Rethinking the MMO: How I would do CoH2

With the talk of sunsetting City of Heroes and even talk of somehow recreating it recently, I've been asking myself the question: if I was going to write City of Heroes from scratch today, how would I do it? And actually, I have over a dozen PMs asking me this same question. This weekend an idea began coalescing that I thought I would share. Its not intended to be a blueprint for a community implemented City of Heroes per se: its just my own musings of the subject. So how would I do it?

It wouldn't be an MMO. Hear me out. If I were making City of Heroes today, it would be a stand alone single player game.

Or rather, it would start like one.

I would make a game client that would reproduce, to the best extent possible (at least to start) all of the gameplay I love in City of Heroes as a stand alone game that anyone could play solo, forever, without needing any other resources. Everything, from the character creator to the mission content would be run entirely on your PC. It would be the solo version of City of Heroes.

But then I would take this stand alone single player City of Heroes and recreate the MMO from scratch, without any of the design baggage of the past.

Lets take this in stages. We start with a stand alone City of Heroes. And then we add global chat. That's not hard: there are a million ways to make global chatting systems, we just need to integrate one of them into the single player game. So while running around in single-player CoH, you can chat with your friends. You'd have the same CoH global chat communities we have now, you just couldn't actually team with anyone.

So lets add teaming. Single player games already have the means to allow for LAN play and cooperative play, we'll let the single player game connect to other single player games and play cooperatively. So if you want to play CoH with four friends, no problem. But what about your fifty guildmates?

For that, we add community servers. Community servers would be special server nodes that could allow lots of people to connect to them, and they would have the ability to arbitrate lots and lots of separate game clients into a shared space. This would be the equivalent of a server shard in City of Heroes today. But the important difference is that with this version, you can leave the shard and play stand alone, you can move to a different shard, anyone could put up a private shard for friends in theory.

But there's a problem. Suppose I play standalone and level my character to 50, and outfit her with a ton of inventions, and then I decide I want to play on a community server? Well, we'll allow you to upload your character to the server, so you can continue on. And at the end of your session, the character is synced back down to your client. You could take that character to another server if you want, or continue to play it stand alone. In many ways, this is like the old pen and paper days where you could take your character from one gaming session to another, even to another gaming group entirely, and continue to play.

But how do we deal with hacks? If we allow people to upload stuff onto the community servers, how do we stop them from just uploading anything they want? Max characters with max loot? We use trust. The community server doesn't trust your game client. So the server only allows you to upload certain things, with certain limits. Anything you can't upload gets temporarily downscaled on the community server until you re-earn it there. This is done in a way that you could leave the server with your full strength intact: its only "exemped" while on the community server. This is also like the old PnP days where GMs would sometimes allow certain things and disallow certain things on character sheets in the interest of balance.

The interesting thing about trust is that different community servers could decide to trust each other in a limited fashion. So you could move from one server to another and keep what you earned, if the server you are transferring to trusts the server you're transferring from. Maybe unique objects on server A don't get transferred to server B, but maybe everything else does.

So what we have is a single player CoH that we could play cooperatively with just a few friends if we want, or we could play on larger community servers if we want, but we would always have the option to come and go as we pleased. We would never be "trapped" on a central server. We would never be beholden to a server: no one could ever "kill" the game. We play alone if we want, we play with others if we want, but regardless we could still have as much social interaction as we want through global chat, which is how the social structures on CoH primarily work anyway. This would be the ultimate instanced MMO. Everyone is running in their own instance unless they *want* to participate in a larger world.

Of course, this is not really possible for any business to do, because you can't make money off of something like this, right? Well think about Guild Wars. You buy it, and then you don't pay a sub. If you think about it, using their servers costs them money: they would make just as much money but you would cost them less money if you didn't actually use their servers. Their business model is to make money on selling the game client itself, and selling microtransaction items. Can we sell microtransaction items in this kind of game, where everyone could just run stand alone forever? I think so: they could sell items on their community servers and DLC for the game clients even if they were stand alone. In fact, the Architect gives us a hint as to how to make money in a novel way. We could allow players to sell MTX missions through a super-architect, and the business could take a cut, like iTunes. $0.99 buys a story-arc, the player-author takes $0.80, we take $0.19 say. And the business itself sells its content through the same system. If we're really smart and really lucky, we'll figure out a way to get the modding community involved to submit mods to the game we could approve and then allow to be sold through the DLC market as well.

So there's the business and technical model. City of Heroes 2 is a stand alone game, with the ability to join community servers at will. Characters can move from single player to community servers and back, with a trust system that prevents serious exploitation by capping what you can transfer into shared environments. What overpowered nonsense you do on your own PC nobody cares about. We sell the client, we don't require a subscription, we support the game with DLC content released through an appstore-like system where the player community can also contribute and actually make money selling content, even to solo players that never connect to a shared community server. And we glue it all together with an improved distributed CoH2 chat and email system, so anyone, even stand alone players, can participate in the community.

There are lots of details missing from this obviously, particularly where it pertains to community management, exploit control, game balance, and the technical issues of trying to make it work. But that's the idea.

And that's how I would do it. It would be, for lack of a better way of putting it, an optional MMO. An optionally multiplayer roleplaying game.

So, kind of like Neverwinter Nights?

Sounds good.

But Arcanaville... You left out the most important part.

Would the Devs still nerf regen?

I'd think each server would have its own 'Regen Nerf' setting going from 0 (Regen is nerfed slightly) to 1 (regen actually damages you).

If this idea was possible, I would be so happy. Sunset would just mean turning off the global chat (assuming you don't use voice chat, as I do often anyway), and only playing with friends. It seems the perfect system.

(Picard) Make it so! (/Picard)

Only read the thread title...
Is this post SFW?

<.<

>.>

I'll buy in if I can start team tasks solo.

This is very similar to what I was brainstorming to do (yes I am literally hoping I have the time and money to pursue this.)

My idea has a few differences. For one, I was not thinking on a single player mode (although it crossed my mind for offline play in android/iOS.)

Character data for multiplayer would only reside in a private server. Characters can transfer from one server to another via some kind of handshaking system (if you going to another server just request a character transfer with the IP of the current server and the servers do their thing.)

Cheating would in a large part be a honor system, though. It's up to the server managers to decide how lax they are going to be, and may even be able to enable certain rule sets (that other servers can look at and refuse transfers.)

Content would be in large part made by the players themselves with tools.

With the content tools, the private server managers can actually re-shape the world to their liking. Let's say I set Starsman as the world's equivalent of Superman or Statesman. Well, any server manager can change that, remove built-in content and setup their own city and core missions. Every server would have the potential to be entirely unique.

Business model would be split in 4:

The client would be sold on it's own for a price.
A client/server combo would also be available for a higher price.
Content authoring tools would be separate.
Premium content "modules" can be bought (example, devs create The Devouring Earth, thats an official enemy group pre-created that can be purchased for a small fee and used on either randomized content or player created missions)
"Power Set" modules also would be available for sale.

I really like the MineCraft server model (don't play minecraft myself though) and that's what inspired a lot of my thinking. The idea that the game will only die the day no one in the planet wants to play the game anymore is something that I just love.

Also, one thing is sure is that the iOS and Android have shown that single player "MMOs" without centralized servers can still make a lot of money (just look at the top grossing lists, they are full of free games people play as if they were single player MMOs.)

My ideas include (Mainly from a heroic perspective, but plenty of opportunities for villainy):

The Genre System

• Pick your genre and it tailors the kind of missions you get directed to, the enemies you face and the random occurrences that occur randomly.

• Primary Contact - Your Jim Gordon, Adam Kane, Daisuke Aramaki, divine benefactor, so on. Someone who you liaise with very closely, getting to know them over the course of your hero's career. They give you the jobs you are adept and skilled to deal with.
• Secondary Contacts - Friends, family, colleagues and individuals who your Primary Contact knows, their troubles are brought to your attention if they're along the lines of the sort of thing you usually deal with most of the time.
• Tertiary Contacts - People who your primary or secondary contacts know of and feel you may be able to assist with.
• Auxiliary Contacts - Those who direct special task forces or arcs tied to zones, enemy groups or events that everyone has access too.

• Various media and information channels that all heroes and villains have access to that provides randomly generated as well as scripted missions and encounters, from break ins and arch enemies to opportunities and community/emergency efforts.
• Choose your preferred types of sources. An ancient mage might not check the internet out, but the mystic ethernet or diviniation? A young hip and happening villain may not check the newspapers, but delve into social media looking for chances for profit or violence.
• Check to see how you appear in the media. Are you a stalwart protector, or a bit of a crazed nutjob in a costume? Your actions in missions get reflected in the word on the street, online or incriminating front page spreads.

• Dotted around the area, these are things you can do that might involve using your powers for more than just beating up thugs, such as putting out fires, rescuing people, demolition, construction, charity appearances and good causes that can pay off in interesting ways. That old man you spend some time talking to in a hospital? He could know the location of an item of interest or an old mystery waiting to be discovered.

It actually sounds a lot like the way Minecraft handles (not plays, of course.)

You can play the standalone game.

You can join a server and play on a cooperative persistant world node.

You can invite other people over the lan to come poke around/play in your single player world.

I would buy this in a heartbeat.

I really like the idea a lot (in theory).

What about the content, though? Would the content be the same on the community servers as it is on my standalone? Would it be distributed from a centralized content server?

There's already a system in place (for some games) that functions in a similar way. Steam. I've downloaded player-designed and developer-made DLC for Skyrim.

Cheating also has a control mechanism. For Counter-Strike:Source, there's a Valve Anti-Cheat mechanism that can be put into place for any given server that wants to host -- and I'm pretty sure it's optional, so a host can use it or not as they please.

Their model seems to work pretty well from an end-user perspective.

*reads OP*

M'hmm. M'hmm. Yes, yes.

Ok, I'll take 2.

Sold.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

So...when is this available in stores again? I can't seem to find it. =3

I think MMOs as we know them will fade out over the next couple of decades (yes it will be slow.)

The entire process of server hosting is insanely expensive and it's only done because it's thought that it's required to secure control and a profit stream.

As I mentioned earlier: mobile games have demonstrated there is a LOT of money to be made without controlling where the player plays.

Reserving my spot for throwing in my own ideas when I'm feeling less beat.

Short form: Getting Guild Wars 2 in my City of Heroes and getting City of Heroes in my Guild Wars 2. Also, vehicles.

Just to add another voice to the topic... this sound horrid, and I wouldn't play it.

My initial response is that I like it. The hacking bit got me thinking, though. I wonder if there would be a way to code in a virtual timeline of sorts, tracking the progression of a character. Most characters will transfer without issue, but if the system reads something that doesn't make sense, it flags the content for review, or flat refuses the transfer.

Granted, like some have said, there could be servers that don't care, and the people who are allowed to do this will end up on a server where everyone does it.

The other thing that I would want to watch for, with people in charge of their own servers and content, is the potential for copyright infringement. I'm not sure how similar games handle that situation, so I'll let someone else speak on it further.

...I would prefer this model because it places the role of owner in the licensee's hands, and indeed, there are indications (Minecraft, A Valley Without Wind, etc etc) that it may be catching on to some extent.

But I find it likely for any kind of MMO-esque game that the complicated 'trust' behavior will simply be dealt with by having authenticated and non-authenticated characters; much like how Diablo 3 allows solo online games and multiplayer online games, characters will only be permitted to join multiplayer games if they have been played through the web service every step of the way.

Obviously this is what you would do if you were designing the game. Still, you likely will not be, and I doubt it will happen very often in MOGs.

Besides, like other repliers, I find the potential physics of CoH2 more interesting.

How would you handle the auction house in this system? It sounds like there would not be a viable way to have one, which would make IOing out a character require either enjoying farming merits or paying real money for them (which is not a viable option for someone like me with over 100 characters).