I know there have been "describe your dream game" threads in the past, but I didn't want to necro any of them, so I hope it's okay that I start a new thread.
Playing Hazordhu has reawakened an old fantasy in me - the fantasy of the perfect MMO. I've been thinking about it more and more, and wondering if such a game might ever come into existence. I've tried countless times to create it myself, even tried to make it on Byond and became a member so I could host, but I have a serious disability when it comes to understanding computer coding and mathematics, so I've never gotten very far even with help. Here are the basics - maybe some of you could give me some input as to whether I'll ever see this game or if it will only ever exist in my dreams.
At the heart of my perfect game is a focus on the story. The gameplay should be fun, but if it's just a repetitive click-fest then I will get bored very quickly. Here are my suggestions about how to fix this.
1. Combat
Most MMOs include some sort of combat. People log on to fight. But the standard MUD-style system of "kill rats until you're strong enough to kill boars until you're strong enough to kill goblins until you're strong enough to kill orcs etc. etc. etc." is so repetitive and tedious that it drives me insane. Realistically, practicing fighting does make you a better fighter. But almost no-one could ever take an arrow through the heart and keep on fighting at full strength until their HP hits zero. (And who attacks a rat with a sword?) For this reason I would want DF-style combat. No HP meter which simply goes down until you die. If you hurt your arm, it takes a long time to heal and maybe there is some permanent damage. Big, dangerous creatures would have to be taken down by either very brave people or very large groups of experienced people. This makes combat more strategic and interesting, and with much higher stakes. Speaking of which:
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.
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:
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:
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.
6. Item Variety and Customization
In real life, we attach sentimental value to our possessions. A craftsman can engrave items or decorate them (DF-style) and make them unique. You can name your sword and pass it down to your children, or it can be put on display in the town hall as a record of the brave founder who established that particular society. Decorative items can be marked with the signature of the creator, and traded and collected as valuable items, especially after the craftsman is dead. A rich banker with no real hardships in his life can take up collecting, maybe even open a museum.
The process of creating more advanced items should be complicated, as well, and involve many steps. In real life, a metalsmith is not also a miner - they are very different skills and both take up a lot of time. Miners mine and sell what they find. Processors turn it into usable material and sell it to craftsmen. Farmers grow wheat, millers make flour, bakers bake bread. This would keep the economy going as well. In most games I've played with trade skills, most people just quickly level up the basic trade skills and make for themselves whatever they want. In my game, that wouldn't be feasible - for most people it would make much more sense to go to a baker and buy bread than to learn how to bake your own (and put in the time and energy and resources to do it). People would be more specialized, and towns and cities would be full of shops and wandering traders rather than just public workshops where everyone does their own thing. Interaction and roleplaying would be a fundamental part of surviving in the game.
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.
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.
There are other details that I've had in mind, but these are the main things I'd love to see in a game. I'm sure my design is far from perfect, but what do you all think - is there any chance that at least a good portion of these things will ever come into existence? I don't give a damn about graphics - the whole thing can be text-based for all I care. The closest thing I've ever found was Faerie Tale Online, but that game is so slow (I had to wait three months IN REAL LIFE just to get into the game, and once I was in I found that every action takes real-life hours to complete and there's no point in playing for more than a few minutes a day) that I quickly got bored and quit.
I'd welcome feedback on my ideas. Where are the flaws? What is preventing this game from coming into existence? Which are the good ideas likely to be implemented somewhere soon?
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Topic: The MMO Of My Dreams (Read 4388 times)