Hey, that's an awesome idea.
Good call Cornflake.
Computer Science Canada MMORPG features. |
| Author: | Martin [ Mon Jan 30, 2006 10:44 pm ] |
| Post subject: | MMORPG features. |
My current project is an MMORPG of sorts, and I had a few questions. What kind of character advancement system do you like in an RPG (a MMO)? The obvious choices would be a level based system (as in get this much experience to get more powerful) or a levelless system in which skills advance through use (as in, use your gun and you'll get better at shooting). What about character classes? Do you like having a large selection of somewhat specialized character classes from which you can choose, or a smaller, more general selection? My personal favourite is Morrowind's system, where you choose areas that you want to specialize in and then have to actually use those skills to improve. Do you like character races? A lot, a few, just one? For those of you that play MMORPG's, what are your thoughts on grouping? How large a group do you like to run with? Finally, what other non combat features of an RPG (MMO or otherwise) that you've played have really stood out? Thanks in advance. |
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| Author: | Tony [ Mon Jan 30, 2006 10:59 pm ] |
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well I like how World of Warcraft has combined both of those leveling systems. You get experience and you level your character.. at each level you get bonus to your stats such as strength and vitality. though the bonus for a weapon class or profession is achieved with practice. So if I mine minerals and Engineer devices, those skill increase with practice. I'd prefer a customazation of characters to fit my original ideas.. though not to a point where it's very generic do-whatever. I guess some story for each class/race/etc should still be there. Grouping.. I think that 4~5 would make a pretty kick-ass group. In WoW raid groups of 50+ could be formed... interestingly enough there are actually quests where this is required. |
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| Author: | brenn [ Mon Jan 30, 2006 11:31 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: MMORPG features. |
Instead of choosing classes, and the skills associated with, why not choose the class based on the skillsets accumulated by the character? For instance, the more a character uses say, magic skills, the greater chance that he will become a magician class character (as opposed to choosing the class first, and then having the skills in conjunction). The class could be chosen when the skill and/or player reaches a certain level, etc. Having levels would be the simplest way to implement advancement, either with general exp points or skill points. If you could have some original way, it could work out better and bring more originality into your MUD. (You're making a MUD, right?) |
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| Author: | Justin_ [ Mon Jan 30, 2006 11:33 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
If you trust yourself Martin, the best way to make a game that people will love is to make a game exactly how YOU would want it. Make it how you would have it in your dreams and your garanteed to get a following :p |
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| Author: | Tony [ Mon Jan 30, 2006 11:39 pm ] |
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Justin_'s right, otherwise you'll just end up with another generic RPG clone. Besides, I don't think most of the above ideas translate into MUD well. |
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| Author: | Martin [ Mon Jan 30, 2006 11:44 pm ] |
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What I was thinking about for the class system was to allow characters to choose major and minor skills from a big list of skills (a la Morrowind). These skills would advance faster than other skills and have a higher maximum. To keep things simple, it'd offer pre-made packages for commonly used archetypes (for example, there'd be a Soldier archetype with the appropriate specializations) but customization would be there for those who want it. My original idea was to create a more hardcore, roleplaying your character enforced game but I'm not sure how well that'd work. So right now I'm collecting ideas. Personally, I've never been a fan of having different races in a game because it seems to me that they tend to encourage power gaming (why play an elf warrior when you can play a troll warrior?). WoW has character classes being race specific though, don't they? |
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| Author: | Martin [ Tue Jan 31, 2006 12:24 am ] |
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Tony wrote: Justin_'s right, otherwise you'll just end up with another generic RPG clone.
Besides, I don't think most of the above ideas translate into MUD well. You'd be suprised at how few things from graphical games doesn't work well with a MUD. For the most part, it's just a difference of graphical mediums. Everquest, for example, got accused of stealing code from the DIKU MUD codebase (although it turned out that they didn't). A MUD vs. a graphical MMORPG is like a unix terminal vs. a GUI. You aren't really limited by a well designed GUI, but in the right hands a terminal can be just as powerful (and often more powerful). |
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| Author: | Justin_ [ Tue Jan 31, 2006 12:42 am ] |
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i'm confused. What is MUD and MMORPG? |
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| Author: | Martin [ Tue Jan 31, 2006 1:15 am ] |
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MMORPG is Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. Like World of Warcraft, Everquest, Anarchy Online, etc. MUD means Multi User (Dungeon|Domain|Dimension|D.*). The predecessors to the current big graphical MMORPG's, a MUD is a text based massively multiplayer game, played through telnet. Check out http://www.topmudsites.com/ EDIT: And DIKU is just the name of a MUD codebase that is widely used. |
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| Author: | codemage [ Tue Jan 31, 2006 12:12 pm ] |
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I prefer Morrowind's system of skills and levelling to any other game I've played. I like having lots of races, but that's more in graphical games where the variety makes things more visually appealing. I like smaller groups for questing (4-8), and much bigger groups for PvPing (10-100). I also like Brenn's idea of classes. I don't like being pigeonholed into a narrow preset; I'd rather be able to test out different skills, and dynamically find what's right for me. I also think there's benefit to being able to change your class after you've "picked" one. |
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| Author: | md [ Tue Jan 31, 2006 12:43 pm ] |
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Skill based on use. The more you use a particular skill the better you become at it. That way you don't have the narrow-ness of classes, but you can't do everything either. Also, if you don't use a particular skill for a while you should become less proficient at it, just as in real life you can forget how to do things. |
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| Author: | rizzix [ Tue Jan 31, 2006 3:11 pm ] |
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haha you guys need to play www.silkroadonline.net (more or less quite similar to what is mentioned here.. with an exception that it's totally free to play!) + no classes, but many customizable characters to choose from + you are free to distribute your skill points over any thing you wish, but it is wise to focus them on one or two masteries only. 3 jobs, that are sort of interdependent: Anyone can be a Thief, a Merchant and a Warrior. Yes you can be all three. But there's a 10 min cool down time before you can equip your self with a another job item. If you gain Thief exp, you loose Merchant exp. All job items can be upgraded. If a Thief gains exp then he gets stronger against higher level Merchants. If a Merchant gains exp, well, he can can gain more gold / trade mission. I'm not quite sure about a Warrior yet. =/ But basically a warrior is supposed to kill Thieves, and I believe he's awarded if he captures a Wanted. A Thief becomes a wanted once he has some x amount of exp. |
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| Author: | Martin [ Tue Jan 31, 2006 8:12 pm ] |
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Rizzix - site's dead. Is that game a MUD or just one of those PHP browser based games? Cornflake - The system that I think I'm going to use is like Morrowind's, with what you said - the player's skills are all constantly atrophying, although at a much slower rate than they learn them at, as well as based upon the rate of learning other things. For example, a player who spends his time shooting rifles isn't going to forget how to use a pistol. Similarly, someone who learns how to use some healing magic (well, not magic... I'll post an explanation of the magic system on antithesis tonight) but then never uses it or any other magic will forget it fairly quickly. Also, skills forgotten this way will regain quicker - it's easier to relearn something than learn something new. I think the biggest challenge will be to keep people from becomming specialized in a lot of things. Everybody is going to learn a bit of healing magic, but a character who focuses on healing magic should be compotent enough that they are still useful to a group of said people, so I think I'm going to go with a level based skill maximum - individual skill maximums as well as total skill points will be based on the player's level. Speaking of which, I think a level based system is the best way to go. One of the problems with a levelless system is that it would be much more difficult to determine who could group with who. Without restrictions, this would lead to people getting the best equipment almost right away (in the form of it being given to them by other players). I think that I'm going to go with a remort system though - after the player reaches a certain level, they are given the option of "remorting" their character, giving them an extended choice of races as well as some other bonuses (such as to stats) while resetting their level to 1 and skills to their defaults. This would keep certain races proportionally rare (I think human will be the only starting race available) and also keep the game contained - so there are always people in your level range to group with. |
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| Author: | rizzix [ Tue Jan 31, 2006 8:41 pm ] |
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hmm its a 3D MMORPG (geez man i know what an mmorpg is). -- you know like WoW??? yea like that! And yea, that site is tweaked to only be viewed on windows. Lame? yea. But good game. |
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| Author: | md [ Tue Jan 31, 2006 9:42 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
since skills are learned faster then forgotten you could always calculate a characters level by averaging their skills, or a similar method. You could then use the level for things like groups or equipment or whatever but still retain the basic level-less nature. |
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| Author: | Martin [ Tue Jan 31, 2006 10:35 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
Hey, that's an awesome idea.
Good call Cornflake. |
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| Author: | md [ Wed Feb 01, 2006 12:35 am ] |
| Post subject: | |
Since when are my ideas not awesome?  |
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| Author: | codemage [ Wed Feb 01, 2006 9:53 am ] |
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Cornflake wrote: since skills are learned faster then forgotten you could always calculate a characters level by averaging their skills, or a similar method. You could then use the level for things like groups or equipment or whatever but still retain the basic level-less nature.
If you're doing levels like that for grouping, you'll want to throw in classes of some type, as well. That way you can quickly grab a, say, healer if you're looking for one. You could do classes dynamically as well (it's been done before). If a player reaches a certain proficiency in predetermined skills, their class name changes to reflect that. Out of curiosity - are you doing a MUD, or something with graphics? What language(s) are you using? No pressure on giving up trade secrets or anythnig. |
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| Author: | md [ Wed Feb 01, 2006 11:41 am ] |
| Post subject: | |
codemage wrote: Cornflake wrote: since skills are learned faster then forgotten you could always calculate a characters level by averaging their skills, or a similar method. You could then use the level for things like groups or equipment or whatever but still retain the basic level-less nature.
If you're doing levels like that for grouping, you'll want to throw in classes of some type, as well. That way you can quickly grab a, say, healer if you're looking for one. You could do classes dynamically as well (it's been done before). If a player reaches a certain proficiency in predetermined skills, their class name changes to reflect that. Out of curiosity - are you doing a MUD, or something with graphics? What language(s) are you using? No pressure on giving up trade secrets or anythnig. You don't need a class at all; just find people who have skills that complement your own. It's the combination of skills that make a character useful, not any supposed class. It's a MUD, and unless martin has decided to do the right thing and go with something non-java it's in Java. |
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| Author: | Martin [ Wed Feb 01, 2006 7:12 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
Yes, it's a MUD, and it's in Java. http://antithesis.nxor.org/ for more information. |
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| Author: | chrispminis [ Wed Feb 01, 2006 10:23 pm ] |
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Hmmm, im rather fond of the diablo style character development. I like races and classes, but I don't mind if its sort of strict, as long as one can create many characters. I like the idea of like Leveling then adding stuff to stats, and then to skills. But having skills restricted to certain classes. Also what works well is when level effects Statistic Points only, such as Strength, Vitality, etc. Whereas Skill Points are raised through training, such as non combat skills like mining or something. It depends are you trying to make a combat based game? Or do you want something with a little more focus on trades? |
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| Author: | Martin [ Wed Feb 01, 2006 10:45 pm ] |
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See, I'm thinking of a focus on lots of things. Combat will be a big part of it, but it's not going to be only combat. The reason that I don't like classes is because I find that classes are too limited. Even with diablo 2, you only have a couple of paths that you can take for each character class (assuming you don't want your character to suck.) My thoughts are like this: If a character wants to cast spells, but they also want to use a crossbow, why can't they? Hopefully the result of such a system will be one where people can customize their character as they choose. |
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| Author: | codemage [ Mon Feb 06, 2006 12:15 pm ] |
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It's still useful to have some sort of shorthand which describes your character. I shouldn't have access to read the skillsheet of every character I'm interested in partying with. (If you're going to have a party system). I should have some sort of way of telling what another characters main strengths are though - even if it's masked by rounding the percentile, etc.) Say another character, player1, has high swordsmanship, healing, and merchantly, in that order. It could be displayed something like: Player1 (Sw:90 He:70 Me: 40) That way, if there are 80 characters in a room, I can tell at a glance who I want for a meat shield, and don't have to browse through character descriptions or start shouting along with the 50 other people trying to form a party. My $0.02 |
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| Author: | Martin [ Mon Feb 06, 2006 7:24 pm ] |
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Well, I'm thinking that I'm going to go for a level and skill based system. I think the biggest thing about a levelless system is that that takes out a huge amount of accomplishment from the game. I think I'm going to do the levelling like in Dungeon Seige - players have three levels (in DS: melee, ranged, magic) and a total level (melee+ranged+magic). If you want to get better at magic, use magic. --- Now, next question. How realistic is good? First thing is that I think I'm going to make the game light roleplaying enforced - in game, you are your character, but I'm not going to yell at people for not creating and playing through elaborate plots. The reason is simply that I hate on MMORPG's how all of the global channels are flooded with "omg where do i get oger sord help plzzzz!!!!!!!!" Those people would get kicked. Literally, if I could. What about death in the game? Incredibly punishing (such as permanent character death)? Slight punishment(exp/skill loss)? None? The system that I am working with is that people purchase clones, and they can update their clones whenever they want, essentially saving their character in case of death. Of course, with cheaper clones, your skills will degrade slightly. As for combat, I was thinking that I want it to be more stylish over realistic. The goal would be for a PvP fight to last about 10 minutes with two moderately skilled contestants, and a player vs. npc fight to last between 1 and 2. The system I've been working out is a martial arts based system for close combat, although of course there are plenty of weapons (swords, shivs, clubs, etc.) available for use. |
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