General Discussion

So, I've been playing around with the idea of a casual MMORPG. It seems that the definition of casual is different when it comes to MMORPGs in general. A casual game is something like Peggle or Puzzle Quest, where you can get your game on in five minutes or less but are addictive enough that you'll want to keep playing for hours. By contrast, a casual MMORPG is something like Dream of Mirror Online where you're going to need at least 30 minutes to get anything done in the lower levels and several hours (plus item mall perks) latter on.

The challenge I'm about to drop involves designing an MMORPG that can be challenging and rewarding in sessions of fifteen minutes or less. In some ways, this means rethinking the entire genre. Most of the ideas that I've come up with require a server reset. I'm sure that there's a way to do this without the server reset, but I haven't thought of anything yet. Here's what I have so far:

King of The Hill - The world is randomly generated and players race to the level cap in order to gain access to a permadeath PVP area and fight to be the last man standing. Players get ranked on how long they survive in the end game.

End of Times - The players are divided into factions and rush to gain XP and artifacts to aid their side until a timer runs down and final battle is declared. At this point the game becomes permadeath and an all out war ensues with the last faction standing as the victor. The server then resets and randomly generates a new world for the next round.

Dueling Raids - This is a variation of the End of Times concept. Here, there are several temples on the  map that grant faction / guild wide bonuses for whoever owns the temples. The only way that you can claim a temple is by raiding that temple's guardian spirit. You can also take ownership of another faction or guild's temple by raiding it. the kicker is that certain artifacts will strengthen the guardian spirit. The game can either run a doomsday clock to the final battle, or declare victory to whoever owns all of the temples.

Hunt for The Great White Wyrm - Players rush to be the first to defeat the big bad boss at the end of the game. Those that are involved with killing the boss, get a small bonus going into the next round as well as some kind of equipment or title that denotes their accomplishment.

The server reset seems to be the only way that we can let players spend as much time as the want while still keeping the XP requirements low enough that those who devote less time can still play. Otherwise we have to impose time limits or keep the trip to the level cap uber short.

I guess you could remove the possibility of grinding and only allow players to gain XP on quests. You could actually limit the number of quests that a player could do in a day and add a bunch of social stuff to keep the player occupied until they were able to begin a new quest. Quests would probably take the form of incredibly short, random dungeons that are adjusted according to the size of the party and difficulty that the player selected. For instance, the player can only to six quests out of 36 offered every day. The harder quests offer more XP and gold. Those quests would also adjust difficulty based on the number of people in the players party when they enter the quest dungeon.

New question: Do we count the times that a player parties up with another player as a quest, or allow them to do a set number of quest assists?

Anyway, I'd be interested in hearing some other people's ideas on this.

Hi,

I'm kinda baffled, I understand the reason but don't think it would work to well. For a start it wouldn't be a MMORPG, mainly because if you were to reset the server every few minutes, that wouldn't allow a RP element. Also I thought if you were to do permadeath all the time then why would you bother to do the quests or grind in a short time to be able to last that bit longer.

My idea would be instead of server resets etc, you could either have lvl caps per fight, so ppl that play short can have the experience and battle it out in a battle made for their lvl so for instance, lvl 1-5 / 6-10 / 11-15 fight each other, maybe even able to get to the next lvl, so ppl will have to do the battles to get to lvl 6 etc. This would allow you to get the 15 min action, achieve a sence of purpose and also allow ppl that want to play more, making the game more popular all the time instead of just peak times. Also you could then use all of your ideas in the same game, just different objectives at different times or lvls.

You might hate my idea but I thought it was a good alternative to the server reset.

I doubt that the server would be reset every few minutes. Rounds may last as long as a year.

I like your idea, but I'm wondering what you'd do for those first people on your server. If no one has made it to lvl 6, then who is the first person to make it to lvl 6 going to fight? Also, do you give the player all the abilities of lvl 6 for this fight or is it a lvl 5 vs. a lvl 6 every time?

Well I would give all the lvl 1-5's the same abilites but maybe more health, mana etc as you lvl, otherwise there would be no point  in lvling, if it were faction vs factioin type fighting then maybe half the population that got to lvl 5 would then be lvl 6, then they have to make thier way to lvl 10. - Oo Idea hit lol, if only say lvl 5, lvl 10, 15 etc can do these battles then everyone would need to work towards lvling to be able to get the the next stage. And following on from my last point, when one faction wins then they would get to lvl up to lvl 6, so they go away and try to lvl, while the rest then fight again to see if they can get lvled up or not, like once a day battles or something.

i guess it depends on your definition of casual, since im just a punk kid (i know it and don't need people to tell me lol) i have about 4-5 hours of time on my hands after school and home work, unless i work that day then i have less, so a casual game for me would be something i can do in an hour or so and still lvl once or so an hour upto about lvl 20 thats 20 hours of game time to lvl to that point. then it gets harder after that but its more fun after lvl 20 i.e. raids or instances or cool quests or gear thats fun to farm for, and on top of all of that most important is to get a cool skill some where around lvl 20 one thats just plain fun to use maybe an area attack or something that you didn't have before...

thats my definision of casual, perhaps mines diferant than yours?

i can't say i would like to play games with "rounds" i wouldn't mind permadeath but i wouldn't want the game to depend on my gear i got on the way to the end "round" or end game i would want to be able to hold my own if i didn't sit there and fight the same thing over and over again to get a good weapon or drop just to be ok in the endgame, of which i most likely am going to die in and have to start over again i would want to be able to use skill to win i know skill is something thats lacking in mmorpg's right now its just the guy with the best gear wins most of the time...

maybe im just a care bear lol but i wouldn't want to spend 60 hours to get good gear only to die and loose it all in 6 mins...

just my opinion
-Skip

15 minutes or less? Logon, sort out your inventory, logoff.

Sorry..joke. I think the NWN persistant servers may have had some ideas along these lines, though it is hard being only 15 minutes. I mean would you be able to achieve anything in GTA4 in that?

GTA 4, and even GTA 3, is a really bad example. Ever since the third installment of the series those games have been heavily padded. The first GTA only took two hours to play from beginning to end. Since there was no save or password feature, you had to play the game from beginning to end. And yes, you could accomplish quite a bit in 15 minutes of that game.