Hi All, My name is Patrick, and I'm new to this forum so nice to meet whoever is reading this right now! My Purpose of posting this thread is to get some feedback about some ideas I have for a WEB-RPG I wish to develop as a sort of pet-project/learning journey. Basically I'd like to ask just a few questions and if you wouldn't mind just choose from the options the idea that sounds most fun/appropriate/etc.. A little background about the game first... I do not have a name as of yet, just a few ideas and all I know is that I want it to be a free-to-play (mostly) web RPG that is low-budget, and mostly textual (with some graphics as necessary with the aid of others most likely) but to make up for the non-graphical elements, I wish to make up for it with the fun/engaging/addicting factor (if possible) I'd just like to see what you (the reader) thinks would be the best approach in a few areas, Thanks! Question #1 - How the player ends up fighting the Enemies (bad guys/monsters/etc) 1) picks from a drop down list at will, perhaps different enemies available in different zones/areas/spots. This is not restricted and can be done multiple/infinity times if wanted 2) Different enemies (perhaps based off some rareness/chance variable) are spawned or maybe preset across the map(s) and do not move (its a text game mostly) until the player is on that grid/square/location (or maybe 1 or 2 at most grids away) and can then decide to attack if wanted (possibly aggroed as well) 3) Encounters are random while moving across the map and so are enemies chosen if encounter is to happen 4) other/mix of the above ideas? please explain. Answer? Please explain (shortly perhaps) your decision if you want, this would be very nice if you did :) Question #2 - Items/weapons obtained during game 1) a Diablo(c) style approach, where weapons are dropped quite frequently, and the player might not even care to pickup/keep cause of limited space and the fact that its not worth much (unless wants to sell for small amount of cash) 2) Kinda like above but quality of item varies by random chance (perhaps also based on luck or other stats for better chance) so you might get the same weapon dropped in a row but one has a very higher quality/rating/stats and might be worth much more or be much more useful in battle. So finding a weapon you use perminately might take a long time but the path taken would take the player through a lot of swaping and trying out new finds * I like this one and find it to be more fun 3) Drops are very rare and when a drop happens usually is worth alot / or perhaps not necessarily. However no variance in quality or value etc, so the Iron Broadsword is the exact same as the next one :) 4) Other. Please explain Answer? Please explain (shortly perhaps) your decision if you want, thanks! I appreciate all your time, and I look forward to your responses :)

Hi, I think your questions have to do with whether the player's character is persistent. Does the player log in to you server so that he could use the same character each time, or does the player completes the game in one sitting?

If it is the type that saves the progress, then for question 1, I would let the monsters be associated with area/dungeons, so that the player has some sense of where to go to fight what type of monster. When a player wants to go back and fight a type of monster again they could do so by selecting the dungeon (then you would spawn the monsters of that dungeon).

For question 2, I would make it such that for every level, the player approximately get 1.5 set of gears for the next level and 2.0 set of gears for the current level. This is done so that the player has gears to look forward to using and some sense of variability to choose among the available next level gears to get the play style the player wants. If your game only has a complete set of gear upgrade every 5 level, then the drop rate would be 1.5 set of gears per 5 levels. Suppose your entire set of equipment consist of four pieces:

a) Sword
b) Helmet
c) Armor
d) Amulet

Then as the player levels up from level 1 to 5, the player would might get these:

1x Lv1 Helmet
1x Lv1 Sword
1x Lv2 Armor
1x Lv3 Sword
1x Lv3 Helmet
1x Lv3 Armor
1x Lv4 Helmet
1x Lv5 Amulet (vs Ice)

1x Lv6 Sword + Fire damage
1x Lv6 Helmet
1x Lv7 Sword
1x Lv7 Armor
1x Lv8 Helmet
1x Lv10 Amulet (vs Lightning)

= 14 equipments

The next thing you do is to calculate how many monsters the player needs to kill to level up to the next bracket. From that number you calculate the drop rate. For example, if the player needs to kill 25 monsters to go from level 1 to level 6, then the droprates are:

32% an equipment at the monster's level
24% an equipment higher than the monster's level


For a drop rate like this the player will not see a lot of repeats of the exact item. This comes to about one equipment drop every other fight when the player goes from Lv1 to Lv6. Suppose the player needs to kill 100 monsters to go from Lv6 to Lv11, then the equipment drop rate falls to about 25% total. If you don't want the game to be too grindy, then you would make it such that although the player needs to kill 100 monsters, each encounter now has two monsters. So that the equipment droprate is still about 50% per two encounters.

I mention equipment droprate because obvious other items such as potions are governed by other objectives (it depends on how often you want the player to go back to town, or how much you want the player to spend on preparation before going into a dungeon). Skills, spells, scrolls droprates follow a similar objective. It depends on how many spells there are and the percentage of that you want the player to obtain.

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Original post by Wai Hi, I think your questions have to do with whether the player's character is persistent. Does the player log in to you server so that he could use the same character each time, or does the player completes the game in one sitting? ...

Thank you for your interesting feedback to my question! I will take all this into consideration :)