The time has come for another Fantasy theme sandbox game. We haven’t had a true one — a good one — in so many years. I’m playing Fallen Earth, thinking about UO and SWG and how fantastic elements of these games are/were and then I think about the themepark model and how I’ve been increasingly frustrated and turned off by MMO’s lately. I would love to play a Fantasy MMORPG sandbox, and I have a big picture idea of how I would want it designed. The problem with so many of the games trying to be Sandboxes today lies with how their systems are designed and implemented. I’m not going to lie, these ideas are not entirely my own. I am basing this heavily on Star Wars Galaxies (pre-NGE/CU) because I feel so strongly that a Fantasy game with these mechanics/systems would astound people.
Combat
Traditional is always better. Age of Conan, Darkfall, and even Fallen Earth’s (even though FE’s isn’t terrible) combat illustrates that nothing is better than traditional. For those having a hard time understanding, just think about the basics of WoW’s combat system or EQ’s combat system — that is traditional.
Progression
Entertainer Skill Tree
Let’s do away with levels for progression and go to a skills system similar to what SWG used (pre-NGE because I have no idea what happened after), but not one like we’ve seen fail multiple times in the past few years. Borrowing heavily from SWG’s system, skills would be arranged in a tiered tree system. The system would be experience based meaning that if you used a sword you would earn sword experience. This experience could then be spent on sword tree skills that you can purchase and move up the tree. The tree system would be tiered with multiple paths to progress, ultimately leading to a “Master” tier at the top if you go up each branch. Obtaining the next rank in the tree allows you to unlock not only new abilities but improvements to the overall use of your skill or other bonuses.
A Master Swordsman in this Fantasy Sandbox would have knowledge in the use of 1h sword, 2h swords, and other sword-like skills with bonuses and attributes matching a Sword user. Such a skill tree would look similar to the Entertainer skill tree from SWG (shown on the right) where the Entertainer not only knows how to dance and play instruments, but also has become a specialist in entertaining (bonuses) and hair styles. Imagine a Sword user increasing their finesse or something. Similar trees would exist for Magic (offensive, healing, etc) and plenty of others.
There would be a limit to the number of skill points you can allocate. Perhaps you can only “Master” 1 entire tree, but you could have points to go up a single branch in another. This would allow you to be a Sword Master, but also be proficient in shields, or perhaps some healing magic, or buffs. If you wanted to be a “tank” you could “Master” whatever tree focuses on the defense and go up the 1h sword branch in Swords (Or maces, etc).
Armor use would be incorporated into trees. Anyone can wear simple cloth but to use higher level armors without immense penalties you will want to go up the branches in your tree that increase armor use. The major defense tree may have a branch dedicated to alleviating the penalties of heavy plate, whereas the magic trees would have a branch dedicated to giving the player bonuses that make up for some of the shortcomings of just using cloth. Regardless, armor will be important but not the end-all-be-all. You may come across a Master Swordsman who kicks the crap out of you and all he’s wearing is Cloth even though you’re in plate.
Unlearning skills would be as simple as pressing a button. However, you would lose all exp gained and spent on that skill. This would allow people to feel like they have some ability to experiment and change what they want to be without always being stuck in one play-style, but at the same time give the community a sense of permanence where people aren’t masters of everything or bouncing around. Investing time to earn “Sword Experience” enough to earn the top skill in a branch would be something you won’t easily want to abandon because you worked hard for it.
Crafting
Artisan Skill Tree
The beauty of the crafting system is that it provides literally everything. The entire economy is player driven and based upon a principle of constant need. To craft a sword requires resources. These resources come from areas of the world/region that are particularly rich in the resource. However, these resources would shift on a weekly basis making them harder to come by — again, very much borrowed from SWG. Where the system would differ from SWG is in the automatic gathering. SWG used harvesters that you placed and paid upkeep on that would extract the resources. You simply come back and collect. That doesn’t fit into a fantasy game too well, unless we stretch deeply into “magic”. I would prefer the manual collection of resources in this setting.
Resources would vary in quality. I might find Iron from a mine/rock in one location but it might only be of a .785 purity. Testing the resources in another location, perhaps 20 feet or even a mile in another direction could yield a richer purity at .984 which means I have found a much higher quality. The higher the quality, the better my ability to experiment with it during the creation process. Crafting something would not only depend on the richness of the resources, but allocating experiment points and then succeeding when experimenting. This introduces an enormous level of customization to the crafting process and diversifies the items crafted to the point that someone could have an Iron sword made by me and one by Bob and they could be extremely different. We both might have even used the .984 Iron but based on how I experimented my Iron swords might have more durability and his might do more damage, or my Swords might offer you some other bonus (let’s not even get into how freaking amazing this crafting system gets when we introduce magic to the equation).
Crafting would not be on a single item basis either. Bringing back Iron will take time and experimenting to find that perfect sword you want to make will take skill, effort, time, and more. Each individual piece of the sword (hilt, blade, etc) can be experimented on thus increasing customization exponentially. When it’s all put together and you have the template for the perfect sword it will take a long time to craft. Why not create 3, 4, or 5 swords at once? I see no reason why you can’t do this. In SWG we could create crates of pistols sharing the same stats and the market flourished.
Gear would break and be gone forever. Yes, it is necessary for the economy. You’ll get a LOT of use out of your things though and this will create a necessity for full-time crafters. As you use your gear it will degrade and you’ll lose condition. As you repair your gear it will lose durability. A weapon may have 100 condition but 10 durability. Eventually it’s going to break.
Player Housing/Cities/Shops
This is key. Players need the ability to set up their own buildings in the world freely (with the help of a player who is a construction crafter). Not only can players have houses, but they can convert these into shops that have NPC’s in them. Players can decorate their houses like this industry hasn’t seen in years with elaborate levels of customization (there’s a crafter for that). Cities can develop around this concept with players coming together and electing a mayor. Player cities won’t be like Darkfall cities that are all pre-determined. They can actually be placed freely and the Mayor can place buildings and choose which ones go where, etc.
If I’m a blacksmith I may want to have a forge near my house/shop or in the player city that I hang out in. I can have one made so that I do not have to travel to town all the time. If I’m an entertainer (Yes, I want Bards to come back and the social aspects of the Taverns to live again) then I’ll want a Tavern built. Imagine a player building his own Tavern off in the wilderness, perhaps near a popular hunting spot, and it turning into a thriving location for commerce, entertainment, and social gathering. Not only has this barkeep succeeded in his accomplishment but he has created a place for someone who makes drinks (yes, with bonuses for players) to sell goods, entertainers to hang out and receive tips, and players who love combat to have a place to come back and receive buffs (from watching dancers, etc) and stock up on supplies (again, provided by actual players).
Dungeons
These would be a mix of open-world and instanced. I’m not entirely against the idea of removing instances because they do have their place, however I do not see them as something that should be overused to compensate for a lack of quality open-world content. You won’t find amazing loot dropping from your average dungeon (in some, but not all, and never better than what can be crafted), but you will find ingredients in these dungeons that you can bring to a crafter that will allow them to augment your weapons and make them something special. This is key here. If I kill a dragon and bring back a fang then I can have that fang used in the creation process of my staff and it will allow the crafter to create a staff with magical properties and stats vastly superior than had he not used the staff when creating it (even if he used a .99 resource with experimentation points used where you wanted them).
PvP
Oh yes, there will be PvP. This is a key part of the game, in my opinion. While the game will not revolve around it unless you want it to, PvP will be rewarding and a part of the game with fun content. There will be sides (this won’t be a FFA PvP game — go away). Think Rebel vs. Empire, Albion vs. Hibernia vs. Midgard, etc. You can do battle with people anywhere in the world if they’re not of your realm, but there are areas of the world that are clearly designed for PvP content. These would resemble the old DAOC frontiers with Castles to claim.
Why PvP? Well, there would be a specific skill-tree (with its own limitation on points) for it that you could earn exp and allocate points into. It would be very, very difficult to earn this exp but you would not lose it. It would operate the same way the normal skill-trees do giving you the ability to remove points invested in something but lose the exp you spent. These abilities would give you a clear advantage, but resemble the older DAOC realm abilities.
The additional benefits of PvP could include something along the lines of DAOC relics.
In conclusion…
I really think this would work well. Obviously I have not gone into any details about the game world itself but I think it should clearly reflect a big open sandbox game world like we have seen in the past with Vanguard, UO, SWG (think of the planets being combined though..), and other games. Ultimately the sandbox style needs to be all about setting the player free while providing structure without the player knowing it because that structure is being a tool in providing freedom (ie, items breaking giving players a need for crafters, giving people the ability to play a full-time crafter, giving the game a full-time player-drven economy, and so on.)
It’s a rough big picture outline, but take this idea and run with it.