Flame my ideas.

[Hoax]

I think the problem is you can't just half-ass these things, sure that sounds like a decent feature-list but it doesn't really say much.

You covered equipment but not skills/levels/experience or death penalties in pve or pvp.

Hell you haven't even explained what kind of mobs we should expect, or how they will interact with the players and the gameworld.

You only barely touch upon how the matrix aspect of the game is going to work, a second gameworld?  Integrated how?  Accessible to all or only certain characters with certain abilities?

Those answers will open up more questions followed by more questions until you are at the point where you need to actually put forth actual design for your karma system, territorial control, game economy and so on.  Making games is hard and stuff.

[dusematic]

Ahem, sorry to have forgotten my traditional duties...  ZOMG UO FOREVAR!!1!  ALSO REVENGE OF THE SITH PWNS CITIZEN KANE!!!1

Now, with that out of the way...  Yes, of course I talk about what I'd like to see in an MMO.  It's a natural outgrowth of bitching about how much they suck ass.  That doesn't mean I'm composing terabytes of design documents in my basement.  I also sometimes bounce around ideas for movies that I'd like to see made, but I'm not flying off to California to work as a busboy while I whore some shitty script around either.

As for validation, guess what?  I don't know if anyone realizes this or not, but I am at least marginally aware that this place is just a wee little bit cynical.  A bunch of thumbs down, flames, and the occasional productive comment are the best anyone should expect in a forum like this.  The thing is, the thumbs down are probably deserved in regards to an amateur's off-the-cuff ideas, the flames don't bother me, and the productive comments are worth wading through the rest for.

PS:  Sinij, quit swinging off my sack already.  I mean I may be guilty of refighting six-year old battles over a game nobody cares about anymore, but at least I also occasionally post other things.  I've never seen a post from you that wasn't either "Trammel sucked!" or "WUA sucks because he liked Trammel!"  If I decide I need a forum-bitch, it won't be you, so quit sniffing around.

I laughed twice.

[WindupAtheist]

You covered equipment but not skills/levels/experience or death penalties in pve or pvp.

I happen to like potential equipment-loss as a death penalty.  It keeps the market from reaching a point where everyone has the best gear and will never lose it, forcing you to either accept stagnation or mudflate to keep people going for new items.  It's critical, though, to make sure this penality isn't too crushing by making decent items accessible and the difference between decent and uber not too huge.  And I may well support a WoW-like total lack of PVP death penalty, except for maybe a brief "no PVP" timer if zerging is a concern.

Hell you haven't even explained what kind of mobs we should expect, or how they will interact with the players and the gameworld.

Primarily intelligent humanoids with spells/firearms, as dictated by the IP.  Fuck that SWG shit of shoehorning animal-bashing into the game for no good reason.  I wouldn't mind working in a factional system to where X group of NPCs isn't neccessarily hostile to every player, but then that adds PVP concerns of "I see them shooting MY NPCs and can't attack them!"  I really don't want a UO/SWG system of PVP flagging.  My initial inclination is to say play on a PVP server if you want to stick up for faction NPCs.

You only barely touch upon how the matrix aspect of the game is going to work, a second gameworld?  Integrated how?  Accessible to all or only certain characters with certain abilities?

Second gameworld, but smaller and simplified, since it will only be accessible by a portion of the playerbase.  (Namely deckers.)  Accesible from the usual plug in the wall.  Solo missions will be accessible from any jack, so that the player can be in a safe location while jacked in.  Group missions may require the player to be jacked in from a specific location, with other players defending him as he works.

Those answers will open up more questions followed by more questions until you are at the point where you need to actually put forth actual design for your karma system, territorial control, game economy and so on.  Making games is hard and stuff.

Which is why this is a meandering messageboard thread, and not a concrete design document.  I never claimed my ideas were perfect, or so clearly laid-out that one could literally make a game from them.  This is idle forum bullshitting.  It's something to do besides post in the SWG thread again.  /shrug

[neoarchaic]

I have to admit that the very thought of a Shadowrun MMORPG makes me pretty excited and in general I thought that most of your ideas worked pretty well at conveying how some of the concepts from Shadowrun would translate online. 

Your point about equipment makes a lot of sense, in fact, if it was otherwise it just wouldn't fee like Shadowrun.  An Ares Predator was always an Ares Predator, it didn't magically do more damage as you became more powerful.  Their was no gold-plated purple Predator of godliness.  Weapons should be disposable, it's far more organic and in touch with reality.  I like the idea of having illegaly modified weapons though.  I think utmost care would have to be taken to ensure that it was impossible to utilize such weapons indefinitly.

I definitly don't see how you could do end game raids though, I mean, it's Shadowrun, I just can't picture even 12 people going on a mission and it still being a "shadowrun."  Missions though I think your right on the money, you could easily have static missions that are more scripted, conspiracy oriented whatever, and then have a good number of Johnsons available for generic shadowruns kind of like in the Genesis game.

I definitly agree there isn't a need for crafting, what are you going to do, harvest resources in the middle of the city?  Hop on over to your machine shop real quick in between runs?  There is no good reason for even including any crafting routines, you suggest having deckers make their own apps and yeah that works, but it should be included with the base "decking" skill (I don't remember what it's called, havn't played since 2nd edition.)

I liked the rest except for the idea of putting any guild emphasis territory war whatever, I think it would be better to have players aligned with a corp/lonestar/the stupid elves/whatever and have that be the basis of conflict (and make them choose one side) than have guilds be a basis.  I think that would work well with your PvP concept, since supporting a megacorp shoudl have tangible benefits and PvP control could work well for those.

Would you keep the stat/karma system pretty much the same?  That has a bigger effect on some archetypes than others I think.  A low karma Street Samurai could I think (not sure on this) be more effective at the outset than a low karma Decker.

It's hard to believe that a Shadowrun mmo hasn't been made, it's a shame really.

Well while I was typing this you replied to Hoax, and I think that equipment loss as a death penalty makes sense based on the general equipment premise.  On the other hand, Shadowrun had Doc Wagon accounts and what not didn't it?  Those could be fun to incorporate somehow.

[Jimbo]

Wouldn't riggers be the kinda fighting craftsmen?  I mean they jack into the vehicle and fly/drive/shoot/bum smokes, and have to tinker on how to make it better.  It wouldn't be the find an node of iron ore and whip out your pickaxe and dig it, but more in the lines of those that can buy, build or jerry-rig gear onto the vehicle.  Plus riggers would or could be combat engineers, setting up fixed platforms of weapons and sensors, or enabling cloaking devices or allowing them to by-pass security.

[Fabricated]

I'm not exactly sure how a rigger would work within the constraints of a MMOG myself, since half their point was that they fly/drive much much better (or less worse) than non-riggers. It's that instancing thing again...will there be actual driving (and will it require player skill)? Will the highways be clogged with jackrabbits and the skies dark with helicopters going to pull their teams out?

Shadowrun has a lot of metagame stuff that would all have to be done WELL for the game not to end up sucking.

[sinij]

I happen to like potential equipment-loss as a death penalty.  It keeps the market from reaching a point where everyone has the best gear and will never lose it, forcing you to either accept stagnation or mudflate to keep people going for new items

Why not design all equipment as easy to lose easy to replace? This way crafting can be very involved and there would be a lot less need for mudflation. Instead of awarding players with ready to use items give them components for items and let them craft customized items. To discourage twinking base all bonuses on percentage boost of base ability instead of flat bonus.

Lets say you raid dungeon not to get a shot at 1% of drop of dragon-tooth sword that you get to keep forever but rather to kill dragon, get few dragon teeth so you can get few of these swords made. You still get to do this dungeon few times to make sure you always have ready supply of dragon-tooth swords but you never going to leave empty-handed.

[WindupAtheist]

Last year, in the thread that heralded WoW hitting one million in North America, people were pelting Raph with thoughts on where MMO design should go from there.  Here's a section from what I posted.

4 - Make all the best items player-crafted.  All.
5 - Let critters drop mid-range items and rare crafting ingredients.
7 - Let endgame critters drop uber crafting ingredients.
8 - Let all items inexorably wear out over a long period of time, so they need to be replaced.
9 - Make sure that engame monsters drop enough crafting stuff to keep #8 from hurting too much.

So yeah, I pretty much agree with Sinij in theory.  I don't mind someone assembling a deck out of components like they were building a PC, and if that is the case, making the best components a "raid" drop makes more sense than dropping complete decks.  There are probably plenty of magic-related talismans and fetishes that could be "crafted" as well.  What do we do about guns and armor, though?  Maybe just let them modify weapons?  It's not really any different from crafting.  Old gun + mod component = leet gun.

As for riggers, I'm open to suggestions.  But yes, I'm all for vehicles.  Every player should be able to drive a basic vehicle for personal conveyance, at the very least, because walking blows.  Make them diverse enough in appearance, and put enough NPC traffic (rusty cars, ugly trucks, etc.) in the street/sky, that it doesn't just look like a world full of 8000 shiny runner-mobiles. 

[Telemediocrity]

Where should MMOs go from here?  Remove crafting entirely, for starters.  Remove the idea of an uninflated economy entirely.  No item decay, either, except for maybe set 'non-essential' products, but certainly not for weapons/armor.

Crafters are a huge cockblock on moving MMOs in interesting directions.  Let them stick with the games that are out there right now, no need to drag them and their preconceived expectations into games moving in new directions.

But then again, what WUA is proposing isn't really 'moving in a new direction' - it's basically a few minor tweaks on what we've all seen thus far.  As a result, this thread is scattershot, because we're all debating pretty much every major MMOG mechanic thus known to man.

[Lantyssa]

Crafters are a huge cockblock on moving MMOs in interesting directions.  Let them stick with the games that are out there right now, no need to drag them and their preconceived expectations into games moving in new directions.

Combat players are the real problem to moving MMOs in interesting directions.  Trying to invent system after system to bop the foozle.  Every game has to be combat this or combat that.  If we could only get away from combat games could really take off with innovations!

A stupid argument?  No more so than saying that crafting is at fault since all we get is uninspired DIKU-clone after DIKU-clone.  There really is not much supporting your stance.

In Shadowrun there is not much call for crafting, although there were systems for building certain things, but let's avoid painting such broad generalizations as the root of MMOs' design problems.

[sinij]

all we get is uninspired DIKU-clone after DIKU-clone.

True story. Enough with killing foozles, its time to go after the bigger game - other players.

[Strazos]

Honestly, if stuff sin't getting beaten up, then what are we to do, sit around in a bar and socialize?

If I want to do that, I can do it without paying $15/month.

[Velorath]

At this point I'd rather just see Bioware do a Knights of the Old Republic style Shadowrun RPG rather than see anyone attempt an MMO.

[shiznitz]

I like the legal/illegal concept, but I would prefer something more like everyone can have one special artifact per character, but all artifacts have a timer. Artifacts can be found anywhere and everywhere but you can only ever have one. Pick one up and you are stuck with it until the timer runs out or you trade it to another player for a different artifact. Artifacts can be combat, crafting or RP in nature. All other gear is basically fungible.

[Murgos]

Honestly, if stuff sin't getting beaten up, then what are we to do, sit around in a bar and socialize?

If I want to do that, I can do it without paying $15/month.

Fuck, what bar do you go to?

[sinij]

Honestly, if stuff sin't getting beaten up, then what are we to do, sit around in a bar and socialize?

If I want to do that, I can do it without paying $15/month.

Fuck, what bar do you go to?

Cheapest keggers are not that cheap.