Pokemon MMO Theory Thread

elvis_sl said:

that's all mighty fine, i still don't understand how a pokemon MMO would look like. how would group content work ? raids ? everyone taking turns at hitting the boss and you hope someone didn't disconnect or steve the stoner didn't fall asleep so you can actually progress in the fight ?

Click to expand...

Look to Ni No Kuni, where you can equip pets and level them up, for an example of how you could do group content. Drops could include rare pets (that can be leveled) gear for the pets (Even though we're using the term pokemon here, use your imagination a little. You don't need to have animal based pets necessarily. You could do an entire game with robots which are fully modifiable and base parts are collectible, whatever, throw ideas at the wall), Im not sure "raids" would have to exist, but two person or four person dungeons could, with commensurate rewards. Grinding and looking for that rare spawn would be part of the game as well. I don't think turn based combat would be required necessarily. Do we have turn based PVP in modern MMOs? Of course not. Why would this have to be different? You control your pet while they battle. Your main character could be customized with equipment to min/max pet skill sets as well.

Much of the game would be based around collection and refinement of your "deck" of pets. Feasibly you could own every pet in the game in your storage (although, like bank vaults and the like, you could have the capacity for holding pets increase as one levels up their main character) but you would have to choose from a select subset of them at any one time, say 4 or 6 pets at maximum level, and those pets would need to be min-maxed according to their special abilities, statistics (which could vary from pet to pet even within a single pet type) and their equipment. You would need to find a good balance of pets so that you could handle any situation that's thrown at you. Since much of the gameplay would be based around elemental types (or whatever you would want to call them species types whatever) there would be some rock paper scissors involved.

The end game would be a lot of PVP and tournament play, but most of the things that define MMOs outside of raiding could be included, such as housing, exploration goals, tradeskills, even dungeons, etc.

Really, and I'm not saying this to be a dick, but the fact that you think that MMOs can only exist if they have raid content is an example of how hard the blinders of the MMO crowd have become. They really think the only game that can be made must have an end game consisting of an item grind that never ends.

I would posit the vast majority of people who would play an MMO

1. Hate the amount of time and effort raiding takes, in fact I would say this is a huge factor in the decline of MMOs as a genre that we see today. People have lives outside of gaming and when you have work and kids and shit, the raid game becomes far less important to you. Doesn't mean you wouldn't play an MMO that takes up less overall time and is less of an hassle to get involved in.
2. Hate raiding in general.
3. Don't want to play a game whose entire end game revolves around raiding, though raiding can certainly be a part of the game overall.

People want an end game, but that end game does not have to be raiding. WoW has sort of brainwashed us all into thinking that a raid based end game is the only thing that can exist and support a long term player base.

I posit that deck building and the strategy and collectible aspects as well as competitive tournaments with solid rewards (rare versions of pets, equipment, etc. with special models that will make your character distinct from others) would be more than enough to garner a large player base that would stick around, for a good long time. My evidence would be the existence of card collection games, the popularity of pokemon throughout the years, the success of games like Ni No Kuni, and the apparent popularity of the WoW pet battling system

No one will ever get 12 million players in one game again, but I bet you could swing a few million easy with this model. That would be more than enough to make mountains of money to swim in.

On the topic at hand, one thing I would add to that earlier post is I don't see the necessity for turn based play at all. The game in PVP could have an ATB type system. I don't really see why a regular old MMO press button receive bacon system wouldn't work as well as for a pet capture and battle style game as it does for regular MMO games.

So your pet goes out, now you control it directly, you can use its abilities directly. Pet positioning and the typical triangle of tank dps and heals could be employed for group content if really necessary. The intesting extra layer that would be added on top of that is which pet do you use? And changing pets on the fly could be involved in PVE combat as well as PVP type combat. There's really no reason for it not too.

Further, again I would like to reiterate, we can rip the Pokemon IP straight out. I could see machines being a really good match for this type of game because it would justify ripping parts off your robots and slapping new ones on, and add another layer to the deck building aspects that would be the core mechanics I think draw more players in.

That's the type of people I would try and get ahold of. I can remember playing WoW, most people weren't in the hard core raiding guilds.

They either PVPed, or farmed, or rolled alts and leveled them up. Raiding was a big deal to the raiders, which I raided a good bit in WoW from the very start up until Ulduar in Wrath when I stopped playing and went back to school. Raiders are definitely a segment that needs to have their needs met, they do make up a good portion of MMO gamers, but I still felt like the core but not 24 hour a day players are basically neglected in a raid game, and when the companies try to appeal to them with the raid game, it leads to the raid game being watered down, and then the core raiders complain that things are too easy.

I think a game that appeals more to, not casual players (at best they will give you a giant bubble for a year or so then leave, as the Wii and the Zynga/Facebook model prove), but to the core players who play a lot, but maybe don't want to be forced into set raid schedules and the like, would be the place to go to get the largest market share dollar for your buck. These people are the ones who would log into WoW and play the PVP battlegrounds for hours then log out, and you'd never see them trying to join raid guilds or raid heavily. I really think Blizzard recognized this, that's why they've watered down their end game so much in the past and stopped the 40 man raids and went with the smaller raid groups. I think its pretty clear that big raid end game games are dying out, and its taking the industry with it in a lot of ways.

How on Earth does it sound like a MOBA?.

I can't even comprehend how anyone, ever, could think these two things sound the same.

Where are we discussing defending lanes, taking down towers, destroying enemy bases? I'm literally boggled by this comparison, tbh.

When I think MOBA, I think 3v3 with lanes and NPCs walking down them and you kill them for awhile and go buy items then you push towers, to capture lanes and take down a central base to win. Its literally nothing like what we're discussing, not even remotely. Not even kinda sort maybe the same thing in the abstract.

You literally couldn't get two things further apart than an MMO based on pokemon style game mechanics and a MOBA if you put both programs on separate interstellar alien space craft and launched them to opposite sides of the galaxy.

Although, a MOBA style PVP battleground or two would not necessarily be bad ideas. Didn't like...one of the old WoW battlegrounds kinda work that way? I can't remember the name of it now. It had like the farm and other locations and you had to capture flags at each one to move forward. That would be a possible aspect of the broader PVP game, sure, but its not even remotely the focus or what we're going for here.

Maybe fill me in on how this sounds like a MOBA so I can explain why its not?