The Path of Chaos

[Deimos]

At the moment, this is more of an idea than much anything else.

Everything's ready to go to start working on this idea, but I don't really want to work on it alone and everyone I've tried to work on it with has refused to learn the necessary thingies needed for it : P.

The Path of Chaos server is a very unique server compared to the other servers that have been up on EQEmu in the past. For one, it features a different combat system, a different spell system, and a system that allows you to map personalities to NPCs, store any type of data in the NPC, etc and keep it persistant.

This is all run through PERL.

Combat System:
The current design idea for this is to create a grid of NPCs within a zone that are well invisible but can be selected in a way. This is so that the player's movements can be tracked, their text can be tracked, and their clicking can be tracked. When you click, it'll select one of these invisible NPCs and then unselect it. It'll also check the direction you're facing and see if you were attempting to click a player. Looting corpses might be a bit different because of this system.

Over-all, with something like this, when you click, you'll be able to swing your sword in the direction you clicked based on the sword's cooldown. Right click would control the item in your right hand, left click the item in your left hand, and well, yea. From here, you could be in regular mode (for chatting, considering, etc), and combat mode (which will auto swing your sword and so forth when you click), and you can be in ranged mode (which will fire your bow in the direction you clicked). Now, in this way, you can dodge attacks and you can block attacks. If you're within a quadrant that's being attacked, you have a small amount of time to defend against that attack with some sort of parry or block. With parries, you need to be much more accurate, with a shield, it'll block a set of points. Hopefully, with this grid it'll be able to detect the arc of an attack and so on : ).

Actual damage is done by the Grid NPCs.

Spell System:
Now, remember our grid? Well, we can use this grid with our spell system as well.

Let's say there are only a few spell gems in the entire game and these mark the different types of spells (conjuration, abjuration, etc). When you use a spell gem thing, that initiates the spell and is an instant cast. From there, you utter any incantations that are needed, you form any circles and so on through your movements, and you cast the spell. You also form a spell circle if it's needed. The actual spell casting will be cast by the Grid NPCs. They will find the spell you are casting based on what you are doing with incantations and so forth and cast it for you and link you to the spell.

Now, with summoning you can get something like the weak mage summoning the powerful demon. You can also get uncontained spells through sloppy spell circles (you actually circle around, and based on how perfect your circle is, your spell circle is stronger).

The Soul:
In this server, every player would start out first in the tutorial area of course (a custom zone), and then in the spirit world based on their initial soul type. You can either choose to have a soul or choose not to have a soul. If you have a soul, then when you die, you only have a set amount of time to get revived otherwise you lose all of your levels, your character, and so forth. Now, with souls, there are 3 types of death, the regular death where you need to get revived asap, the rebirth death which increases your soul power but you still have to restart your physical character, and the soul death, which actually kills your soul and would only happen with very special types of baddies.

Now, with revivals, there are two types of revivals... the clerical revival and the necromatic revival. Necromatic revivals launch you into a hellish world while the necromancer controls your corpse. When you escape the hellish world, you go back into your body and you can fight the necromancer or run away before he kills you and reanimates you. With things like this, you can see how the player population might outlaw necromancy because of how cruel and bitter most of the necromatic powers are. Yes, the players will have full control of the cities, and so forth. It'll be a free world, and when they create a law, they will have to enforce that law.

Now back to souls. Souls will either be a lighter side or a darker side. If you have no soul then you just auto revive at your respawn point. Now to souls again. In the spirit world there are 3 places you can start out. The place for dark souls, the place for light souls, and the place for people without souls. You may choose initially what type of soul you have, and then based on your actions and so forth, your soul will either get darker or lighter. Your soul's map is one factor to how effective your spells and abilities are.

Soul Weapons:
Soul Weapons are weapons that have souls imbued into them. These souls can be player souls as well (remember that third type of death from super baddies?). From here, you can rebirth the spirit weapon as it grows in power. As it rebirths, it changes form constantly. This skill would be called Soul Forging. It's converting a weapon between a physical form and a spiritual form. Sometimes, a soul weapon will require a certain soul level of the player to be achieved... this means people without souls can't use soul weapons because they don't have the ability to master the soul of that weapon. Your soul must always be stronger than the soul of the weapon(s) you are using or you will be overcome by it and it will attempt to kill you. This is just a very brief explanation, there is much more.

Classes:
There are no classes. Based on your race, your stats, and your soul, certain abilities will be more effective than others. As you level, you will get points to spend on going up in different tiers and to spend on spells/abilities from those tiers. This means you can't master everything in the game : ). It will require very strategic building. You may only be able to go all the way up in 2-3 tier. If you're too narrow in this, you'll be easy to kill as you won't have a wide variety of tools at your disposal. If you're too wide, you'll be weak at everything.

The Path of the Game:
The game isn't all about fighting. You may choose any path you want from a shopkeeper to a politician to an adventurer to a bandit to a wandering merchant etc.

The Game Stages:
The game goes from stage to stage like a timeline. These stages are pushed forward through world events. Based on what happens, you'll go on to a certain stage. Let's say you're at stage 1 and you end up going to Stage 2D (the fourth possible stage 2). When you reach the final stage, the world rebirths and starts over : ). So far, there are 3 very massive incredible large scale epic stages set up.

War:
In the game, you will be able to build keeps and so on. You can also set up guilds, armies, and what not. You can also join an army or whatever and go up in rank. Based on your rank, yuo'll be able to lead a certain number of NPCs with a certain level : P. The higher you are, the more influence you have over a battle. When you take over the main camp of your enemy, you pretty much win. One of the horrid and evil forces in the game are the forces of Heknar. Heknar dwells within the realms of chaos. He's pretty much the enemy to all things on the planet. When you first start the game, you can start out to start under Heknar if you want. You can really start out anywhere in the game. Based on your soul map, the path you chose will either be easier or harder because your soul map determines how NPCs initially react to you. Each NPC will be handcrafted, will have memories, a past, hopes, a personality map, and hopefully some decent AI for conversation (I have ideas about putting some sort of dictionary into the NPCs and I have an idea of how to let them learn, add accents, and so on).


Now back to war. There are 3 main types of keeps. A Weapons Depot, Supply Depot, and Barracks. These each have different specializations. Now, with keeps, you may expand them by adding new floors to them which increases the overall production rates of the keeps, you may build new keeps, and you may take over or destroy old keeps. Now, what I'm probably going to end up doing is using a large set of custom models to do this ;o. A very large set ...

Now, I have not gone over everything that the server will have. Also, keep in mind that this is an idea at the moment. I know how to do all of this and I can do it, it would just take... a very long time ><, and I def don't want to do it on my own.

Why am I wanting to make this? Because this is almost my dream MMO that I would just love to play every day. That's why : P. And nobody will make it so I need to do it : ). It features a better combat system than most modern MMOs with such a basic back-design to it -.-. I really don't see why MMOs today don't do this stuff yet...

Now, I'm not sure if I'm going to do it yet or not. I have done some programming for it so far, some zone building, and I have a pretty nice textures library at the moment. I also have an exe designer for giving people files and giving them default files so they can restore their directory.

I also don't really use things like quest::setglobal... and currently, the functions in PERL that were designed by the eqemulator community are missing some key triggers that I would need to design some of this.

Oh well : ). Thoughts? Just about every zone in the server would be *custom* built btw. I don't really see any of the regular EQ zones that'd work for a lot of this : (. I could use some of them if I modified them, but that'd be bad : P.

Currently, I can give GMs access to the zone files, quest files, patch files, and the Database. The GMs can do the work they need to do.. if they'd learn how -.-.

But yea, what do you guys think?