Building An MMO

[Depression Moon]

Hey everyone. I just wanted to share with you all that I was planning of making my own MMORPG one day and I was having a bit of trouble trying to find some balance for some of my classes. I'm trying to think of more spells abilities or limit breaks for some of my jobs and am also looking for some opinions as well about anything you have about them. I attached the document.

Edit: I changed the name of most of my spells to ones common in FF so we're all familiar with them.

[McLovin']

Do you mean an RPG? An MMO would mean it's available to the mass public and you have servers and stuff. Plus as an MMO you could recieve a letter from Square saying to change the names of all spells related to FF (ie Firaga).

[Iceglow]

hey DM what software/coding are you planning to use? Browser based or client based? MMORPG that looks and plays like FFT (strategy RPG)? Or one that plays like FFXII or that has a text interface?

I will say, the job classes are VERY ambitious for the start of a new game, whilst it is good to have these laid out be very fluid with them too. Now depending on your interface and browser/client decision you have different limitations. A major one in the MMORPG I work for (TPS) is balancement and believe me the combat there seems simple enough; you have skill you have stats what modify it, you have around 14 different classes of weapon and about 10 tiers of weapon you also have different armours and yet balancement is a fine tuning issue. 66% chance of striking with a 1hit kill move is not a good idea it'll hit more often than not and whilst if there are monsters in the game can you imagine if there is PvP? Everyone would just have these skills and just go around using them endlessly. Also theres other issues but I need more information before I try and advise you.

[Edgar]

Okay.

First and foremost, you'll need to answer Iceglow's question before we get anywhere. I don't see any details of the MMO overview in the document you sent. Is it going to be an RPG? RTS? TBS? FPS? Browser based? Without knowing this, it is impossible for anyone to give you solid advice.

Secondly, at this stage (assuming you are just starting out), in-depth details like what skills a job should have and balancing is not important. Balancing can always (and it always does) come later. That's what patches are for. It's totally impossible to make a totally balanced game and it's also impossible to attempt balancing without anyone to test your game first.

What is most important now is your game overview. Right now, you only need to decide (this is mostly for MMORPGs):-
1) Is your game going to focus on PVP or PVE? Or both?

2) How does a player progress as he levels up? Are there stats allocation? Are there skill trees? Can he change jobs? You don't have to decide if "oh at level 12, a black mage can cast fireball" yet. You need to decide "oh as you level up, you can change stats, acquire more skills and equip better items".

In other words, don't decide the details of what a player can do, decide what can he actually do.

3) The setting. Fantasy? Steampunk? Modern day? Futuristic? Something new?

4) How do players interact with one another? Is partying needed? Or is the game going to cater more to soloing?

5) The ultimate question that all MMORPGs face is this: "How to make grinding FUN?" Good luck with this. It mostly depends how 'fun' you want leveling up to be. Grinding is inevitably repetitive, but there are ways to make it feel less repetitive than the norm.

Thirdly, do you have a team with you at the moment? It'd be nice to have one since brainstorming can really answer most of these questions. Some of these questions cannot really be answered alone.

Bottom line is, we want to know the skeletal outlook of your game. "What makes your game a game?"

[Depression Moon]

There are a lot of questions here. This is some ideas for a RPG MMO and I'm not trying to make it now I have plans to for several years in the future. I was using FF related terms as described in my first post because I want to use familiar terms with the members here.

I want it to be PvE and PvP. I was mostly looking for concerns on the balancing of the jobs.

[Depression Moon]

I had just forgot to answer some earlier questions. I'm not concerned about any coding or anything at the moment it's just a future plan of mine. It will be in a fantasy setting of course and anything relating to specific detail of progression of the sort is not really on my mind at the moment, for anything else look at the post above.