Afrofire - Character development is a big draw for a large amount of MMO players. Planetside does not give much in the way of character development and has lost many of the RPG-friendly users because of it. Ultima Online seems to have a market though, so your type of game seems fairly viable. I''d certainly give it a shot as long as the gameplay was interesting and the quests were fun. I''ve always hated games that make you relearn things though. . . that adds repetition. UO was neat, but degrading skills are bleh.
Kylotan -
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But that is not very relevant to designers, who know that most gamers will never complete a game anyway. They know they can''t stop some people from leaving mid-way because the vast majority just don''t have that kind of attention span. That''s not lost revenue. However, if someone reaches the max level/skill cap/whatever, and then leaves out of boredom, that''s a problem because you''ve just encountered someone who was willing to continue playing your game but was unable to do so. That is lost revenue. Therefore designers worry a lot about the end-game because they know it''s the place where they need to improve the most.
As long as a game had solid and fun everytime gameplay, I''d play it over and over. I''d want to see character development over time, but hell levels wouldn''t be nearly as tedious if I were having fun playing. I see what you are saying, but DAoC serves as a good example of how good gameplay keeps retention up. That game had more level capped players that continued to play than any other game I''ve ever played. The game would need some additions for level capped players. I like the idea of an alternate leveling system once levels are maxed.
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Could you elaborate on these points in turn? (See below - dink) I think you''re too rooted in your own experiences of MMORPGs to see the theoretical side. In particular, all of the above can be solved in simpler ways but often designers choose not to.
- makes grouping seamless.
The healer circles would allow players to get "grouped" whenever they bind to one of the circles. Basically they would be assigned to one of the healers and get access to chat specific to that healer. It would be neat if you could group types of players to each healer too. My idea would be set up to have mages and archer types on the walls and melee in a courtyard defending against those mobs that break through. Grouping these together could help with moving the healer''s camera around. The additional benefit of this is that the shifting camera for healers lets them be closer to the battles. Healing has always been divorced from the action a bit.
- eliminates long travel times.
Want to go fight? Go to your town''s guards and get warped to the zone appropriate for your level and help your faction be victorious. No travel time needed.
- eliminates mob camping and kill stealing issues.
Kills are communal and the mobs come to you. This is like camping in that you set up to kill things in one area (once you''ve taken the objective) but I''m referring to long camp times on rare spawn mobs. Rare spawn mobs are either lucky waves if the wave system is randomized (with parameters for difficulty), or you get them after defeating the maximum number of waves and "winning" an area. Rotating through all the waves would spawn the area boss.
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Time sinks are there by choice. Nobody forced the developers to make the Chastity Belt of Cthulu only appear once in every 40 respawns. They chose to do so in order to make it more valuable and to give people a long-term goal. Long-term goals = retention, retention = cash. On my online game I banned such items because I, like you, disagree with the principle of it. But I don''t bill customers periodically. For a standard MMORPG with standard billing, they''re pretty much forced to suck up your time
I couldn''t agree with you more that time sinks are programmed on purpose. Wouldn''t it be much more fun if instead of having the uber rare loot drop on rare occassions it dropped when an alliance of guilds got together and really laid waste to an area to get a boss mob to spawn? You could still make things rare as far as drop rates. What if the boss mob drops a rare and really good but not fanttasic item all the time, but an ultra rare super item every 1 in 20 times? Of course the numbers could be adjusted, and I wouldn''t even add ultra rare loot until after beta balancing and a post launch balance confirmation period. My experience from betas is that the players who find bugs or the optimum way of doing something do not report it or do not have the resources to make it happen until after a game has launched.
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In such a game, the developers might be tempted to charge you on a per-quest basis rather than a per-month one.
Hah! Not unless they were attempting to lower company stock.
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How does Y relate to X? And won''t this just be Reverse Camping, except that the monsters come to you? What about when the Z wave arrives, the players get beaten, and you now have a large mob of angry and tough creatures gathered at that spot? Do they get bored and wander off to give the players a chance? I can see some merit to this idea and it certainly adds some variety but I''m not convinced it''s really any different from the normal gameplay.
X being the defenders, they would probably have an advantage. I''d have to play around with it, but I''d definitely want Y (the first wave of attackers) to be a warm-up wave. This is a timesink of my own. ^^ Getting the castle/objective should not be that difficult because I''d like to see low population areas able to acheive this. The real xp and loot would come through holding out over time.
Yes, it would be reverse camping.
As for after the players are defeated. I see this as kind of how it is done in DAoC. After an NPC attacker kills the objective''s NPC leader then the players would get a defeat screen. The surviors would load back in to the starting area, the attacking mobs would poof, and the X mobs (defenders) would spawn in.
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