Looking for Opinions on an Idea

Decided to put some personal ideas for a superhero MMO on paper and I want to bounce it off the experts here. I will post it in parts and is based off of the structure we have here, but with some tweeks. First we have the Level Types.


Hero
As a hero, your ability allows you to easily overcome 5 non-powered minions or three powered minions. It would take two fully powered and trained heroes to defeat a fully powered and trained super villain. A hero takes it to the streets protecting citizens neighborhood by neighborhood.

Superhero
As a superhero, you can easily defeat 12 non-powered minions or 5 powered minions. It would take three fully powered and trained superheroes to defeat a single, fully powered and trained scourge. You are the defender of the city and an icon of the people.

Paragon
As a paragon, you can easily defeat 20 non-powered minions (usually the entire room) and 10 powered minions. It would take 8 fully powered and trained paragons to stand against a single Cosmic. You are a paragon, called upon to stop a hurtling asteroid or invading alien force. The world depends on you.

Cosmic
A fleeting level of power, cosmic is the pinnacle of power, but no mortal man, alien, or demigod can hold it for long. Cosmic power gives you the ability accesses all the possible combinations of powers within your origins as well as powers specified by the mission or object of empowerment that granted you cosmic-level abilities. Reaching cosmic level will be temporary, but may leave the character with residual boosts to stats that fade over time.



The levels we are familiar with are summarized into blocks to allow players more options in teaming with others as well as reducing the need for incremental min-maxing. These are not "hard numbers" as mileage will vary with the type of build, but the mindset is still that all builds remain effective.

Imho, it is easy to create a fighting game, but more difficult to create reasons to fight. I think the types of content should be created 1st and then make sure the powers can handle the content.

Next we have Origins. In my concept, they have an impact on your character.



Origins determine a character's natural affinity. Your origin will determine the type of missions you will receive at lower levels, the type of enemy that will actively seek you out and the types of salvage you can craft to create origin-based temporary powers. Throughout the game world there will be opportunities to either temporarily or permanently combine your origin to advance to higher levels. Some origins combine more fluidly giving a more significant boost in stats, while others less so. Below is a list of the Origin Affinities:
Natural: Science, Tech, Mutation, Magic
Science: Tech, Natural, Mutation
Tech: Science, Natural
Mutation: Natural, Magic, Science
Magic: Natural, Mutation

Any origin except for Natural can advance to the level of Paragon without combining origins. To compensate, Naturals are able to combine with any other origin to increase a hero’s effectiveness. An example of this would be Batman trying to stop a meteor from hitting the earth. His fighting and detective skills would be useless, but some form of tech or science would allow him to get the job done.


Natural
Whether of Earth, alien planet, or alternate dimension your inherent abilities began at baseline human. With training and experience, you can perform at peak human levels.

Science
An exposure to some chemical, biological, or radiological agent has changed your physical structure in some strange way.

Technology
You wield some form of device either as a tool or as part of your body. It is this technology that cannot be recreated and specific to the user.

Mutation
Your DNA was different from baseline human from birth giving you special abilities. These abilities are as much a part of you as your arms or legs, making you a specialist with them.

Magic
You are a magical being, student of the arts, or a wielder of a magical object; you have tapped into the forces of the unknown.

Pretty sure the term "Superhero" is actually trademarked or something, which is why we have "Hero" enemies, instead of Superhero or anything...I may be wrong.

Next are the damage types. Again, a little more summarized to give players more flexibility in customising.


Energy
Any form of positive emission that can be manipulated and /or projected. Energy will do equal damage to defense and resistance.

Nega-Energy
Dark force or anti-matter, nega-energy will cause somewhat less damage to defense and resistance, but can draw health and endurance from the target back to the wielder.

Psionic
The weakest damage of all, but will bypass any other defense or resistance. Psionic force can only be countered by equal or greater psionic defense or resistance.

Smashing
Any crushing force will smash. Smashing does more damage to resistance and less to defense; you have to connect to smash.

Cutting/Piercing
Swift and penetrating, cutting/piercing does more damage to defenses and less to resistance.

Attacks and defense/resistance can come in any combination of these damage types, giving the player the ability to customize not only the look of a power, but how that powers works.

Here's the "meat" of my idea so far...Classes. Again, loosely based on what we had here, but with, what I think, are some interesting twists.



Classes
Classes in a superhero game are important, but the dynamic of classes must be broken out to address the differences of effectiveness in teams, solo, and PvP. In comic it appears that a solo character seems more effective than as part of the team. This, in the most part, is because the solo character is the highlight of his or her comic, while a team must be greater than the sum of its parts. The trick is to address this, while not letting the player character feel “gimped” while in a team. Skills will give the player the bridge to make them more effective within the team dynamic. PvP has been a thorn in the side of most superhero games. The most effective PvP puts competing players on an equal footing. All participants in PvP will be placed at the same level and all damage types will be balanced to a zero-sum level against defense/resistance types. This will allow tactics such as positioning and use of the environment to play a significant role in winning in PvP. Powers will accentuate skill in PvP, not replace it.

Support
The support class has always been seen as the tool of the team, but less effective solo, and useless in PvP. Any power that buffs a teammate should debuff an opponent with equal effectiveness. Team buffs should also affect the caster with equal effect. Add this to secondary powers from any of the other three classes and the support character is more than able to stand on their own or support a team.

Battler
The battler is the front line of combat. The battler uses a combination of ranged and melee attacks to pummel the enemy from all over the battle field. The more a battler fights a particular opponent, the better he becomes at defeating them. The battlers’ defense/resistance is enough to ensure that he can survive to the end of the fight.

Controller
The controller is the master of the area manipulation. Whether through the use of energy fields, environmental changes, or mental influence, the controller uses his powers to keep the enemy from attacking the team. Like support, the controller gains buffs from the use of his powers against the enemy, the more he controls, the more he builds defense/resistance to retaliation.

Tanker
The tanker is not as agile as the battler, nor is he as effective against an entire area of enemies as the controller, but the tanker is a juggernaut of short-range attack and defense/resistance. The tanker has the unique ability to shift his power from irresistible force to an immovable object. The tanker is used to break blockades or form a last line of defense. The key to being a good tanker is knowing when to switch and by how much.

A look at status bars


Status Bars
In the beginning, there was Health and Endurance. City of Heroes eventually added several other status modifiers such as Rage and Scourge. In this game there are only three, health, endurance, and strength.

Health
A standard in most games, health reflects the amount of life you have left before either death or incapacitation. In this game, your health bar remains constant, but as you increase in power and skill, you are able to conserve your health more efficiently or even become completely, but temporarily, invulnerable.

Endurance
Endurance is your ability to perform a task as long as possible. In this game, endurance means just that, how often you can attack, defend, or simply endure. Your character will show signs of physical exhaustion as their endurance diminishes and may even collapse once it is completely gone.

Strength
Strength is the key variable to accessing your abilities. Whether lifting a heavy object, or focusing on healing an ally, your strength is the power behind the power. Your strength can be applied to any power, increasing the intensity of that ability based on the amount applied to it. Strength can be effected by in game modifiers or through level increases. Visual cues of increased strength, let other see just how powerful you are.

The balance between strength and endurance is a delicate balance. A super speeder doesn’t use much strength to or to strike multiple targets, but will used a significant amount of endurance. That same speeder can focus their strength into a single-powerful blow that will drain his strength, but leave him with enough endurance to escape. Constantly applying holds, or holds to an increasing number of targets will require more endurance, while the intensity of those holds varies with the amount strength applied.

When you say "a superhero MMO on paper" I assume you mean you're just working out how you'd do a new computer hero-based MMO if you were in charge.

But just in case, here's some general advice for anyone creating a pen & paper RPG: make it possible to create a character in your system in about 15 minutes.

Anyone who play the original Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) knows that you could roll up a character very quickly. The system was far from perfect, but it's amazing how useful it is to be able to have someone new join an ongoing campaign, maybe for only the one night, and be able to come up with a character for them on the spot. Also, it's invaluable for the GM in creating all of the NPC's to be able to do that quickly and easily.

I'm not sure how often people play pen & paper RPGs these days, but years ago my group of friends used to play a lot. I had a friend who had designed his own superhero roleplaying game, and one of the great strengths of the game was that you could create a character completely by rolling a few dice. He had charts to tell you what class of powers you had (fire, lighting, illusion, magnetic, whatever) and then charts to select specific powers in that class.

We played Champions a bit too. Champions was an amazing game back then for it's ability to allow you to design your character however you imagined and then find how how to fit that into the rule system, but one thing it wasn't was fast -- it could take 2-3 hours to create a character, with a lot of help from the GM since new players didn't understand the game system well. It was almost impossible for a new player to join on the spur of the moment, and it was a huge amount of work for a GM to construct a game session ahead of time, creating all the background npcs, villains, etc. My friend's home-made system was a bit like AD&D in that it wasn't by any means perfect, but it was quick and dirty and didn't get in the way of a good game session.

But I don't know if people even write their own pen & paper mmo's anymore, it's so easy to adapt universal systems like GURPs to just about anything, as long as you know the system already. But that's just one thing I took away from those years of superhero roleplay gaming: the cooler, more innovative system was not necessarily the better or more practical system.

Now a look at character creation. City of Heroes is one of many sources that have done a good job of it.



Character Creation
City of Heroes did it very well, but Guild Wars 2 did it better. What I am looking for is the best of both worlds.


Layering
The layering of skin-to-skin texture-to-tatoo-to-hair-to-cloth-to-armor is the tailor-made for the superhero genre. What superheroes have on top of these layers is the addition of “auras”, or visual representations of power. Auras can be either a radiant glow, wispy smoke, or even buzzing flies, auras should have the flexibility of being emitted from either skin (think: elemental), skin texture (think: cracked magma), tattoos (think: mystic sigils), hair (think: flaming hair), cloth (think: Green Lantern movie), and armor (think: too many to think of). The option of auras in combination with customizable powers gives the player even more options than even City of Heroes ever had.

Scaling
The proportions of a character, in many games, limit the options in the types of layers for hair, cloth, and armor. It’s understood that a character with hooved feet cannot wear shoes, but giving the player an option of types of hooves makes up for the limit of not having shoes. In contrast, a fat character should have access to all the above-skin texture options as a thin or muscular character has. Body sliders should address not only the size of a character, but the bulk and muscle tone of a character. This will allow for not only obese characters, but also muscular females.

The Customization Conservatory
Haven’t seen it in game? Suggest it here. City of Heroes was touted as revolution in character creation, many critics claimed this was the only thing that the reason the game lasted as long as it did. I want a game that gives the player the ability to truly create a superhero unique to their imagination. A place where ideas for new clothing types, tattoos, auras, or even body types can be suggested, voted on by players, and fast-tracked to development.

Moving on to Game Mechanics. There are a lot of moving parts to such a topic and I am sure I haven't touched on all of them, but here I address major features I would like to introduce to a new game.


Game Mechanics
Character Based
Fast-Paced action has been translated by other superhero MMOs to mean “twitch mechanics”, where actions happen as fast as the player can mash their button. This is in stark contrast to City of Heroes where animation times are a part of a powers’ metric that can vary from power to power and can determine the effectiveness of that power. Twitch mechanics give the player the ability to “run-and-gun” executing powers while in motion whereas in City of Heroes, most powers rooted the player while executing an animation. It is a common theme in comics to dive in, guns blazing, but there is a need for concentrated efforts to execute big powers, so in this game, there needs to be a blending of the two.
The two big factors in accuracy are range and motion. A target farther away is harder to hit than one closer. A target in motion will be harder to hit than a stationary one. Alternately, a player in motion will have an equally difficult time hitting a stationary target. Both can be improved with various modifiers that improve a player’s stats. This promotes a slowing down of battles, more concentrated calculation of the type of attacks a player will use in the heat of battle. This also prevents missing inanimate objects while standing right in front of them. Ranged powers will have a maximum range as well as a maximum effective range. The maximum range of a power usually the visual range to the target, if you can see it, there is a chance you can hit it. The maximum effective range can vary with the amount of strength applied to that power. Thrown objects will have a range based on the strength of the player against the weight of the object, with accuracy based on distance of motion. Area of Effect powers come in two flavors, single plane and omni-directional. Single plane attacks will hit all targets along a single axis, while omni-directional powers will hit all targets in every direction. Omni-directional powers naturally require more endurance than single plane, but have less range.
Vectors of impact and ragdoll effects will give players a more visceral feel of combat. The point of impact and the direction of force will be reflected in the reaction of player characters and NPCs. Knockback effects will be directly translated from the force and direction of an impact, the more strength put into a blow, the farther the target will fly. Force absorbing modifiers will factor in to knockback distances, but the biggest factor will be the weight of the target against the force applied. Every object, including player characters, will have a specific weight. For player characters, being heavier will have advantages and disadvantages. A heavier character will have a higher inherent resistance to knockback, to being lifted, or being thrown. Inversely, a heavier character will also move slower and will often have to delegate a percentage of their strength to increasing their travel speed. Visual cues, such as ground shakes and cracks, will vary with the weight of a character. This variable gives the player the flexibility to create characters a light as a feather or as heavy as a tank without being reliant on having to use a bulky body form. Any power that increases the size of a character will inherently increase that characters weight.



Environmental
The environment is the unseen third player in the game. There are two types of environments in-game, first is the open zone. The game world is expansive having everything from bustling cityscapes, to dense jungles, to desert landscapes. Players will find themselves anywhere from the ocean depths, to the weightlessness of outer space. The player will always have to factor in the environment they find themselves in as part of their combat strategy. An ice-based character will receive a very slight buff to secondary effects in polar zones and areas, but may receive a very slight debuff in a desert zone. Visual cues will show a player that their character is in an environment that is advantageous to their base powers. These cues are purely cosmetic, such as brighter lightning flashes for storm and electricity powers during light storms, or larger water effects when underwater. The open world will be filled with destructible objects of various weights that any character can lift and/or throw. Anything from mailboxes, crates, to boulders and trucks can be “weaponized”, with varying efficiency based on the strength of the character and the weight of the object. Splash damage will reflect battles in the open zones, such as cracked pavement and walls, shattered windows in buildings, or scorched trees and earth. This added to the remains of destroyed objects will give the player the feel of how destructive their powers are. Zone resets will clean up the mess left by open battles, but bigger battles will be talked about by NPCs whenever a player is near.
In-mission, or dungeon environments can either be isolated open areas, or inside buildings or other structures and will allow players to experience even more destructibility where walls, floors, even whole buildings can cecum to a players might. Objects can be affected not only by powers, but also by secondary knockback collisions such as punching someone through a wall. Potential the entire mission area can be leveled, but in some missions avoiding collateral damage may be key to a successful mission. Zones, whether in-mission or open areas, that are counter intuitive to certain powers (ie; Wind in space or fire underwater) will give players easy access to temporary powers and narratives that allow those characters to be effective in any environment.