Developers Corner

I am trying to propose for a new game type. In this design, the server side is basically for grouping and perhaps grouping only, everything else will be on the client side. Basically the philosophy is that, the server will define storylines and set up check points on the storylines and to keep track of only resources and critical items. It doesn't care about what the player will do on the client side.

1. Storyline
You start as a nobody in a village (client side), you follow the classic RPG game storyline as in the game Ultima VII. Everything is just like an old fashioned single machine RPG game. It could be a skill-based game on the client side.

As your toon grows, you feel the need of gears such as armors and weapons for further adventuring. The client side will not fulfill your gear needs. Now you need to group with people on the server side to get gears as well as other resources. The trick is, you adventure life and storyline are on the client side, while critical resources are located on the server side.

The play style is basically like this, you play on the client side for adventuring (RPG). At the same time, you connect yourself to the server to specify your class/profession, what kind of resource you would like to farm, that is, what kind of player party you would like to join. Alternatively, you can be a party leader to pick your crews, instead of the being picked. That is, you either put your name to the list of 'looking for group', or you may start a new party and looking for crews actively.

2. Classes/Professions
There will be basically 8~10 core classes, to form groups of 1~8 members. The combat system is basically turn-based, for more critical raiding/farming, you need a highly co-operative team to do the job.

The server side adapts a level-based system. You need to group to grow in levels. And level may only indicate the kind of resources you need corresponding to the storyline on your client side game.

On the client side, you continue your adventure into the deeper realm. You start to expand your village into a town, a city and a capitol. You start to build armies and your own kingdom. One day you will be informed that another human kingdom becomes your competitor and your target is destroy that competitor. Then there comes yet another human kingdom competitor. Then there comes an elf kingdom, or a dwarf kingdom, or an orc kingdom. So you go alone the storyline to continue to maintain your own kingdom and to face the popped-up kingdom competitors.

3. Client/server role
It is different from a single machine RPGs in that, the storyline is controlled and checked by the server. Actually, the server decides (randomly) what will be the next kingdom to pop up as your competitor. The server counts your resources and decides what your fate will be. Everything else will be on your client side.

Again, in order to compete with and to beat down your competitor kingdom, you need to complete RPG quests on the client side (the server is freed), yet in order to complete the mission and quests, you may need special types of resources. You need to form parties of the same level (looking for same resources types) to farm the resources on the server side.

[B]An Example[/B]
Here's an in-game scenario, as an example.

On the server side, I took the class of a human paladin tank. On the client side, I follow the storyline till I need to build a much tougher city wall for my kingdom. The critical resources for building such a city wall are a secret ancient architect design.

In order to get to the design,
first, you need to change my toon on the client side to a scribe with certain special skill gains, say, I need to gain an extra +20 inscription, +20 stone-crafting, +20 magery..... The server doesn't care about your current status, it only keeps track of whether "+20 inscription, +20 stone-crafting, and +20 magery" is achieved or not (without cheating). The server will only keep track of and to make sure of those changes are progressed. For example, my toon’s current inscription is 100 (maxed), stone-crafting is 0, and magery is 90. So I need to train my inscription to 120, stone-crafting to 20 and magery to 110. After this mission and quests are completed, my 120 inscription and 110 magery will gradually return to 100.

So I start to kill client side creatures, the server does not care about what monsters to killed, you need to find a suitable monster of your level, such that the combat will last long enough to trigger a gain. And the server controls such that you won't gain too fast and, not too slow either. There will be storylines which lead you to kill necessary bosses such that you may finally acquire the necessary skills. If you want to cheat on the client side, it is ok, yet you will be so bored to wait for the gains controlled by the server side.

After the questing by following the in-game storylines on the client side, I finally achieved the necessary skill requirements. The server thus qualifies me to enter a dangerous zone on the server side to continue the mission, which will be in the party mode. So I put my name to the list of "looking for group", and under the category of “level 30~40, dungeon Wrong”. So while you continue to manage, quest, kill monsters on the client side, you wait for a team to be formed, and only to dungeon Wrong. Other players of the same level with their own different needs may need also to go to dungeon Wrong. Finally, you gather together forming a party heading to the dungeon Wrong.

In the dungeon, we fight different monsters. I need to fight a specific boss to get the architect design. Other players need to fight other bosses for other quest items or resources. So finally, we finished our quests, killing the bosses for each other. And luckily, I get the architect design I need for building the new type city wall.

The game balance is that you need to level on the server side naturally (by server design). If a player goes too slow, he may not meet the level 30~40 requirement to go to Wrong in the above case. On the other hand, if the player goes too fast than the controlled storyline, he exceeds the level 30~40 group requirement. He thus has to pay dearly (in form of time, effort and gold) for the resources/quest items.

[B]PvP[/B]
1-on-1 PvP works similarly. You put your name and thus class and level to a list, while you venture through the client side storylines. Say, you are building the city walls of your kingdom in-game (on the client side), while you nominate yourself to the list available for 1-on-1 PvP. So someone would like to PvP with you, he will thus send you a message after seeing you on the list.

Group vs. group PvP works the same. First you need to form a PvP group on the server side, and then you look for another group to do the Group vs. group PvP.

As for guild vs. guild war, you need to join a player guild first, and to gather special resources and to build special units and facilities. Your guild may war with another player guild in siege. Other forms of player wars can be carried out similarly, such as racial wars or server side kingdom wars.

Wars can be at all levels, and wars will sink resources. Even the wars on the client side will consume resources. A player needs to farm local resources on the client side (critical resources will be checked by server, in the form of quests), he needs also to farm resources on the server side via grouping. Grouping will become natural, as everyone demands resources at the same level. And you don't need to know anyone to group. You just nominate yourself to be available and you will be picked up by the party leaders. Leveling will be natural too, as there is no motive for getting as high as possible. In contrary, you need to stay to the right level for the right resources controlled by the storylines.

So it cycles like this, you quest on client side, feel the demand for resources and items, then group hunt on the server side, gather the server side resources and items, then build a kingdom out, then war with other kingdoms via both pvm and pvp, thus consume and sink resource, then farm resources of various types, build and enhance your own kingdom, war again and again to sink resources.

If you save progress or items client side, they are open to exploit. You can't just send someone out to quest for 4 hours then bring them back to the server and them tell you the quests they finished or worse their rewards. To become totally disconnected from a server you would have no spawns, no view of other people in the world and probably no chat unless they put in some irc connection. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean, but it seems impossible as stated.

 On a side note, what is the reason you want to connect and disconnect from the server?

Never ever EVER trust the client to be capable of anything.

Originally posted by paulscott

Never ever EVER trust the client to be capable of anything.

 

I know this long time ago. I am trying to break it after knowing it so well. hehe...

Somehow it works like this;

[quote]
So the idea is that most of the time, you are playing a semi-traditional single player RPG game, but on occassion you connect to a server to play through dungeons or battles or the like with other people? And you're forced to play online to get certain widgets you need to proceed in the single player game?
[/quote]

Basically it is so. Actually, the server has its own "world", it is a MMORPG + a traditional single player RPG game. However, the MMO part is somehow driven by the single player RPG part.

[quote]
I think this kind of design makes a lot of sense - you let the individual player be the kind of world-changing hero that most MMORPGs simply can't support, while still giving the player the chance to interact with other human players. This is the kind of game design I have in mind when people talk about 'massively single player' games - there are a lot of people playing, but other players intrude into your personal world only indirectly.
[/quote]

Yes, the issue of cheating should be handled carefully. The design concept is that if the player cheats, he will be bored as the speed of progress is somehow controlled by the server. Moreover, if the player cheats, he may lose important information to complete his mission to gain access to important resources and items, as the server will regularly plant NPCs and thus quests and clues into the single player RPG part. If the player cheats, he may miss out what are planted and thus may fail to access critical resources.

[quote]
There are some concerns to consider - cheating in the single player game will be pretty trivial as the logic is all interpreted client-side. You'd need to manage the potential for cheats in the single player game to impact the multiplayer game. Also, you may be attracting a niche audience, as to really enjoy your game, the player needs to be interested in both long-term, potentially slow moving epic campaigns and short-term, rapid action multiplayer action.
[/quote]

On the other hand, they are always allowed to cheat on gathering the less important local resources in the single player RPG world. However, those resources will become useless if the design is right. For example, the design may require the player to first acquire a server side tool to do the harvesting. And right after the harvesting, those local resource should be combined with the important server resources to form semi-products. Extra local resource will decay on each server check.

Though he may cheat on getting local resources, since it can only stored in a form combining with the server resources/items, it is thus meaningless to keep extra local resources.

More importantly, local resources are usually obtained by following the single player RPG storyline and quests, if the player cheats by by-passing the in-game storyline, he will be bored most of the time.

Of course, no matter how cautious the designs are, players are always the most creative group of people, there's always a possibility that they may find out all they can cheat and ruin the game.

[quote]
One thing that's kind of handy is that you can show each player his own interpretation of events. For example, if you have three players with dwarf characters, two elves, and an orc, and they all band together for a castle raid, you could display all the players in a skin depending on what each local player would expect based on the situation in that player's single-player game. Sort of like in America's Army how each player always sees his team as the USians.[/quote]

Yes. I think that group hunting will occur on the server side. There will be a whole game world in the server side for grouping (and grouping only). That is, you solo in the single player RPG world, while you group hunt in the MMO server. The RPG world may just be a copy or a fragment of the server side MMO world. Say, the story is that due to a catastrophe, all players are brought to the different time spots of the same (or a fragment of) game world, so that each player will have his own copy of the world for his single player RPG part of the game.

The overall concept here is,
A (or several) main storyline is designed and implemented just as in a traditional sinple player RPG game, such as Ultima VII. The server will not care about how the player will play the game (as if it is a single player game). However, the server will gain control of the speed of progress of the game. The server will give out quests and clues by regularly planting quests and NPCs to the client side RPG. As a result, the players are forced to follow the designed storyline to get to the NPCs and to finish the design quests in order to gain access to critical resources and items.

Besides the storyline, the player has the ultimal goal of building, expanding and maintaining an empire. He thus needs to go along the storyline to get to the different quests in order to gain access to resources and items needed for the empire-building. He thus needs to group and farm the resources on the server side game world. He can't, however, over farm on the server side because the client story controls the progress for the player actually knows what to farm. The player thus has to go back and forth between the server game world and the client game world.

And the whole farming of resources and items serves but one purpose - to war with others in form of pvm or pvp. Resources are thus sunken or consumed war after war. To simply put, by going through the designed storyline in a single player RPG game, the player discovers what resources and items are needed for in various points of the game, he then farm those resources in both the local game world (soloing) and server game world (grouping). Then he uses those resources/items to build his own kingdom then to war with NPC empires or player empires to consume out the farmed resources. Then rinse and repeat.

Originally posted by a_name

If you save progress or items client side, they are open to exploit. You can't just send someone out to quest for 4 hours then bring them back to the server and them tell you the quests they finished or worse their rewards. To become totally disconnected from a server you would have no spawns, no view of other people in the world and probably no chat unless they put in some irc connection. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean, but it seems impossible as stated.

 On a side note, what is the reason you want to connect and disconnect from the server?

It doesn't matter, the solution is handy. You can cheat all you want for resources. Yet you need to combine them in proportion with server side resources in order to 'save' them or to store them.

The concept is that you solo on the client world, while you group hunt on the server world. On the server world you see everyone as you wish. The player needs to connect to server before he can play at all, even when he's playing on the client side only.

And the whole farming of resources and items serves but one purpose - to war with others in form of pvm or pvp. Resources are thus sunken or consumed war after war. To simply put, by going through the designed storyline in a single player RPG game, the player discovers what resources and items are needed for in various points of the game, he then farm those resources in both the local game world (soloing) and server game world (grouping). The he uses those resources/items to build his own kingdom then to war with NPC empires or player empires to consume out the farmed resources. Then rinse and repeat.
 

Well if your going like diablo and a lot of other action rpg games with the client and server method similar to what you described then yea I like it.  I was kinda disapointed that HGL wasn't set up like that.  But then when you step into MMORPGs it doesn't really work....

Imo nothing in an MMORPG should be "single player."  I'm one to spend a lot of time in MMOs playing by myself and doing quests but it looks to me like you want an awesome single player game nd then just add a server section to turn it multiplayer with events to make a storyline.  Maybe that would work for something like Oblivion where its a single player game and you could set up a server to add other player characters to interact with but overall an MMO shouldn't really work like that.   Or you could have something like spore where the "server" decides what shows up in your single player game in a sense.

But overall with massive ammounts of players playing together and information stored client side....it is just a no no.

Like the story concept though, and it could work just wouldn't be an MMO.