I don’t have anyone I know to talk about such issues, so I'll make a thread here instead. Just looking for any type of ideas for improvements, flaws, or even if you just dislike or like the idea. Goal: Allow players to gain experience while fighting, while protecting monsters from extinction Monsters do not respawn when killed, but new young can be produced. Most monsters have some form of ability that lets them produce something Such as unique weapons/amour and jewelry. If a player knows the monsters language they are able to communicate. Now, since monsters have to produce their own young, if all the monsters of a type are killed, then that race is exterminated. While in a mmorpg, this would defiantly happen, current goal I'm trying to think of is how to reduce it happening, while still allowing players to battle/loot/gain skills of monsters. What my current idea would be to slow it down, is make serious injury and death hit separate, Life doesn't reduce below 0, when it hits 0 the monster falls unconscious. The players may then choose to just loot the body, or deal a killing blow. When fighting, experience is given per hit/skill use (within reason), And nothing is given for the death blow. Cutting some goblins throat hardly qualifies you to become a master knife user. The within reason would be, if you attack something that can't fight back you wont gain any experience for it, Or if you gain any it will be very little. (A parent would attack you if you threaten their young) I think this method, would stop/slow down the people that are just fighting for experience The more you leave alive, the more there are for you to hunt next time. Why kill a guy, when you can just wait for him to drag himself home then be back out in the fields once cured, So you can attack and him again and gain more experience. This wouldn't slow down someone that just wanted to kill them all, but what would If players realized the bit about rare items and birth/death, I can see the guild forming already 'Monster Wildlife Reserve' letting the players take control of keep a species alive while it has faults I think its better then some godly act to stop from running out of things to kill. So any ideas, thanks for any feedback ^.^ (The monster would be the fields for a Varity of reasons, they could be looking for food, Guarding the area from trespassers. The ai involved is an entirely different matter for now) (Reasons for dealing a death blow, to reduce a constant threat, or to fulfill a condition of a quest) This is a plan for part of a mmorpg, if I would ever make said mmo is an entirely different matter and not worth discussing I do have a degree in IT, and I've done among other things c,c++,java/network/ai and I have been researching mmorpgs for 5+ years. So I have an idea how much work would be involved to create such a game.

First of all, I really love your idea. Having monsters really behave as part of the world population adds a sense of realism and I like that.

However, I fear that the inability to spawn makes it difficult to deal with a large player base. With spawning you can literally have creatures pop-up out of nowhere, which although unrealistic, would help responding to large groups of people that suddenly come by and start killing. I hope you can overcome this balancing issue though!

Quote:Original post by DaBono
However, I fear that the inability to spawn makes it difficult to deal with a large player base. With spawning you can literally have creatures pop-up out of nowhere, which although unrealistic, would help responding to large groups of people that suddenly come by and start killing. I hope you can overcome this balancing issue though!

Yes it is a problem, currently some of the idea's in my head have been
more non combat chances allowing advancements thru methods other then fighting
I am often a support type role, I make a crafter in any games that has crafters, and I play solo more often then not, so being forced to kill to get anywhere is annoying.

spreading out the population more, so everyones not sticking to a particluar city
increasing the bonuses for players to verus other players

The monsters should be more of a threat, but any skilled fighter should be able to handle anything middle and lower by themselve.
So preferably players would begin fighting monsters, but eventually leading to just fighting other players.

I know some people are very happy with monsters, and hate pvp (I'm not a very good pvper ^^) but I d like a skill system thats more rewarding, if you fight the same guys over and over you dont gain much, if you travel and fight a varity of monsters, then your skills would improve alot more.
instead of just click and kill you would have a varity of skills you assign and you perform them during combat.

Quote:Original post by Dinner

What my current idea would be to slow it down, is make serious injury and death hit separate, Life doesn't reduce below 0, when it hits 0 the monster falls unconscious.
The players may then choose to just loot the body, or deal a killing blow.

When fighting, experience is given per hit/skill use (within reason),
And nothing is given for the death blow. Cutting some goblins throat hardly qualifies you to become a master knife user.

That doesn't account for one basic fact in MMO games: people in those games tend to be -- and I'm trying to keep this family friendly -- idiots. Without creating monsters out of thin air, you'll run out of them. People will eradicate the bunny hill just because they want to spoil the game for "dumb n00bs". They'll terminate all their enemies just because they can. If there is any way they can hurt others, they'll use it, if it isn't sanctioned even more so.

Even if you'd make players lose a level or whatever measure of achievement you have, it won't stop them.

Never give a player any measure of power over other people's game experience or it'll get abused. It's one of the major and unfixable flaws in MMOGs.

I really like your idea, but it won't work in a game.

yup I know what players are like, theres one other thing i was thinking of
which most players dont even think is possible.

Permement Death, wouldn't be for just monsters and the villages of each species would be under heavy guard, so you would have to have quite a large group of players to wipe out a entire village, and if a village is under attack, non violent monsters would flee and try and find somewhere far away to setup a new base.

It was also floating in my head, there would be a overlord, this overlord is the one that can get diffrent races of monsters to attack
if you wiped out a village, then a dragon or a army could be sent to your city.

I agree that this would be work a lot better (or at least be a lot more awesome) if you incorporated elements of ecology and evolution into the mix.

To add to the ideas, you could make it so that not all the monsters of one race would be the same. You could have weak goblins (easy to kill), normal goblins, and tough goblins. If all the weak and normal goblins get killed, then only the tough goblins are left to breed, so the race of golbins becomes stronger. You would occasionally have to throw a few random genetic defects into the mix based on a Bell curve, so that occasionally they'd be a ultra-weak or and ultra-strong golbin to make things interesting.

Then if you're game, you could extend this to other character traits. Make some goblins shy and some bold. The shy goblins would hide from players and so be less likely to be killed, but the bold ones would be getting more resources and so could reproduce quicker. See which ones last.

Or include intelligence as a trait. Smarter goblins might be more able to assess threats, or plan higher levels of strategy, or become more likely to be goblin mages.

But I also agree with Shadowdancer; although I don't play MMORPGs, from what I've read they seem to be plagued with spoiler idiots who try to wreck the fun for everyone else. Plus the default strategy seems to be to slaughter anything that moves. Maybe you should add some elven druid park rangers to put the fear of Silvanus into anyone who hunts endangered species? [grin]

Quote:Original post by HellRiZZer
You can also use the law of Highlander movie: the more monsters you kill, the more stronger others of their race become. Thus, that one last standing will be almost un-killable.

Yes, that would work, although it might be a little bit odd to have an invincible field mouse. [grin]

But another idea is that you have a fixed amount of 'life force' in the world. As creatures get killed, there's more life force available for new creatures. Then make the birth rate of the creatures increase to use up the pool of life force available. That way you'll always have a steady population of creatures to fuel the constant bloodlust of your MMORPG players.