Sunday, November 28, 2010

Slow, Harduous Research

What I would like to see in an MMORPG is a system of research for acquirable skills; something that allowed players to spend some time, possibly involving another minigame, and learn a new skill or recipe, or receive a new enhancement, as a passive skill.

On the skill side, this would be akin to intense training, either in general, earning an unknown skill; or in particular, trying to design a skill from scratch. This would be a form of self-teaching, allowing one to gain a skill when no one knows or is willing to teach it. With great effort, a player would discover something new - or possibly understand something they have seen done - and be able to teach it to others. This would allow first-generation players to have something to strive for; and when basic skills have all been discovered and spread, new players will have an easier time catching up to the veterans, making the game more fun for everyone.

For recipes, the system would be similar, but require that the player actually input materials. Experiments using said materials would destroy them, but possibly teach the player some new ways of using them, potentially yielding a working prototype. Again, recipes would eventually spread in the community, if not by teaching, then by reverse-engineering, meaning new players can become useful crafters with less invested time.

As for passive skills, it's all about intense training - one could train themselves to withstand great mental fatigue, for example, hardening them against psychological effects or increasing some related attributes. Even without a precise goal in mind, intense training in their skill in general can yield small but welcome incremental bonuses, something that is always useful to have.

The whole idea here is to allow players to be pioneers in their chosen fields, permanently engraving their names in the history of the world - or perhaps just following the footsteps of heroes of yore, who learned every move people take for granted the hard way.

And darnit, they liked it!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey,
I came to this blog via Kongregate. I was looking for more infomation about "The Nameless Rougelike". I found this, and have been reading it quite a bit. I love the idears that you've got here.
Anyway, the reason I was here is for infomation about "The Nameless Roughlike", but I geuss this is the wrong place. Could you point me in the right direction. If this is the right place, then I was wondering if the throw command was compleatly disabled when version 2 came out, or if there is another way to throw items. Thanks alot.

PS: Is the MMO that you talk about here playable or underconstruction ect. ect.. I'm quite intrested in it. And are you working on any other games?
Thanks, Pseudiablo.

Hexedian said...

Hey there, yes, I'm the programmer for "The Nameless Roguelike".
Thanks for pointing out the lack of explanation for the "throw" command. You can throw in version 2 with 'T', that is Shift + t, since 't' now moves north west per the new non-numeric keypad commands.

Unfortunately, these ramblings aren't netting me any job in the games industry, but hopefully it will inspire some developers one way or another...

Anonymous said...

Hey,
First off, thanks for the quick reply. I hadn't hoped for as much but it sure will be useful to nail enemies from long range. I'll be putting it to full use later.

It's a shame about the MMO. When I read these posts I was in awe of the idears you have down here. Particually the bit about "Love" and how it hoped to generate situation that are engaging without player input. I have no-idear how you would go about doing this though, whenever I use proceeduraly generated games, I can only really to get them to generate maps or charicters. I've got no idear how you could automate quests, items or skills.
I hopw that someone manages this soon, it would be great.

I would also like to add my thought on the MMO. If I were to do this, I would focous the game on alliances and territories. To do this, I would make it so that you could set monthy trades such as; This much metal for acsess to these shops and this guild,but 10% tax on all profit made in the guild. Things like that would be very affective.
I would also promote team playing by making it so that you reach the maximum level for skills very quickly. There would also be very few skills. This would mean that to get stronger, you would need a bigger clan, not more traning. This would also discorage people who just train in unhealthy ammounts, like you see in runescape, and similar MMOs. I would also make it so that if you died, you would have to start over. This would make players much more cautios, and make the game more tense and exciting.

Just thought I'd add these to the houghs alredy here. Note: I love the idear of 3 numberd stats, but If I did that, I'd make sure they were diffrent to skills, which would be one number, which slowly increased. The idears here are all excellent.

Thanks, Pseudiablo.

Johnny Storme said...

If I spent any more time developing anything more, I think I would have to play full-time!

Love your Blog! I’ll be checkin out your archives! I specialize in “Best Of” posts, and your blog will be added to one of my posts.

Rock on Dude!
Storme
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http://www.xlogspot.com said...

I love science and science truly is the closest thing to "magic" we have in this world. Very cool post :)