I want to make an rpg.

[Clockwork]

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 ) 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.