The Ossiranth Chronicles

I mentioned about Knowledges in an earlier post, but I thought I would go into detail about something I've cooked up for it.

Each Knowledge represents what a character knows about a particular academic or practical subject. How much a character knows will affect how successful they are in various tradeskills and can improve their various combat and other abilities as well. Metallurgy would improve a character's blacksmithing, engineering, and mechanic professions and might give the character a chance to identify weaknesses in a target's metal armor (in PvP, if the armor isn't fully repaired), allowing extra armor pen or crit or something.

Players can increase their Knowledges with practical experience. Anytime a player does something relating to a Knowledge, there is a chance they will learn something. A player can also read books in game to temporarily learn a piece of knowledge, which will greatly increase the chance of learning that piece of knowledge through practical experience (a player's intellect will determine how long, in game time, a piece of knowledge will stay remembered if they do not go and acquire it with practical experience).

In the game, players would have a Knowledge Compendium, representing the sum total of their character's knowledge. In it, each subject would have each of its topics denoted with each piece of information (such as "A Dragon has a weak point just under it's jaw where the scales are as soft as they are on the belly" in Anatomy). As more information is gathered, the connected bits will arrange themselves into a narrative almost like a wikipedia entry on the subject. Each bit will also list the particular bonus the piece of information gives the player.

The game would also have a Knowledge Helper. While playing, if your character knows something relevant about an enemy or something in the world, an icon would pop up next to it to alert the player. In the mentioned example when fighting a dragon, if the dragon were to lunge at you to try and bite you, an icon would come up indicating a weak point and glowing when you should strike.

I'm considering having a maximum level of knowledge which could be linked to a wisdom stat. Knowledge which is gained beyond that stat will be learned, but older piece of information will become depreciated, losing some of their bonus, and then eventually being forgotten. Perhaps any time the player uses that piece of knowledge to their advantage, that bit would gain a point of XP or two, and then after so many, the knowledge becomes ingrained and doesn't count against the maximum.

I think this would make the game much more enjoyable for players who enjoy learning everything they can about their favorite games while not being annoying to anyone who doesn't, and it would provide another method of character advancement beyond just class levels.

I find myself constantly redesigning the class structure of my game. Originally, I had the classes able to multiclass into anything they wanted, granting a massive number of choices of secondary and tertiary classes.

To trim that down, I decided to change the design to one where each class could advance to their secondary form, or multiclass into one of two other for one of two other specializations. This resulted in 33 classes with a good deal of redundancy (3 flavors of paladins, 2 flavors of monks), it left out many classes I wanted to include, and forced me to introduce several I felt were craptastic just so each class would have enough that wanted to take it as a multiclass option.

I think my new design will be based on abilities. If you want to be an Assassin, you have to have a certain amount of skill in stealth, melee combat, and various forms of information gathering abilities. If you are skilled enough, you may even be able to pass these tests without much skill or even without learning any of the abilities at all (though the tests are specifically designed for these abilities and only the most crafty players will be able to do so).

This would provide a good balance between the two. Players would never feel limited by their character build because their class couldn't move into many specializations. It also gives me the freedom to include some of the redundancy if the feel of the classes is different enough.

If you want to be a Paladin, you only need knowledge of some Priest skills and melee medium or large size weapons. There can be several specializations of the class which would depend on what else you took, but you can do any of them if you wish.

This system also allows me to go with my other idea in which a player's tradeskills can be used to unlock additional classes. A Mage who is an enchanter can become a Sorcerer. A Specialist who is a mechanic can become a Machinist. And so on.

Ok, I feel like I'm rambling now. I'm going to go work on a talent system that makes sense in a classless context.

(I also feel like I've made this post before. >_> I need a better filing system.)

For the last 6 years, Azeroth has been basically the same. Same NPCs, same quests, same rewards, same instances, same progression towards endgame. Even the expansion areas follow this same pattern. Even though in lore, players have fought off the Burning Legion and defeated Kil'jaeden's plans at the Sunwell, when you go to Outland all of the storylines about helping defend Honor Hold and killing massive amounts of creatures for Nessingwary and assisting the nether dragons in defeating the Dragonmaw clan are still there. All of these stories have played out as far as the game is concerned, yet there they still are.

Now they are wiping the old world slate clean and starting it over with a fresh 1-60 batch of everything. This is only a temporary solution though. In two more years, all of the new questing experience is going to be old too, and the same inconsistencies are going to pop up.

They have all these neat phasing technologies which they use to great effect in the new race starting zones (and the new old race starting zones). Why didn't they do that with all of the other races' starting zones? Hell, why don't they do that with ALL of the zones?

Imagine it this way: each zone has six states. The first state is the default state for players at or below the appropriate level. I'm going to use Westfall as an example. In Westfall, the default state is that of first walking in at level 8-10. There's Old Blanchy and Farmer Mr. and Mrs Whatstheirfaces. There are Defias problems everywhere. The crops are in a perpetual state of total crap famine. Players can play through these quests all the way through to the end of the massive quest chains helping destroy broken Harvest Reapers, save peoples' farms, and foil the Defias plots. Players will stay in this game state until either they finish the quest chains or they level to a point that those quest chains no longer grant experience.

This puts the game into state 2 in which all of the major problems are solved. The local inhabitants are happy and getting back to their lives. There are repeatable or daily quests from almost all of them which don't give XP as a reward (to encourage players to GTFO and go level somewhere else), but do give money and possibly other items, such as mats needed to level crafting professions. Once a player has reached a certain level, say a bracket above the Stage 2 trigger point (this point would be level 30, and the next bracket would start at level 40), then the game advances to state 3.

State 3 is basically State 1, only with an entirely new set of problems that are updated for the new level range. Maybe after the Defias were driven out, Murlocs could swarm the shores. Players could then complete these quest chains to solve the new problems, or get to the next point (level 60 in this case) to take the game to State 4, which is State 2 for the higher level range.

State 5 begins at 85, and would probably be patched into the game zone by zone according to different tiers. Some would be available right at Cataclysm launch, others such as our Westfall example would become available at a later time (the release of Heroic Deadmines in this case, if that's not happening at launch) such as after a player completes a certain raid tier.

This updates those Zones to be relevant to the Deathwing destroying the world storyline. While the Cataclysm happens to the entire world for all players, player interaction with Deathwing starts out very low and ramps up as they advance through the zones culminating in these stage 5 zones where he is literally doing fly bys at 5 feet over your head trying to barbecue and/or eat you. Completing all of the quests in the stage 5 zones unlocks a large number of dailies similar to how Icecrown has tons of dailies all over after playing through the storylines.

There are a lot of other things which could play in here too, like reputation gear for lower level characters based on stages, but those are a different story. The main idea here is that as you go through the world, the story of the world actually changes around you as your character has his or her adventure. Things that happened are in the past where they belong. Players also get a much wider choice of where they can go for each level range to level in. Instead of having 3 or 4 level 40 appropriate zones, there become 8.

I guess I'm just kind of disappointed that they didn't take a golden opportunity to put some realism and immersion back into the game that doesn't affect game play ability.

(and before anyone says it, they haven't announced any CoT plans yet, so if players want to go back and do quests from old states they might have missed or get quest rewards they missed out on, perhaps our Bronze dragonpals could allow us to do that.)

After playing for years now, it seems like players don't like to have adventures. Sure some do. I'm sure at least a few who read this post do. Most, from what I read on forums and blogs don't though. They skip quest text, go straight to the quest objectives, complete them and turn in, moving on to the next quest. You aren't an epic hero on a quest to save a little girl kidnapped by a gang of thieves (who are holding her for ransom from her rich parents). You are a guy with a sword in search of XP. Is the little girl NPC unharmed? Is she being treated well by her captors? How is she coping with the experience after you rescue her?

Who cares? As long as you get your XP, she can be missing an arm or scarred mentally for the rest of her life and it makes no difference. Although this is a legitimate way to play a character (my own main would likely take this particular view, though it may secretly tug at his heartstrings just a tiny bit), it's not really in character for all characters. A friend of mine plays the selfless and noble paladin who would be generally concerned about the girl and her eventual fate. However, the game rewards those who disregard all that wishy washy RP crap and go straight for the good stuff.

This is a bit off topic from what I want to talk about, but it is loosely related. I wanted to talk about experience and the way it is earned.

I really want to make a game where the story is the important part. When a player plays their character, they should want to actually play the role of that character. These are called Role Playing Games after all. Most game mechanics seem to incentivize the player to disregard any hint of story elements and just burn through as much questing and mobs as their sword can slice through. The story becomes irrelevant as it is just a tl;dr version of the objectives from which the real goal can be extracted from a quick skim.

What if the game mechanics for things like XP punish those who try to grind through everything and rewards those who play in the story mode? Alternative methods of achieving objectives could award more XP than the standard "Kill everything you see method". This especially applies to stealth classes who would get a bonus for not being seen or for having a minimum casualty rate.

However, this doesn't seem to apply to just regular killing mobs. Players grinding 4 million boars in Elwynn forest certainly doesn't seem heroic. I had an idea to discourage that with XP gains being on a diminishing returns cooldown timer. You kill one mob, you get full XP. You kill a second mob, you get full XP. You kill X number of X additional mobs (the number of which should be tuned to a proper amount) and get full XP. After this point, a very short cooldown hidden from the player starts. Maybe 10 or 15 seconds. Killing a mob once this cooldown is up will award full XP. Killing a mob before this timer is up will award reduced XP and restart the cooldown timer with a slightly increased time amount. This continues until about 4 or 5 mobs killed this way (before the timer ends) when no XP is gained at all. Each of these additional timers you wait out will return to the previous XP level.

The main idea is to slow down the grinding player to it is more efficient to actually complete quests. Mobs which are involved in the quests you must complete would of course be exempt from these timers. Killing rats as a grinding exercise is on the timer. Getting a quest to kill rats will not trigger the timer until the quest objectives are met (at which point they kick in).

This could also be incorporated into the profession system for professions that require killing mobs like skinning or butchering. Killing additional mobs grants the reduced XP, but if you perform the profession actions like skinning the corpse then a large portion of the lost XP is returned in the form of XP towards that profession.

I've also been considering the inn mechanic from WoW. Logging out at an inn wouldn't give you a bonus on its own. You'd need to actually rent a room, at which point you would automatically log out and your character would be sleeping. The longer you are logged out, the more bonus experience you get for a certain amount of time (up to a maximum). The idea here being that players who play all the time can play normally, and players who have limited play time can still keep up so that they can participate in group content as well. The bonuses would be balanced so that if a player plays for 15 hours straight (something I don't recommend) and another plays for two, goes to work for 8, spends three hours with his family upon coming home and eating, and then plays two more hours, the player who only played four hours would gain XP from his play time enough to equal him to the 15 hours straight player and they can continue to play on equal level group content together. I think this is a much better way to do what Square was trying to do at keeping players on the same level of play as it doesn't punish the player who wants to play for 15 hours straight with no XP walls.

To sum up, the XP system I have in mind would:

1. Discourage grinding and incentivize playing in a natural story based way
2. Not punish players who are trying to use or level their mob killing related professions
3. Allow players with less play time to stay on a competitive level of play with those who have time in abundance.

This is all subject to balancing of course so that players who play in a natural way would never be affected by any of the downsides.

Thoughts? Does this system seem like it would annoy players if it's balanced correctly? Is there a better way to accomplish these goals?

In WoW, there are sets which provide bonuses depending on how many pieces of the set you are wearing. Sometimes, these sets are strong enough that gear outside the set isn't worth using. Sometimes they are weak enough that you don't want any of the set, or just a smaller part of the set. Then when you get new gear, which would otherwise be an upgrade, you don't want to use it as it would break those set bonuses which defeats the purpose of gear upgrades. As a rogue main, I used T8 until I had 2 piece T10, as T9 completely sucked (this also meant I was finished with T9 badge gear long before anyone else in my guild).

What if, instead of the bonuses for sets being on the gear itself, they were on an upgrade item like a gem or rune? Blacksmiths or the like could add special sockets or some kind of slot to certain pieces of gear ( a limit of one per piece of course to prevent stacking) which these items would be able to be placed. New gear which would otherwise be an upgrade could then be taken and used while keeping the set bonuses. I think this could solve the gear leaping problem where a majority of designed gear is skipped in favor of set pieces.

Just a thought: Why does the initial game world have to be all there is? What I mean by that is the MMO so far has the player growing in power until they hit a cap, and there they are. Why not let it scale infinitely?

As players play through MMOs, they gradually get more powerful and defeat stronger and stronger foes. Eventually there has to come a point where they run out of enemies they aren't strong enough for (this begs the question of how those enemies got so powerful themselves with nothing to fight against. Did they grind 4 million boars?). This is already starting to be a problem in WoW. We've already defeated a good majority of the most powerful characters in lore, and will have most of them licked by the end of Cataclysm. An elemental Lord, two direct children of Deathwing, Illidan, a Dragon Aspect (soon to be two), the Lich King, Archimonde (even though it was a travel back in time deal), TWO Old Gods, and then.....not much else on the "still on Azeroth" scale. The other two old gods (or possibly three, depending on if they retcon The Master's Glaive to be a dead lieutenant or something) and possibly a second Algalon type entity arriving, and there is literally nothing else on the planet more powerful. You would have to step up to Actual Kil'Jaeden, then maybe find Sargeras out in the Nether, then maybe a few of the other Titans, and then you're done.

The entire time, the heroes remain as ordinary mortals. Mortals that can slay gods and Titans. Why does that have to be? Why can't the players eventually become gods, or at least half gods, along the way? You defeat all the evils of your world and the gods say "Grats. As a reward, you can be a god too." And you can then continue on to other worlds and fight greater evils, and maybe even make your own worlds.

I dunno. I just think it would be cool to take a character who was once a lowly farmhand (who lost his home when the farm was burned down by bandits) and turn them into an all powerful god of the cosmos.

I've been playing Lord of the Rings Online since my WoW account expired and it's now free to play. They use a trait system instead of talents for customizing your character. These traits are earned by doing things in game as opposed to as you level. You get empathy for completing quests. you get justice for killing brigands. Etc.

What if these traits were more than just stat bonuses? What if they also affected how you speak to NPCs? There are already things like text options and dialogue wheels that let you choose (in a limited way) what you say to NPCs. Why not have these traits affect what options are available, allowing the dialogue to go in directions that others wouldn't see? This could open up entirely new quest paths, allow players to negotiate better quest rewards, or even open up new skills to be learned from trainers. There could also be "negative" traits as well, allowing a wider range of bonuses and even changing the way the game is played. Ruthless would grant pets and hirelings higher damage (because you push them harder), but causes them to be more willing to abandon you after taking enough damage. Evil would grant a bonus to shadow damage spells and abilities and give you greater control over undead minions. And so on.

The main thing here is that I'm trying to come up with ideas that bring an RP play style into the main part of the game. Playing on RP servers basically since I've started playing MMOs, it seems that most players regard RP as something that is done in town. When you are out questing or doing instances, RP becomes impractical. I want to bring about a game where a character's actions have impact on what happens to them and where players have to consider their actions' consequences before leaping into the fray. A paladin who is an upholder of all that is good and just running into the forest to slaughter squirrels and bears en mass doesn't really seem like it would be in character.

I know a lot of my ideas would make for a game that is extremely niche and not very widespread, but I think it would make for a game that is highly immersive and rich.