Topic: Adventures in the Orient: Idea(s) for a MMORPG
Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Alright its an idea I've been chewing on for the last 6 months and I have been slowly brainstorming it and developing it into something I think has a decent chance of succeeding were it ever made.
The Premise: The idea is that you get to romp around in 15th century China much fighting. Being an MMORPG you can fight others, fight NPCs and socialize with others.
Now the good bits.
Classes:
I have came up with two core classes
"Hero" and "Soldier" the Hero class is tantamount to being like a Wushu Jet-li like class and would like in Assasins Creed/Prince of Persia allow you to become proficient with any weapon, any style of martial arts and be able to move around pretty much anywhere, penalties: You cannot wear any real armour, you could get away with leather armour maybe there'ld be a slight penalty but nothing compared to using real armour.
Typical Example: Your given a mission to kill a petty lord in his for lack of a better word villa in the city. The first thing you do is find out WHERE he is by either asking your fellow players, buying maps, or just from wandering around until you stumble onto a clue. Once your find his villa you can AC style climb onto buildings run across pecariously across tight ropes jump long distances onto his roof and move silently past the guards find the lord kill him, and run out battling several "soldier" archetypes on the way out decently.
Generally 1 Hero of say 10 D&D levels can fight on several other "soldiers" of comparable level successfully but they might die or they might not.
Soldier: The soldier class is as it seems your a soldier the trick is that as you gain ranks (as anointed upon you by the NPC/PC 'Lord' ) you can control an NPC party and command a squad, which also becomes stronger through training and experience, and its weapons and armour can be customized, even more interesting is that I would intend that in a battle situation you could pull up a tactical minimap and positions your squad in the way yould think best.
Now the 'Lord/General' system, basically there's Lord's who can have Generals and Generals who can have troops. Only Lords can form the equivilent of a "guild" except in this game a Lord can have land which can turn profit, provide materials for crafting and food. Yes thats right your character will need to eat regularily to stay healthy and fight at your fullest like your pets if you play WoW.
Food is important now because you can develop land to eventually have walls and such, while yes you could break down the gates storm in/sneak in and take it over, sometimes its a stalemate you cant break it, you cant break out so waiting until they're starving adds a touch of realism. Instead of buffs you eat magic food to empower you. In fact I really liked how in original Pre-CU pre NGE Star Wars Galaxies the stats you got when you created your character were the stats you had for the rest of the game and never got more as such to use all your armor, weapons and to fight you needed buffs, here different types of "food" can buff you though only certain ones give sustenance.
Cities are "neutral" in the sense that its like a .5-1.0 security system in EVE you knife someone there guards will very likely find out and go after you. Now its not that simple, you can dress comspiciously stealth around ninja like AND knife someone and get away like in Assasins creed, both NPCs and PC's though only elite PC's are worth knifing you get most benefit from NPC's/quests.
Now cities wont be completely neutral they'll be two primary factions, 'Imperials' and 'Rebels' (apologies to SWG) most cities will be Imperial controlled so people officially rebel aligned will have difficulties getting in from the front, it will always be possible to sneak in but it wont be a cake walk. Walking around openly wont be a smart move but you can dress conspiciously to avoid attention and blend in with the crowds.
There will be total pvp though so anywhere and everywhere you can stab people, i think ill have it so that if your afk and dont move they cant stab you. And I think in your city home I think itld be best if people cant get you there.
Rebels tend to control smaller towns in the remote rural regions however through quests, events and through player v player war you can expand power and lands your faction controls and this could serve as the instrument to give out land to new Lords.
To reiterate Lords are given lands based on when and where you did the quests to get the plot handed to you, powerful human lords and delegate land to you once your a lord. Lords can hire Generals to manage the defenses of your land and only Generals can lead troops to attack other Lords/general (Generals give a "boost" to your troops inside/outside of the fort) Generals with permission of the Lord hand out ranks to the Soldiers assigned to them. You can siege with actual siege equipment to break down walls and gates as normal weapons do next to nothing. Heroes in the context of siege warfare can sneak into forts, give boosts equivilent to what higher ranked soldiers can give when assigned to a formation and are effective at leading the charge.
As for normal standard MMORPG way of progression I'll throw it out, all your progress with experience, skills, and "feats" are hidden from the player to take it from being a progression based game to a character development based game and to focus on the actual player v player dynamic. While it is true an "Epic/Elite" Hero can usually with ease dispatch dozens of weaker "Soldier" players and their pawns it won't change that one unlucky roll and a critical with an poisoned arrow crippling you is still possible. Efforts will be made to encourage people to not just runaway from stronger people but actually strive to take them on for the rewards it renders.
The combat will be like a hack&slash except I want more skill involved, randomly mashing buttons on your keyboard won't get you far and some strategy will be needed mixing and matching martial art styles. Now I won't be the first to admit that I know next to nothing of the actual terms and mechanics of how Kungfu/Wushu work but lets assume there are styles/forms of it and some are good versus others both Hero class and Soldier class can train and specialize in martial arts just that Heros gets agility advantages that makes them better then Soldiers at kungfu. If I can make this a PC game lets just say that in combat mode, I suspect easily 15 different keys will be required, Assasins Creed has some good combat features I want to take it to the next step and add some more skill to it for pvp.
Now back to the hidden experience, a lot of it will be based on the d20 system actively calculating it as you do things, jumping, climbing, rappelling, swimming all can succeed/fail based on the rolls. Combat not so much but there will be a chance that shoddier weapons will break. And as your fighting you can drop/grab weapons at will as the fight demands.
The economy obviously player driven but will depend heavily on harvesting resources from player owned lands, and from there refining/crafting/assembling in player or npc crafting areas (shops, factories, etc).
Cities I want to be able to grow organically to represent a growing player base and growing trade of goods and currency from growing expanding player fiefs and the npc towns and cities. Cities can grow from say PCs buying a plot of land in a city and building whatever counted as a apartment building back then and players can own buildings, housing etc and rent them out to poor players. The world I want to be large and possible to have alot of stuff to do in the cities might even be possible to confine yourself to the city as a crafter or a bodyguard or a hitman and stay relatively safe behind city walls. Also i want it be possible to own/rent a building which you can then turn into a shop and have an NPC there to handle trades and transactions while you handle all the bookeeping and orders, maybe even deliveries.
The rural areas can be best described as interesting.
Like some areas are the player controlled lands and forts which the players have to patrol otherwise mobs spawn really often and can eventually take down the fort on their own and secure the trade caravan routes. Also the player traders themselves will probably like players and npcs securing the roads and not have NPC bandits interfearing.
There will be river and boat traffic which can be raided by NPC and player bandits though the chances of NPC robbery goes up if there's a player defending it
Samurai\Frankish Knights\Musketeers I think should be possible to be included but are a kinda prestige unlockable sorta thing.
Now for the user feedback *holds hands up in defense*
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posted
Your cultural fictionalization/fetishization(?) of my (second) culture has hit a new high.
I have pointed out in that past that you seem to promote and 'fanboy' Chinese culture in a way that some people would become a 'fanboy' of the Protoss in Starcraft or a faction in World of Warcraft.
That you actually want to create a computer game based on this tendency makes it a whole new level of recursive strangeness. Among other problems, this is a tendency that may come to cause problems if you ever become disillusioned by the 'real' thing.
That said, this particular idea is harmless, there are a large number stories and movies based on a fantasy depiction of Chinese culture and I see no particular reason why you could not draw upon them to create a computer game.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
trust me, my Drow fetish makes my Sinophilia seem like mild interest.
However that is neither here not there, I would like constructive criticism as well as input on what could make my idea for a MMORPG better, this idea could have easily been done in a European or a Japanese Sengoku Jidai era setting just as easily I choose Ming China inorder to simplify it, otherwise I would say 'generic east asian'.
Enquiry: What would make an idea "harmful" in your eyes?
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I'm sorry, but how do you become a MUSKETEER in an Oriental setting? I was unaware that France was in the Orient.
Posts: 2705 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote: it won't change that one unlucky roll and a critical with an poisoned arrow crippling you is still possible
This alone will doom the game, providing it would ever get made.
What is the point if one lucky hit can kill you? Most people won't invest all that time and money to play a game where that is the norm.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: ... Enquiry: What would make an idea "harmful" in your eyes?
Hmmm, in general, if it has a good chance of leading to harm. In specific for a game, if it could lead to the spread of harmful stereotypes or misperceptions.
That said, I'm usually pretty generous when it comes to this kind of thing, which may be why I have no real problems with your proposal on that front.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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I think your game is going to have severe balance issues. Heroes will beat soldiers, because it's easier to control one character than several, much less dozens. Imperials controlling most major cities will give them a pretty big edge over rebels. All it will take are few lords who decide they wanna be jerks, and people will flee the game.
Basically, you give the players TOO much freedom. Power will accumulate in a select few players hands, and they'll have a great time. Everyone else, subject to the whims of the elite, will not.
quote:As for normal standard MMORPG way of progression I'll throw it out, all your progress with experience, skills, and "feats" are hidden from the player
You realize that for a lot of people this is the main incentive to play MMOs, right?
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Blayne, would you like sincere suggestions?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
quote:Originally posted by Mucus:
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: ... Enquiry: What would make an idea "harmful" in your eyes?
Hmmm, in general, if it has a good chance of leading to harm. In specific for a game, if it could lead to the spread of harmful stereotypes or misperceptions.
That said, I'm usually pretty generous when it comes to this kind of thing, which may be why I have no real problems with your proposal on that front.
Have you played Assasins Creed? How the NPC's would act in my game would be no different then how they act in Assasins Creed except replace Middle Eastern Arab with Oriental.
Next, I said that as a possible prestige thing you could have a Musketeer, allow me to explain for those not to well versed in history foreigner visted China in this time period, if I am not mistaken Macao was a foreign colony at this time, it is perfectly plausible that some could be wandering around. Also Japan had theyre own Musketeers.
Tom: Anything goes.
Also for player freedom remember I play EVE-Online where the players have even MORE freedom in theory.
Also what i forgot to mention was that Im thinking that all progression skill wise would mostly be done through training and practice, you'ld notice yourself getting stronger and better over time. Its a confidence factor.
Kwea: In D&D if you add in a bunch of variant rules it IS possible for a string of unlucky roles to kill you even as a level 20, itld be hard in both cases but it could happen.
Also soldiers are the only ones who can own and control land heroes can only really wander around or pretend to be soldiers in the combat sense.
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I won't play unless I can be a dark elf. Who comes from an industrialised democratic society that has long since outgrown its youthful fling with Lloth. :nods:
Actually I won't play anyway, I don't like MMORPGs. But really, why don't you start this thread on Gamedev? You are quite likely to get a lot of useful advice. You may want to clean up your apostrophes and whatnot, though; Gamedev gets about five threads every week (at least they used to) saying "OMG I wanna maek a 1337 MMORPGFPSRTS, how cn i do it?" Generally the more serious actors, as defined by not saying OMG and spelling 'make' correctly, get the more helpful advice. Apostrophes would be even better!
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Broadly, the game you're describing would be enormously expensive to develop and would have to be very carefully balanced (i.e. would be expensive to maintain). You'd also be removing most of the traditional MMO carrots, meaning that the potential for addiction is lower -- something that, while probably being a good thing overall, is bad for your business model.
Not to mention that you're describing this game so broadly that it's like you're examining it from space; you're only a few details away from "What do you think of this game: the best game ever?"
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
I'm doing most of my modeling on what to my mind made EVE and SWG great games before SOE ruined SWG. And EVE I should point out has some 500,000 subscribers not to shabby. Sure WoW has Eleventy Million some subscribers but meh Quality over Quantity.
Other details: In game VOIP but not just any VOIP I want it so that people when they talk in game there voice carries so people can have in game conversations by walking up to people and yabbering. Another thing, Im thinking of getting rid of the ability to see people's names unless there on your friends list, so if your an assassin wanting to grief people you wont be able to tell them apart from NPC unless they do something rather dense and start jumping around brandishing they're Katana or something. This is I think the next logical step from the original Pre-CU SWG model of where you couldn't tell who was a Jedi unless they started sail boating with a light saber. THEN they got raped by every bounty hunter from the cantina to Corruscent.
So that this way while yes people can attack you wherever but if you like many people in MMO's generally do just want to be left alone to do crafting if you stay conspicious and don't draw attention to yourself assassins won't knife you.
Now the question is what details would you like me to flesh out?
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Okay. Let's take just those two features, for a second. It's always helpful to look at the positive and negative effects of any proposed features, then think about what you could do to address them.
VOIP that "carries" depending on volume and location, centered on the avatar Pros: 1) Easier, more "real-life" chat 2) Strong sense of "living" world, assuming users are present in numbers
Cons: 1) Potential for audio spamming and profanity. You can mitigate this by somehow making it possible for people to "ban" voice chats from individuals or all avatars at once, but it's going to be a problem even with that ability. 2) Enormous processing requirements; it's already necessary to track the location of all avatars, but now you've got to somehow broadcast audio of varying content and volume to each of those avatars. My guess is that, to address bandwidth issues, you'd have to assemble an outbound audio stream for each avatar based on environmental audio and the inbound audio streams from all the other avatars in the area. This is non-trivial. 3) Potential for perfectly legitimate "crowd" noise to overwhelm an area. You'd need to find a way for people to still have an audible conversation among dozens of other conversations, while not drowning out your environmental audio. 4) Roleplay is negatively impacted by female avatars with male voices, 12-year-old voices coming from grizzled veterans, and people yelling, "F**k you, lamer!" from across a crowded square. Perhaps you could apply filters in some cases, but these are almost never perfect.
Lack of tags to distinguish non-friend players from NPCs Pros: 1) Fewer nametags cluttering up the screen. 2) More realistic interaction with the environment (and potentially with other players.) 3) Threat assessment is harder. (Also a con.) 4) No longer exposed to names like "FKTHECOPS$$!@)(AFIRULZ!)" when trying to RP.
Cons: 1) Threat assessment is harder. 2) You will not always know the name of a player character with whom you're interacting. This may make it harder to complain to officials about them or contact them later. 3) No longer able to impress people with how clever your character name is.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:your an assassin wanting to grief people you wont be able to tell them apart from NPC unless they do something rather dense and start jumping around brandishing they're Katana or something.
And how are you going to stop the said griefer assassin from just killing every NPC they see, and bagging some characters in the process? Unless you make the NPCs immune to attack... which provides a really excellent way to distinguish them from players.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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And it will almost certainly be easy to tell NPCs apart from characters by their behavior.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
I have already noted that there are NPC guards who will intervene once someone is killed for the most part they can dispatch the vast majority of assassins but remember even in EVE it is possible for long portions of time to avoid getting ganked by the NPC police, in my game if someone starts knifing NPCs like in Assassins Creed the police as it were would take notice and give chase. It will be possible to sneak away if your skilled enough but it would be hard and impractical to knife dozens of npcs and grief dozens of players and not get ganked by hordes of guards.
The easiest solution to my mind is to make it so that like in EVE you cannot leave the city past the guards and cannot hide in your home while your "actively" wanted for knifing someone whose not a legitimate bounty target. You might be able to elude pursuit if you only killed an npc or two or a player or two but it would be next to impossible to dodge a whole regiment of guards all over city looking for you AND players as well as now they're would be a bounty on your head, a default one placed by NPC's (a decent one as well) and then anything else added on to it by players griefed by you. Then player bounty hunters can chase you down.
Now that I think of it a wanted system, 1-2 stars guards are alert for you and if you make sudden moves they'll go after you and PCs can place money on your head, 3-4 stars there's a NPC bounty on you ontp of any player bounty and now a certain type of guards are now chasing you no matter what, 5-6 all guards will KILL ON SIGHT and you have NPC Hero's coming after you and player bounty hunters, once you leave the city walls NPC Bounty hunters will still doggedly chase you into the mountains until your dead. All this time Player BH can still chase you.
Fugu it is not self evident to tell someone apart from an NPC if theyre aware someone might just might attack them SWG had it so anyone could attack anyone afaik AND you couldnt tell just by looking at them how strong they were.
If NPC's can be approbiately designed so that a player doing the following:
A) moving around semi randomly loitering B) going from merchant to merchant C) stopping to converse with people D) Various Emotes E) Dress varied and diversly
does not seem out of place in a crowed then I think it should take a certain amount of work.
Now as for voice carrying, well in real life crowded areas are hard to talk in do i just stop living? No I find a quieter area to talk which ingame terms has risks vs rewards as well as if your in a more secluded area there's more chance someone might notice you.
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The thing about games is that generally they are different from real life because, you know, there's quite a bit of that right outside your door, should you want any. What's more, in real life you can shout back at an obnoxious yeller; in a game he will happily turn off his own speakers and go on poisoning the air, oblivious to any backtalk. Or of course you can increase your wanted rating by killing him off. Which might not shut him up either, actually; how are dead people going to communicate?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Sure WoW has Eleventy Million some subscribers but meh Quality over Quantity.
You must be the first person I have ever heard say that Blizzard Entertainment has neglected quality in favor of quantity. It astounds me that you seriously suggested this.
But I'm not quick to judge, if you could indulge me, explain why you think so.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
A bit of hyperbole on my part but generally my feeling come down to this:
WoW has set a standard for what makes a MMORPG what it generally offers is what should also be the minimum for any decent MMO that tries to be a success however I believe that yes it is a standard, a standard to be exceeded and surpassed.
I base my standards of gameplay based on what EVE-Online offers. I consider EVE-Online a far more fulfilling game to play then World of Warcraft, heck I can play WoW for free and it still doesn't offer me much, its just grind grind and grind and quest quest and quest until your level 70 and then what? Battlegrounds consensual pvp until the next expansion? Seems so pointless for me, which I why when I try out MMO's I ask myself "what does this offer that makes it better then WoW?" Vanguard, SWG, Tabula Rasa, Anarchy Online, DDO, Everquest II don't offer anything that to me is a stark enough difference to make them worth playing beyond DDO because I like its theme better and might have a bunch of friends who might be playing it.
Beyond that I find EVE's gameplay of such a stark and inviting contrast to wow that I would go as far as say "EVE Online is a more interesting game" and I like how everyone who plays it play on a SINGLE server rather then the many many servers WoW uses.
King of Men your argument would have merit if it werent for "Second Life Online". Beyond that I would think that vehicles for dealing with spam and profanity and people getting disturbed are generally not gameplay features but simple details that are needed to prevent abuse. I don't think it would be hard to find ways of filtering it so you as the reciever have some choice of who you hear.
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If you're seriously suggesting that there's less of a grind in EVE, I'm not sure how to respond to that.
quote:I don't think it would be hard to find ways of filtering it so you as the reciever have some choice of who you hear.
I am a professional software developer. I'm curious what ideas you have to resolve this very non-trivial problem.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Oh well, enough of these piffling nitpicks; I'm bringing out the big guns. Have you done any coding yet? Would it be possible to download a client, connect to your server, and see a black triangle? If not, when might this be expected?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Blayne Bradley
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this is my idea for a game, I wouldn't even attempt to try coding this or at least not on my own. This is something I am going to save until I either make my own development studio or work my way up in one and pitch it.
EVE has grind but only as a means to make money and there are many clever ways of delegating this to reduce to amount and pass onto others who enjoy it. Grinding is completely unnessasary as a means to progress your character so essenially if yo have the money you can do whatever you want.
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That article about the black triangle is great. It is a great way to describe the process to non-techies (like me) without minimizing the importance of it, or confusing them with techobabble.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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As for the topic. Well, who hasn't had a game idea or two kicking around their head. Heck, I've had two MMO ideas kicking around my head for the last year or so. It can certainly be fun to go and think about, even if it is almost never practical to actually implement. My suggestion to Blayne would be to look at individual pieces of the game and go into them in a detailed fashion, along the lines of what Tom Davidson did for your VOIP idea. Sure, the game itself will likely never end up being developed, but this sort of exercise will be beneficial no matter what you end up doing.
Go through and think about how it would actually be implemented, what some of the pitfalls are, what the tradeoffs would be compared to other ways of achieving your objective, etc. If you are actually looking hard at the component, you will almost certainly find a number of non trivial problems, so spend some time thinking about how you would go about solving them. Like I said before, you will almost certainly never actually develop this game, but time spent seriously developing ideas and solving the related problems will be of great benefit in the long run.
Posts: 2437 | Registered: Apr 2005
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I enjoy the overall concept of your two class system. Will there be sub-classes?
I greatly enjoy the idea that your progress and advancement are hidden from you. I feel this will annoy many players, however, because they like to get into contests to see who's defense is higher, who deals more damage, etc. etc. and having any hidden stats makes it harder to brag.
Soldiers:
1. Why limit armies to just NPC's? Why not let PC's enlist lower level PC's into their army? Give the low level soldiers an "auto formation" command, so with one button press they can obey the formation orders of their superior officer. It might seem a little dull, but helping a higher level PC in this way would net you good experience and you'd wear the same equipment as the rest of his soldiers. Assuming that his army is important to combat, you should see plenty of action. You could set up penalties for low level soldiers stealing drops from their superior officers (assuming the loot system involves drops). I think some people would enjoy the ability to start out as a low level soldier in another's army, advance in the ranks, and eventually earn an army of their own, or choose to stay on and continue fighting for someone else.
2. This system for soldiers would also allow you to have PC's give out awards and medals (or have them auto-awarded). That record could then be viewed by any soldier. So, if someone wanted to join your army, you could quickly see their medals and demerits. Say, this person has 6 demerits for theft from a superior officer, maybe I won't be hiring him... Or he has 8 for failing to stay in formation... interesting... but this guy has 3 medals for bravery, defeating a more powerful foe after the rest of his unit had fallen in battle... etc. etc.
I suggest not basing anything off from the D20 system, ever. You are working with computers, so everything could just as easily be based on a D100 system or a D244 system, which allows for much more depth. Their is much fault in thinking that you have a 10% chance you're attacks will be either a critical miss or a critical threat. I suggest taking a look at other computer games to get a feel for how others have moved beyond the D20 system, or in many cases never visited it in the first place.
Question: How will blocking be handled? In Diablo II, your percent chance to block was very literal (you would block exactly 67 out of 100 incoming attacks if your block chance was 67%, for example, without ever having to do anything). Some games, like the Elder Scrolls series, made blocking an activity that the player must perform. Although that arguably adds realism, I find it detracts greatly from the action and fun of the game. Interestingly, you could make it so soldiers with shields auto-block, and the Hero class must manually do it, and with some harsh penalties (dodging is more in their flavor anyway). I like that idea... soldiers auto-block, heroes auto-dodge... soldiers are capable of dodging manually, but with harsh penalties, heroes are capable of blocking manually, but with harsh penalties...
Combat: I'm going to assume that all combat will be in real time. This will make it difficult for commanders to survey the terrain and get their troops in formation before the enemy is upon them. Even if they quickly assess the situation and select the best formation, they still have to wait for their troops to move and get into position. Perhaps a "quick formation" power, that allows the commander to select formation and instantly teleport his troops into said formation, would be handy? Maybe make it usable once every 6 minutes or so? Attach a radius to it as well...
Anyway, simple brainstorming for a game like this could go on for weeks, without ever even setting down a single piece of code (especially, since, you know, we're all armchair game designers anyway). It's fun to think about though.
Posts: 247 | Registered: Feb 2007
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Blayne Bradley
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I have to sleep now but a quick correction "Soldier" is a class, PC armies are generally made up with Soldier PC's as the backbone who themselves command a squad of NPC grunts.
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The soldier, at some point in his career, gets access to NPC grunts. I'm seeing this as similar to a necromancer's minions from Diablo II, they follow you around and fight for you. Unlike in DII, you have full control of their formation, being able to tell them to flank, protect certain units, focus attacks, strategically retreat, etc.
It's my understanding that the soldier PC must pay for his minions equipment, and possibly food as well. So, in many ways they are similar to a PC. My idea was "Why not let a low level PC soldier sign on as a minion to a higher level PC?" The higher level character would pay for the low level PC's equipment and food, just like he would for his NPC minions. If the low level PC is too weak or too strong (compared to the NPC soldiers), he can't be hired. If he becomes too weak or too strong while in your service, he is released from service.
I'm suggesting a system where you can log on to the game, create a soldier character, and quickly find a higher level player who will take you under their wing, providing food and equipment so long as you serve them, which means, literally, replacing one of their NPC minions, so you must follow them around and obey their orders, exactly as though you were an NPC minion. If the person who hired you leaves the game, you become a free agent again. If you leave the game, you are instantly replaced by the NPC you originally replaced.
Hired PC minions would be, in general, stronger than NPC minions, to help provide incentive for higher level characters taking the risk of hiring a minion that can disobey orders.
Posts: 247 | Registered: Feb 2007
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Blayne Bradley
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Ah okay now I see what your getting at, I think to an extent that is covered in the guild/lord/general system of when a Lord appoints a General that General hires/enrolles lower level PC soldiers to fight as part of greator formation.
In other words: The lord can appoint many Generals one for each "army" the Lord can support.
The General can then appoint/promote/demote PC Soldiers as he sees fit.
Say Typical example:
General Colonel Captain Leftanent Sargent
Lets say optimally the General apoints two Colonels one for each regiment, in these individual regiments the Colonel assigns a Captain this is part administrative /guild rank/guild management and part military application as in a battle the Colonel would command the captains much the same way as a Commander in battlefield 2 commands squads.
the Captans from there have lieutenants who can have many Sgts assigned to his Company and can give orders and equip them much the same way as above and so on and so forth until you get to Sgt who command only NPC pet grunts.
All the "Officers" being soldiers themselves while having npc minions those minions in this case act more as a personal guard then front line troops.
A player in this sense if he wants to follow another player as a following I think is essenially a part of this system.
Another possibility those is to assign yourself and follow a "Hero" in much the same way Jet-Li in Fearless had those dozens of followers. After all as strong as Hero's are they could still be overwhelmed so why not hire and assign PC Soldiers to be body guards?
Another thought though is that in such times bandits didn't nessasarily have land but they had a heirarchy, I think for this case if your a "Bandit-Lord" I think your idea although with additional guild/clan management options should be interesting.
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It is in fact spelled 'lieutenant' even in British English. And pronounced 'leftenant'. Not 'leftanent'.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Blayne while there are certainly some interesting ideas here, I think you need to take a step back and start thinking about the basics of player drive and balance.
Example: in WoW the main "point" of playing is to improve your character through levelling and getting successively better equipment. This is done by grinding through mobs, grinding through quests and grinding through instances (and secondarily by crafting/buying with the results of your grinding).
in EVE (from my recollection) the "point" is development of skills (time based) and accumulation of wealth in order to get the bigger/better ships and holdings... this wealth is accumulated by some combination of grinding resource gathering, trading, building, hunting? (keep in mind that I haven't looked into EVE since the open beta)
So for your proposed game what is the point for the players? why do they want to spend their time and money in your virtual world? If it is to level their characters then there shouldn't be much "hidden" mechanics or they just aren't going to be interested. If it is to own and develop land then can both classes actually hold land and command troops? If it is to get better and better equipment, how is that done, and how does that balance against leading armies?
These motivations are especially troublesome as you've said that Heroes can't own land (which seems to be the primary method of accumulating wealth, that is presumably the goal of the game). So what does the Hero do to improve himself and see some kind of reward in the game?
The balance also seems troublesome, as the two classes seem to be effectively playing entirely different games. Also, they seem to be focused on entirely different goals (i.e. improving skills vs accumulating land and wealth and power). It seems like the soldier class would be much more subject to the game economy and negative forces such as gold-buying, and as a result would be shaped very differently from the Heroes.
Also, your thoughts on combat: I think you may be getting a bit over-zealous here. I know it's what you're trying to avoid, but look at WoW as an example: there is a decent balance between stats (level and equipment) and player skill (what abilities to use in what order against what kinds of opponents, what specialties to focus on, etc...) If you make the combat system too complicated, then the actual stats of your character become less and less important (which is going to frustrate many MMO players). There needs to be a careful balance, where experienced players do have some advantage based on their own skill, but at the same time it also needs to rely on their character's skill levels, stats etc...
Summary, it sounds like if you want to play a Soldier you're probably better off just playing Shogun or something, while if you want to play a Hero you should just play Assassin's Creed.
Also, one unrelated comment about the voice communication: also consider whether NPCs are going to use voice communication along with PCs. Because some distinct possibilities occur: 1) Your nominal PC volume ends up being much louder than the NPCs, and thus when you get an NPC runner informing you that your town is under attack, you can't hear him over your clan members laughing about the latest Will Farrel movie. 2) Your nominal PC volume ends up being much lower than the NPCs (even with mic boost on my mic tends to be soft, so when friends calibrate their VOIP setup to talk with me, we have to take that into account) and now you can't carry on a conversation while you're in town because the NPC merchants keep yelling at you to buy their stuff. 3) Even if the sound is balanced in volume, what happens when you get into crowded areas? the main trading areas are likely to be crowded with dozens if not hundreds of PCs and NPCs alike, how do you deal with that din? 4) As mentioned: spam. it took me about 30 seconds after WoW's release to exit every chat channel except a guild chat, and that was just a little chat window in the corner of the screen. Not only are there a rediculous nnumber of people on the internet who take perverse pleasure in spamming things to annoy people, but there's also a lot of random people that will try using this venue as a meeting place to talk about unrelated stuff that you don't want to muck up your gaming experience... What about when you're playing in college and your roommate is asleep 5 feet away, even if you turn down the volume to a whisper, there's still the potential of someone coming in and blowing a fog horn into their mic just because...
Posts: 1038 | Registered: Feb 2006
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For your hero class, play jade empire, that had alot about martial arts and there strong/weak points.
Have you ever played silk road? It's a mmo alot like what your talking about, without the assasins creed type security.
Other than the big, how are you going to get ti made, or are you question, i was just thinking how graphically intense wouldthis game be? it seemsl ike we would have another crysis on our hands.
Alos, play by the month is my most despised enemy, and i will never submit. Try liiking a voyage centure online also, it has alot of pirate style action, sailing and raiding stuff, it may give ou some ideas.
Posts: 549 | Registered: Feb 2008
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This is in all honesty a sort of fruitless blend of theorycrafting and idealistic conjecture (in effect, "In my game, things would work like this and it would be rad") with little or no technical or playtested basis for how you would get the idea molded into a workable system.
This is important to recognize because it's what kills games and leaves WoW and LII essentially untouched by real competition. It's like if I were to say "I want my game to be like World of Warcraft, except for it would also have aerial combat which would make it awesome."
Great. Good luck making aerial combat, then. I can't honestly think that this brainstorming is taking the right track or that it has the potential to go anywhere. It doesn't even seem to have any credible market appeal.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
My problem with jade Empire and assasins creed is that theyre singleplayer games.
The thing with "Heroes" is that if everyone is a hero what of it anymore? Y'know what i mean? I don't want there to be too many hero's one way of solving this is to make the class so limited in what i can do past being awesome to sail boat with that people will prefer Soldiers for the sake of wealth and prestige progression.
Another possibility though, though I dont like it is to make it akin to Jedi back Pre-CU SWG, make it an unlockable alpha class that is not availiable from the get go, essentially everyone who wants to be one needs to do a whole bunch of quests hopefully taking a few month then they can unlock a slot and only ONE slot for it that can do everything soldiers can but throw in perma death after say 4-5 deaths.
Basically what i would prefer is that whenever Hero's are encountered and fight it should play out in a fun way for all sides like a Kungfu action flick or act as the Jedi did in the prequels being in the thin edge of the wedge.
However while Hero's cannot be generals in my initial vision I see no reason why they shouldn't be Lords and control Generals?
The overall goal of the game to my mind is to acquire territory or help others acquire territory. And to have fun just simply fighting or crafting, what I would strive to do though is make the fighting more dynamic rather then say for example camp the same forest again and again for bandits you can have active patrols and NPCs will come out to try to ambush you always in a different place and if you dont keep the bandit population low enough they can mount serious assaults on your settlements.
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: This is in all honesty a sort of fruitless blend of theorycrafting and idealistic conjecture (in effect, "In my game, things would work like this and it would be rad") with little or no technical or playtested basis for how you would get the idea molded into a workable system.
This is important to recognize because it's what kills games and leaves WoW and LII essentially untouched by real competition. It's like if I were to say "I want my game to be like World of Warcraft, except for it would also have aerial combat which would make it awesome."
Great. Good luck making aerial combat, then. I can't honestly think that this brainstorming is taking the right track or that it has the potential to go anywhere. It doesn't even seem to have any credible market appeal.
And if I followed your great advice it will never get made at all.
My goal in life is to be a game developer, I have to start somewhere even if its just through brainstorming. Others have found some things in my proposal interesting, why haven't you? Also saying that WoW's market share is never going to get a dent is a self fulfilling prophacy of course its not going to shrink if no one tries. Also the thing about my proposal is that it is possible if I polish enough get enough detail in it and if its impressive enough a company whether its Vivendi, or CCP or BioWare or Ubisoft or Atari or Microsoft or any other large game publisher might take an interest in it.
Being an important cog in the clockwork monstrosity that is an MMORPG is my dream job. Its a job for life for a good MMO never dies.
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quote:I have to start somewhere even if its just through brainstorming.
As I pointed out, once you brainstorm a feature, you next need to analyze that feature. Otherwise the brainstorming is useless.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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And in the real business environment, when you're all sitting around a table brainstorming, everyone's ideas are going to get shot down, criticized, and torn to shreds. This is good practice. Let people criticize and poke holes, then think about what they've said and try to solve the problem and address their concerns
Personally, you had me at kung fu and I'd happy to talk to your more about this martial art if you're interested. I'm still a new student but maybe I could help. For instance, subclasses could be based around specializing in regional styles (northern v. southern) or even concentrated on the various animal forms (tiger, mantis, crane, etc) with a variety of weapons.
I don't play alot of MMO and really only have experience with Guild Wars (because it was free and therefore a big hit with myself and my non-gamer friends who needed to be able to put the game aside for the occasional month when real life took over and not feel guilty about wasting money on a subscription.) For me, it was all about customizing my character and feeling unique in a sea of people who were most likely better than me. When the game introduced more complex control of NPC soldiers, I became frustrated and it was around that time that I quit.
An engaging story and immersive environments were what I valued most. I could see myself really drawn to a game that incorporated kung fu fighting classes around ancient Chinese myths and legends.
I will say that I do like the idea of new players being able to join the ranks of more experienced players. I imagine it would be a good community builder for non-gamer-types and people who are shy even online.
Posts: 1733 | Registered: Apr 2005
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I haven't read everything in the OP, but I will tomorrow. I'm actually starting in a Game Development program in a school in Chicago this fall, so this is definitely my area of interest. Don't let anyone tell you brainstorming your ideas and putting them out there is pointless just because you don't have code to show for it; but do be open to all forms of criticism. There are great jobs out there for people who come up with these ideas, but you do have to be prepared for them to be dissected and stomped all over when you present them. After all, a game is a form of entertainment, and if it won't sell, then it won't be made (usually). Strive to find that balance between having all the innovations you can dream of and creating something a lot of people are going to want to play over and over for more than a year. That's my advice for tonight; I'll write more tomorrow after I read the details.
Posts: 349 | Registered: Jul 2006
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:I have to start somewhere even if its just through brainstorming.
As I pointed out, once you brainstorm a feature, you next need to analyze that feature. Otherwise the brainstorming is useless.
Yes which I am working on on and offline but Samp's critisism simply boiled down to "this is useless give up".
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The approach that you appear to be taking in this thread is useless. That said, I'm hoping you'll also start taking the time to discuss and analyze the individual design decisions you're making, since that's where the interesting stuff happens.
Just as an example: why d20? What about that system do you think makes it a good choice for a MMO?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Its the system I am currently familiarizing myself with for D&D so why not kill two birds with one stone?
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That's... lazy. The d20 system is designed for simplicity and table-top games, it's not really intended for video games, where it's very easy to have a much more in-depth system without putting any additional burden on the players.
When you say D20 system, I picture games like Never Winter Nights or Icewind Dale. Games where you can pause the game and think about what you're going to do. You really can't allow players to pause an MMORPG. Aside from this, there are many factors that limit the D20 system that you really shouldn't have to deal with.
1. Probability: A. Limited to 5% increments. For example, faced against a DC 20 Strength check, a character with a strength of 12 (modifier +1) has a 5% better chance at success than a character with a strength of 10 (modifier +0). Basically, every +1 modifier on a D20 results in a +5% increase in success rate. Fine for tabletop games, but the computer can just as easily roll a 100 sided dice, allowing you to have boosts increase odds by single percent increments (or really, any amount you want). In other games, players will fight tooth and nail to improve their odds by a single percentage point. We know people will seek to improve by very small amounts, so why limit them to fighting over a very significant 5% every time?
B. Critical hits/Critical misses. In the D20 system, you have a ten percent chance of rolling either a natural 20 or a natural 1. Believe it or not, that's incredibly frequent, especially if your game will involve a lot of combat. Maybe this is what you want, but it's something to think about. Since you are in theory designing this, you can just as easily make critical failure a 1 in 36 chance, or a 1 in 50, instead of the traditional 1 in 20. Or build a system where both odds vary depending on PC level and the level of their opponent.
2. Combat: A. Decision making. In a table top game, you can pause and think about what you're doing. This is exactly what the D20 system was designed for. It works well in single player games based on patience. MMORPG not so much. A good interface design would help to alleviate this, but there will still be issues. This doesn't make the D20 system unusable, it's just a feature that will have to be altered and handled carefully. Simple functions, like full-defense and charge, which can normally be performed by anyone, should be skills with different names to help separate your game from being yet another D&D clone.
B. Blocking. Blocking is incredibly important to me as a game feature. Assuming that you'll be using the standard D20 system, blocking will not exist, it will simply be an armor class bonus that functions identically to every other AC bonus you have (unless you're using a Tower Shield, that grants concealment). From a flavor perspective, why do this? If blocking is a separate roll, and a separate mechanic, you gain the benefits of giving players a block recovery speed (the time it takes to block, recover from the blow and then strike back, a stat that's unneeded in the traditional D20 system, but in a video game it really adds flavor). See, in the traditional D20 system, the game rules don't care if an attack misses you because you're wearing a shield, heavy armor, you have a high dex, you dodged, doesn't matter, all of them function exactly the same. It has value to role-playing, so DM's and players can determine what happened, but the rules of the game just don't care. Here you have an opportunity to make blocking, dodging, being struck with a weapon but it fails to penetrate your armor, the enemy missing outright, all have real in-game implications without adding any burden to the players.
Sorry, that ended up being the longest post in the world. Just trust me on this, as someone who has played a lot of D&D 3.5 and RPG's in general, the D20 system is not what you're looking for.
Posts: 247 | Registered: Feb 2007
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I would suggest adding a 3rd class--the Monk.
No, not the AD&D Uber fighter monk.
I am referring to something closer to the standard cleric, though representing one of the three basic Eastern philosophies/religions Buddhist, Tao-ist, Confuciusist.
We are not talking spells being granted to these players, but some appropriate skills.
Begging: No cost for food or shelter.
Healing: Ability to cure diseases, heal injuries, etc. This is all herbal/traditional/ perhaps even acupunture/pressure.
Weapons Skills based on non-weapon tools. Ability to fight a fully armored soldier with a sledge hammer, staff, or fishing net.
Information Gathering:
Inspiration:
Although, I think the healing will be a major benefit to getting this class to work with other players.
Instead of getting armies under you belt like the soldier, the Monk moves from small wandering beggar to running ever larger shrines, with other monks under them.
Perhaps different career paths will be available depending on what is historically appropriate to the different religions.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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