But I don't have any great ideas. This isn't someone who's just "dreaming" of doing something like this some day. I'm a programmer and I do game development. I have written several working MMO prototypes with basic RPG mechanics, trading, vendors, monster spawns, instances, etc. When I say I want to make an MMO, the question isn't "How?" but "What?"
I'm in the rare circumstance for the first time in my programming career where I really need an idea guy. I need someone who has a dream to make a solid game. An MMO that may not blow people's minds (or maybe it will) but people will play because it's fun and solid. I'm a big fan of most MMO games and have played my fair share of bad ones along with some really solid games. I appreciate all games from sandboxes to theme parks. There are games that try to go REALLY theme park and I don't think those are the greatest.
Why write this here? One, because maybe there's someone here who has this idea that they want to try. Maybe there's a handful of them. I want to try to build them. I got extra time and I have the ability.
The second is I'm honestly stuck. I get paid enough to live doing game development but truthfully, I have felt miserable lately. THe person I work for is amazing and we have a solid Zelda-like going. I'm proud of that game but I know I need something else to get me going. My hours are starting to decrease with him and while I need mroe money eventually, I want to have a project started I know is going to be the big thing or at least something that whoever I work with and myself can learn from. I still earn a semi-livable wage so I intend to devote a lot of time for the first few months to get it going, then start a review to see where it can go.
Truthfully, if it is a 2D MMO, I can probably put together a prototype in 2 months from scratch. I have random projects I could re-use but there's a few things i've learned that those things that don't implement. Some of them might be worth re-building. Not really sure. 3D would take more a little more time to get terrain and honestly haven't done any culling in 3D, but apparently Unity does a great job of handling that for you in 3D specifically.
Life is hard. Working for yourself is tough. Accomplishing your dreams is like climbing to the top of a mountain, only to realize there's another mountain 2x it's size waiting for you. But moving forward is always the most important thing. Or I guess up. YOu know what I mean.
Anyway, just wanted to rant a bit. Been feeling kinda down lately and truthfully, writing it down in a blog helps. This is the only blog I have that I actually use. Thankfully, this website still exists.
Real quick, it's kinda funny how much I come to this site still. I haven't watched ANY Starcraft in probably a year at least, and before that was years. But I come back here for some reason, at least once a day. Thanks for being awesome TL.net. It's nice to have a place to vent.
As an addendum, I notice how many emphasizer words I use. I need to stop doing that shit. This is like when I notice the words "here" and "there" in commentary. I can stop noticing it and it just starts to annoy me.
This is interesting because most of the time people are full of ideas but don't have the technical know-how. Funny to see the reverse for once. I think it would be hard to compete with the dozens of games using the "kill stuff, get loot" formula. I just watched a film about a linguist trying to learn a language from the last two living speakers left. I wonder if players cooperating to decode a language or doing other archaeological stuff could be made into a game. I've also been wanting to play a sci-fi, spaced themed roguelike but there's nothing besides FTL. Might be another niche to consider...
One can assume that plenty of successful linearities from lack of ideas to ideas to great ideas to awesome concepts leading into practicality have been kickstarted by music. and mashups "Diablo meets Eve online", for example, would be nuff said for me to check out a hypothetical product. Or "web space alliance remade".. "for stereoscopic 3d," and I'd preorder. "+ enhanced forum mafia support" —mind blown, would never play anything else ever again.
One of the things I never got was why we didn't get good SciFi RPGs with solid flying. Like imagine how much fun a game like KotoR would have been if you also had a sprinkler of freelancer in there. You could combine the story-telling aspects of classical RPGs with the flying part, money progression and mobility of space games.
But that would probably work better generally as a single player RPG than an MMO.
Also might be just me, but isn't an MMO a really an odd choice for a single person project? From all I know MMOs are the game type that requires the most sheer amount of work, because it needs a fun open world, aka a ton of assets and work, a solid server structure which is a huge issue for a single person.
I think Tibia has a lot of potential with it comes to top down view 2d game (Although I guess it could work in issometric 3d too).
Maplestory is a side-scrolling 2D MMO, but I feel it's art style doesn't help and updates over the years made it worse in general (although some story events and modern mechanics are cool). Characters are very dynamic there, so it could be a starting point in terms of mechanics.
I kind of feel like MMO's are trending towards the AR/VR side of things. Pokemon Go is still going strong afaik (i don't play, but my friends like it as a side game), and I've always wondered what a Sword Art Online AR/VR MMO would look like.
All the MMO's I can think of are fancy 3D characters with over-the-top moves, keyboard mashing, 71 different classes/jobs/characters, raid a dungeon, kill things for loot, etc...I found that appealing as a kid, but now there's so much stuff out there that I have 0 desire to play any of those games.
I've also wondered if it'd be possible to make a spy vs spy / mafia-esque / John Wick-style MMO game? Make a character, choose a starting country, blend in with the population, make an alternate life, choose your job, etc. Not sure how to handle what happens when characters die, but maybe you restart with the same stats in a different location? Maybe even give it a cyberpunk/sci-fi twist and start on a different planet? Just thinking out loud here.
Hi hoby, I would love to be your idea guy! I'm an aspiring game developer, I'm self-taught and currently learning Unity, focusing on programming. I've always seen myself more as a game designer than a programmer, but I saw a clearer learning path in game programming, and I've been enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. I don't have experience on any big projects, but I guess on an MMO I'd fit more as a gameplay/level/system designer than a creative/narrative/world designer.
I'm always looking for other gamedevs i can collab with and learn from, you seem experienced and describe a project I would love to be a part of.
Also I resonate with everything you say about starting a big project even if it ends up being just for learning purposes and about accomplishing your dreams, I've realized what my gamedev dreams are recently but I feel it's so hard moving towards them.
I often think about game concepts and game ideas I can't develop yet, but MMOs seemed so out of reach I've never thought about them, trying to keep my feet on the ground. So I don't have many ideas yet, but I've been trying to come up with some since I saw your post and it's been fun. I'm excited to do some research and get some more ideas after I know what would be possible and what you'd like to build, since, even with your experience, an MMO sounds like a huge challenge for a super small team/solo developer.
I'll PM you my contact details hoping you'd like to talk with me, even if we don't end up collabing I'd love to learn more about you and I feel I could get a lot of useful advice from you!
EPT
