How to addict consumers to a real next-generation MMO

Can only speak for myself but I'd be a fan of less combat skills. I'll take a more classic EQ approach rather than the piano playing across 6 full hotbars EQ2 style.

Jais_sl said:

Can only speak for myself but I'd be a fan of less combat skills. I'll take a more classic EQ approach rather than the piano playing across 6 full hotbars EQ2 style.

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Some classes warrant that many... I wonder if those wanting 5 don't play mages. I can see for a rogue or warrior something having few skills but a mage with 5 skills ? My wizard in DDO has like 30 or something and they are all useful ( a bunch are buffs and non combat however, so maybe 15 combat ones). of course, this assumes the game has depth with resists, different CC resists and such.. which has gone the way of the dodo.. so perhaps i am just stuck in the past forever !

My Pokemon/Harvest Moon Cross-IP MMO idea isstillbetter than all of this.

A lot of this I could be on board with, but yeah, count me in with those who really like 1 char. I have 0 desire to play an mmo where I have to switch between 100 different avatars depending on what I want to do. And yeah, I played 1 guy on LoL the dozen times I played it before going "So wait, this is the whole game?". Same thing with PvP in Wow, I have friends who are still playing hours of random bg's a day, they have done thousands upon thousands of them, and they still love it.

Me personally? Give me a solid Main I enjoy, and a lot of different things to do and I'm pretty much happy as can be.

The Secret World is in quite a few ways (but lacking in some areas) what you're looking for. I'm sad that a game that innovated as well as TSW did hasn't had the success it (IMO) deserves.

It still suffers from the 'endgame' syndrome but not as badly as the mainstream MMOs. Most of the content is still current for most players due to the continual addition of new skills to learn. It's a 1 character game too which I really like. No alts, because you can do everything on one character.

Nice ideas but I didn't mind leveling so much as I hated ghost towns. And even more then I hated ghost towns is the feeling of wasted time I get when I level an alt. I feel like all of my gear, achievements, professions, etc. have to be repeated again on every alt and that eventually puts me off.

I am the type of player who wants to experience every class type and story but I want what I have accomplished to follow me regardless of what character I am playing. I like to jump around a lot instead of focusing on one class at a time but when I accomplish a difficult achievement I wish I didn't feel like I needed to do it again on every alt. Especially if resources or time limits are involved. I don't want to repeat every holiday event on 6 alts.

To that end I think a leveling system is fine as long as it is combined with a robust subjob system that includes access to lots of bonuses experience items, consumables, events etc. for min/maxers to take advantage of. I would also like it to be an endless subjob system where you can keep leveling as many classes as you want. Let me really invest and grow attached to a singular character through but only vertical character development but also horizontal character development.

Lastly the solution to ghost towns is just stop making so many servers and take a page from Guild wars. One server with new zones opened and closed as they fill up or empty.

They could even go so far as to include advanced low level dungeons specifically for people leveling subjobs.

Moving from levels to achievement based content will be nice. Achievement content is a more accurate representation of what levels are supposed to be a symbol of.

You can cheese them both. But so what, you can "cheat" at any game.

We could start by not trying to make MMOs PVP esports. That shit is terrible for the genre.

Sean_sl said:

My Pokemon/Harvest Moon Cross-IP MMO idea isstillbetter than all of this.

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For pure moneymaking addiction success? I can't see anything being better. Social Media + collect 'em all + progressive goals that require both the previous concepts = Dollar Bills. Lots of them. I mean I would fund that shit and invest in the company because unless it is a complete disaster (assuming that all things technical are handled to a level that is compatible with modern machines and the technology required to run to a degree of acceptability) it would damn near literally print money.

You're simply replacing leveling with item levels. It's basically the same thing. The only real advantage using items instead of levels is it allows the skipping item levels and reaching current endgame quicker for those that are enabled by whatever means to do so. I don't see any real value in fast paced leveling ether with gear are levels. A good mmog in my view shouldn't allow people to hit max level for months. Six months to a year to hit ether max level are max gear level for the semi dedicated longer for the casuals. I honestly think player levels work better because it meters the limited amount of content better over the duration.

The current model of 100 million dollar mmog that have people at max level in two weeks and then max gear two weeks later doesn't seem to be working.

Restriction breeds creativity. I agree 5 is a bit low and he doesnt allow for switching them, but 8-10 active abilities is fine (worked for GW1 and EQ, among others). He makes it a very LoL like approach in his OP which might work. At least it's different.

At least I want games to stop with having umpteen duplicate skills per class that are ever so slightly different. Different skills that really do different things, sure. But not Fireball, Fireblast and Firestrike that are all the same but one has a yard more range, one has 5 dps more and the last one uses a bit less power. That might as well be one spell and is pointless ability bloat.

Removing the "game begins at level cap" attitude and the waste that goes into rushed leveling content is a great idea too. You're not going to train players to accept such a change without a radical solution though. Either have no levels or have unlimited levels that only give a point each to spend on something (EVE, UO, EQ-like AA or GW skill points or PS2 certs but without the levels).

The smaller amount of abilities means that it's easier to balance against other classes. This means you can constantly add new characters into the game which is kind of a fun thing to do.

When you don't have 80 levels and giant talent trees, it also makes things easier as well. LOL's model is really really good for this.

I wouldn't mind a game that comes out with a bunch of classes (warriors, healers, rogues, mages, etc), that has forced grouping and a steep levelling curve, has huge raids, and doesn't cater to casuals at every turn.

I'm basically asking for an Everquest that doesn't follow WoW's formula. I would even pay a subscription.

Is this hard?

This F2P shit gotta go, shit is cray

If I could design an MMO-/ARPG it would work something like this.

PvE

The characters would only have 5 abilities each BUT each ability would have "versions" that actually would allow for vdifferent mechanics behind each skill (So, like Whirl Wind, but one WW can lifesteal, another can make you move faster ect). The world would be open and for this game, despite the fact that I don't like instancing, it would be heavily instanced. There would be dozens of dungeons of every difficulty level, and large, huge, amounts of gear. There would be levels, but they would not affect mechanics of game play--which means a level 1 could potentially, given the right gear, hit as hard as a level 99 (Or whatever).

However, there would be "experience" like power--as you can augment abilities with experience (rather than putting it into your level.) Think of this as kind of like AA's, except each ability has it's own little "build up" that you can slowly build into--however, every time you swap a skill, you lose this build up. These would be called "Skill levels". So again, taking "Whirl Wind" as an example--You'd select which "version" of WW you want to build up, lets say it's the "life steal" one--and every level of that you gain experience for, you get slightly more lifesteal. If you were building up the version that gives you higher movement speed, then every level might give you a small amount of movement speed.

These would be "capped". However, if you swap them, you lose the levels on each ability. Players WOULD have reasons to swap, as items will also give levels to abilities, and the +skill levels on items, would allow abilities to exceed their inherent caps. So for example, an Axe drops with +1 Whirl Wind Life Steal skill level--you have that skill maxed at 5% Life Steal, the Axe now boosts it to 6%. (There would be overall soft caps from +Item Skill levels ect--so players would have to watch and diversify their items to get the most out of +skill levels).

Character levels would be used strictly as a fame type system, which would allow you to unlock various dungeons--these dungeons would have progressively higher difficulty and better chances at loot (But maybe not better loot overall--However, I imagine level "bosses" would have small chances at unique loot). The caveat, however, would be that higher end dungeons reduce your level upon death. Level 90+ dungeons would take away 2-3 levels--and these levels could take a significant amount of time to regain--if you are knocked below 90, for example, you're then restricted to dungeons that require 80+ or lower.

Also, these "high end" dungeons would not re-spawn until you die and their mechanics would work similar to an "endless" dungeon--so the deeper you go, the harder, but you get more loot and more chances at those "unique" boss drops. And it would just continue on, the developers adding levels. (Levels would be random, bosses would not be. It should be kind of a source of notoriety to kill X or Y boss in the high end, 99 dungeon--because remember, a death locks you out of for a few days.)

Middle tier dungeons (Lets say 60-70+) would hardly take away anything and would have a far lower hit to levels. Essentially, these dungeons would be experience grinding grounds for when you're locked out of the higher dungeons for dying. These dungeons would still drop good loot, ect, just not at the samequantityas the max level dungeons.

Between tweaking skills to adapt your build to new items. And recovering from progression in the max level dungeons--the game would emphasize grinding for both loot and a constant stream of experience in the various dungeons. And all of this would be to help in PvP.

PvP

The same characters you've been farming on would be placed in a MOBA. When the game starts, however, all of their items are grayed out, and all of their skill "levels" are set to 0. So at the start of the game, everyone is a generic version of character X or Y and somewhat balanced. As the game progresses however, and people farm up gold, instead of an item shop, there would be an "unlocking" store. Each item slot would cost X gold to unlock. So chest piece? 2k gold. Weapon? 2.5k gold. Also, each skill "level" for your skills would cost a small amount of gold to unlock.

Unless you become extremely fed in the game, you won't unlock all of your gear or "skill levels". It's up to the player to decide which pieces of gear or skill levels will be the most beneficial to him in this game. As the game progresses, and people's wildly different gear comes into play, obviously things will become less balanced--a very farmed character will be a good deal stronger than one who hasn't farmed a lot in the PvE game.

However, the start of the game, everyone is even--so a better player will unlock his gear and "skill levels" far faster. Allowing him to potentially end the game with skill before the better farmer/more geared character can really access his power. So the first half of the match, the "lane" phase, would be determined mostly by skill--and even a better geared character can be shut out if he's outmatched. But the second half of the game, all that farming and character build up would come into play, so if two people are relatively even in skill levels, the one who is better farmed will be stronger.

Anyway, just a game I'd design if I could design them--I think combining the need to farm to be stronger WITH an allowance of skill and balance at the start of the match, would make a neat game. Champions could literally train out in the world and become stronger for "the arena", but player skill would have a bearing on how they can use or be locked out of that strength. I'd find it addicting, but who knows.