I've been running the same ideas through my mind over and over for the past few weeks in my spare time. I've thought about leveling a character up, gaining stats, fighting random monsters, etc, etc... I've finally come to some what of a conclusion. I'm curious to hear opinnions and suggestions on this idea. What if you don't actually have levels, exp, or complex stats. What if there were no random monsters every 10 steps you take that seem to come from no where. Would a game with just your health and maybe some form of magic were your only stats be entertaining? The way you would get stronger is to find better items and such. A form of attack for your character would be somewhat good to have, but it would increase so little over time on it's own, similar to how humans do... If you think about it, people don't double their strength in a week.(Assuming they aren't on steriods.) Usually it's not your strength that would increase, it's how well your weapon was made. There is some degree of how well you can use the weapon and how strong you are, but if one person has a knife, and the other has a long sword, you can generally tell who will win.
As far as monsters go, maybe they should attack very rarely, and only in certain areas. Maybe monsters should actually be on the world map, and they only attack if you get too close, or you attack them first. Generally an animal in the real world will only attack if you provoke it to.
Should items not be made able to find so rare that you actually have to search the world, and work for it to find them? If you can simply go make some money and walk in your local general store and pick up a sword that will do 2432 damage a hit, where's the challenge in obtaining it? Normal basic weapons should be in stores for the beginner, and the most advanced weapons should be in the deepest corners of a temple, or the darkest areas of a sacred forest. Possibly even a black smith who depending on how good they are at their work, could turn out a better weapon that would do more damage.
Most of your fighting would be better if you did it against other players. The only down side to that is that a newbie would never get anywhere as far as getting stronger goes. This leads one to think that maybe there should only be so many weapons, so that you could use items in combat, such as a flash capsule to blind your enemy, or a poison dart to slow them down or blurr their vision. Maybe a game should be focused more on items used strategically than just beating someone in the head with a club or impailing them with a sword.
Should skills not be emphasized? Like maybe you could have a lock picking skill. You can only pick certain locks, and the more of the locks you pick that you can unlock, the more advanced locks you can pick. Ex: You can only pick level 1 locks, after you pick say 35 level 1 locks, you advance and can now pick level 2 locks and so on. Maybe you could have an ability called shadow, where you can be concealed to a NPC like a guard, so that you can hide in the shadows. But you can only hide from guards that aren't that alert, then when you progress you can sneak past the most alert and well trained guards.
No multi-player rpg should have a set story, no matter what. The only way you could enjoy that is if you were in from the start. Certain elements such as a little bit of polotics should be included so that an ongoing story can be made by the players. Like maybe if you own so much wealth and money you can make your own village and become a mayor, or king. Or if there are a group of players that are thieves, they could rob cities blind untill someone were to catch them and earn a reward. Or perhaps a monster is terrorizing people and it would take a large group of the best warriors to defeat it.
Speaking of storyline and stats and such, would it be better to have a character that could only die once and be permanately deleted? Sure it would be horrible to have worked for a month on your character just to have lost all that time in one fight, but that would make you be a little more careful in the game. There would only be so many areas where you would worry about dying. Perhaps only the deadliest monsters would kill you along with possibly other players. If you can only die once though it would virtually eliminate the factor of becoming a demigod.(One of the most annoying things in an RPG) A character that could only die once would also make not dying and becoming powerful that much better. This would put all players in the same range of strength, depending on how careful they are. You would have to take risks to become stronger, but that would make it more rewarding instead of clicking a couple times and being more powerful. Items to prevent death would be included ofcourse, but they would be very rare and finding them alone would be a risk but would make for better game play.
A large world to explore is a must. Not one that would make it seem like it's as big as earth actually is, but one that would take a long time to fully explore. I was thinking maybe certain areas you could go underwater, and depending on your race and/or skills you could only stay under for so long. Maybe an area around a volcanno would have unbearable temperatures that only people used to the heat could stand, and others would loose health and eventually collapse from the heat. Or a swamp with poison gas that only people with the skills or items necessary to survive could make it through.
I also thought about maybe making it so you have to eat and drink every once and a while, or you could collapse from starvation or dehydration. And if you do pass out from a fight against someone who decided to spare you, maybe they could loot you for your carelessness in battle. After all, life is survival of the fittest.
I'm still thinking on how to make a decent battle system. I've already ruled out the classic final fantasy battle system on grounds that it is too old and there is little stratedgy if any. Walking up to someone and clicking the attack verb is out due to the fastest internet connection would win. I was thinking about a turn based system where a map was generated based on the area you are in at the time. You could be able to move so many spaces across the map on your turn, when close enough, you could either use a close up attack, or long range attack. The downsides I can see in this is that it would require more than 2 people fighting to be interesting. I was thinking about giving everyone a party of characters to control, but that would get too annoying having to upgrade 5 people at once. I was thinking of saving that type of fighting for a tournament held every once and a while where fighters could form teams and go head to head against each other. If there are any suggestions on a way to manage this type of battle system, or to use it for one player vs. another player, I'd greatly appreciate any reasonable input.
I know my post was rather long, but I'm trying to clear up as many aspects as I can as I wish to begin development soon. Any and all good suggestions are appreciated.
ID:153604
 Aug 22 2003, 5:20 pm
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<small>Have you ever seen a windbag,
a windbag, a windbag? Have you ever seen a windbag? Well there's two right there!</small> <<LoW's short "rule-of-thumb">> RPGs are fun and playable if they stray far and often from reality. People want to immerse themselves in fantasy, not feel the burdens of real life on them. If I want to be dedicated to a job, the arts, or learning a useful skill, I'll do it in real life... not a computer game. | |
Lord of Water wrote:
<<LoW's short "rule-of-thumb">> Depends. Some people like it that way since they cant do it in real life. Although I agree with what your saying. These games tend to get too close to Simulation games in my eyes. Often the only reason they arent Sim games is because they are set in fantasy lands. | |
DarkView wrote:
Lord of Water wrote: Likewise. I think I have a good blend of that in Haven, and I mentioned The UnReal World in another thread, and that game's sole purpose is just to survive in a fantasy world. Although I agree with what your saying. These games tend to get too close to Simulation games in my eyes. Often the only reason they arent Sim games is because they are set in fantasy lands. Yeah. The key, however, is to make life dangerous, or to add some kind of flavour into the game that makes ordinary existence interesting. A game where you have to press "B" every 3 seconds or else you die is not fun, because it's just repetitive. Add in the other keys on the keyboard, and it would start to get a little more fun, but it'd still be repetitive. Invent some different situations, like having to type in phrases, or enter codes when prompted, and it gets a little more fun... and so on. Continually adding unique situations continually increases fun, so long as you don't make it too complicated -- otherwise it becomes frustrating. | |
As far as monsters go, maybe they should attack very rarely. After all, how many monsters have you been attacked by lately? Sure, occasionally someone encounters a bear, a lion or some other hostile creature that puts their life in danger, but its not exactly a common event where you have to defeat 10 lions on your way to school or work every day. How monsters attack is up to the monster, really. Some creatures are harmless unless attacked, some will defend their territory. Otherwise, like humans, might just hunt you down.
Items aren't rare. Heck, people make items right and left. Go to a watch shop sometime and see how many watches are for sale. Rare? Hah! Nothing is really rare, unless there's something rare about it. A watch made completely out of gold and diamonds is probably less common than your average digital watch. And I haven't seen too many magical watches of dragon summoning around lately either. I like to think that the more common something is, the less valuable it is. That long sword you bought will probably be sufficient to ward off any threats, but you'd still be better off with a long sword made by the master smith who works at the emperor's palace, and better yet still with the magical sword of destruction that was lost ages ago, but legend has it to be found at the depths of the deepest, darkest, most dangerous cave in the known world. (Of course, that mythical sword of destruction could just turn out to be a common long sword with a nice ruby encrusted on the hilt...)
Contrary to your apparent belief in PKing, I find that as far as games are concerned, PKing is nothing more than frustrating. People don't generally go around killing each other in every day life now do they? (Lets ignore what we hear in the media...) But then, as we've already put it, newbies and stronger players are both the same because players don't get stronger, they just get more skilled. Difference between strength and skill is that the skilled fellow can always foul up and get himself killed by the newbie. And as for getting stronger, who says the only way to get stronger is to fight? There are plenty of ways to get stronger besides fighting. But since we're not talking about getting stronger, we're talking about getting more skilled, how about taking some classes? Personally though, I prefer to just restrict PKing to begin with, or at least hinder it greatly by making town guards commonplace and giving even the most skilled players a chance at death against an unskilled opponent. Combat should never be taken lightly.
Emphasizing skills is always a good thing. There are a ton of things to do in life besides fight, which isn't really all that common anyway unless you live in a bad neighborhood. Of course you have to take into consideration that this is medieval, so there are plenty of trade skills to go around. Just figure out what players in the game would be able to use, and make a way for them to make their own goods. The hunter kills the prey and skins it, the tanner tans the skin and sells the leather, the leatherworker turns the leather into a crude shirt, and the embroiderer turns the shirt into a masterpiece. Hunting, tanning, leatherworking, embroidering - all skills players could learn, and that's just for making a nice shirt. What else could players use?
Online RPGs should never have linear storylines - agreed. They should though have histories and settings. If players are going to roleplay at all, they need to know what they're working with. What is the world around them like? How would their character have lived their lives, what would their backgrounds be like? Lots of questions that never get answered, or even considered, in typical combat RPGs. Everything beyond that is up to the players to roleplay. Gameplay mechanics don't really need to support kingship. If the player has a lot of wealth to buy that castle and is respected by players, he could declare his own kingdom and if other players are willing to follow it - well there you go.
Permadeath is a delicate issue for any RPG. It really depends on how your game is played. If death is a common threat to every player, then no, leave permadeath out. It will only frustrate people. If death is a rare thing that can be easily avoided with some common sense, like not picking fights or wandering into dark caves, then permadeath can add extra danger to a dangerous situation. You're not just risking half your gold when you enter that cave, you're risking your character and everything they've worked for. Still feel like going it? Its a lot more frightening that way.
Large worlds are great, and exploring is defenitelly something you want in any RPG. Just remember though, all the space in the universe to explore means nothing without something to find. Seriously! You can download games that use fractal-math to create infinite universes to explore. They get boring fast, because once you've seen one planet, you've seen them all. Unless you find one with the ruins of an ancient civilization, caves filled with wonders or some other *interesting* thing. If there's nothing interesting to find, there's no point in exploring. How you make the different areas interesting is up to you.
Eating and drinking is debatable. If you're going for realism, then yes. Otherwise a lot of people just find it annoying. And you absolutely must not make it something that's required say, every 15 minutes. You should be able to live quite a long time without food and water, but not indefenitelly. Leaving them out is a sure way to avoid annoying players, but if done properly they can add an extra element to the game, such as the need to find provisions and water sources, to take rations and waterskins along. To be prepared. Exploring is always more interesting if you're constantly in danger, even if its only a danger of starvation or lack of water.
Battle systems. Turn based systems are something I prefer to avoid in online games. Its annoying when you're trying to run past a group of enemies and a turn based system keeps engaging the battle, so you have to wait your turn... Or the other players are being lazy and you have to wait... wait wait wait... No one likes to wait. The current theory I've been tampering with is just an action point system. You get so many points maximum and every action costs a certain amount of points. If you don't have enough points, you can't perform the action, and points regenerate on a regular basis depending on how fast you want the combat to play out.
That's my take on some of that RPG stuff anyway.