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Having read multiple threads on this over the last few weeks I got to thinking about what exactly did I look for in a game? What would make it spectacular in my eyes? I had a couple of ideas and wanted to see what everyone else would want in a game.Here's a few of my thoughts

No classes.

I'd rather see skill trees that allow the player to almost 'design' their toon. As you spend more points in certain areas it opens up more options. So if you placed points into a magical skillset you would open up more magical pursuits. Same goes for melee types. Obviously there would be a finite amount of skill points or whatnot to spend but basically you would build your own character and not be forced into a certain role. If you aren't wise you could end up with a gimped character.It all fine and dandy to profess that you know every skill ingame but you just aren't any good at them :p

Drawbacks: Very difficult to balance skills and skill trees. You could end up with an 'uber' build with such a wide open system. Would take a ton of tinkering to ensure a mostly even playing field.

Player owned shops/Guild owned cities

As time progresses ingame a guild could actually start building a city within the games architecture. I would forsee this taking 6+ months of gametime. Could start out as a small trading post with wooden walls up to a commercial hub. And within this city are player owned shops. Inn's, Blacksmith's,General Store amongst many others.If other players spend coin in these shops then the player/owner could actually make a small amount. If enough coin isn't funneled into a city it will start to fall apart.When you have no visitors to your town it'll end up a ghost town.

Drawbacks: If your guild are the 'bad guys' on server then many folks could conceivibly boycott your city. Could possibly take long hours of farming coin to ensure your shop/city keeps growing.Also how to determine which player in the guild has the right to open what kind of shop etc.

Overall there's a myriad of other factors for my above ideas. But I'm hoping you get the overall idea.If a game were to impliment these 2 and do it well I would certainly consider a move.

And yes,I am off today and the WoW servers are down :p

So anyone else have anything to add?

Permadeath.

Dynamiciscm

Advanced AI based on character reputation and ethnicity

Nothing static.

Sithos, Shadowbane is pretty close to what your asking for but the execution is WAY off.

Lyion, it would take way too much programming to have a completely dynamic world. I like the idea, but it's not really realistic.

That's one thing that EQ used to have over WoW. I don't think they do it anymore but as lame as GM events where, atleast verant did have dynamic content from time to time. The only thing WoW has is seasonal quests.

Yes, I checked out Shadowbane a long while back and liked some of their ideas. But as you said the implementation was just horrific. Heard Shadowbane has gone to hell in a handbasket over the last couple of months.

Probably, but to me that's the holy grail that hopefully we'll achieve.

At a minimum, I'd like permadeath and as much dynamicism and interaction as can be allowed. I'm tired of static worlds of respawns.

Sithos wrote:Yes, I checked out Shadowbane a long while back and liked some of their ideas. But as you said the implementation was just horrific. Heard Shadowbane has gone to hell in a handbasket over the last couple of months.

It's free now.

Permadeath as in your character in the game? Permadeath as in when someone finally kills Obnoxious the Red Dragon that it'll never repawn? Combo of both? Would be intresting to only have one of a kind mobs that once killed will never return. Would make for a variety of 'one of a kind' items

As for dynamics, I like that idea but it is IMO far off. Certainly given an unlimited budget and a long long time it is feasible. But sadly I dont think it's something you or I will see in our gaming career. Maybe our childrens though.In order for such dynamics to occour you would literally have to have all one world where tens of thousands if not more could all be on the same server at the same time. It's been tried but with little success. Thats just one of the issues holding your vision back

Not saying it's impossible but I think technology isn't at the point yet that it's a viable option.Having said that I'd love to be proved wrong :p

Zanchief wrote:

Sithos wrote:Yes, I checked out Shadowbane a long while back and liked some of their ideas. But as you said the implementation was just horrific. Heard Shadowbane has gone to hell in a handbasket over the last couple of months.

It's free now.

Aye, but whats the sense in starting anew on a game such as that? When they first made it free I joined up on the new Braella(sp) server and got in a guild that had a ToL and such. We started making a city but then the GM of our guild just up and quit, when it was announced that Wolfpack was gone. Then the infighting started. So I just quietly left. No real reason to return IMO. I have little to no chance of joining a 'good' guild and experiencing city building and such. Maybe if they started out a whole new fresh server again but with Wolfpack getting shut down that will never happen.

I couldn't get past the combat. Some of the high end stuff intrigued me, but the game mechanics were terrible.

Whore houses, gun fights and booze:

http://frontier1859.com/

I loved Horizons idea of being able to change the world and working together as a community to achieve certain objectives.

Eve has most of those.

The game that Sithos is describing is Ultima Online

what I want is relatively simple


you need to combine the empire building of Romance of the 3 kingdoms, with the large scale 1st person warfare of Dynasty warriors, but turn the combat engine into Bushido blade


bam

greatest game ever

10sun wrote:Eve has most of those.

I was going to say that too. I've never played it, but I have read a fair bit about it. Correct me if I'm wrong but it's got:
-- everyone on one server
-- dynamic content through its massive PVP system (often army vs army) where guilds will control certain areas of space
-- doesn't have permadeath per se, but a ship destroyed is completely destroyed

Menlaan wrote:

10sun wrote:Eve has most of those.

I was going to say that too. I've never played it, but I have read a fair bit about it. Correct me if I'm wrong but it's got:
-- everyone on one server
-- dynamic content through its massive PVP system (often army vs army) where guilds will control certain areas of space
-- doesn't have permadeath per se, but a ship destroyed is completely destroyed

you can buy insurance on the ship

you also have to buy insurance on your skills

ie, ifyour ship gets killed buy you eject safely
but the pk is a dink and destroys your capsule
if you're not insured (or something) then you lose a certain % of your skills too

it's kind of a really neat concept, but I just fucking hate the flight model

There's a good discussion about this here

http://www.mmoroundtable.com/forums/vie ... php?p=1534

I'd like to see a slower power curve instead of ramping up a character's damage output so exponentially as they raise levels.

More NPC interaction such as NPCs following your character around to help fight stuff for quests a la the henchmen in NWN.

Better named respawns so that placeholders keep respawning until the named pops then the named stays up until killed. There's nothing more moronic than a dungeon with no bosses up unless the whole thing is camped.