Revision as of 08:07, 5 April 2010

Exalted Online

Overview

My idea for exalted online came as an epiphany one night while thinking about what kind of game I would like to build for my final exam as I work my way through college to become a game programmer. It would have action (and lots of it), cool weapons, magic, great evil, and great good (and the line between these latter two become quite fuzzy at times). And it dawned on me. An Exalted RPG online! Now I know what alot of you are thinking... "Yeah right white wolf games blow..." Well I admit that the few games they have put out have not exactly stimulated me either but they had promise. Here is how I propose we fix these issues...

Fixes

1) The slow and tough combat in the WoD games: Turn them into a type of action platformer slash rpg. Think about having 3 different points of view (3rd person over shoulder for hand to hand combat, 3/4 3rd person for spell casters (though you may still cast spells in the first view), and a first person view resembling Metroid Prime or Metroid Prime 2 from Nintendo) Each of these views would come with their own control scheme (I am still trying to work out the specifics) and it would be just one push of a button (maybe select on a controller) to switch views.

2) The idea of many people wanting to be solars and breaking the game: This was one of my greatest worries to try and balance gameplay, difficulty, and fun. With there only being at most 200 solars that limits the amount of people per server or if you eliminate that then you have 4 or 5 hundred godlings running around. I have two fixes for this 1) have 200 solars xxx Lunars and unlimited DBs so the first 200 people on a server get a solar and everyone else can just live with being a lunar or DB (I am not messing with sidereals they will be NPCs =P) of course the DBs will have better starting equipment and will generally be more skilled... At First. 2) Make it a non linear story much like Elder scrolls and allow people to team up to do cooperative in their own instances either run on a server or their own PC.

More to come...

Comments

Please any feedback would be welcome even if it is a shout out wanting an exalted RPG. Thanks Guys ~ Insanewizard

LAG. I've considered similar, and in order to get something that isn't just more of the same "Select target, click skills, wash, rinse, repeat" style, you'd need a dynamic control system. Thus enters the horrible head of latency, which you should know all about if you're training for games dev. Secondly, while you've considered the limits on solars, lunars, DBs, etc. People won't like "first 200 people in get Solar Shards!" and you'll lose patronage. People like to try alts, different character types, different builds, all that jazz.

On top of that, Creation is HUGE, not including Yu-Shan, the Underworld, the Middlemarches, and Autochthonia. That's easily 50 to a hundred times larger than the World of Warcraft, which is a bloody large game. If you're designing this for consoles, you'll *never* fit it all in, and you'll have masive load times, or lots of load points. If you make it for PC, the game would fill Hard Drives. Next issue is that no-one wants to go into Creation to grind. But unless you have a legion of on-staff event managers, you'll have to have grind. Then there's the issue of IP. Assuming White-wolf give out license to do this, the world would have to be stagnant. As soon as you present a massively availible, public world from an existing IP, any changes you make will be considered canon.

Personally, I severely doubt an Exalted MMO would be viable. My two cents. - Trithne

There is an Exalted MUD or MOO or MUSH or something that used the approach that no one could be solars to start, but those dedicated to the game might exalt into them in some unspecified way. As far as the size of Creation goes, you could just treat it like a web of "waypoints", where a region's size is more related to its narrative use than physical dimension. -- Wordman

These reasons are why I am leaning more and more toward an elder scrolls take. single player with the chance to multiplayer co-op with other people (kind of like halo for the Xbox). As to creation being HUGE, I understand that but Sigil games is putting out an entire world (read 4 continents) for Saga of Heroes. Granted Exalted is quite a stretch for an MMO but I think an idea like multiplayer coop or deathmatches (Duels) would be an awesome idea and very viable. And as for my training to become a game dev it has not quite started yet but I am doing alot of reading and trial and error with the sounds, character models, and visual effects. No game play mechanics yet. So please forgive me if any of you out there actually KNOW and I stuble into the domain of incorrectness. Again as I stated at the top of this page this is an idea for my final as well as a great game I would love to see come alive the criteria for the final is : "At least one completed level". That's it other than that I have free reign. If any of you have more ideas or input please let me know, I am off to work. Thanks guys. ~ Insanewizard

This is quite the undertaking... Let's see. First of all, you want to get as close to -absolute freedom- as you can. Morrowind comes to mind: you can do mostly anything, even break the plot. Second, you want STUNTS, see God Of War (especially the first level and the hydra battle) and Kingdom Hearts 2 (Reaction Commands). Third, if you want extras up the gazoo, see Dinasty Warriors for mass battles. Online play is not very viable at all, unless you have massive levels with hundreds of mooks around to kill, and at BEST I would let 5 people grup toguether (yay circles). Finally, being able to actually costumize your character somehow would also be cool, be it about abilities or appearance.

Just my 2 cents. -- Tiffa