buy other legendary gear from other players, but the prices will likely be extremely high. Legendary gear can include equipment and spells. Your character is then defined both by its stat progression, its skill progression, and its equipment/spells. You can certainly progress it forever, having infinite stats and skills as well as all equipment/spells in the game, but doing this is simply not really feasible due to time and in-game currency requirements.
Learning spells gives you the combinations required to cast that spell, similar to Guitar Hero but without the rhythm. You go through that sequence as fast as you can in order to get the spell out as fast as you can. Opposing casters can attempt to unravel your spell as well as they can see your spell. Allied casters can also help cast the spell. Lines of combinations are split among the players so that the spell is cast faster. Furthermore, the players can all pool mana into the spell, making it possible to cast epic level spells that require enormous amounts of mana. In this way, spell combat become more of a reality: you are no longer just clicking on an ability and watching the effects.
To be decided. It needs to be a system that gives the player a lot of control and is very open and also has to support control of players that may dual wield weapons. The only thing I could think of was using motion controllers, but that is out of the question as nobody would want to buy motion controllers. They were a flop for PC Games.
Heknar was originally a general of Astrea - corrupted by Heknar
Astors, ruler of dragons - created the world and sent dragons to watch over it, most died
in war to banish Heknar
Deimos the bringer of Chaos - thrown out god, turned into chaos
Nimhdu the Infinite - self proclaimed head of the gods
Daolin - the gods, or rather self proclaimed. From another world. There are many interconnected worlds. They
commissioned Astors to create their own world and then locked it off from all others. Astors can be thought of as a
forger of reality. Astors then sent dragons to protect the world from the group and limit their influence. Deimos was
against the group's idea of creating new worlds, so he was cast out and turned into an element of chaos, bringing
conflict wherever he went. He went to the world to try and help them reconnect with the rest by finding the heart of
the world. He worked with Heknar to do this. When Heknar came in contact with the heart, he became corrupt, with the
help of Deimos' presence as well. He then led a war on the rest of the planet. The dragons responded and cast him out
into another plane on top of the world, a subspace forged by Astors to lock Heknar up. Deimos gave up and went back
into the astral space around the planet. Tens of thousands of years later, Heknar accrued enough power using the heart
of the world to break out of the subspace. He began to invade the world once again. There were few dragons left to stop
him, so it is now up to the planet to defend itself. The Daolin could care less, they actually find it interesting,
using Deimos as a catalyst to start such events.
The planet eventually defends and destroys Heknar. Deimos is known as a legendary evil demon lord that had once thrown
the entire world into chaos. Deimos comes down and the planet attacks and destroys him. They then learn the truth about
the daolin as the chaos given by Deimos is no more. They travel to the subspace of the Daolin and defeat them, thereby
reconnecting the world with all of the others.
The storylines of the world (the many starts to the many areas) form backstories for the various characters and in their own ways develop the main storyline. Eventually, all in their own ways, they start to focus on Heknar. With their own perceptions, goals, and origins, the players move on Heknar together. This type of storytelling is essentially about weaving many stories together into one large world story ; D.
The current solution to endgame stuff is to just make players wait for expansion packs. If you have a better solution that doesn't include repeating tons of previous content through farming/grinding, I'm open to them.
If you have better ideas or ways to expand the above ideas or see problems in them, please let me know ^_^.
Also, I don't know if the above was apparent, but the storylines would eventually converge on to common acts with perhaps minor difference in viewpoints, sources, and overall goals. The first 3 acts may setup the player's background and the remaining ones be major stories seen through the unique perspective of the player coming from where they come from. For example, an unknown force invading the world form another plane would likely entail every player on every storyline, hence why it would be a global quest ^_^. Acts are broken down into quests for each act. These quests can be a set of different stories that are all related to one cause. You could complete these stories in whatever order, but you'd have to complete all of them to get to that final quest or set of quests, like perhaps a thieves guild storyline. You may have to do various things against the thieves guild before you can actually invade it and take it down, but the order of the things before the invasion don't matter. It'd be really cool if you could have 10 quests and only have to complete 3-5 of them and then a main one, but that'd be cost prohibitive
.
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