Personally, I would love to find a game without any leveling of any kind. The only difference in characters would be what your equipment is and anybody can get it, from anywhere. When you create your character for the first time, you can have any balance-related equipment as someone who had played the game for years. This may sound like some nerd raging about how he gets owned in games with levels, but it's not.

A game like this, true, would be a little hard to perfectly balance at first. But as soon as you get to that, the game would be amazing. Of course, it would have to focus on many types of other game play to keep people interested, which shouldn't be too hard. I mean, whats the difference between getting 10 people of high level, with the right mixture of job classes and abilities, to go do a huge, hard quest... Versus finding 10 people of that same quantity, minus the level requirement?

If there is no such game out there and one does not come out within the next five years, I will make it a personal goal, to do it. I think that a community driven game like this would be much better than a game where it's so diverse because of the leveling.

As for "What would I do without leveling?"
Why not have other goals and aspirations? Like having the ability to run the whole game, each and every person playing. All NPCs could lead to be near non-existent as players can get potions from certain classes, equipment can be traded and bought from one another, information and assistance being purchased from one another would also be more common. This would also boost social interaction and prevent people from making asses of themselves by being courteous or else they wouldn't get far in terms of surviving the game's social base.

To a certain extent, urban dead is like that. There's a total of 44 levels, but it takes a couple of months to get those, and half of them you don't need urgently anyway. Higher level players aren't much harder to kill, and everyone can get and use the same items.

I feel like there would be no real sense of progression or accomplishment, and hence, would not sell well. Leveling up gives you a reason to get new equipment or spells, makes you stronger. I guess you could technically still give spells and there would still be item progression, but I think leveling is an integral part of most MMOs. MMOs have to balance two huge things, they have to balance skill, and they have to balance time investment. If you put too much weight into skill, people who spend a lot of time but aren't very skilled are not going to have any fun in your game. If you put too much weight into time investment, your game simply becomes "who has been playing for the longest" and the skilled players would become disenchanted because the items they worked so hard for are easily obtained by someone who puts 50+ hours into the game every week. It's basically one of the biggest issues in WoW right now. ;o

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I feel like there would be no real sense of progression or accomplishment, and hence, would not sell well. Leveling up gives you a reason to get new equipment or spells, makes you stronger. I guess you could technically still give spells and there would still be item progression, but I think leveling is an integral part of most MMOs. MMOs have to balance two huge things, they have to balance skill, and they have to balance time investment. If you put too much weight into skill, people who spend a lot of time but aren't very skilled are not going to have any fun in your game. If you put too much weight into time investment, your game simply becomes "who has been playing for the longest" and the skilled players would become disenchanted because the items they worked so hard for are easily obtained by someone who puts 50+ hours into the game every week. It's basically one of the biggest issues in WoW right now. ;o

The whole point behind that, would be to achieve titles, different graphics maybe and besides, a small, non-retarded community would be pretty cool in my opinion.

Think of the whole game as a forum, with interactive things to do and people to talk to, the like. Of course, there would be missions you could do all the time.

If you think about it, most people are attracted to how things look. Give them the ability to customize their entire character so unless a person is trying to directly mimic them, they are unique.

If not appearance, maybe you like Tycoon games. Would you want to be able to say that you own an entire town's monetary abilities, such as Inns, Shops and the like? You would essentially run your own business... In a game.

Things like this are entirely possible.

OP's game description sounds like Sims TBH

Well, in terms of fighting and such, it would of course need to be something less... Turn-style. More like an action RPG, where you swing the weapons yourself.

Equipment would determine attack speed, movement speed, damage you can take, damage you can block and so on. Of course, you can't intermingle some items depending on your character and the other equipment you have, which is where the balance would come in. Such as you could equip a huge knight with massive armor and give him a dagger if you wanted, but you could only attack so fast anyway because of the armor's bulkiness. A lot of the game's balance of equipment would depend on size, weight and your character's role in terms of job/class/style.

Personally, I see no problem with a game that is basically a huge MMO Action RPG.

I'd play it. Just be able to chill and go around bartering for equipts, trying to learn new abilities doin a quest, meeting up with random people and be like 'k let's go kill a dragon' or some shit. The pvp could be action style like you said. The winner is mostly whoever is best at microing their abilities / moving their char and equipts have something to do with it but the game's not decided by it. NICE.

And in all honesty, so what if there isn't 10 million players. You would only meet and greet 100-200 of these guys within a year anyway. A small, tightly knit community would be a nice change for MMOs. I would be perfectly happy with a few thousand players as a high for the game.

Norm also gets the general idea, the game would be very fun and have infinite replay value as a result. I mean, a game where there is no character that can flat out kill another without a problem because of their level and gear... That's dumb. Keeping all of the players together, would result in a much more 'community' feel.

Make it a zombie game ;o
Maybe even PvP with player zombies?

So, items and abilities are still in it?

You still have investment.

You I think you'd pretty much HAVE to have items and abilities. If they were just people walkin around carrying nothing interesting it wouldn't be that interesting.

Yeah, items and abilities would still be very much existent. They would all depend on your class and such.

If I really do end up creating a game like this, it will take a while to either: Find people who share my vision or learn how to do everything myself. So, I will of course wait until my military career is over and go to a game design school. I very much want to make this kind of game a reality.

If anybody with any experience in this kind of thing and wants to become a game developer within the next five to six years, hit me up.

As far as classes/items/abilities/spells are concerned, I was thinking a main-class and sub-class for about 20-30 different classes all together, to ensure variety. Then each class has a different set of abilities/spells, then when their merged with a sub-class, some abilities/spells will change into new ones and you will get some from both different classes. Keeping one class, instead of two, will not water down the initial class like it would for having both.

Items will be pretty useful to have, certain ones having a timer so you cant spam it and classes can affect just about everything about the items, from their quantity to effects or cool-down.

Abilities, will be in the large numbers, but you will probrably be able to only have a maximum amount learned at any one time, to ensure people cannot just have a library of skills for any situation they come across.

As for how the game runs, I already expressed how much an action feel to it would work best, something like Devil May Cry, but instead of one guy able to do a million things, you have different characters able to do different things. I compare it to that, because I could see some of that game play attracting people into a massive MMO game. Things like using combo's and such.

I'd love to see an MMO like this that focused more on actual player skill than how much time and money they can put into it (*cough* WOW *cough*)

It would be actual fun to play PVP, since it would take skill to fight other people, and gives a sense of skill, more than OOO LOOK I CLICKED THE BUTTON FASTA!

It could also be cool if the gear you got didnt increase attributes, but instead affected your fighting style and how good your character was at different abilities. Like, if you had full plate armor, you'd be much more suited towards fighting with slow, heavy attacks, whereas if you had just a cloak on, you'd be much better at hitting in critical spots and attacking fast. Neither would be more advantageous over the other, but it depends on how the player himself (or herself) likes to play the game.

I likey.

But, i would stay away from a set class system in itself. If you as a player are good at dodging and confusing your opponent and want the speed of a ninja, but know you dont get a lot of hits off and therefore want a big, heavy sword like a knight, i'd say be my guest. Or, if you do have classes, i'd say allow for hybridization.

Quote from ShredderIV

I'd love to see an MMO like this that focused more on actual player skill than how much time and money they can put into it (*cough* WOW *cough*)

It would be actual fun to play PVP, since it would take skill to fight other people, and gives a sense of skill, more than OOO LOOK I CLICKED THE BUTTON FASTA!

It could also be cool if the gear you got didnt increase attributes, but instead affected your fighting style and how good your character was at different abilities. Like, if you had full plate armor, you'd be much more suited towards fighting with slow, heavy attacks, whereas if you had just a cloak on, you'd be much better at hitting in critical spots and attacking fast. Neither would be more advantageous over the other, but it depends on how the player himself (or herself) likes to play the game.

I likey.

But, i would stay away from a set class system in itself. If you as a player are good at dodging and confusing your opponent and want the speed of a ninja, but know you dont get a lot of hits off and therefore want a big, heavy sword like a knight, i'd say be my guest. Or, if you do have classes, i'd say allow for hybridization.

As for what you said about the gear, I already said that. Heavier stuff is slow but strong and lighter is fast yet weak. Different mixtures of this are possible and hybridization is completely within the realms of your hero type thing.

Man... I really wish I could start working on this with a small company. I would pay for the servers with every penny I have.

You mentioned about it increasing attack speed n everything. I mean it literally changing the way you attack.

also, Lighter weapons aren't "weaker" but they have less force. Like, if you stab someone with a knife and with a sword, they're both gonna die. But it's easier to get through armor with a bigger sword.

Quote from ShredderIV

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As for what you said about the gear, I already said that. Heavier stuff is slow but strong and lighter is fast yet weak. Different mixtures of this are possible and hybridization is completely within the realms of your hero type thing.

Man... I really wish I could start working on this with a small company. I would pay for the servers with every penny I have.

You mentioned about it increasing attack speed n everything. I mean it literally changing the way you attack.

also, Lighter weapons aren't "weaker" but they have less force. Like, if you stab someone with a knife and with a sword, they're both gonna die. But it's easier to get through armor with a bigger sword.

That's kinda what I meant. And into reference with sword vs knife, a sword would cut someone's head off while a knife would just be able to slice their jugular, they'll die from either, but ones instant. So there is always going to be that application of different damages, especially because the vision I have for this is not some FPS where you die in a few shots, but it's a battle reliant on skill. A good idea, is a 1v1 PVP would take about a minute, nothing to extraordinary. Of course, two healers fighting each other might take longer than that.

And I didn't at all mean increased attack speed, not attributes, but how fast you swing and such. It's more like, a claymore would take some effort to swing. Where as, a knife, would be relatively easy to swing back and forth. Get the idea?

chyea loveless... I fully support this idea as well. It's revolutionary to the MMO community.

This sounds great, and what you said about five or six years from now, I would absolutely love to be a part of. After high school I plan on either going to Full Sail University, or International Acadamy of Design and Technology. I plan on making games myself, (Maybe work for blizzard one day, or make my own company.)

It's been done. I forget the name of it, but it's a fantasy game, and there's PvP everywhere, so if you don't have friends, you get ganked. Also, I think you drop your equipment when you get killed, so pretty much phail. I think it had 'dark' in the name somewhere...

Found it. It's called Darkfall.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 7 2010, 6:36 am by FatalException.

RPG -- roll playing. It would be assumed that since you are pretty much pretending to be someone else, you would grow or learn in some way or another. This idea of everyone having the same level but different gear is prevalent in end game of WoW. I guess my problem is...what would you strive for after you're geared out?