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Original post by Gyrthok As to the super villan aspect, why use a potion to make a player more powerful when you could use your afore-mentioned Rare and Unique Magical Artifacts? While these items are rare and offer some benefits, some truely rare artifacts (where talking 2 or 3 here tops) could allow the player to become extremely (unbalancingly so) powerful.

For sure - but as I mentioned above, I don't think all rare/powerful/magical items should be directly combat related (ie. weapons or armour), and the potion was simply an example which fitted this. The occasional weapon or armour (or ring that increases skill, etc, the list goes on [wink]) is of course also good - the key thing to such a system is simply to keep such items quite rare (and therefore valuable), it doesn't actually matter all that much what specifically the items are. Also note that as the number of players increases, the number of powerful items the game can include while they are still considered rare also increases, but probably not in a linear fashion of x-players = y-items, as some items possibly being more powerful than others (such as those that may intentional be unbalancing) would have to be taken into account.

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Original post by Gyrthok If a player has a key unique and rare item and just doesn't logon anymore, then for all intents and purposes the item is removed from the game. The possible solutions to this might be to re-introduce the key item into the game at a random location if the player is logged out to long, or to allow someone to 'steal' it while the player is offline.

Ah yes, an excellent point, that's definately an issue that would have to be dealt with. I'm inclined to avoid the idea of stealing from an offline player, but I'm sure with the correct game design that could probably be made to work.

I do like the idea of tracking logins for these purposes. Considering the rarity of such items, it probably wouldn't have an adverse effect on the game's balance if an item were taken out of the game for a reasonably significant period of time - perhaps characters who do not login for an entire month (or a shorter time, such as two weeks - I image such a system would require a fair bit of fine tuning to get right) could be marked as inactive, and any rare/valuable items they possess could then be reintroduced into the game world. The reintroduction could come in the form of the item being re-spawned at a random location, being given to an NPC who supposedly stole it from the character in question, or perhaps the item could simply be deleted, allowing for the creation of a new item without upsetting the balance of the world. If records were kept of items deleted/replaced, they could perhaps be reintroduced at a later stage - imagine the player reaction when the famed Lost <item> of <character> re-appeared after being gone from the game world for over a year (in real-world time, not game-time).

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Original post by Gyrthok some truely rare artifacts (where talking 2 or 3 here tops) could allow the player to become extremely (unbalancingly so) powerful, that would require a couple of players, or a group of players to challenge him and take the item from him. Such items could also have drawbacks to using/possessing them, such as in Shinobi with his mystical sword that had to be "Fed" lest it eat away his health. Certain items may even dissappear on their own for awhile, reappearing every full moon or so for people to take possession of. This would surely give some items a legendary reputation and mythos about them, with some of them droping from the game for awhile before reappearing to wreak havoc again.

I definately like the ideas here, especially in regards to possible drawbacks to some items. Some powerful items could also potentially constantly draw (very) powerful eneies to the player, meaning that if they wish to keep and use the item, they will have to put up with being constantly harassed by these opponents. Perhaps some items (I'm thinking things that must be actively used here, such as wands, pendants that unleash some power, etc) could allow a player to unleash a powerful effect, but in doing so the player draws the attention of an unbalancingly powerful opponent. Surely the power provided by such an item would be worth having, but the player would have to be very careful when/where they used it.

You have also given me another idea:
How about a powerful evil entity, that possesses a random player (or perhaps one picked on a variety of criteria) once every 1-3 months (real world time), and either stays with the player for a limited period of time (such as a few days), or stays with the player until dealt with (I tend to prefer this option). This may or may not manifest visible signs, but there would have to be some kind of clue to other players that this had happened (an oracle of some sort senses that the evil has reentered the world?). The possessed player would remain in control of thier own character, but would be granted additional skills/abilities/etc for the duration of the possession, and could even be given hints of things to do by the entity that inhabits them (a voice that only the possessed player can hear).

I've also been toying with the idea of a way to trigger global events, in the form of massive wars:
Many games track the 'karma' or 'alignment' of players - basically how good or evil they have been. This is typically based on things such as stealing, killing, etc. This information could be used in one of two different ways that I havn't seen in current titles:

-As a balancing agent. Basically, if the majority of players are being good, there will be more (powerful) NPC's present in the world. If the collective karma of the players falls (more evil acts), then there should be more PvP conflict, and less NPC activity would be required. If karma is allowed to automatically reset slightly towards good over time, this would also naturally detect if players weren't doing much at all, and generate more for them to do (as the number/power of evil NPCs would be increased).

-To severely unblance the world, with the aim of creating an epic world-event. In my opinion, this option would be trickier to implement well, and would probably require a lot of fine-tuning. In this case, whenever the collective karma of the player body dropped below a certain threshold, a 'great evil' would be unleashed upon the world. This could come in the form of several powerful evil beings, a single, incredibly powerful evil being, many (a significantly larger than normal number of) regular powered evil beings, or some balanced combination of the 3. Another potential option in this situation would be to pick out one or several of the most evil players, and bestow additional benefits upon them. Taking the neccesary action to defeat such a threat (requiring players to band together against the evil) would reset the collective karma, restarting the cycle.

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I definately like the ideas here, especially in regards to possible drawbacks to some items. Some powerful items could also potentially constantly draw (very) powerful eneies to the player, meaning that if they wish to keep and use the item, they will have to put up with being constantly harassed by these opponents. Perhaps some items (I'm thinking things that must be actively used here, such as wands, pendants that unleash some power, etc) could allow a player to unleash a powerful effect, but in doing so the player draws the attention of an unbalancingly powerful opponent. Surely the power provided by such an item would be worth having, but the player would have to be very careful when/where they used it.

It would certainly encourage players to be careful with specific items, and the fact that it attracts monsters could be used to the players advantage to lure them into other groups of players to wreak havoc. ;D However, the first thing that pop's into my mind about it is "Exploit", players possessing an incredibly powerful item (even if it isn't that powerful for combat) that lures powerful monsters to him could be abused to farm monsters for experience (if there is any) and items. This is all depending on whether it would be worth it to do that, if most items are generic and there's no XP then it doesn't matter. The player would likely at that point either not use the item (or at least use it as a weapon of destruction towards others) or use it when he's bored with a bunch of friends to get a quick mob going.

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How about a powerful evil entity, that possesses a random player (or perhaps one picked on a variety of criteria) once every 1-3 months (real world time), and either stays with the player for a limited period of time (such as a few days), or stays with the player until dealt with (I tend to prefer this option). This may or may not manifest visible signs, but there would have to be some kind of clue to other players that this had happened (an oracle of some sort senses that the evil has reentered the world?). The possessed player would remain in control of thier own character, but would be granted additional skills/abilities/etc for the duration of the possession, and could even be given hints of things to do by the entity that inhabits them (a voice that only the possessed player can hear).

This is a very interesting idea, the evil voice telling you to kill your friends then yourself, lol. I could see people having fun with that screaming "I HAVE VOICES IN MY HEAD!! AHH!!", and playing along with it. Some new players may become confused or not play along at all, so perhalps it should effect players who have had a specific amount of game time and know whether to take advantage of it or not. Conversely, Mage/healer/oracle classes (if there are any) can have visions or tell when such things occur. As well, another option would be to have special "Evil" places, such as destroyed temples where monsters roam. Players would naturally wander in those places, and occasionally one of the dormant alters/shrines could activate with an evil spirit in it and possess one of the players.

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I've also been toying with the idea of a way to trigger global events, in the form of massive wars: Many games track the 'karma' or 'alignment' of players - basically how good or evil they have been. This is typically based on things such as stealing, killing, etc. This information could be used in one of two different ways that I havn't seen in current titles: -As a balancing agent. Basically, if the majority of players are being good, there will be more (powerful) NPC's present in the world. If the collective karma of the players falls (more evil acts), then there should be more PvP conflict, and less NPC activity would be required. If karma is allowed to automatically reset slightly towards good over time, this would also naturally detect if players weren't doing much at all, and generate more for them to do (as the number/power of evil NPCs would be increased). -To severely unblance the world, with the aim of creating an epic world-event. In my opinion, this option would be trickier to implement well, and would probably require a lot of fine-tuning. In this case, whenever the collective karma of the player body dropped below a certain threshold, a 'great evil' would be unleashed upon the world. This could come in the form of several powerful evil beings, a single, incredibly powerful evil being, many (a significantly larger than normal number of) regular powered evil beings, or some balanced combination of the 3. Another potential option in this situation would be to pick out one or several of the most evil players, and bestow additional benefits upon them. Taking the neccesary action to defeat such a threat (requiring players to band together against the evil) would reset the collective karma, restarting the cycle.

Hmm... You have to understand that players usually don't need any kind of excuse to turn violent, just give them a weapon and they'll gladly turn on each other with zeal. Determining what Good behavior, and Bad behavior at that point becomes a little subjective. Then again, Ultima Online implemented a rather effective system with the Virtues that the players can follow to determine good/evil. I figure it might be something like Star Wars in this respect, not so much more/evil monsters, but greater bonus's of power being given to evil players depending on how good/bad other players are. This could create a very interesting and dynamic balance system. In other MMORPG's balancing of this nature tends to be really difficult, since people have a tendancy to gravitate to "The Winning Team", so if the loosing team's avatars get great bonus's to even out the balance of power, it would still keep gameplay even and fun.

I do like the idea of being able to eventually summon a horde of monsters or a great evil though. It could be that certain Evil items of this nature may appear when the tides of evil are high for the evil players to use, with it being so destructive that good players would not be inclined to use it. This would have to be balanced very carefully so as not to tip the balance of power overwhelmingly in the bad players favor.

My attempt at epicness is to have a bunch of small communities against each other, and the option for guilds to form their own guilds. The default ones could be taken over.

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Original post by Gyrthok This is a very interesting idea, the evil voice telling you to kill your friends then yourself, lol. I could see people having fun with that screaming "I HAVE VOICES IN MY HEAD!! AHH!!", and playing along with it. Some new players may become confused or not play along at all, so perhaps it should effect players who have had a specific amount of game time and know whether to take advantage of it or not. Conversely, Mage/healer/oracle classes can have visions when such things occur. As well, another option would be to have "Evil" places, such as destroyed temples where monsters roam. Players would naturally wander in those places, and occasionally one of the dormant alters/shrines could activate with an evil spirit in it and possess one of the players. (edited slightly for length)

Good point about the fact that not everyone would always play along. Perhaps this could be taken advantage of in order to generate more possible player activities. It's already been established that an entity possessing one of the players would grant them certain benefits (skills increases/boosted stats/whatever) in addition to making suggestions for what they should do - how about it only gives them these benefits if they do what it says? It could even hinder them to some extent if they directly oppose it's suggestions, and perhaps there are some complex/difficult/risky ways of removing such a creature without dying in the process, for those good characters who may choose to resist.

This could potentially impart some kind of lesser but permanent benefits upon the player if they are successful - so they get the option of quickly gaining some (potentially a fair amount) more power, going on a bit of a rampage, and basically being as evil and destructive of possible for as long as they can survive, or alternately, they could go on a difficult, dangerous quest, and end up being (very) slightly more powerful permenantly as a result if they succeed.

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Original post by Gyrthok However, the first thing that pop's into my mind about it is "Exploit", players possessing an incredibly powerful item (even if it isn't that powerful for combat) that lures powerful monsters to him could be abused to farm monsters for experience (if there is any) and items. This is all depending on whether it would be worth it to do that, if most items are generic and there's no XP then it doesn't matter.

I personally think that it would be better if most items are generic, and that either there is no XP, or the game is designed and balanced in such a way as to make XP considerations effectively negligible. Brand new characters, while weaker than the most experienced, should not be too significantly weaker - and this would mean that farming XP probably isn't worth the effort.

If those considerations (item/XP farming) are dealt with effectively, then it's no longer a problem if players intentionally misuse such an item to lure monsters in - it infact provides another activity to keep players occupied, and one that they're likely to enjoy at least once, since they would have effectively 'thought of it themselves'. I've noticed that players seem to love finding and experimenting with things that the developers may not have thought of, and I believe they would likely consider this to fall into that category. If the lured monsters are particularly powerful, I can even see powerful groups of players banding together and preparing, then luring an incredibly challenging monster in and seeing if they can take it down by working together and using some clever planning.

Just as a little note on my beliefs with regards to XP/Leveling - this to some extent removes the primary reason a lot of players play (or at least keep playing) this type of game - direct competition with other players to try to have the best, most powerful character, with the greatest equipment. This means that gameplay will have to be improved so as to provide a new reason to play, and to continue to play.

imo there is no point to creating a static story in a mmorpg.
If the game design is good the players should make the storyline through interactions with other players. This has yet to be accomplished. For pre-written storylines i will stick to Morrowind.

So you ask "How would players create a story through interaction?"
answer: you just have to look at the world today and ask "how do events transpire?"

1. politics - most of events today happen because of politics therefore there must be politics in the game. This would involve electing a leader/mayor/king for each town/province/city/country every month. All the technical problems i can think of have a work around. I.e. inactive leaders are replaced with the runner up in the vote.

2. Justice system - If a player commits a crime he will be imprisoned for a period of time depending on the crime. Jail breaks could be organised. If a criminal flees to another town politics would come into play. Harbouring a known criminal - this means war!!

3. Death = restart. If you can die with a mere loss of goods/skills there would be havoc. Less focus on skill building and more on your role as a character. Dying should be harder - fighting could result in unconsciousness. If you do kill someone you could loose humanity which would make your model appear evil. If you are careful you should only die a few times per year (irl).

4. Bounty system - bring in known criminals for a fee.

Many things could develope if people communicate.
Killing AI rats and goblins isnt role playing. Its hacking and slashing with stat building. How exactly is that role any different to anyone elses role?

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Original post by Riviera Kid 2. Justice system - If a player commits a crime he will be imprisoned for a period of time depending on the crime. Jail breaks could be organised. If a criminal flees to another town politics would come into play. Harbouring a known criminal - this means war!!

In the event that there isn't a break-out, how do you propose making imprisonment entertaining for the criminal character. This situation presents a bit of a catch22 - if jail is fun, it's not a deterant from crime, but if it isn't jailed players may very well simply leave the game, or perhaps create a new character that isn't in jail, abandonning the other to it's boring fate.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster This is something that is _probably_ impractical for a community game, or any real game project, but here it comes anyway. *snip* Dread at the nightmarish complexity of the system needed. It is called real life and the server is down... Faithfully Yours, Nicolas FOURNIALS

Very interesting suggestion. It would indeed be very technically challenging, and the sheer effort and time required to organise all the different modules, interactions and interdependacies would be amazing. This is something that could very well work if done correctly however, but I think it would take a lot of dedicated and skilled people a long time to implement.

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Original post by Kazgoroth Quote: Original post by Riviera Kid 2. Justice system - If a player commits a crime he will be imprisoned for a period of time depending on the crime. Jail breaks could be organised. If a criminal flees to another town politics would come into play. Harbouring a known criminal - this means war!! In the event that there isn't a break-out, how do you propose making imprisonment entertaining for the criminal character. This situation presents a bit of a catch22 - if jail is fun, it's not a deterant from crime, but if it isn't jailed players may very well simply leave the game, or perhaps create a new character that isn't in jail, abandonning the other to it's boring fate.

you would still be able to communicate with the outside world via e-mails. Spells could be used to escape. Or you could be released on bail. Not maximum security. Not too long to piss off players/newbies.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster @Kazgoroth : Ok, this is settled. But do you think the amount of time and involvement needed to create such a network of servers would be a worthwile one? Let me get this straight: do you think that the invested time in the development of this structure could in fact SAVE time further on in the development of AI for NPC, economical structures, recessions' conditions large scale quests and so on and so forth, or would it only be a gadget feature which would bring nothing to the development?

I think this could provide for a very interesting game, and furthermore, would help to deliver relevant content to specific players, as they would only require the modules for the types of gameplay they wished to try out. In addition, this could also allow for more flexibility with what can be implemented, as different play styles would not neccesarily have to be conformed to working in the same interface as everything else.

Having actual players in place of most (if not all) NPCs could definately improve the experience to a fair extent - but then, there is the flip side - an actual human player might not be quite as reliable as an NPC. While this certainly makes it more interesting, it also could be rather annoying to certain players.

In short, I think it could turn out either way, depending upon implementation, as well as of course, how well players actually take to such a system, and work within it.

I'd certainly like to see it at least tried.

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Original post by Kazgoroth In the event that there isn't a break-out, how do you propose making imprisonment entertaining for the criminal character. This situation presents a bit of a catch22 - if jail is fun, it's not a deterant from crime, but if it isn't jailed players may very well simply leave the game, or perhaps create a new character that isn't in jail, abandonning the other to it's boring fate.

Im having a jail element in my game and I want it to be an actual jail. So Im making it so that jail is treated much like prison life is today. Players have to join a gang for protection and battle it out with other inmates. Sentences for PCs would be shortened of course. I couldnt see keeping a player in jail for more than a week or two, tops. But while theyre in jail, it essentially becomes a PvP game at that point, and the best part is if you lose a battle, you have no money or items to lose but strength and dexterity to gain. This may not be everyones cup of tea, but if you dont like being a human punching bag in prison, then maybe you shouldnt be doing things that get you put in prison. If people abandon characters in jail and start over, then thats OK by me. It means they have to give up that lvl 27 character and start back at lvl 1, so its their loss for being a quitter.

The point is, the game doesnt necessarily have to end while theyre in jail. ;)