PvE RvR PvP

Mention the three letters PvP and immediately you get a flame war. Things settle down into three groups: full PvP folks who insist its the only way to go and anything else is for losers, restricted PvP folks who insist that the only way to keep griefing down is to put up some kind of restrictions, and PvE folks who don't like the idea of facing off against another human being.

For a long time I was a self-confessed carebear that hated PvP because my only exposure to it consisted of being repeatedly hammered by some character well above my level, and then have them dance on my grave like it was some kind of accomplishment (EQ, AC). I was later exposed to RvR (DAoC) which at least let me know who my enemies were, and that was a little more tolerable. I played Lineage 2 which had a PvP system with a twist where player killing wasn't free. I enjoyed that system, but it had its issues too.

Eventually I found out that I had the most fun in an RvR system when things were on a level playing field. Level-limited playing areas and safe zones kept things balanced and it was immensely fun to join a bridgade of other players in a battle for dominance. Yes I died a lot, but it didn't detract from the fun because I also helped kill a lot and I could get a sense of accomplishment regardless of whether I was defending an outpost or attacking one. It wasn't a meaningless free-for-all and I didn't have to join a large guild to experience the fun.

I think a lot of PvE people would get enjoyment out of PvP if they felt they had a fair chance at winning a battle. Of course its nice to beat up a monster with predictable AI that doesn't dance on your grave when you die. But there isn't anything like the thrill of going up against another human, winning some and losing some, and never knowing how the next battle will turn out. Its also especially satisfying to see someone dancing on your grave, and then get killed while doing so. What comes around goes around.

Crafting, Items, and Economy

Item economy remains a difficult concept for many MMOs to handle. This is a hard thing to manage for many reasons. First, like a real economy, it isn't a simple numbers game. There are a lot of factors to manage. Second, since there needs to be an (apparently) endless supply of monsters to kill, there is a constant influx of goods (items, cash, etc.) that needs to be balanced. The longer a game is around, the more stuff that floats around, and everything but the rarest items become devalued. It makes a lower skilled crafter worthless.

Item decay is the first step I think, and many systems have this. However to limit frustration, item decay is seldom significant enough to balance supply. I think to support a good economy, things should decay rapidly with use. Things could be repaired with additional supplies, but they'd never be as good as the original, and eventually would wear out entirely. This also helps get rid of hand-me-downs that end up devaluing the more basic crafted items.

Item sinks (typically cash sinks) are also used to help balance this. Things like material cost for guild houses, maintenance of the same, paying for skills, etc. all behave as drains that remove excess goods from the economy. This needs to be employed to a high level in order to help stave off the growing influx. Warehouse fees should be used -- make it cost money to keep things under lock-and-key.

Selling items back to NPCs is a common way of converting stuff into cash. This is almost always done at a significant loss to help keep the economy in check. Any conversion of stuff from one form to another should be done at a loss for this reason (crafting raw materials into items, salvaging items into raw materials, etc.). Selling items to PCs is also a common way of converting stuff into cash at a better rate than selling it to NPCs. If there is a commission charge for this (I think Horizons did this), then you continue this concept. Many games also utilize no-drop/no-trade items, though generally to prevent people from bypassing quests it also has the effect of removing items from the economy.

Tailor-making items is another way to keep values up. If there are one-size-fits-all suits of armor out there then one suit is as good as another for any character. Instead have tailor-made items. If you want to hand down or sell your armor to another character, then they would either need to salvage the materials (at a loss of course) and make a new suit, or at least require a refitting (costing additional materials).

In almost every MMO, the longer you are in a game the richer you get. Higher level critters drop more cash and/or more expensive items, and it costs more to get higher level items. This is done to keep lower level characters from having access to the best stuff. However it does create twinking. Level caps are often employed to reduce this effect as are no-drop/no-trade items. I think this experience=rich is enevitable, but can be kept in check with better items costing more to maintain.

In a real economy, technology often plays a part. The "new, improved" widget is better than the old widget, so everyone is going to want to upgrade to it. This is probably one of the most difficult things to manage, and probably is beyond the capabilities of most games. Things like Copper->Bronze and Bronze->Iron are major progressions, and most games treat it as if low skill crafters can only work with the older technology. If periodically a technology upgrade occurred, then both crafters and consumers across the board would need to move forward to stay competitive.

The last way to help crafters stay in business is to have unique items. Suppose each crafter gains the ability to make a particular unique item after they've progressed far enough in their craft. No other crafter can make their unique item, and the item has some special effect. This would require a lot of work on the game designers and developers, but would go a long way towards placing a high value on the work of a crafter.

Mini-games

Several MMOs use mini-games to make the overall game more interesting. In some cases (e.g. 9Dragons) the mini-game is used to learn a new skill or progress in level. In others the mini-game is essential to the game as a whole (e.g. A Tale In The Desert) where the mini-game is used to create a new item. Still others have them just for fun.

I think mini-games add a diminsion to an MMO beyond simple hack-n-slash. In particular, I think crafting skills should be very strongly mini-game based. Rather than sit around punching the same button over and over, make it a mini-game. Crafting in most MMOs is either minimalistic or repetitive, and making a game out of it would make it a viable alternative to hack-n-slash.

Guilds

The current guild system that most MMOs have is one guild per player. A Tale In The Desert allowed a character to join multiple guilds, and it allowed guilds that were dedicated to a specific purpose to pop up. Some were chat only, some were for teaching, some were dedicated to a specific goal, etc. I like the idea and I think it should be more widespread.

A guild should be more than just a random collection of people each with their own ideas of what the guild should be doing. Instead, have many guilds each with a specific cause and let players join the guilds they are most aligned with.

Higher and Lower Levels Working Together

One of the biggest complaints people have with MMORGPs is that the casual player cannot compete with or even play with the dedicated player. City of Heroes/Villains had a system that helped lower level characters play with higher level characters (and vice versa). I liked the idea enough that I wanted to make it a core part of DA -- higher levels taught lower levels by working with them (and giving them quests). For example, a soldier would be more effective and learn faster when working with a sargeant than when working alone, and a sargeant would be more effective with a few soldiers to back him up.

A lower lever character working with a higher level character should be able to fight closer to the higher level character's ability and learn faster. A higher level character that is mentoring a lower level character would gain the benefit of having extra support, and should also learn faster. Both win. In a skill-based system this would be harder to quantify, but it could still be done.

Difficulty Level

An idea I liked from Shaiya (and probably a few other games have it) is the concept of Easy/Normal/Hard characters. Easy characters are level-capped at 30, gain XP twice as fast, but don't have access to certain skills. Hard characters earn XP slower but gained more points from leveling. They have an Ultimate mode too where death is permanent if you're not ressurected withing 3 minutes of dying. Hard mode was unlocked only after you reached level 50 in Normal mode, and Ultimate mode was unlocked only after you reached level 50 in Hard mode.

For a system based entirely on skills, there would be a lot of tweaking to this concept, but I think the idea is a good one. Easy mode lets people unfamiliar with the game (or MMORPGs as a whole) learn it without a lot of grind. Hard mode gains a bonus in ability at the expense of difficulty and time.

In DA I thought of this as Easy (no PvP or RvR, cannot progress past Journeyman), Normal (RvR but no PvP, cannot progress past Immortal), and Hard (full PvP, full shot at divinity).

Character Background

Character background is an area that I think that almost all MMOs lack depth. I want to see an MMO where background has meaning beyond some backstory someone typed into a box (if you even get a box). Grew up as the son of a farmer? Then you get a higher starting strength (did a lot of chores), lower intelligence (not much for book learning), and a fair knowledge of farming.

The advantages and disadvantages system from GURPS would be a great addition to MMOs. A lot of balancing would need to go into the system, but having a character with aquaphobia but keen eyesight would make my character different from yours. He won't be taking any boat rides or trudging through swamps, but he'll nail you with an arrow from afar otherwise.

If you are familiar with the old CRPG Arcanum, they had character background as a part of the character generation system. This might be a helpful addition for people unfamiliar with the concept of the advantages/disadvantages system. Raised by snake handlers? You're a bit uglier from being bit a lot, but you've got a good poison resistance.

I realize that this system would play a lot into "finding the perfect build", which is why a lot of balancing would need to be made. However, a lot of people get enjoyment out of that sort of thing. If new a/ds were added regularly I could see a lot of folks spending a lot of time doing this thing.

Skill Leveling

I know my original plan for DA was to use character classes instead of (or in addition to) skills. The primary reason for that was to try to kill off the jack-of-all-trades class that skill-only systems seem to encourage. However I eventually came back to the skill system with the modification noted below to help prevent that.

Skill systems aren't new, but the leveling of them seems to fall into two categories: (1) each incremental step gets some amount harder than the last step, or (2) the skill is capped based on the character's current level. A lot of MMOs use both. What I would love to see is a game without character levels that is entirely skill based - kill (2). Also I'd like to see some sort of plateau system; initially skills are hard to pick up, then they get easier, and then back to harder. If you know statistics, think of the Gaussian distribution curve where the y-axis is the amount of benefit you get from learning and the x-axis is the current skill level. You'd pick a spot on the left side of the curve to start learning at (skill default if you want) and learning progresses to the right. Its only a minor change from (1), but perhaps a little more realistic, and also helps keep the purity of skils so that you don't have every character end up being a jack-of-all-trades.

I think skills should be increased based on frequency of use, rather than dumping points into them you earn. Nothing new, several MMOs do this, but again the new focus of this blog is to list the things I'd like to see combined into one MMO. Also I'd like to see the frequency of use be tempered by repetitive use. To clarify, if you use a sword skill to hack up orcs, you should have diminishing returns -- you aren't learning anything new by fighting orcs. However, start using that skill to hack up goblins and now you're learning again. Some things would be inherently "harder" so would garner you more experience than easier things, but I still think that you should get benefit out of "new" even when it is "easy".

Realistically skills decay over time if not used. I don't like this idea as-is (I think UO tried it), but I do think it might be worth experimenting with the idea that frequently used skills get a small boost. Over all it looks like decaying with disuse, but it never drops below the original learned level, and I wouldn't want the amount of boost be high enough that people feel obligated to constantly cycle their skills to maintain the boost. Perhaps you can only have some number of skills with a boost at any given time, or maybe the boost is a "pool" of points that is spread out based on frequency of use.

Okay I'm dead.

After about forty pages of design document I've decided I'm in way over my head. Without a good staff of artists and developers this game won't see the light of day. Instead I will rattle off a few things that I've seen in other MMOs that I'd love to see stuffed into one, as well as a few ideas I haven't seen elsewhere.

Still Alive

I realize the posts have stopped for the moment. I've been collecting my thoughts on the project and I'm working on a design document. When I have the first draft, I'll put it out here.