I want to make an rpg.
 

Hello, Aeko here~

I'm pretty sure Graal is going downhill... I know it's something that's always been said before, but the pc version is dying, losing developers and all that... While more i-servers continue to be released. iClassic and iEra seem to be fun and where everyone is now, iZone just seems horrible and, no offence to MD or any of the delt staff, I think Delteria should only really be considered for the hosted status until it is much more polished.

Anyhow, apart from that, I've tried to attack the people I need to, to try and get izod made, but that seemed to end up being a sort of fruitless effort. SO, I thought I'd post what my ideal ideas (which everyone seems to have :D ) are, for an RPG genre server.

To start off with, I think I'll address something many people seem obbsessed with when it comes to creating an rpg server...

Nations:

Nations and nation wars always seem to be the main focus point in the fair few of rpg server's I've tried to help get underway. The nations and their wars that are deemed necessary dictate that the gmap be a huge open world. It dictates that people will be separated into usually three or four large groups destined to argue and dive into drama about kings and queens and all the positions, putting power into a few select players hands over the mass of usually equally deserving players, with the exception of altering play styles.

I probably sound bias against the whole nation theme, which is true, I've never liked it for the reasons above. They have little player interaction apart from going from "Join my nation" to "lets go fight". To try and resolve these issues, I believe it's best to turn the nation idea into several smaller ideas that give a bit more. Broken down, nations could seemingly become Guilds, Alliances, Citizenship, Town Control, and more.

Guilds:

Guilds are giving players the ability to start a family. They begin as low levels and work there way up before suddenly having the opportunity to use what they've acquired to purchase a guild of their own, fill it with players, and rise to be judged as an amazing, well known group, or maybe infamous, lazy or extremely exclusive, from not known at all.

Guilds can offer players customization, adding something unique to players to set them apart from others with the title of their current guild beside there name, and as the guild gets better, they can have their own icon and the like, and various benefits associated with being in a guilds. Guild Bank, Guild houses, Guild events, guild chat, guild alliances, alliance chat, guild icons, guild pvp, being able to create your own guild and managing it and it's people. I believe guilds trump nations nearly entirely, and if no member limit is such, why not simply make a nation of a guild if you can? Nations should always have been able to rise, and fall.

Citizenship and Town Control:

I've played a lot of mmorpg's, and love them to death. The most unique aspects some of them are things I think best emulated for the sake of being that much more involved.

Most rpg servers, if not all servers in general, I've worked with on graal always followed one aspect. A common OSL, a sort of home base, for players.
I found one mmorpg that did this differently, and I loved it. This idea was Citizenship. To comply with further customization, players can choose which town, or area if applicable, they should choose to claim their citizenship. For ease of starting out, every player should start with the same town, and be able to choose which town they would like to live in afterwards. Certain things such as location, type of town, general look of the town, how filled it is, what the shops carry, what events are held in the town, what type of church is based near the town, or which guild controls the town can all be deciding factors when choosing citizenship.

To choose citizenship, players would have to find an npc in the town to renounce your citizenship (if you currently have citizenship in that town), tell you that you already are a citizen elsewhere, or offer you citizenship in the town (perhaps for a fee or certain conditions met).

The pro's of having citizenship would be spawning in this towns very own inn (osl) and having the ability to essentially live there. Of course other means of travel should be around, so you are always able to move around, but this town would be where you would come back to upon death or using a return scroll or the like. A mention of your current citizenship could be shown in your lore, and the towns emblem shown in your personal profile.

Towns could be further along with the idea of taxing current citizens, certain towns having higher and lower tax based on population, the amount of citizens in a town may garner greater rewards based on population for controlling guilds.

As far as Town control is concerned, I'm not all that inclined to say I know just how it should be done. I believe that guilds should always have the ability to decide to try and take it, but then you don't want there being too many guilds with the town always changing owners. With this in mind, I believe it best that the town guild in control have a minimum a day or two of guaranteed control of the town (the town could have flags and banners that change by scrips to show the controlling guilds emblem...?). The guild could be challenged by others afterwards for control of the town, and upon winning, be granted more guaranteed time before being able to be challenged again. the act of abusing this with people simply letting themselves lose would be handled by guards and staff with severe punishment.

Of course the benefits of controlling the town would mean possible taxes collected would be forwarded to the guilds bank, and discount shop prices for the guild and things along those lines.

Gmap:

I can understand the love for an openworld gmap. being able to explore and such with everything being right there. However, I've always advocated for the use of small gmaps. Ranging from no more than 4x4 or 5x5 unless REALLY needed. In this use, and size, every area should have sufficient space for whatever they need, giving each specific town/area/forest/dungeon/graveyard/whatever it's own small gmap that connect to others, letting you travel by foot (of course as you get higher in level, you should be able to unlock teleportation or other methods of travel). This is also usually best explained by image, so I'll simply do that with an old image I made for somewhere.


It should be a simple concept to grasp, but it allows for more than an open world I believe, and lets developers do more in a certain constrained space rather than spread a town out thinly across a large area. It allows for developers to block a certain area out easily by simply having a road block or something of that sort until the next area is developed and released, rather than blocking the area off with a million ugly staff blocks. It'd also allow much greater diversity in terms of graphics, not being held to one tileset for an openworld, each small gmap could use a certain tileset, letting developers create areas that have their own graphics and tiles. Now I'm not entirely knowledgeable on if this is doable with scripts on a gmap, but either way, I'm willing to bet it's easier to do it with separate gmaps. :o

GP and ET's.

Personally, I don't think GP's and ET's need RC access. I propose that while each of teams have an admin to oversee things and have rc access is fine, the rest shouldn't. Guards could be voted for after however long, via an in game event by players. Players would run for positions and be voted on by other players to be Guards (GP's) and Event Planners (ET's) who would get in game gui tools with the minimum power to do thier jobs to a certain degree, while the staff would hire their own Guard Captain/Judge and Event Master who would have rc access and have the power to grant heavier punishments to players and have larger scale events with better prizes.

Of course there can be other positions too that require no real need for much more other than a title and maybe a special in game piece of equipment or something. Players could vote for Teachers (FAQ's), and other titles.

Religion:

Now, I'm not advocating religion, but by itself, it offers a huge chance to provide lore in a rather non-invasive way in game. Churches in game are in random areas, some in certain towns. They each worship their very own god, different from all the rest and usually based on an element or the like (Death, Life, Creation, The wind...). These gods would all have their own lore, and be rivals, friends with others, but it would be a sort of daily quest for players.

Players would first begin by entering the church as a regular person. If interested in joining the church, players could request to be invited by an already existing member of a certain rank. The player would be asked to read the lore, and the existing member would test the player with a few questions based on the lore. If the player answered enough correctly, he would be allowed to join.

The church is a place that, once joined, offers a few options to players. You can come and pray every day for a some experience. You can opt to pray for items instead, receiving return scrolls to the town or area it's based in, or other such options. Every time you pray, your faith stat rises slightly, which determines your rank in the church. Reaching higher ranks grants you the ability to invite new players, receive more experience for praying, and even pray for the god to bless you with a large buff, or bless you with an item based on your god (ex. Dwenya's cuffs, Shyia's belt...).

Certain players of rank can once a week (no more than once a week at all) have a special ceremony in the church called 'Mass'. Mass involves gathering players from the church into the pews as the person hosting the event talks about the lore and such of their god and tells a story that must last a certain time minimum. when Mass is over, each players that joined the room for mass will acquire a significant exp. gift, and a small blessing buff. Mass would be a chance for players to essentially hold their own small events, and teach different lore each week, totally dependent from staff.

Of course if players chose to just hold mass and do nothing, or invite new players and not test them, certain players of rank could request staff to banish them from the church, preventing those players from even being able to enter the church for a period of time and removing all of their faith.

Lose faith, and the ranks acquired with it, slowly, by not attending church to pray.

Profile:

Most servers use the (right click) classic profile, showing age, and various comments. In an RPG, the profile should be used to show player level, certain stats, and basic information. This is also a place for a player to show off, having a tab to show their legend, and a place to show off their hard earned equipment.

The players legend would be a kind of diary. It would hold the date in which the player was born (when the chara. was created) as a first entry. Each entry after that would be earned by a hard quest, or something different;

Aeko was born on the 2nd day of Deoch 19.
Aeko was killed by a Poison Slime (Level 2).
Aeko renounced citizenship of Alredge.
Aeko became a citizen of New Alexandria!
Aeko helped the queen overcome her illness.
Aeko attended the Church of Ifits Mass.
Aeko married Chompy, 14th day of Deoch 22.
Aeko divorced Chompy, 15th Day of Deoch 22.
Aeko completed the journey to the desert island of kings.

Starting Out:

I've always enjoyed games where a player starts on a certain sort of beginners island, or Novice area, and when they reach a certain level, they decid on a class and are granted passage to the main continent (or choose to stay and level to 99 in the noob area :D )

Classes and Advancement:

Classes and advancement are two sought after goals in an rpg. As such, I believe a fair number of classes should be offered, the new classes being an occasionally (rare) update. Advancements should come in modest time, for example going from Novice, choosing Archer, and eventually become a Ranger, and then a high leveled Sniper.

Upon reaching each advancement, the player would be rewarded with new skills to place skill points acquired through leveling into.

Upon the higher levels, based on a system with 100 levels, a player would get a final decision ~lv95. To choose to Master their class (becoming Master Sniper...) and advance to lvl 100 while obtaining several new powerful skills, or choose to dual class, starting anew at lvl 1 (with certain skills from the old job unlocked permanently) and advance to 95 in a new class.

If a 'choose your own stat points' after leveling system were involved, the formula for certain skills would be quite different. Meaning you would be building pure STR to build a warrior of pure power, the STR improving his damaging skills, though not truly assisting in making his Defensive spells better. While a Warrior improving his VIT stat would have less damage, but amazing defense and health, and improved Defensive spells. No stat would be unused, as even going INT on a warrior would vastly improve certain warrior spells. This would allow for MUCH more diverse builds and playstyles the player could decide upon, and make choosing Mastery or Dual-classing a hard choice.

Balance would best be applied on endgame characters...

Inventory:

EVERY server I've helped has followed the same 32x32 icon grid. This offers 0 information apart from an image and maybe a name.

Please remove the Grid, make it a list, and provide the name, description or stats besides an icon. o-o...

Staff:

Don't hire co-managers. Don't have any ET/GP/FAQ/Non-dev until the server is playable. Don't worry about rights unless someone is abusive, dont attack people for idling, it makes RC look more full, and people work better when they're not alone. Don't deal with drama, just ignore it and let the person/people get over it. Don't let people get away with doing nothing and still wanting their voice heard.

o-o...

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Anyhow, I'm putting these idea's out here in the hope that someone else wants to make an rpg server like this, maybe we can get several people together :D If not, then I'd love for people to at least see an idea or two here they like and perhaps use them. I'm sure if I came back in day or two I could write things I've forgotten, but I'm sort of burnt out and cant think of anything else after writing this much.

Diversity, customization, and enjoyment are three things I'd want to see in an rpg. And this is how I would do it. :p

Wow I really love this concept, good job at explaining it aeko. Some stuff that really stuck out for me were the town taxes, split gmaps, and church. Really good ideas.

You would need a pretty expierenced team to pull this off, but I am rooting for this concept to turn into reality.

One question though; for the actual content of gameplay, did you plan it to be just a guild pvp takeover system or for it to have more of a solo questing element?

Good luck. :)

Didn't really touch on solo play at all, as the rest is all basic rpg stuff o-o... If I had to pick, I'd say I'd want profiency-based fighting to be more of a basis for gameplay rather than solo questing, (which in it's own right is nice, but is limited and a bit tricky to dev), while guild pvp being something that happens for you only if you want to join it.

I think that's very interesting. I really like the concept, and agree on alot of points. If you ever need a hand with levels or anything, happy to help out.

poor Chompy

No offence, Delteria "Iphone", is just as polished as Era Iphone and Classic Iphone and has a little bit more content then Zone iPhone, Ask Snakeandy, Xor and or Matt. They can both can contest to that. Hosted Tab is for servers to show there potential and possible rail in some staff. Delteria already has this and a structured system with a set focus. I don't think there is 1 PC server, that's as polished as Delteria in my honest opinion.

Well then I look forward to seeing nothing about it change after releasing.... o_o

And as for polishing on Hosted, I mearly meant things such as the horrid GUI and a few things like that. :(

I'd have to agree 100%

compared to what it could be - all graal servers fall very short of anything amazing. I think the only main reason people play, and continue to play.. is the community.

i can totally get into an action RPG. i just hate leveling up.

How big do you propose those different areas that you showed in that image to be? In my experience PC Graal does not have the playerbase to cover gmaps that are extraordinarily big, and even those that are smaller. That's an issue we've had on Era for quite some time. We have the highest PC player count (usually) and still have trouble spreading the players out even with added incentives to go to other places. People just find a spot where everyone else is that kind of becomes "the hangout," so to speak.

That being said, do you have any ideas to spread out the player base so that all of your different areas are being utilized?

All MMOs have that problem. It doesn't go away. Just accept it.

Players will always have some place where they like to return, and it's usually the area where the most commerce and activity is going on. It's mostly about socialization more than anything.

However, if it's really such a big issue, put the most important resources to players (like banks, hospitals, event buildings, etc) in locations that are spread very far apart instead of putting all the most commonly-used facilities near one location. Minor facilities like player-run shops, recycling centers, and so on are less important to spread out, as players will usually return to those places only if they are looking for commodities. What you want to have them do is more actively seek out their necessities first.

If you account for travel times from location to location, it should give you a good idea of about how long players may be spending away from "the hangout."

If you're going to do this, go with something purely action. No auto-hits, make people work for their damage and have to figure out positioning. Maybe even completely change up the control scheme and do WASD with mouse controls.