Looks like the folks who were working on a Firefly MMO decided to do Buffy first.
I would definitely subscribe to a steam punk MMORPG. Or something Vernian in scope. Or hell…a game based completely on Verne’s stuff. WOW does the whole engineering thing pretty well, shouldn’t be too hard to build a game around the concept of steam technology.
However, I would hate it if it was geared towards kids. I’ld like to see back alley London, Ripper-like sub-plots, Lost World plateaus, dark continent exploration and maybe a martian invasion. The whole Victorian thing is an undervalued wellspring of fantasy game playing goodness.
Hmmm. Are you talking about an “M” rated mmorg?
I dunno much about the industry. Wouldn’t it be harder to get investors interested in an “M” rated game?
I know some major vendors won’t stock “M” rated games, either.
Are you possibly limiting yourself too much that way?
Most vendors will stock M rated games, perhaps you’re thinking of AO? The only AO rated game to be stocked in Walmart or Gamestop (two top retailers for games) was one of the GTAs, and that was during that brief Hot Coffee stint where it wasn’t AO then it was and then it wasn’t again.
Edit: I’ll post an elaboration of my idea soonish, I have the response typed up in the box, but my laptop isn’t connecting to the internet so I can’t actually post it.
I’m not talking about “Adult Content”…i.e. graphic sexuality or even graphic violence. I really want to avoid it being saturday morning cartoonish. This game should acknowledge that some seedy, dark stuffs happens in the underbelly of Victorian society. It would make for an interesting dichotomy, as far as character play. One could lurk the streets, be a street urchin or one could be a member of, say, the scientific community. It would be neat to have the option to simply hang around London, pick pocketing unsuspecting players or to become a member of the scientific community, create elaborate steam powered machines and explore the dark reaches of mysterious continents. I guess I’m thinking a gaslight Sandbox game.
You should have the option to actually BE a Jack the Ripper if you so choose. No different than WOW PVP to me.
No, I didn’t mean graphic nudity. I assumed you meant “combat” depicted more graphically (aka blood/light gore) than it does in WoW. A “Ripper” style scenario would depict the quest/victim as gory, right?
I thought Walmart wouldn’t stock an “M” rated game. But, looking at their online website, I see that they have “Call of Duty”, which is “M” rated (presumadely for battlefield violence).
Sorry.
Hooray, my laptop is can has intarwebz!
Interplay had a stipulation in the license transfer of Fallout to Bethesda that they retain the rights to make one Fallout MMO (called Vault 13 from what I’ve heard), so you may get some form of Fallout MMO in the near future (“near” being in game development terms).
Alright, this is the cliffnotes version. Remember that I (one) am not posting everything so there may be some inconsistencies that are ironed out in the full version and (two) this is an idealistic idea, I realize some things could be abused badly and I’m trying to work them out but I’m going to give the basic idea.
Dynamic PvE - The non-“integral” (like character progression) quests are going to be based off of three things, Random generation, necessity, and character traits. Random is self explanatory, necessity is the one I find the most fun to think about. Various things will “control” quests. I always thought it was dumb that every rank level 1 gets the exact same bear carcass, after the initial “training” phase (basically a skippable tutorial at ninja school, which should be somewhat homogenized) the quests are based on current events.
Say the day before you generated your character that village got hit by a heavy PvP raid, the first quest might be to get wood to rebuild or help put out ongoing fires or to kill off some stragglers (PvP or PvE). Or if, conversely, the village is in a state of prosperity you may get a quest to take out some thieves that stole someone’s wallet or gather a plant to make a healing salve or ink for scrolls. Quests would also have a definitive “expiration” condition, i.e. amount of wood gathered between the players, all the fires are put out, if there’s an invasion enough of them dead might make them retreat or you could do a group quest to take out the messenger sending for reinforcements so they don’t respawn (which would happen at designated “entry” points). And after they’re driven out the quest won’t be issued anymore and all people who take it but didn’t complete it will get partial credit, and the area they were in will be inhabited by something new (probably random).
Abilities - The system will be skill based rather than level based. I’m still working this one out a lot, but the general gist is there will be several trees you can go down with more advanced trees being unlocked based on your rank and current tree. It’s not entirely infeasible for a lower level to acquire a higher level ABILITY however, but without the necessary points in certain skills it may be ineffective or erratic until they learn how to control it.
Skills would be a bit different than most MMOs, for one it would be Action + RPG just because straight RPG doesn’t fit it well. You’re going to aim your kunai, be able to shoot them down, and yes, there would be passive dodge skills but they’ll be at a minimum. It would definitely be about dodging more than tanking, if there is high end raid group PvE it would be more effective, I would say, to get the jump on a boss and have a 20 man kiting spree than it would to have your tough guy stand there and get hit 10000 times. Abilities wouldn’t be “click and go”, they’d be controlled through using hand signs, the longer you hold down the more chakra goes into it.
To get new skills you can go to the “dojo” for a small fee, there you’re offered a training dummy (or a sparring partner of higher rank) that allows you to develop new abilities (though you will be taught “basic” ones for each rank advancement, Genin, Chuunin, S. Jonin etc), the closer you get the correct balance of chakra with the correct hand signs the more powerful the results will be. If you’re just a little off the chakra may be “formed” but not “controlled” for example, and you may end up blowing yourself up and having to pay a hospital and damages fee (I may cut that). The one thing I really want to do is procedural generation of abilities based on variables such as clan, “body type” (taken from your character creation choices), current skill specialties, and some random “talent” variables hidden to the user (to curb FAQs and carbon copy skillsets, sorry guys). You WILL be able to become overpowered if you work at it.
Death - Everywhere you go will have an outpost nearby with a medical ninja squad, if you go below 0 HP you become “fallen” they come to drag you away from the fray and heal you up, if you take a large enough hit and go below zero or keep being hit after being downed you pass out and have to be dragged back to the camp. If you, go help you, DIE, either from a “fuck you” ability, a soul stealing jutsu, or having being hit enough times after being downed and unconscious (or you “bleed out” meaning the medical ninja came for you but the opposing side knocked THEM out too, which can only really happen in PvP) you are looking at a huge fee for materials to resurrect you, and you’ll probably be back in your village and have to run back to the place you died. You’ll be lootable until you’re resurrected (which is going to be a timer), but the game isn’t inventory based, most items are dime-a-dozen kunai and shuriken and maybe some scrolls, which may be bad to lose (your enemies can learn jutsu you wrote down, more on this in a second), but are replaceable without raiding 6 dungeons provided you remember how to make it.
The scrolls thing is basically a shortcut for jutsu, more basic jutsu everyone learns, such as substitution (for teleport dodging) can just be “remembered” and dragged onto an action bar for quick use and not having to remember the commands all the time, but jutsu you develop and higher rank summons that may be hard to remember can be “scribed” using a sort of minigame, not sure what kind of minigame, but it’d be fun and somewhat challenging, using the scroll you can just click it to “consume” it and automatically have your character use the jutsu. Of course, some jutsu are scroll exclusive (like some of Ten Ten’s weapon attacks in the anime) so you can experiment with them too. You can use them or have them teach to another ninja, provided they have similar skills, and it may be more or less effective depending on the aforementioned variables. This is why it’s so bad to die and be looted, sure you can replace them, but your enemy now has a powerful weapon.
Village Stuff - this is the hardest one for me to conceptualize working, because there are so many variables, even more than overpowered jutsu. What I basically want is a cycle, all players above rank whatever get called to serve on the council eventually, they can make or break treaties with other villages, assign important missions, organize raids on opposing villages, banish or re-accept people etc. There will be a vote at the end of a term to keep certain people if they did really well, but only the top so much will be accepted for a second term to prevent static governments. There will also be a kage, but I have no clue how to work that (I’m thinking mission distribution and special jutsu), or how to select him, popular enough to serve on the council multiple terms and a really high rank? Like I said, this one is hard to work out but I like the idea so I keep playing with it. There will also be guilds, they can assign missions to their members, guilds can be inter-village and even include rogue ninja, but if your village sees an enemy guildy roaming around or especially an infamous rogue ninja your entire guild may be shunned, banished etc from your village, so you may have to disguise them in the village if nation relations are less than stellar.
Random disjointed thoughts:
I want small-chance clan abilities at the start that you can see in your skill chart but won’t manifest until later, if you roll an Uchiha (which probably won’t be in there since I’m thinking of making it far post anime, but whatever) you could have a chance to unlock the Sharingan later. There would also be a chance to have talents such as “excellent chakra control” or “immense physical ability.” That could make you more talented, especially in certain fields (i.e. you may be a really, really good medical ninja or a Rock Lee type character because of it).
There will be a chance to get a tailed-beast in you, this you grant you ridiculous powers, but also result in possibly losing control of your character for a bit if you use it wrong or abuse it too much. There can only be one of each in a given server at a time, and if that person doesn’t log in (i.e. if it was generated in a guy who only played a month) after a while the beast will escape out of the logged off character and begin terrorizing everyone, eventually being “sealed” after some large scale player effort meaning it will eventually be put into another random character again. It should be possible to “release it” from another character to prevent one person from being eternally powerful and godlike, so an enemy may do that to them to cripple the side. It may be possible to “steal” it too, but it’s unlikely to work in my head and if I did allow it it would require immense amounts of resources and the ability to CAPTURE this person, highly unlikely.
Anyway, like I said, it’s really idealistic right now, and some of it probably impossible given today’s technology, but the ideas and the way the Naruto universe works could make a great MMO if done right.
I know nothing of Naruto, but your ideas intrigue me, Jragon. I’d like to subscribe to your newsletter. 
Scouring a few of my Rifts book briefly and after reading your ideas for villages I though of something that may not be as complicated as your ideas, but I wondered if it it was even remotely possible with present technology.
The governments, settlements and villages in the world would treat different player characters differently. Some may be accepting to say, cyborgs, but not so friendly with people that use magic. Some may be outright hostile to those characters, depending. Characters might might be able to improve their standing with some of them despite of this. If Jim the cyborg mercenary isn’t particularly welcome in village A because they distrust supertech, he might find acceptance anyway because he did a quest that helps the village against certain monsters or threats, or even against village B which is at odds of village A in some dispute. Village B might accept Jim because they are more tech inclined, but since Jim helped Village A his rating with B went from friendly to nuetral or lower making them openly hostile to him. Maybe Jim is friendly with village C which is inhabited by D-bees (dimensional beings) and villages A and B distrust D-bees so he’s not welcome in either unless he backstabs his D-bee friends in village C. Doing so would make him friendly in village B but only nuetral (barely welcome) in village A unless he does more things that they approve of.
PvP wise if Jim is friendly with the Coalition he would be flagged as PvPable with characters that are not. But say Bill the cyberknight who is an enemy of the coalition wants to team up with Jim for a quest/mission, they can agree to a truce and work together. This would have to be set up in a way to keep players from backstabbing each other in the middle of a quest, or directly after in order to score the best loot. Perhaps any rare valuables could be dueled for after the mission is complete. If players are on friendly terms with each other because of affiliations they can still PvP if they challenge and accept to fight each other. Or maybe two friendly characters could be allowed to attack each other, but the attacker would take a negative hit with those that he was friendly with. (though his affiliations with his victims enemies would get a + bump)
Considering the size of the Earth it could be possible to have some places where your character would be attacked on sight and some where they are not. I probably articulated that badly, but I hope I got my idea across.
Also there should be multiple starting areas for every class and racial class if possible. If you want to start off as a coalition soldier you might have to start off in the Coalition States, but you can have a choice of maybe starting in an outpost on the wilderness (with appropriate starting missions to get you going) or in the capitol with appropriate starting missions.
These are just ideas that I came up with not using a lot of thought, so I’m sorry if they aren’t all that fleshed out. I wish I were a programmer so I could claim more knowledge on how it could be implemented. Well, I also wish i were rich so I could actually maybe try to start a business and make the game. That actually sounds like a lot of fun to me.
After watching TTB on youtube, Thundarr’s world is more bent on barbarism than Rifts. In Rifts technology is not totally unknown. Its a bit of a mix of Conan and ***cyberpunk. ***
I was thinking of a game that was more like Thundarr than Rifts…where technology is viewed as magic of a sort because the human populace is has forgotten the advances made in the present day and live in a roughly medieval style.
It would be interesting to try to figure out how to do that, Perhaps a PnP version first. That might require another thread, but again it would be fun to try to do.