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what do you think about games like Maple,Latale,wonderking [Question] Any mmo really

Discussion in 'Game Design' started by simonlvschal, Dec 7, 2017.

  1. simonlvschal

    simonlvschal

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    how do people think about those 3 games named in the Title. but for good meassurement i name em here again

    Maplestory - Cartoon - 2D - Large Amount of Classes

    Latale - Cartoon - 2D - Large Amount of Classes - Diverse

    Wonderking - Cartoon - 2D - Large Amount of Classes

    how likely would you people here play a Similiar type Game without the horrible yet obvious Paywalls? and make more balance between the cash shop and Game?

    i am mainly Curious
     
  2. JoeStrout

    JoeStrout

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    I've never heard of any of them, so I can't really say.

    But if the common element is Large Amount of Classes, perhaps I can contribute something with my recent experience in FFXIV Online. This has a large number of classes (I'm not sure exactly how many) and an even larger amount of "jobs" (crafting skills, etc.), which you can combine in any way you want — you basically have unlimited multi-classing, where by simply equipping a Spatula, you temporarily change your class from Archer to Culinarian (i.e. cook). Or whatever.

    I've only been playing a couple of weeks and haven't attempted this yet, but I get the impression that all this produces very deep play. You can either form a group of multiple players/characters, each specializing in something (pretty necessary for combat at least), or you can try to level up all the needed jobs yourself, or anything in between. A lot of crafting requires components that can only be made by some other type of crafting, too, so again you either learn how to do that, or find somebody who does, or find a source for such components in the markets. I've seen people on the forums who have apparently been playing for years, and they're now playing hard to find/gather/craft fancy decorations for their houses. It's pretty insane — but clearly makes the game sticky far beyond what most games achieve.
     
  3. Joe-Censored

    Joe-Censored

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    I haven't heard of any of those games either. What I can say is the number of classes isn't as important as the restrictions on classes and the depth you can take each class. If your game includes 30 different classes but doesn't allow much flexibility within each class, where every character of that class is pretty much the same as any other of that class, then your players will get bored quickly and not appreciate the vast number of classes available. That is assuming that the game doesn't allow the changing or blending of classes. Even if it does though, you don't want every character to end up the same as every character. You have to consider what characters are going to look like after training for the next few years.

    As an example of what not to do, you can look at Darkfall and Darkfall Unholy Wars (Darkfall 2). In Darkfall 1 there were classes in concept, but in actuality any character could train in any and all directions. What you would normally do for the first 6 months or so was train as just 1 class. For example if you were a fire mage you would build your character up to max skills across everything fire mage.

    At a certain point though you capped out, no problem though because you'd then go and skill up what would be considered another class. The devs never or rarely added new skills to the game as the game aged, and eventually all the long term characters were all the same, where they had max skills in every class. The game became just battles of max level characters that could do everything, with every character exactly the same, and that was one of the key issues that killed the game.

    Rather than fix the game, the devs decided to throw it away and work on Darkfall 2. They would put in a design from the beginning that prevented the game turning into all characters being the same. Unfortunately they didn't really think through what the real problems were, and ended up with several very restrictive character classes. So now a fire mage is only a fire mage and can't become anything else, but they didn't offer any real customization to a fire mage of any significance. So every fire mage was exactly like every other fire mage, all the same spells available, etc, with the only difference being how skilled up they were at those spells. Having about 5 spells total that your character could ever do was just boring, and leveling that limited arsenal up over months was less than satisfying.

    The devs never considered the root problem in both games, which was the lack of depth within each class. Adding more classes, or restricting players to certain classes wasn't the fix. Once you start down a path you shouldn't cap out with no new content in just months.
     
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  4. JoeStrout

    JoeStrout

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    Since this is the Game Design forum, I wonder if we can spend a bit of time exploring ways to avoid maxed-out characters all looking the same.

    So I guess one way is to have the game deep enough (or difficult enough) that you just can't make everything out in a reasonable number of years. But let's suppose that's

    One thought is, perhaps there's a total amount of skill your virtual skull can hold. So, let's say there are (for the sake of argument) 20 different skills, and each one makes out at level 100. But you have a total skill cap of only 1000; any attempt to increase a skill once your total is at 1000, causes some other skill (chosen randomly? least recently used?) to decrease by the same amount.

    So this means that, among maxed-out players, there will still be quite a bit of variation (assuming there isn't some combination of skills obviously better than any other). And you're not stuck forever — if you really want to build your culinary skills, and let your previously-maxed leatherworking skills get rusty, you can always do that. You could continue tweaking and adjusting your character as your interests change, or just because you're still trying to minmax it but there is no obvious maximum.

    What do you think? Other ideas?
     
  5. simonlvschal

    simonlvschal

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    the reason i am asking is because i am attempting to design a complex set of classes that is unigue to each other. but also offers varrying different gameplay style. for example like being a fire mage. you still have access to a frost mage skills. but you're limited in the sense of not being able to just mix and match.

    like having lets say you hit a enemy with a fireball, and afterwards using a frostball. this in reality would generate some sort of effect. like rapid cooling down the enemy. making frostball do higher damage. or using a lightning skill on a cold enemy would affect it with higher damage aswell as possibly stunning it.
     
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  6. JoeStrout

    JoeStrout

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    Sounds neat. Reminds me very much of a game my boys were really into on the iPad a year or two ago... and dangit, now I can't remember the game. But you played a mage, with lots of elemental magic, and it was exactly that: using your elements in sensible combinations to rack up huge damage. (Anybody remember the game I'm thinking of?)
     
  7. Martin_H

    Martin_H

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    Was Magicka on the ipad?

    I don't like designs based around limiting what you can do, but maybe I'm a poor testcase since I generally don't like RPG systems as much as games where the player's skill counts.


    A random thought I had yesterday was: is leveling just a way to have progression while also showing you ahead of time a glimpse at what you could get or become? I'm replaying System Shock 2 right now and I've been carrying a Laser Rapier around for quite a while that I couldn't use yet, because of a minimum skill requirement in Energy weapons. I've farmed the game's XP skillpoint equivalent for a while and had a very clear goal I looked forward to. Those progressions essentially allow emergent goals on the skilltree to be picked.
     
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  8. JoeStrout

    JoeStrout

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    THAT'S IT!



    Well, how then do we prevent maxed-out characters from ending up all the same?

    I mean, I guess in a pure skill game, it doesn't matter — what you're interested in is player progression, not character progression. But just suppose your target audience likes characters. Limits don't thrill me either, but... without them, how to solve this problem?

    Yes, I do think that's one benefit of skill trees; you get to pick your own goals and work towards them. Gives you the fun of planning your own destiny, and (as you say) something to look forward to.
     
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  9. Martin_H

    Martin_H

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    I think if there was a simple no-brainer way to manage it, someone would have figured it out and implemented it already.

    From my perspective as an artist I would suggest tying leveling choices closer to self-expression choices. Some people seem to be willing to pick e.g. armor or weapons that don't have the absolute best stats in their inventory, if they like how they look or what they represent. Fallout New Vegas had faction armor that would make people belonging to opposing factions react differently to you. Imagine highest end skill tiers only being available as special training from factions that have some mutually exclusive agendas. And maybe combine it with a sort of sacrifice in a 3 steps forward, 1 step back kind of way. It'd still be a mechanic of limiting players, but it'd be one that imho is slightly easier to swallow when narratively it is embedded into a context that makes sense. Like once you've ascended through the ranks of the "dark brotherhood" and accepted their ritual scars on your face, you lose 40% charisma and blow your chance to get accepted in the "'friendship is magic'-carebear-club", but you'll be slitting throats from the shadows like no other.

    Ultimately one has to ask whether highlevel chars being samey is really a problem, or if maybe the mechanics of such games attract players that all want to converge to one of a very small number of archetypical endgame characters instead of making permanent choices. I find it sometimes liberating to not be locked in much, and I like to experiment with different playstyles, skills, weapons, etc..
     
  10. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    In answer to the bold part, I can tell you that these paywalls and lack of balance are the reason these products are successful. These games while looking simple, require staff, servers and considerable upkeep costs.

    I would recommend doing a normal small 2D multiplayer title without the massive and with simple IAP / microtransactions.
     
  11. simonlvschal

    simonlvschal

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    well all 3 of those games are soon to be shut down i believe. seeing either of em got enough people to sustain the server cost + paying their workers. well Wonderking was shut down in 2012. and Latale is close to being shut down again. cause lack of players. due to its extreme paywall. maplestory is most likely going to be shut down to because of nexon's inability to fix things and well. making people distrust them.

    However. i do plan on trying to make something exciting that isn't just grinding to max level. but also having something to do endgame. Bossing, daily challenge, constant events, actual f2p.. with purely cosmic cash shop etc.
     
  12. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Go ahead and make it.
     
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  13. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    Wouldn't likely consider it at all. For me to be happy long term an MMO needs to have strong world building and strong character customization (eg multi-classing, having to choose between multiple good abilities, etc).

    Additionally I despise almost every single form of free-to-play currently in existence. Only one method has been made that I have found acceptable in any form and that's the one employeed by Dungeons and Dragons Online where you purchase races, classes, and modules. For anything else I prefer subscription or buy-to-play like Guild Wars.
     
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  14. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    I think we're basically already partially in an age of decentralised mmo. In COD or similar, you'll find the regular mmo features are sprinkled throughout in regards to levelling, matchmaking, friends, guilds and so forth. This can also be seen in generalised networks like Playstation.

    When you consider warcraft is mostly 5 player 'matches' in dungeons and pvp is between 2 and 5, then raids and larger scale pvp being up to 40, it makes more sense to bring the mmo to the player rather than the player choosing to play an mmo.

    So it's decentralised. It's cheaper. Better for business, more palatable for the customer and similar sticky retention. We'll only see more of this deconstructed cheesecake mmo as time goes by.
     
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  15. ModLunar

    ModLunar

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    Almost 3 years late already! Wow.

    I wanted to say games like these were the reason I got into game development.
    For me, almost no other games ever came close to the MMORPG experience for me.
    My main 2 games were RuneScape and MapleStory (thank the heavens Old School (2007Scape) still exists).

    I played and loved WonderKing, but it got shutdown.

    What I loved so much was that I could play with my friends, and it wasn't a game I'd drop the next day.
    Or a game I'd just drop the next week.
    Or month.
    Or even year.

    I could play it for years and work on my character(s), and feel so accomplished, and keep exploring this ever-expanding/updating fantasy world, unlock items, quests, combat skills/abilities, and more.
    Playing singleplayer games gets old and boring for me.
    I am quite the picky RPG gamer haha.

    There's a lot to consider when making an RPG on this scale, and I've tried playing several other MMORPGs that I couldn't get into (maybe learning curve, an uninteresting style where all the armor looked "the same" to me as a noob, etc.?).

    But I figured I'd leave these thoughts here.
    I know many people have experienced the beauty of Pre-Big Bang MapleStory (~2006-2010), RuneScape 2, and other similar MMORPGs.
    Gosh, what a childhood.

    Graphics style is also something that makes you just want to play.
    That feeling is so powerful.
    I never got there by trying hyper-realistic 3D graphics.
    It just takes way too long to learn and/or make that stuff as a 1-person team. Maybe it might be easier when I learn Substance Design/Painter though?

    3D cel-shaded anime style, 2D pixel art, or other styles might be easier.
     
  16. ModLunar

    ModLunar

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    @Joe-Censored What you mentioned about depth within a single class is super wise.

    I really agree, and especially about MapleStory.
    I loved being the Bishop (Cleric, light-magic support) character that could heal my friends and give them buffs (Lol "HS plz").

    But for example, eventually, every Bishop would max out their skills and have the same Genesis ultimate attack at Skill Level 30, with the same stats (for that skill) as any other Bishop with Lv. 30 Genesis.
    There were Skill Level requirements (like "Hey, you have to have Lv. 20 Skill "X" from 2nd Job in order to acquire Skill "Y" from 3rd Job"), but there was no branching choices really.
    Eventually you'd unlock all the skills.

    When training, you'd often be spamming the same skill.
    I wish they had added more variety (combat skills), as the combat skills were one of the biggest selling points of that game for me.

    --- --- ---

    But players' roles as playing their class was really good.
    At least back in the day.
    Like Warriors were absolutely much better at defending themselves against bosses,
    Magicians had very low HP but got by with Magic Guard to defend themselves with their high reserves of MP.
    You couldn't just "master it all", which was good.
    It encouraged teamwork in party quests and bosses, so people could help out in their own different ways.
     
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