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Old 01-20-2013, 03:42 PM
Secrets's Avatar
Secrets
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Default Concepts; Revisited

Imagine a world... where everything makes sense. When you hit a rat, it's physically weaker than you and you can overpower it quite easily. A rat, however, may not be carrying a lot of useful items beyond meat that tastes awful.
A merchant wouldn't find rat meat very valuable in the real world, why should they in our version? It's almost very real, very mortal.

That's the inspiration behind a new server if I were to make one.

When I first did MortalQuest, I had an issue with the way players knew all the content, they were able to say things such as, "I can kill 8 more rats before having to /afk for 8 minutes next to guards that would protect me."
Personally, I think that's a horrible idea. It does not promote any sort of fun, even though EverQuest players love to grind content furiously.

Recently, there have been a trend in survival games. As I hate comparing my work to other games, I will not specify anymore what my work is similar to. That stifles innovation if you are simply trying to recreate a game in another engine.
As I matured over the years (and done some really immature things in the process) I started to realize all my effort had been to recreate other things people have done. When I made MortalQuest, it was to simulate EverQuest's discord server.
Edge II was a clone of Ailia's Edge I. Times Five was a clone of the x5 Freeport Server. The many semi-legit servers I have done were inspired by the old Krusher's server. Some of my small, but never finished servers were inspired by S2K and Zeb.
Lastly, I spent the most time recreating Classic EQ and was vehement to the point where I would do anything to recreate it at the cost of friends, my social life, and other things, which I ultimately regret because I was trying to clone an ancient game that I had no true interest in because it was not my own idea.

Fast forward to today. I left p99 on uneasy terms, done a bunch of things to EQMac that ended up in people abusing the server to life support, and I have still yet to release any original content of quality since 2008 when I did Edge II from scratch.
Needless to say, I have had my time to think on things. I have had rational and irrational ideas. I have had my time in solitude and have attempted to get out of it several times. Every attempt failed.

I cannot say with a straight face that I invested time in making original ideas. I will admit that. It's time for that to change.

Going back to the rat concept... what if you had a level of realism while maintaining fantasy elements in an MMORPG?
As an example, sitting would not recover your HP or heighten your 'mana'. It would make you sit and maybe recover some of your stamina.
What if you went up to a merchant and said "Hey, I want to sell the Sword of a Thousand Truths" which you embarked on a major journey to obtain? A lowly merchant in EverQuest would not be able to afford that, but perhaps a Purveyor of artifacts would.
And lastly, what if the people you met had no names? What if the character you were playing was only defined by your typing style, your equipment, and other goodies that players could identify themselves with?

One of the major things I feel EverQuest is missing, whether forcefully or by hardship that classic made you endure, is a feeling of players working together
Back in the days of classic, a guild was a bond between players. It was a bond because the game was so new and challenging that you had to work together to figure out and explore it.
If you weren't in the top raiding guild and someone else was, that other player may be skeptical even in most modern MMORPGs about your ability to play the game. In my opinion, there's one problem with that.

Exclusion based on playstyle.

A person who does exclusively tradecrafting should not be hindered by their ideals because they like to tradeskill. They should be able to progress even if it's not directly them doing it at their own pace.
Likewise, if the person loves group play, they should not be hindered by their ideals, and in fact, because of numbers they should prevail over the soloist.
The problem with modern MMORPGs is the best gear is obtained through raiding, and the common crafter gets nothing but money out of it. The best crafter should be able to make gear that is adequate enough so they can go out and adventure with the raiders someday.

Let's look at the realism concept and how it fits into this. A player with a sword should be able to beat up a rat... almost in three slashes of a sword. A player with fists should take more than the player with the sword.
How do we determine how powerful the sword should be? Well let's think this out before we move onto the sword itself.

I just discussed the problem with solo vs group vs raid. Why not eliminate gear altogether and make it so a sword is, well, a sword? Not just a "Sword of Angelic Divinity", or a "Kreljok's Short Sword of Power", it is simply an "Iron Short Sword."
It gives no benefits but in order to make that sword, you may have to go through hoops in order to make that sword. You'll need to cut down a tree by clicking on the base within 20 meters of it, Use a knife (which can also be wielded as a sword, albeit less effective) in a public tradeskill container to whittle down the wooden hilt, and then attach iron, which you can obtain from either mining with a pickaxe or slaughtering humanoids for it.
This will add a new dimension of play to the game. For example, a humanoid creature may drop ore randomly, or you can find the same ore in a vein of iron. A merchant may contain the ore sold to it by other players, which could be obtained in either way.

Expanding on merchants a bit, why not take the game a step further and give a merchant a fully dynamic inventory that restocks only on server up? The rest of items could be traded and sold to it just like they are in EverQuest now once that quantity is gone.

These are just some of the ideas I have been theorycrafting. I'm putting them down on paper not because I am announcing a server immediately, but because I want to not forget this concept as I am a scatterbrain and will forget it if I don't type it.

I am posting this here because it may become something someday -- and I want you guys to know.
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Old 01-20-2013, 04:22 PM
c0ncrete's Avatar
c0ncrete
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Join Date: Dec 2009
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lovely. i've found myself tinkering with source modifications and perl to allow me to implement such things as mining and custom (scripted) trade-skills very recently.

one of my major complaints with most of the servers out there is a lack of variation. once people become familliar with how something works, it almost immediately becomes less interesting. i've always thought it'd be well worth the time invested to add a bit more flavor to interactions with things in the world via randomization.

bust up a barrel? maybe it was home to a rat or two that aren't too pleased with the disturbance. perhaps you get hit by a falling rock when you're mining in a cave. what if the creature you're trying to dispatch is capable of changing its strategy depending on your group makeup?
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