If I were to design an MMO... Part 1?

I said I was going to maybe think about posting more on here, so hey, two posts in a row works I guess.

Oh, right, warning, this is going to be really fucking long probably.

Anyway, I've been thinking. People love to bitch and complain that an MMO's direction isn't going the way they'd like, but... I've got a pretty good feeling that if they were in the designer/developer view they'd be completely hopeless. They'd do stupid things and likely fuck things up more than what they were even complaining about due to not taking all situations into account. But this is to be expected, it takes a pretty specific mentality to be able to do that efficiently and in an appropriate manner. Shit is hard, man.

But I digress, all that thinking turned to "well, what the hell would I even do," and eventually then progressed to being pretty unsatisfied with almost every MMO's system in some way or another. Some games get them completely right in some areas but fuck everything else up. Others get them half right while not fucking everything else up quite that badly. And some are just plain bad with what they do.

Now, I'm going to preface this thought with stating I actually don't have that much MMO experience. I've never been much of an avid MMO player, despite that it may seem to the contrary. I can actually name all the MMORPG's I've played legitimately relatively easily; Dream of Mirror Online, Grand Fantasia, Eden Eternal and TERA. Yeah. I've only "really" played 4 MMO's to any real extent that I can claim I know how it goes. I've "tried" a few others, sure, but I don't count that as really playing.

Carrying on, the most important thing is to actually run the game on an f2p platform. Yeah, it makes running and marketing it a lot harder, but it also allows the largest possible audience, which is key. If you don't have a large playerbase, no one is going to play to begin with. Beyond that, it would follow one very simple philosophy, and really, I have no remorse for saying this; The entire game would be designed around pushing the player to want to do more than they wanted to begin with. Yes. I just said the entire point of the game would to make the player an addict and shovel money in for virtual items. And I'll repeat, I have no remorse. Why? Because ultimately, not only is that the most successful way to build an MMO, it's also satisfying for the player, even though it doesn't sound like it is. But that's the basic concept, I  could go way more into it but I won't - it'll just take way too much time and effort.

So, basic and completely vague design principle out of the way, next comes the primary structure and planned update pattern. This is quite possibly the most important part of the entire design process. Fuck this up at any stage and your game dies. I'm not joking. It just dies. You'll bleed players and only bring in one new for every 2-5 you lose, which is extremely bad math.
I may not have played WoW, but from what I understand it did do something slightly right. It casualized the grind over time with every new release. Which I'll be blunt in saying this is so important now it's unbelievable. So unbelievable I can't believe that a lot of people seem to be missing it. I mean, really. This is something you cannot not do anymore. So how would I do it? In a pretty simple way, actually.

First, the initial level cap would be extremely low - but it would be a deceiving number. EE started with a level cap of 50(on Aeria, that is) and did extremely well at the start; and for good reason. It was easy to hit cap. True, it took a chunk of time to get their initially, but it was easy.
My plan? Level cap initially of 30. Level 1-20 would take, in total, maybe 5 hours. This is important, because no one wants to be stuck in the lower levels. It's not fun, you're locked to having very little variety. Once you reach  20, however, things jump drastically. It'll start off slow, 20-21 would take half an hour to 45 minutes, 21-22 would jump to 45-60 minutes, 22-26 would be around the same as 21-22, once you hit 27, though, it'll jump again. The planned time for the last 3 levels of cap would take 2 hours, 3 hours and 4 hours.
By the point they reach 27, they'd be involved enough into the game that it would be safe to say they're enjoying it - so they'll want to keep going regardless. And to a lot of people, those times actually aren't that long. You could legitimately hit cap from level 1 in a weekend if you're dedicated. Though, then there comes up with a problem - what do people do after that? The answer?

Multiclassing - I cannot stress how great multiclassing is. It artificially increases grind time, creates further  player dedication to the game and their characters and combats the artificial population problem of multiple characters per player. And so far, I've played two multiclassing games - DoMO and EE, neither of which really nailed the system "just right." EE's problem was that it wasn't true multiclassing, you just had access to all classes on one character - DoMO's problem was that it was proper multiclassing but it limited what you could do via skill points, which limited player interaction. My version would combine the "global" character level with class level idea that EE had; with the base class+two sub-classes that DoMO used. As for why, I'd have it set to allow XP calculation on whichever level is the closest to mob level - this means that you could have a level 30 "base character" level, use a level 12 base class and kill level 12 mobs and not receive nerfed XP; or you could kill level 30 mobs in the same setup and neither receive buffed nor nerfed XP(however, class levels would be designed in such a way to prevent abuse in this function).

Ok I'm done typing this  for now.  Stay tuned for a part II to come up... Whenever it comes up. There's a ton more to design, though - this isn't even half the basic systems it would involve. I told you this shit would be really long.

Current state of Grand Fantasia

Man, I've totally more or less abandoned this blog. Maybe I'll start posting on it more, with non economics related things(because seriously I'm kind of stopped caring, everything is deflating with the exception of a few  niche items that demand surged for - and even those aren't very high).

Anyway, recent there's been a specific patch. The biggest concern that players seem to have is, obviously, involving +18. I personally think it's absolutely stupid to bitch about, since it ultimately is a "virtual" increase in content for the end game players, which is what everyone and their mother bitched about not existing before. And yes, I realize I'm being slightly hypocritical on this statement - I fought against +15 existing quite hard, but my views have changed a decent bit since then as well as realize that there'd be no hope in fighting for the removal of +18 anyway.
I also find it absolutely hilarious that everyone vocal enough to shout "I QUIT!" will inevitably return anyway. Well, 95% of them at least. As for why, if someone is attached enough to a free MMO to regularly use its forum and complain about things, they're not going to just quit and never return. It just doesn't work that way. The only people who are really quitting are the ones who don't say a word about it, they don't care enough to say "I'm out" or complain otherwise - which clearly means they aren't attached much to the game itself.

Now, if I had my way, I do admit it would have been done differently. S Scrolls would have a req equipment level of 80+ and... Actually that pretty much solves everything. With that in place I would actually be 100% ok with fortification items for them flooding the game. Not only does it entirely niche the audience size, it also prevents the degradation of lower brackets. The only real drawback is that it would be that GVG weapons wouldn't be able to be fortified +18, but there wouldn't be a real feasible way to fix it. Requiring a player level to use S scrolls wouldn't work; you'd have to autobind the equipment to prevent the resale, but even that doesn't work due to the archive - they can just +18 a piece of equipment, archive it over to another character on the account and then proceed to curbstomp a lower bracket. But hey, that's just my take on it.

As for everything else, the update actually did some tremendous things to help the players "just starting." Crafting rates on gear 66 and below was increased dramatically. Like, brute forcing 60 yellows isn't that unfeasible anymore dramatically. It also added a quick teleport system as well as removed death penalties from all maps below level 36~ish(I think black swamp is the highest levelled map it was removed from).

Ultimately, this was a pretty great patch. It has some things that need ironed out in the form of bugs, but that's to be expected.

As far as the future of the game goes, I'm supposedly working on events, or something. I also hear that there's going to be some neat changes coming down the line that I can't really mention, but I'm sure everyone will get to find out about that soon enough.
Oh, right, also there's some arena things that might be happening, but hey, you didn't hear that from me.

What I've been doing, etc.

Economy sheet is stalled. Over the past 2~ weeks I've been progressively being a bit busier irl(which makes consistently logging to check things pretty much impossible), so suffice to say just haven't been keeping up with it.

Anyway, apparently I might play TERA a bit(having irl friends wanting me to play with them), so that'll likely also bite into whatever I planned to work on.
Other stuff... idk. There's actually not much to do/work on in the game at this point. Waiting on 90 cap and a bunch of other medium-sized patches still. And while the arena revamp patch was "huge," it didn't actually change that much. Overall, the devs are slow as hell and we keep going from lull to lull over extended periods of time between patches that when implemented in TW were on a week to week basis, while we receive a month to month basis.
At least 90 cap SEEMS like it'll be here "soon™," so that's something to look forward to I guess.

Anyway, speaking of TERA, the game is sort of hit/miss. The UI is terrible. And I mean, it's EE levels of terrible, possibly more-so in terms of usability, which is a major accomplishment... Of sorts. The game itself, however, is kind of "ok." Combat isn't exactly as "free flowing" as the claim appears to be, it's just set so that every skill is a straight-line directional or center-point AOE with a limited cap on how many mobs it can hit. It's not bad, but it's not great, either. It has the advantage(and drawback) of being more engaging than a number of other MMO's combat systems.
The grind is also pretty bearable/easy. It's a lot longer than most western MMO's but on the lower end for asian MMO's, so that's nice(though, then again, my definition is probably a lot more forgiving on the "hardcore" scale, considering I was the first to nolife to 80 on GF and was the first 55/60 on EE).
The game also feels like a hybrid of several f2p MMO's that uses a graphics engine that doesn't suck. It plays extremely and eerily similar to an f2p MMO, it even has a ton of very noticeable outlets where an f2p model could be built into. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't designed this way on purpose to generate more money and ease dev time that would be required to remodel the game from a p2p environment to an f2p one when it (inevitably) changes from being subscription based(this isn't even a question of "will it," it's a question of "when will it").
One thing I'm very interested/intrigued with in the game, though is the whole chrono scroll system. For those unaware, it's basically a 30 day subscription turned into an in-game consumable that's tradable. Meaning there will be players who buy them specifically to sell for in-game gold, making it possible to get the game initially, exploit the early game market and then continue to play for free off of your earnings.

Anyway, if anyone's interested, my IGN is/will be Chiru if I decide to actually pick it up and play legitimately. And, obviously, I'm playing a loli bunny girl ranger, because you can't play a game like this and hardcore it without being a loli bunny girl. Not listing server because fuck stalkers.

/endblogpost

Weekly Economy Sheet

Spreadsheet can be found here.
Weekend spender can be found here.
April loyalty rewards can be found here.

4/3/12 Patch Notes

Official patch notes here.

Content:

• Lowered dungeon MO count for gold payout to 5, implemented infinite secondary MO system(with no gold payout), limited to 15.
• Easter event, info can be found here.
• Character lock system temporarily removed due to complications.
• Minor bug fixes.

Otherwise, channels still fucked up and... Who knows what else.

Oh, also, 85 ARENA SET AND 80 GVG SET IS IN. Fucking A', man. But seriously, it's about time.

Also also; followed up with an emergency maint due to a faulty captcha debuff glitch.

Weekly Economy Sheet

Average price week 3/27-4/2
Crystal Chisel - 3100g       Present: 8/12
Blessed Fortification Clover -5862g      Present: 9/12
Blessed Alchemy Clover - 2233g      Present: 9/12
MFI 3 -  4900g      Present: 10/12
MFI 2 - 3213g      Present: 11/12
Sage Stone 2 - 207g      Present: 11/12
Sage Stone 3 - 356g      Present: 11/12
Magic Alchemy Clay - 604g      Present: 12/12
Greater Blacksmith's Mallet - 395g      Present: 11/12
Infinite Sprite King's Blessing - 28333g      Present: 3/12
Sprite King's Blessing 5 - 15430g      Present: 10/12
Sprite King's Blessing 4 - 14580g      Present: 10/12
Sprite King's Blessing 3 - 7562g      Present: 8/12



Spreadsheet can be found here.
No weekly tiered spender.
Expiration of the March loyalty rewards.
Introduction of the April loyalty rewards.

3/26/12 Patch Notes

Official patch notes here.

Nothing substantial. GVG reg appears to finally be fixed properly, ch1 is back down again, etc. Normal backup as usual.