Roguelike MMORPG - Game Design Discussion

Right, heres an idea I want to discuss! A Roguelike MMORPG.

Let me preface this chat with:

?? This is not a Construct limited chat, it is a high level game design chat ?? I have no intention of developing this game as it is waaaaaay beyond the scope I can achieve. So I'm not farming you for ideas. ?? This could be purely futile, and entirely impossible. If so, tell me! Thats kind of the point... am I crazy for thinking this could work?

So with that out of the way, heres my idea.

A classic roguelike set in a multiplayer world. Where everyone can interact and progress together in the world. You can either work together to fight the monsters, or fight each other.

It would still have the traditional elements of a roguelike such as Dungeon Crawling, Random Generation, Permadeath, tile based gameplay. It would not inlcude turn based gameplay for obvious reasons.

I have thought through some of the technical problems, and some of the story/setting ideas.

Technical Thoughts

Problem: If every player is free to move around, and free to attack other players, how do you prevent high levels camping the spawns and just constantly killing new players. Or even just wandering around... and killing new players. Solution: Picture the world as a tower (I'll be referencing this a lot. So, get used to it!). The tower has floors to it, these are technically infinite due to the endless random generation aspect, but... floors. You map these floors to the player levels. When you spawn as a level 1, you are on floor one. To level up, you must physically travel to Floor 2.. thus becoming a level 2 character. Once you have gone up, you can't come back down. So while you could still have an experienced player hunting new players... they will all be the same INGAME level, balancing it out atleast 80-90% Problem: Roguelikes are randomly generated, how do you handle multiple players (hopefully 1000's) who want to A) Interact with other players but B) have their own random rooms. Solution: Back to the tower, on each floor is a "Room". This room can be arbitrarily sized. From an actual room through to a city, right now it doesn't matter. The idea is that the "World" is a grid of "rooms" and each room is only generated when a player visits it for the first time. So lets say Player 1 spawns in Room 1. It generates. Player 2 spawns in Room 1, and gets the exact same room, and can interact with Player 1. Player 1 goes East, gets a new random room. Player 2 goes West, and gets a new Random room. They can both go back to Room 1, or to the room the other players went to... It is a MMORPG remember. Problem: This raises the problem of late comers getting only pre-generated rooms. Lets say 1000 players have played the game. Now Mr 1001 comes along, and they never get a new room. Worse still, Mr 999 dies and respawns (it is permadeath) in Room 1... and it's the same Room 1 they had before. Solution: Room Resets. There are two types of Room Resets I can picture. The first is to do with visiting an already generated room. The second is for re-generating rooms. Type 1, a room can either reset it's contents (loot, monsters, puzzle items etc etc) constantly so theres always a steady stream of enemies pouring through the walls for example and loot is always there for each new player (one player can only take it once though).. or once there are no players in the room it resets. The other type is to do with re-generating rooms, which is tricky. You want to keep rooms around for a while so players have a familiar path if they backtrack. But re-generate them eventually to keep the game fresh. My idea is to reset a timer everytime a player enters the room, and start the timer when there are 0 players inside. if the timer reaches some time (example, 60 minutes) then the room can re-generate.

Setting Thoughts

Multiplayer games always have multiple Servers you can pick from. I picture these servers being called "Adventurer Guilds", each time your character dies you get the opportunity to pick a new "Guild". Now, most people will pick the same because it is a server and people pick that for lag reasons etc, but this does allow players to get more variety. And also spreads the players out, increasing the chance of room re-sets. You could also have "Private Guilds" these would be groups of players who want to play together. They can setup their own server and run that in private mode. Continuing on with the "Tower" idea, that would be the setting. You would be an adventurer who is exploring a powerful wizards tower. This explains the changing, and seemingly infinite size.

Right. Thats my thoughts so far on some of the problems and how I would work around them.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the concept as a whole, and whether there is anything I missed. Or any glaring mistakes that would make this simply impossible?

As well, what would you like to see in a game like this? What would you do for the design and setting? Etc etc etc!

Regarding the idea of separating players automatically according to their level, it's true that it would prevent the higher ones to kill newbies but it would be too restrictive. Now imagine a level 100 player that invites his friend to join the game, they couldn't play together because of this block! The same goes with fellow players that only differ by one level. Also not all players like to play with the risk to be killed by other ones, some of them want to play pacefully. Therefore you could split the "rooms" in two types: "friendly rooms" do not allow players to kill each other, "danger rooms" allow that. You could also put better resources in "danger rooms" to counterbalance the risk. This would allow players to choose which play style they want every time that they change room.

The room resetting mechanism has also some drawbacks: players do not know when a room will be resetted since they don't know how many players are in a room and also any player that enters would reset the timer, that may cause the rooms to never reset when there are many players and they would end up in quitting for boredom. Therefore i suggest to set a "deadline" to any creating room that lasts approximately ten times the timer and when the dealine passed no player can enter the room and once that all players in the room are gone it becomes empty.

Third, I imagine that players would enjoy a way to revisit a room. To make it possible, each randomly generated room actually generates from a random seed (have you played to "the binding of Isaac"? ), this seed is visible in the room info as well in the player game log. The player can input a seed in a free room in the lobby and regenerates the same exact room as before.

Regarding the idea of separating players automatically according to their level, it's true that it would prevent the higher ones to kill newbies but it would be too restrictive. Now imagine a level 100 player that invites his friend to join the game, they couldn't play together because of this block! The same goes with fellow players that only differ by one level.

Very good point, I guess that my vision ddn't have people lasting very long. Each "Ascent" of the tower so to speak would be max an hour. You're going to die after that. It's a continual resetting world and your characters are the same.

Though, now I think maybe you need something that sticks around to make it engaging to come back. Maybe permanent upgrades that stay between characters/deaths?

Also not all players like to play with the risk to be killed by other ones, some of them want to play pacefully. Therefore you could split the "rooms" in two types: "friendly rooms" do not allow players to kill each other, "danger rooms" allow that. You could also put better resources in "danger rooms" to counterbalance the risk. This would allow players to choose which play style they want every time that they change room.

Definitely agree, either make it a server thing, or have rooms spawn with a 50% chance of being PVP and mark it somehow. Maybe a red cross on the doors to enter those rooms... definitely would need to be addressed.

The room resetting mechanism has also some drawbacks: players do not know when a room will be resetted since they don't know how many players are in a room and also any player that enters would reset the timer, that may cause the rooms to never reset when there are many players and they would end up in quitting for boredom. Therefore i suggest to set a "deadline" to any creating room that lasts approximately ten times the timer and when the dealine passed no player can enter the room and once that all players in the room are gone it becomes empty.

I like the deadline idea. Physically stop players entering a room, or maybe... regenerate it anyway. Players inside wont notice, they still get the old room. But anyone NEW coming in gets the new room. Definitely a technically difficult problem to solve!

Third, I imagine that players would enjoy a way to revisit a room. To make it possible, each randomly generated room actually generates from a random seed (have you played to "the binding of Isaac"? ), this seed is visible in the room info as well in the player game log. The player can input a seed in a free room in the lobby and regenerates the same exact room as before.

Would you allow them to still get loot etc from it? Or is it purely for showing off "Hey look at this cool room I found"?

Bro if u want to create mmo roguelike better to look tomenet, already roguelike with mmo elemetns like party, guilds, houses. Game free and opensourse.

TomeNET

is an online multiplayer rogue-like role-playing game, derived from MAngband (Multiplayer-Angband). TomeNET loosely bases on the stories of J.R.R. Tolkien mainly "The Lord Of The Rings", hence the name "the Troubles of Middle Earth" or alternatively "the Tales of Middle Earth". The final goal in TomeNET is to destroy the fallen god Melkor who is known by the name of Morgoth, Lord of Darkness.

Tomenet -ascii screen:

Tomenet 1-bit graphics:

Features:

Real-time multiplayer online rogue-like gameplay; time passes slower on deeper levels to make up for speed gain of players and monsters, keeping the real-time experience at an optimum Day/night changes, four seasons, weather Sound effects and dynamic background music Normal server and ironman rules server (dubbed 'RPG server') Various character modes, including: Traditional rogue-like (one life), MAngband-style (infinite resurrections), PvP-mode for killing each other off in the game world or in a special PvP arena Allow non-PvP mode chars to still fight each other in friendly duels that won't kill the player who loses Automatically scheduled special events Players may create artifacts if they have the required resources Post-king gameplay: Characters that have beaten the main boss, Morgoth, may venture into another insanely dangerous dungeon to try and find the last remaining path to Valinor, to possibly retire on its shores Over 250 static artifacts, infinite random artifacts, over 200 special item powers, over 1000 items, over 1100 monsters and many 'ego monster' types ie variations of base monsters Over 200 types of floor features/terrain Multiple towns and a rich world map with lots of completely different types of dungeons spread out over it Parties and guilds, which feature shared houses and internal chat 18 distinct races and 13+ classes to choose from Skill system allowing for specialization, for example put your rogue's emphasis on being a hideous backstabber, a user of shadowy magic, or an infamous shoplifter who even steals items from the black market without being caught ..most of the time. Class and race specific special abilities such as "cloaking mode" for rogues or "firestones" for draconians A variety of shape-shifting classes and features Create hybrid classes that allow for unusual combinations of abilities and skills Many special stores in towns (Casino for gambling; possibility to play a game of Go) and dungeons; dungeon towns (in a special ironman competition dungeon) Players may turn their houses into stores that sell items in their absence Powerful macro system, featuring a wizard that makes macro creation easily done in three steps even by beginners. Dual-wielding of 1-handed weapons for certain extra combat boni if you choose to forego heavy armour Parrying and blocking with weapons and shields respectively Different combat stances, special melee and ranged techniques that cost "stamina" to use Advanced commands for handling certain tasks without annoyances, such as 'x' which combines wear/wield and take-off in a special manner Different types of monster AI regarding movement and combat that will result in challenging behaviour Players may create a golem that heeds their command (albeit more of a fun feature than of serious use) Spell system and certain other game aspects are handled by LUA script which allows for seamless updates without requiring players to manually download anything in case something gets adjusted, changed or fixed Players may create own spellbooks from combining single spells of their choice into blank books