5punk

Yeah but I think you're also falling down on assuming that every mmo that doesn't involve massive pvp, player politics, and spaceships, is like Warcraft.

Thinking about alternatives though, I read a discussion on a (falsely I think) rumoured WH40k mmo. It got me to thinking about controlling a whole squad rather than an individual, and influencing the outcome of a military campaign rather than your own personal little quest for glory. If you think a little there are plenty of alternative routes for MMOs, but as I said before most publishers only seem interested in the Warcraft (by extension UO I think) model.

Ooh yes, that was the other part of the dream. It was similar to Guild Wars (is that it's name? I can't remember it's been that long since I played it) in that you could pick some NPC squad members, but it gave you control over what they did and how they were equipped. You could switch between squad members so that, if you wanted to, you could for example pick locks, seduce a corporate type etc.

Roman Totale wrote: It was similar to Guild Wars (is that its name? I can't remember it's been that long since I played it)

Continuing the theme of alternative MMOs, I'll go back to Jumpgate 2. I like the sound of this - kind of like a Freelancer MMO, but using realistically modelled physics. A guy at work played the original and was regaling me with a tale of using one-shot afterburners to accelerate to full speed, then turning off his angines and fliping 180 degrees to shoot at the fighters chasing him. The realistic physics meant he carried on going in the same direction at the same speed, and made it very troublesome for the fighters.

Jumpgate interests me, especially as it's like most MMOs, where you can do PVE with optional PvP.

From what I've heard you can be classed as civilian (PvE) or something else (PvP). If you kill a civilian you lose standing and things cost more. It would be nice if it was one persistent world like Eve, but I can't see it happening.

You know what we all need?

We all need to play Deus Ex (and possibly Invisible War) again.

If we're still not happy, we need to plan and work on a modification or game that gives us these things.

I want the spawn of Deus Ex and Bladerunner's passionate but animal one night stand.

"<i>Have you ever retired a human by mistake</i>"

tandino wrote:(and possibly Invisible War)

I tried that like yesterday. Couldn't possibly play Deus Ex yet again, so I thought I'd try its sequel which I'd only played once.

It didn't work. At all. It just locked up my computer the first time I tried it, and then any subsequent tries froze the game and I had to kill the process. So I uninstalled it. Didn't really want to play it anyway.

Wait, what was this topic about again?

I'm a sad panda, 90% of the things everyone said they wanted in a MMONG FFXI has had since it came out, 2 years before WoW came along and destroyed the genre. (imo) But still FFXI gets no love.

FFXI sounded quite interesting from your review, but it sounds way too team orientated for me. If I can't solo a game I'll probably only play the first couple of levels, until the 5punkers I'm playing with are ahead of me.

Oh boy is Anarchy ugly. It's also lacking those UI nicities that modern games have. Neocron looks similar but more modern. Anyone played that?

God I'm bored. I've been thinking about the SLA MMONG idea, and while it'll never get made it's interesting to think about alternative ideas to how a game could work, and how many fresh ideas must be rejected by development teams before they end up with their generi-mmong.

Game World:
I love Eve's persistant game world, and there's no reason a more traditional character based MMO couldn't do it. GTA has huge cities, and spread across several servers a game world could be even bigger. Sacrificing some detail and having a little uniformity, vast areas could be generated for players to wander in if they so desire. Walls are bad, as Warcraft has shown, and a player could in theory walk from one end of the city to the other. This would not be recommended though, and vehicles would need to be a part of the game. However, the setting already has gauss trains that can get a person anywhere in the city in minutes, and from there taxis can get pedestrian players to where they need to be. Gauss stations in regular places should be able to cut down travel time, a bugbear of many MMO players.

Experience and levelling:
In tabletop RPG terms levels are a relic brought about by Dungeons & Dragons and abandoned by many modern games. Experience would still exist in a similar way to traits in Warcraft - points for completion of a BPN to be spent on skills and stats, in the same way as the tabletop game. Regardless of the player's progress through the game, between 0 and 4 points are awarded, but the higher a skill level is the more it costs to increase. A player's relative power is still be tracked behind the scenes with a number derived from their skills and stats, weighted by usefulness. The player never sees this number.

Mission Assignment:
BPNs are the standard mission structure of SLA Industries, but there's nothing to say GM led events and sporadic set pieces can't occur outside of them. Similar to CoX's rare monster spawns, 'Red BPN' events such as DarkNight bombings and Thresher attacks would draw players from across the area. BPNs can be found in BPN halls, listed by SCL and recommended based on the character's hidden power stat vs the difficulty of the mission. The difficulty stat is absolute, so a solo character may be limited to low difficulty recommendations, but four characters in a squad would have much tougher recommendations due to their combined power. Of course if a player wished to take on an extremely tough BPN anyway then why stop them? They'd still only get a maximum of 4 experience if they somehow managed it. Likewise, extremely easy BPNs would yield little to none.
There would need to be a lot of BPNs available, and thought needs to be put into them. Mission design is a difficult and time consuming task for a dev, but a delight for players. More on that later. Accepting a BPN locks out other players, effectively instancing it while staying in the persistant world. This prevents having to wait for spawns or seeing groups of other people doing the same tasks as you, which breaks immersion.
In the BPN halls temporary squads can be formed for the duration of a BPN by unaffiliated characters.

Groups:
Small community groups can be formed, called squads. This offers little in the way of advantages for individuals, but squad reputation affects individual reputation, and also offers potential group resources such as vehicles, support staff, and importantly directed PCs and a financier. Squads are limited to a dozen or so players by neccessity, for reasons to become clear later regarding directed PCs.

Directed PCs:
A player in a squad can utilise the characters of other players as NPCs on a BPN. The directed character gets no experience but a share of the money. The directed PC would also not accrue costs from consumable use, rather it would be taken from the end reward. It would be reasonable to allow players to opt their characters out if this, although realistically it presents free money for them while offline. This could allow a lone player to create and run a squad on their own using multiple alts, albeit at quite a disadvantage.

Mission Design:
Ragnarok allowed mission design using building blocks and simple script. Even I could do it. Allowing players to design missions isn't technically difficult, but caerful balancing would be needed to prevent exploits. Using the building blocks would allow missions to be assigned difficulty levels based on their components, with rewards assigned automatically. Player feedback would assist in not only seeking decent missions, but could also weight the rewards based on how many players maqnaged to complete it and how easily. Designing missions is done through an NPC squad financier, and the reward for popular ones is increased squad ratings and reputations, as mentioned earlier. Individuals could opt to design missions as a combat financier if they wished, but would recieve no benefit other than satisfaction until they joined a squad.

Gear:
The equipment a player can use is limited only by the cost. Of course the skills to use it is useful, otherwise the equipment is fairly ineffective, but the option is there. A starting character would be limited in their cash though, and with no trade system they couldn't be twinked. The difference between the characters would, after a time, come down to skill levels and choice of equipment rather than player level and lucky drops. Most can be customised to an extent, not least of which is visually. The ability to import skins for armour would allow great scope for individuality, as would placement of sponsorship logos and clothing worn over it (jackets, scarves and the like).

Death:
Every character has a Life After Death account. For a minimum of 1c a copter evac will arrive and shuttle off a player's corpse to the nearest LAD facility. Putting more money into the account reaps greater benefits such as faster reaction time and even upgrades once restored. The system isn't flawless though. Some areas for high difficulty missions don't have LAD cover, and character death while in such an area leads to permanent character death. Of course the player need never go there and live risk free, but the rewards are great.

PvP:
There are no limits on who can be attacked, but reputation with Cloak Division would provide an incentive to avoid PKing. Kill another Op and you'd be pretty much committing suicide. Life After Death cover does not extend tio enemies of SLA, which is what a character who kills another Op would be. However, players can choose to sign as being a Contract Killer. This is a sanctioned choice that makes a player fair game to ither Contract Killers. Reputation and sponsorship, and hence cash, can be gained quickly from excelling against other players, but a Killer is always open to ambush from other Killers. Still, that's what LAD is for. As well as random fights, Killers would be able to take, and subject to, Hunter Sheets. These bounties are for both powerful roaming NPCs in the form of rival company killers, as well as for other players. It adds an element of The Ship to the game, ad Killers would probably be very paranoid sorts.

Reputations:
As well as skills and equipment, a character's reputation would be part of their definition. Reputation is gained from completing BPNs, issuing BPNs for squad rep, and PvP kills. They allow characters to take sponsorships for extra income and at higher levels free (and possibly rare) equipment. Reputations can rise and drop though. In theory a character could garner such a high reputation with Cloak Division that a non-Killer PvP kill could be done and the reputation hit not dropping to the level where Cloak comes along and terminates them. Could provide a nasty surprise for a player who has made enemies if a squadmate assassinates him in a non-LAD covered area.



Christ, that's just from a few hours thought. Admittedly some wouldn't work but surely an MMO in development could follow a similar thought process of using new systems and not ditch them all for a Warcraft clone. If I can do it, why the fuck can't they?

Partly due to lack of internets but also for similar MMO boredom, I've fired up Medieval Total War II again. Slap some mods on and it's still very engaging. I might revisit Armed Assault for the same reasons: active modding fan base and multiplayer fun.

Nice thoughts in there. I especially like the idea of levelling/experience - to do away with the whole level system would be quite refreshing in a MMONG.

I've always found it slightly depressing in Fairyland and CoX that people can work out the best build for 'X' (e.g. if you're a Blaster or a Rogue you have to get X, Y and Z to be halfway decent). The system you suggest would be fantastic because you could utterly specialise in one skill if you so wished (i.e. generic stealthy Wraith sniper), but at the detriment of other useful social skills, or you could make an all rounder figure. It would certainly do away with seeing character after character of the same skills set up.

I also see it as benefiting from a GTA style open game world. I think it would be great trying to track a killer across town, following clues rather than waypoints. I guess you'd still have to have instanced areas at some points, such as sewer missions or parts of the Cannibal Sector.

With regards to the PvP aspect, I actually thought LotRO had a good idea, albeit poorly implemented. You could have people playing as Carrions - no levels or fancy skills/equipment, but just wave after wave of them attempting to capture or destroy something. Ooh, another good idea: a story line mission in which, if you accept it, you have to become a serial killer all the while evading the authorities. Other players would be able to take you down, but neither of you would suffer any reputation loss due to the nature of the mission (I don't know, maybe something organised by Stygmata to cover something up). Could run similarly to the Dark Brotherhood mission in Oblivion.

One bugbear of mine in MMONGS is travelling - it's too slow to travel normally, but it's far too expensive to afford a mount etc if you don't spend all day playing. Vehicles in SLA should still be expensive to prohibit every fucker driving them, but public transport should be ubiquitous enough that you're not at a disadvantage. Obviously having your own transport would have advantages like mobile storage and maybe some offensive capabilities.

I love CoX's character creation - I really don't see why it's so difficult for other games to have a bit of variety in character generation (I'm looking at you, Conan!). I'd love to see a massive library of looks and outfits for a SLA MMONG - and like you suggest, importing skins would be several kinds of awesome.



This game, it needs to be made.

I did think of a similar sort of thing actually with the PvP monstering, also inspired by LotRO. Rather than just playing a Carriens or something though, you played a serial killer trying to generate notoriety. Killing civilians to attract the attention of PC Ops, and then getting more notoriety from killing them. Players hunting down these serial killers are issued Hunter Sheets. I forgot to put it in my huge long brain-vomit, and it'd need to have ways to stop players exploiting it by stat-padding, but I liked the idea of having a sort of disposable mini-character for when you just wanted to go have some quick PvP fun. I envisioned it as sort of a game of cat and mouse, like Behind Enemy Lines mode in COD.

Actually, thinking about it, Killers could go on scheduled gameshows like Gorezone too with player controlled bad guys. That would be similar to the arenas that more and more MMONGs seem to have now.

I'd love to see a MMONG version of Left4Dead. The combat style of AoC matched with the gameplay/tech of GTAIV and Dead Rising.

After an Xfire convo with Chicken, just want to clarify something about "classes".

The way I see it, there would be no classes other than the training packages you get (which would add skill points to certain things depending upon what you picked i.e. Scout package adds points to Hide and Detect). I think it would bring a lot more diversity to the game and stop people getting caught up specialising in "tech trees" - which is what Chicken said his gripe about MMONGS was.

There shouldn't be anything to stop a gun toting mad man being able to carry out basic first aid. He may not be able to perform surgery (presumably having spent all his XP in gun related skills), but he should still be able to do the basics.

God damn, think of the variety you could have!

Chickenz wrote:I'd love to see a MMONG version of Left4Dead. The combat style of AoC matched with the gameplay/tech of GTAIV and Dead Rising.

http://www.exanimusthegame.com/

Roman Totale wrote:After an Xfire convo with Chicken, just want to clarify something about "classes".

The way I see it, there would be no classes other than the training packages you get (which would add skill points to certain things depending upon what you picked i.e. Scout package adds points to Hide and Detect). I think it would bring a lot more diversity to the game and stop people getting caught up specialising in "tech trees" - which is what Chicken said his gripe about MMONGS was.

There shouldn't be anything to stop a gun toting mad man being able to carry out basic first aid. He may not be able to perform surgery (presumably having spent all his XP in gun related skills), but he should still be able to do the basics.

God damn, think of the variety you could have!

I seem to remember WAR was going to have this, but the early beta testers hated it and wanted a Warcraft style system. I want to kick each and every one of them in the balls.

For players who absolutely need to measure their epeen, Security Clearance Levels would increasse with successful missions. Generally a higher SCL character should be tougher, but not neccessarily. Kind of like looking at a character's age in Eve to try to gauge roughly how skilled they are.

I want the game you two are making. that is all.

I both liked and disliked the "classes" in Oblivion - I initially chose the Spellsword I think, as I had intended to use magic primarily, but once I'd qualified to mage school and had access to the enchanting stations, I basically used my magic to imbue my sword with three basic magical attack types and proceeded to slay everything in the game with one or two swipes of it.

The problem was that I was only gaining skill points for my swordplay, rather than the primary skills of my class - so I never gained levels...and neither did my opponents.

Conversely it was great that I was still able to bone up my stealth skills and undertake the sidequests from the thieves and dark brotherhood.


As for the SLA thing, I would welcome an MMO with a more gritty city-based feel, be it based in a post-apocalyptic future or in the ones portrayed in the GTA games, rather than the olde-worlde urban areas in most existing games, or the rather twee cartoon cities of CoX and Phantasy Star Online.

What I wouldn't be hard for though is SLA in its entirety, as a lot of the posts here relating to it have me thinking of it as some big exclusive party I'm not invited to. I don't mean that I wouldn't be welcome, just that the body of lore people seem to have memorised seems utterly daunting to me - for example it took me a good 15 minutes to find out that BPNs are "Blueprint News Files" - Google isn't kind when abbreviations have many meanings. Instead I'd like something with the setting and feel, rather than a licensed product.


It'd be good to see a new take on the types of missions you do, there were some entertaining ones in both NWNs that had you representing in court cases, as well as to a lesser degree in Mass Effect - which given the rather basic construction tools used to generate missions in both those games, shouldn't be too hard to reproduce or allow imaginative players to create themselves.

Of course you then get complaints from people used to having large icons above the heads of the main players in the script (which are largely there to stop you becoming frustrated by having to talk to hundreds of NPCs who only have ten lines between them) so it would be important to have the player feel they were gaining something, even if the mission didn't go as planned. Why shouldn't you gain experience if you didn't find who you were after, but got some valuable knowledge about them instead?


Probably my biggest complaint about existing MMOs is the amount of time it takes to become proficient at things, yet how so many others playing the game seem to have already put in that time, and then some.

Min/maxing, or munchkining and twinking make you feel inadequate as soon as you start, and high-level characters can ruin the game for beginners. Either directly through ganking or instance-camping, or indirectly through driving up item prices and being the most listened-to voices by devs developing new content.

But without decent rewards for continued play, making you feel you are so much better than when you started - how can an MMO survive?