MMORPG Design for light novel setting

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5 comments, last by Durakken 10 years, 3 months ago

i decided to write a Light Novel series in the vein of Log Horizon, .hack\\, Yureka, 1/2 Prince, Sword Arts Online, etc.. more or less just for fun, but I like to keep things more realistic than not, so it needs a design, but not a highly detailed design (yet) to keep things consistent... So I'm going to describe several aspects of the MMO, please, give feed back thanks...

Basic Light Novel setting. People who are in comas or physically incapable of interacting with the world for some reason are hooked up into a beta of a full virtual reality. Death in the game does not result in death in the real world. The Virtual world is roughly 1/2 the size of the real world.

Setting of the MMO: The Game world is divided into 3 "worlds". The 2 divine worlds.. Basically Heaven and the Under world. The 3rd world is the planet. The Gods create humans who begin to spread out across the world, but then something happens and horrible creatures, monsters, and mutants start arising and attacking humans killing them or driving them outwards away from the gateway to the realm of the gods. This results in humans living on the 3 other continents and the western side of the continent with the gods.

When the character is created you have the choice of physical appearance (not sure if I'm going to have a nation or continent select) and whether to be a Ki User or a Mana User. Basically, Magic or Martial spiritual powers.

Ki User Stats are

HP: 100 +10/level +10/every even level no divisible by 4

MP: 10 +5/every 2 levels

KP: 50 +5/level +5/every 4 levels

STR: 20 +1/level

DEX: 20 +1/level

DUR: 20 +1/level

AGI: 10 +5/5th level

INT: 10

FOC: 10

WIS: 10

Mana User Stats are

HP: 100 +10/level

MP: 50 +10/level +10/every even level

KP: 10 +5/every even level

STR: 10

DEX: 10

DUR: 10

AGI: 10

INT: 20 +1/level

FOC: 20 +1/level

WIS: 20 +1/level

Both User types also get 2 distributable points per level.

At level 10 the player must choose a specific class... 4 classes for each user type...

- Ki User -

Warrior (+10 HP/5th level, +2 STR/lvl, +1 DUR/lvl, +1 DEX/lvl)

Shielder (+10 HP/lvl, +10 HP/every even lvl, +2 DUR/lvl, +2 WIS/lvl)

Shadow (+5 KP/every even level, +2 DEX/lvl, +2 AGI/lvl)

Ranger (+2 KP/every even level, +4 AGI/lvl)

- Mana User -

Sorcerer (+10 MP/lvl, +10 MP/every even lvl, +4 INT/lvl)

Mender (+10 MP/lvl, +3 INT/lvl, +1 WIS/lvl)

Enchanter (+10 MP/lvl, +1 INT/lvl, +1 FOC/lvl, +2 WIS/lvl)

Summoner (+1 DEX/lvl, +1 DUR/lvl, +1 FOC/lvl, +1 WIS/lvl)

For a clarification, the User Type bonuses continue to be applied.

STR/INT = Physical/Magical Attack ability

DEX/FOC = Physical/Magical speed

DUR/WIS = Physical/Magical defense (note that magical attacks are not "fireball" magic but more mystical type damage and status things, even though the "cast" is based on magic)

AGI = Accuracy

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Starting off a character gets 1 General Skill Slot and 1 Ability Skill Slot.

Generals Slots are for crafting skills, special "other" skills, and passive skills, for example dual weilding bonus...

Ability Skill Slots are spells, techniques, etc

All skills level up as they are used. If you want to learn a skill, but do not have an open slot, you can forget the skill, but you lose all development in that skill...

Players game 1 general skill slot every 5 levels, and 1 ability skill slot every 10.

As long as you can find the way to gain the skill all skills are learnable at lvl 1.

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Also, there are special Sub-classes that you can learn/gain access to... Some are common, some are rare. And they do stack together.

The list of sub-clases I've though up so far...

Animal Tamer - lets you have animal pets
Legend Tamer - lets you have Legendary Beast pets
Puppet Master - Controls inanimate things to use as pets
Assassin - gives stealth and priority strikes
Theif - increases loot and allows opening locks
Sword Saint - Enhances abilities to use magic and physical attacks together
Dual Spell - Allows casting 2 magics at once
Holy Knight - Enhances abilities to use magic and physical Defenses together
Bard - Allows enhancing of party parameters via songs/cheering
Monk - Increases regen and defense
Scholar - Uses items to cast spells
Dragoon - Merges with a Dragon to increase abilities and allows access to certain spells
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All land can be bought (not sure on price yet)
Land is divided into Kilometer Hexagons and then 10 meter hexagons. Cities are, starting off, 1 km.
Already owned land is buyable/rentable in 10m chunks, but if it is wild land it must be bought in 1km chunks
This ownership can be associated with guilds or individuals
Ownership allows the player/guild to set various settings such as access, safety level, and tax fee.
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Guilds is a generic name for an organization or group of organizations associated with each other...
Nation > Tribe > Clan > Family
Guilds can merge, ally with each other, or declare another group as an enemy group.
Guilds can gain various standings and bonuses as well as access to special items, quests, areas, stores, facilities, that while there are some aspects that are attainable via solo player methods being part of a guild gives an auto status boost as long as a player is in a guild.
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So those are most of the things I've come up with (the rest is more or less spell lists, maps, and such)...
What do you think?
Also... how far do you think someone should have to walk, considering roughly human walking speed, before mob level changes assuming a lvl 100 cap (i plan on saying it is actually higher, but stat increases will differ)
There is also something I think might be helpful to point out...
Summoner has different Tier lvl of summons, that summons a spirit. There are 9 tiers where most of the summons of the higher tiers are linked to 1 players so there is only, for example, 1 Fenrir summon that only 1 person can get and use... And that is neat and all, but the lower tiers use common stuff and inanimate objects drawing from japanese spiritualism where everything has a spirit... which is where I personally think it can draw it's overpoweredness...A Summoner could potentially get the Dual Spell sub-class and Summon 2 tier 0 weapon spirits to wield which then would be boosted from being a spell skill and a weapon which ends up making them able to potentially have insanely powerful attacking STR due to summons having their own stats... Naturally this doesn't work too much with higher tiers because they require more magic and would drain too fast...
Anyways...feed back and thoughts on what I got here... much appreciated.
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So nearly 200 views and over a week and no feedback... awesome...

So nearly 200 views and over a week and no feedback... awesome...

Patience is a virtue. A bit of a turn off for some people commenting is that you designated this an MMO. These tend to turn into another "I have a great MMO idea can you make this for me?" threads.

Game style aside, the idea is interesting. I like the virtual world idea for comatose individuals. It could be a way for doctors to diagnose and help those that are beyond physical help. I may have overlooked it, but you didn't mention any crafting-related skills or resource-gathering skills for crafting. This could give your world a real market and add extra things for players to partake, especially since you have purchasable land and a community/cultural status idea. Let players create shops to sell their wares and gain renown for the items they offer.

So nearly 200 views and over a week and no feedback... awesome...

It's a bit generic to make heads or tails of your game. There's nothing really revolutionary about what you've presented so far, and from what I've read I don't see anything that sets it apart from the dime-a-dozen asian MMOs that get released then close down every other week.

The first thing you present is starting stats? Now it not the time for that, balancing those numbers is one of the last things you do.

So nearly 200 views and over a week and no feedback... awesome...

Patience is a virtue. A bit of a turn off for some people commenting is that you designated this an MMO. These tend to turn into another "I have a great MMO idea can you make this for me?" threads.

Game style aside, the idea is interesting. I like the virtual world idea for comatose individuals. It could be a way for doctors to diagnose and help those that are beyond physical help. I may have overlooked it, but you didn't mention any crafting-related skills or resource-gathering skills for crafting. This could give your world a real market and add extra things for players to partake, especially since you have purchasable land and a community/cultural status idea. Let players create shops to sell their wares and gain renown for the items they offer.

A week and a half of a forum is patience enough.

As far as what I titled this post...it's an accurate description so I don't see how that would be a problem.

This is more or less a generic MMO idea, not something that I'd use to make an MMO... however I am thinking of possibly creating an explore-able 3D map, just as an extra thing, but a lot of the stuff requires a virtual reality world, so to make an MMO even if I wanted to, would still require me to wait 10 or 20 years at least lol.

I left out a list of generic skills, but everyone can do the basics of mining, farming, etc, but only at a base level. Attempting to do these things at a higher level will result in failed product or poor material. This goes for every thing. For example, someone might be able to boil water, but not be able to create a stew ^.^ To increase these skill you have to work on it like any other skill and have the generic skill in one of your skill slots. I'm not sure whether it should be a sub-class too where you can only do it if you have the subclass itself., because I want to limit those who would go down the path of crafting, but not make it impossible.

Sub-classes give you skills that do not take up your skill slots and if I were to make them a sub-class it would be a sub-class that would be a fairly generically open to every without problem... So i think I will keeping that as just generic skills

I'm also being careful that issue because Log Horizon touches on the issue of crafting in such a world, so if you read it, it's going to work somewhat like that, but I don't want to delve too much into it due to it being used so well and being such a front and center of Log Horizon... Basically, in LH they find that making food via normal instant make skill tastes like soggy crackers, but if you have high chef skill and cook the ingredients normally they maintain the flavor. This is discovered and then used to advance a cause...then the NPCs and other players learn about this and then the books pretty much follow on from the repercussions of this being learned.

Even though I'm avoiding that issue directly, it will still be going on to some degree and players will have shops and such.

I have a list of some 30 spells that 3-5 would open up every 5 levels for mages, but I found that most of the spells don't work as being tiered because they level up and they all seem base level stuff so I decided to use the slot system which forces you to select your spells carefully.

Also just about every category and sub-category has a generic skill associated with it...for example... bladed weapons skill, sword skill, dual wielding skill are all available and they stack... it's the same with magic where there would a be projectile skill, fire skill, etc...

Generic skills also include things like tracking abilities, increasing hearing, sight, special forms of sight, etc... I need a more concrete list of these types of skills, but I figure I'll add more as I go... though I have to be careful with this considering that a lot of these should be available from the beginning.

Also I've added sub-classes Sword Dancer, Alchemist, and Rune Mage to the list...

Sword Saint = magic and skills that use the sword are enhanced

Sword Dancer = Sword skills are enhanced

Alchemist = Combine items to produce magical spells

Rune Mage = Combine runes to produce spells

There are slight differences in them that create big differences overall.

As to the coma concept...yes that's part of the idea... I've not decided exactly how NPCs work. I was thinking that perhaps NPCs would be generated by lower brain function resources of the users or those people who are alive enough to connect, but not alive enough to do much else allowing the system to use the brains processing power to create NPCs in hopes of generating some reaction from using the brain, but a lot of that is in the air that will be explored as I go along.

So nearly 200 views and over a week and no feedback... awesome...

It's a bit generic to make heads or tails of your game. There's nothing really revolutionary about what you've presented so far, and from what I've read I don't see anything that sets it apart from the dime-a-dozen asian MMOs that get released then close down every other week.

The first thing you present is starting stats? Now it not the time for that, balancing those numbers is one of the last things you do.

The design isn't supposed to be revolutionary ^.^

I'm not concerned with "balancing" stats so much as in a semi realistic stat numbers that I can be consistent about no matter what if I ever wish to list the stats off which I can now cuz it's looks fairly balanced without any sort of testing and I has a calculator that gives me any of the stats for any class at any level ^.^

Interesting that you're posting in a game development forum with an idea for a fictional MMORPG that takes place inside a LN. Still, I understand why one would do this, as I appreciated the numbers present in SAO and in 1/2 prince.

It's very useful to be able to make up new things in a work of fiction, as the characters begin to face more diverse opponents, some of which may be more rare than others.

Also, from what I'm seeing, stat increase is relatively linear. This would also mean that the danger that a lvl 20 poses to a lvl 10 character is smaller than the danger that a lvl 80 poses to a lvl 70. Also, I may be mistaken, but the hp of a lvl 100 character appears to only be about 6 times the hp of a lvl 10 character, which one may want to reconsider.

Where better to get information to get gave design info than game designers?

SAO is the worst of these types of novels I've come across...at least in anime form.

Here's the stat info for the levels you mention...

Level: 10 User Type: Ki User Class: None Sub-Class: ?

HP: 210 MP: 35 KP: 105 STR: 29 INT: 10 DEX: 29 FOC: 10 DUR: 29 WIS: 10 AGI: 20

Distributable Pts: 18
Total Pts: 155

Level: 10 User Type: Mana User Class: None Sub-Class: ? HP: 190 MP: 190 KP: 35 STR: 10 INT: 29 DEX: 10 FOC: 29 DUR: 10 WIS: 29 AGI: 20

Distributable Pts: 18
Total Pts: 155

Level: 20 User Type: Ki User Class: Warrior Sub-Class: ? HP: 360 MP: 60 KP: 170 STR: 61 INT: 10 DEX: 50 FOC: 10 DUR: 50 WIS: 10 AGI: 30

Distributable Pts: 38
Total Pts: 259

Level: 100 User Type: Ki User Class: Shielder Sub-Class: ?
HP: 3200 MP: 260 KP: 670 STR: 119 INT: 10 DEX: 119 FOC: 10 DUR: 301 WIS: 192 AGI: 110

Distributable Pts: 198
Total Pts: 1059

Level: 100 User Type: Ki User Class: Warrior Sub-Class: ? HP: 1520 MP: 260 KP: 670 STR: 301 INT: 10 DEX: 210 FOC: 10 DUR: 210 WIS: 10 AGI: 110

Distributable Pts: 198
Total Pts: 1059

Level: 100 User Type: Mana User Class: Sorcerer Sub-Class: ?

HP: 1090 MP: 3400 KP: 260 STR: 10 INT: 483 DEX: 10 FOC: 119 DUR: 10 WIS: 119 AGI: 110

Distributable Pts: 198
Total Pts: 1059

There are also generic skill slots that one can use that can be filled with possible stat modifiers (which i haven't come up with yet ^.^) and gear so yeah...

And yes currently there is a bigger difference between lower levels than there is between higher level in terms of flat stats, but gear, sub classes, generic slots, and ability selection can make a huge difference...

For example Summoner with a tier 8 Summon vs a Summoner with a tier 6... they're both things that you'd only get at the higher lvls, but a tier 8 would be a ton more powerful than a tier 6

Also I'm thinking that I might come up with a new paradigm of stat increase at level 100 to further distinguish the classes

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