Guild Wars 2

I’m not a game designer or developer, I just play games. These are the things that I think about in a “what-if” scenario but I’m not conceited enough to tell people that “this is what it should be”. These are merely just ideas that I like throwing out here to open for discussion and might inspire anything in any way. Although I think that these ideas are cool, I know that not all of these(maybe all) are not feasible but I might as well throw it out there to get hammered and bashed away that it might produce something that can be used.

I will be looking at using majorly guild wars 2(specifically PvE), and make this as the backbone for the examples so that everyone can somewhat relate to the same thing.

I think that too much balance is boring for an MMORPG, but that’s just my opinion. I think the minor imbalances is what makes something fun, you are given a choice whether to make up for the imbalances by skill, abuse the imbalance-ness of something, make a strategy to counter the imbalance, etc., it’s totally up to the player.
I. The core system: For the game that I have in mind to work, you must first think about playability for and somewhat balance the playing field for everyone.

• soul binding system: everything is not soulbound at first, but can be soulbound for extra effects (such as stats, visuals, customization, extra skills)

• loot ranking system: everybody gets loot, same as now but you get the quality depending on your “rank” and rank depends on damage dealt, received, dodged attacks, etc.

• skills slots system: just like in guild wars today, but only everyone gets access to everything, they just choose oh which skills to unlock(balance nightmare, I know but don’t look at the current state of the game because there WILL BE overpowered combinations). You can even put something like “preview” that you can refund the skill point used to unlock after x amount of time.

• skill leveling/legendary skills: these are for those who like to grind, you can choose your favorite skill(or all) to level and unlock cool additional visual effects, customizability options, added skills, effectivity, etc. but not too much effectivity that you must level it to be effective(think current legendary weapons). Can also be applied to crafting and crafted materials by different leveled crafters have additional cool things.

II. The goal and progression style: I could group these with the core system but I feel that this needs a section of its own as it is very way out there and might cause the whole thread to collapse if it’s not segregated.

- The goal is simple, beat the content; But the way it’s set up, the idea on how you do that is very different.

• There are no instance dungeons(WHAT?!), the dungeon is an open world “dynamic event area”. the mobs in these dungeons do not respawn, you can crawl your way through the dungeon up to the last boss and when the last boss is defeated, it will give access to the next area(think lion’s arch) and after a set time, everything will reset and last boss will respawn. it will be impossible to just zerg through it without doing some of the dynamic events.
  Now for balance sake, after an x amount of people clear the last boss, you can provide bonuses(% nerf to dungeon, % boost to character development in dungeon, % nerfs in item progression). This is where people can get creative, in an active last boss fight, you can “help” people inside, by doing something outside of the dungeon that is activated when he’s engaged to make everyone in the area have the ability to contribute even if you are not strong enough to engage the boss directly. Also, events after the boss is downed can also be inserted here.

• regular dynamic events and quests outside of the “dungeon” will help you clear it, help character development (gear, special items, etc), development of base cities, unlock extra areas, or bonuses for other players, or just flavor for the other systems proposed that will be discussed later. This is much like the dynamic events leading to world bosses. and permanently alter the areas for development.

The whole concept is slowing down the pace of story-telling progression and increasing character progression, progression rate, social interaction, and immersion in the storyline for everyone. This is where I feel people are going to react and I am really curious on how many people will find this type of progression fun.
This comes off as a very grindy game but what I’m going for is exactly the opposite. taking the grind and making it affect the world you’re playing in and distributing it to everyone playing. and less and less grind as you repeat.

III. Additional stuff: These are the ideas that with the above setup and with the guildwars 2 example, might not work but still ideas that can be viewed and discussed (potentially for other games).

• Instancing technology put to use into housing. This might be only bought through microtransactions because architecture of towns and cities are very limited, it’s set up like dungeons, premiere locations(instance/houses/portal location) can be used as a guild castle (which can have a guild castle siege type system in place) or as a shop with a vendor that auto-crafts only when an order is placed (set by the owner and his skill, he may also hire other crafters for a spot and place and get a cut off the profits). personal houses for more storage and other stuff can be placed on same location. or just custom areas in which owner get free reign over development(like minecraft). Ideas are limitless, just stating some that come into mind.

• Self healing skills only(much like gw2), with the addition of potion healing(on a considerable cooldown) that can be used on other players). Potions are also rare/quest rewards/limited in the game.

• tanking system (throwing out arbitrary numbers for an idea: something like an “attack me!” button which consumes a skill slot, a forced aggro on you for 30 secs on a 1 min cd, cannot be overwritten by any other player while on cd(the 1 min part), if you fail/die, boss gets a bonus) this can be also diversified by preference of people, either they want to be face-tanking, taking the brunt of attacks and damage, or skills set up for kiting or dodging attacks, lets people get creative.

• group skills, charged skills that can be equiped by a group that can be triggered by a formation, or coordinated charge time or button press timings.

• Item combinations (for example combining a katana and a knife for a katanife/knitana in which you will opt for a katana slash ability with decreased range and damage but decreases the action time).

• battle equipment change with cast time. this will work with:

• equipment/item affinity (think of the current traits system specifically designed for equipped items optimization eg. sword masters, heavy armor efficiency, etc.)

Many more come into mind but puting them all here might mess up the thinking process (character limit)

This whole thing is just like saying “wouldn’t it be cool if…”. You can also add some ideas that you think would be cool to integrate into an MMO so that people will know on what YOU like.

This should be moved to the “Suggestions” forum. Thanks for your input though, I like many of your ideas.