What MMO(RPG or otherwise) setting would you like to see the most in a NEW release?

Before I get started, yes I'm aware some of these settings have already been covered, but I'm not interested in that. I'm more curious as to what everyone else feels is missing in the MMO market.

Let's assume your favorite developer was about to embark on a new MMO IP. All the mechanics you personally love and improvements you've wanted from said developer have been announced along with one of the above settings (or something else you specify). What would it be? There's so much history and variety in fictional genres that developers could be diving into for source material, yet most keep rehashing the same settings over and over.

Brainstorm, people. If you want it, lets start talking about it! You never know who may be reading.

I think a cyberpunk MMO would be pretty cool. It could add a lot of different types of game play we aren't used to seeing. Like a PVP system revolved around Hacking your enemies in cyberspace rather than just running up to them and shooting/stabbing their faces.

The Oregon Trails, DO IT!!! I'll actually play a MMO then

If your not voting for Cyberpunk or Lovecraft you are doing it wrong!

Isn't The Secret World kinda gothic horror?

Hahaha a World War 1 MMO. How fucking amazing would that be?

I remember running with a group of cowboy vigilantes in Fallen Earth, and that was kick-ass. I would love to recreate that in an MMO Western with the GB Gaming Hub dudes.

@Pr1mus:

Yup, but there's never enough Lovecraftian horror, in my opinion >:)

@No0b0rAmA:

I know, right? lol Brutal PvP.

@Aronman789:

I've always wondered why it's never gotten a proper treatment. Seems like a setting that would be very conducive to the MMO formula. And, yes, FE came pretty close, mostly because the two genre settings are just a step away from one another heh.

Pokemon. And I want neither the traditional Pokemon battle system (unless they can find a way to make it work well in an MMO) nor a really generic MMO combat system. I want something different, just set in the Pokemon universe.

P. If it's an option, I'll always choose P. Wait, that came out wrong.

I'd probably never buy an MMO, but an Old West MMO would be different.

Bible Horror.

Tied between cyberpunk & Lovecraft. Though not enough sci-fi rpg/mmo out there and a well crafted one would be also welcome.

A wild west MMO could be neat. For me, the thing is is that it would need to be a very large world and could allow you to create your own settlements. I guess it could be like EVE, where you go out to find mining areas (gold, silver, oil, there's a lot you could do in this setting) and basically have an economy ran by the community. Run your own saloon, be the sheriff, a bandit, whatever. I don't ever see it happening, but a duder can dream.

@Butano:

This is what I've thought for awhile too, which is partially why it's the first option hehe. I also like the idea of Dust 541's connectivity to Eve, and think there needs to be far more of this. As in having separate, dedicated modes of play for each preference instead of just cramming all the archetypes into the same game system. As another hypothetical example in the Space/Sci-fi genre; 30ish players assigned to a capital ship, engineers could space walk on the sides of the ships, pilots would play as a space sim, security and shore parties would play as a FPS/TPS, etc etc just as a short example. So many dynamic possibilities when you have these elements working and relying on each other.

cyberpunk allows for alot of style and creativity

Space, just done properly. I want to zip around the galaxy in a ship crewed by me and my friends, landing on remote planets and having on-foot adventures. There should be 100% real-time space battles where I could be strolling around my ship as it gets hit with a laser, tearing open the hull and sucking me into space. It should be player-run and have a fiction as fleshed out and serious as Mass Effect.

EDIT: Oh, and the soundtrack should be made by Orbital, Leftfield, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis and Aphex Twin, to create properly sci-fi ish tones.

@Grimhild said:

@Butano:

This is what I've thought for awhile too, which is partially why it's the first option hehe. I also like the idea of Dust 541's connectivity to Eve, and think there needs to be far more of this. As in having separate, dedicated modes of play for each preference instead of just cramming all the archetypes into the same game system. As another hypothetical example in the Space/Sci-fi genre; 30ish players assigned to a capital ship, engineers could space walk on the sides of the ships, pilots would play as a space sim, security and shore parties would play as a FPS/TPS, etc etc just as a short example. So many dynamic possibilities when you have these elements working and relying on each other.

Hell yes. I would lose my life to this. SPACE OPERA ADVENTURES ONLINE.

A colorful yet contemporary setting, like Earthbound. I'm sick of all the fantasy settings with swords and shields. Something with the same sense of humor.

I guess what i'm saying is that i want another Earhtbound?

Third person World War I MMO where you play as Animorphs.

i had this weird idea for something that follows our time line like when you start its in the stone age and as you lvl up you go up in the time line where everything follows your from a cave to castle and maybe up to our time-line. and for an expansion you to in to the future. i think it could be really cool but its properly near impossible to make it so its good

Zombies? WHERE THE HELL ARE THEY?

@Dexter_Morgan_:

I would fold that into the "Post Apocalyptic" setting since things rarely go well after the zombie break out.

EDIT: Unless you're a zombie.

I think something like the world in The Diamond Age could be a good setting for a game - not just an mmo. Highly advanced nano technology with a combination of traditional cyberpunk and neo-Victorian aesthetics.

@Harkat said:

EDIT: Oh, and the soundtrack should be made by Orbital, Leftfield, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis and Aphex Twin, to create properly sci-fi ish tones.

Absolutely. I'd also add Telemetrik:

EDIT: +1 for Leftfield. I wish they were still putting music out :|

I'm one of those people who still pines for a good Zombie/survival mmorpg. What I mostly want is an extremely large and persistent world, where warring in factions won't just win you points in set arena (think WOW), but one faction can actually conquer another's land, with real impacts, and make factions far more player controlled, like in EVE in regards to Corporations. I just think the more flexibility and control players have over the MMORPG world, the better it is.

@Pr1mus said:

If your not voting for Cyberpunk or Lovecraft you are doing it wrong!

Isn't The Secret World kinda gothic horror?

I would love to see a good Lovecraftian game, but an MMO doesn't really fit for me.

@Inkerman:

Yes, and I think all these EVE references are on point, in that they created a great game space and basically handed the players the reins and said "have at it." There needs to be way more of this. I think most developers miss the point that if you give players a reason to care about their game space, you don't have to keep paying writers to crank out repetitive quests since the player base will do it for them and yield far more interesting results, just from the chaos. There's far too much linearity that force every player to tread the same ground over and over. Even in SW:TOR, the "individual" quest lines (that everyone else of the same class was doing as well) only constituted about 20% of your experience. The rest was the same old shit. Enjoyed the first run through it, I suppose, but that could've easily been achieved better with a different formula that didn't adhere to the standard MMO blueprint.

@Grillbar:

If you think about some of the games we have now, as opposed to, say, 20 years ago, we might have thought that impossible at the time, too ;) This is one reason I wanted to get this post out there; if we don't challenge the rate of progress, it stagnates. I see that as a package deal of being a gamer, to constructively encourage developers to push it further instead of just playing it safe and recycling the same idea over and over that have increasingly reduced entertainment and longevity that people will still go and fork out $60 dollars for. It's a reciprocal relationship between us and them.

@Grimhild said:

@Harkat said:

EDIT: Oh, and the soundtrack should be made by Orbital, Leftfield, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis and Aphex Twin, to create properly sci-fi ish tones.

Absolutely. I'd also add Telemetrik:

EDIT: +1 for Leftfield. I wish they were still putting music out :|

Nice. Cool DNB like that should kick in whenever you're raiding ships. And yeah, pour one out for Leftfield while blasting Storm 3000 and looking to the starry skies.

Modern day for sure. Everything else is unknown and too easy to produce.

Steampunk, cyberpunk, or space.

Or steampunk/cyberpunk IN SPACE! And if you can accept that steam can be hacked and differentiate between friend and foe in Bioshock, then a steam-powered spaceship shouldn't be too much of a stretch for you. I would strongly prefer an animated setting, possibly even cel-shaded.

Also, third person real-time combat. No more of this "click a million on-screen buttons, wait for cool down timers" bullshit.

@believer258 said:

Also, third person real-time combat. No more of this "click a million on-screen buttons, wait for cool down timers" bullshit.

Yes, they have their place sometimes, but I think we've gotten far beyond the point where everything needs to use a skill bar in MMOs since that was partly due to latency and ping issues of yesteryear. It's totally feasible to have complex mechanics and statistics under the hood while having real-time combat.

I was immediately disappointed when I jumped into a closed beta recently and "Oh... Skill Bar... I see you're still here. How quaint."

Post-apocalyptic world inhabited by mutant dinosaurs, robot wizards, gun wielding amazons and vampire aliens. Basically the hodge-podge world from Thundarr the Barbarian as well as a few paper and pencil RPGs from the 80's and 90's (TORG, Xenozoic Tales/Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Rifts). Like the underexploited Shadowrun franchise, I'd like to see an MMO or even an single-player RPG that mixes up genres and gives us the cool bits from a multitude of sources. Something that includes magic, firearms, sword combat, cybernetics, non-human humanoid races, cars, dragons, ninja, and all that good stuff rolled into one.

My second choice would be a present-day setting. Maybe a spy-versus-spy thing where players align themselves to covert groups and wage a hidden war in the shadows of our modern world. I thought The Agency would be that, but it was canned.

Me personally I've always been a fan of a sci-fi inspired space opera setting. Yes I'm aware there are many game out there like this right now like SWTOR, EVE Online, etc. However if you can make a setting that's interesting and maybe implement some ideas that haven't been done I would certainly play it. For example allow characters do to something OTHER than simply fighting and killing things. Allow players to maybe open a shop, be creators and crafters of things. I know the early Star Wars Online game did this and I gladly give that game respect for it, now if something could come along and execute that better.

Also I'm a firm beliver that an MMO game doesn't NEED to be an RPG, we can get rid of the level grind. There are other ways you can entice your player base to keep going maybe for items that they'd like to use, create, or just have for cosmetic reasons. Also I don't think the subscription based model works anymore. A lot of MMO's go free to play and for very good reason, because it really works. The cost of entry to a game can be expensive enough, so to ask the consumer to continue paying a fee for something that's really not a necessity can be a lot to ask depending on who you're asking.

While I think the Space sci-fi setting has been done, I don't think we've tapped all of it's potential yet. There's possibilities for new lore and new ideas to be made and being a guy who loves seeing futuristic tech in games and movies, that's the kind of setting I'd like to see.

That futuristic city in FFXIII-2 would be an amazing setting for an MMO (No I don't mean make a FFXIII-2 MMO, I mean make an MMO with an amazing, sprawling future city like that one). I figure Cyberpunk is probably the most fitting for that level of technology so that's what I went with, although cyberpunk typically implies it'll be dark and gritty a la Deus Ex or Shadowrun.... I'd honestly prefer a more Ghost in the Shell kind of cyberpunk, though, where things can be clean, bright, and vibrant, but still have that shady underside to it and plenty of crazy technology.

@Harkat said:

@Grimhild said:

@Butano:

This is what I've thought for awhile too, which is partially why it's the first option hehe. I also like the idea of Dust 541's connectivity to Eve, and think there needs to be far more of this. As in having separate, dedicated modes of play for each preference instead of just cramming all the archetypes into the same game system. As another hypothetical example in the Space/Sci-fi genre; 30ish players assigned to a capital ship, engineers could space walk on the sides of the ships, pilots would play as a space sim, security and shore parties would play as a FPS/TPS, etc etc just as a short example. So many dynamic possibilities when you have these elements working and relying on each other.

Hell yes. I would lose my life to this. SPACE OPERA ADVENTURES ONLINE.

@Atary77 said:

Me personally I've always been a fan of a sci-fi inspired space opera setting. Yes I'm aware there are many game out there like this right now like SWTOR, EVE Online, etc. However if you can make a setting that's interesting and maybe implement some ideas that haven't been done I would certainly play it. For example allow characters do to something OTHER than simply fighting and killing things. Allow players to maybe open a shop, be creators and crafters of things. I know the early Star Wars Online game did this and I gladly give that game respect for it, now if something could come along and execute that better.

Also I'm a firm beliver that an MMO game doesn't NEED to be an RPG, we can get rid of the level grind. There are other ways you can entice your player base to keep going maybe for items that they'd like to use, create, or just have for cosmetic reasons. Also I don't think the subscription based model works anymore. A lot of MMO's go free to play and for very good reason, because it really works. The cost of entry to a game can be expensive enough, so to ask the consumer to continue paying a fee for something that's really not a necessity can be a lot to ask depending on who you're asking.

While I think the Space sci-fi setting has been done, I don't think we've tapped all of it's potential yet. There's possibilities for new lore and new ideas to be made and being a guy who loves seeing futuristic tech in games and movies, that's the kind of setting I'd like to see.

Well that settles it. Let's get to work lol

/rollsleeves

I also though it would be interesting to have this theoretical game being PvP intensive, just to allow the on-ship espionage/sabotage aspect in and make a wild card for the Security/Shore Party players that are still on board the ship. Can that new engineer that transferred in be trusted? What're they always doing down in the blahblahblahtechnotalk chamber when it's fully manned?

And like Atary77 said, make the mechanics of the engineers be something more than a shallow mini-game, as well as their work benefitting the entire crew, making titles such as "Chief Engineer" and "Chief Medical Officer" and such on a ship much more meaningful and just as important as the combat roles. Like I said, there's so many dynamics that can come of a system like this instead of just relegating everyone to the same roles.

Steampunk or Gothic Horror. Haven't seen many of those, only Resonance of Fate comes to mind (for PS3).

@Morrow:

Hmmm... I might have to check that out. The combat system sounds kind of similar to the Valkyria Chronicles, which I enjoyed.

@Grimhild: I played both and wouldn't really compare them... although the timed aspect of the combat is similar. Check it out if you have a chance :)

@Seedofpower said:

Bible Horror.

Binding of Isaac MMO? :o

@BeachThunder said:

@Seedofpower said:

Bible Horror.

Binding of Isaac MMO? :o

Yes please.

High fantasy version of the Italian city-states. I don't want to like give away any ideas, but basically it'd be an open-world mmo with conflicts centered on player-driven economics.

Modern Day/Near-Future Geo-Political Wars.

We need a Blade runner type of MMO or even a game that would be cool.

I was going to say Sci-Fi because I can never get enough of it but we have a few of those already and I can't think of a single zombie mmo so post-apocalyptic it is