Saving some comments I wrote on a thread on F13 about the settings that would fit best for a mmorpg. Plus another couple that were triggered but didn’t belong there.

Of course my comments are about Elric/Stormbringer, around which I shape my dream mmorpg from a couple of years. Nothing new that I haven’t written already in the various entries but I always like to summarize and consolidate some basic points so that I don’t lose track of what drives my ideas.

Btw, I forgot to say that beside the steampunk and dark fantasy setting I would also love to do a mmorpg inspired by Macross (with those frigging huge battles around the mothership). That’s another one that would totally rock if done properly.

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Nausicaa would be fucking great (airships! steampunk!).

But then I wish I had the founding and a huge group of talented people to do Elric/Stormbringer (Michael Moorcock, which is rather dark fantasy). That’s my dream.

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The game is pretty much complete in my head since it’s a couple of years that I shape my ideas around that setting.

I consider this a very powerful licence, not only because it’s truly evocative and already rather “graphical” in the books (the descriptions are absolutely awesome and Melnibone would be worth the price alone) but also because it’s still available (Moorcock wouldn’t be against the idea and some exposition) and because of the potential of the Multiverse.

I’ve done a whole lot of work but some of the traits are:
– Some raw game mechanics taken directly from “Elric” the pen&paper ruleset made by Chaosium and completely skill based and realism based (no infinite hit points, no levels crap, no infinite treadmills).
– A game world separated in two. Shards (the implementation of the basic world in the books) with factional PvP where the guilds conquer and control the land and spawn NPCs themselves (no passive NPC lore, it’s all in the hands of the players) and portals that link these shards together (realm-crossing) and open access to planes (static, not instanced). Then from these planes (working like hubs similar to Guild Wars) the access to other PvE dimensions, worlds and adventures. These completely instanced for full control and authorship in the stories.
– The implementation of powerful artifacts that transform the player into a demi-god (hello unbalance). Think of Strormbringer (the sword). These can be taken/summoned from the PvE instances accessible through the planes (exactly as Elric got Stormbringer) and then brought back to the PvP shards. These artifacts grants insane powers and change the whole aspect of a character (more fearsome, huger etc..) but they are also lootable in PvP. To remain in the game world they have a maintenance cost that can be paid only by killing people in PvP. So no hiding. The opposite faction can also use divination to track the current location of the artifact, so you are always hunted and cannot hide.

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Well, my implementation is pretty loose. It borrows many elements that I find functional and inspiring but then I ditch everything that doesn’t fit in the model.

As I said the world is split in two. The PvP/conquest world has no directed story and is enrooted with three static factions (Law/Balance(crafters-traders)/Chaos), plus the possibility for the players to form “fallen houses” that will work like independent factions. The players start here, the PvP is the first and main purpose.

(This PvP world is cloned on different servers like it happens in every other game. The difference is that the players can open portals to the planes and then, from the planes, travel to a different shard. But then you can own landmass only on one shard set as “home” and if you set a new one you lose what you previously got.)

Then there are the planes and the access to the multiverse (which can shift from horror to fantasy but wouldn’t go past the setting boundaries) where there’s space for directed lore and stories to follow, like pieces of “dreams” that you gather progressively (discovering the story). Like a web with many ramifications.

I used the setting for inspiration, then the actual rules depend on the game needs only.

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– While the respawning of mobs still exist in my game, forget the lame pulling tactics. The rule is that if you can see a mob, the mob can probably see you (you know, innovation). So you can try to “pull” a scout near an orc camp by attracting its attention with some noise, and maybe he will only call one other orc to explore the area. But if you shamelessly start a fight, the whole orc camp will run at you to hand your ass back to you. At least if they consider you enough a menace to move their lazy asses all at once. Realism.

– The portals are one of the part more defined and that I like more. It’s rather complex and articulated behind the scenes but rather simple for the player. There are two types of portals, one “in”, and one “out”, sending players to the planes. Basically you press “M” on your keyboard and you bring up a fullscreen map of the world, pretty much like it happens in WoW. This map shows the location of each portal with a symbol next to it (stop lights):
* Red means that the portal is sealed and cannot be opened in any way (at least for the next few hours).
* Yellow means that the portal is inactive but could be opened if set conditions are met.
* Green means that the portal is currently active and available.

These portals are faction based so each faction will have a different copy. Plus there can be clones at various locations so that the players can access them without crossing the whole map. From “yellow” to “green” the portals open as result of PvP goals. Think to Darkness Falls in DAoC.

Enemy faction players cannot conquer the portals themselves but could conquer the region where they are and send NPC guards to camp them so that the access won’t be too easy. (NPCs respawn but on very long timers and only at their origin, so if you send them somewhere else they cannot return to that place till you send a new batch).

– On, and then there are the ideas about naval combat (with realistic boarding and ramming), dragon flight and the collision system. It’s a dream, right? So let me dream. Lets assume this game has the founding of WoW. Well with all those subscriptions and money you get, what will you do? In WoW they’ll rise the level cap to 70 and then create more 5-man up to 40-man instances and loot. Then rise the cap to 80 and create more instances and loot. Then rise the cap to 90 and create more instances and loot. Well, I find this a total waste of precious money that isn’t used to accomplish something worthwhile. If you don’t have new ideas you can as well go back to sleep and goodbye. Instead I have those ideas and with the money I would do what it isn’t possible right now: naval combat, dragon flight and the collision system.

This is something I definitely wasn’t planning. Just a derailed thread on Q23 that I resurrected only because I was curious about one of the board members getting involved with the game I manipulated to trigger my own reasonings. So here more reasonings. I was accused about not being coherent and then defended because what I wrote was a few months old. Come on. The basis of my ideas are *years* old now. with the time I delve deeper, expand and learn new things. But I’m coherent and not an hypocrite. You can say my ideas suck and that what I think is retared, but you cannot say that I contradict myself and there isn’t anything consistent behind what I babble about. The ideals I chase are strong, very strong and consolidated. They definitely aren’t volatile trends. I even think I’m awfully redundant most of the times.

(“the graphic is the game” reference is here)

Unrelated observation: there’s an increasing interest everywhere about games appealing to women (the last reference I read is from Raph). The believable commonplace (I simplify here) is that women seem to love in particular three parts: the social aspects, the character customization and personalization and kick-ass PvP. Have you noticed how these last two are merely subsets of the first? PvP is Socializer, not Killer. And women love to kick asses. In particular they love to find out and demonstrate they can.

The two, awesome screenshots that triggered everything can be found here.

These ideas are bland a superficial but they also distill the essential so that I remember from where I’m coming. The ideal. The actual valid “pitch” of those ideas.

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Andrew Mayer:
Amazing. After all the scoldings you’ve given over the last year or so you’re seduced by a couple of pretty screenshots.

And what other parts of the gameplay are you referring to? Do you see the irony in the fact that in that very sentence you manage to totally avoid any specific details on the “other parts” but clearly define what you mean by combat wth specific examples?

I give no scolding, in fact I’m not between those ranting loosely about the lack of innovation and I believe more in the evolution. I also dislike commonplaces and I wrote in other occasions that I believe that “the graphic is the game”. Like if we could go to see a movie and say that the image isn’t important, only the story is.

My old comments about the screenshots were the result of my own awe and my own impressions that those screenshots simply suggested me. It’s just what I “saw” into them, not what the actual game will be. It doesn’t mean that the game will be like I imagined it by looking at the screenshots, in fact they have nothing to share. I just put them out of context to illustrate my own idea, even if that idea is completely ignored in the actual game.

That said, those two screenshots illustrate perfectly the two most important aspects I would like to see in a mmorpg: 1- The “virtual world” scope, not just limited to combat (first screenshot) 2- The large scale PvP and conquest system (second screenshots)

Now look at the first. There are farmers, animals (and not xp bags), caravans, big and small boats, a lighthouse and a general natural, countryside quiet mood, with warm colors which, already in the screenshot, look absolutely stunning and immersive. That first screenshot has a strong charming impact, imho. I started to think about that.

That’s what I see and all the rest is triggered from those stimuli. What if we start to design a (even graphically) believable, recognizable world opposed to one built as a set of squared boxes labelled as “level 1-5”, “level 5-10” that you have to follow linearly, without any pretense of cohesion and self-consistence. What if those animals, the farms, the caravans, the lighthouse and the boats all had even a gameplay relevance instead of just sit there as “pretty scenery”. What if a player could own that farms, sail those boats, lead along those caravans and build a believable commerce system between the countries that just doesn’t teleports all the items from “x” to “y” or regulated through an artificial UI named “Auction House”. What if all those abstract and alienating intrusion of game systems could go away to put again the actual players at the *center* and as focus of the game world, instead of just gliding on a fixed, rendered background. What if we could drop all these buttons, quickbars, health bars, text messages and generally clunky and counterintutive, heavy interfaces that are just a huge limit of accessibility for most of the players and an intrusive curtain between you and the actual game world that you can *see*. What if these games could finally emancipate from their MUDs heritage and leave behind that type of cumbersome geekdom to move toward a more natural, believable and even visceral (guess why sex and violence and even the tactile world of Katamari Damacy are successful nowadays?) type of gameplay that is directly fun and accessible for everyone. Because it draws hands down from our real experience and the most natural feelings?

All that is just a start. Because all the rest follows, like a chain. Once you trigger a line of thoughts and dream about a potential, all the rest will follow naturally. You are chasing an idea that links together all these parts. An idea that can be started just by one screenshot to then move on its own. When I think about mmorpgs in general, that’s what I see.

Then there’s the second screenshot. The ideas above, for me, melt with this second part. Because in that type of world I described I want also the conflict and the conquest. The PvP is the most fun, social and satisfying repetable content possible. It just needs better environments where the players are, once again, the focus. Where they OWN the world and not just move around in one ruled by NPCs.

In that second screenshot I see once again the luscious scenery, a town with various buildings, defensive walls, watchtowers and an army moving to war. There seem to be archers, soldiers and huge dinosaurs used like huge war machines to siege the town. The awe here comes from the *scale* of things and the idea of a conquest. Two elements that are severely lacking in the games of today where the focus is always the single player and where the scale never changes. That scenery suggests “breadth”. It suggests a battle that will start shortly after that may remind what we saw in the Peter Jackson movies (which also strongly exploited z-axis movement of the camera to underline the sense of scale and dizziness).

We are excited when we buy a mount in WoW. What if you could drive one of those huge dinosaurs? What if you could charge and pound against those defensive walls and breach them? What if you could sweep the place with the tail and tear both men and buildings with the jaws (and here we would need a true physics engine and not intangible character models)? And what if all these actions were possible with more natural controls instead of a bunch of quickbars cluttering the screen with fancy, retarded effects like DOTs, mezz, stuns, buffs, debuffs and other totally absurd abstractions?

Think to a truly epic battle and conquest suggested in the second screenshot, with smooth, fluid and intuitive controls and visceral combat like in “God of War” and all within a cohesive, believable and consistent virtual world with an unmatched breadth as suggested in the first screenshot.

That’s what I “see” :)

This is another answer to a comment that Heartless wrote here. And an occasion for me to underline a few concepts that are dear to me.

He says that my system could be interesting but it cannot really be judged since it’s not fully developed and explained. Well, as I wrote in my reply, that’s not something that I can do. Simply because I miss the data I need and designing a system in all the minimal details just based on pure assumptions is actually silly and goes far beyond the purpose of my “design” ravings.

But even if I cannot snap my fingers and make appear a complete design document in all its parts, I can still take an existing game and apply my ideas to it to imagine (and share) what could be the possible result. Of course it cannot be perfect because my ideas were supposed to make sense together, but I think it’s still possible to make my goals more understandable if I take a current game and explain how it would change with some of my rules applied. Instead of having to force people to follow and tune to my ideas for a long and not trivial journey, using a concrete example everyone knows can be useful to make clear at least some of the concepts.

Of course to do this I’ll take the most fucked up PvP system out there: World of Warcraft.

We know that it works with equal mechanics for both factions (Horde, Alliance) with 14 different ranks that offer access to superior PvP loot. So we have a rather simple and straightforward system, different ranks and a reward: the shiny loot. Of course this structure is already broken on a number of points but again my purpose is to explan a few ideas and what they bring to the plate and not magically heal all of WoW’s flaws. So we take this basic system with all its issues and see which effect some of my rules can have on it.

As you can see by reading the brochure, one of the main goals is to have a system that is equally accessible for everyone. So the first thing to go is how the honor points will be achieved. There won’t be anymore an inner competition in the same realm, nor a functional competition over the greed for points against the other realm. Instead we can still have a variable threshold of points to move between the ranks from server to server, but once the amount is set, it won’t change anymore dynamically. We can also retain a mild decay rate considering that the progress isn’t freeform as in DAoC (the points to spend) and so the progression is bound to a cap (rank 14) that could be even too easy to reach if you don’t lose anymore the points from week to week.

So you kill enemy players and achieve goals in the BGs and you gain regularly honor points. These honor points don’t need anymore to be compared to the points of every other character. So they are added clearly and immediately like it happens to the normal experience. The UI will clearly show in real time your constant progression. What will change from week to week, instead (and since we retain some rules from the current game), is the amount of points you need to reach a precise rank. This doesn’t mean that these numbers are supposed to skyrocket. They just oscillate around a constant value to mimic the different activity on the different servers, but you’ll need more or less the same points to reach rank 10 today as you’d need five years later.

This means that, thanks to the constant progression, everyone will be able to reach the last rank with some dedication. The catasses will do that in three months while the casual players will need more time. But everyone will be able to get there eventually and at their own pace. Without a forced competition over time that is just inaccessible for most of the players.

At this point the system is similar to DAoC’s Realm Points and Ranks. You gain honor points and progressively move up the ranks to acquire the proper reward (loot in this case).

Now lets move to the heart of my system. Lets say that 20 players enter Arathi Basin. To make things simple I’ll say that 15 of them are still rank 1, while five of them are rank 14. If you read how my system is designed you know that your possible rank is set on the amount of players active at that moment and directly organized in squads. This means that if twenty rank 14 players join a BG, they CANNOT go around and use their rank 14 equipment. The rule would be that in a BG like Arathi Basin with 20 players for each factions, only ONE of them would be able to fill the last rank.

Ungrouped the ranks do not exist. In my original system you couldn’t use any of your advanced skills and, in this example about WoW, you just cannot access the PvP loot you achieved from the ranks, if you are alone. So there’s a definite difference between a rank you unblocked because you have the right amount of honor points and a rank you currently hold and use. To do this you must be organized in groups and be designated as leader. When this happens the leader will finally have access to the powers granted by its rank (just loot in this case).

In this example only one every twenty players can be set at rank 14. As decided above we have 15 players at rank 1 that just cannot move from there since they don’t have enough honor points, while there are five of them with rank 14 unblocked. So all five of them could cover that rank but only ONE will be able to. How does the system decide who between them will be choosed? Well.. it’s based on democracy. There will be a specific window showing the organization of the squads and ranks, not dissimilar to the current raid UI. The -position- on the diagram will define the current rank of the player, while next to the name of the player it will display the “possible” rank.

The five rank 14-enabled characters in our example can now propose themeselves to be designated to use their max rank. Lets say that three of them porpose themselves, while two of them just don’t bother and accept to remain rank 1 for the length of this BG. At this point all the players in the BG can make their choice and vote for one of them. Who will have the 51% of the preferences will be choosed, set leader and will be able to finally use his uber rank 14 loot. The same for the opposite faction.

It’s not rare to hear that “Level-based PvP doesn’t work unless everyone on the same level” but we often forget the problem of the loot, which is just another type of treadmill, equally disruptive for the PvP. In fact in WoW the level 60 BGs happen just between same-level players and, still, they are horribly unbalanced (as Heartless writes in the last paragraphs of this comment). If twenty rank 14 players in uber purple loot enter a BG, the other faction would have no chance and the gameplay would just suck. The variance in possibilities is what defines a good fight from one that just doesn’t hold any fun. Till the variance is within manageable margins the fight is fun, but when the difference in level or loot has too much of an impact, the purpose of the PvP goes to hell and the game just becomes a paractice of confrontation to decide who has grown the biggest e-peen. Which I don’t really feel all that interesting.

This is why the system I just described would help to retain the balance. Only one player every twenty can be rank 14. In order to fill a rank you’ll have to be organize in squads so it won’t be possible to just randomly zerg in without even forming a group. This system would encourage the players to organize themselves, set their leaders, build up good or bad reputation among the players and so on. I consider all these “side-effects” as good and positive. They make the community and help to structure the PvP so that it makes sense and is enjoyable for everyone instead of a chaotic mess where everyone competes against everyone else. It’s a system that brings players together instead of making them fight agaist each other. That encourages them to fight together for a shared goal instead of a selfish interest.

The example here is just to explain one part of the system. Specifically how the ranks are unblocked and designated. How the system is kept accessible and how the balance is retained. But there are then other goals that complete it and that would differ from WoW. For example the ranks are not supposed to be linear, nor one as a more powerful version of the other. Each rank should define a *role*, similarly to what happens with the classes. A role isn’t directly more powerful than another. It just gives you different tools to use in the proper way and contribute to the battle through that specific role.

And, finally, the reward and purpose of the ranks isn’t about better loot. But about advanced skills that have an impact on the large scale of the battle and that add dynamism, tactics and coherence to it. All elements that are missing and have been completely dismissed in the current design of these games.

Saving another old discussion about my fancy ideas.

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Darniaq:
How do we “solve” the “problem” of RMT?

Through communism.

Really, solving this problem is extremely easy and can be done in hundreds of ways. What lacks is the will to do so.

To explain some more my idea (that is just one of those hundreds other possible ways):

I divide the “objects” in the game world in two groups:
– Player-centered tools
– Commodities

All the objects in the first group are the traditional loot we have in other games. Weapons, armors and other stat-enhancing items. Since these objects are directly tied to the PvE experience, they are cut out completely from the economy. They are not tradeable.

The concrete form of this idea is that the magical items develop personal paths. Think to WoW talent tree, a similar system will be used for each object and it will be the object itself to provide more skills and powers to the player. So there’s a personal tie and uniqueness between one item and its owner. If the item is traded it will lose all its proprieties and the player will have to restart the path. So no twinking, the PvE experience and its patterns are untouched and cannot be messed from the outside. There’s no external intervention.

This first system is completely closed.

Then there’s a second group. The objects in this second group (the “commodities”) don’t hold a value for the single player (they aren’t used in “solo”) but they are meaningful for the wider community. For the guilds and for the realm. On The PvP conquest system the players will have to manage their territories, gather resources and move them between places, commerce within the borders of the realm and outside (think to elements of an RTS joining the PvP metagame to simulate a world).

This is the level that already by design is “shared” and communal. So it’s this level that will be flagged as “tradeable” and so part of the economy (while the first level above is completely precluded from an economy). In this case the trading system doesn’t affect nor can ruin the PvE experience of the players. It’s not an external violation of something that was supposed to remain closed (the PvE, the fights, the quests, loot drops and so on). It’s instead the REAL commercial level working properly along with its premises.

The players will commerce those goods that have an effect on the meta level, those goods that are already designed to have a communal use, so already designed to be shared and reused. The economic system exists outside the single players, where these players gain a status already dependent on their role within the community.

This is how the PvE experience is preserved without being violated by an external, unexpected intervention, and how the economic system remains stronger and even more deep and meaningful because already part of that “shared endgame” that is usually completely lacking from this games (where everyone just think to himself and his uberness).

This system is completely impermeable to something like IGE because it would require them to play the game.

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Noel:
If there is a market for something, someone will provide that service or good. In other words, so long as someone is missing something they want (be it a game item or a new car), someone else will be willing to provide that to them. I think the real question isn’t ‘What’s the problem?’, but rather ‘Is there a solution that doesn’t make a game less fun?’

The fact is that the example is a recursive system that doesn’t seem to possibly work in another way. It’s a paradox because it recursively implies itself, so there’s no escape (as you said).

As for every paradox the only way to solve it is to break the model. If you break the model you’ll see where the paradox was blind.

The paradox, in this case, is that in a game where only the single players has a value (is a goal) nothing can be accepted from the outside. Because this disrupts the experience. That experience that the players is supposed to live instead of “buy”.

An economic system (that doesn’t suck), can exist only if the game has already shared/truly-communal processes. Right now the games have nearly zero persistence and depth, so nothing matters outside the personal level and the economic systems we have now are often “exploits” to break the game (twinking, for example).

EDIT- I anticipate discussions. Some relevant points also in the comments here below.

Written on QT3 forums as result of this discussion about the PvP endgame between WoW, DAoC and other games.

Also consequence of this old discussion.

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We gave a glance to the advantage/disadvantages of them. I said that better models are possible and this thread is to suggest a solution to explain my point of view and demonstrate concretely what I consider a “better model”. So you can see directly what I mean and agree/disagree.

To build it I borrowed the best parts of WoW, DAoC and Planetside. Adding my own ideas to the general shape.

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The idea I suggested a year ago was built on this principle:
“Designing a game which allows players not to HAVE to play regularly”.

– At the base the system works like DAoC. You gain points and progressively unblock ranks. The relevant difference is that these points are only gained by achieving PvP goals and never by killing players directly. The enemies are considered simply as “obstacles” that step in your way and that you need to get rid of in order to reach your goal.

– As you gain points you unblock ranks in a similar way to what happens in both WoW and DAoC but as a “flat treadmill”.

– Ranks unblock new skills but you do not gain them automatically. You do not fill a rank as you unblock it. You unblock only the *possibility* to fill it.

– The skills and spells a rank offers aren’t cumulative. So you can use exclusively the skills/spells that are tied directly to the single rank you fill at that precise moment.

– Ranks get assigned to groups and raids through a voting system (also based on ranks). So, for example, every group of “normal players” will have just one commander assigned and each raid will have a finite number of officers and just one leader (to simplify, the actual system offers many different ranks/”roles”).

– These ranks will be assigned through the voting system and to the players that were able to unblock them by gaining the appropriate amount of points.

– When a character is within a specific rank he gets access to specific new skills that are tied to his particular role. These skills are for the most part area-based effects that affect his squadron, the enemies or the environment. So, generally, not just more powerful versions of the same skills/spells he uses normally. This to give each rank a different *role* in the battlefield and not just making the character directly more powerful. Ranks are meant to unblock specific purposes and possibilities, not to make the single player more powerful.

This system allows to appoint players that are considered “naturally” leaders by giving them a recognized role in the game and specific skills that are appropriate for the situation. It also differentiates the gameplay so that different ranks behave in different ways on the battlefield.

The system can then be extended to PvE to create more dynamic situations instead of the repetitive models in the endgame content in games like WoW.

Plus, the bigger goal, it brings together the casual players and the catasses. It allows them to join their forces and rely on each other. Since the ranks are unblocked and assigned in groups and raids, not everyone will just become more powerful. A group of five players will always have just one commander. Even if ALL the players in that group have the “commander” rank already unblocked, only one of them will fill that role after being voted by the group.

So if you want to be a leader you don’t just have to catass but also build your own *reputation* with the community so that after you unblocked a rank you are also voted to fill and use it.

The system is called “Flat Power Treadmill” since it doesn’t define direct advancement paths like in other games. You don’t gain directly more power between the ranks. Instead you gain a different roles, different goals and differemt responsibilities, making the gameplay more interactive and dynamic. At the same time you always need “normal players” in your group in order for someone to fill an higher rank, so you’ll NEVER see in the game a full group of commanders or higher ranks. It isn’t an endless race to be more “leet”. The higher ranks will always have to rely on the “casual players” to have access to their powers.

This offers an incentive to go on and unblock new interesting roles in the battlefield (for example in a game with vehicles only higher ranks could get access to them or some specific weaponry). So this is an incentive to play and enjoy the game in the long term (retention of subscriptions). At the same time it doesn’t creates GAPS between casual players and catasses that ultimately breaks the game when the groups progressively outdistance each other. Instead it helps them to play *together*. The catasses will help the casual players to get involved and understand the game and the casual players will help the catasses to gain access to what they want.

• This is a model that works on the long term (because it provides always incentives to unblock *new* gameplay and not just more powerful version of “the same”).

• It is always accessible for both the catasses and the casual players and throughout the whole life span of the game.

• It adds dynamism to the battlefield by giving the players different roles and purposes.

• It finally brings together catasses and casual players. Producing an heathly community that doesn’t shatter in pieces, progressively damaging the accessibility for new players as they join.

— UPDATED after the comment

To address even more the core concept:

Catassing a system is about progressing through it in order to play along with your friends. In other games you are forced to catass or you are excluded from the game. This because you have to keep up with your friends or you’ll lag out and become an outcast.

That’s what is wrong in the advancement systems we have in the games now. Not the advancement itself but the OBLIGATION TO KEEP UP AND MATCH THE RESULTS OF OTHER PLAYERS.

“Advancing” is always fun if it’s kept accessible and if you aren’t forced to maintain an exact pace set by someone else.

My system address this problem directly. New ranks do not make you more powerful but just give you access to different gameplay. A player can choose that a specific role is extremely fun and REFUSE to progress further because he has no interest in doing so. You can stop where you want for as long as you want. The system allows you do do this without punishing you.

The system never *forces* you to “keep up”. You just go where you want to go. From a side you have an incentive because you can get bored after playing the same role for months. So you could have an interest to get access to something else (and this happens naturally as you play). From the other side this process is NEVER REQUIRED and always optional.

There will be no gaps between catasses and normal players. The catasses will fill naturally their role as leaders while other players will explore other possibilities. I believe not everyone plays to lead raids. I offer specific roles to those players that want such positions, I offer then a bunch of different roles for the players that are interested to play with other mechanics.

It’s NEVER a race to the end, it’s just a space of solutions and offers that you can explore as you like. All the roles you unblock are essential to the system and they are the OPPOSITE of a ladder you have to endlessly climb. There isn’t a direct direction where you are pointed to. You are the one to decide where you are heading and why.

This is just a quick note to pin down one of the design issues about my “dream mmorpg” that I was considering. So that I don’t forget about it.

The problem comes as a consequence of the skill system. If the game isn’t built on levels many useful structures simply vanish. In World of Warcraft the levels are extremely useful from many different perspectives. They are used to build zones bundling together the players around a similar level range. This isn’t a trivial feature and it’s instead tied to many core concepts. A zone has its own chat channels, its own offer of content, its own (temporary) sub-community. This allows to “chunk” these elements and the larger community into manageable units. If the players are put in an environment, sharing a similar status, they can also build groups and play together in order to reach the shared goals more easily. This builds the social aspects and allows at the same time to immerse the players in an environment that they can understand and begin to interact with.

But what happens if there is no direct and artificial separation between the players? From a side we solve a huge and consolidated complaint coming from those players that hate to get split from their friends and foreced out of the “accessibility” of the game. In fact we know that removing these “walls” is good. But from the other side we lose the depth of the system along with the whole RPG perspective. The content becomes all relative, all accessible, always, maybe even through insta-ports from everywhere in the world. And it would be extremely hard to recognize an experienced player from a newbie and this would ultimately frustrate the players and directly bring to closed communities that will never accept to open up their “friend list” (A big issue even if it doesn’t seem so at a first glance, the “who cares?” typical reaction).

To manage all these points my (rough) idea is to use the content to give some substance to the world and develop the characters. To an extent this happens already in Guild Wars. The players move and gain access to new zones by accomplishing missions more than just by levelling up. Even without the need of coding a strict level system, the content can still be used to bring along the players on their journey and mark this path in a significant way.

This brings the design back to a “world” model more than an artificial ruleset that strictly imposes its will. Your access to the various parts of the game isn’t anymore defined from external rules but defined instead by logical reasons coming from the game-world. The player will move on its own journey through the story-lines, developing its character and following logical purposes. I’d leave behind the extreme linearity of Guild Wars to open up choices. So instead moving from (A) to (B) and then (C), the player should chase down his interest and explore the game-world following logical ties and interactions (discovering, exploring, making choices as an active element of the system). Instead of a strict linear progression of the content the model is to mimic the complexity of a world, with more complex ties between the parts, more choices and persistent elements that do not systematically reset.

This idea is a compromise between the two approaches, in order to collect the qualities of both and minimize the limits. From a side the artificial walls (levels) between the players are removed, from the other the content is built in a logic, believable way to bring in a definite progression that can be recognized and used. At the same time moving away from an artificial linear progression of content (as seen in Guild Wars) to chase instead a model where the simulation of the “world” is consistent with what happens and where the progression from a point to another is subject to logic, self-consistent ties. Opening up choices and non-linear (but logic and natural) progress.

Reducing even more: from a side the artificial walls and boundaries are removed, from the other they are progressively rebuilt in order to recreate and respect the natural (complex) behaviour of a “world”.

Ahaha, I got the best idea ever.

If I’m going to experiment with new forms of economic systems, why not communism? So, maybe, this will become the base of my dream mmorpg and the chimera I’m building with Chris. And there are also very good premises for it to work, in the non-reality.

The actual implementation isn’t really so alienated from the few forms we have already in the game. There’s already planned a guild system under a bigger structure with three hardcoded factions. So the players will keep fighting for their realm, expanding it, its resources, conquering new territories, spawing NPCs, guards and so on. It’s part of my general purpose of pulling out the purpose of the game from the single character power treadmill to the “outside”, the environment, the role of the player in a bigger structure, with a more direct commitment and responsibility. Not anymore faked in a fixed, artificial arena.

The crafting will have odd quirks, the crafters will never be the players (there are exceptions I won’t discuss here). Instead the players will be able to spawn both crafters and resource gatherer NPCs and plot simple schedules structures for them (player-controlled robots). The player won’t have to press a key and stare a progression bar, all the work will be automated through NPCs. The economy (and currency) will exist on a bigger level, all that the players will need to control will be at an higher level, dependent to the guild (the guilds will be able to claim and manage the RTS level of the game) and, then, the realm. Private propriety? No thanks. Everything related to the gameplay and the single player (loot, magic items) won’t enter the economy. What is part of the economic level will exist at the “upper” level, so the creation and management of the resources already (by design) “shared” between all the players under that faction – already built to be part of that shared/trade level without disrupting and damaging the “game”.

Most of the game comes from that layer. The players are brought together because they share goals and means. They aren’t anymore within artficial structures excusing their actions.

They ARE the structure. They ARE the state.

Now tell IGE to try to enter this system to broke it, they would be required to actually… play the game. This model not only is impermeable to the Real Money Trade, but it also preserves all the fun elements unique to this sub-genre.

Quoting an old comment from Raph:

Hmm, I think that one thing that people who want to just axe economies are missing is that economies can and DO provide gameplay. There’s strategic gameplay, large-scale cooperation gameplay, PvP gameplay, and other types of gameplay that kill-the-foozle doesn’t offer.

We may quibble all we want about whether harvesting is currently as fun as it should be (it isn’t), the act of crafting is as fun as it should be (it isn’t), or the juggling of inventory is as fun as it should be (it isn’t). But it’d be dumb to say that running a business in a game can’t be a fun endeavor or add gameplay–there’s entire single-player genres of game based on it, and they are some of the most popular games in the world–Rollercoaster Tycoon, anyone?

The reason to have game economies that have complexity to them is the same reason why you have PvE combat with complexity to it–to have it meet the minimum threshold bar of fun. Worrying about wwhether dupes unbalance your economy is the same as worrying about whether buffs are overpowered, frankly. It’s just another axis of gameplay.

Does your game NEED it? No. But given that it is one of the axes of gameplay that makes use of persistence, and persistence is one of the key things these games offer that other games cannot , well, leaving it out may be considered to be at least underutilizing the genre. Not a bad thing if you have a specific other area of focus, but not the One True Way either.