Stop Trying to Develop & Start Learning How - A case study

This post is included for posterity. It was originally posted in my now-defunct Discord server.

In the last month, I have not worked on the game concept I talked about here. It was not an idea I am passionate about. I have been playing Magic the Gathering Arena recently, and really enjoyed the interactions between cards.

This reminded me of my all-time favourite game, Anarchy Online, which could almost be considered a real-time card trading game, as unlike most other MMOs, that lean on levels and class limitations, AO did things differently.

Although it had level and class limitations, level limitations were usually used as a last resort, and class limitations more implemented to encourage teamwork in an MMO, after all. There were also breeds, that very rarely acted as a limitation, but did act as an overall bias on the skills- if you wanted to min max a particular build. The key here is the structured, logical freedom this provides. 

The two pillars AO leaned on were buffs and equipment. These could be used to highly modify your skills. There were 73 distinct skills that could be increased directly with points every time you level. The core 6 of these provided trickle down bonuses to the rest, with intuitive relationships (agility and stamina has a 50/50 bias on Run Speed trickle down, for example). There were also a few other skills that weren't directly modifiable outside of equipment and buffs, as well as an overarching "Aggressive / Defensive" slider which changed the fighting style of your character in realtime which allowed for multi-roles on-the-fly.

This may sound quite RPG and character focussed, but it is worth a reminder at this point that equipment and buffs could far supercede the base stats levelling could give you. It is this relationship that I think is so precious about the game; most games are either all equipment or all character-focussed, or both but implemented in a very shallow way. The most character-focussed part was definitely the classes limitations, which solidifed it as an MMO RPG.

AO is a very old game. 19 years old- the longest surviving MMO, in fact. Given the fact it was built on hopes and dreams, it was never stable, but at this point, after a decade of neglect, it is dying a dementia death, with a tiny playerbase, abysmal graphics, huge inflation, terrible performance that never improved, bugs that were never resolved and exploits and straight up cheats left unattended to. And yet, I have never seen a game pull off such complex stat interactions as satisfyingly.

I want to bring back the spirit of AO for the modern gamer. To do this, it will need to have some changes:

Focus on its strengths

• Stat interaction model is the best of any game I have found, all the others apart from MTGA (which has a manageable level of RNG) have such wishy-washy levels of statint it bores me.
• Make the limiting factors universal currencies and knowledge. This maximises the freedom and therefore fun for the player, as long as they have a meaningful structure instead of the "freedom" of empty, asset driven sandboxes. With a good mix of currency and knowledge, the grind can be shortened, or skipped entirely.
• The procedural mission, dungeon and loot economy model of the game complimented the equipment/buff pillars fantastically. A healthy mix of procedural + bespoke / special missions will give replayability both in randomness and consistency, in amounts the player gets to weight themselves.
• Avoid complex mechanics in combat. Timing and ordering of abilities is fine, but pixel clicking, reliance on physical hitboxes etc will detract from the stat focus.

Adapt its weaknesses

• AO did not fundamentally work as a multiplayer game. Power imbalance on the experienced vs the meek was unlike anything I have ever seen. A new or middling player could offer a veteran nothing. The economy became absurd as metas were established- the biggest money makers being incredibly low drop items that require mind-melting grinds or astonishing luck. The older players had a headstart on younger players that could never be closed. The idea of trying to force a gameloop to last years is archaic, but for an MMO to be a viable business prospect, that is unavoidable. Therefore, this game will need to be singleplayer.
• If the game is going to be singleplayer, class limitations will need to be removed or reworked. Whilst theoretically classes encourage multiplayer game-play, no one wants to wait on someone else for them to be able to accomplish their goal on the internet. That's why truly successful MMOs are so rare and those that are successful usually have the ability to multiclass.
• The bugs. The jank. Just making the game in a new engine will avoid So much jank that was ever-present in AO. With that said, there were some exploits that were very satisfying and consistent to employ, which added a level of depth to the gameplay itself (not just the "precombat phase" that I want to bottle up and use in this game. The key takeaway here is not to make the game logic / AI so predictable like I see in most other games. I am so passionate for that alone.

Quick mental note for later: I will need to evaluate the feasibility of tradeskilling (crafting) in a singleplayer AO. Not sure how much value it would add- could be added during alpha subject to feedback. Would mean adding recipes for some/all items, and possibly the creation of a new type of item- materials. If it is added, should definitely be reserved for the highest tier of item instead of them dropping from trash mobs 0.001% of the time.

What does all of this add up to?

A singleplayer real-time card collection game-style dungeon crawler. "Dungeon" not to be taken literally, of course. With AO's all encompassing stats and equipment, huge, beautiful spaces could eventually be ran through quickly, skipped by jumping once-impossible gaps, or teleported between, providing variety and immersion to the game world, without it feeling like a tedious commute after a while. The key here is that the player had the power to choose how they got around, just like everything else in the game, instead of it being taken for granted like a static portal system or fast travel.

I have not been this passionate about a video game idea since Insight, which was definitely a game I wanted to make, but not so much one I wanted to play. I realized I need both so that I can enjoy my time building the game if I want to stick to the project. However, this game likely has the biggest potential resource demand of any concept I have come up with, and so before I can even think about starting work on the project itself, it is time to bite the bullet and invest in the #1 skill one could have to have a hope of pulling it off any time this century: Programming.

Despite the scope of the project, it does not have major technical requirements. No multiplayer. Very simple physics. Fairly simple AI.

The biggest issues are going to be content (graphics, audio, copy), game logic and game data tracking. The data tracking is going to be very easy to get lost in, so I will need to build tools. There is no hope of building this in Blueprint.

Therefore, I have started a course in Unreal C++ development. This is a big step because traditionally I have been averse to tutorials, but I believe in this idea enough to pull through. I will complete this and then evaluate if I need to take further courses before starting the project itself.