How about a Disgaea MMO? where the cave/dungeon IS the weapon or item. Consider yourself MindF'd.....

This is quite genius really.

Cores should not be reusable, unless you pay to have the core removed from the weapon... otherwise your going to have a crapload of overpowered characters.

cores should be tradeable, although some "ultimate cores"? Should be untradeable.

Weapon looks should not be given out 100%, rather at like a 75% or so rate, per dungeon. People WILL go back to get there look. This is proven in MapleStory where people spend 1000's of dollars / month on looks.

If created wrong, cores will replace the currency of the game entirely. Cores would have to be implemented perfectly or not implemented at all...

But I love the idea, gonna fix it up a bit and put it in a game. Eventually.

This may have already been mentioned but you have two spheres of view, basically. Controlling item stats allows you control over the game experience, difficulty curve, etc. If you allow players to control stats then you are quite probably going to have min/max people who, for example, go all offense and damange or go all defense and health. What you should evaluate is how you want a person's experience to play out. Do you want them to have the choice to be able to go up against the Uber Pwn Boss and barely get a scratch but not be able to inflict much damage? You could address this by designing your enemies to discourage min/max practices. For example, Uber Pwn Boss might not be able to hurt a maxed out defense character but give that enemy a damage resistance such that if characters don't invest in damaging abilities then they can't hurt that enemy either.

Just a few points of thought for ya.

Edit: Are you having some method of being able to control which character an enemy attacks? If so you may also want to look into having some abilities "cost" more, otherwise what's to stop someone from investing only in defense and enemy control and let the rest of your friends pound away without recourse?

Cores should not be reusable, unless you pay to have the core removed from the weapon... otherwise your going to have a crapload of overpowered characters.
cores should be tradeable, although some "ultimate cores"? Should be untradeable.
Weapon looks should not be given out 100%, rather at like a 75% or so rate, per dungeon. People WILL go back to get there look. This is proven in MapleStory where people spend 1000's of dollars / month on looks.
But I love the idea, gonna fix it up a bit and put it in a game. Eventually.

Thanks! As of now, both of those are possibilities. A possibility is to add in difficulty levels for dungeons and have the look drop more frequently at the higher levels. I'm still iffy on core re-usability. On one hand, you have to stock pile a lot of them if they aren't reusable, which means they have to drop much more. This can also lead to a reverse engineering of cores as an in-game option to where you can destroy a core and get the parts that made it so you can craft one you rather like. This was the kind of feed back I like hearing. The fine tweaks to ideas will always take a play test and a couple of different iterations before its /just/ right.

This may have already been mentioned but you have two spheres of view, basically. Controlling item stats allows you control over the game experience, difficulty curve, etc. If you allow players to control stats then you are quite probably going to have min/max people who, for example, go all offense and damange or go all defense and health. What you should evaluate is how you want a person's experience to play out. Do you want them to have the choice to be able to go up against the Uber Pwn Boss and barely get a scratch but not be able to inflict much damage? You could address this by designing your enemies to discourage min/max practices. For example, Uber Pwn Boss might not be able to hurt a maxed out defense character but give that enemy a damage resistance such that if characters don't invest in damaging abilities then they can't hurt that enemy either.

Just a few points of thought for ya.

Edit: Are you having some method of being able to control which character an enemy attacks? If so you may also want to look into having some abilities "cost" more, otherwise what's to stop someone from investing only in defense and enemy control and let the rest of your friends pound away without recourse?

As to people stacking all offense or all defense. I am including the possibility of burdening to stats. Which means if you add multiples of the same stat they start to become less effective. Thanks for the words about balancing. That is a high possibility.

As for enemy attacks, I plan on balancing encounters based off of three things:

1. The bosses attacks. These will be influenced by a standard enmity system. Attacks generate a resource called Threat. The boss attacks the person with the highest amount of threat. People who wish to tank will have options to decrease their allies and increase their own. DPS will have the opposite. There will also be phases of the boss where he attacks specific characters, regardless of enmity.

2. The bosses spells. These will effect areas at a time, and will hurt everyone in it. Either play smart or at least invest in some survivability.

3. The environment. Since I am shooting for more of a single-player dungeon crawl feel, a dungeon could have falling stones that hurt people. An ice dungeon may have a persistant attack/move speed decrease. A dungeon controlled by the lich could have a constant life draining mechanic. These will hit everyone at a pretty high success rate. While the damage in most cases will be minimal, players that don't invest in some survivability will be doomed.

I'm loving this feedback everyone! Thanks!

Thanks! As of now, both of those are possibilities. A possibility is to add in difficulty levels for dungeons and have the look drop more frequently at the higher levels. I'm still iffy on core re-usability. On one hand, you have to stock pile a lot of them if they aren't reusable, which means they have to drop much more. This can also lead to a reverse engineering of cores as an in-game option to where you can destroy a core and get the parts that made it so you can craft one you rather like. This was the kind of feed back I like hearing. The fine tweaks to ideas will always take a play test and a couple of different iterations before its /just/ right.

But of course they will. Who knows, perhaps reusable cores can be implemented in a way that neither you nor I have thought of yet. But that requires creating a game with an economy, and a fairly large community to test.

Mmm, I like the difficulty levels of dungeons, but I'm not a fan of "This is the hometown, go here select a dungeon, select the difficulty" kinda games. I like the open world, dungeons there, walk for 10 minutes to get to it and everythings the same every time. But that's just my opinion. I suppose difficulty level could be implemented automatically through the players level, but then higher level characters would get more items of EVERYTHING.

Cores would be able to get their own "bag" per-se, so as not to have a messy inventory. They could be stackable, and organized in the inventory automatically. Although both of those could be changed depending on how large the game is, or how many different cores there are, and a few other rules revolving around the cores.

I'm not feelin the reverse engineering of cores to create a new core. I'd understand it if the cores required DIFFERENT things to make, based around a 'template'. So, you need metal ores (higher level ores for higher level cores?) however much currency (more for higher leveled cores) and a few other things that are in EVERY core. Then some more basic things, like some power crystals, or something for cores that give + power, or whatever the stat is.

This may have already been mentioned but you have two spheres of view, basically. Controlling item stats allows you control over the game experience, difficulty curve, etc. If you allow players to control stats then you are quite probably going to have min/max people who, for example, go all offense and damange or go all defense and health. What you should evaluate is how you want a person's experience to play out. Do you want them to have the choice to be able to go up against the Uber Pwn Boss and barely get a scratch but not be able to inflict much damage? You could address this by designing your enemies to discourage min/max practices. For example, Uber Pwn Boss might not be able to hurt a maxed out defense character but give that enemy a damage resistance such that if characters don't invest in damaging abilities then they can't hurt that enemy either.

Just a few points of thought for ya.

Edit: Are you having some method of being able to control which character an enemy attacks? If so you may also want to look into having some abilities "cost" more, otherwise what's to stop someone from investing only in defense and enemy control and let the rest of your friends pound away without recourse?

As to people stacking all offense or all defense. I am including the possibility of burdening to stats. Which means if you add multiples of the same stat they start to become less effective. Thanks for the words about balancing. That is a high possibility.
[/quote]
+1 to this. That's a great idea. Had to say that.

As for enemy attacks, I plan on balancing encounters based off of three things:

1. The bosses attacks. These will be influenced by a standard enmity system. Attacks generate a resource called Threat. The boss attacks the person with the highest amount of threat. People who wish to tank will have options to decrease their allies and increase their own. DPS will have the opposite. There will also be phases of the boss where he attacks specific characters, regardless of enmity.

2. The bosses spells. These will effect areas at a time, and will hurt everyone in it. Either play smart or at least invest in some survivability.

3. The environment. Since I am shooting for more of a single-player dungeon crawl feel, a dungeon could have falling stones that hurt people. An ice dungeon may have a persistant attack/move speed decrease. A dungeon controlled by the lich could have a constant life draining mechanic. These will hit everyone at a pretty high success rate. While the damage in most cases will be minimal, players that don't invest in some survivability will be doomed.

I'm loving this feedback everyone! Thanks!
[/quote]


Those are great ways to counter tanks. I've seen them all implemented, and they do their job wonderfully.

Mmm, I like the difficulty levels of dungeons, but I'm not a fan of "This is the hometown, go here select a dungeon, select the difficulty" kinda games. I like the open world, dungeons there, walk for 10 minutes to get to it and everythings the same every time. But that's just my opinion. I suppose difficulty level could be implemented automatically through the players level, but then higher level characters would get more items of EVERYTHING.

Cores would be able to get their own "bag" per-se, so as not to have a messy inventory. They could be stackable, and organized in the inventory automatically. Although both of those could be changed depending on how large the game is, or how many different cores there are, and a few other rules revolving around the cores.

I'm not feelin the reverse engineering of cores to create a new core. I'd understand it if the cores required DIFFERENT things to make, based around a 'template'. So, you need metal ores (higher level ores for higher level cores?) however much currency (more for higher leveled cores) and a few other things that are in EVERY core. Then some more basic things, like some power crystals, or something for cores that give + power, or whatever the stat is.

~The open world was designed for player crafts/farming and guild towns, cities, etc. The story line involved human growth and population of foreign lands, so I would like to simulate growth of cities and towns by having guilds and npc camps. Some dungeons will be open field dungeons, because let's face it, being underground every time you want to fight is stale and boring. As I can tell though, all fights will be instanced, because I haven't found a way to mesh game mechanics together yet. If I do find a way to do that, I'll be sure to include some normal spawns.

~I've mentioned this twice now, but Cores and item skins aren't going to be placed in your inventory. They would be placed in a menu that is separate of your inventory (used to store potions, activate items, recipes, etc.) They would have their own window, no cap on how many you can have, so you can potentially have them all. You can still open it and manage it, but it is 100% separate from your inventory. That way, you don't have to keep count of 1000s of cores across banks, bags, storage, etc. If there ever ends up being that many, it will be such a hassle, I agree, that's why they have their own space. Maybe I'm not explaining this clearly enough? Or maybe you fellows don't actually read posts word for word. Hm.. I hope I'm clear, this time.

~Reverse engineering cores isn't a necessity to create new cores. Reverse engineering is simply a convenience tool to scrap a core in exchange for materials that can be used to make other things. In order to craft a core, you'd probably need something like:
- A shell to contain the "magic energy"/whatever lore provides.
- Let's just say, 3 bones off of a random animal
- Some Mystic Water Liquid to bind it together.

The point is, those will make a standard armor core. Better armor cores may require better bones, or more of them, and possibly a different material all together later on. Now say you play a Mage, and you don't attack a lot. You have a Strength core that isn't doing you too well. You could reverse engineer the core and maybe get 2 claws off of it. That's it. That's where the process stops. You can use those two claws to sell, or put forward to another core recipe, or maybe towards a craft for your guild's city.

[quote name='XDaWNeDX' timestamp='1305753343' post='4812736']

Mmm, I like the difficulty levels of dungeons, but I'm not a fan of "This is the hometown, go here select a dungeon, select the difficulty" kinda games. I like the open world, dungeons there, walk for 10 minutes to get to it and everythings the same every time. But that's just my opinion. I suppose difficulty level could be implemented automatically through the players level, but then higher level characters would get more items of EVERYTHING.

Cores would be able to get their own "bag" per-se, so as not to have a messy inventory. They could be stackable, and organized in the inventory automatically. Although both of those could be changed depending on how large the game is, or how many different cores there are, and a few other rules revolving around the cores.

I'm not feelin the reverse engineering of cores to create a new core. I'd understand it if the cores required DIFFERENT things to make, based around a 'template'. So, you need metal ores (higher level ores for higher level cores?) however much currency (more for higher leveled cores) and a few other things that are in EVERY core. Then some more basic things, like some power crystals, or something for cores that give + power, or whatever the stat is.

~The open world was designed for player crafts/farming and guild towns, cities, etc. The story line involved human growth and population of foreign lands, so I would like to simulate growth of cities and towns by having guilds and npc camps. Some dungeons will be open field dungeons, because let's face it, being underground every time you want to fight is stale and boring. As I can tell though, all fights will be instanced, because I haven't found a way to mesh game mechanics together yet. If I do find a way to do that, I'll be sure to include some normal spawns.

~I've mentioned this twice now, but Cores and item skins aren't going to be placed in your inventory. They would be placed in a menu that is separate of your inventory (used to store potions, activate items, recipes, etc.) They would have their own window, no cap on how many you can have, so you can potentially have them all. You can still open it and manage it, but it is 100% separate from your inventory. That way, you don't have to keep count of 1000s of cores across banks, bags, storage, etc. If there ever ends up being that many, it will be such a hassle, I agree, that's why they have their own space. Maybe I'm not explaining this clearly enough? Or maybe you fellows don't actually read posts word for word. Hm.. I hope I'm clear, this time.

~Reverse engineering cores isn't a necessity to create new cores. Reverse engineering is simply a convenience tool to scrap a core in exchange for materials that can be used to make other things. In order to craft a core, you'd probably need something like:
- A shell to contain the "magic energy"/whatever lore provides.
- Let's just say, 3 bones off of a random animal
- Some Mystic Water Liquid to bind it together.

The point is, those will make a standard armor core. Better armor cores may require better bones, or more of them, and possibly a different material all together later on. Now say you play a Mage, and you don't attack a lot. You have a Strength core that isn't doing you too well. You could reverse engineer the core and maybe get 2 claws off of it. That's it. That's where the process stops. You can use those two claws to sell, or put forward to another core recipe, or maybe towards a craft for your guild's city.
[/quote]
I see, so its not like vindictus, it has an open world, where dungeons are found. Somewhat like diablo?

I do read word for word, didn't notice you mentioned cores will have a seperate inventory though.

I understand it's not a necessity for creating cores. Although one suggestion for the creation of cores is to create a core it should be easier, although take longer, than to fight the dungeon dropping the core, or if multiple drop the same core, then the easiest dungeon that drops the core. I'm sure you've already thought of this, or the difficulty of creating a core though.
I had assumed when you said, reverse engineering the cores, you meant getting everything required to make it, at a specified chance. I should've asked before jumping to conclusions though. Seems like you have that sorted out.

I believe that this idea can only be further solidified by being implemented in a game. So hurry up and make your game

How feasible is this?

I see no problem in line of thinking. However, what "cores" are able to do is the problem. As long as the cores apply modifiers to damage or chance to hit this will be fairly simple. The more a core is "interesting" the more it will require good design.
Here are some examples:

• Resonance: when you score a hit, the same damage is applied to all "similar" units in a certain range from the hit point.
  This is way more complicated than just apply a damage modifier. The core must have some sort of routine to figure out where the hit took place, select all the creatures in a certain radius, be able to figure out if two creatures are "similar enough" to apply the bonus.
• Rebound (ranged only): if the projectile hits a "hard" surface, it bounces off in the direction of the nearest enemy.
  This features another kind of complexity. How to figure out if something is an enemy?
  

  Do you think this is better than traditional methods?

  I think it's not really comparable. Most games have used players to nearly immutable items. Those features also seem to work better for magic users - it would also adapt well in a technological setting I guess. In general, there's a parallel between this system and traditional skill-based methods for player leveling. The main problem with those systems is having combinations that are fairly more effective than others - this is normal to a certain degree but when taken to the extreme can be problematic. At least that's what I think. Those systems are in my opinion also more prone to "topping out" a skill/feature set - being standard systems more controllable, they can at least potentially avoid that issue.
  Personally I'd say this concept is more appropriate for character building than item building.
  
  

  Overall thoughts on implementation?

  You'll need a lot of gameplay-logic scripting facilities. Figuring out the necessary functionality might take a while.
  
  

  Would it be hard to balance, would it 'not matter' because there will always be a desirable stat causing builds to be similar anyway?

  Sure it will be hard. Item configurations will evolve and after a while all players will use the most effective configuration for their use. The config will be shared on forums and such. All the other builds will be 2nd choices.