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Constructing mmomrpgs is massive, massive effort. Something like an mmorps would probably take a very long time. Its best chance is a 400 million dollar budget or a bigtime open source team – since something like this is almost impossible to find out there, this means lots of trial and error.

I said that the world would need currency. This got me thinking a bit about how items would be more of a status symbol and a consequence of adventuring – which also has other benefits. One way of going about this is to make constructing items themselves cheap, but the knowledge to produce that item is not automatic. If you can acquire the knowledge, then you don’t need the currency. This atleast would prevent players from blaming the developers that currency is too grindy. The only thing they could blame is the complexity of the innates and the world around them. In this instance, it would be much more non-linear, so there’d be much less to fall back on. This would reduce any single argument, no matter how good its evidence is. This is all true unless most of the players are complaining about the complexity of the world. In that case, you’d attempt to reduce the number of innates or the number of combinations that’re required to produce usefull goods to meet the needs of the average player. For myself, I’d prefer complexity over simplicity because I’m inclined towards engineering and design and software, but I think many players might feel a bit frustrated at a system that’s too complicated. On the other hand, if knowledge is going to be important, simplifying it will compromise its value. If you simplify it too much, you might lose causality and you might even lose the non-linear ecology, which is hte basis for the simulation.

You missed the part where he takes a hammer and smashes the existence of a power differential into tiny pieces and replaces that with status symbols.

No, I wasn’t talking about John’s idea at that point. Just saying that without some meaning, power wise, to items and skills, there’s not much left to give players “bragging rights”, except maybe rareness and artistic beauty. Yet, the current system of grind is way too far the other way. Something in between is what I’m getting at, where things have value in the scope of power and abilities, but not so much that players can’t do social events without feeling like they fell behind.

Before I reply I’d like to say that this is not a “design” I’ve built up over the yeears. It’s just something I decided to write last night. It does represent a feeling of what I think an mmorps should be like, but it doesn’t represent a professional project that I’m working on. So we’re all kind of taking part in a brainstorm here, NOT anything more than that.

The enjoyment of an MMORPS would be in manipulating the simulation and sharing these creations with others in various ways. You’d change the ecology: its numerous interlocking dynamics. There’d be a lot to learn and to manipulate. I think that a non-linear simulation almost wholly requires that a player is flexible and not permanently fixed or bound to a particular skill set or ability, that’s why innates would be so cheap to change. This doesn’t have to mean that using those innates is automatic, so even though you don’t have to earn the innates, you still have to use them appropriately. There’s still a learning curve here. And learning to manipulate the ecology effectively would also be a big thing.

Consider that testing all of the possible fail-conditions in a non-linear world is virtually impossible. This doesn’t mean there’d be no testing, there would be, but there’d be a lot that the developers just have to realize can’t be tested before the fact. There’d be details that players AND developers haven’t seen, and there’d be details that players have seen, but developers haven’t. Thusly, players would find what works, and discard what doesn’t. The developers would have to keep this in mind when they design it from the start.

Players would develop the world more than they’d develop their character, in technical terms. In abstract terms, you’d get status symbols, as pointed out by Michael, from collecting items and accomplishing quests. Items could accompany you in your social pursuits and should contribute to your status and appearance. Most quests would be intricately connected to the ecology, so quests might tie into that instead of them being item dispensers, but items would still likely be gifted as an additional reward.

Dungeon delvers would also find cool, one of a kind items. These types of items would likely be collectibles. Rich players, assuming there’s a currency, would probably buy these types of items from adventurers for a show of status to others. I’m not against some kind of benefit for items, but like Micheal said, I’m trying to get rid of any hard or permanent power differentials. By hard I mean, number-wise. For example, a sword that’s 10 damage versus a sword that’s 5 damage. That’s hard, and it’s permanent in the sense that you have to first acquire the 10 damage sword to have its power, and in most mmorpgs, that means a lot of linear grinding. I’d rather that the difference between one player and another is in their ability to effectively manipulate things around them, and how well they work with others to acheive these feats. So knowledge would or should be much more valuable than than the items you’ve collected. Dungeon delvers would, assumimg they have the same innates, virtually perform the same, despite whatever items they’re wearing. It would be their knowledge of innates and how to use those innates that determines their performance versus someone else.

I do think there should be a currency since trading should be a part of this mmorps. Players would want tools and resources, having a currency allows players to move things around quickly without having to spend the time bartering various odds and ends. Besides, it makes more sense to carry gold trinkets which are lightweight than it would to carry everything you own in wagons just so that you can trade items with others. The trick is to make sure that rich players don’t feeel the need to isolate themselves from poor players. And that experienced players don’t isolate themselves from new players. The goal of this mmorps should be to invisibly encourage players of all rank and status to come together and share time. It’s afteral a roleplayer friendly world, and social gatherings should be common. They shouldn’t be tempted to isolate themselves, unless it’s just simply a preferance that they have to be alone – which is impossible to prevent, imho.

That’s the hardest thing of all, imho. How do we ensure that we have a rich world and a rich variety of things to accomplish and to trade, and to do this all without tempting players to isolate themselves away from those who do not have the same knowledge or status? How do you ensure that new players have a chance, that they won’t be left behind, that they won’t be ignored?? I’d like new players to be almost as important as old players, but I’d like there to be things that players earn during the course of their time in this world, but I hope that it’s not too divisive.

You missed the part where he takes a hammer and smashes the existence of a power differential into tiny pieces and replaces that with status symbols.

No, I wasn’t talking about John’s idea at that point. Just saying that without some meaning, power wise, to items and skills, there’s not much left to give players “bragging rights”, except maybe rareness and artistic beauty. Yet, the current system of grind is way too far the other way. Something in between is what I’m getting at, where things have value in the scope of power and abilities, but not so much that players can’t do social events without feeling like they fell behind.

I’d like to see an MMORPS – Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Simulation. A non-linear world where most everything is procedural and there’s very little developer intrusion in the world. Players are free to change the world by manipulating hte ecology, and so forth. The main goal of the game is to build cities and to socialize, and to brag about all the cool stuff you’ve done and collected.

Give me like.. five years, dammit.

How many players are going to go do that social event thing a second time when they fell behind their guildies a couple of levels the first time?

You missed the part where he takes a hammer and smashes the existence of a power differential into tiny pieces and replaces that with status symbols.

What I see most people missing, here and elsewhere, about “the grind” is the daily game play it forces on players so they can keep up with their friends. The alternative is to fall behind which means separation from friends. It’s not the act of grinding, it’s the consequence. Every game has grind, unless you have no character development at all, and most gamers want to develop their characters.

How many players are going to go do that social event thing a second time when they fell behind their guildies a couple of levels the first time? That is, under the way levels mean so much now. If level dominance didn’t mean so much, if players could be of value and intermix with players who are 10-20 levels higher than them, even beat one in PvP if they play smarter than the other +10 guy, then they wouldn’t have to miss social events. And I’m not talking about rock/paper/scissors class (un)balance here. I’m talking about R/P/S in choices. Playing trump cards at the right time.

I think that we should all slow down a bit and consider that maybe mmorpgs are becoming too acheivement focused. Maybe socialization is being neglected.

I’d like to see an MMORPS – Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Simulation. A non-linear world where most everything is procedural and there’s very little developer intrusion in the world. Players are free to change the world by manipulating hte ecology, and so forth. The main goal of the game is to build cities and to socialize, and to brag about all the cool stuff you’ve done and collected. Character creation would be as involved as you choose it to be, everything from changing your innate skills to your history to your appearance to your birth place in the world and so on. And I’d like there to be no levels and no forced grinds. All characters would have skill innates that they could set at char creation and could change liberally during the course of their character life, but nothing would be permanent and changing your innates would be cheap. Innates would rule your ability to do combat, to do tradeskills, basically they’d govern your power at any particular skill, number-wise. That’d be the limit of numbers, however. The difference, versus other mmorpgs, is that you wouldn’t have to grind to change your innates. Armour and weapons would still have stats and characters would still have stats like hitpoints/etc to boast about, but I’m inclined towards a system where items are about bragging rights instead of beefing up your character. They might make your character better by a few small percentage points, but the vast majority of their value is the bragging rights you’d collect from showing them off to others. For example, someone next to me might have equipment that’s 10x better, but they’re not 10x better than you. The only thing that would make players different quantitatevly (as determined by numbers and formulas in the game engine) are their innates and by a very small amount, their items. The main fun in the game should be community, adventuring for kool stuff to show off, in general showing off what you’ve created or collected, building cities, enjoying the dynamic non-linear ecological-based world, and so on. The main thing is to get rid of grinds, no more! I want social worlds that’re roleplayer friendly with depth and intrigue and causality and so on, but I don’t want a world where the only thing that matters is combat and how good your equipment is.