New MMORPG Idea

Bon_Darris said:
Let's build a new world together.

Moved to Hobby Project Classifieds.

Just share your idea and don't make us beg you… You will notice afterwards whether it is interesting or not.

Also, you might be interested in this long discussion: Critique of MUDs, RPGs, DnD, MMORPGs, and immersive interactive adventures. There, we try to find ways to create more novel-like immersion for role playing games.

Definitely not trying to make anyone beg for my idea, but would rather discuss privately with people that feel as passionately as I do that the MMORPG genre needs a huge overhaul.

It would take a long time to go into all of the specifics, but the core vision of my game would be to leave all of the worldbuilding up to the players, where they depend on each other to create a functional village, town, city, bandit camp, band of wandering thieves or performers, and whatever else they can think of. Of course this would be boring without quests, bit quests will be random events introduced into the server, with actual consequences on the players and/or the world should a quest be failed or succeded. That is the very short form of my idea. Hope it inerests somebody.

Bon_Darris said:
but the core vision of my game would be to leave all of the worldbuilding up to the players, where they depend on each other to create a functional village, town, city, bandit camp, band of wandering thieves or performers, and whatever else they can think of.

Sounds you want to create something like a metaverse, which isn't easy.
Leaving worldbuilding to players means:
You either start with an empty world, making it hard to attract initial players. (Example would be Minecraft or Roblox)
Or you start with a dense world already filled with content and lore, requiring a budget of millions or billions and a big team of professional devs. (Example would be all the other games)

Assuming you could somehow pull it off, which is unlikely considering providing design ideas in private discussion is your only contribution, the next problem i see is: ‘How do you intend to cultivate multiplayer?’
For example, to have a village or bandit camp requires a hierarchy of power. On the top is one guy being a leader, on the bottom are many guys which willingly obey his orders, doing all the work for some water and bread.
How do you motivate players to become a blacksmith, wielding swords all day? How should this be fun?

If the game does not impose any kind of structure (like what a village or a bandit camp is), then it becomes hard for players to actually form a coherent world. I think it is best to try to give structure to the players wherever it can be meaningful, but to design it in a responsive way, so that you can mess with the structure if you want to, to a reasonable degree.

In the thread I linked earlier, we talked about the game having to provide as many opportunities as possible for the player to create or experience storytelling moments, without setting a fixed story. And that could be via introduction of large-scale events whose outcome affects the world, as you said. Procedurally generated, pre-existing lore and scenarios are a powerful tool for pre-shaping the sandbox into something befitting of a dynamic adventure story. Having large-scale systems (such as national or regional economy) affect the moment-to-moment gameplay is also important for making the game world take itself seriously, which in turn helps the player take the world and the events therein seriously. And of course, small-scale actions must also affect the large-scale systems to varying degrees. I highly recommend taking the time to read that thread.

P.S.: If you have systems in place that are responsive enough, you actually don't need any official quests at all. I list a few examples of what would be equivalent to world-scale quests in that thread, which can be achieved without any actual quest system, and they don't necessarily have or need a success/failure condition. One example is the corpse of a dragon that produces contamination for the surrounding lands, which affects their economy and makes them poor and infested with abominations, etc. If you manage to purify the dragon corpse, you can cleanse the lands, which affects the state of the entire region, removing the abominations, etc. Or you could somehow make use of that contamination, for necromancy or alchemy or whatever, or try to spread it even more, etc.

So to expand on things a bit more, the structure of things would develop based on how players choose skills, where each player gets one major skill and 3 minor skills (there are ways to change these, though not without a cost) villages take the cooperation of at least 5 residents to be established with options of how that village is governed. From there the village stones eventually can become small towns, then large towns, up to eventually becoming large cities with enough people working together. Similarly to village creation, people with a skill called Criminal Leadership, a small bandage camp can be created and from there the same thing applies just on a smaller scale. There would be a way for settlement stones to be conquered or destroyed of course. Those with the adventurer skill would have the ability to for adventure parties with unique moveable and upgradable camps, perhaps a blacksmith would join a group of adventurers if they had a camp able to accomodate him. There are so many things I have thought of for the game system to truly allow players to live a naturally developing history as a server ages, and mixed with quest events that can impact both individual players and the server as a whole, I really think if people were willing to help me create the game, it would most definitely have a player base.

@undefined I'm on mobile at the moment and can't see where to edit a post, it irks me that I wrote bandage camp instead of bandit camp.

@JoeJ That’s exactly the balance we’re tackling with AFTERLIFE at HAPAX. We don’t leave the world empty, but we don’t overfill it either. Lumina (our starting city) already has factions, resources, and threats — giving players an anchor. From there, roles aren’t chores (like “being a blacksmith all day”), but levers of influence in a living economy and faction war. So it’s not about grinding jobs, it’s about shaping power dynamics. We call it a sandbox narrative framework: structured enough to feel alive, flexible enough for players to rewrite it.

izanagi33 said:
We call it a sandbox narrative framework: structured enough to feel alive, flexible enough for players to rewrite it.

Yeah, i like that. But curiously it's not just me. I'm an industry outsider, but it seems that currently almost everybody i talk to has this kind of vision, no matter if it's devs or gamers.

I assume my current depression about boring AAA games won't persist for long, and our greatest time is still in front of us. \:D/

@JoeJ Totally agree, and that’s what keeps us building AFTERLIFE. AAA games tend to polish repetition, but players (like you and me) are craving worlds that evolve with them.

If more devs and gamers align on this vision, then yeah, the best is definitely ahead of us 😉

@joej I certainly hope so, but you know, I don't see why it would be outside the realm of possibility for a AAA title to go outside the box and have someone direct a game who hasn't been in the industry.

Because that's not how big corporations work, especially not those who are publicly traded.

@rmbrt i get that, and that's what brings me here, looking for anyone who might be interested enough to work with me on it. 😎 Anyone interested in talking more can feel free to add me on discord my tag is Bon_Darris.

Bon_Darris said:
I don't see why it would be outside the realm of possibility for a AAA title to go outside the box and have someone direct a game who hasn't been in the industry.

It's possible, an in the early days it probably happened pretty often.
But nowadays they have plenty of experienced designers, and likely those have design ideas similar to yours.
The problem is, they can't take a risk. A single commercial failure and their studio may need to close.
So they rather repeat what they have successfully done before, holding on to established franchises and designs, to minimize the risk.

Maybe the current layoffs are part of scaling down, so they can work on smaller projects, allowing to innovate again.
They will come up with something, but it's still unlikely they ask you for help.

Thus, imo you should not aim for AAA standards. The indie scene is much more likely to introduce new designs, eventually using 2D and pixel art, stylized lofi gfx, etc. instead of photo realistic assets and motion capture.
You need to smart small, so only a hand full of people can make the game.
So, the fewer the better. But in this case, they usually don't have one whole person just to do game design. A programmer or an artist can easily do the design beside programming and content. Thus my cynical comment about your contribution.
To improve your chances, it would be good to learn some practical skills as well. Even if it's just AI generated concept art, that's already better than nothing. But ideally you would already work on a prototype using some game engine.

@joej I'm currently working with UE5 but since I'm just starting to learn, such a big idea is very overwhelming to think about, yet it's all I can think about. 😆

JoeJ said:
The indie scene is much more likely to introduce new designs, eventually using 2D and pixel art, stylized lofi gfx, etc.

Dang, I read that as “loli gfx” and already flew into a rage and was mid-way through writing a long rant… Just woke up and my eyes are still smeary, lol. I think high fidelity graphics aren't a problem even for indie, as long as you got someone competent on the scene who knows his ways around GPUs at least a bit and is aware of what is fast and what is slow. The problem lies in the massive amount of asset creation a AAA game usually involves. Some genres, such as space games and car games can get away with much fewer assets. These genres don't even really require animated models, because they don't involve animated humans (at least not necessarily), and vehicles and space ships usually don't have joints. Procedural landscapes also take away a lot of the effort. But as soon as you have lots of animated meshes and lots of props and even detailed, handmade landscapes, you suddenly see an explosion in budget. And even for 2D, you probably need animated sprite sheets, and for MMORPGs, you probably want your sprite characters to also visibly wear equipment, and suddenly you're in such a bad combinatory complexity explosion for your 2D assets that a 3D system would be easier and better.

Bon_Darris said:
I'm currently working with UE5 but since I'm just starting to learn, such a big idea is very overwhelming to think about, yet it's all I can think about. 😆

I don't think UE5 is going to be that useful for you. For an MMORPG, you will have to do your own netcode and server code anyway, and your own world partitioniong, etc., and “it just works” won't be enough for more than a few players. A non-programme won't be able to get beyond a slow and/or buggy or insecure (against cheating) netcode, and you also can't just throw more servers at it.

Engines in the hands of a non-programmer are really only useful for making a quick demo, or rapid visual prototyping. Engines are made for AAA studios to allow their artists to do minor stuff like add simple behaviours to props or something that would otherwise require more technical expertise from an actual programmer. But without any programming at all, the game will just run badly on all dimensions. MMOs in particular need a lot of reach and need acceptable performance on old hardware.

With a programmer, you can at least use an engine to get the graphics and sounds etc. out of the box, but he will still have to get his hands dirty under the hood.

And realistically, unless you know someone really well, you probably won't be able to assemble a committed team. What you can do, though, is create a visual proof of concept in the engine, to showcase what you envision, and then use that to pitch a trailer or something to people on youtube or something. Or some other way to pitch your dream to people and then assemble a team of skilled volunteers around that.

JoeJ said:
You need to smart small, so only a hand full of people can make the game. So, the fewer the better. But in this case, they usually don't have one whole person just to do game design. A programmer or an artist can easily do the design beside programming and content. Thus my cynical comment about your contribution. To improve your chances, it would be good to learn some practical skills as well. Even if it's just AI generated concept art, that's already better than nothing. But ideally you would already work on a prototype using some game engine.

I fully agree. And yeah, the easiest way to get an indie game to the finish line is if you as the project lead are also a programmer. Because then you can sort-of do everything else if you just sit there long enough, as all other areas of game development are a bit “softer” than programming, they allow more room for slight error, etc. Learning the actual underlying skills involved in game development, and not just how to click together a scene in the engine editor, is crucial, especially on the scale of an MMORPG.

@rmbrt Definitely some helpful feedback, I agree that making something visual to showcase the vision is a good starting point.

RmbRT said:
Dang, I read that as “loli gfx” and already flew into a rage and was mid-way through writing a long rant…

Now i do not dare to google what that means, but i'll write it as 'lo-fi' in the future.

Regarding 2d sprite characters vs. skeletal 3D, i agree 2d is not necessarily less work. With 3D you only need one model, and animations could come from a tool like Mixamo.
If i wanted to minimize work, i would use low poly 3D characters. Most games i actually play do this.
But i ignore all the retro shooters which use 2D billboards. Some would be good games, but i hated this already when Doom was out.

RmbRT said:
I don't think UE5 is going to be that useful for you. For an MMORPG, you will have to do your own netcode and server code anyway, and your own world partitioniong, etc.

UE5 is not really a beginner engine they say, but now it has blue scripts, so no coding needed. And you get Meta Humans and a lot of other content for free. It's maybe not bad for a start anymore. And it has partitioning and network.

Personally i would still recommend to begin with PacMan completely from scratch, but well - i'm a dinosaur… ; )
Making a MMORPG as a beginner is ofc. not realistic, but if that's your dream, trying to do so is much better than waiting for somebody else to join doing it for you.

Bon_Darris said:
I'm currently working with UE5 but since I'm just starting to learn, such a big idea is very overwhelming to think about, yet it's all I can think about.

Be patient and keep it a hobby. If you find somebody to help, ensure the project isn't dead if he leaves later.
Consider to learn programming as well, e.g. using rayLib which comes with its own IDE and compiler afaik. If you can make Pong or PacMan in C this way, leveling up to C++ needed for UE is just another step.

JoeJ said:
And it has partitioning and network

Yeah, but is that suited for MMO-scale levels of multiplayer? I highly doubt it. And is it cheat-proof and all that? And does it desync, etc.? A 90% solution won't cut it if you don't have the skill to get to 100%, for critical systems like that. An unstable netcode will absolutely break an MMO, or if it allows for cheating. Like all these item duping bugs and all that, or desyncing, etc. So if you don't have the skills to fix it, you already need a 100% solution out of the box. But if you can fix it, you also have the skills to build it yourself, which means you can build something that doesn't try to be a generic “multiplayer game” netcode, but actually a “massively multiplayer game” netcode, and even specific to all the circumstances of your specific game. Same with world partitioning and all that. When does the game demand simulation ticks for certain entities, which entities need simulation only if a player is close (and how close), and which entities need simulation even when nobody is there, or which entities only need to exist at all if anyone comes near? Etc. Good luck making all that in a UE5 blueprint or via some generic store asset.

Also, the netcode needs to be made in a way that prevents gaming the RNG with modified game clients or something (and if the game is made with a default UE netcode, making a modified client is also not that hard, since you can just use the UE netcode for that). For example, the logic to decide whether an attack is a critical hit, or whether an item upgrade succeeds, etc., is known on the client side, you can write clients with 100% crit rate or 100% item upgrade chance. I think one could do something like that in DotA 2, where it would know before the attack hits whether the hit will be a critical hit, and you can cancel attacks and start new attacks. So it could potentially issue 100 attacks a second and cancel all non-critical hits immediately. Same with aimbotting in FPSes, etc. It's not that hard to mostly prevent (by forbidding the instant aim snapping stuff), although hard to fully prevent.

JoeJ said:
Personally i would still recommend to begin with PacMan completely from scratch, but well - i'm a dinosaur… ; )

If you can't make pacman within a reasonable timeframe then you have no business making anything bigger than that.

JoeJ said:
Making a MMORPG as a beginner is ofc. not realistic, but if that's your dream, trying to do so is much better than waiting for somebody else to join doing it for you.

Massive games like minecraft can be developed by a single person. And if you take something on that rather low level of complexity for what you get out of it, and turn it into an MMO, that's feasible. But again, Notch was only able to make minecraft because he could program and really leverage the benefits of procedural generation and general mechanics / systems to fill everything with content and behaviour.

JoeJ said:
Consider to learn programming as well, e.g. using rayLib which comes with its own IDE and compiler afaik. If you can make Pong or PacMan in C this way, leveling up to C++ needed for UE is just another step.

I started out with SDL and then WinApi + OpenGL1.1 and then GLFW+OpenGL 3.3, if I recall correctly. My first IDE was Visual Studio 2008 or something. Good times. Looking back at it, it is funny how nobody managed to put OpenGL's API into simple terms in any tutorial. It's not actually complicated if you just show a simple 1-page diagram of what you're actually interacting with. Actually, this is exactly what a debugger should look like. Domain-specific visualisation of state and of interconnectedness of things.