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[alfie275]

I am suprised noone has mentioned Wurm.

[Megaman]

This has probably been mentioned before, but I think no one in their right minds would want to spend the time and money to make it, while they can do all that in real life.

[Sowelu]

ATITD is good for some of this stuff.  No combat, no aging, but there's a lot of potential for exploration and resource scarcity is pretty interesting.  Travel time is also interesting:  In some Tales, if you wanted to find Red Sand (the only source of mercury) or Tar, there were only like two places in the game to get it...so you'd go on very long treks to get there.  Or you would pay someone vast quantities of other materials to make the trek for you.  Add some combat and there you go.  Also ATITD had crafting minigames that were expertly done, much better than Puzzle Pirates (which I also adore).  Want to forge an axe?  Here's some hammers that move metal in different ways, here's a hex grid with elevations to shape it, here's the template to get as close as you can for high quality, in a limited number of strokes based on the material you're using--have fun.

But, any game where you have to worry about logging off will never work in a high-risk setting.  NPCs are not enough to protect you or to keep things going while you're away; otherwise, why be present at all?  Realistically, you should ALWAYS be able to protect yourself and your possessions as long as you're physically present, which means hoarding and sitting on top of stuff if it's important to you.  That's how the real world is, and you can only ask people to commit so much RL time to things.  Not more than 16 hours a day certainly!

Here's something that sounds impossible, but makes me wonder a little:  Would it be possible to do this as a daily turn-based thing?  No I don't mean the classic action-based browser game (as much as I liked Utopia back in the day when I was fourteen).  I mean, everyone declares their actions for the day, and they all resolve simultaneously.  Nobody gets screwed by time zones.  As long as you can log on for N minutes a day (where N is 10-60) you're good, so it's reasonable.  It can take a very long time.  Certainly you could roleplay over some open comm thing.

...Aw, crud.  I just described a simultaneous-turn PBEM strategy game, instead.  :/

Anyway Wurm has the worst crafting ever.  Although I DID like building highways in it, as megaprojects.

[Mephisto]

I used to play a game called RPG World Online, or RPGWO for short. I wouldn't wish to inflict that on anyone, but it did do some things right. Graphics and community were not things it did right.

2. Permadeath and Aging
In my mind, any game with no permanent consequences is guaranteed to stagnate eventually and be filled with maxed-level players who get bored and do nothing but grief other players.  Someone kills you?  So what.  Just respawn and carry on.  Maybe you lose some gold or equipment, but who cares?  I would want my game to be a real role-playing game, and that means that characters sometimes die.  Not too easily of course - first they would be knocked unconscious and there would be plenty of opportunity to heal, if with long-term effects to their health.  But they would start as children, age, travel, experience, and then die, either of old age or from illness or injury.  And then you make a new character, maybe the child of your old one, and carry on.  As you age, some things get better and some get worse.  An old man has less strength than a young one, but more wisdom.  The game is full of stories rather than players' egos.  Every once in a while you might think you've died unfairly - but if someone killed you for no reason and got caught, you can bet that others would do something about it to keep that threat under control.  The reason we have law and order in real life is, ultimately, because we are afraid.  If someone kills us, we don't get to respawn, and so we do our best to make sure no one goes around killing people.  This would have to happen in the game as well.

If a group of players banded together to form a settlement, they basically have free reign. If they get together and come up with a set of laws that say "we'll hunt down and slaughter you if you kill a member" and they can enforce it, they can do so.

Assuming, of course, the server config allows PKing and item theft. I'm fairly certain there was an option for permadeath also.

3. Non-Combat Skills
A lot of people want to play a game in order to kill stuff, but I prefer the "trade skills" in most games.  The problem with them is that they are completely unrealistic and unbalanced in almost every case.  In order to level up your carpentry skill, you make ten thousand wooden spoons.  This is just ridiculous.  It's also time consuming and grindy to the point of being discouraging.  Why is this the only system I can find?  Why hasn't someone come up with a better, more interesting one?  Well, I think I have: minigames.  (This goes for combat skills as well - training and sparring and such rather than killing a thousand rats.)  Want to train to be a carpenter?  You play an abstract minigame, maybe a puzzle game somehow tied to wood or carving.  It doesn't have to be complicated, but it's something interesting and engaging rather than a click-fest.  Your performance determines the amount of experience you gain in this skill.  It still takes time to get better at something, and high skill is something valuable because someone had to put in a lot of time and effort to get it, but it does so without boring the player and without flooding the world with spoons and sucking up valuable resources.  Speaking of which:

Trade skills were the bread and butter of the game for me. While it was kind of simple, there was a small amount of beauty in that simplicity. Mine stone, iron ore, and coal. Turn a piece of stone into a fire pit. Turn another into an anvil. Fill pit with coal and light with your firestarter. Heat iron to make an iron sheet. Heat iron sheet to get a... *drumroll* hot iron sheet. Use iron sheet on anvil to get [HUEG LIST OF ITAMS], let's say a pick head. Cut down a tree with your axe to get a log. Cut log with saw to get planks. Cut planks to get poles. Cut pole to get... handle. Mash handle and pick head together and get pick. Use pick to mine more ore and make lots of nifty utility items.

Okay, yeah, maybe not so simple. At least everything made some kind of sense once you got used to it.

One downside is that you don't always succeed and failing doesn't have any effect besides giving you a small amount of experience. You don't lose any of the items you were combining if you were combining stuff either. Crafting turns out to be "Hold F12 (repeat last action) until action succeeds."

4. Scarcity of Resources
When a tree is cut down, it shouldn't respawn in ten minutes or at the next server reset.  It should have to grow back, and very slowly.  Trees left alone will drop seeds which will eventually grow into new trees, but once a forest is clear-cut, people will have to plant the trees themselves.  And I'm talking about in-game years before the tree is usable again.  Wood shouldn't be infinite.  Stone shouldn't be infinite.  Metal and jewels certainly shouldn't be infinite.  Items have value because they aren't easy to replace.  An economy will never work if items don't have value.  And if items have value and there is a functioning economy, there will be motivation for the brave and foolhardy to go exploring the dangerous, untamed wilds for new resources.  Which leads me to:

Trees do grow quite quickly but I'm fairly certain they don't respawn if there are no trees nearby and you don't plant saplings. Same with all of the fruit, vegetables, and herbs.

You can mine out all of the underworld map and it basically stays that way barring cave-ins.

5. Exploration
One of the most fun parts of a game for me is when the world is very large and there is a lot to explore.  Always something new to discover.  A vein of gold in an unexplored mountain cave makes its founder rich.  A new type of metal discovered miles away from civilization leads to an entirely new set of craftable items (including things like weapons).  A hermit can go off into the woods and build a homestead which, after he dies, might be discovered a hundred years later and used for shelter by an explorer hiding from a dangerous predator (or the city guard).  Buildings should decay, but only very slowly.  An ambitious group of people could go off and found a new city, build great things, and then die off leaving only ruins.  Any game I would be interested in playing would have to have a huge game world.  And with permadeath forcing people to regularly change their character and situation, and preventing the really dangerous areas from being conquered swiftly, things wouldn't stagnate so quickly.  And if the world did stagnate, there's always the possibility of an earthquake or volcano to liven things up.

This was another important part (for me) of the game. The maps could potentially be huge. Just randomly stumbling around in the middle of nowhere, you could possibly stumble upon the rotting ruins of some poor sod's house who had arrived before you. There may be nifty items inside, depending on the length of time between the time of the owner and the time of you.

Now would be a nice time to explain decay. Buildings and items don't go to ruin or disappear if you own the land they're on. Depending on the server configuration, you could own between zero and basically unlimited plots of land with an increasing cost for each. You could then build walls, etc without fear of anyone being able to tear them down or the walls decaying.

7. Health
Aside from combat, people have to keep fed and hydrated and healthy.  Diseases can spread (and new ones can be discovered in distant lands), and healers have to find the proper herbs or chemicals to heal it, lest the entire city be wiped out by a plague (minus a few lucky souls with natural immunity).  And with permadeath, entire cities *would* be wiped out by a plague (though this would be a very rare occurance of course).  This kind of constant change in the game world is something I view as a good thing - it keeps it interesting and prevents stagnation, something I obviously detest.

The only point that applies here is that your character has to eat. You can also drink, but the only point is to warm up or cool down depending on the beverage.

8. Setting
I am absolutely sick and tired of playing game after game of "medieval fantasy" ultimately based on Tolkein and DnD.  Sure, there can be fearsome mythical creatures, but make them original for Armok's sake.  No more goblins and orcs and dragons.  And I'm also tired of everyone who plays these games automatically speaking as though they're in a Shakespeare play.  Let people talk normally - no one really knows how to speak middle English anyway.

The setting is fairly unique. Again, depending on server config, there may be elves and goblins, but they are by far the minority.

There's no real story, however. There may be various disconnected quests (depending, yes, on server config), but Quest A doesn't normally lead to Quest B. They can be done in any order.

[Muz]

Armageddon looks interesting; been looking for something else to play after HellMOO lost its intrigue. Edit: They make you go through an application process for a game? Can't see this being extremely popular.

Well, there you go. More realism = more work. Arm's quite lenient with the application, especially with newbies, they just don't want you to be a ninja dwarf or a metalsmith or a guy with glowing red eyes because none of those fit into the world.

FTO doesn't have an application process, but they have like a 1-3 month + some RL weeks as a baby/child waiting period so you could be born into a family and learn how the society works.

A lot of people don't realize that games are a balance between a lot of things. If your ideal MMO pushes towards realism, you'll have to suffer other effects of that realism - elitism, harder learning curve, less to do, people being scared to take risks. Multiplayer brings in a lot of fun from some angles, but you can't be the hero. You can have a dream game that has "no grinding", but you'll have to be satisfied with the fact that no matter how much of a veteran you are, the game is going to benefit newbies more. Balance.


WoW, and all Blizzard games, hit the "mainstream" sweet spot. They let you run off and kill things right off the bat. They let you have a lot of fun in short term and the long term. But there are obviously drawbacks to all that, it's just that some people value the benefits more than the drawbacks. I love my RP intensive games and I hate grinding, so I don't fit well into your standard MMO.

This has probably been mentioned before, but I think no one in their right minds would want to spend the time and money to make it, while they can do all that in real life.

Under this logic, The Sims and Minecraft would be a flop.

[Nivim]

The MMO of my dreams is Infinity. It just needs to get finished...

It'll certainly satisfy 1.-twitch based combat; 8.-IN SPACE; 5.-a whole, procedurally generated galaxy to explore;
To comment on the remaining points, we'll have to wait until later in the development.

  Actually, the details of good game design have been steamrolled into the bedrock on the Infinity forums, and the moderators/old forumites have absorbed said information, and recompile it semi-regularly for those who only have enough time to read a book or two. Or at least, that was the state of things last month, haven't visited since then.

 (Haven't read the whole thread; my mind glazes over and I start falling asleep. Just so similar to some 1000-1300 walls of text I've read before.)

[Astral]

Armageddon looks interesting; been looking for something else to play after HellMOO lost its intrigue. Edit: They make you go through an application process for a game? Can't see this being extremely popular.

Well, there you go. More realism = more work. Arm's quite lenient with the application, especially with newbies, they just don't want you to be a ninja dwarf or a metalsmith or a guy with glowing red eyes because none of those fit into the world.

Strangely enough, with my public school writing skills and vague sense of RPness, I managed to make my first application a success. Haven't had time to devote to it yet; going to do that tomorrow though.

[ZhangC1459]

Just wanna jump in and say, I would totally play this fucking game.  Without question.

Although, granted, it does sound like you're doing a "let's simulate real life" sort of thing here, but you can work around that.

What I want to be able to see though, is realistic inventory management... you should not be able to carry around three logs, fifteen sets of clothes, five weapons, and 20 bear asses (or whatever) item all on your person.

[Nivim]

 Hm, this in on my "replies to your posts" list now...drat.

Well, there you go. More realism = more work.

 That's not at all true, for any of the four possibilities I haven't read before you post to know which one. For the game's design and structure, people are not actually looking for realism, since even when they claim they've found it there doesn't need to be any. Merely sense. Complete, solid, and logical; even if it has limited sources of information or apparent arbitrary randomness (or arbitrary order). This can be achieved by (getting degrees in economics, science, mathematics, biology, sociology, and psychology, then reading the choice elements of good research an analysis for a few years) evolving the world you make instead of simply creating it (*poofs* are quite flawed, regardless of how much work or thought those "poofs" took). This could have gone on for many more paragraphs (it's not worth it till the game is being made).
 For people roleplaying realism sense (or failing to do so, here), there is a simple, effective, and plentiful deterrent; ignore it. Usually something followed by shame if your community wishes it. Treat any of those who fail their roleplaying like they have severe mental illness or disease, and allow such treatment to become common among the players. It does wonders by itself, and when combined with a game system that takes a couple weeks of getting into, does wonders for the griefer and troll population too. [Note here that I mean a system, that once you're into it, does not require significant effort to stay into it. The difference between a wall (or mountain pass), and an infinite field of brambles (or perhaps lava). Both of them discourage intruders, but the second(s) also discourage guests. This should not be based on any lack of in-game skill/currency/wealth/other-numbers for newbies, but instead on player experience and in-game world lore. This is where you need the incredible complexity the first paragraph would follow into.]

What I want to be able to see though, is realistic inventory management... you should not be able to carry around three logs, fifteen sets of clothes, five weapons, and 20 bear asses (or whatever) item all on your person.

...without a wagon. Or a monstrous physique and an equal steel frame back pack.

Edit:Typo.

[Sappho]

General point, since several people have brought this up: I'm not specifically after "realism" per se in a game.  I don't care at all if the game world has anything to do with the real world.  The only reason I default to "real-life" explanations and systems is that they work.  I have no problem playing a game that isn't "realistic" as long as it runs on sensible self-contained logic.  I don't care if the players are magical insects in a giant underground colony on a square planet in another universe, as long as it has the features I want (building, trade skills, combat that isn't based on HP, etc.) and it makes sense within itself.

Come to think of it, an insect MMO could be kind of awesome.  I may have to run with this idea a bit and jot down some notes...

@Astral: I know that WoW is the standard for mainstream games, but as far as my game goes, I wouldn't care at all if it was mainstream.  In fact, better if it's not.  I think one of the main reasons the B12 community is so cool is that DF is the type of game only a certain sort of person really gets into and enjoys (at least in its current state).  A mainstream game of any sort is guaranteed to be full of griefers.  Better if it's just a niche game, as long as there are twenty or thirty people interested in it (and I think I could find that many people for the game I have in mind).

@Virex: I completely agree with the travel thing.  In FTO you click "travel" and then come back in a week.  Boring and pointless.  You can't even chat while you're moving.  In some games, you can go from one end of the world to the other in five minutes - destroying the need for trade.  Then there's the opposite extreme in ATITD, where it takes real-life hours to traverse the game - and you do nothing but run over a monotonous desert floor.  Also boring.  I would want travel to be slow, but also entertaining.  At the very least it should be possible to travel with your friends and roleplay while you are moving.  Maybe some travel minigames would be good - choose a destination from a pre-set list of places you've been (unless you're out exploring, in which case you have to be paying attention and will be actively engaged anyway) and while you're auto-traveling, open a minigame.  You can train some skills a bit using the minigames (like observational skills by trying to spot wildlife, carving skill with some kind of abstract whittling game, etc.) and only have to interact with the world directly if you encounter something interesting, like another person or an animal.  Maybe you could set the game to alert you when you come across certain types of wild herbs or plants or rocks or something, too, and that way you could pick a direction, have the character automatically travel looking for something, and meanwhile keep yourself entertained with another little game.

@Sowelu: I played ATITD for a while and enjoyed it for the most part, but so much of it was just too monotonous.  I spent many hours wandering around exploring but there was never anything new to find.  Combine that with the fact that the average player there has 12 hours a day (I seriously remember at one point hearing that the average player was on for 60 hours a week) to dedicate to the game and it means I could never keep up (having a life and all that).  I remember at one point they added herbs that could be found and harvested, but they were extremely difficult to find and then you had to take a risk and guess about which way to harvest it - and if you chose wrong the plant was destroyed.  I managed to get two or three herbs in total, but then when I tried to trade them, no one was interested.  I suppose the game might be different now, as that was a couple of years ago, but if it's still $15 a month to play, I just don't have enough time to invest to make it worth it.
As for the daily turn-based thing, this was my problem with FTO.  I'm looking for something I could sit and play for an hour or two each day, when I'm bored or need a break from my real-life responsibilities.  A game where you can only select a few actions a day gets massively boring to me very quickly.

@Mephisto: I played RPGWO for a long time too, but I got really frustrated with it.  First off, you can only build on your 20x20 plot and nowhere else - if you build on unclaimed land, everything decays within a day or two in real life.  Second, people claim their 20x20 plots and build a wall all around it and that's it - there's nothing to see or explore, and people tended to wall off entire sections of the game world so you couldn't get past them.  Third, the monsters got massively stronger the further you got from the starting town - and since all the land close to town is claimed within the first day or two a server is open, that means you somehow have to level up your fighting skills really fast if you even want to get far enough away to claim land at all.  Fourth, there was no dabbling - you either had a skill or you didn't, meaning if you don't have the farming skill, you can't even pick an apple from a tree, so you can't eat.  And it took ages to earn enough points (through leveling) to acquire a new skill.  Fifth, the players in that game are absolute dicks.  Worst playerbase I think I've ever encountered, and I'm including Runescape in that.  I joined and rejoined countless times over many years, but I could just never get very far in that game.

@Nivm: I actually had a thought yesterday about how to deal with griefers in an effective way (something which is absolutely necessary for a game with permadeath): institutionalize them.  Consider them possessed or lunatics or something, and instead of banning them, throw them in an asylum from which there is no escape.  People can come visit them to study them or something, but other than that they can't interact with the game world.  Maybe IP ban anyone who makes more than one account that ends up in the institution.  They can get out only if they convince the doctor/warden/whoever IN RP that they are cured and ready to rejoin society.  I imagine most griefers would get bored of this pretty quickly and just quit - if not, they can stay there and do what they like.  They can't hurt anyone from behind bars.
I'm sure there are plenty of potential problems with this sytem, but it seems like a good starting point.

Phew.  Sorry for the walls of text, but I want to respond to as much as I can and continue this discussion.

[Muz]

Hm, this in on my "replies to your posts" list now...drat.

Well, there you go. More realism = more work.

That's not at all true, for any of the four possibilities I haven't read before you post to know which one. For the game's design and structure, people are not actually looking for realism, since even when they claim they've found it there doesn't need to be any. Merely sense. Complete, solid, and logical; even if it has limited sources of information or apparent arbitrary randomness (or arbitrary order). This can be achieved by (getting degrees in economics, science, mathematics, biology, sociology, and psychology, then reading the choice elements of good research an analysis for a few years) evolving the world you make instead of simply creating it (*poofs* are quite flawed, regardless of how much work or thought those "poofs" took). This could have gone on for many more paragraphs (it's not worth it till the game is being made).
 For people roleplaying realism sense (or failing to do so, here), there is a simple, effective, and plentiful deterrent; ignore it. Usually something followed by shame if your community wishes it. Treat any of those who fail their roleplaying like they have severe mental illness or disease, and allow such treatment to become common among the players. It does wonders by itself, and when combined with a game system that takes a couple weeks of getting into, does wonders for the griefer and troll population too. [Note here that I mean a system, that once you're into it, does not require significant effort to stay into it. The difference between a wall (or mountain pass), and an infinite field of brambles (or perhaps lava). Both of them discourage intruders, but the second(s) also discourage guests. This should not be based on any lack of in-game skill/currency/wealth/other-numbers for newbies, but instead on player experience and in-game world lore. This is where you need the incredible complexity the first paragraph would follow into.]

I don't really mean "realism", but it's the closest word. I guess you could say logical, believable, persistent, detailed. Or "hardcore".

Unfortunately, if someone needs to get a degree or learn about something for a few years before designing a game, he'd be a few years later in designing that game. In reality, you won't know everything, so you have to cut corners and make things much harder on the player.

Oh, and unfortunately ignoring people only works for poor roleplayers. They don't work at all against griefers and trolls, or basically good roleplayers who play bad. Trolls tend to gang up or cheat, using IC info OOCly. Every single game with the same features listed in the OP is very prone to griefing, so much so that you need a lot of very active moderators. Armageddon's mods claim that the ideal ratio would be 1 moderator per player to keep the peace, but they make do with far less.

And something like scarce resources means that the info is very valuable. If it leaks outside the game, or god forbid, onto a wiki, a griefer could just camp the place and mine it out. It ends up like trying to play poker on the internet - a few people can team up and look at each other's cards.

Come to think of it, an insect MMO could be kind of awesome.  I may have to run with this idea a bit and jot down some notes...

There's a dinosaur MUD out there with the same list of requirements as you put on the front. I heard it was great, but haven't played it because I'm worry that games like that may attract furries.

[Sappho]

In my opinion, if a "troll" or "griefer" is roleplaying well while they do it, they're not a troll or griefer.  If they are roleplaying a character who does these sorts of things, and if they do it in character, then it should be allowed.  The world should be a dangerous place.  As I said in an earlier post, I don't think that being a "good roleplayer" or "good player" means you don't hurt anyone.  A world can have thieves and murderers, and the characters in-game have to try to find a way to deal with it.  That probably means banding together to form communities where people protect each other and locking up people who cause problems.  A player who is really good at roleplaying a serial killer or thief should be allowed to do so for as long as they can get away with it - but they also have to accept the consequences if they get caught.

As for "camping" resources, the simple solution is to always move them around.  New resources would appear in different locations every time, so any previous information is automatically outdated.  I'm thinking more and more that it would be good to have a truly chaotic, unfriendly environment - regular earthquakes, storms, volcanoes, meteor strikes, etc. - to keep players on their toes, prevent things from getting boring, and stop people from camping resources.  And admins/mods could target places where people are causing a lot of problems if need be.

[Zangi]

The bandit/pirate/thief is a troll/griefer syndrome.  The whining gets a lot worse when players can't... or worse... won't do anything about it themselves.
Vengeful lot, given half a chance, they will do all they can to drive the supposed troll/griefer out of the game...

The world is a boring place without a well-played baddie.  But, they rarely stay long within the community, while the true trolls/griefers are actually fueled by the pushback... till they burn out much later.


@Sappho;
How does that anti-resource camping idea / unfriendly environment work with towns?

[Siquo]

I just started on this. Expect it to be done in 2030