Specific IDEAS from wish that we'd like to see implemented Options

[Melanthe]

Can we make a list of very specific aspects of Wish that seem worth keeping?

These are IDEAS which worked in Wish and could/should be part of the new project. (I say "ideas" because I mean concepts, not code-specific)

My list:

-An auction system
-Town citizenship birthright (with town chat and ability to change citizenship)
-Variety of natural resources used in different manners, with variable rarity and usage tied to skill (species of trees, plants, ore, etc.)
-Creative sense of geography and distance
-Random spawn of resource and mobs
-Highly customizable physical characteristics for PC's
-No instant transportation


Others?

[pearle]

How about this one, upon reaching said town u want to go to ... u'd have to get into a temple of some sort and set your resurrection point there.


I like the idea of having to 'bind' at a temple or priest. I was never big on the idea of spawning back at some mysterious object or portal that has no real in-game explanation. These temples would not necessarily have to be in towns but towns would probably the most common ocation.

Wish had a decent death penalty system, IMO. However, what about the idea of having a gold debt you had to pay back? Other games have experience debt and what not, which I find a little odd. What if when you auto ressurrected after death you had an option to pay for your ressurection immediately (let's assume it's a spell that costs money to cast due to reagent cost, for example) or the option of acquiring debt. A percentage of money earned would be paid towards the debt until it was paid off.

[Troodon]

Concepts/ideas I'd like to see in a mmorpg:

Good communication between the developers and the players. Its something easy to manage when your player base is just a few hundred core fans. Much harder to achieve when the game goes live and the numbers increase.
A game where ebay isnt the ultimate provider of all items. Though impossible to completely prevent, it needs to be clear from the outset that all in game property is the property of PW. Any item discovered to have been sold outside the game world will simply be deleted and the parties involved reprimanded.
A game that is fair. Cheaters/deliberate exploiters are dealt firmly and promptly. There seems to be an odd myth among some mmorpg companies, that they somehow wont loose honest players disgusted that their investment of time is devalued by those that exploit and get away with it.
A single server - thus ongoing development/story attention isn't focused on players from one geographic region, while players from other regions are relegated to third party management.
A world in which players can make a difference. Though the story is directed by the developers, the in/actions and choices of the players shape how things turn out and has real consequences. A Pen and Paper Campaign feel to events each of which is unique, rather than cookie cutter vending machine quests. Though direct conflict between groups of players is limited to PvP areas, quests in which its possible to have players working with conflicting aims at the same time.
A strong background. A believable world with enough information about the individual races to allow the players to base their roleplaying off, and offering a cue to encourage roleplaying. Though many of the races may be from the typical Tokienesq stable: a unique slant on them, or at least enough uniqueness to make them distinct from other online games. Preferably a good helping of new and unique races. If you want a PnP example of this consider the distinct races of Earthdawn.
A draconic/dragonkin/dragon/etc like player race. Just a personal predilection
A real world economy, with trade of goods and services prompted by a variation in resources and their relative availably. Thus opening the way for local markets and trade between them. Implicit in this is the lack of instantaneous travel.
A skill system where players are not limited by early choices/mistakes, and are free to continue to develop their characters later on. However to stop experienced characters becoming a homogenous mass, a system with a player purchases a limited number of abilities. Thus allowing characters to develop, to be tailored to the desires of a player yet be distinct. i.e. what Wish used.
A complex and interrelated web of crafts. Though as we saw in Wish this can make things a bit awkward while the economy gets going and again unlike Wish demonstrated needs a lot of good in game support. Thus experienced crafters cant be one man factories churning out an endless supply of items and effectively preventing newbie crafters from entering the market.
An involving combat system, that's more than just "whack-a-mole". Realism in combat isn't particularly something that would turn out to be fun, but something that engages the player a bit more than just hitting buttons whenever they become available. Conversely a combat system that is forgiving of players with poor connections.
Consensual PvP: be it duels, arenas or entire regions which upon entering a player accepts PvP. But PvP should never be forced upon anyone, a player should not be disadvantaged by not taking part in PvP. The challenge PvP is a reward unto itself for its participants, however it also opens up the possibility of more interesting Live Content for those willing to take a risk: where opposing groups of players can have opposing objectives.
A reputation/kama system. Each region/town/group is a faction. Through a players actions they can gain/loose kama with that faction which can have repercussions.
E.g. A player thief kills a npc guard escaping from a raid on a warehouse owned by a particular guild within a town. For completing the raid he gains +kama with the bandit group that sent him, however he games -kama with the guild and -kama with the Town. The result is that the bandits now trusts him more/is now willing to offer services etc; without hard evidence the "Town" considers him a shady character and honest merchants are less willing to be seen doing business with him i.e. charge more; the Guild considers him a foe and may even offer a reward to other players to bring him to justice.
An interface designed by someone with at least passing acquaintance of the themes of HCI theory. Interfaces are really hard to get right, but they really are worth the effort.
Strong in game help - beyond tool tips, I want to be able to consult context sensitive help directly from the window etc where I need it.
Newspapers/bards/town criers. Some way to help foster player community, a means ensure that as many players can learn of and get involved with events as possible and that event aren't monopolised by a clued up clique.

[Ashy]

Point and Click movement with excelent path finding :)

[Strangerr]

I like the idea of the Gold Debt pearle suggested , this would be a nice and fresh death penalty system , but what about long term players that have so much gold that they can pay the resurrection fee without even noticing the gold loss ?

[Hankellin]

Could it be worked to be a percentage of your current funds?

[bezerker]

with given percentage, the less experienced player won't feel the pinch so bad.

with a player that has been amassing a substancial amount of gold, a single death could cost him hundreds even thousands in gold debts.

I like the idea of having to 'bind' at a temple or priest. I was never big on the idea of spawning back at some mysterious object or portal that has no real in-game explanation. These temples would not necessarily have to be in towns but towns would probably the most common location.


given that we do have necromancy and healers and sorcerors in this game, the temple should be the ideal place to resurrect the player after dying, thus making it more believable.

In some races, dying in combat results in the player being bound to servitude to the resurrector for an X amount of time perhaps? The Cyclops or Dragonkin races are more or less spiritual beings and dying may or may not cause them to be indebted to the person that resurrected them.

just my two cents,

[sblmnl]

If it was a really large amount, or even a % of the player's net worth, it could make a great gold-sink for advanced players.

Building on that - as your debt is really to the community that "maintains" the temple, and to avoid saddling new players with gold-debt, make it that you can alternatively choose to perform a community service. And until you've cleared all your debts, you are not allowed to change your city allegiance, hire npcs etc.

Functionally this could operate as a special type of quest:

Perhaps the mayor or temple-leader-npc could tell you a list of what needs to be done, and you can choose according to your capability. Each task would expunge a certain amount of debt (the calculation should not be expressed numerically though, the npc should say only, when a certain task is selected, that your rights as a citizen of (town) would be fully restored (or not). The tasks should not be overly onerous, for example it could range from contributing a small amount of resources, which would expunge say 1-5 deaths, or taking a "young" (ie, with skills less than specified level) player as a apprentice/squire for say 4 hours in-game time, worth say 5-10 deaths - during which time his/her overall skills would have to increase by n. percent. Or powerful pvm/pvp characters might choose to perform one very difficult service to expunge a lot of deaths - like hunting down a very dangerous creature, or a dangerous npc or a specific player murderer! - or if your town is at war, personally defeating n. enemies. There are lots of possibilities.

Let's keep the sense of risk and danger in Wish. I think it was one of the things which made it so addictive. I think Wish's pvp setup was "area only" or 100% consensual/guild war based? After a lot of thought, I'd like to keep a modified, less restrictive form of pvp than that. The exception should be young players below a certain skill level in guarded areas, and the newly resurrected, who shouldn't be attackable or able to attack other players at all for a grace period, to avoid res killing /griefing.

With those exceptions, I think that technically pvp should be enabled everywhere - but there are severe consequences if you attack another player in civilised (guard-protected)
areas. I've posted about it at the end of this thread http://www.projectwish.com/viewtopic.php?p...highlight=#1389 so I won't do it again here :-), please have a look though.

Another "keeper" from Wish I forgot to mention in there is that players should keep their items when they die. Period. No-looting rules may not be "realistic" but then, neither is resurrection. Opportunities for players to enrich themselves at the expense of other players should be severely restricted - although we should have theives and of course, the odd unscrupulous trader is a given ;-).

And please let us never ever, EVER have a "kill score" published anywhere, or any other encouragement for noto-killers. I liked the idea I heard Wish would have, of players earning titles - as murderers essentially chose become outcasts, instead they should lose their titles.

Hmm.. and I think, at least in the beginning, we should keep Wish's no player-owned housing. In Wish that there were a lot of empty buildings standing around - so instead of introducing custom housing, let guild leaders rent these from the town, and hire npcs to place there as needed, including a banker who could hold guild resources accessible to members who pay their tithe or whatever. Maybe a limited amout of player-crafted furniture could be placed in such buildings, while the lease is paid up.

(EDIT: forgot this) Finally, let's keep realistic-looking models. Perhaps it's just me but I have a BIG problem relating to "cartoony" looking avatars, for example WoW or UXO.

And do we want to keep one character per account? I know I'd *really* want two, but I think if we are trying to create a game where your character's choices really matter, then probably your choices about your character should matter too.

[khrag]

Well I think everything from Wish should be in, except.

When you die, your pet should be transported with you. (that was the worst spending 240 on a dog and dieing and him going wild before you get back to him)

Beginner items should cost much less (or when apprenticing, give free crap tools)

NPC vendors should sell nothing but PC created stuff and newbie equipment. (although I think there should be a Dev controlled economy system. Say Dev's can set the price of what the vendors will pay for something, and what they will sell it for.) We all remember what a pain in the ass it was to buy ore for 8gpu and to have to sell your creations at a huge price or at a loss.

Just my few ideas

[Jerky]

I disagree with the cheap newbie tools thing. That discourages players from learning every profession from the start. I thought it was great. Yeah, I wanted to do every profession when I was playing too, but not being able to forced me to stick to one, which was the best thing, because I was able to get to the point of making money much faster. I thought that the skills thing is one thingtha we should try to get correct, and as Wish was pretty dang close to perfect (IMO) in this area (for those skills that were implemented). As someone says: "Don't mess with success." I think that there is still a lot of skills and things to add to what Wish had, but those are just my 2 cents.

[ysu]

This is all nice, but Melante, could you please update the first topic to reflect all the ideas? that way new visitors don't have to comb through all the posts...

[bezerker]

thread also has some pretty good ideas to combine with this thread of posts. an update on our current idea should be nice. Forum mods, can we get a stickie on this?

[HeavensLastHope]

About the Caravan Idea/Concept, there should be like 4 different levels of Caravans

Example:



*Can hold up to 4 players (not including NPCs)
*Requires 2 pony/horses to pull
*has 1,000 pound capacity for storing stuff
*Low Armor Rating (depending on what the caravan is made of)
*No Defencive Weapons (players in caravan would have to defend if the caravan is attacked)



*Can hold up to 8 players
*Requires 3 pony/horses to pull
*has 1,750 pound capacity for storing stuff
*Medium Armor Rating (depending on what the caravan is made of)
*Low Level Defencive Weapons "2 defencive mounts" (players can either mount on the caravan's weapons or leave the caravan to fight of enemys)

High-Class Caravan:

*Can hold up to 14 players
*Requires 5 pony/horses to pull
*has 3,000 pound capacity for storing stuff
*High Armor Rating (depending on what the caravan is made of)
*Medium Level Defencive Weapons "3 defencive mounts"



*Can hold up to 22 players
*Requires 8 pony/horses to pull
*has 4,500 pound capacity for storing stuff
*High Armor Rating + Metal Plating Armor (depending on what caravan is made of & depending on what metal is used for Metal Plating)
*High Level Defencive Weapons "5 defencive mounts"

------------------------------

Ok now thats my idea.

plus it would be nice if the players could make them and drive them.

Or

Towns that wanna make a caravan, would have to ask the mayor and players would have to get the amount needed to make a curtain caravan.

[Melanthe]

About the Caravan Idea/Concept, there should be like 4 different levels of Caravans

...Towns that wanna make a caravan, would have to ask the mayor and players would have to get the amount needed to make a curtain caravan.

Great ideas about the caravans. Only I'd hate for it to become something only towns could do, if it turned out only a town could get enough resources together for a really strong one, and people wouldn't use weaker ones, which seems possible. To me, that would put too much power in the hands of one player (the mayor).

I'd personally prefer that any player or group of players could gather resources and provide the service, selling tickets at a depot or caravanserai in each major town, perhaps.

The ticketing process could be something similar to the Wish auction, buyer talks to an innkeeper or reads a board or such and gets a list of departures/times/price etc. Of course weaker caravans would cost less, etc. It would be a great way to meet other PC's too, by traveling with them, and perhaps sharing in defending against bandits, etc. :)

This would also help solve a problem some of the warrior-types were complaining about with Wish--the lack of something for them to do. Defending caravans and/or attacking them could be a great role for the pure warrior.

[bezerker]

will definately give reason for thieves to band together to grab the loot. thumbs up for the caravan idea!

[Pashta]

Criaus, could you pretty please format your response into paragraphs? I just cannot read what you wrote the way it is, it really hurts my eyes...

[Jerky]

Holy smokes! I would not want to be a coder right now. These ideas are incredibly cool, but also incredibly complex. These ideas are making this into SimFantasy. A fastasy game and a sim game mixed. So many different variables. Yeesh. Once again. Keep the ideas coming, but don't expect them all to actually make it into the game.

[Melanthe]

Which parts are you saying would be particularly difficult, Jerky?

I can see both code and social complexities and challenges to the caravan idea, but on the other hand, they may be worth it.

[HeavensLastHope]

Mobs should seem intellegent, so they should like be able to determend if its worth attacking a caravan, the following would be what the AI for the mob would do to determend to attack or not to attack:

*Mobs own lvl
*Number of Mobs in the group
*The Defence Level of the Caravan
*Number of players in the Caravan (if any)
*What type of loot the caravan is holding (including the stuff the players are holding that could be concidered "loot")
*Plus the chances of succesfully attacking and killing everything on the caravan

So all this to would be added up & determind if the mob(s) would attack the caravan. its seems simple enough to me.

but the major part of mobs attacking a caravan is to abtain its loot & riches. so if it be a very low lvl caravan, then less chances of it being attacked, but higher the lvl of the caravan, more chances. but thats all depends on what type of mobs they are and the area your in.

[Melanthe]

Mobs should seem intellegent, so they should like be able to determend if its worth attacking a caravan, the following would be what the AI for the mob would do to determend to attack or not to attack:

*Mobs own lvl
*Number of Mobs in the group
*The Defence Level of the Caravan
*Number of players in the Caravan (if any)
*What type of loot the caravan is holding (including the stuff the players are holding that could be concidered "loot")
*Plus the chances of succesfully attacking and killing everything on the caravan

So all this to would be added up & determind if the mob(s) would attack the caravan. its seems simple enough to me.

but the major part of mobs attacking a caravan is to abtain its loot & riches. so if it be a very low lvl caravan, then less chances of it being attacked, but higher the lvl of the caravan, more chances. but thats all depends on what type of mobs they are and the area your in.

Those are some excellent points, HLH.