Idea for MMO?

[Drifting DarkAngel]

I dunno where to post this but i'm curious what you guys would think of this, i actually had a dream a few moments ago i was playing an mmo like this, and when i woke up my brain ran with the idea.

basics of my idea:

MMORPG based on 3-D fighters such as Mortal Kombat, Soul Calibur.

Best thing about this idea is that its console-friendly. Imagine this, you would start with a basic kick/punch combo,
maybe you'd even choose what type of martial arts or sorcery, or whatever to specialize in, and learn combo's and special moves. I haven't really iron'd out the rest of the idea past that, but theres so many ways you could make this really cool, and best of all, fun to play. Combat would be very similar to 3d fighters of today, combo's, specials, maybe even fatalities would be great, or maybe mix in a little God of War in there. Have some epic bosses with certain combo's and weaknesses involved... What do you guys think? In my "vision" you would get exp from battles, get new gear, that would perhaps accent your damage, speed, etc.

[Der Helm]

Welcome to F13. This is going to be a fun ride.  :-D

By the way, there IS a game development subforum.

This "idea of MMO" reminds me of swashbuckling in PotbS. I do not see another way to implement it.

[Falconeer]

Take a look at Rumble Fighter. That said, your dreams are so wet that I am embarassed. Please keep the dirty fantasies for yourself.

[Trippy]

MMORPG based on 3-D fighters such as Mortal Kombat, Soul Calibur.

That would be Shenmue Online.

[Jayce]

Seemingly, there's nothing new under the sun.

[Signe]

There is too much space at the bottom of your post, Jayce.  I have wasted several minutes waiting for something to load there.  Or was that your intention all along? 

[Venkman]

Reminds me of the premise of Fury. In a good way.

A move to the other forum would make sense.

[Koyasha]

Well usually other people pick apart ideas before I get around to it, but that idea is really, really basic.  There are some things that just from your post might be interesting to think more about if they're elaborated in considerably greater detail, however.

First off is the obvious mention of getting exp and gear.  Does that mean that a high-level character will destroy a low level one with 1-2 fast punches?  Leveling and gear doesn't seem to mix all that well with a fighting type game, especially if there's going to be PvP (which you didn't mention one way or the other at all).

Another obvious issue is lag - hit detection and instant response is necessary in fighting-style games to pull off the best combos and reversals and such.  How will the fact that even among the best connections there's likely to be anywhere from 200 to 500ms between client A, the server, and client B affect that?  In a game genre where a fraction of a second can mean everything and a difference of ten pixels determines hitting or missing, even a small amount of lag can seriously affect combat.

Are fights restricted to 1 vs 1?  Multi target fights?  If you ask me, something that 'sounds cool' means little until there's some details to discuss, since the details would be what makes it fun vs. unfun.  Refine it some and try to answer some of these questions and it'll make a much more interesting discussion.

[Xanthippe]

My 8 year old daughter has an idea for an MMO. 

"It'll be like WoW, only you start out with a mount.  You can get any kind of mount you want, from the beginning - horse, lion, tiger, ram, dinosaur, wolf.  The mounts start out as babies who go slow and then they get faster as you level up.  You can also get different outfits so you can look any way you want.  And you can change your hair, and you can trade clothes with people.  Plus you can get pets and trade pets and your pets can have baby pets."

I think she's on to something big here.

[Stephen Zepp]

My 8 year old daughter has an idea for an MMO. 

"It'll be like WoW, only you start out with a mount.  You can get any kind of mount you want, from the beginning - horse, lion, tiger, ram, dinosaur, wolf.  The mounts start out as babies who go slow and then they get faster as you level up.  You can also get different outfits so you can look any way you want.  And you can change your hair, and you can trade clothes with people.  Plus you can get pets and trade pets and your pets can have baby pets."

I think she's on to something big here.

Actually she is ;)

[lesion]

PARLEY

[Drifting DarkAngel]

sorry i didnt notice the other forum, was kinda spur of the moment thing. and yea i never said it was completely thought out, but im not sure i buy your theory about lag making such a game impossible. Lag is just important a factor in FPS games but MMOFPS games are possible and do exist? as far as pvp, imo i'd make it all out pvp. That would be half the fun. As far as what you said, getting killed by 2 fast punches, you could make the fights longer, sort of like increased health bar's. Where even a super powerful player can't 1 shot a lowbie. So you'd have some time to react. I couldn't see a game like that WITHOUT exp/gear, for me half the fun of any rpg is developing my character. I'd be against instanced anything, have the game be as open as possible, you could have aoe attacks for dealing with multiple monsters, or have some method of havin the monsters swarm you  yet come at you 1-2 at a time (like many action fighting games ive played)

forgot to say, thanks for the comments, i was just curious if anyone else thought it was a cool idea.

[Lantyssa]

My 8 year old daughter has an idea for an MMO. 

"It'll be like WoW, only you start out with a mount.  You can get any kind of mount you want, from the beginning - horse, lion, tiger, ram, dinosaur, wolf.  The mounts start out as babies who go slow and then they get faster as you level up.  You can also get different outfits so you can look any way you want.  And you can change your hair, and you can trade clothes with people.  Plus you can get pets and trade pets and your pets can have baby pets."

I think she's on to something big here.

Most of that was in SWG...

[cmlancas]

My 8 year old daughter has an idea for an MMO. 

"It'll be like WoW, only you start out with a mount.  You can get any kind of mount you want, from the beginning - horse, lion, tiger, ram, dinosaur, wolf.  The mounts start out as babies who go slow and then they get faster as you level up.  You can also get different outfits so you can look any way you want.  And you can change your hair, and you can trade clothes with people.  Plus you can get pets and trade pets and your pets can have baby pets."

I think she's on to something big here.

Isn't there a mini-pet thing out there that is stupid-popular with the kids? I always see them in Hallmark or whatever they are stores and they are always sold out.

[Krakrok]

"It'll be like WoW, only you start out with a mount.  You can get any kind of mount you want, from the beginning - horse, lion, tiger, ram, dinosaur, wolf.  The mounts start out as babies who go slow and then they get faster as you level up.  You can also get different outfits so you can look any way you want.  And you can change your hair, and you can trade clothes with people.  Plus you can get pets and trade pets and your pets can have baby pets."

Just back load that into the My Little Pony franchise (or Lucky Charms) and you're golden.

[Nebu]

The pet concept is done with rangers in GW to some degree.  It would be like the heros introduced in Nightfall only in pet form.  I think i's a decent idea, but would have to be carefully thought out in order to avoid the usual pitfalls.  GW overcomes many of these by being primarily instanced.

[Venkman]

Pet-based games are a dime-a-dozen, both as download and online-only play, on every platform you can think of, with great attractiveness with kids in particular, for all the obvious reasons.

As applied to the traditional AAA-level MMORPGs though, giving us mounts at character creation would just compel the developers to spread the content areas of the world by 10% :)

[Signe]

My 8 year old daughter has an idea for an MMO. 

"It'll be like WoW, only you start out with a mount.  You can get any kind of mount you want, from the beginning - horse, lion, tiger, ram, dinosaur, wolf.  The mounts start out as babies who go slow and then they get faster as you level up.  You can also get different outfits so you can look any way you want.  And you can change your hair, and you can trade clothes with people.  Plus you can get pets and trade pets and your pets can have baby pets."

I think she's on to something big here.

I would play that.  Especially if there was farming, cooking and fishing.  And mini-games.

[Yegolev]

Is Xanthippe's daughter's idea terribly different from NeoPets?  I don't think you can ride your NeoPets, but combine that with Virtual Horse Rancher and you have a game.  Have her get with Dave Rickey and Stephen Zepp by the end of the week.

[Nija]

My idea for a MMO is you never posting again.

[Drifting DarkAngel]

new idea for a mmo: STFUQUEST.


flamer.

[schild]

You're both right. Your MMOG idea is less insightful than a bad ee cummings poem and Nija is a dick. Move on.

[Drifting DarkAngel]

not sure i see how its 'not insightful' its never been done before, ive never read about it thought of being done before, but i'm not 'in the industry' so whatever, just had an idea i liked and wanted to share it with others. I don't really care, I think it'd be alot more fun and engaging than the crap available now. 

[Nebu]

Neat idea, just plenty of technical issues to overcome.  Twitch and massively-multiplayer are tough things to combine.  Kept low rez with moderate requirements, it may be possible to pull off if they keep the number of rendered characters in any one area to a minimum.

[Drifting DarkAngel]

ideas that require technical hurdles to overcome are exactly what the industry needs to push the envelope. I'm sure  when EQ was first thought up it garnered similar remarks regarding technical problems making it happen on screen.

[Nebu]

Workable on a console where everyone has identical machines running.  When you add a bajillion video card/mobo/processor combos, the level of difficulty goes up (as do the csr costs).  Blizzard may be the closest to pulling it off, but walking into a busy town in WoW will quickly remind you of what an MMO dev would have to overcome.

[Drifting DarkAngel]

yea, thats why i mentioned it being console friendly, probably would be alot easier to pull off on a console. But really, twitch combat wouldn't happen in city hubs anyway. Thats not an issue. You could make it (if you had to) all quests were instances much like DDO.

[Yegolev]

I just stole your idea.  Look for it on Xbox Live next Christmas.

[Venkman]

not sure i see how its 'not insightful' its never been done before, ive never read about it thought of being done before, but i'm not 'in the industry' so whatever, just had an idea i liked and wanted to share it with others. I don't really care, I think it'd be alot more fun and engaging than the crap available now. 

I think you need first to broaden your experiences with current MMOs, including the Eastern ones, before jumping to the conclusion that it's never been done before. So far you're really only talking about a control system, which I assume you think could be a good replacement for the dice roll combat we have now while maintaining the normal trappings of a DIKU.

Of course, per your other thread, that's not to say any of these referential titles are any good :)

As to the technical aspects, I think it'd be hard only if you were looking to deliver an exact Soul Caliber (or whatever) experience in a all-public-space persistent world. Meanwhile, if you looked to emulate a Soul Caliber game and used a largely instantiated system ala Guild Wars, the overhead may not be so bad. That's the theory behind the upcoming MMOFPS Huxley, which unlike Planetside is supposedly actually FPS.

[Abelian75]

not sure i see how its 'not insightful' its never been done before, ive never read about it thought of being done before, but i'm not 'in the industry' so whatever, just had an idea i liked and wanted to share it with others. I don't really care, I think it'd be alot more fun and engaging than the crap available now. 

Don't mean to sound like a dick, but I think it's safe to assume that if a game idea is of the form, "Like Game X, but massively multiplayer," it has been thought of before.  In fact, I hereby think of all such combinations by thinking of the concept of "Game X, but massively multiplayer" in general.  Like magic, I have just thought of thousands of ideas.

Now, you might reply, justifiably, that that isn't REALLY thinking of a game idea in any important sense.  But then I would reply: Exactly.  What you're describing would not be groundbreaking at the idea-level, even if it hasn't been done (much) before... nobody would look at a game like that and think, "Wow, how'd they ever think of that."  If it ended up being awesome, they'd most likely say, "Wow, this game was really well executed."  (WoW being a textbook example of the latter)

All of this is fine, of course, as the vast majority of games rely vastly more on execution rather than some revolutionary new idea.  The somewhat hostile response you're getting is probably due to the undertones in your post about how you think your idea is really good, when it's really a pretty basic idea (though perhaps in your head it is much more detailed than what you wrote here).  Whether something like what you're describing would make for a good game, and what details in the execution might help it be more fun, would certainly make for interesting discussion, though.

[Drifting DarkAngel]

The somewhat hostile response you're getting is probably due to the undertones in your post about how you think your idea is really good, when it's really a pretty basic idea (though perhaps in your head it is much more detailed than what you wrote here).  Whether something like what you're describing would make for a good game, and what details in the execution might help it be more fun, would certainly make for interesting discussion, though.

I'm not sure where I said i thought it was a really cool idea, I said there was many ways to make this a really cool idea. No, I didn't sit and flesh it out to minute detail, There's no point. Really, the only point was curiosity if anyone else would dig a mmo like that.

[Soln]

Shenangigans Online.

[WindupAtheist]

I'd rather play Xanthippe's daughter's game.  If nothing else, it's better fleshed out.

[Drifting DarkAngel]

 

[Margalis]

There is already a game like this (in open beta IIRC), I think it is Korean, it's called "Kwan Ho" or something like that. It looks pretty similar to a MMORPG Virtua Fighter.