MMO Worldbuilding

So, how do we actually go about coming up with a good idea for an MMO world? Well, MMO gameplay puts a few constraints on us:

1. You probably want a reason for there to be monster everywhere which the player can and should kill. Ideally these monsters are also of a type which can be captured and used as pets or mounts. This alone is probably the reason most MMOs are fantasy or fantasy mixed with something else. (A secondary reason being that magical combat has more breadth and is more visually flashy than realistic combat.) It's very difficult to come up with a pure science fiction or modern realistic setting where it's reasonable for lots of monsters to exist and morally acceptable for the player to be slaughtering them.

1.5 As a corollary, you probably need some wilderness areas for these monsters to live, and also some forgotten ruins for players to explore; you also want some hubs of civilization where players can do business with each other, get organized for pvp or dungeon runs, and which is a safe place for players to log out (and maybe even consider their 'hometown' within the game). This set up of a wilderness dotted with a few cities naturally lends itself to a frontier, feudal, or survivalist mentality, and isn't well suited to a highly organized government, pacifistic philosophy, or other sophisticated and urbane type of culture.

2. You probably want to have a selection of races, classes, professions, or factions that the player can choose to align themselves with and work to gain higher rank at. That means you have to invent the options, balance them against each other if the player can't pursue them all with the same character, and then the options have to make sense existing in the same culture/time period/location.

3. The theme of the world can be a strong selling point. In Dofus the theme is the Dofu, a magical artifact which can only be found by beating a higher-level dungeon. Each gives a large stat bonus or can be sold for a lot of money, so they are good treasures. One of the beginner quests gives the player a fake Dofu, which gives a tiny stat bonus, and gets the player interested in finding the real things. In Perfect World the theme is the Dragon Quest. The Dragons are mythic level bosses, somewhat comparable to the Weapons in Final Fantasy 7; as a lower level player you can't interact with them, but you run around to various NPCs collecting legends about them. Other hypothetical themes might be discovering every area on the map, collecting all of a large set of objects, discovering why and how your character got pulled into the game world in the first place, discovering what happened in the world's past to cause a current post-apocalyptic state, discovering the mysterious culture/race which left a lot of ruins, discovering who is the final boss behind a lot of problems, or achieving some sort of apotheosis or transcendence (character becomes god-like or is reincarnated as a class or race not available to starting players).



So, what worldbuilding ideas do you all have that you think would make for a fun MMO?

[Edited by - sunandshadow on November 26, 2010 3:14:22 PM]

Here are some of my own thoughts, just because I think it would be fun to discuss them.

I like a survivalist mindset - I'm a fan of marooning stories, McGuyver problem solving, gathering and crafting, sim farming, sim animal breeding, etc. So one type of MMO world I think would be fun would be the kind which sets the player's initial overarching goal (the one required to graduate from the beginner tutorial area) to be a goal of climbing a crafting tech tree a bit. I believe allowing the player to craft some of the basic gameplay elements which will be used throughout the rest of the game would help make those elements feel personal and something to be proud of instead of something to take for granted. These basic gameplay elements might include a backpack or other storage devices, a world map, some kind of transportation device like a teleportation stone, the most basic level of player housing, a first weapon, tools used for further crafting, etc. I would not include a first mount here because that's a major reward the player should not be able to achieve immediately.

But, I don't want to just maroon new players in the wilderness by themselves. Getting a bit of mentoring from higher-level players is really helpful to people beginning an MMO, and many people play MMOs for the feeling of community and might be a bit unhappy to join and not see any other players. Seeing the cool stuff higher level players have equipped, as well as things like earned emotes that higher level players can do, are major motivators for lower and mid-level players. For these reasons is it best not to prevent beginners and non-beginners from talking to each other, as many games do. Pvp might be impossible in the beginner area, and beginners shouldn't be able to leave the beginner area until they've mastered it (also level one bots should not be able to leave the beginner area and spam the rest of the game).

On the other hand, there should be some logical reason why new players appear in the beginner area, and why they have to work their way up from sticks and stones if the rest of the world contains much more sophisticated technology. One possibility is that the beginner area is a test imposed by a powerful organization or unknown force, which for some reason doesn't want people with no strength or skills in their world. The easiest interpretation of this is a school, where benevolent adults won't let incapable children out into a dangerous world until they acquire some survival skills. The opposite is also possible - the player might be trying to enter an exclusive school by passing a difficult entrance exam. Another possibility is that the starting area is a cage where players are intended to be trapped, and have to break out. Another possibility is that the player has literally been marooned somewhere uninhabited and needs to build themselves a means to get back to civilization, but the player happens to have a device which allows voice communication with more populated areas. Yet another approach is to place the player as a young adult in a tribe where the whole culture is at the survival level but other cultures elsewhere are more advanced.

We might, in fact, want to implement different starting circumstances for different races. We could consult the "suits of cards" theory about the personalities of RPG player (or a similar theory) and design one race's starting circumstances to appeal to each type of player. Perhaps the survival start might be aimed at players who like crafting, while a more combat-focused start might be aimed at players who don't like crafting.
[post in progress]

I’m not MMO player but I like the survivalist start up idea. One of the interesting setups for a game I’ve played recently was Harvest moon Island of happiness which has the player and a few other characters marooned on an island. As the player develops their farm, build roads and bridges on the island, new areas are unlocked, the town develops and more characters start arriving on the island. It’s all a nice setup controls are rather poor and the crop mechanics overly complex this time around but the setup is good and interesting.

What I think would be a cool setting for MMO or SP game would be shattered earth setting, where the player and a couple of npc wake up in desolate ruined colony floating in astral space. After a quick tutorial the player gains access to their first set of gate cards/stones/devices the cards allow the player travel to different eras/dimensions similar to Chrono Trigger. In these different eras the player can collect relics and samples, gather materials, learn about the era, intact with the people, hunt monsters, and quest with their fellow players.

Those adventures through time then shape the player’s home dimension. New npc can come through to time expand the players colony. Relics unlock new activates and items available such as you collecting parts for a Victorian workshop you can craft and buy more Victorian and Victorian hybrid items in your home dimension. Bringing back plant and animal samples back allows you start growing and raising them back at home, helping turning the home dimension from desolate to a lush paradise.

Learning about an era would increase your culture points in that era allowing you unlock styles for your home. So the more time you spend in the prehistoric era the more you can transform your home colony into a Neolithic village. Or if you gain enough you Victorian and Modern culture points you can have your colony be a steam punk theme.

NPC would help out around your dimension crafting items, crowing planets, raising animals, and exploring the ruins, etc depending on the type.

As you play and your dimension can grow in size allowing more buildings, space for npcs, plants, animals etc..

Back story setup being that a cataclysm in the distant future has shattered the dimensional barriers fragment the earth into shards floating in astral space existing in timeless state between tick and tock. The survivors have been changed by the cataclysm there are now three groups of people. Avatars people who can traverse dimensions with a limited control of reality able to create their own bubble of reality out of the shards floating in astral space. The Hungry the warped souls of those who perished in the cataclysm now scattered across time driven insane and inhabiting twisted bodies. And The Lost displaced from time that help rebuild the earth as servants of the avatars.

I'm not sure how useful this might be, but I posted a series for last month on my blog about building fictional cultures from the ground up. I know 99% of all fantasy / sci fi games just exactly duplicate a pre-existing Earth culture as a back drop, throw in some speculative elements(magic / high technology) and focus on story events without bothering to do anything new or creative with it.

If anyone wants to check it out, it's the 4 part series from last month http://brianlinvillewriter.blogspot.com/

"1. You probably want a reason for there to be monster everywhere which the player can and should kill."


What if the MMO was designed to let the players advance and progress through activities other than killing mobs in this world?

I'm not a very big fan of the current MMO design since it has a forced "monsters everywhere" philosophy, It would be much more fun to have monsters be rarer and more scary (OMG itz a monster, run! *dies*)

Something really effective in MMO world building is giving the players an experience that can link them to this "supposedly living" world (Random events, constantly updated content, varying triggered events and very well hidden valuables).

Hmm, I guess this doesn't have much to do with writing, just throwing the idea out in the open ;p.

Quote:

Original post by sneaky_squirrel "1. You probably want a reason for there to be monster everywhere which the player can and should kill." What if the MMO was designed to let the players advance and progress through activities other than killing mobs in this world? I'm not a very big fan of the current MMO design since it has a forced "monsters everywhere" philosophy, It would be much more fun to have monsters be rarer and more scary (OMG itz a monster, run! *dies*) Something really effective in MMO world building is giving the players an experience that can link them to this "supposedly living" world (Random events, constantly updated content, varying triggered events and very well hidden valuables). Hmm, I guess this doesn't have much to do with writing, just throwing the idea out in the open ;p.

Well, it does somewhat have to do with writing. When I see the phrase "living world" what that means to me personally is that I want an MMO to feel like reading a novel. Not a random life, but one scripted to be dramatic and satisfying escapism. A player's experience within a game world can vary much be shaped by the writing within the game, so identifying what sort of experience you want your player to have leads naturally to the question of what you can write to cause them to have that experience.

Personally I do like killing monsters if there's some actual strategy involved, I see monster-killing as a profession the player has within the game world, but I can understand people who don't find that activity appealing.

Re:

Quote:

So, what worldbuilding ideas do you all have that you think would make for a fun MMO?

It might also be interesting to discuss how to build a world that attracts people who don't normally play MMORPG.

Concept: Team-based MMORPG:

Title: Fantasy Road Trip

In this game, small groups of players would form a team and share a caravan. The purpose is to travel, sightsee, solve challenges and collect interesting things on the way. The caravan itself serves as a mobile home/inventory of the team and an reset point for the team members. The condition of the caravan could degrade overtime (i.e. if the wheel breaks the team must repair before the caravan can move).

Why is it fun:
o Shared resources
o Commitment to the same team
o Discussions that arise about where to go, what to get, and what to do.
o It is the safe way for the team members to understand risks and consequences
o It is the safe way to completely screw up and gets everyone killed without dying if it were a real trip.
o Singing (DDR style gameplay to move the Caravan)
o Anecdotal stories of how road trip goes bad (Reminds the players not to take cooperation for granted)
o Roadside Guestbooks
o ...

Target audience:
o Family members
o Friends
o Random strangers
o Solo'ers
(The game makes it really hard for a person to maintain a caravan by himself. A lot of the quests cannot be solo'ed. Some tasks would take exceedingly long, or become very challenging if attempted solo.)

Challenges:
o Hunting
o Treasure hunting
o Puzzle solving
o Solving a mystery
o Team-based Combat
o Breeding
o Crafting
o Caravan improvement/decoration
o ...

Variations to the "Caravan":
o Ship
o Flying creature
o Spaceship
o Submarine
o ...

Regions to explore:
o Harmonious Nature
o Dangerous Nature
o Creepy Nature
o Towns
o Harsh Nature: Surival Challenge Lands
o Zombie Land
o Warzone
o Cultural Zones
o Historical Zones
o Fantasy Zones
o Philosophy Zones
o Education Zones
o Mindbender / Puzzle Land
o Romantic Pockets
o ...

Interaction among teams:
o Tag along, cooperative, alliance
o Competition / Rivals / Race
o Enemy
o Random helpful strangers
o Sees others' teams and Caravans
o Exchange interesting places to explore, things to do, things to get
o Trading

[Edited by - Wai on December 12, 2010 6:34:37 PM]

I don't know yet whether it would make for a fun MMO, but what I have done is to make "monsters" part of the "tech tree" as "just another kind of unit that can be built and deployed".

This approach though means that whether there be monsters, and if so where there be monsters, is up to the controllers of the "civilisation" that chooses to build and deploy the type of unit(s) known generically as "monsters".

I am currently trying out "Imperial Warfare" to see an implementation of an attempt to have "armies" and "individual heroes" combined in one battle-resolution system, but whatever the implemention details the question of how large an army an individual character is or can be "equalivalent to" in the sense of "can do as much damage as and survive as deadly an attacker as" is going to be a key factor in the game.

There is a potential conflict of interest between people who want to in effect play an entire nation or civilisation and march large scale units around and those who want to play a single individual and yet possibly interfere in some way with the plans of those who are marching armies around. And vice versa.

But on the up side, it creates the possibility of doing one's worldbuilding inside the game, by using the terraforming capabilities of engineer units to mould the map and the ability to build monster units to populate the map. (Though on terraforming the specific engine I am looking at does not yet give engineers the ability to build rivers, hmm, something for a future version maybe...)

Quote:

Original post by sneaky_squirrel What if the MMO was designed to let the players advance and progress through activities other than killing mobs in this world?

AGREE! There's so much more we can be doing here than just killing mobs! If you have to really try hard to justify killing boars (i.e. an NPC needs to make a boar liver pie), then maybe it shouldn't be there? When considering the game world, there are settings that are better suited to greater things than mob killing...

1. A dozen or so miscelaneous areas, each with some unique theme (jungle, mountain, forest, desert) and unique mobs. If there is no real meaningful connection between them, or why they are important, then it's simply a collection of mob spawn points. "Quests" are just lame excuses to kill critters in these unrelated areas.

2. A dozen or so areas, each with political, economic, and military points of interest, with NPC forces interacting with the resources and each other. This creates a realistic setting with so much more that needs to be done than killing blind mobs. Make the mobs themselves have some sort of organization and reason for what they are doing.

So, here's an example setting that just begs for a better experience:

A newly founded excavation site on a new world... As the colonists dig deeper to exploit more valuable resources, they discover more about the world they have come to call home. Unfortunately, as the scope of the excavation expands, the surrounding settlements become the focus of attack from native populations. During this time of ever-growing tension, you have come to seek your prospects on the new world.

In this setting, perhaps exploration could be one alternate activity.

- Exploration skills, archaeology, mining, cartography.
- Reading of ancient languages, deciphering codes.
- Invention (blueprint-based) crafting.
- Negotiation missions, trying to problem solve to maintain relations with the natives.
- Exploration missions, either on the mainland, or deeper into the mines.
- Trade and Company opportunities, making money.

Trade would also have significant meaning. In fact, I'd even boil it down to this:

The more of an impact the player can have on the world, the more it will mean to him or her

Sometimes there is a possibly somewhat balancing desire to limit the impact players can have on the world, such as not being able to do anything to aspects of the world that relate to a player who is not currently online.

That might even be part of the motive for wanting people to be able to fold up their farm so it no longer displays on the main map: they can thus log off without their farm being raided while they are offline.

The impact that players have can too end up aiming at limiting the potential of players who join the game later.

For exmaple in a game where players start as children who are just growing up as the player takes control, many players ended up keeping all children locked up so that they can find out who ends up controlling each child before deciding which child to let out...

From my MMO experience and thoughts about this thread, I may say that killing mobs is the lesser evil of cooperating with people you don't know. Let's consider the anonymous gamer for this example:

Player A is a social gamer who likes playing MMO's. He's tired of grinding tho, and finds The Game, a game that has all sorts of fun, team based activities instead of grind. Player A likes that as he is capable of being social as well as having fun in a virtual world.
Player B is an arse, an interweb troll who loves spoiling other people's days. He kind of likes MMO's, but the need to grind and ultimatelly join a crowd of people that cooperate overwhelems him. He likes trolling, nothing but that. He finds The Game - an ideal spot for a person like him to join activities and ruin them for others without the need to grind or work to get there.
Grinding is the safety mechanism for most MMO's in my opinion. It's hard to grief when you are low level, so you have to level up. Over the levels, people get to know you and ultimatelly, if you're a hardcore troll, you end up alone or banned. That is the WoW, PW and other typical action RPG games.
Games such as the muiltiplayer aspect of Minecraft are stricktly social and artistic. Easy ground for griefers, as they may ruin the fun for any player at any given time. I think that is the reason that The Sims franchise is SP only - the troll factor (or the unimagination of the creators). Multiple people + troll = not fun.

Developers and designers have to take all sorts of people into account - those that will play by the rules, the ones that came only for the grind, those that came only to troll, etc. Grind is kind of what you expect of a game - Second Life isn't a big hit, despite it having great content. It lies in the human nature to enyoj destruction more than creation. There is no denying it - even creation through destruction is still destruction (mining resources, gathering skins, using up tools).

This is just my point of view. Each problem can be considered from a hundred angles and each angle has a hundred solutions - still it would be nice to finally let the old battle axe rest in the shadow of a trully entertaining game, with constantly developed content, a changing world that would not feel like a second job... But I guess you get the same when you get outside once in a while

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In current mmorpgs the wilderness is quite dull.
This will be a description of how the wilderness around the beginning town could look like, but the
same principles can and should also be applied later.
I'm not sure how well it fits this subforum topic, but it fits the thread title.

You're placed in the beginner town. The town is surrounded by wilderness and there are different
types of wilderness in the different directions. You are free to go anywhere you want,
but there will be a beginner quest chain, introducing you to the game that most will follow.
The wilderness around the town are mainly forests, but to the north it is denser and darker.

You are first sent out into the "normal" forest,
here you will enounter regular monsters like in typical mmos, but there are not as many of them.
There are enemies that are "hiding" that will come out if you approach, or only if you do something
special. This is a good way to balance monster numbers compared to players in the area.
If there's many players the, spawing will be more agressive (secret world will enable you to
summon zombies by turning on car alarms).
There will also be types of non agressive monsters.
The first type is something like big, powerful and peaceful plant eating animals. You can attack
them, but they can easily crush you.
The other type is herds. They are formed by a specie of smaller plant eating animals.
They are individually defeatable, but an attack on one will either cause them to flee, or they will
attack you (most likely alpha males). They will generally travel over large areas, and a running herd
can easily trample anyone standing in the way (although getting hit by a "herdtrain" is unlikely).
Herd's consist of females, juveniles, young/small males and big and powerful alpha males.
This can be considered the"casual"/safe wilderness area.

The forest to the north will look very similar, but it is denser and has a darker atmosphere.
Monsters are found in fewer numbers here, but they are stronger and have a more agressive
behaviour.
The big and powerful peaceful creatures are now more agressive. If you get very close or do
something wrong, they may attack you, but only after warning you to back off (which you should
heed).
The alpha males in herds are very agressive here, and if you approach a juvenile or a female,
close alpha members will fend you off. They will charge towards you, but if you run away, they
will not follow. An alpha male is difficult to kill, but a small party (3-4) will easily take one down.
Killing an alpha male will cause the belonging herd to flee at full speed to a location far away.
If you kill more than one of other types, and the alpha males are struggling to take you down,
it will also cause the herd to flee.
The big difference however, that makes these forests so dangerous, are wolves. They are fierce
predators cooperating together. Scouts will run around, and detect targets from a large distance.
If they believe you are weak enough, they will attack you. If not, they will call the others.
An available party of this specie will respond, and move towards your location. The scout will
follow you, but keep it's distance, so fleeing away is not that easy. Only a large party (8+) will be
strong enough to not attract wolves. To escape you must loose the scout, and preferably get away
before backup arrives. The best thing though, is to stay undetected. Characters will be given several
ways to stay undetected, and this is crucial to survive in the northern forest and similar types of
areas.

RIFT made rifts with demons pop up, but I'd rather see interesting monster/animal behaviours like
what I described here. They enrich the world, where both strong and weak monsters are mixed,
without making it to "hardcore", as yes there's monsters that can defeat you, but you can generally
avoid those fights. However a group may take on some of those fights, making the forests
interesting for both groups and individuals.
You can avoid the northern forest, but the increased difficulty is more exciting than pure attribute
boosts and rewards are generally higher here. Many special items (like rare crafting materials) are
only found in these types of areas.

What you end up with is a much more interesting wilderness.
Let's say you're asked to bring proof of killing a wolf. How do you go about?
Wolves will keep their distance, unless they think they can win.
Do you make yourself appear weaker to lure it in, do you set a trap, do you use a weaker player as
bait, or do you become the hunter yourself by sneaking up on a wolf?
By making dynamic behaviours like these, simple kill/gather quests get much more interesting,
as they have the potential to be fun to do. This can compete against well made, scripted story heavy
quests.

Interesting post, caught my attention pretty well.

What do you think about a possible MMO with no combat whatsoever but mainly directed on advanced crafting options and players interaction between them?

I am working on designing an MMO that I decided to call an Exploration and Crafting type. The concept proofs to be quite complex with a need for advanced logic but its damn interesting to work on, my current difficulty stand in part of balancing the game to be "fair" as we all know there are those players that will just try to abuse resources gathering and lets confess that IS one of the biggest fun spoilers of online games, when those with multiple accounts gather so much material that we get an inflation.

Limiting materials gathering to subscribers or money spenders is an option, however it takes away a big if not all of free players fun.

Setting game to subscribers only is another option to prevent materials abuse, but would we get enough audience to make it fun and populated? I believe free players are an important side of community.

On another note what do you think of an idea where player have to cooperate in an MMO world, lets say to build a bridge over that canyon... the amount of resources would be amazingly huge where various players would need to donate in order to create it for whole game, and once done the durability of it will slowly drop and if not maintained again by players it would fall down, taking away the connection point... so by having too many of those constructions around the world some will eventually fall down... I know this will create a couple of problems like players ending up on other side... and if a game is having members shortening there will be a time when maintaining a bridge would be impossible... so any ideas on this are appreciated.

Interesting post, caught my attention pretty well.

What do you think about a possible MMO with no combat whatsoever but mainly directed on advanced crafting options and players interaction between them?

I am working on designing an MMO that I decided to call an Exploration and Crafting type. The concept proofs to be quite complex with a need for advanced logic but its damn interesting to work on, my current difficulty stand in part of balancing the game to be "fair" as we all know there are those players that will just try to abuse resources gathering and lets confess that IS one of the biggest fun spoilers of online games, when those with multiple accounts gather so much material that we get an inflation.

Limiting materials gathering to subscribers or money spenders is an option, however it takes away a big if not all of free players fun.

Setting game to subscribers only is another option to prevent materials abuse, but would we get enough audience to make it fun and populated? I believe free players are an important side of community.

On another note what do you think of an idea where player have to cooperate in an MMO world, lets say to build a bridge over that canyon... the amount of resources would be amazingly huge where various players would need to donate in order to create it for whole game, and once done the durability of it will slowly drop and if not maintained again by players it would fall down, taking away the connection point... so by having too many of those constructions around the world some will eventually fall down... I know this will create a couple of problems like players ending up on other side... and if a game is having members shortening there will be a time when maintaining a bridge would be impossible... so any ideas on this are appreciated.

I've played A Tale In the Desert, that's a combat-less crafting-focused MMO. Subscription only, except for the free trial. It was rather boring and unbalanced. The map was much too big for the number of players, the large map had more or less the same resources everywhere so you could explore all you wanted but it was pointless because there wasn't anything unique and meaningful to find (no story, so no story pieces to find either), and trading was horrible because there wasn't any world marketplace or money system. On the other hand, gathering was pretty balanced because it was limited by time, not by rarity. The main resources were wood, grass, dirt, mud, water, sand, clay, slate, and flint, and these resources were easily available almost everywhere. With those resources you could make a plane to turn wood into boards, and a brick frame to make mud bricks, and with boards and bricks you could build storage chests, so everyone's storage was limited by the time and effort they were willing to put into crafting storage. Additionally one of the main activities of the game is growing flax, basically a farming sim mini-game. Flax in turn produced straw, thread, and twine, and those could be processed into rope, cloth, and canvas. So the common resources of the game were enough to keep a player busy for at least two weeks of fairly hardcore play before they even had a reason to worry about the more rare or finicky resources in the game. BTW in ITITD the players did need to cooperate to donate huge amounts of resources to build community utilities like a chariot stop (teleportation point) and guilds often built public crafting workhouses so newbies could use time-saving equipment they didn't have the ability to build yet. I did not like either of these aspects of the game.

Personally, although I'd like to see a crafting-focused MMO, I don't see any reason to exclude combat because it can be a fun minigame. Even multiple types of combat could be good. Combat's only a problem when the whole game is doing the same thing over and over again. But if I was going to design a combat-less MMO I'd want to focus on the interactive story elements to give meaning to all the gathering and crafting - they get boring pretty fast if they seem pointless.

I really don't like MMOs which require the players to actually work together. I like the sense of being in the same world with other people doing the same things as me, but I don't want to have to socialize that much with them. I like to do almost everything myself, and not be penalized for not wanting to do group activities.

I've played A Tale In the Desert, that's a combat-less crafting-focused MMO. Subscription only, except for the free trial. It was rather boring and unbalanced. The map was much too big for the number of players, the large map had more or less the same resources everywhere so you could explore all you wanted but it was pointless because there wasn't anything unique and meaningful to find (no story, so no story pieces to find either), and trading was horrible because there wasn't any world marketplace or money system. On the other hand, gathering was pretty balanced because it was limited by time, not by rarity. The main resources were wood, grass, dirt, mud, water, sand, clay, slate, and flint, and these resources were easily available almost everywhere. With those resources you could make a plane to turn wood into boards, and a brick frame to make mud bricks, and with boards and bricks you could build storage chests, so everyone's storage was limited by the time and effort they were willing to put into crafting storage. Additionally one of the main activities of the game is growing flax, basically a farming sim mini-game. Flax in turn produced straw, thread, and twine, and those could be processed into rope, cloth, and canvas. So the common resources of the game were enough to keep a player busy for at least two weeks of fairly hardcore play before they even had a reason to worry about the more rare or finicky resources in the game. BTW in ITITD the players did need to cooperate to donate huge amounts of resources to build community utilities like a chariot stop (teleportation point) and guilds often built public crafting workhouses so newbies could use time-saving equipment they didn't have the ability to build yet. I did not like either of these aspects of the game.

Personally, although I'd like to see a crafting-focused MMO, I don't see any reason to exclude combat because it can be a fun minigame. Even multiple types of combat could be good. Combat's only a problem when the whole game is doing the same thing over and over again. But if I was going to design a combat-less MMO I'd want to focus on the interactive story elements to give meaning to all the gathering and crafting - they get boring pretty fast if they seem pointless.

I really don't like MMOs which require the players to actually work together. I like the sense of being in the same world with other people doing the same things as me, but I don't want to have to socialize that much with them. I like to do almost everything myself, and not be penalized for not wanting to do group activities.

See, now the hard part about design is that you just cant please everyone, its sad but a reality in my opinion, best we can try doing is to get everyone to co exist in a game by giving options for lone wolfs as well as social types. That being said its quite complicate to see what feature people will actually enjoy and which they will not, as a player I know I hate many parts of some games... but hey I still play them, most of time...

So my idea of cooperating world with mutable environment is something that will require some deeper research.

How do you trade if you dont like to socialize much? Or marketplaces where you can just place items for sale or buy orders is not exactly what you call "socializing"? Asking to find out how players like you who like being more of lone wolfs behave.

As for storyline, I can understand what you mean by actual MMO problem... they feel "lifeless" no background... what I am currently thinking is that its awesome to have a storyline and all but it doubles the necessary resources for world building since we would need more locations, stories, maybe NPC and so on... cost wise its quite more expensive than creating just an advanced crafting MMO, of course that you cant have that Exploration type if you dont add all that so its something I am still analyzing and considering.
In my idea of exploration however a world would literally be divided by "harder" and "easier" locations with various resources all around the world waiting to be found... this should add more fun to exploration different from what you said about A Tale In the Desert.

Have you played Harvest Moon series? What do you think of them and can you identify a "storyline" or meaning behind all the farming and crafting?

See, now the hard part about design is that you just cant please everyone, its sad but a reality in my opinion, best we can try doing is to get everyone to co exist in a game by giving options for lone wolfs as well as social types. That being said its quite complicate to see what feature people will actually enjoy and which they will not, as a player I know I hate many parts of some games... but hey I still play them, most of time...

I agree with that. Although, some MMOs specialize - some are 100% group play and some are 90% solo play. But yes it's hard to predict what will be fun, and a fun feature can become agony due to a bad interaction with another part of the game - a relevant example is games which have a big crafting system, but a player must lose money to raise crafting skill to a high level before it is possible to make any profit. Losing money is never fun, so the who crafting system becomes un-fun.

How do you trade if you dont like to socialize much? Or marketplaces where you can just place items for sale or buy orders is not exactly what you call "socializing"? Asking to find out how players like you who like being more of lone wolfs behave.[/quote] Yes, I love a worldwide marketplace where I can automatically sell and buy, no need to look at individual shops (hate those in every game I've seen them in) or worse, shout on some channel to find someone to trade with. But, I don't consider trade the important part of crafting. I craft to make stuff for my own character to use - the rest is just junk that I have to make to level my crafting and I'm lucky if I can get my money back out of it. That was one of the things I did really like about ATITD - the focus is on crafting your own house, tools, an obelisk proclaiming your fame, a sculpture showing your creativity, etc.

Here are my thoughts on lone wolves. In combat, lone wolves often play either a pet-user/summoner class (this way they are the tank and the DPS by themselves) or they play a fighter who can heal themselves and endure a medium amount of damage (paladin, druid), or play a class who can switch between an offensive mode and a defensive mode. Lone wolves are often motivated to craft because they want to make/customize all their own gear (cut out the middle man), they want to have their own house because they don't want to share, they want to beat the game without help because needing help shows a lack of brains/work ethic/preparedness/etc. Lone wolves are often completists - they want a checklist of achievements, places to explore, quests to complete, and they like to check everything off the list. Lone wolves often like puzzles. Lone wolves like the type of pvp where they can tell the game they want to play and the game will automatically find them an opponent or team mates, and the pvp has no major affect on the main game. Lone wolves like soloing dungeons, and hate monsters which have strong elemental immunity to all the abilities of a class.

As for storyline, I can understand what you mean by actual MMO problem... they feel "lifeless" no background... what I am currently thinking is that its awesome to have a storyline and all but it doubles the necessary resources for world building since we would need more locations, stories, maybe NPC and so on... cost wise its quite more expensive than creating just an advanced crafting MMO, of course that you cant have that Exploration type if you dont add all that so its something I am still analyzing and considering.
In my idea of exploration however a world would literally be divided by "harder" and "easier" locations with various resources all around the world waiting to be found... this should add more fun to exploration different from what you said about A Tale In the Desert.

Have you played Harvest Moon series? What do you think of them and can you identify a "storyline" or meaning behind all the farming and crafting?
[/quote]
I love the Harvest Moon series. It's one of my major inspirations in my own designs. They do certainly have an overall storyline: The player's job is to create harmony between nature and humans by growing plants, interacting with harvest sprites, improving the buildings of the farm and the rest of the town, and solving the personal problems of the people. It is also a classic "rags to riches" story where the character begins a poor child and, with work and time, becomes a rich adult with fame, friends, a spouse, and possibly a child. But some games in the series have much more story than others. Save the Homeland probably has the best story.

What I would like to see is the ren'ai (dating sim) aspect of Harvest Moon applied to the story of a more grown up romantic science fiction or fantasy novel. So I think it would be very interesting to see an MMO with a small number of NPCs where the player interacts many times with each of them, building up a relationship (friendly, romantic, or antagonistic). I'd also like to see a game where the customization of the playable character and their possessions is more a part of the story. For example, the player might join an NPC faction and after working their way up in the ranks, be allowed to wear the same tabard NPCs of that faction wear. And perhaps, rather than choosing a class at the beginning, the player's choices within the game would make the character's story branch toward a profession and faction alignment; different choices made on a second play through the game would make the character's story develop in a different direction.


As for the division of the game into easier and harder areas, if there isn't combat, what makes them hard?

I agree with that. Although, some MMOs specialize - some are 100% group play and some are 90% solo play. But yes it's hard to predict what will be fun, and a fun feature can become agony due to a bad interaction with another part of the game - a relevant example is games which have a big crafting system, but a player must lose money to raise crafting skill to a high level before it is possible to make any profit. Losing money is never fun, so the who crafting system becomes un-fun.

I think a big crafting system with a lot of different items/products just has to have a significant meaning to it, just having a huge tree with lots of options for the sake of "cool" is kinda lame and pointless... All items must have a use. As for loosing part, dont you think that to create something you need to lose something? Oh but wait I just went against myself, I get it now... high level to make profit, meaning that on lower level the items are just useless material that no one likes, if they were the way I said where all items are "essential" starting from lvl1 - lvl300 then players would not need to lose money right? I think I understand it now.

Yes, I love a worldwide marketplace where I can automatically sell and buy, no need to look at individual shops (hate those in every game I've seen them in) or worse, shout on some channel to find someone to trade with. But, I don't consider trade the important part of crafting. I craft to make stuff for my own character to use - the rest is just junk that I have to make to level my crafting and I'm lucky if I can get my money back out of it. That was one of the things I did really like about ATITD - the focus is on crafting your own house, tools, an obelisk proclaiming your fame, a sculpture showing your creativity, etc. [/quote]

I want to create a crafting system and a world where different classes of players are kind of dependent on each other, ok let me be honest, they ARE dependent... lets say you have Type A class, Type B and Type C class... so each of them needs items for crafting and besides the basic ones that anyone can get there are those that only one Type of class can create, so they MUST trade for them in order to craft more advanced items that later can be traded for good items/gold or used in quests or whatever. I think this can become a bit problematic for lone wolfs, of course that this system WILL have a global marketplace as well as usual shout system.

So to speak this system of crafting is less of personal and more of global, since you will have to manufacture sometimes just to trade items for those that you need to craft for your house or own use, kinda, I help you, you help me.

I love the Harvest Moon series. It's one of my major inspirations in my own designs. They do certainly have an overall storyline: The player's job is to create harmony between nature and humans by growing plants, interacting with harvest sprites, improving the buildings of the farm and the rest of the town, and solving the personal problems of the people. It is also a classic "rags to riches" story where the character begins a poor child and, with work and time, becomes a rich adult with fame, friends, a spouse, and possibly a child. But some games in the series have much more story than others. Save the Homeland probably has the best story.[/quote]

I am a fan myself, but I dont see that as a storyline, more like a symbolic background, although it fits great in the context and makes it fun! I believe people always love, just love, the feeling of becoming rich, powerful and well respected, in my opinion thats a something MMO should always try to implement, a system to make players feel that they rock in there... that said classic "rags to riches" objective should always be popular.

What I would like to see is the ren'ai (dating sim) aspect of Harvest Moon applied to the story of a more grown up romantic science fiction or fantasy novel. So I think it would be very interesting to see an MMO with a small number of NPCs where the player interacts many times with each of them, building up a relationship (friendly, romantic, or antagonistic). I'd also like to see a game where the customization of the playable character and their possessions is more a part of the story. For example, the player might join an NPC faction and after working their way up in the ranks, be allowed to wear the same tabard NPCs of that faction wear. And perhaps, rather than choosing a class at the beginning, the player's choices within the game would make the character's story branch toward a profession and faction alignment; different choices made on a second play through the game would make the character's story develop in a different direction.[/quote]

I've been trying to create an MMO "dating" system for a while now and it always ends up not so good... note that when I say "dating" I am not speaking of those adult type things where people are driven other than by their brains and so called "romantism?" I am speaking more of a HM type, where getting a girl is fun, you learn her secrets and help her and all that. The problem I find on MMO is that if we do it with NPC then we end up with 300 people dating same girl... kinda strange to say the least...

As for joining a faction, work on NPC quests and gain respect, thats quite possible and quite easy to do.

What do you think of One Time Quests? Say some quests will have you a notice like " Be aware that by accepting this quest you'll have a time limit to complete it, the outcome of quest will change the storyline and that process is irreversible." So in a simple word quests that have a meaning and that are one time only kind of thing, or maybe not one time but have a very long recovery time so you can try again... Dont know how hard it would be programming wise and how much it'll take of resources since each outcome will hae to be stored for each player... This was my attempt to fix the "meaningless quests" problem that people speak of, now days you dont even read a story... only objective in best case scenario "kill XXXX monsters"...

As for the division of the game into easier and harder areas, if there isn't combat, what makes them hard?
[/quote]

Ok so I'll go deeper in my crafting idea, there are no levels of crafting, you can pretty much craft anything as long as you learn technology and have materials. The difficulty here is that materials must be traded for, are rare and difficult to come by... as well as technology it would be a big tree with multiple choices allowing you to branch out in various direction making all crafters unique since each can produce different stuff and ALL of stuff in game has a use for other crafts. So to say you Craft - Trade - Craft... craft to craft more kinda thing.

What it does is it takes away the problem of "weak" useless items since there no combat you dont need special attributes on crafts like usual games have LVL1 Craft = Weak sword LVL50 Craft = Strong sword, so no one needs weak sword. And now what crafts will be used for then? Well lets say that the world is build like a puzzle, lots of hidden places, locks, runes and whatever... each of them would have requirements, for example to go to forest you'll need to cut trough that huge tree blocking your way, so you need something like a Cutting Robot or whatever, which would be a Crafting Item, something that players can create.... so users who want to visit there would work upon getting it... Other sample would be having treasure boxes with special requirements to open them like you must feed them X items for it to open ... so you craft once more... to build stuff for home you also craft... So the whole idea is, you craft to go further in game, discover more, gain more, build more.

The hard and easy would in exactly that... Hard Requirement to get trough and Easy Requirement... it would be connected to crafting items and possibilities the harder an area the more advanced, tricky and hard to come by items it would require a player to gather and manufacture in order to collect its treasures.

I think a big crafting system with a lot of different items/products just has to have a significant meaning to it, just having a huge tree with lots of options for the sake of "cool" is kinda lame and pointless... All items must have a use. As for loosing part, dont you think that to create something you need to lose something? Oh but wait I just went against myself, I get it now... high level to make profit, meaning that on lower level the items are just useless material that no one likes, if they were the way I said where all items are "essential" starting from lvl1 - lvl300 then players would not need to lose money right? I think I understand it now.

I think that other than combat uses, players are most strongly motivated to obtain items to customize their avatars and accessories like mounts, houses, etc. So I would personally start designing the crafting system by making different colors of dyes craftable, and making all items dyeable to different colors. Also players would probably enjoy crafting 'artifact creatures' for pets and mounts and crafting plants for decorative gardens. Possibly also bodily modifications of avatars - for example adding a tail could be done by some kind of magical or genetic crafting.

I want to create a crafting system and a world where different classes of players are kind of dependent on each other, ok let me be honest, they ARE dependent... lets say you have Type A class, Type B and Type C class... so each of them needs items for crafting and besides the basic ones that anyone can get there are those that only one Type of class can create, so they MUST trade for them in order to craft more advanced items that later can be traded for good items/gold or used in quests or whatever. I think this can become a bit problematic for lone wolfs, of course that this system WILL have a global marketplace as well as usual shout system.

So to speak this system of crafting is less of personal and more of global, since you will have to manufacture sometimes just to trade items for those that you need to craft for your house or own use, kinda, I help you, you help me.[/quote]
I think it makes more sense to group characters by what type of gameplay within your game they prefer to do. This makes more sense for a system with combat or other minigames though. In my own MMO design pvp rewards money and 'crafting vouchers', both of which are needed by pve players. Pve rewards crafting resources and abilities which pve players craft into items and sell to pvp players for money, some of which they use to buy the pvp players' crafting vouchers. This makes lone wolves happy because they can choose to do both kinds of gameplay if they want to be economically self-sufficient. It is balanced because doing both kind of game play means you 'level' more slowly at both. Alternating between both kinds of gameplay also makes the game last longer for them.

In a system with no combat you might try to balance people who spend time on farming-sim type activities and crafting minigames vs. people who spend time exploring and puzzle-solving, or whatever the two or three major activities of your game are.

This is getting long, I'll reply to the other half in a second post.

[quote name='sunandshadow' timestamp='1303798302' post='4802954']I love the Harvest Moon series. It's one of my major inspirations in my own designs. They do certainly have an overall storyline: The player's job is to create harmony between nature and humans by growing plants, interacting with harvest sprites, improving the buildings of the farm and the rest of the town, and solving the personal problems of the people. It is also a classic "rags to riches" story where the character begins a poor child and, with work and time, becomes a rich adult with fame, friends, a spouse, and possibly a child. But some games in the series have much more story than others. Save the Homeland probably has the best story.

I am a fan myself, but I dont see that as a storyline, more like a symbolic background, although it fits great in the context and makes it fun! [/quote]
Well, that fits with what I said about some games in the series having more story than others. Save the Homeland had more of a proper interactive story - the town was due to be turned into a tourist spot, and you can save it from this 'horrible fate' by accomplishing one of six goals (and you have to discover what these goals are within the story). Many Japanese dating sims have stronger examples of interactive stories, and thus in my opinion make better examples to emulate when designing a story for a game with ren'ai elements.

I believe people always love, just love, the feeling of becoming rich, powerful and well respected, in my opinion thats a something MMO should always try to implement, a system to make players feel that they rock in there... that said classic "rags to riches" objective should always be popular.[/quote] Yeah I think that's at the heart of the appeal of the MMO genre - the idea of a fair world where patient work really does lead to fame, wealth, and power.

I've been trying to create an MMO "dating" system for a while now and it always ends up not so good... note that when I say "dating" I am not speaking of those adult type things where people are driven other than by their brains and so called "romantism?" I am speaking more of a HM type, where getting a girl is fun, you learn her secrets and help her and all that. The problem I find on MMO is that if we do it with NPC then we end up with 300 people dating same girl... kinda strange to say the least...[/quote]
I do like the adult games (well, being a straight woman, I like the ones which have 'gettable' male characters...) - some of them do actually have grown-up stories to go along with the sexual content. But I like to look at a high-quality fantasy romance novel or science fiction romance novel as an example of what would really be a great interactive game story. I love a story that presents a new world to the player, invites the player to find a role within the world, and reacts to the player's choices within the game to personalize the story. I don't see it as a problem to have multiple players get the same girl. I enjoy MMOs where every player takes a turn at being the one to save the village or cure the plague or kill the boss or whatever. I like the feeling that others are experiencing a similar story to me - it's like being in a book club where everyone is reading the same novel and then they discuss it.

I also like situations where the world can appear a bit differently to players depending on whether or not players have completed a quest yet. For example, all deer appear sick with a plague, but if the player completes the plague-curing quest, thereafter all deer appear healthy. Or, initially a player sees only a ruins they can't enter, but if they complete the rebuild ruins quest they now see a restored building with a door they can enter. I think this is an excellent example of a 'crafting puzzle', somewhat like the Myst-style puzzles where you must flip switches or repair broken equipment to unlock passage to the next area. (Myst Online is another example of an MMO with no combat. Also rather boring once you solve all the easy puzzles.)

As for joining a faction, work on NPC quests and gain respect, thats quite possible and quite easy to do.

What do you think of One Time Quests? Say some quests will have you a notice like " Be aware that by accepting this quest you'll have a time limit to complete it, the outcome of quest will change the storyline and that process is irreversible." So in a simple word quests that have a meaning and that are one time only kind of thing, or maybe not one time but have a very long recovery time so you can try again... Dont know how hard it would be programming wise and how much it'll take of resources since each outcome will hae to be stored for each player... This was my attempt to fix the "meaningless quests" problem that people speak of, now days you dont even read a story... only objective in best case scenario "kill XXXX monsters"...[/quote]
I don't think it would be difficult to program but I don't think one time quests are more meaningful than quests given to every player. In my opinion the way to make a quest meaningful is to work it into the bildungsroman story of how the player's character learns about the world and finds a place within the world's society and economy, or to work it into the story about how the world as a whole makes progress due to the NPCs problems and physical environment's problems being solved.


About crafting meaningful items - I think the way to make crafting meaningful is to make crafted items affect gameplay. For example, each player could craft for themself storage capacity, living space, personal appearance, transportation (possibly including the ability to jump higher, swim, fly, endure severe cold and heat, etc.), farmland, barns or tanks for keeping animals, tools and appliances for unlocking advanced crafting abilities, and I even see 'rank within a faction' as something players basically craft for themselves, as well as relationships with NPCs. Combat could also be a craftable thing if it is a system where players buy or earn abilities for their characters to create a custom 'class', or collect cards for deckbuilding/dueling combat, or develop an army of monsters or soldiers for tactical combat.