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Fighters could have....Blunts

I like where this is going.


To stay on topic, there's a MUD out there called Dragonrealms. Completely skill based. Everyone can use every skill, with certain exceptions. For example, only traders can learn the trading skill. Other than that, anyone can use any weapon, any armor, etc.

Based on your class, you may be more hindered and less able to dodge if you wear plate armor instead of leather. It's possible, but impractical, for thieves to wear plate for example because it hinders hiding quite a bit compared to leather. Basically there are 5 skill sets: weapons, armor, magic, survivial, and lore. Each class is "primary" in 1 skill, secondary in one or two others, and tertiary in everything else. It works on a cyclical 8, 4, and 2 rank system.

Each skill has a "pool" that you fill up with potential XP by doing stuff. Cast a spell alot and your primary magic skill will go from throughtful, to concentrating, to perplexed, eventually to mind lock after which point you can't get any more potential XP. The size of this pool is determined by certain stats and your level. Every 300 seconds you "pulse" and based on a formula also dealing with mental stats and level, you convert a certain amount of that pool to real XP points.

If you are primary in magic, then at rank 1 of the cycle you'll convert 100% of your potential XP, then as you progress through the cycle you convert at a slower rate.

Rank 1 - primary magic: 101.10.34% mind lock --> pulse --> 101.60.24% thoughtful
Rank 2 - primary magic: 102.10.34% mind lock --> pulse --> 102.50.11% concentrating
Rank 3 - primary magic: 103.10.34% mind lock --> pulse --> 103.34.17% perplexed
...
Rank 8 - primary magic: 108.10.34% mind lock --> pulse --> 108.18.54% dazed
Rank 1 - primary magic: 109.10.34% mind lock --> pulse --> 109.59.01% thoughtful
...

The last rank in your cycle is called your "wall rank" and it's the hardest to get through. Then it resets and it's again relatively easy to earn your next ranks in the skill.

If you're a mage trying to learn an armor skill though, you'll find it much harder yet still possible, since armor is tertiary and basically every other rank will be a wall rank.

This way your character can be and do anything, within limits, some things are just harder to attain than others.

Fundamentally speaking, I don't care for classes at all - who wants to be "stuck" in a class that you can't solo in later because the class is so wussy alone that they will die within 3-4 attacks due to specialization? Morrowind does a decent job at a semi-classless RPG. With enough time, you can do anything with your character but it still limits you. Classes are more realistic, mind you as hair stylist designing and flying super sonic jets isn't too realistic at all, however - if you start as a hair stylist there shouldn't be any problems with you learning about flying and getting skills as an engineer if you want to do that later.

The biggest downfall to the class/level system is realism. How realistic is it for someone to chop all day with an AXE and up their sword skills when they "level up". Hence why I agree with the skills base concept - if you axe you get skills in axe, if you bow you get skills in bow, and if you fire magic you get skills in fire magic.

I don't agree with the "degragation" of skills. As with most games, time in game and time in real world rarely are syncronised. If I play 4 two hours sessions and axe in the first two hours while it takes 3 hours for a skill to atrophy I won't be hurt like a fellow who plays the 8 hours back to back. You would encourage people to attack with a sword every 40-50 monsters to keep atrophy at bay and not much else.

Atrophy defeats the urge for a wizard to go back and pick up sword play. The atrophy is built in so why add atrophy to unused skills. The wizard, while learning to skewer chipmunks isn't using his magic so his magic skills are not going up, just his sword use. Essentially time spent elsewhere degrades his time in games application towards ubering his wizardry skills. Hence implied apothy.

As for Gacking, either honor can be added (how honerable is it to kill a non-attacker who is at such a lower level?) or some similar device. A dishonored hero will be berated by villagers, skipped over for trade promotions, or neglected from organizations of dissimilar honor. "No kingly appointments to positions for you, worm."

Unfortunately, the world of Warcraft (ironically) prevents the signature of honor. If you are a good guy you are supposed to fight evil, if you are a bad guy you are supposed to fight good. You are either totally honorable or totally dishonerable towards either good or evil. The best bet is to track "gacking" stats and flag repeated gackers via their name tags. Such flagged folks are "free kills" and don't detriment a player who kills them in any way.

Personally, I want to see an MMO with a system something like Champion, or GURPS, or some other point-based system. Instead of levels with exponential power, you could have 'mini levels' (like levels, but instead of doubling in power, you get a few character points to spend).

You still get much more powerfull over time, but generally you gain in breadth instead of depth - a powerful warrior is better because he can use any weapon he finds (definitely a good thing with randomish magic items), not beacuse he does 100 times as much damage, has 20 times the armor, and can take 1000 times the beating. A mage is better because he can cast fireball, ice dagger, and lightning as appropriate to the situation, not because he has fireball, explosive fireball, Big Boom fireball, and One-Hit-Boss-Killer fireball, and Kill-Everything-In-Zone fireball.

These systems are already in their 5th and 4th editions respectively - around the same place D&D is. Why haven't such systems been adopted? Because they're conductive to play but not addiction - if you stick with the game it would be based on the game's merits rather than the fact that it abuses psychology.

Well, I've been playing WoW lately as well, and I'm sickly tired of the static level system, and especially the quests, oh my god someone must have lost their imagination.

So, I feel urged to describe an old MUD I used to play, I can't wait until its system is implemented in a MMORPG, basically it has alot of the ideas presented in this thread. Maybe someone might recognize it :)

Briefly, nothing is presented in numbers, there is no such thing as classes, there is no traditional 'level up', ganking is not a problem and people are still very addicted to it, there is people who have played for nearly 20 years now :)

Ok so first, nothing is presented in numbers: The character levels got names like Beginner ... journeyman ... adventurer ... veteran ... champion ... legend etc.. Also being a champion does not immediately mean you can beat a veteran, or even adventurer for that matter. The 'level' you are is based on your stats, there are six of them, strength, agility, constitution, wisdom, intelligence and discipline (bravery) which levels are presented like weak .. well built .. strong .. titanic etc.. and you can estimate how close you are to each (very far, far, halfway, close, very close), skills are presented in a similar way, with major and minor levels, i.e "apprentice student", "seasoned craftsman", "confident veteran", "superior guru" where "apprentice, seasoned.." is minor and "veteran, guru.." is major.

No classes: You do not choose class, all general skills is available for everyone, but only to a certain 'level', say 30 or 40 out of a 100, and with skills and abilities comes the real power.

Now to get higher skills and to get abilities you need to join a guild, the guilds is the big thing about the system, they are created by the people that make the game, but they are basically ruled by the players, and work pretty much like any organization. Some guilds are stronger than others, some are weaker, there is no accurate balance, the most dreaded mages are really terrifying, you don't want to get in a fight with them alone, but they don't abuse it, because if they do they get severely punished for it. Also you can't just go and sign up and start kicking ass, it's a long process getting in to the overpowered guilds, which also makes it an honor to get in.

The guilds are alot about politics, some guilds are at war, and there is even an alliance formed by the players to join forces against the evil. This is really what I think is lacking in most MMORPGS, the real sense of politics, that the players control the world, and this way legends are made. "The old war between the knights and the army..", "When <name> was the ruler.."

Also the ganking: It is not a problem because players know if they gank someone without reason, someone will find out, and it might get you punished by the guild, thrown out if done repeatedly or even get your character deleted if it is very serious.

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Original post by Thex0 Well, I've been playing WoW lately as well, and I'm sickly tired of the static level system, and especially the quests, oh my god someone must have lost their imagination.

Is this your first MMO? I'm supposing it is, well it's mine too. I hear this complaint from a lot of Warcraft people whom are playing an MMO for the first time. The one bit of perspective I have that they don't is that you really should be thankful for quests at all. Take an MMO style like EQ2 and instead of even saying "you get 1000 experience for walking from point A to point B" it's just "kill [x] of creature [y] until you get 1000 experience". Sure, WoW has a grind, but at least they attempt to obfuscate it. There are also a lot of very cool quests out there - Distress Beacons in Tanaris, Hinterlands, and Feralas come to mind. Other than that, realize that levelling is just a way to move from dungeon to dungeon - where the real cool stuff is. Sad fact is that there simply isn't enough manhours in the dev team of a game like WoW to support thousands of completely unique quests. Given the problems of creating these quests, bugtesting them, balancing them, and keeping the server load from them to a minimum - it's just not possible.

very interesting reading the posts. I got a question on that skill based system:
how do you increase some particular skills? In low levels, its not a problem, you can just go out and kill some monsters around, or train with someone higher, as in almost all mmo games there are a lot of medium skilled players. But what if you want to get better than normal in some skills, especially in resistence? take example if you want to get "professional" in sword skill, you go out and kill harder monsters with sword, but if you want to raise your melee defence, what can you do? go to a horde of monsters and let them hit on you until you got minimum life and then run away? And how do you know that they are especially using melee attacks? of course its possible to make any type of creature only using one or a few type of attacks / defences, but without random stats on creatures, its going to be like "survive one more thousands of super-xtreme-hard-using-melee-attack-monsters-attacks" to get your skill of melee defence up to level xxx. And thinks everyone agrees that this isnt what's making "fun" in a game.

by the way, the pvp problem, is it better to have a complex system, where everything (every exploit possbility) or almost every is thought of, and to adjust the system on every new problem, or is it better to have a simple solution for example the possiblities of creating friendly only areas / games, pvp only areas / games?

i've played a long time games like diablo, and the way they solved it (by creating a game you setup if pvp is allowed or not or the maximum level of characters which is allowed to join your game) maybe isnt the perfect one, but it works, as for example you can just create a game where only people of +/- 10 levels of yours area allowed to join that to prevent those "a-high-level-suddenly-hostiled-and-killed-me-with-one-hit" phenomenas.

I see this type of problem solving a lot, and disagree with it 90% of the time.

Your in the business of solving problems, dont make more. Your problem is players killing you in one hit. Lower the damage, dont rewrite a system that works. Solve one problem at a time, fun is the absense of all that is not fun. Take away all the bad your left with (mostly) good.

(I do not believe this is how all problems should be solved, but it works most times).

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Original post by James Dee Finical I see this type of problem solving a lot, and disagree with it 90% of the time. Your in the business of solving problems, dont make more. Your problem is players killing you in one hit. Lower the damage, dont rewrite a system that works. Solve one problem at a time, fun is the absense of all that is not fun. Take away all the bad your left with (mostly) good. (I do not believe this is how all problems should be solved, but it works most times).

The problem with that appropach is that it doesn't scale at all. Sure, it will fix that one thing you don't like, and then you can fix that thing the other guy doesn't like, and then you can patch something else on, then you find you need to totally start from scratch because the patchwork is falling appart.
Of course you don't need to invent a new system to fix such problems, you just need to look around and use what already exists. There are hundreds of approaches to RPGs, but most of them have been burried under the few methods adopted as standards.

Interesting... with the levels/pvp/uber-high-lvl-chars issue, I always thought that was the main *reason* that people choose to play online RPGs rather than games like counterstrike. That being, that if you invest the time in your character then your character will become uber, and *should* have no trouble dealing with many low level characters.

The problem with 'ganking' is apparently being addressed in WoW 'real soon now' with the introduction of an 'honour system'. Time will tell how well that works, but at a last resort one could simply do what JoeDB suggested, and have a level difference cap on combat, so a lvl 60 actually *can't* engage a lvl20, nor vice versa.

Either that or simply accept that there are high level enemy players around, and be careful. Admittedly I've only had a few quests in contested areas so far, and I play on a low population server so the chance of running into a high level enemy is low, but I find that the chance of encountering an enemy player adds some excitement to the game. That aspect lacking, I may as well be playing a single player or small-scale multiplayer RPG and saving myself the monthly subscription fee.

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Original post by Extrarius The problem with that appropach is that it doesn't scale at all. Sure, it will fix that one thing you don't like, and then you can fix that thing the other guy doesn't like, and then you can patch something else on, then you find you need to totally start from scratch because the patchwork is falling appart.

I said 90% of the time and this does not work in all cases (gotta read the whole message).

Why would it fix fall apart? You shouldn't assume everything is going to turn out bad. Sometimes people make mistakes, then they fix them.