Originally posted by ianonmmorpg

As regards the hoarding problem, this is an issue of the economy of the world. If you want to horde timber from your local forest... sure go wild, not sure what your going to do with it all. And how exactly are you going to maintain your control over this pile of wood, it wont fit in any sensible backpack and you're going to need help moving it to the local 'bank' and why would you put wood in a bank? its worthless until you give it to folk who can use it. Just how much furniture do you want? The fact is, sure you can amass a great deal of wealth, but you'd need to employ other PCs in order to collect resources and process them or to control the economics of a city full of PCs. And lets not miss the point here... this will provide some of the dynamic for our stories.

If the local despot is hoarding all the food for the eventuality of war... Causing most players to get negative effects from hunger... They might just rebel and kill him. All will be well again. Or will it? If he survives he might start paying the local militia to instil fear on the population via daily executions. Perma Death at its best right there.

While Sandbox is not the only way for devs to give us an evolving storyline... It'd be by far the easiest/cheapest. Because otherwise they'd need people to do that for them... To play the NPCs from time to time(Matrix Online does this and... it's awesome!), they also need people to write it and if they want Players to have some input on it... They'll need numerous ramifications on the story line... All done in advance since new content would also need to be placed and/or designed.

Glad you liked the magic idea. For me the ideal game shouldn't limit itself to one kind of gameplay.. A stealthy character would probably play more like a game of splinter cell or Thief(Water arrows were so much fun). Oh... And fuck invisible stealth

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Well I buy it because I follow every new MMORPG in these last years.

(and I lost a lot of money on it).

But seriously as a mainland European I don't think Conan has the lore to be much interested in.

Most Europeans (even gamers) can only think of very bad B- films with the governor of California doing stupid actions in his underwear.

Or other films like Red Sonja etc... didn't do good either.

You can't even find the Conan comics (UK not counted) in Europe in the mainstream comics shops.

Like I said I will buy the game because I follow the industry, but by sheer lore I am convinced there are far more better choices for Europeans (and don't forget Germany, France, etc are HUGE markets).

Star Wars, Star Trek, Aliens, Terminator (not a B film), even Tintin would have better suited lores to lure in the Europeans.

The point is that it wasn't an unknown IP, not even in europe. It's like the saying goes... There's no such thing as bad publicity. And if you tell me that when you saw the name associated with the game, you weren't a bit curious to see what it was all about... I know you're lying

Tintin MMO would be... special.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Here is the REAL stat of 08  to your question:

http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart7.html

62.2 % plays Wow. 7.5 % plays Runescape.

It just shows HOW far off MMORPG.COM has driven off from the MMO market.

Interesting is that NOT ONE of the MMORPG's that were launched in the last 2 years attained more than 0.9%  ! ! ! (LOTRO).

Fan boy of Wow? No I play all newly published MMO's. Just facts to replace everyone with his feet on the ground.

mmorpg.com hasn't driven off from the MMO market, it just represents the veteran players of MMOs. I've been registered here since 2003, even though my post count suggests I'm not that active. This is not to make us sound elitist... But rather we've been seeing WoW for quite sometime, I remember when it came out most people hailed it like the second coming of christ... Today with all the WoW clones, it doesn't seem that special.

Also consider that mmorpg.com has A LOT of wannabe devs(Me included). So we've usually become somewhat obsessed with pin pointing the gameplay weakness' of the various games out there... Reason why they all suck (We obviously could do better with limitless resources.)

In short mmorpg.com hasn't driven off the MMO market... mmorpg.com has just been on the MMO market highway for too long and wants to take a leak.

You're right Funcom really went out on a limb here... I never heard the name Conan before...

Oh... Wait...

I kinda have to disagree with your claim about risk. They built their game on an existing and rather famous IP. Even if you weren't familiar with the novels... You at least had an image of Arnie wielding a broadsword while campaigning on California.

Haven't tried AoC... I'm going to wait for the console version. I can't really run it on my laptop and... I want to support consoles as MMO platforms. That way I don't have to worry about upgrading a PC every year to run games with pretty graphics.

Originally posted by Lobotomist

Just another MMOSPRPG = massive multiplayer singleplayer rpg

Probably very similar to LOTRO .....

I'm pretty sure they'll have an awesome story, but... As MMOs go, we all know how the vast majority of players feels about story lines.... Quest lines amirite?

I do hope they surprise me... But not likely, they're working for EA now.

Originally posted by trailrations

I wonder if the OP is an online gamer.

The OP is a girl... Of course she isn't!  

It makes one wonder if you don't have too much time on your hands but... Nice read, thank you.

Fate points unless they are given with large intervals of time will only perpetuate a notion that there's playing time session. Either you give them a fix amount(I reckon 10 is more than sufficient) or you make it once per week.

If someone stabs you in the back of your head... I'd say chances of survival are pretty slim. Still a "noob" would probably be a "noob" at sneaking, which would in turn make noise while approaching. So, then you have a chance to dodge is attack.

As regarding to the fate system... How about something percentage based? First death you have about 50% chance dying, second one 25%, third one 12.5%... Basically 1/(2n) chance to survive, in which n is the number of times you died. That would account for those people who have such dumb luck that they survive injuries most people think are untreatable. They do not respawn in town though... They'll still need to be found and treated.

For magic I had a few ideas:

Arcane Magic: Mana springs - These would be like mana mines, they'd only be visible by characters who had an "Attuned to Magic" background feat(It would give some penalties, but would allow a person to have the ability to see springs and have a mana bar). These would be somewhat limited. Basically, once a mana spring has been completely drained another one would pop up in the world randomly. The mana springs (re)fill your mana bar, I reckon about 5 refills would be enough. This would mean that mages would actively need to be looking for these and control their use of magic. The rain of fire might be a powerful spell but you'd be magicless after that.

Divine Magic: Temples - A congregation would first need to create a guild of sorts and select which god they'd worship, with the ability to create a new one from certain templates. They'd select an Avatar and the leader of the church. To use divine magic a temple would first need to be built. They'd work like mana springs only they'd be constantly generating faith... Faith would then be transfered 20% to the main church and the rest would remain in the temple. The amount of Faith regeneration rate and faith limit would be limited by the amount of players registered into a temple. If temples do have a high faith(ie lot's of players) they might have divine power as well. A small temple to the god plants might create a small patch of fertile land, but a grand temple to the same god in the desert might create an oasis(Or just a bunch of cactus). The Avatar would be a player whose stats(and maybe appearance) would be enhanced depending on the amount of faith the main temple had.

Divine vs Arcane: A powerful mage beats most divine casters, except the leader of a very powerful church. Of course beats is relative. They can all probably kill themselves without much effort.

Originally posted by UtMoon

Alot of stuff

Very nice post and very informative.

I admit I've been silently following Planeshift.

Few things.

Maybe I have a bit too much faith on people but... Why would anyone kill you while you are fishing? Most MMOs at the moment reward death. When a player kills someone he gets experience/currency, this would not happen in the game I envision. Why? Because while I believe there is experience to be gained through fighting(instead of just sparring(a far safer alternative)), you don't gain it when you kill someone, rather you gain it by fighting them. If someone catches you off guard and kills you well... The only thing he'll gain is a fishing cane(already used), worn out clothes and possibly shoes(wealthy people have shoes!).

Of course, if you are a politician of some importance in your community... And you go fishing without some sort of escort... I don't think it'll be a "noob" who will kill you. If you are a warrior famed for finding a legendary sword... And you bring it with you when you're fishing... Maybe you do deserve to die, I'm sorry.

How long will it take to develop your character? Well... Just finish up your character criation process and you are done. Sure, you can advance skills... But you won't be limited by retarded stuff like weapon profficiency. If you have a bow, you can pull its string... If you have a hammer, you can hammer nails, etc. The only snag I have with my game concept is how magic(divine or arcane) would enter the game world. Yeah... In all novels you read, mages and priests with real power are pretty rare... They're a dime a dozen in most games though, of course being rare you can imagine the advantage of having someone who can create a rain of fire on the enemy army in your ranks.

Anyway, I got sidetracked. Perma Death is a good thing, it would help the game be fresh and alive(Life is created from Death after all).

Not many details...

They're ridding on a concept similar to Sony's The Agency, but looks cooler I give it that.

Originally posted by Rappletek

this all proves in a way that true perma death where a character would disapear upon death wouldn't be attractive to most players however prior proposed forms of it would work.

Errr... No. Just no. What that all proved, at best, was that levels are a rather user friendly way of presenting character progression.

Originally posted by Rappletek

and as such i agree with you perma death is not implementable but harder punishments for dying in certain ways is and is needed over the die respawn die respawn to which death doesn't mean the end of anything, instead it may even mean a quick way back to the spawn point

See... You can't agree with me on this. Because I believe perma death is implementable.

I think, that perma death is implementable in a dynamic world. Which is funny... Because one of the key features on a dynamic world is perma death(not just players, npcs as well).

While most games now catter to the whole be a big immortal hero... I don't want that. Especially because I never ever felt like a hero on these games. A good mortal hero is good enough for me. I'd like to be in a game where I pass through a player and I can say "Wow... That's player X, he once single handedly stopped a bandit raid on our town." A few days later he shows up poisoned and people decide it would be nice to make a statue to honor is memory.

Sure, this may never happen in my life time. But that doesn't mean I have to aim low just because I can't implement it now.

upon reading 'lives' i shuddered in ill feeling but after a bit of thought RW localised days with an ammount of lives per day 3-5 seems quite acceptable although different servers could simply give more lives for a more relaxed feeling, or even a hardcore server with one life per day, this system would encourage players not to die and yet not punish them too much.

unfortunaitly this wouldnt differentiate between types of death so you could still have a high level character come and kill you 3 times at the beging of the day. and policing the game wouldnt be hard as a lot of players will always nominate to do so (a system of player based help/policing community is used in EVE to help new players etc)

I think you're just putting too much time into thinking of giving the game ways to protect low level characters(why does the game even have to be level based?). Instead the game should provide the tools for low level characters to protect themselves. Namely a way to defend themselves.

If a veteran player could die from a lucky shot from a new player, would he not think twice about attacking the new guy? Same goes for the new player, he'll approach veteran players more cautiously since he'll know that they have a better chance at killing them.

Also, if things like fatigue, hunger, thirst influenced characters... They'd be more hardpressed to cooperate rather than destroy each other. A fully driven player economy would be a big step on this. People would need to be explorers(to find resources, make maps, etc), they'd need farmers(any kind of resource gatherer), resource processors(grain is not food, you need to prepare bread from it!).

If nothing else, a world like this would make a very interesting experiment on inter-personal relationships online.

Edit:

player interest is the fuel of MMO worlds, no player interest no money, no money no game, and no one would pay to wait a week. a day is probably as far as you can push it, two for people who act badly, if they want to come back after that then they will if they dont then the game looses a player that many would be happy to see leave

If you're arguing about a Perma Death system, that doesn't really enforce Perma Death... Then you basicly end up without Perma Death.

The point isn't making them wait a week to play(That doesn't make sense). The point is having fate points as somewhat of a... "You got lucky this time... Don't expect to survive this kind of shit often." 

Players would continue to play, but they'd be more wary as to not die! Which to me is the whole point, making players afraid of dying.

If you just give them 3 a day, they'll just... Play their game until they run out of fate points and relog the next day. They still won't be afraid of dying, because... Tomorrow is another day.

the issue with this is the world expanse needed for using that, otherwise 'hidden' treasure would be found very often, maybe worlds along the SWG style enviroment would work but something like GW has no oppertunity to hide treasure.

And also, like I said multiple times along this discussion... Most of the concepts I'm talking about wouldn't work on most games out now. Do I think Perma Death works on games that are out now? Clear as day for me, I'm positive it won't work.

A few rebuttals:

First of all the claim that twitch combat doesn't apply to RPGs. There are plenty successful RPGs that use twitch combat... From the top of my head... Mass Effect, Jade Empire, Elder Scrolls Series, Arx Fatalis, etc. The system we're using nowadays is basicly the diablo system(Now in 3d, but still the same system).

Lag issues. I have to agree that they need to be taken into account... But lag is always there. Like a friend of mine in Gunz used to say to everyone who shouted "OMG Lagger", "We're on the internet we all lag". I see FPS players complaining all the time about lag, even when pings are pretty low. Also, twitch combat isn't the only way to make combat more involved.

The no potion system by itself doesn't introduce a fear of death like a PD system would... Not if you don't implement harsh penalties for dying. 9dragons has no healing potions and it's fairly like everyother MMO(They have other money sinks). Nowadays I see alot of games boasting that they won't introduce death penalties(Yeah, I'm looking at you Champions Online)... They claim that, if you already lost the battle you shouldn't be punished anymore for it. Fair point, but if you don't actually lose anything from losing the battle, how exactly did you lose the battle?

EVE has actually one of the best systems I've seen. You might say it's cash oriented but... In the game world it makes sense.

I know I didn't reply to the fate points idea before and it's because I'm actually torn on that issue. Part of me thinks it's a great idea. The other part sees how other players would see it... "Ok, let's get myself killed for today and then log off." Maybe with a longer time interval... Let's say a month? Or even a week?

I never found a way to reasonably implement the heir idea. Best way to do it for me would be just, hoard your treasures somewhere safe that only you know... When you die, go back there. Then you can RP that you were iPwnN00bs long lost son, recently returned.

Tabula Rasa. I believe every character is part of the army.

Originally posted by RAWRG

Well, as far as my experience in RPG's goes, and that's mostly Anarchy Online, EVE, and WoW, I think there are some good theories out there, but they could use some mixing. Anarchy used the system where if you die, you loose experience points, I think, but can't remember for sure, you could even drop levels. However, the experience you lost went into a pool of lost exp. As you gained new exp, you got a portion of the lost back. It gives you a reason not to die, but it's not a huge penalty. EVE on the other hand gave you huge incentive not to die, unless you're rich of course. Basically, for those of you unfamiliar with EVE, you die, you loose your gear. If it was a PvE death, you might be able to go and pick up some of what you lost, if PvP, probably not. Forget getting, pod killed, that's just bad. I do like this system because it gives a very real feel to combat, and huge adrenaline rush, but if death actually occurs, it hurts, or at least it hurt me...

Somewhere in between would be interesting. Permadeath seems a bit extreme, but I haven't tried it, might be fun.

Maybe that's why I like the Perma Death idea.

Also to those who say, you can just impose Perma Death on yourself... Well, it's not that simple... It's not just having perma death, rather it's having a game built around that feature.

Originally posted by Mylon

The problem with consequences for death? All it means is lost time, and people play overly cautiously to try and avoid it. In a game like a Roguelike, where the world is procedurally generated, playing the game several times isn't so bad, but in an MMO where getting to level 10 for your 20th time is a downright bore, permadeath is going to cause a loss of players.

Oh, and playing cautiously is boring. That just means killing stuff 2 levels below you for a quarter of the EXP and an even slower leveling rate. People will think, "Hey, there's a dragon in there? No way, I'm going to die!" And the people that do try and die don't think, "Wow, at least I tried." No, they think, "Dammit, now I have to do all of that stuff all over again."

And any kind of death penalty is this way. Permadeath is merely the most extreme form of it. Death penalties won't be so bad if there isn't much to gain (ala, an FPS where you pick up equipment and powerups, but all guns are lethal), but MMORPGs are all about going from rat killing n00b to dragon slaying, and would have to look very different to compensate.

You're thinking about what would happen if Perma-Death were introduced to today's MMOs, which I agree... I wouldn't enjoy Perma-Death in such games.

Originally posted by ianonmmorpg

 

Originally posted by Itzcoliuhqui

 

I fear you may be right as regards a fairly unenjoyable game developing from a poorly designed Perma-death system, but I hope that we could deduce an enjoyable system including the 'risk of death'.

 

I agree that a 'standard' levelling system will result in a lv10 capable of engaging easily against many lv1s and inturn incapable of sucess against a single lv100 even with a large number of their peers in support. I agree we've seen such adventures in film and books but such battles are more about skilled evasion of blows rather than absorbing them thanks to HPs. But why must we imagine a system that contains features we think are 'un-realistic' or limit gameplay, instead lets start again with something 'more-useful'.

And indeed an artifact that permits a character to absorb massive amounts of damage would be a nice piece of kit. With a more sandbox system we could well see such a development, but we could be waiting a while....

- Solid combat system. This is kind of personal but... One thing that bothers me in MMOs today is how little control I have in how my character fights(Probably because I like melee fighting)... I just click, press buttons until the other thing's hp is over(or my hp runs out). Something more involved that will actually make me acknowledge that I died because I failed, not because the game decided I would fail. The combat system I most enjoyed in a game was "Bushido Blade", a beat 'em up in which characters could only win if they hit their opponents vital organs.

- No insta heals. I have a theory that they were introduced as money sinks(In most MMOs these are the only useable items.)... Thus it's important that we don't have excess of money to make these a necessary evil. Insta heals are game breakers... Because they are so available. I could understand that there could be an extremely rare formula that has this effect(actually, I don't... At best regeneration is greatly increased), but as it is in games they practicly grow on trees. They take the fear of death out of the player. You never see heroes walking into a battle thinking... "He seems tough... Good thing I have 50 healing potions on my imaginary bag". And the funny thing, you don't even need to stop fighting to use them(in alot of games you don't anyway)... If I ever entered a sword lock with another guy and saw him reaching out for his pack... I'd smack it clean off of his hand!

- Also, it'd be nice if players didn't have a meter to let them know if they were up against someone of upper level or lower level.

While I'm a big fan of open pvp and PD, I am quite aware that introducing these elements, on most of the games in the market today, would result in a fairly unenjoyable experience.

One of the things that, I believe, makes it unworkable is the con system used. Your HP and your regenerative abilities increase as you level up. This growth is so often exagerated that... Considering a warrior at level 10 is already terrific(capable of slaying bears and such), at level 100 is a demi god. Capable of killing a large group of the level 10 warriors... With  no armor or weapons equiped. While I can understand that a moment like this can be epic... It doesn't make sense at all(You see it happen in Anime sometimes but... They at least have weapons and, the heroes, usually dodge the attacks).

That said, I do think that it'd make for a great plot for a player to find an item that would indeed let him take alot of punishment and simply regenerate. He could then head on to a barbarian wasteland topple off all the warchiefs and unite them under his banner... Making him the new king of the northern realms, the Immortal King. Unfortunately, by the way I see MMOs evolving I predict this will happen... Never.

It's actually a lie that there are no videos...

I remember watching an interview for this game in which the dev was playing a "demo" of Earthrise... It looked pretty.