I just got an idea for an MMO

Started by winkio, May 23, 2010, 02:04:07 am

Previous topic - Next topic

winkio

First off, this is not for RMXP.  Second, this is just an idea, I most likely won't follow through with it.

A terrain / enemy / weapon / all other content generator is at the core of this game.  The concept is that when a new character is created, a unique area with a town, monsters, people, and other content is generated on the world server.  The user gives the character some background info which determines some of the main features of their area.  Then the game begins.

You start off the game by preparing to go to the city to begin your studies as a warrior.  You prepare yourself, say goodbye, and then get teleported to the starting city.  Once there, you find the academy and go through the tutorial of the system.  After learning the basics, you now have free reign to go about the world.

The world consists entirely of towns and their surrounding areas that have been generated by characters, with a few generated cities in between that serve as teleportation hubs, but are not linked to any specific character.  All areas have dungeons to explore, an economy, quests, monsters, and NPCs, all of which have been generated and are unique.  You do not level up in this game by defeating monsters: rather, each time you visit a new town, you can take a lesson from the town instructor after completing the town's quest line to level up and gain a new skill point.  Thus, the game emphasizes exploration, not repetition.

You have the choice of putting your skill point into one of 5 areas: close combat, ranged combat, attack magic, support magic, and animal training.  Depending on how you allocate your points, certain stats will increase, and you will gain new skills.  There is no redistribution of points: you must stick with the character you make.

In terms of the strategy of distribution, it will not favor any particular distribution.  Putting all the points in one area will gain you new skills faster, but your stats will not be balanced.  Spreading out the points too thin will make you very well rounded and adaptable, but not allow you access to higher level skills.  In general, spreading the points among 3 areas will work well, although other distributions may work equally well or better.

Once the player reaches their starting town again, they must go on an epic quest to save the town.  When they succeed, they become the ruler of their town.  At this point, they are allowed to setup quests and create user generated content within the town.  In turn, other players visiting the town can experience the user generated content.  As other players complete your quests, your town gains funds which can be used to extend its economy, restock its shops, create new NPCs, or just build up.

But your adventure does not stop when you reach your town.  Continue to go out and explore, gain more power, and gain experience and skills from other people's areas.  The game never has a level cap, but level differences are not of much significance: a level 20 could best a level 40, and a level 40 could best a level 70, and so on and so forth.



So what do people think of this?  Would you play it?

Magus

To add more to that idea, YOU  can build an army or alliance and TAKE OVER other player's towns if you defeat the player  and his town defenders in combat. You can continue to to take over towns, attempting to rule the country maybe. Next step: the entire mmo world(but other players aren't dumb enough to let that happen. You'd have to be a real badass to gain that much power without getting 4343-teamed by every player in the game)  This would be so epic.
this idea is epic
LEVEL ME DOWN. THE ANTI-BLIZZ GROUP IS AMONG YOU... Do it for the chick below...She watches..<br />

winkio

Quote from: Nawm on May 23, 2010, 02:09:58 am
To add more to that idea, YOU  can build an army or alliance and TAKE OVER other player's towns if you defeat the player and his town defenders in combat.


No, that's stupid.  People are supposed to find their town, setup their content, and then go out and continue the game, coming back to their town every once in a while when they feel like it.  They aren't supposed to sit around defending their town, or infringe on other people's gameplay.  Town to town interaction could occur in other ways though.

Magus

May 23, 2010, 02:19:12 am #3 Last Edit: May 23, 2010, 02:22:36 am by Nawm
ah: I'd say take a look into this idea. Since it would be a new experience from the typical mmos

Edit: they wouldn't have to stay and defend their town. That's what they hire guards for.(using the money made)
LEVEL ME DOWN. THE ANTI-BLIZZ GROUP IS AMONG YOU... Do it for the chick below...She watches..<br />

Landith

No grinding. I like it.
I would play it solely for that reason alone.
I think you could pull it off starting off small. Like I'm talking 8bit graphics then scripting the basic features like character creation and creating a base city. Then hiring a spriter and scripter and have them build 3D or even 2D models and work together with them to make the other features then creating the server, etc... It would take a lot of work and at least 3 years to pull it off. Rough estimate. Good idea going away from RMXP. Oh and one more thing, you will need to be able to create a generator of a storyline for the generated character and the town goes off what that storyline is and they can venture from their storyline and visit other towns and what not. Also I would make town interaction like this: You can go to other towns and if the character who originally belongs to that town is there and needs help you can help him/her with a task and ya'll split the xp or the skill points or something idk. But make it friendly. PvP is also something you need to consider as you can't have a MMO without it. Some form of it like a Wild Area, PvP servers, Duel Arenas, Challenges, Gladiator style battles where other people can spectate, anything works. Another thing you would need to think about is control over the player. Do you want it 3D, 2D? Mouse or Keyboard based? Etc... Lots of other things as well. But so far it sounds like a great idea. Would be expensive to get up and going though. But look at Runescape, it started out with horrible graphics, not good gameplay, and now everything is 3D, ok gameplay and still alive after 8 years I believe. Just start small and wait for it to grow.

If you go through with this and pull it off, I will be impressed and would def play it.

winkio

Really the only chance this has of getting done is if I get people at my university to work on it with me.  I'm helping start a game creation club, and if I can get enough people on board, I could possibly get funding through the club to start it up.  I have three people in mind that, if we all decide to work together, could have this whole thing up and running in less than a year.  I wouldn't count on it happening though, as I have other priorities, and I'm sure the other guys do too.

More specifics on the game:
3D all the way, can use either keyboard or mouse for controls.  Combat would be very active where instead of just clicking on a target and pressing buttons for skills, timing and combos are extremely important, and combat is very fast-paced.  My initial idea is that there would be PvP leagues, where you get set up with matches every so often, and you get special rewards for winning.  There would be a solo league, where it's just you, and a team league, where you join a team, and could participate in battles, capture the flag, etc.

Blizzard

May 23, 2010, 03:52:06 am #6 Last Edit: May 23, 2010, 03:56:18 am by Blizzard
I only want to add that Runescape is just ew. I had to play it for a college assignment (don't ask) and it was next to horrible.

As for the game concept itself, it's original, that's definitely. But one thing that I have noticed about the average Joe is that he actually likes grinding. Maybe (and only maybe) 10% of the population would actually appreciate your concept. Why is WoW so popular? Because it's based on grinding and new "content". They added a horse recently. You can mount it and ride it. And that's it. They sell it for $20. From the 11.5 million players if only 10% buy it, that would still be $23 millions. A horse. That probably took a few days to model and program which probably was less than $1000 development cost.

As for MMOs in general, I personally want to stay away from them. As Landith said, something like this might as well take 3 years. And during those thre years I have to eat and pay the rent so I can't put all my time into the MMO.
But if you'd pull this off, I'd definitely consider playing (and I hate MMOs ever since 4 months MuOnline, 15 hours per day).
Check out Daygames and our games:

King of Booze 2      King of Booze: Never Ever
Drinking Game for Android      Never have I ever for Android
Drinking Game for iOS      Never have I ever for iOS


Quote from: winkioI do not speak to bricks, either as individuals or in wall form.

Quote from: Barney StinsonWhen I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.

legacyblade

I personally HATE grinding. And what you're describing is literally my dream game winkio o.o Though I do really like Nawm's idea of being able to make armies and conquer kingdoms and such. I think one idea that would really help the randomly generated towns and such work would be an island based world. I think multiple towns per island with a few main LARGE islands with the big cities would make it work. This would also foster a bit of the economy, as there are a few towns on each island that have to interact on a regular basis.

Though taking over the world shouldn't be possible :P

Epic idea though. I would make you breakfast every day if you made this game.

Blizzard

I disagree on the army and conquering thing. The game sums up in being able to take over the entire world and once a player has done that, he'll probably stay the ruler forever as he won't let anybody get strong enough to conquer the world. The game would become unplayable and one man would dictate the entire world. Games where one player can achieve godlike power like this are destinied to fail quickly. That's the reason nobody has thought of it yet; they already have and they realized it's a stupid idea. Winkio's original idea is good though, as it is somewhere in between plus some new stuff.
Check out Daygames and our games:

King of Booze 2      King of Booze: Never Ever
Drinking Game for Android      Never have I ever for Android
Drinking Game for iOS      Never have I ever for iOS


Quote from: winkioI do not speak to bricks, either as individuals or in wall form.

Quote from: Barney StinsonWhen I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.

legacyblade

Ya, I forgot that some people devote their lives to MMOs, so such abilities would break the game. Sad...

Blizzard

How can one which has no life, devote it to MMOs? :V
Check out Daygames and our games:

King of Booze 2      King of Booze: Never Ever
Drinking Game for Android      Never have I ever for Android
Drinking Game for iOS      Never have I ever for iOS


Quote from: winkioI do not speak to bricks, either as individuals or in wall form.

Quote from: Barney StinsonWhen I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.

winkio

Blizz, from the people I talk to that play WoW, they don't like grinding for grinding sake.  But they will grind to level up and become more powerful.  You still grind in this game, but you grind by exploring, not by fighting.  And even better, other players create the new content that you grind on.

The other thing I think would be cool for this game would be player made maps and charts.  The basic land and paths would be game-generated, but the players would make notes about enemies, dungeons, resources, etc.

And to reiterate, I'm probably never going to make this.

Magus

Quote from: Blizzard on May 23, 2010, 03:52:06 am
I only want to add that Runescape is just ew. I had to play it for a college assignment (don't ask) and it was next to horrible.

As for the game concept itself, it's original, that's definitely. But one thing that I have noticed about the average Joe is that he actually likes grinding. Maybe (and only maybe) 10% of the population would actually appreciate your concept. Why is WoW so popular? Because it's based on grinding and new "content". They added a horse recently. You can mount it and ride it. And that's it. They sell it for $20. From the 11.5 million players if only 10% buy it, that would still be $23 millions. A horse. That probably took a few days to model and program which probably was less than $1000 development cost.

As for MMOs in general, I personally want to stay away from them. As Landith said, something like this might as well take 3 years. And during those thre years I have to eat and pay the rent so I can't put all my time into the MMO.
But if you'd pull this off, I'd definitely consider playing (and I hate MMOs ever since 4 months MuOnline, 15 hours per day).


Runescape is the worst piece of crap game I've ever played. No seriously, If I had a choice between dying or playing runescape, I'd choose dying.
Yes that game is that horrible.
LEVEL ME DOWN. THE ANTI-BLIZZ GROUP IS AMONG YOU... Do it for the chick below...She watches..<br />

Subsonic_Noise

Quote from: Nawm on May 23, 2010, 04:09:57 pm
If I had a choice between dying or playing runescape, I'd choose dying.

wow your life must be pretty worthless.

Also, the idea sounds awesome, and will proabably be awesome if refined. Just make it more complex and "round" and oh god I suck at explaining. You got what I mean.
I'd play it and then stop after a few weeks, like with every good mmo. It only took 30 minutes for WOW though.

winkio

Quote from: Subsonic_Noise on May 23, 2010, 04:22:16 pm
I'd play it and then stop after a few weeks, like with every good mmo. It only took 30 minutes for WOW though.


Not much of an addictive personality, eh?

Subsonic_Noise

Quote from: winkio on May 23, 2010, 04:30:07 pm
Quote from: Subsonic_Noise on May 23, 2010, 04:22:16 pm
I'd play it and then stop after a few weeks, like with every good mmo. It only took 30 minutes for WOW though.


Not much of an addictive personality, eh?

Only with illegal drugs.

Also, I'd play MMOs for longer but I found it to be rather annoying to have the game tell me when to play. Like when I was kicked out of my RO guild because I had something better to do than spending a saturday evening on my pc.

Blizzard

I don't know if I am an addictive personality, but I know a few things. I tend to get bored quickly. I can keep playing something for longer than other people (e.g. several dozens of hours), but after that I don't want to see even a similar game for the next 2 years. >.<
Check out Daygames and our games:

King of Booze 2      King of Booze: Never Ever
Drinking Game for Android      Never have I ever for Android
Drinking Game for iOS      Never have I ever for iOS


Quote from: winkioI do not speak to bricks, either as individuals or in wall form.

Quote from: Barney StinsonWhen I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.

King Munkey

My 4 year old little cousin gets on his dads WoW account and grinds for him.

I hate having to grind. I hate hate hate hate loathe hate hate loathe some more... Did I mention I hate it? I would play this. It's sounds very unique. I agree with blizz about getting bored quickly. Sometimes when I play a game I cannot play it again because I already know what to do. And it gets too repetitive.

G_G Is my hero!
Munkey != monkey
Munkey > monkey

winkio

Yeah, I think besides a superb auto-generation engine, player-generated content would have to have a wide amount of usability.  Like, to the extent that Starcraft had.

legacyblade

User generated content gave me an extra year and a half of enjoyment out of Oblivion. That's what would be the biggest factor in making this hypothetical game stay fresh.