Hey all, i've rescently joined the forums and descided that i wanted to hear your oppinion on a MMO idea. First off let me say, i do not have the hardware or the capability to make a MMO, i've been a MMO gamer from early UO days, and been a steady player through the years experiencing and looking for the "ultimate MMO game" allthough that will probably never exist. Reason for making a post now is that i wrote a mail to a game studio (not allowed to say what the game is, or even if my idea is going to be used), however i was chosen to come and present my idea at their studio in a couple of months. And before i go, i'm pretty certain there is alot that can be polished, but please be aware that i'm not allowed to mension what world this is supposed to be inn, but i am allowed to talk about the technicality of my idea, and would really love some feedback for it. So here it goes. First off the character. In most(not all) MMO's today we are characters based on class and race, my idea is that instead of choosing anything but race in the beginning you are allowed to custimize the class as you level up. By that i mean that you have both skill points and stat points that you can contribute to your character making you able to use magic even as a fighter if you should so choose. Races aren't supposed to define what the character is able to, so giving races any bonuses beyond crafting gives you a feeling that you are free to play any race because it is a race you like. The classes, skill and Gear. Classes aren't something you choose, it's given to you by the choise you make by stats, example (using wow here) if you choose strength, you would become a warrior after you achieved a certain amount in the stat strength. So instead of training a class, you become the class, and get bonuses based on choises you already make with stats. Most of mmo's today achieving another level, rank or classbuild only grants you so much, this is where AO had a unique design, the ability to buff yourself and increasing the value of your stats to use higher items. I wan't to elevate that idea, by saying gear isn't something you have to have a certain stat all the time to use, but a one time thing, if you managed to get that heavy plate armor on, you can wear it at all times, aslong as you don't take it off. So if i was to achieve another level rank or class i can utilize buffs and unique skills to get me to a point where what was hard at level 25 is easy on 26, since you spent time to actually wear items. Concept of that idea is to spend as much time you wan't on leveling to provide more fun getting 1 level instead of the usual 1 skillpoint or similar. Skills is something you must visit a trainer to learn, this would be something unique and new, for those that have played D&D paper and pen, would understand what i mean with ease. To be able to wear armor, you must actually choose that skill, it's not something you just get, same goes with magic, fighting abilities etc. example. I wanna be able to wear plate armor, if so i need to first learn Simple armor, then Medium armor, then heavy armor. Also every skill can be specialiced meaning you can go from 1-5 in each skill to increase it's effect. (example heavy armor skill grants 1-5% additional effect from the armor). Gear can be highly customized, adding spikes, or a halo above your head, dye the armor black, white, orange or whatever you choose, add small things to your armor to make it unique. Proffessions, crafting etc. I didn't want to go to much into the subject to begin with, but it was required in order for me to deliver a full idea, so i had at it. The idea of proffessions today isn't to make something new, ofcourse there is that to, but much more, i wan't proffessions to really be a part of the community. So in order to do this i started to think about mixing proffessions together, example. If i had alchemy i can mix ingridients to increase the effect of another craft of another player, giving them a % chanse to increase the effect of their item, however this has to be done at the exact same time, so they have to go together to make it work. Additionally whenever you use a craft, lets say blacksmithing and create a plate armor, you get 10% into your "level of crafting", after achieving 100% you can choose a new recipie, the recipies you can choose from is how much of a particular type of item you made. Example if you made 10 armors, and armor alone, you can only choose recipies that can create new armor, and not weapons, if you did a little of both weapons and armor you can choose lower grade from each side. There is no levels to proffessions, however you need to finish quests (turn inns) in order to buy new and unique armors, weapons, reinforcing, materials etc. And ofc you can't make all gear everywhere, a blacksmith would need more than just the ambolt and forge, if he f.ex got a hold of a unique blacksmithing hammer, he could create or add more properties to an item. Also thought about refining gear, increasing their effect, this means reinforcing armor with their appropriate proffession (plate = Blacksmith) etc. So if you don't have the skill to wear heavier armor, you can increase your armor to be as good as the normal heavy armor by reinforcing it, but that would require additional stats to wear only, instead of the skill aswell. The world I can't really go into the subject to much, but i wanted to add some ideas to how it should work, my thoughts was to have entire areas or "zones" that could be captured by a team / side / faction to be able to buy and sell houses (all forms of houses, player owned shops, homes, greater proffession areas etc). Also these areas would have unique trainers, where certain skills and proffessions (recipies) could be bought. Having a house alone would increase the chanse of proffession crafting, temporary increase in stats (to wear heavier more unique gear) and similar. There should also be battlegrounds / instances / scenarios / arenas implemented. Where you could spectate if you so choose. Weekly events should occur, imagine a mob being GM controlled, where they wreck havoc upon an area that you controll, and have unique abilities. Fighting PVE vs another player (aka GM), would make for unique encounters, where everyone can participate and get rewards. PVP and PVE is mean't to be equally big, so having both is important. I was asked to say how long a normal instance night(PVE) should last, and i answered 1-2 hrs (easy mode), 3-4 hrs(hard mode), 5-6 hrs (expert mode) to much? Every city, (we are talking more than 1, actually plenty of them) has an ability to store guildhalls, these guildhalls can only be utilized by the best of the best, since every city has a limited capacity of them, and they need to be maintained every week (pay money to keep, add new rewards etc)in order to keep it, or be rented out to another guild. Here you can add rooms, training rooms, trophy room, unique skill trainer / merchant room, guildmaster room and much more (not gonna mension all, but over 50 ideas for rooms on my sheet). All in all there isn't side vs side (example, wow alliance vs horde) but community vs community, this means if you find a guild you are allied with that guild, and only that guild, if you descide to kill someone you kill them, simple as that, so any race can ally any race, and you can descide to have war with another guild and attack them, or fight it out in battlegrounds, or even steal from other players houses / guilds. But beware guardians can be bought by spending money, and if you descide to steal from a player, you better beware that they can utilize revenge. Respecs, balancing i want everyone to be able to respec /retrain all their stats and skills, if you dont like how you built your character you can remove what you have done, and start over, but the cost is alot of money, and ofc. The gear you are wearing will be taken off, so if you are a high ranked character with alot of gear getting all that gear on again must be redone. The balance or twist of the MMO is that you wont have to balance to much if you use a % base instead of steady numbers, this means that if example. a sword does your strength*1.25% dmg, you wont have to rebalance way to much aslong as you are carefull. Summary My idea is a world where everything is configurable, if you descided to explore it could take years to find it all, and by then maybe more has released, exploring different character types only require a push of a button, and gear can allways get "a little" better, so in order to achieve that you must explore every proffession, every last piece of the world just to find that 1 trainer. If you descide to PVE, PVP or RP, the option's shouldn't just be ok, better gear and that's it. So in order to achieve more you should be ready to spend hours figuring out how to wear that 1 piece of gear, or take over areas to find unique trainers, houses, instances etc. Much more, but i don't want to make the post to big. The end. Thank you for reading this far, i really hope for some feedback since my presentation is in 2 months time, this was a short version of the idea, and i probably forgot alot, but will try to add more later as i get to look it better over. PS. If this is the wrong place to add such a post, please tell me and i'll remove it and put it in it's proper place.

Quote:Original post by DantarionX
Many, if not ALL of your ideas, have been tried before.
A lot of your ideas that have to do with skill repicking and respec-ing your characters have been done in Guild Wars.

I agree. Didn't find anything new in his post either.

Let me play the villain and say that long posts about "new" MMO ideas are a dime a dozen. Almost every week there is someone with a list of ground breaking "unique" changes to current MMOs. Yours is actually better than the rest because at least yours is feasible.


One thing I didn't like about your ideas is that it didn't make me want to play your MMO over the rest out there. In other words : it feels like "just another grind fest". But this is just the opinion of one person.

Good luck with your letter. :)

Actually, i've spent quite some hours trying to figure out a way to avoid as much grinding as possible, and looking over my post a little, i do agree it looks very well. Hard to understand properly prob.

But as i said i can't really say to much either, if i reveal even 1 bit, i'm looking at 10 000 dollar out the window.

My main idea to avoid grind is that alot (not all) proffession materials can be bought, or dropped from instance based monsters, and ofc. I forgot to mension that i wanted solo / group / raid instance difficulties that you can run 70% of the time you are leveling, or atleast have the option.

But then again, you are prob. Right, back to the drawing board, How to avoid grind?

Quote:Original post by Vorg
Reason for making a post now is that i wrote a mail to a game studio (not allowed to say what the game is, or even if my idea is going to be used), however i was chosen to come and present my idea at their studio in a couple of months.

First off, best wishes that it goes well.

Quote:Original post by Vorg
In most(not all) MMO's today we are characters based on class and race,
my idea is that instead of choosing anything but race in the beginning you
are allowed to custimize the class as you level up.

This is done partly so that players are able to recognize what they need to do.

Quote:Original post by Vorg
By that i mean that you have both skill points and stat points that you can contribute to your character making you able to use magic even as a fighter if you should so choose.

You will probably find that as people level up various skills they will need to define these classes themselves or be left some weird hybrid mage/warrior/priest that can't do anything well.

Quote:Original post by Vorg
Races aren't supposed to define what the character is able to, so giving races any bonuses beyond crafting gives you a feeling that you are free to play any race because it is a race you like.

Using Warcraft as an example, A Tauren is definitely more suited to being a warrior than a gnome would be. Unless the races are all physically similar then they should have differences. (For example, using common fantasy races, I would believe that orcs, humans, and elves could be physically equal to each other.)

Quote:Original post by Vorg
Most of mmo's today achieving another level, rank or classbuild only grants you so much, this is where AO had a unique design, the ability to buff yourself and increasing the value of your stats to use higher items.
I wan't to elevate that idea, by saying gear isn't something you have to have a certain stat all the time to use, but a one time thing, if you managed to get that heavy plate armor on, you can wear it at all times, aslong as you don't take it off.

Are these buffs going to be available to everyone? If not, who gets them? If they are, whats the point? Why would someone take off the armor if they wouldn't be able to put it back on? If it does come off, whats to stop them from recasting the buff and just putting it back on?

It seems like it would just be an annoyance.

Quote:Original post by Vorg
So if i was to achieve another level rank or class i can utilize buffs and unique skills to get me to a point where what was hard at level 25 is easy on 26, since you spent time to actually wear items.

So by gaining a level something became easier, thats pretty much how all level based systems work.

Quote:Original post by Vorg
Concept of that idea is to spend as much time you wan't on leveling to provide more fun getting 1 level instead of the usual 1 skillpoint or similar.

What?

You start off by saying you want to create a system without levels and now you're trying to improve the way levels work?

Quote:Original post by Vorg
Skills is something you must visit a trainer to learn, this would be something unique and new, for those that have played D&D paper and pen, would understand what i mean with ease.
To be able to wear armor, you must actually choose that skill, it's not something you just get, same goes with magic, fighting abilities etc.
example. I wanna be able to wear plate armor, if so i need to first learn Simple armor, then Medium armor, then heavy armor. Also every skill can be specialiced meaning you can go from 1-5 in each skill to increase it's effect.
(example heavy armor skill grants 1-5% additional effect from the armor).

Wait, why do I need to learn how to wear the armor? Is my character too retarded to understand the plated boots go on the foot, simply because he only knows how to wear leather boots? Just out of curiosity, what skill does it take to let the enemy hit your armor? How do you improve on that so the armor becomes more effective?

Quote:Original post by Vorg
Gear can be highly customized, adding spikes, or a halo above your head, dye the armor black, white, orange or whatever you choose, add small things to your armor to make it unique.

Love the idea, not sure how practical it is but I love it anyways.

Quote:Original post by Vorg
I didn't want to go to much into the subject to begin with, but it was required in order for me to deliver a full idea, so i had at it.
The idea of proffessions today isn't to make something new, ofcourse there is that to, but much more, i wan't proffessions to really be a part of the community. So in order to do this i started to think about mixing proffessions together, example. If i had alchemy i can mix ingridients to increase the effect of another craft of another player, giving them a % chanse to increase the effect of their item, however this has to be done at the exact same time, so they have to go together to make it work.

Definitely an interesting idea, but it becomes more difficult to craft now because you might be relying on someone who remembers they have a doctors appointment. Now the blacksmith can't do anything because making a sword without the alchemists buffs isn't worth anything.

Quote:Original post by Vorg
Additionally whenever you use a craft, lets say blacksmithing and create a plate armor, you get 10% into your "level of crafting", after achieving 100% you can choose a new recipie, the recipies you can choose from is how much of a particular type of item you made.
Example if you made 10 armors, and armor alone, you can only choose recipies that can create new armor, and not weapons, if you did a little of both weapons and armor you can choose lower grade from each side.

Ok, sure. As you level up your blacksmithing you get more options to craft from.

Quote:Original post by Vorg
There is no levels to proffessions, however you need to finish quests (turn inns) in order to buy new and unique armors, weapons, reinforcing, materials etc. And ofc you can't make all gear everywhere, a blacksmith would need more than just the ambolt and forge, if he f.ex got a hold of a unique blacksmithing hammer, he could create or add more properties to an item.

Wait, just last paragraph you mentioned that every time a blacksmith makes an item they level up their blacksmithing. Now your saying its when they complete quests?

Having special hammers and advanced tools to improve your profession. Thats basically how most crafting systems work.

Quote:Original post by Vorg
Also thought about refining gear, increasing their effect, this means reinforcing armor with their appropriate proffession (plate = Blacksmith) etc.
So if you don't have the skill to wear heavier armor, you can increase your armor to be as good as the normal heavy armor by reinforcing it, but that would require additional stats to wear only, instead of the skill aswell.

This goes back to my what skill does it take to put armor on? Instead of having skills for armor, make armor affect the skills. An archer wont be pouring his stat points into strength, so he won't be able to equip the heavy armor anyways. By the time he has the strength to equip heavy armor it will be the lower level heavy armor that is less effective than his higher level light armor.

Or

Heavy armor makes it harder to move, so an archer or a mage that can't fight close range won't be able to run quickly enough to escape the warrior. The archer will then turn to leather armor so they can escape death.

Quote:Original post by Vorg
I can't really go into the subject to much, but i wanted to add some ideas to how it should work, my thoughts was to have entire areas or "zones" that could be captured by a team / side / faction to be able to buy and sell houses (all forms of houses, player owned shops, homes, greater proffession areas etc).
Also these areas would have unique trainers, where certain skills and proffessions (recipies) could be bought.
Having a house alone would increase the chanse of proffession crafting, temporary increase in stats (to wear heavier more unique gear) and similar.

How does a house do any of that? A house should be a place to store items, maybe have a smithy out back for blacksmiths, and should have decorations so the player can host the ultimate tea party!!!!!

I do like the idea of player owned houses though. And the zone's, it would add something more for people who like to PvP.

Quote:Original post by Vorg
There should also be battlegrounds / instances / scenarios / arenas implemented. Where you could spectate if you so choose.

I like the idea of being able to spectate, although it would need to be well thought out. Do you lock the spectators view to one of the combatants, so the spectator can only see what the player sees? Or do you allow free roaming with the possible risk of the spectator cheating and telling the players where the enemy is attacking?

Quote:Original post by Vorg
Weekly events should occur, imagine a mob being GM controlled, where they wreck havoc upon an area that you controll, and have unique abilities.
Fighting PVE vs another player (aka GM), would make for unique encounters, where everyone can participate and get rewards.
PVP and PVE is mean't to be equally big, so having both is important.
I was asked to say how long a normal instance night(PVE) should last, and i answered 1-2 hrs (easy mode), 3-4 hrs(hard mode), 5-6 hrs (expert mode)
to much?

The weekly events is a good idea. If they're localized then give players warning about where they will occur. I won't comment on the instances because I pretty much play for the PvP and only do instances for the more effective weapons for said PvP.

Quote:Original post by Vorg
Every city, (we are talking more than 1, actually plenty of them) has an ability to store guildhalls, these guildhalls can only be utilized by the best of the best, since every city has a limited capacity of them, and they need to be maintained every week (pay money to keep, add new rewards etc)in order to keep it, or be rented out to another guild.
Here you can add rooms, training rooms, trophy room, unique skill trainer / merchant room, guildmaster room and much more (not gonna mension all, but over 50 ideas for rooms on my sheet).

All in all there isn't side vs side (example, wow alliance vs horde)
but community vs community, this means if you find a guild you are allied with that guild, and only that guild, if you descide to kill someone you kill them, simple as that, so any race can ally any race, and you can descide to have war with another guild and attack them, or fight it out in battlegrounds, or even steal from other players houses / guilds.
But beware guardians can be bought by spending money, and if you descide to steal from a player, you better beware that they can utilize revenge.

How do you plan on protecting the new players from older ones? The thing about side vs. side is that it gives a large number of players a common enemy. Right now, the only mmo I play is Warhammer. I love the fact that even when the majority of my guild is offline I can ask any nearby players if they want to start a warband and all of a sudden I have enough players to launch an attack on any battlefield objective the enemy has.

Having the sides gives players a purpose in the game, instead of dumping them off in some village with no clearcut idea who's side they are on (especially if the options are major guilds who are at war for reasons unknown to the new players.)

Quote:Original post by Vorg
Respecs, balancing
i want everyone to be able to respec /retrain all their stats and skills, if you dont like how you built your character you can remove what you have done, and start over, but the cost is alot of money, and ofc. The gear you are wearing will be taken off, so if you are a high ranked character with alot of gear getting all that gear on again must be redone.

This will eliminate the possiblity that someone accidently creates a mage/warrior/priest hybrid and is stuck with it. If your going to allow players to choose their skills and stats then this is a must have feature.

Quote:Original post by Vorg
The balance or twist of the MMO is that you wont have to balance to much if you use a % base instead of steady numbers, this means that if example. a sword does your strength*1.25% dmg, you wont have to rebalance way to much aslong as you are carefull.

Being careful as you make the items and choose whether it should 1.25 or 1.50 is balancing.

Quote:Original post by Vorg
Summary
My idea is a world where everything is configurable, if you descided to explore it could take years to find it all, and by then maybe more has released, exploring different character types only require a push of a button, and gear can allways get "a little" better, so in order to achieve that you must explore every proffession, every last piece of the world just to find that 1 trainer.

Lower your expectations, a lot. Players can explore much faster than content can be created. Most mmo's take years to complete, and thats with content I could explore in a few months at most. (much of it recycled and reused in many places.)

Quote:Original post by Vorg
If you descide to PVE, PVP or RP, the option's shouldn't just be ok, better gear and that's it.
So in order to achieve more you should be ready to spend hours figuring out how to wear that 1 piece of gear, or take over areas to find unique trainers, houses, instances etc.
Much more, but i don't want to make the post to big.

Hours to figure out how to wear one piece of gear? No. Unless you make figuring it out worthwhile, and not just figuring out which combination of buffs will allow it, just no.

Taking over area's for more bonuses, awesome. Hours for gear? I would quit and never look back at the game.


Wow, that took a while. Note that while much of this is criticism its so you can try to look at the idea's and improve on them, not just to be mean.

Good luck with your idea.

Jcolton, thanks alot for the writeup.

And yeh, some things were definitly unclear, thanks alot for pointing out the areas, my head is spinning around with ideas, so getting everything properly down on paper, never been my strong suit kinda.

The skill / level system i had as my main idea is so that you can respec later when you better understand the game, and i do agree it's very much necessary.

Races are meant to be diverse, i cant reveal much, but here every race is suited to be all classes, so tauren vs gnome and class makeup isn't really a huge problem.

The skill tree is designed so that you can choose mastery tree's yourself.
Imagine wow, or War, you have 3 tree's you can spend points inn, to increase the effect of certain abilities.
Here you have 5 tree's, Melee, Ranged, Defencive, Magical and Passive tree.
The buffs can be choosen from the Passive tree, where as in wow, any player can cast any buff on any player, even outside of parties.
So you can go to a town, go /1 WTB ... Buff, paying 10s (example)
Or you can choose them yourself.

My original idea is that if you are lvl 25, and facing a 26 mob, the difference would be (comparing with wow), you being lvl 25 and a mob being 28/29.
This requires very specific zones, and strict movement.
So 1 lvl will be as gaining 3-4 lvl's in wow.

Armor is one reason why alot of players are playing, not all ofc.
But there is alot of players that love being OP based on gear, i only give them the choise by maxing buffs to put on gear hard to get on for their lvl.
(but it's not everything).

And only reason i want to have characters retarded as you call them ;) is to really make the difference between a tank and a archer.
In wow, an archer wears mail, here you can have leather, plate or no armor at all, it being your choise if you want to wear it or not.
All tree's are designed so that you need to learn to wear lower armor, in order to wear heavier armor.
But some classes also get the ability to wear such items without the talent.
That's where you prob. as a first time player will go and respec when you find out that you get it for free.

Wearing heavier armor, reduces the damage you take, so someone wearing plate can have upto 50% reduction from melee attacks, reduces movement speed, and gives you a chanse to fail on casting spells.
While wearing light armor only reduces upto (examples ofc) 15%, increases run speed by a slight amount, slight (next to none) on casting spells.(none if you have a magic armor that reduces the chanse on fail, or skill for it).
All skills go from 1-5, where 5 makes the skill very strong.
(please say if this cleared some things up? ;))

Combining 2 players to craft is only an option really, when i say stronger, i mean a chanse that you get a rarity beyond what you are really crafting, imagine being an alchemist in wow, you have a chanse to learn new recipies on crafting them, the new recipie is stronger than what you had.
The chanse of higher rarity is only in place to make extremely strong for that level. But it won't be so OP that it's the only way to go.

learning new proffession crafts is done by either finishing a quest, or making enough of armors, weapons, imbues etc. to go to a trainer to learn new.
But unique recipies on higher levels will require people to show that they are able to make tough armor, in order to learn to create tougher armor.
(turn inn quests shows that you are able to craft those items, since those crafts will be something only you can use, or BoP if you want to ;))

Having advanced proffession tools is true, but i want to make it slightly more realistic, meaning you cant craft a weapon without water, fire, metal, hammer, proper protection and such. Not much difference on how tools work, just a slight detail that gives it more realistic feeling.

I'm thinking more fast paced combat here, so spectating and even telling where people is ain't really a problem, the aren't alot of hiding places, or none in some cases, it's mostly about speed, and controll of the character that defines if you win or not.
Imagine SC's in War(T3) that lava SC, same principle only less hiding places ;)

Side vs side i can really agree is more effective when it comes to uniting players. However.
Assuming i'm new to the game and still leveling, i see this lvl (something high) running around, and he attacks and kills me.
For him(the high lvl) this will mean, he lost personal rating on his pvp level, (if you kill an equal player you gain example 100 points, if you kill something 5+ lower levels than you, you loose 1k points). Extreme pheraps, but it's needed these days. Also ontop of that the high lvl would loose points for his guild and loose the rights to visit trainers for 1hr per person lower lvl he killed during that hour.(stacks to 20 hours).
I know these are extreme cases, but today people like to make lower levels hate them,.. alot ..

So if you are a low level, and found out that an area is under attack, you can join the Zone crew, meaning that you choose a side, this or that, you will become unattackable from 1 side, and can aid them in what they do.
And personally i would belive that people wanna have the most players in order to take over areas and such.

Houses, gaining buffs from a house isn't really hard, just say you bought runes to make the area magical.
But mostly houses and personal zones are something a guild needs to protect if you are to have it 24/7 but you can if you want do what you want with the house, i only proposed ideas you can use the house for.

And when it comes to gear, and spending hours.
The idea is that if a player spends 3 hours figuring out that if he uses this and that buff, he can imbue his own armor (which requires more stats to wear than it originally would), he would have an advantage over other players 1v1. He actually spent the time on it, but remember the level difference, this only means that he has a higher chanse against higher level players basicly. And would probably kill his own level players with a higher chanse.
But he spent the time on it. So it's deserving.
If a player want to use that time to level instead, that would mostly even the playing field. It's what you like to do, and not really about the gear itself.
(imbued gear are about 15-25% better than it's equal, meaning more stats, more special and unique properties).

Ofc you can pvp for better quality gear, i mean imbuing and wearing is one thing, but you can also PVP for that gear, where you get increased PVP only statistics, these items can't be player modified. For balancing purposes.
(atleast how i look at it for now).

Think i got most covered, time to get back to work, but please don't hesitate to reply :p i love critisism, it really points out things i need to work on, maybe i don't have what it takes, who knows :P