I believe that a combination of everything that has been said so far would give the most personalized MMO experience. I am working on an MMORPG myself and the experience is a combination of ''story per job class'' along with the rewards system based on player''s activity.

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Original post by sunandshadow
designers were locked into the D&D character class mindset which I hate and am really frustrated with as a standard component of mmorpg design.

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This is true, the standard D&D class mindset is getting old. FFXI has some different, more interesting classes, but the gameplay is just to "go get a party and kill the most monsters" and "get more money for my fantasy bling".

Another way to introduce drastically different classes is to create a futuristic RPG.

But really, I don't like classes at all. Why do you need to pick something you want to do through a menu? Why not be thrown into the world, and, maybe have to learn your basic skills from an NPC or other player.

Just as an example:
If it were a futuristic MMORPG you could have endless possibilites (sane as with a more D&D based fantasy). You could learn marksmanship from a NPC who hangs around the slums and stuff, which might get you thrown into a crime ring, or you could join the military and get put aboard a pace battle cruiser and climb through the ranks to captain.

A number of possibilites absed on what NPCs you talk to and don't. Maybe if you talked to some NPCs in the slums they offered you some drugs, these drugs could raise your health to by maybe 50% of what it usually is for about 1 or 2 ingame hours, but you get a dependency on it; your health is lowered slowly until you die unless you get what you need. If you went to join the military they'd screen you anbd would not allow you in until you were clean. So you'd have to go to the ingame drug rehab facility.


Stuff needs to be implemented to give MMOGs more depth than buying new stuff and killing monsters with it.



[edited by - valkyr on April 18, 2004 11:03:40 AM]

If you want to give each player a different goal, I got an idea for you. The goal of every player will be to find an artifact. However, it will be different artifact. Just randomly hide the object in the gameworld, and change the local NPC''s dialog a bit. Allso give each player a key to that artifact, so other players can''t get it and ruin it for him.

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Original post by someboddy
If you want to give each player a different goal, I got an idea for you. The goal of every player will be to find an artifact. However, it will be different artifact. Just randomly hide the object in the gameworld, and change the local NPC''s dialog a bit. Allso give each player a key to that artifact, so other players can''t get it and ruin it for him.

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MMORPG as easter egg hunt. Yeah... or not. So what happens when you find your artefact, is the game over, or do you just get a new one to find? That would be deadly boring to try to play.

Hate to shoot down your idea, someboddy, but yeah... that would suck. :\

What if designers just tailored the storyline of MMORPG''s to include the thousands of players that are always online. Instead of one person out of the population trying to stop the apocalyptic war or ultimate flaming sphere of doom or whatever, make the storyline revolve around all of the players in the game.

One way to do this would be to pose a serious threat on the game world, like an army of orcs or mutants or gelatinous cubes trying to wipe out the entire world. This would mean rethinking player death, making it more significant, but this would force each player to become an important part of the player population. Since most MMORPGs already focus on combat and killing things, this seems like it would be an easy feature to implement. The key to making this storyline idea the best would be to make your character developement system robust enough to allow for players to become recognized, to become a hero amongst heros.

Perhaps if the game would be run on virtual mini-servers with 100 or less people on each would make the game more personal, since in that case every player would matter a whole lot more. There''d have to be some easier way of contacting other players though, or it''d be a lot more lonely.

In sense, this is how they are already... and what happens is people usually don''t involve themselves in the story and end up going on the huge leveling and money-making grind. We want to pull the players away from the fighting scene a little and make it more of a story. It isn''t personalizing it either.

we want each player to have his or her own story, and seeing as how players think its too "geeky" or time-consuming to do it on their own, we have to give them each one or make it extremely easy to create their own.

Well, when I suggested that classes be the past of the character, when I was trying to get at is that the player should be set up with a role. It is a Role-Playing game, so you have to consider the mentality, do you want them to come in playing their own personality or playing the personality of a character that fits the context of the world?

Given that, I suppose having a in-depth background of a character would be beneficial, but again, it''d have to fit a context. Consider members of a rich family, they''d be more likely to know how to fense, but way less likely to know how to steal.

Well... you can''t really let someone pick from classes like "Person who saves the world" and "Party member of the guy who goes to stop the person tryin to save the world". Change those names around all you want to something more attractive, I don''t think you can really let the player decide from a menu at the get-go who they want to be.

Rather, let them pick a very general side (classical pick between good and evil, or just pick a side with no orientation, they are just fighting each other) and let that player deicde what he wants to do for that side. He could join the military, and later quit and become a vigilante-type with another group of radical players. SOMETHING has ot be done to allow dynamic character development and elimenate "I pick me lvl 46 fighter, im going to go pt 2night to get some exp and mad skillz!!".

I guess it all depends on the player though... You can''t force someone to role play. You can nudge them in the right direction and everything, but it''s what the players want to do.... and anyone will ever want to do in an MMO is kill monsters and get money..