Overview: Goals & Objectives

Long list of the most important ideas, to help users get a feeling for the project and dive into what interests them the most:

Stats, Talents, Items, Builds

• Easier stats: Avoid things like "5 hit rating" and other terms that arent transparent about what they do. Use simple indicators like "+5% chance to hit" and simple stats on enemies "this boss has +50% dodge". Let players play, don't make players solve math equations to understand their items or skills. [to do]

• Talent Trees using a system of advantages+disadvantages: Each talent should give an advantage and a disadvantage. This way talents can have more impactful modifiers without being OP, and also allows talent-builds to be more diverse (Ex.: replace a +5% armor talent with +50% armor with -50% dodge). https://how-to-make-a-good-mmorpg.talkyard.net/-17/how-to-create-interesting-talentsupgrades

• Avoid Meta Builds: Whenever possible allow players to pick the talents, weapons and play style they prefer to build their heroes as they like (Examples.: never punish warriors for picking a 2h weapon or dual wielding, don't require talents like [sword specialization] for using certain weapons). [to do]

• Level up items: like an item? keep it with you longer. Items gather "souls" from the enemies slain. When a benchmark is reached, boss-fight materials can be gathered to upgrade the item into the next power-range. https://how-to-make-a-good-mmorpg.talkyard.net/-21/how-to-make-items-more-relevant-in-mmo-rpgs

• Multiple specializations (builds) using the same items: Have base-items (which hold base-stats) and allow their enhancements to be swapped on-the-fly to adapt to different situations. For example: Instead of a player having 5 different item builds, player has 1 armor set with 5 different "settings" that can be live-swapped (less inventory management and easier to go back to previous seasons). These Item-enhancements use different slots than the items themselves, similar to how item-sockets work in games like Diablo 2. Objective: swap the item, but keep the enhancements. Easier inventory management. [to do]

• Enhancements on Items/weapons (like enchantments) could be temporary, to force players to revisit dungeons/places more often and/or reward lower level players for farming those regions. These items are requested to lower level players and generate 'quests' to fetch those items for gold. More on this in the section about economy.

• Temporary Legendary items, which allows for much higher stats (MUCH MUCH higher) but are restricted to a maximum number of players at a time, and disappear after a period of time (30 days or season duration), allowing for massive OP items and allowing everyone a chance at the spotlight from time-to-time. https://how-to-make-a-good-mmorpg.talkyard.net/-25/how-to-implement-legendary-items

Combat

• Tab-Targeting based, but with changes to make melee feel more like action-combat. Make most melee-range abilities work like a cone of damage (affect an area in front of the hero, even if only one enemy is damaged), while most range attacks use target-locking and AoE range-attacks use mouse aim. https://how-to-make-a-good-mmorpg.talkyard.net/-18/combat-style-action-or-tab-target
• Abandon the spam-attack/heals design: Abandon the old approach of of huge health bars, getting damaged constantly and requiring constant heal. Replace with having most attacks being absorbed/dodged/blocked/paried and having to first break your enemy's defense before landing a relevant attack. https://how-to-make-a-good-mmorpg.talkyard.net/-22/health-system-how-to-manage-player-health-hits-and-heals and https://how-to-make-a-good-mmorpg.talkyard.net/-20/how-to-implement-combat-avoidance-dodges-blinks-shields
• Make choices and consequences more visible: Since fewer attacks land, the game has the opportunity to give attacks better animations and higher damage. Instead of casting 20x and doing 0.05% damage to the boss, the players can land important attacks with nicer animations, higher damage and, most of all, more spectacle.
• Allow players to stand in the way of spells/arrows/etc to take the the damage in place of the original target (no spells going 'through' players).

Economy, AH | Economy-Driven Quests vs 'Real' Quests

• Auction House: An AH based on "want to buy" instead of "want to sell". High level players post the materials they need, and low level players can go farm those and claim rewards. https://how-to-make-a-good-mmorpg.talkyard.net/-23/healthy-economy-in-mmo-rpgs-professions-auction-house-and-questing

• Use this AH to replace filler quests: instead of "kill 20 wolves" the AH will say "need 20 wolf-hides", and the player might have farmed them without even realizing (no more having to kill the same 20 wolves you just killed to arrive at a town). https://how-to-make-a-good-mmorpg.talkyard.net/-23/healthy-economy-in-mmo-rpgs-professions-auction-house-and-questing

• No more filler quests means that real quests can have decent stories, decent voice acting and players wont skip them, since they are rare and relevant. https://how-to-make-a-good-mmorpg.talkyard.net/-23/healthy-economy-in-mmo-rpgs-professions-auction-house-and-questing

• Open world events based on players in the zone: if no player is in an area, then there is no need to start the event. if many players are meeting in a town, then make the town get attacked by werewolves or whatever. https://how-to-make-a-good-mmorpg.talkyard.net/-15/how-to-build-zones-that-feel-alive

• [draft] While we are at it: make more of these "i was not expecting a quest" situations. let players run around the woods and stumble upon adventure. reward players for going off the grid. https://how-to-make-a-good-mmorpg.talkyard.net/-15/how-to-build-zones-that-feel-alive

• Cross level quests and opponents: Add content that allows players of different power-levels to interact with each-other, but without normalizing everyone to the same power-level. Quests like "the strong hero goes into the dungeon to get something, while the low level heroes have to defend the town from the werewolves", things that enable real cross-level interaction. https://how-to-make-a-good-mmorpg.talkyard.net/-15/how-to-build-zones-that-feel-alive

• Stable economy (inflation resistant and secure) by using non-fungible currency. Game world that always keeps the same amount of currency in circulation. When players have more gold, reduce the drop-rates, and as players have less gold, increase the drop-rates. https://how-to-make-a-good-mmorpg.talkyard.net/-31/in-game-currency-inflation-and-security

World Building, World Quests and Dungeons

• Bigger zones, each with multiple levels of difficulty: easy near roads, for newbies and low level players, more dangerous as the players go deeper. i want every level of player to share the same zones and meet eacho-other more often. https://how-to-make-a-good-mmorpg.talkyard.net/-15/how-to-build-zones-that-feel-alive

• Each season, different content opens up, that requires different approaches (fire resistance, frost resistance, etc). Less vertical progress, more horizontal progress. [to do]

• Reward exploration by increasing loot value, rare mobs and rewards in areas that have been neglected by players. "Found a cave no one has been to in days? Congratz, it will have a rare encounter and lots of rare ore to mine." [to do]

• Dungeons/Raids where different builds are rewarded. For example: One boss takes more damage from fire and/or big crits, next boss takes more damage from frost and/or fast/quick attacks. Objective is to avoid one build outshining others in every fight. [to do]

Cities [unfinished]

Create zones where different factions are at war, and allow the players to pick sides to decide how the zone will evolve. For example: Centaurs and Goblins could be at war in a region.
Then allow the players to conquer and hold certain positions that, if held long enough can turn into a city.

• Players can choose which faction to help and befriend it.
• Players can start a city in the region, by fighting against the other faction (for example drive out goblins from a town, so the goblins retreat in a cave.
• When that happens, the opposing faction (centaurs) automatically gets stronger and can't be driven out (as long as the city exists).
• Lower power players will quest near cities, because of the safety they provide and the quests generated by higher level-player-residents.
• which in turn helps keep the zone under control (ex.: keep the goblins in check).
• Which helps the citizens not have to actively defend the city as often anymore.

City Alignment System

• Residents can vote on city alignments.
• Each voting round can change the alignment by, for example, 5% or 10%.
• Each ally brings an advantage/skill/crafting to the town, each enemy brings a disadvantage.
• Players can also vote the alignment towards other city-controlled players.

City Upgrades

• Players can upgrade city guards, walls etc.
• There upgrades cost an upkeep (every month).
• So cities will look different based on the type of resource they produce.
• Production is based on quests done by low lvl players in the area.
• Quests which are published by high lvl players (city managers).

Character Creation & Customization

• Allow players to customize heroes after they are created. Players want to jump into the game as quick as possible. Allow players some time to still edit their heroes after they are created. Changing the name, appearance, race... for a limited time &/or levels after the hero was created, and announce this system in the character creation screen. [to do]

• name+surname system to give players more liberty to name their heroes: https://how-to-make-a-good-mmorpg.talkyard.net/-26/how-to-solve-character-naming-duplicate-names-and-more

• Better Race Balance and Designs: Allow every race to look badass or sexy, and give each race advantages and disadvantages. https://how-to-make-a-good-mmorpg.talkyard.net/-24/how-to-encourage-balance-between-races

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Others

• Allow any player of any profession level to mine any ore (and similar for other professions). Increase the amount they get of it, or give some other bonus, but don't punish players for exploring the wrong zone. [to do]

• Encourage open world PvP, but avoid dead-ends where players can't run from a fight. Let players see approaching enemies from afar. Change the way stealth works to avoid players getting ganked without warning. For example: stealth system with cooldown or time-limit. Add a cooldown and/or drain stamina while using. The objective here si to avoid invisible players at intersections farming lowbies. [to do]

• Make inventory easier to use. https://how-to-make-a-good-mmorpg.talkyard.net/-16/inventory-management [to do]

• Leveling should not be in the way of having fun: either include gearing up into the leveling process, or replace levels completely with [item level]. https://how-to-make-a-good-mmorpg.talkyard.net/-19/how-to-implement-good-leveling-in-mmo-rpgs.

• Boss fights: https://how-to-make-a-good-mmorpg.talkyard.net/-29/dragon-fights