Your MMOG Setting?

[Der Helm]

Call of Cthulhu might work, but would require one thing no company is willing to put the balls on the table to do.  Perma death.

I have been thinking about perma-death for quite some time now. For it to work, you would need a really innovative way of handling character advancement. Maybe something like the old turn-based strategy games, where you could keep your best troops from mission to mission. Sure, you bitch and moan when you loose one of them, but you do not have to start over again and again.

[Alkiera]

Call of Cthulhu might work, but would require one thing no company is willing to put the balls on the table to do.  Perma death.

I have been thinking about perma-death for quite some time now. For it to work, you would need a really innovative way of handling character advancement. Maybe something like the old turn-based strategy games, where you could keep your best troops from mission to mission. Sure, you bitch and moan when you loose one of them, but you do not have to start over again and again.

I've been thinking of a system like karma, related to the amount of points you get for character creation...  Certain things you do in life give you karma, other things take it away.  Then if you die, your karma modifies the power of your next character.  So you don't lose 'all that investment' of the character...  the karma in his soul caries on to the next life.  If you've been a right bastard, your next life, you might be a helpless newb... hopefully some other right bastard will come kill you, just for justice's sake.

Of course, the numbers would have to be balanced.  And there would be some character development in the game itself, not all up front.  But some of what you define at creation effects how far you can advance, and how you can advance.

Alkiera

[Viin]

And you'd have to figure out some opposite of karma for the bad guys. Maybe something along the lines of how much of your soul you sell to the devil, he'll help you out more when you recreate or some such.

That'd probably work, but with any real "death" it has to be pretty damn rare. You can't expect people to go changing their character name every week. Things like that (as someone else said in another thread) are considered 'exit points' - you are not longer attached to your character so why keep playing?

[HaemishM]

Permadeath will never work in a mass market MMOG. You guys know this.

Now if you are talking niche, go right ahead. And since we are wet dreaming in this thread, shoot for the moon.

[Signe]

Oh, speaking of permadeath... Mourning is back.  Such cheek!

Couldn't see the point of making a new thread to pass this along... or even necro-ing an old one.  Posting was more than it deserves.

[Viin]

For a 'mass market' MMO (who the hell wants to play those anymore anyway? Most of us have quit those already!) I think Der Helm has the right idea. If your 'presence' within the game was a unit or group of things, as opposed to a single avatar, you could lose one or some without losing your identity within the game. (I consider losing your identity as the biggest barrier to implementing any kind of permadeath).

Games like Tactica Online might address this, as I believe your group/squad can lose individual units but it won't affect your overall status/identity within the game.

[HaemishM]

Mass market budget dollars is the only way most of the wet dream settings in this thread (and wet dream game features) would get made.

[Krakrok]

You can create it in BYOND except that it would look like Ultima III. Maybe Multiverse will fulfill the promise in 3D but I'm not holding my breath.

[Azazel]

Wild West with fantasy elements (Zombie Cowboys, Indian Shamans, shape-changers, etc)

Elite, in MMOG form.

Warhammer 40k, as a background where you could be a Rogue trader/smuggler/agent of one of the tons of different factions,. but not "play as a space marine".

[Righ]

Moorcock's 'conjunction of a million spheres' is nice and open-ended, but you really don't need to go any further than the Dancers At The End Of Time sub-series to make anything and everything possible. This of course brings new problems, since players should really be able to do anything to satisfy their whim, and by nature of the game will be unable to. Restrictive environments are so much more useful to the developer.

The other problem with Moorcock is that even in his popular fantasy books, he primarily writes intelligent, witty and sensitive romances. Taking away the character interplay and Moorcock's prose, and you're left with a fairly underwhelming multiverse. Amber (Zelazny) is more inviting for a multiverse, as there's more development of the setting in this series.

For a nicely defined world without too much scope, Marion Bradley's Darkover provides a balance that would suit an MMOG setting. You've got well defined geography, multiple sentient races, classes and castes, millenia spanning history to set sequal games in, etc.

[Dren]

Wild West with fantasy elements (Zombie Cowboys, Indian Shamans, shape-changers, etc)

Dark Tower.  Yes.

[Dren]

For something most definitely niche, develop a massive persistent strategy game based on the Game of Thrones.  I didn't say Song of Ice and Fire because I wouldn't base the game on those specific characters or anything.  I'm more interested in simulating the Game than Martin's books.

Permadeath?  Yep, in the form of aging and losing members of your family.  Your "avatar" is your family crest.  You could possibly lose all of your family, but never that last one.  He/she could live on to rebuild the family name, lands and estates.

Each day consists of 4-6 years.  That is real time!  Each real day, 4-6 years of game time passes regardless.  Each of these "years" represents a "level" for the armies or individual "heros" you assign to level for that time period. (i.e. Training.)  Yes, that is offline leveling at its finest, but you do have to be careful.  You can't have these characters lvl'ing AND defending at the same time.  If they were ALL training while you were offline, you could come back to your last surviving heir sitting on a hill all by his/her lonesome.  As I said, this is a strategy game, not your traditinoal MMOG.

You build alliances by intermarrying or sending wards off to other families.  You grow your family by setting them into reproductive mode (if married or willing to take on bastards (lower forms of hero's that are capped on the influence.) Each family member is a "hero" and considered an individual, armies are different and come in large groups, not individuals.  "Heroes" can lead multitudes of armies.  The number of armies a hero can hold depends on level (age,) influence, standing in the family, etc.

You build your treasury by mining, farming the land, fishing, trade, etc.  Again this depends on your strategy for castle building/placement, towns, farms, mines, etc.  Sections of land can be challenged if war is declared, etc.  Think Civilization from the micromanagement standpoint.

Really all of it would be Civilization except for the diplomacy portion.  Plus, the concept of "family" and reproduction and adding hero's etc. 

Obviously, I haven't thought out all the details, but I think you'll get the idea.

Oh, progression through game? Sellsword (no lands, no family)--> Hedge Knight (no lands, no family, but you are recognized for your worth) --> Sworn Knight (attached yourself to a Lord)--> Lord (Able to hold lands and start building a little empire of your own, but sworn to a king)--> several layers of Lords --> King (Top of the food chain, but have to contend with other Kings and can get knocked down with one wrong move.)  Naturally, the higher up you go the harder it is to keep your position without real skill and guile.  This will allow the positions to rotate quite often creating a nice dynamic landscape but physically and diplomatically.

[Krakrok]

Each day consists of 4-6 years.  That is real time!  Each real day, 4-6 years of game time passes regardless.  Each of these "years" represents a "level" for the armies or individual "heros" you assign to level for that time period. (i.e. Training.)  Yes, that is offline leveling at its finest, but you do have to be careful. 

This kind of thing does an end run around Mcquaid's catass player retention whine. The old "Legend of the Red Dragon" turns per day. It has player retention but no catassing. "The bigger you get, the harder you fall" mechanic keeps mega empires from sticking around for long. Your idea really sounds like MMO Merchant Prince which I'd play in a heartbeat.

[Fargull]

I have been thinking about perma-death for quite some time now. For it to work, you would need a really innovative way of handling character advancement. Maybe something like the old turn-based strategy games, where you could keep your best troops from mission to mission. Sure, you bitch and moan when you loose one of them, but you do not have to start over again and again.

Yes.  I like the idea.  Would be a group founding with the option of building a base structure similar to X-Com?  And the ability to attach those bases to other players (perhaps spaning cities and nations) allowing for large complexes or such.  Nice pie in the sky, but I could dig it.  Would make Alts something of a skill then, instead of just a time sink.

[Dren]

Each day consists of 4-6 years.  That is real time!  Each real day, 4-6 years of game time passes regardless.  Each of these "years" represents a "level" for the armies or individual "heros" you assign to level for that time period. (i.e. Training.)  Yes, that is offline leveling at its finest, but you do have to be careful. 

This kind of thing does an end run around Mcquaid's catass player retention whine. The old "Legend of the Red Dragon" turns per day. It has player retention but no catassing. "The bigger you get, the harder you fall" mechanic keeps mega empires from sticking around for long. Your idea really sounds like MMO Merchant Prince which I'd play in a heartbeat.

The idea is to make training/leveling easy, but with risk in the form of "defenselessness."  You can lvl up your armies while in a time of peace or lower than usual threat.  If your enemies allow you to do this for too long, they will come over the hill to face a very veteran kingdom.  There would be a balance to be played between veteran vs. zerg forces. (Choice: should I grow my army or train my army.)

That, along with all of the other micromanagement decisions and, more importently, diplomatic decisions would provide for a game that would be complex, but playable with 1-2 hours a day perhaps.  I suppose a catass would do slightly better just from those obvious reasons constantly being able to change actions depending on the environment would bring, but I'd try to balance this.  Direct action type gameplay could be directed in exploration areas, dungeons, etc.  Those activities could be used to moderately boost treasuries, boost fame/reputation, etc.  Again, those are catass type activities (meaning catasses would prevail since time played = reward.)  I suppose it could be used as a side diversion while the "years" go by in the game.

I'd almost rather keep this very niche.  In my mind, the game would progress in a way that really just allowed you to check in several times during a day to check that things are progressing well or make changes if they aren't.  Each play session would probably only be 15-30 minutes consisting of making commands to your armies/workers/knights/etc.  Combat would be turn-based (meaning it would take real days to finish.)  Some battles would be one turn (an army of 5000 vs. a small patrol of 50,) and others would take a week (epic battle of 15,000 vs. 17,000 perhaps.)  Sieges could take weeks. (food lines cut off, diplomatic discussions of surrender, etc.)

The pace of the game would be slow enough to allow anyone paying ANY attention to their kingdom enough time to make choices.  Those that turn their attention away considerably will start to lose ground, which is as it should be.  You are not rewarded for slumber in The Game of Thrones.

Yes, there would be prices to pay for maintaining a bloated kingdom as well.  These would be in the form of keeping citizens content, taxes fair but high enough to keep paying for things, borders become harder to protect since they are stretched thin, etc.  The best way to avoid these issues is to keep your diplomatic ties very strong.  As your kingdom increases, it become increasing difficult (and at some point impossible) without "friends."

[Velorath]

Actually that sounds almost like MMO Romance of the 3 Kingdoms.

[Dren]

Actually that sounds almost like MMO Romance of the 3 Kingdoms.

Excellent.  Somebody make that then.

[schild]

Actually that sounds almost like MMO Romance of the 3 Kingdoms.

Excellent.  Somebody make that then.

/very agree.

[Signe]

You do it.

[Velorath]

Actually that sounds almost like MMO Romance of the 3 Kingdoms.

Excellent.  Somebody make that then.

If Koei does, we'll probably never see it.  When it comes to MMO's they don't seem to want our money since they don't seem to have any plans to give us Nobunaga's Ambition Online or Uncharted Waters Online.  A shame since Uncharted Waters looks fairly unique.

[Strazos]

I think I would seriously make a mess in my pants if someone did a faithful adaptation of the Bronze Age Hellenic world, including Egypt and the Near East. Take down 100+ Persian Immortals as a single Greek Phalanx? Yes please. Be a young Spartan soldier, having to steal stuff at night to survive because the barracks headmaster doesn't feed you enough? Sure. Get uber quests from Athena? Kickass.

I also like the idea of a Medieval/Renaissance world full of economic competition, exploration, and political intrigue. Let me be a spy and actually SPY on people, and have some kind of lasting effect on the world. Let me become a little bastardly merchant prince. Lemme be a Brigand and lay waste to weakly guarded caravans, or scare the shit out of me when powerful PC's acting as escorts fight me off and scare me away. Lemme be a sponsored explorer that runs into indigenous populations, and let me decide how to treat them - I can befriend them and forge trade deals, go around them if I don't feel like dealing with them, or decimate them with superior arms and skills - any of these choices should benefit me.

Of course, none of the hairbrained ideas we come up with could actually work, as your average MMOG player actually LIKES the stupid grinds and derivative shit from WoW or Vanguard. Not having easily-obtained levels andvisible quest machines confuse and scare them.

[Righ]

your average MMOG player

Just over one year ago, the size of the MMOG market was smaller than it is now. Nothing really changed much except that a few more games were released that were more functional, a lot more people got online, and more people online started using broadband. These will continue to be factors which change the market, but so will the type of games.

The games designed today will not be played by "your average MMOG player". Perhaps "your average MMOG designer" is still blinkered enough to miss that, but I hope (and indeed suspect) not.

[HaemishM]

Righ has a point. Which such a larger pool of potential players to choose from, there SHOULD be more niche MMOG's in development. After all, there's a larger potential market to target.

But first we have to convince devs and suits alike that a profitable game with 50,000 players really isn't a bad thing.

[shiznitz]

Righ has a point. Which such a larger pool of potential players to choose from, there SHOULD be more niche MMOG's in development. After all, there's a larger potential market to target.

But first we have to convince devs and suits alike that a profitable game with 50,000 players really isn't a bad thing.

Of course, the first game that specifically targets a 50,000 sub audience with a carefully crafted game at a premium price on a $3 million budget will end up attracting 5-10x that.

[El Gallo]

I don't think you can make a game that will attract that many people on that budget anymore.

[Dren]

I don't think you can make a game that will attract that many people on that budget anymore.

I could.  Send me 3 million and I'll give it a shot.

[shiznitz]

I don't think you can make a game that will attract that many people on that budget anymore.

That's conventional wisdom talking. UO was made on a smaller budget. I bet those game dynamics could be duplicated into modern terms for that price, but that is a blatant, uninformed guess.

[HaemishM]

I don't think you can make a game that will attract that many people on that budget anymore.

Yes, you can. It just won't have pixel shaders and bump mapping and all the other useless shit that contributes fuckall to immersiveness, sitckiness or dare I say it, fun.

[Krakrok]

Of course, the first game that specifically targets a 50,000 sub audience with a carefully crafted game at a premium price on a $3 million budget will end up attracting 5-10x that.

Cap it at 50,000 subs then. Make them wait in line to subscribe to the game. You can't join until one of the 50k people quits. Let them sell their account on eBay for hundreds of dollars to people that want to play. Better yet provide the auction system for the accounts on your own site. Exclusive club MMOG for the win.

Ahhhh artificial scarcity capitalism.

---

MultiVerse is claiming you'll be able to create an indie MMOG on a $10k budget using their system.

[tazelbain]

There was another system like Multiverse that someone posted here, but they didn't support a free 3D modelers.  Kinda hard to build a MMOG for 10k when 4 copies of 3D Studio Max blows the budget. I hope one of these MMOG construstion sets pan out.  I have a ton of ideas. I'd like to try out without having to start at the very beginning.

[Viin]

Q: What tools are available for building 3D models for the Multiverse Platform?
A: Our binary format is the same as the Ogre .mesh format, and we have built a tool to convert models in the Collada format to this binary format. Maya, 3ds Max, Blender and XSI all have Collada exporters. Many other tools, such as Milkshape, can export into the Ogre .mesh format.

I have yet to see a good all-in-one "platform" for a game. Usually you pick by parts: networking system, graphics system, database system, etc. While their "demo" game (http://www.kothuria.com/) looks like ass, it is possible that in the right hands it could be made to look nice. The problem with such an approach is that you don't know what you have to sacrifice to get it there until you.. get it there. (Which is why most dev houses go with an inhouse 3d engine or license unreal/quake or other platform).

It looks like they are using the Axiom 3D engine (website down), which is a port of Ogre it seems.

What we really need is a standard UI language and a standard network communication language (not TCP/IP - I mean, MMO langauge to handle state changes, UI updates, etc etc), which could allow you to plug-n-play different graphics engines depending on OS and game mode. (Imagine being able to login in to a 2D/isometric 'god mode' to setup your harvesters, manage resources, task your peoples, build your fortress, etc on your Mac at work and then going home to login as your hero/avatar for some FPS/RPG action on your PC).

Sorry didn't mean to derail. :)

[Righ]

I think the derailment was pretty well established. It's probably a good point to reference a post closely related to the derailment on Raph's blog.

[Krakrok]

What we really need is a standard UI language

I'm not sure if you're meaning GUI when you say UI but if it were me I'd make Flash the standard GUI. It's vector, it's an industry standard (or at least has a broad install base), it's cross platform, it's scriptable, and accepts dynamic content at runtime. One of the problems indies have (at least the graphically challenged ones) is providing a polished user interface and Flash does that. I'm surprised more people don't use it as such.

I did some searching and it looks like Torque has this functionality which is nice.

[Viin]

The problem with Flash is that it's not very well suited for 3D games. It might be able to do the UI/GUI well, but anything 3D or 2 1/2D doesn't work very well.

When I mean language I mean like XML. If you can describe how the UI should look and function in a standard format, you could easily have plug-n-play UIs that will work in any engine (Flash, Unreal, Quake, HTML even) as long as it can support/translate that language.

Then, you could create your UI using Macromedia's Flash tools and plug it into your Unreal engine to provide the UI.

[Margalis]

XML is a format, not a language. We could both use XML to descibe our UIs but end up with two very different looking descriptions. What you want is a specific type of XML specialized for descibing UIs, like XAML or XUL.

The problem with Flash is that it's slow. Even for 2d things it's slow.

Also UI updates and state changes are two very different things. In a typical client you have state changes and then the UI responds to those changes - you never change the UI directly. That's why people can write customized UIs and mods and things like that.

The client might currently know the HP of everyone in a mile radius but you don't have to display that. You could write a mod that would though, or a mod that would based on a filter like "show me everyone near death." But you don't want the server saying "show this on the screen." All the server does is update state information and the client displays that however it wants. It can display your inventory as a 2d image, a 3d model, a window with grid lines, not show it at all, etc etc.