-- beware, rant ahead -- (sorry about this one, just got started and couldn't stop >__<)

this is actually really interesting, and I think if implemented well could be very strong.

I'm just wondering how severe morale deficiencies should be, as you then punish the more 'hardcore' players, unless of course you have a variety of interesting things to do in their home towns. This is quite good in a sense though, because it essentially creates reward for the non-hardcore players making it slightly easier for them to keep up. I just don't know if the experience bonus of WoW is as far as you should take it.

For example, for end game raiding leaders may necessitate full morale, ie. not playing you character much apart from raids.

I also think that with a fairly simple algorithm you could alter morale, based on combat. I also think in some ways that it's unrealistic to say that you will lose morale for not being at home, most people are exhilarated by traveling unless it is forced upon them.

I would then base morale on performance in combat, and if in combat you are excelling have a boost in your capabilities, or vice versa, and have the majority of the effect end with combat. Good performance over a long period of time would then lead to a generally higher morale which takes a long time to build up, and perhaps the more extreme ones morale is, the easier it is to change. If you have been doing exceptionally well over a period of time, a poor performance will result in a serious knock in your morale. Likewise if you are performing poorly in general, struggling to stay alive, a strong victory will seriously boost your morale.

Death I imagine would also result in a decrease in morale, both personally and in a group.

The greatest concern all in all would be getting stuck in a vicious cycle of bad morale, and this is where your idea of towns or camps raising morale would be a good idea. the way I would utilise this is that while in a town/camp players with morale greater than neutral will maintain it, and players with morale less than neutral will regain morale. By doing this you don't punish players for spending time in town if they have strong morale, and you help those of low morale. I know that if things are going terribly for me in an MMO in general, I'll head over to a town and bum around for a while anyways, so a restoration of skill while doing so may be encouraging to players.

Totally agree with a 'morale' factor for PC's in a MMO. The trick is implementing it.

Let's face it, morale is based upon the observer.

Sure, being away from home may be bad, but if you're wife/so is a real b** then being away from home is good. As you put it if a character spends a bunch of time in a mosquito infested swamp...morale is going to drop unless that is the norm for the person i.e. the person is from the area and used to the status quo.

Here's another one: The PC's spend 2 months adventuring in the wilderness...how important is a real bed to them. To answer that question, as a programmer, you would have to have to have an answer and stats for many different criteria.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you.

Just how would you implement it?

It's interesting, but not viable in most situations for an MMO. By implementing morale, you're separating the character from the player. In my MMO experience, the players' own morale reflects in the way they control their character.

So I don't think morale is viable for the standard MMO. However, if you have an MMO with mostly RTS elements and you control multiple units, morale can work. Each unit can have his/her/its own set of attributes that determine what causes morale to increase/decrease, how easily they're affected by those factors, and possibly attributes that they use to help keep up the morale of other units (minstrels?).

Some attributes that could affect morale:
*Unit's home town - how far from it are they? do they prefer to be far away or close to home?
*Unit's prefered environment - what kind of environment are you in currently? how comfortable is the unit in this environment? are they properly equipped to be in the environment (e.g. if you're on a tundra, are they equipped with thick fur coats? if you're in a desert, are they protected from wind and sand - do they have light armor to reduce energy used?)
*Preferred entertainment - what does the unit like to do with his down time? card games? music? pub brawling? do you have a unit naturally inclined to entertain other units as a special talent?
*Units' relationship with companions. How long have they known/been with each of the other units? Do they get along?

Also:
*What's the rations situation like? Do you have enough food/drink to keep units satisfied? Do you have the preferred food/drink for each unit?

Derakon, I believe I also mentioned the potential negative impact upon certain groups of players,

and that's the main reason I would like to see morale being dependent upon something like combat, or at least have combat have a stronger effect on your morale than your location. I would however agree that a slight morale decay depending upon location may be appropriate, and perhaps a slight morale boost when you're in town for the first couple of days would be acceptable. I just think that this morale boost should be marginal in comparison to the morale boost you could gain in a similar amount of time in combat.

Perhaps morale wouldn't be boosted by being in a town, but just maintained, so you effectively let players maintain their advantage if they log off in a town, whereas logging off in the wilderness would lead to a gradual decay of your morale, to a fixed point that is.

I would then also offer a service for players to restore their morale through meditation or something of the sort, where they pay for a service and their morale can be restored to par if it is under par, or lead to a very temporary boost in morale. I see this being an advantage as you would allow players with low morale to restore their morale in a fairly short time-frame, at a cost. You would then have to dictate that they can only use this service once in a given time-frame, ie. once per hour.

but then again, on some levels I'm not sure if this is an improvement upon the rested system of World of Warcraft. But simultaneously you're giving more skilled players a slight edge, which is only fair to be honest, as MMORPGs are constantly criticised for rewarding only time spent, and not skill, and I think players would generally appreciate this acknowledgement of their skill.

Maybe, instead of it decreasing the longer a player is away from home, have it decrease the farther a player is away from home. This way, you're not penalizing your players for playing your game, but you are making it more difficult to travel to distant places.

I'm picturing the morale equation as having three sorts of terms:

1) Distance from home. The further you are from home, the lower your morale.

2) Location. Some constant depending primarily on the sort of place you're in. You'll have higher morale in a friendly town than in the middle of nowhere than in a hostile town. This is different from (1) in that it doesn't depend on distance from home. You could say this is the background value from which (1) is subtracted. It would also depend on political/race/etc. relations (e.g. for typical fantasy races, elves would have higher morale than dwarves in a forest, but the reverse would be true in caves).

3) Time dependent effects. This would be where your character's morale-boosting activity or drugs would come in. Play a friendly game of cards and you'll get a bit of a morale boost that'll decrease with time. These are essentially "buffs" (do people still say that?) in the same category as temporary boosts to strength, speed, etc.

I like it because it makes it less of a punishment to those who're out playing your game since the only downside to being out longer is your buffs wearing off, which is an accepted mechanic. It still acheives the safety of towns (since they'll have a higher "constant" term than the wilderness or dungeons) and the adventure of leaving home (since your morale decreases with distance).

I like the idea of being able to set up a camp, but I don't know if that should be more like a location (adding a constant to your morale so long as you're within a certain radius) or more like a temporary home (where the bonus depends on your distance from the camp). I kind of like the idea of the camp as a temporary home, possibly even replacing your home so long as you have a camp. However, morale decays faster as you move away from your camp than it does as you move away from home. Something like:

Morale without camp = A - B*(distance from home)
Morale with camp = A - C*(distance from camp)

with B < C. The thing is, setting up camp would have to be fairly costly in this case to keep people from always being "at home".