Your MMOG Setting?

[Kenrick]

I got inspired by a thread on Corpnews.

First of all,
/slap

-Not sci-fi.
-Fantasy's been done into the ground.
-It's time for the wild West, a'la Outlaws. If I can help design it, I promise it won't suck.

[Paelos]

Something with pirates (why this hasn't been done yet I have no clue).

Ancient Rome, but only if I get to command units. Being a legionary isn't fun. I'd like to duel rival generals in instanced battlegrounds for more units and prestige ala, Rome:TW in an MMO format.

[eldaec]

Total War the MMOG.

Each player gains around a dozen unit slots over the course of his career. You can use about 4 or 5 in a battle at once, you can form groups of around 5 or 6 players to build an army of 20-25ish units.

Unit choice/abilities are fixed by your General's class.

Crafting, mining, and healing is done between battles by 'retinue' units (which a certain number of your 12 units have to be, say minimum of 3, maximum of 6).

DAoC RvR type set up with limited size battles for pvp, various limited size set piece npc battles in the home realm, as well as general hunting zones.

XP levels for your general gain you your 12 unit slots and points toward shiny abilities for heroes leading your units.

Death penalty is a little xp debt, plus units are healed up one at a time while out of combat (on or offline) by your retinue.


But you asked for a setting...

Star Wars, Ancient Rome, Epic Scale DAoC, WH40k, the napoleonic wears don't get much coverage I guess; to be honest I don't care much. Just give me Total War: teh MMOG.

[MrHat]

You guys might both want to read the PC Gamer review of Age of Empires 3.  They're trying for some persistant world stuff.

[Nebu]

The American West.  Like this, not like this.

Ancient Rome

[AcidCat]

Sci-Fi, space exploration, planet exploration,

Same here. Take something like Planetside but add space, more exploration, more interaction with the environment, PvE content, deeper character customization ....

[Pineapple]

How about all of you guys? Where would you like to play?

Road Warrior Online.

I want to run you off the road, loot your car, steal some of the gas, and peel out before the psycho clan shows up for scraps.

I want to get missions in outposts and build up a reputation out on the dangerous wastelands.

[WayAbvPar]

In order-

Shadowrun- I just loved this setting (mechanics were a bit clunky), partially because it is set in my home area (Seattle and surrounding). I thought it did a good job of melding tech with some magic with a decent explanation.

Cyberpunk- I want a 1337 Solo kthx.

Wild West- Something based on the Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove series would totally rock.

Car Wars- I even liked the buggy as hell Autoduel.

Wheel of Time- There is so much detail to the world already that it seems like a natural.

Song of Ice and Fire- brutal realism with very little magic.  Dave Rickey is working on something fantasy-ish with no demi-humans, so maybe that will satisfy this.

[Krakrok]

Firefly which is old west in space.

[sidereal]

Something with pirates (why this hasn't been done yet I have no clue).

http://www.piratesoftheburningsea.com/index.php">Woohoo!

[Paelos]

And they are using Steam to distribute....awwwwww, so close.

[Furiously]

Fallout / Road Warrior setting would be goodness (Long as they had cars and no banks for item storage. I would want this to be UO old school gank-o-rama.)

I think a survival/horror setting would be interesting too.  Zombies!

Perhaps the matrix will be cyberpunkie enough, I doubt it though.

[kaid]

I think one reason that SCI FI games has not really taken off is due to the way ranged weapons currently work in most mmrpg. I have just really not liked the way ranged combat feels in any scifi mmrpg I have tried yet.

If somebody throws a fire ball you give them a lot of leeway but man if somebody is shooting a gun like thing  that looks like a rifle but is only accurate between 64 meters and 60 meters it brings out the eye stabbing part of me.

I think it may be more doable if you went for a scifi game with a more COH style fluid combat system.


My personal favorite of games I would love to see done and done well is shadowrun. But this project would have some pretty big issues because that universe combines very realistic stuff with some advance scifi bits and throws in the elf dwarf thing into the mix. It would be really tough to do it without making you want to get stabby.

I am still a sucker for the ancient super NES and genesis shadowbane games.


kaid

[Lum]

So if someone gave me $20 million and told me to make an MMO I would (after asking for $20 million more - blackjack and hookers are expensive) create an MMO that roughly approximates what military colleges use to teach young officers about geopolitics.

Basically, everyone gets to run a country. (Set it in a mythical post-World War 2 era, but with no Cold War and no bipolar world - think the Warring States period of Japan, but with a lot more guns) You want to take over the world - or maybe not, maybe just develop your own little mercantile slice of heaven.  You have a military, which you can develop, and you might even use it once in a while, but generally wars bankrupt you as a nation and budding little Napoleans will figure out why world conquest never actually works.

The MMO part of this would be in live team support. Basically, the "quests" in this game would be global events. There's a tsunami, say, that has laid waste to 8 countries. Including a couple that are at war with each other. How do you as a world handle it? How do the international systems in place - alliances, UN equivalents, et cetera, react? Who takes advantage of it for political or economic gain? Who just wants to be nice guys?

This would not be a 3000 person game. This would be a 300 person game, with maybe 50 countries. You'd have a bit of "levelling up" to run your own country, depending on the country in question (maybe you need political support and get "elected" by the NPC voters, maybe you can take over in a coup and piss off the people who WERE running the place). None of this is rocket science, there are text MUDs (mostly sci-fi) that do this sort of thing all the time.

See, my pet theory is that there's a space in the market for a game that uses MMO design principles, but does not actually stick you in a suit of armor and expect you to run around a first-person-shooter level hitting bunny rabbits over the head for their lunch money. There's a level of seperation involved in playing a national metagame, yet still allowing for socialization and personal projection. People who've played PBM games of Diplomacy may be nodding their heads here.

This would also probably only cost around $5-10m to develop. Much less if it's done as an "indy" game with low production values. If it was done as a web game I could probably do it myself, if I had mythical spare time. But it would be pretty cheap. More money for the blackjack tables!

(Edit: Or as Schild said, "Jennifer Government. But not shitty and web based.")

[AcidCat]

I think one reason that SCI FI games has not really taken off is due to the way ranged weapons currently work in most mmrpg. I have just really not liked the way ranged combat feels in any scifi mmrpg I have tried yet.

If somebody throws a fire ball you give them a lot of leeway but man if somebody is shooting a gun like thing  that looks like a rifle but is only accurate between 64 meters and 60 meters it brings out the eye stabbing part of me.

That's why you make it play like Planetside.

I guess what I'm looking for is just the next generation MMOFPS. I just want more RPG elements to it.

And Krakrok, nice to see another Firefly fan. :)

[Krakrok]

@Lum: Sounds like the old BBS door game, Barren Realms Elite. I'd say a web version as a plugin for say phpbb where each website running phpbb would war against the other websites running phpbb. When is the first F13 vs. CorpNews game?

Edit: Or Flash based like Tactics Arena.

[Shockeye]

I'd say a web version as a plugin for say phpbb where each website running phpbb would war against the other websites running phpbb. When is the first F13 vs. CorpNews game?

This is your first and last warning.

[kaid]

Hehe I infact do play planetside I am not sure that kind of ranged combat would work super well in a more traditional mmrpg but it is a good fun game.

One thing that surprised me is we even managed to hook my friends wife on it and she is the most anti fps person you will ever meet. But there are enough support roles and things to do that don't require super ammounts of twitch ability.

If you went with this style combat you really would have to have a LOT of useful and fun support roles cause many people who would be attracted to it kinda suck at fps skills.

kaid

[Bunk]

This is your first and last warning.

Wow, your quick today :)

As to a setting, I like some of the ideas that have come up here:

Steampunk
Shadowrun
Firefly

What I think I would enjoy personally though, is something White Wolf based. I wouldn't have considered it before, but Bloodlines has warmed me to the idea. You would need more detailed character progress than what Bloodlines gives, but it could work.

I'd throw the whole mythos in: Vamps, Garou, Mages, etc.  Make use of limitations like sunlight, the Masquerade, lunar cycles, etc. to help balance things out.

Promblem is, it'll never happen because you can't make an MMO an M rated game and the setting won't work on anything less than that.

[stray]

Promblem is, it'll never happen because you can't make an MMO an M rated game and the setting won't work on anything less than that.

I wonder why. I bet if someone made a well produced X rated MMO, subs would be right up there with WoW and EQ.

[Bunk]

Probably true.

[Lum]

Promblem is, it'll never happen because you can't make an MMO an M rated game and the setting won't work on anything less than that.

UO was rated M.

[Pineapple]

UO was rated M.

I think it tried to get changed to a T rating however. They removed some sensitive items from the game. The expansions were going for T rating.

[Shannow]

pre-Clans Battletech (Clans are the Night Elves of Battletech)

Yes yes yes. (The clans are extra matured cheesy night elves, inner sphere all the way!)

[Shannow]

There is a roman empire MMOLG in development 'Victor Roma' or something?

A Rome Total War mmolg would be nice, with combat being army on army combat.

[Kail]

Personally, I kind of like Fantasy, but I think they can do a lot more with it than re-make Lord of the Rings.  My favorite settings have always been the science fiction/fantasy settings, like the old Phantasy Star games (before they replaced "plate mail armor and swords" with "neon spandex and glow-sticks"), or other variations on the fantasy theme.  Western/fantasy, like Wild Arms, is something I haven't seen a lot of, either.

One thing I just wanted to agree with is the idea a few people have mentioned here of moving the game more towards the strategy genre.  Considering that arguably the biggest strength of a massively multiplayer setting is it's ability to generate large groups of players in one place, I'm surprised there hasn't been more of a push to see some integration with games that are designed specifically to handle conflicts between large groups (like RTS games).  Something like Savage, or Allegiance, where players can be either a general commanding his army or a foot soldier down on the front lines, seems like it would be a lot of fun, compared to the sort of aimless, ant hill milling around that I'm seeing in World of Warcraft.

[Polysorbate80]

Paranoia - Already said too much...

I vote for this, since there will never be a grind--deaths being as frequent and gruesome as they are in Paranoia, nobody will ever advance beyond level one :)

[Shockeye]

Paranoia - Already said too much...

I vote for this, since there will never be a grind--deaths being as frequent and gruesome as they are in Paranoia, nobody will ever advance beyond level one :)

There used to be a game for MajorBBS called "Infinity Complex". That was essentially Paranoia. Great fun.

[geldonyetich]

Personally I'd like to see the old PnP Shadowrun turned into an MMO. It fused Cyberpunk and Fantasy and worked for the most part.

It's not online, but look what I found.   Although it only really focuses on the "decker" aspect, and not the fantasy hybrid.

[schild]

(Edit: Or as Schild said, "Jennifer Government. But not shitty and web based.")

I almost wrote all the shit you just wrote. Then I realized it would be a MMO Jennifer Government. And you know what? Our aggreeing on this scares me.

[daveNYC]

Independence War.  I'd also suggest Freespace, but the players would be more limited.

[Raguel]

To be honest, for the past several months I've thought about a mmog based on Europe during Elizabeth I's reign (1558- 1608). IIRC Francis Walsingham, her majesty's secretary of state,  is credited as the father of "modern" espionage. I just made my first class in C++ a week ago so it'll be awhile before my Walsingham Project sees the light of day :p

[Comstar]

Firefly. Cowboys in space.

Car Wars. Leet Speek is the voice of the future, and it counts as role playing.  It even has zombies where the nukes landed.

Freespace. With trading and stuff.

Total War the MMOG (which was what WHFB online was going to be at one stage).

Star Wars......err never mind.

[Rodent]

Ironseed online, Privateer Online, Middle Earth online ( Asatru middle earth, not tolkien ).

[Tebonas]

Firefly online, or a Western themed game without spaceships.

Fallout Online

Shadowrun Online

or, for the fun of it, Darklands Online (Medieval Europe with Saints and Alchemy)