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[JoshuaFH]

So I got back into brainstorming about an MMO that I would actually play, as things that currently exist are deeply unappealing to me on a personal level.

Basically, what I have envisioned is a game where the whole MMO is a giant communal struggle of PVE. There's one giant, central fortified city, and that's where players start and are encouraged to participate in. The world outside the City is hostile and formidable, but it's the place where real glory and treasure is to be found. Inside the city, there'd be shoppes, player homes, PVP arenas, public places to socialize, the game auction house, things like that, it's all right there when you start the game. In the center is a crystal that is the "Heart" of the city.

The idea is that the City is occasionally besieged by demons, huge swathes of'em coming from every direction, not a small task for even the most hardened MMO players. It's up to everyone to break these sieges and save the city before the demons get to the center, to the Heart of the city, and destroy it which triggers the loss condition for the server. Now, instead of just being a "You Lose" screen, it sends out an energy pulse that kills all living things in and around the city, players included for an impromptu exodus to save itself. This has consequences for everyone who owns anything, or who wants to progress their character. Basically, it'd be things like: Player's player homes are either badly damaged, reducing them to an impoverished looking state, or their ownership is ripped from them and gets fed into the Lottery Economy again (which I'll get to later), all the shoppes are downgraded and some shoppes are closed until the 'city level' is back to high enough point, any lustre the public places have built up is gone, and people lose their medals (which are the closest thing I have envisioned for money).

Basically, the longer the Player's Home City goes without getting pillaged, the fancier and prettier it gets through just the normal actions of players interacting with it. When it's protected, player homes are safe to be upgraded upon and invested into, shoppes get better and better and more numerous and diverse, and I was thinking there'd be some passive magical benefit that gives all players a blanket bonus of some kind to encourage everyone equally to participate in the game's sieges rather than ignore them, and the longer the City is safe, the stronger this benefit becomes.

Now, I mentioned a lottery system, and it has to do with a pretty simple idea:

The fact that the game's City has finite resources for everyone. There's limited player homes based on the number of them that exist, yes, but there's also a finite number of weapons and armor in the shoppes, only a few horses are produced each day in the stables, only so much furniture and other vanity kind of accessories are made each day for player's homes (and even the type and quality are randomized to some extent), so basically there's just never enough to go around for everyone.

How it'd work, is that there'd be lotteries held for nearly everything. Players would go to the venue that offers what they want, be that the Castle which bequeaths player homes, the shoppes for weapons and armor, Apothecaries for potions, stables for horses, etc, and they'd be able to clearly see exactly what and how much is being made for that day or that hour. Players would then enter the lottery for these materials by chipping in "Medals" which gives them a chance to win these things they want. The winners have the things delivered to their Player Bank (with a chime to let them know they got it) and the losers just lose their Medals, probably explained in that the Medals are taken in as tax, and the losers are actually passively making their Kingdom nicer and shinier. The crux though is that you can chip in as many Medals as you want towards what you want, each medal constitutes it's own chance in the lottery, and thus more Medals = more chances to get what you want.

Now, WHAT are Medals? Medals are a temporary currency. The game world runs on a 24 hour clock, and every midnight a special Witching Hour event happens where all the Medals in players inventories, or those existing anywhere, are instantly invalidated and they disappear from the game world. This idea is to both prevent hoarding, and also to encourage spending and participation in the game's economy. It also confers a kind of equality to players, cause every Witching Hour places every player back on the same foot. This doesn't have an effect on items or weapons or anything, just Medals.

Now, HOW do you get medals? The idea of Medals is that they're indicative of your personal glory. You go out and kill demons, you get medals. You travel to distant lands and solve ancient puzzles and find artifacts to return to your peoples, you get medals. You engage in the PVP arenas against other players, you get medals. You have to put yourself out there to get ahead, and the people that are the most active and the most daring in the game's world will be the ones reaping the most rewards.

Of course, the closer and closer you get to the Witching hour, the less and less time you have to actually USE those Medals. So I was thinking that the closer you get to midnight, the more violently dangerous things get outside the City's Walls, and the more rewarding things outside get, so while you'd only be able to participate in the very last lotteries of that day, you'd have tons of medals to chip in when you do.

It's only things in the player economy that function like normal this-for-that trading. Things, including medals and other items, between players can be traded, things in the auction house are rewarded to the highest bidder, etc etc.

Now I'm just asking what others think of this. I don't play MMORPG's, so additional perspective is appreciated.

[acetech09]

I like the city/demon/risk/communal concept. Not sure about the lottery economy though - it's too arbitrary for my tastes. (but hell, I'm an eve player so anything but an accurate capitalist ore-to-destruction cyclical economy is pretty meh).

I'd definitely play it, though, but would be constantly worried about grief/lack of work by other players. It's basic human nature that most players won't act toward the group's (city's) best interest. While the demons are invading, some players might take advantage of that and visit shops/harvest resources while the other players are out fighting. So, to punish them, you'd need a group justice system where groups could eject the slackers. Then you'll start having to prevent witch hunting and griefing through that system. It needs a truly motivating goal that keeps players serious and invested long-term, and that's always tough to work out.

It could be fun but needs lots of work and theorycrafting, just like many other game suggestions here.

[JoshuaFH]

Well, I've always been the kind of person to want to motivate with rewards rather than motivate with punishments. While the exodus is very firmly in the punishment category, I'd like everything else to be rewarding, regardless of your commitment to the struggle at hand.

The idea of a lottery with Medals is specifically to prevent a capitalistic kind of economy, since it's very hard to accumulate wealth, and you're always investing it back into your community rather than investing it into personal goals. Plus, it draws a much fuzzier line between the most wealthy and the least wealthy, since even nubs that are just entering the game can get lucky and get that Super Awesome +1 sword, or get lucky and grab ownership of a house. The Lottos are random, and while the odds will be tipped into the favor of those with the most medals, the actual distribution is still spread out over everyone.

You say that people could be wasting time shopping or whatever while a siege is going on, it wouldn't be unrealistic for the current lotteries to be frozen while the siege is going on, and not do business until it's safe out again. It's the idea of wanting to make the player's personal interest into the group's interest, and now that I think about it, there's quite alot of ways of going about that:

-Sieges being a kind of formal event with special NPC raiding bosses, the game could track who is contributing the most in the defense effort. Who's doing the most damage, who's killing the most named Demons, who is healing and reviving the most, things like that, and on a successful defense, it count up the top ten for any given category and rewards them with lots and lots of Medals.

-Moreover, ontop of the actual prize, the Town Square could temporarily herald these players for their achievements on banners or somesuch, adding another layer of sense-of-community and personal recognition for your efforts.

-I touched on it in my post, where the longer and longer the City goes without an exodus, the stronger and stronger a magical passive effect is given to everyone on the server. I can easily envision it being a bonus that helps that newest and poorest players the most, so even they have a reason to help out instead of just lazing about hoping the landowning players get dirt kicked in their faces. (Though from a realist perspective, I don't think there'd be a group of people large enough that is both that vindictive and that organized around being lazy)

One thing that's always bothered me about MMO Questing is that each quest is still just a personal quest, with a personal reward. The way I picture it, is that as the "City Level" goes up, that is the longer and longer the city's defense remains strong without an exodus + the amount of medals invested into the city, triggers the NPC Monarch to issue Communal Quests. That is, quests that apply to everyone as a whole. Maybe it'd start with simple enough stuff, like retaking a Demon Infested Mine in order to bolster the amount of Steel/Gold/whatever metal items, but these wouldn't be easy tasks, these would be very extremely difficult ones, this would require a concerted effort from large groups of people, and if the pressure isn't enough to complete it in one go, then the Demon's strength re-surges and takes it all back. Once it IS taken though, everyone that participated is rewarded, with the most effective people being rewarded the most, and the very best people having their name memorialized at the quest location. Plus, the City Level is bolstered, and greater quality, quantity, and more diverse things become available in the shoppes. These players become genuine heroes.

The idea I'm trying to strike at, is that I'd want an MMO that has an unclear, emergent story that rewards group effort, but also rewards a player's personal involvement in that story.

Now, the City Level would act alot like how a DF Fort grows and grows in value, gradually attracting increasingly hostile enemies, so sieges become longer, larger, and more torturous. On the same foot though, having a high City Level enables players to both be more prepared for these attack, and they have more on the line so people are overall more motivated to jump in and defend.

The most developed Servers would have players that are armed to the gills, organized, and very numerous as more and more people join the server and participate, the game's world would expand as the Communal Quests entail things like taking back a neighboring City, and once that's completed it acts like the Home City does, with it's own sieges and it's own items it produces, and it's own player homes to give out, etc and etc.

It's just the idea that people are working together to build this world up, and in the process they build a personal attachment to that world and are reluctant to let anything happen to it.

[stabbymcstabstab]

I would play this, the housing idea is kinda "wrong" in someway this seems like a addition that wouldn't add anything, perhaps a group barracks where a group of players all have as a house?

[JoshuaFH]

Well, the idea is that it acts as a piece of prestige for players, giving them a sense ownership in the world, and thus having a investment in it that would attach them to the game and keep them playing.

Plus, having a spot for a player and his friends to gather could give players a "Look at me I'm so rich and/or lucky" kind of feeling.

[Skyrunner]

Perhaps you could exclude the most expensive houses from the lottery and instead make them up for bidding.


I like the idea of an actually hard MMO rather than one where mobs just get slaughtered en masse with no way to defend themselves I expect there'd be some way for low level players to participate, without higher level players slaughtering every low level mob that appears instantly.

[Zangi]

Input:
1. The 'witching hour' may seem like a bulldung thing to some players.  Perhaps, instead of having monies reset at set time every day... make it a perishable barter item everyone needs/wants.  Perishable Food.
After X time, food perishes.  But, players can smoke/cure/freeze it to increase it's lifespan.  They can also consume it themselves, for whatever reason/bonus.

Seems believable enough in a society which does not have a common currency and food is scarce...
More barter/trade of food for services/goods = healthier city.... which in turn increases demand as more people move in/are born/survive.

2. Siege.  Different servers, different siege times.  People would be pissed if a full fledge siege shows up in the middle of the night or while everyone is at work or school.  There are also people wanting to be given even some fair warning of incoming sieges....
2a. Push and pull events.  Siege happens if players fail a series of chained events.  Instead of OMG they came out of nowhere!  (I'm in the things need to have a reason to happening, rather then stuff happening out of nowhere camp.)
2b. One way to simulate is a constant battle for territory, the push and pull events that last from days to weeks for each territory.
2c. Another is an enemy faction gathering a large force every now and then, marching their way toward the city, pillaging everything inbetween them and their target.  Player faction can try to stop them in the field(more likely, slow em down and/or weaken em before they hit the city), but it would require the player faction to coordinate a lot.  This sort of event could be cancelled by events/objectives players could undertake to prevent the gathering of a siege army.  (I suppose this is more in-line with your original idea...)

3. Disparity between new and old players.  Disparity between lucky and unlucky players... how bad is it?  What do you expect of it?

4. Crafting and Gathering: So... is there?
4a. Durability on equipment?
4b. If durability, will equipment permanently break eventually?  Will repairs lower max durability?

[Eric Blank]

I agree that the witching hour concept is a little too far; at that point you're basically punishing players for bothering to pick themselves up out of the gutter in the first place. What Zangi suggested sounds reasonable enough.

Perhaps in addition to the loot earned from conquering a site being put into the city's federal industrial complex to distribute again, players can also obtain loot directly, sidestepping the lotteries, and craft it into final products for personal use or trade, and give them a way to set up their own living spaces outside the city if they don't like the idea of having their house yanked out form under them just because NPC McNobility wants to award it to someone else.

[alway]

No, it wouldn't work. "Like WoW, but with X" is not a formula that works. There are two aspects that draw one to an MMO: Gameplay and social. As this is competing with WoW's gameplay mechanics, it will be in generally the same market. Is the gameplay better? Debatable. Is the social aspect better? No. Those interested in this sort of gameplay will already play/have played/have friends who play WoW. As such, the social aspect falls strongly in WoW's favor, essentially restricting your market to "people who would play WoW but who, for whatever reason, haven't."

That's why a whole host of games attempting to be "The WoW Killer" all failed and died a painfully, moneybleeding death. If you want to succeed in the MMO space, you need to start from the ground up and create gameplay which is fresh and exists outside of a pre-established market.

[Skyrunner]

WoW still exists?

[Eric Blank]

Indeed it does, and it doesnt show many signs of ceasing to exist. Still not all that entertaining given the costs, though.

[Tawa]

Well, your idea sounds awesome, but you kind of lost me at the whole "demon siege" thing. Too many trolls letting them by would ruin the feel and crush the game.

Other than that, it sounds pretty interesting.

[werty892]

How would you make money with this if it was to be made? Subscription? Free to Play with microtransactions? Or something else? You would have to cover the server costs somehow