If you could design a MMORPG...

[neighbortaru]

Re: If you could design a MMORPG...

btw, here's an interesting read on game design challenges in MMORPGs by Lead Combat Designer of BioWare Austin:

http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm?loadFeature=868&bhcp=1

[Murphie]

Re: If you could design a MMORPG...

I've read that article. It's pretty neat (and eye-opening). Nice find, NT.^^

[DakAttack]

Re: If you could design a MMORPG...

That said, my "perfect" concept of MMORPGs would involve no economy whatsoever - items bind to you immediately, and cannot be traded. This absolves the need for lots of tedious things; farming, crafting for income, and (hah!) RMTs.


Icemage

I'd much rather have a more expansive secondary and tertiary market. Just like CP and IS, you earn them for certain tasks, they're not tradable, they can be accumulated within a realistic amount of time, and they're tradable for items that can be used and sold on the primary market(s). There's a range of ways players can obtain money from fallen enemies, and this really takes the stress off of it while promoting progress as well.

[Icemage]

Re: If you could design a MMORPG...

I'd much rather have a more expansive secondary and tertiary market. Just like CP and IS, you earn them for certain tasks, they're not tradable, they can be accumulated within a realistic amount of time, and they're tradable for items that can be used and sold on the primary market(s). There's a range of ways players can obtain money from fallen enemies, and this really takes the stress off of it while promoting progress as well.

The fact of the matter is, if you have useful and difficult to acquire items that are tradable, you have an economy. Witness the stupidity which is the "barter economy" of Diablo II, for instance - people don't buy stuff with gold, they buy them with other items.

When you have an economy, you have players who desire things that they can get from other players. And when you have desire to acquire things that would normally be out of your reach, you invite the presence of RMTs by definition since in the absence of sufficient supply to meet demand, there will always be opportunities to exploit those who won't go through the trouble of getting things the "right" way; i.e. buy it off of EBay.

Any online game with a stable economy (which all current MMORPGs strive for) is susceptible to this. It is the nature of socio-economic design. That's why I said that my "perfect world" model would have zero tradeable items of value. Effectively no economy. You can have "stuff" without being able to give or exchange it.


Icemage

[Macht]

Re: If you could design a MMORPG...

I've been doing hobbyist game programming for about 5 years now (I'm a professional programmer by day) and I have found that the vast majority of the playerbase has no idea what would make for an engaging game design that remains technologically feasible.
Usually questions like this attract responses from people who just don't have any idea of the trade-offs involved with the features they'd like to implement, be it excessive art assets, too much pressure on a rendering engine, too much pressure on limited bandwidth, or just horribly unbalanced gameplay.
Icemage

Agree with this, lot of people really don't know what the trade offs are. The biggest thing constantly ignored is the database structure and effeciancy, MMOs can easily have billions of billions of queries of different types that the system has to respond to quickly. Bad database structure and the games totally skrewed.

That said, my "perfect" concept of MMORPGs would involve no economy whatsoever - items bind to you immediately, and cannot be traded. This absolves the need for lots of tedious things; farming, crafting for income, and (hah!) RMTs.

Don't agree with this, part of the MMORPG concept is interaction with players in all forms. This requires an economy, camping out a mob means you'll have to make it spawn frequently with good drop rates. Otherwise it creates a wicked bottleneck, you won't have a playerbase long if they can to spend 1 year hunting a mob hoping to get that 1 drop and doing this repeatedly for every drop. Only works best for end-game design.

Just have to think of inovative ways to counter monopolizing, hording of desired items, and large repetative money trades (Two part sender and receiver rules). That should counter most of RMTs while keeping trade skills. Some people may not like trade skills but there are a lot that do.

[Herrisa]

Re: If you could design a MMORPG...

You know... with zero tradeable items it could be possible to by-pass slottable items altogether. *breaks out the smelling salts*

I know it's crazy, but it could work. Say you choose warrior as a job. You start out with good ol' leather armor. To upgrade your leather you have to go talk to the metalsmith in the next town and do a series of quests. After finishing the quests the metalsmith will increase the stats on the armor and the graphics change. Then, to get rarer armor, you have to head out and do difficult quests, dungeon delving, missions, etc. Basically, morphing your armor over time and changing stats without actually having an item.

It's hard to get your head around not being able to have an item that fills up a slot somewhere, but it could become a very flexible system. In that maybe you can quest for colors or effects to create armor like Black Armor of Smashing, or Grey Leather of Sneaking. Best yet, the Pink Leather Armor of Ultimate Doom!

Ok, ok... it has its flaws, but it does stop "item greed" which brings in undesirable elements. This makes it so you have to work for good armor instead of just buying it.
Hmm...

[dirtyclown]

Re: If you could design a MMORPG...

If you could design a MMORPG, what types of features would you put in?

*By features I mean fight-systems, crafting, transport, etc.

If I could design an MMO, I'd do things a bit differently than alot of these newer games have been designed. EXP would be rewarded based on your actions, rather than how many mobs you've killed. Reasoning behind that is that Experience is valuable no matter where it comes from. With an intricate skills system, this could open up lots of possibilities for different character types, and even possible roleplaying options.

As for skills, I'm not a fan of the random skillups. I think skill levels determined by a rate of exp gained with that skill is far less frustrating than randomly gaining skills based on a random number generator. The amount of exp needed would scale upward as your character levels up, but that would make little difference because you'd be using your main skills so often it wouldn't matter. All of your gained exp would go into increasing character level, at which point you would receive points to distribute to make your character better.

I really like being able to customize my characters' growth, and so far only a few games have allowed that. So, in order to make the game friendly to people who don't sit around parsing reams of data trying to figure out some obscure bit of info, I'd be completely open as far as what stats affect what skills, etc. and try to encourage people to experiment with different things.

Party play wouldn't really be a major focus for the game, but a party system would be in place. One that would allow support classes to see when there are status effects on their party members via icons next to the player's HP bar, and other neat things. On the opposite end of that, I'd like to see it possible for every class to be able to solo at least somewhat decently as opposed to forcing certain classes to party with each other. There would be advantages to it of course, but it wouldn't be mandatory. I'm a fan of the laid back approach to gaming.

A crafting system that relies on the skill system described above would be quite nice in my opinion. Players wouldn't have to "skill up" their crafting, they could just sit back, chat with friends, craft some things and gain exp at the same time. Everybody wins. I'd even make it possible for players to just level their crafts and gain high levels.

To get around the NM camping and gear problems, I'd make all of the gear in the game either crafted with general crafting tools and ingredients (which would all be NPCed) or available in a shop somewhere in the game. Gear rewarded for completing a difficult quest or mission would be a possibility, and instanced zones could circumvent competition/botting and give everyone an equal chance at getting what they need.

I'd also add in a few "warzone" areas, much like the Besieged that we see in Al Zahbi. Though it would be at constant war rather than having scheduled attacks. In my mind, evil creatures fight like evil creatures, not English gentlemen. A possibility of having the warzones move about through the different countries of the game would be interesting as well and probably inspire players to actively participate. A system could be worked out where players of all levels could enjoy this aspect of the game, rather than having to be at or near max to get any sort of enjoyment out of it. Perhaps even certain classes would be created specifically for this sort of thing. A skill called "Ballista Operation" sounds pretty cool. I'm tired of typing, so..yeah. >.>

[Zempten]

Re: If you could design a MMORPG...

You can shoot me if you want but . . . i would REALLY LOVE to see an MMORPG based on the Valkyrie Profile world ^ ^

There's just so much there ; ; It seems like such a waste *sniffles*

[Bricklayer]

Re: If you could design a MMORPG...

I think other posters have mentioned something similar, but I would definitely like to see an expansion of multi-player combined abilities. It could be pretty cool to have magic fusions, magic-weaponskill fusions, or weaponskill fusions that produced special effects. This would be similar to Chrono Trigger, but in the multi-player interface. Maybe one player could initiate the fusion window, which would pop up an indicator in another player's interface, and the other player could click on the indicator or hit a hotkey to complete the fusion. Depending on spell timers, the initiation button could be greyed out.

[Aeni]

Re: If you could design a MMORPG...

That's why I said that my "perfect world" model would have zero tradeable items of value. Effectively no economy. You can have "stuff" without being able to give or exchange it.


Icemage

I like this. If you want economy, go apply for a franchise license at corporate headquarters of McDonalds. This is a game. There should be no need to introduce "real world" concept in an other wise virtual "fantasy" environment.

[Bricklayer]

Re: If you could design a MMORPG...

I like this. If you want economy, go apply for a franchise license at corporate headquarters of McDonalds. This is a game. There should be no need to introduce "real world" concept in an other wise virtual "fantasy" environment.

there will always be opportunities to exploit those who won't go through the trouble of getting things the "right" way; i.e. buy it off of EBay...
You can have "stuff" without being able to give or exchange it.

So, basically, trading, selling, sending, and auctioning are all eliminated. The only possible paths to attaining items are through drops (including mobs and chests), vendoring (assuming you allow currency), questing, and crafting. It seems, at first blush, that what this system will do (aside from eliminating RMT) is severly restrict available options for obtaining desired items. Applied to FFXI (which you may deem inappropriate), instead of money being the common interface between commodities, whereby you could previously farm/fish/craft/etc for items you don't want to attain through direct means, e.g. drops or unlearned crafts, now if you want to attain an item, you have to do it through the "designated" path. For example, crafted consumables are only available to you if you level your craft. Dropped spells are only available if you kill the mob.

Perhaps I am approaching this too simplistically, but it seems that an economy-free MMORPG would require a different paradigm for how items are attained. Partying would seem pointless, though people may be forced to party for the good of the individual. Maybe higher level (or stronger) characters could barter their services for rights to drops. I'll help you get your Item A if you help me get my Item B.

I don't know. Until I see an item on FFXI that costs more than 999,999,999 gil, I will support having an economy with money and item exchange over one without.

Edit: Regarding the "buy[ing]... off of Ebay," you'd still enjoy character selling, though you may be able to eliminate single-item auctions.

[Aeni]

Re: If you could design a MMORPG...

Perhaps I am approaching this too simplistically, but it seems that an economy-free MMORPG would require a different paradigm for how items are attained. Partying would seem pointless, though people may be forced to party for the good of the individual. Maybe higher level (or stronger) characters could barter their services for rights to drops. I'll help you get your Item A if you help me get my Item B.

You are. Of course, the idea is so radical, it is not without its own set of flaws when trying to integrate into any current MMORPGs without modifying anything.

However, with a carefully designed game from the ground up and removing currency, it is quite possible to have a game that can still perform similarly to any other game many players currently enjoy.

I don't know if you ever played Xenosaga II, but that game removed currency. However, the implementation of such a system did leave little to be desired (thus this goes back to careful planning and designing on the outset instead of trying to do this somewhere in the middle of a series develoment)

People need to think outside of the box. Yes, it's a broken-record-cliche but seriously, it is something that only 5% of human beings ever do. The rest are stuck in their "like sheep or lemmings" mentality and cannot produce an original idea or thought.