MMORPG - Your Opinions

[Myskillzownu]

Note:
The real part of this thread starts at Question 1.
You don't have to read the introduction; it's just there for those who are interested.

Introduction:
As I breifly introduced in my introduction thread "http://www.opticraft.net/index.php/topic,9578.0.html", I, along with a few others, are working on creating an MMORPG.

The idea first started by an old friend of mine who was visiting from Australia and I, about 6 years ago.
From there I constantly evolved the idea in my head, and eventually started to write and type stuff down.
From there I just added and revised, and didn't do much.
My plan was to find a company that would make the game for me, as I believed it had incentive.

2/3 years after the game was first thought up, I decided it would be awesome to try to create the game myself, and I began talking to my brother. (He has around 25+ years of experience with computers, and he's a very smart guy.)
Talking to him I realized the possibility was real, and we decided we were going to make the game.

I asked my friend (Tigerwolf117 on here) if he would like to join us, and he said yeah.
So we researched, and began to start.

At first we were all just creating 3D models for the game, and after a while we branched off. (Namely because I hated it, and it wasn't what I wanted to do.)
My brother enjoyed it and was pretty good at it, so he stuck with that role.
Tigerwolf then took on the role of doing GFX in Gimp, drawing basic concepts, obtaining textures, creating basic models to work with, etc. Basically the odd artistic jobs.
I took on the role of the programmer, and I began to look into the possible options. (I eventually settled on the Panda 3D Game Engine, in which I can write with Python.)

Knowing Python was an easy scripting language, I began to grow my knowledge in it. (At the current time I had a lot of down time at work as I was temporarily in charge of helping people with their computer issues, so I camped in my office, and whilst having nothing to do, I practiced Python.)

At times schedules began to conflict, and that made things very difficult. My brother depended on Tiger in a lot of ways, and I 100% depended on my brother. (Without models I had nothing to work with.)
Things came up, such as my brother getting married, my brother having a kid, me being busy with this, Tiger being busy with that, and eventually the idea got put off.

We would occasionally get the fire to start working on it again, but nothing really happened until recently.

Now we have four of us, we're as serious about working on it as we have ever been, and my highly artistic friend Riley joined the team.
Currently:
My brother is in charge of the 3D models (all aspects of them at the current time), and as he is truly a knowledgeable guy, he can help with most of the questions we dish out. (Though I can answer most of Tiger's and Riley's questions, and up to this point I haven't had many questions myself.)
Tiger is between jobs so to speak. He isn't quite sure what he wants to do in life itself, and until he figures that out/we find something we're in need of, he isn't responsible for too much. (That will change as the ball gets rolling.)
Currently I'm thinking of having him also do concept work, gather/create textures, find good references to make sure we correctly animate people/animals, etc.
Riley is in charge of drawing concepts of whatever we may need, and he is in charge of creating reference drawings for my brother to model off of.
My brother, myself, and Tiger all own expensive graphics tablets (Tiger's being the best), and the next time Riley is visiting I plan on getting him used to them, as it would help immensely.
I am still in charge of the programming/game engine side of things. I will also be creating the website when the time comes for it, and I will probably create most of the graphics for it. I might ask for Tiger's help though, depending on how much he has on his plate.

Our current goal is to create a very basic "game" (basically you can customize basic features of your player, choose between two weapons, and kill chickens that are in a pen), and get some nice concept art done to show people.

At that point we are going to work on creating a very professional video about the game, our plans for the game, and who we are. (Having a love for creating videos is finally going to pay off )

At that point we are going to post our project on kickstarter.com, including the video, concept art, and some information, in the attempt to raise some money to get the ball rolling big time.
At the current time the plan for the money is to hire some professionals for a few things here and there to make sure the game is as good as it can be, build a good server that we can dedicate to it, and possibly purchase some motion-tracking items for character animation.

Question 1:
Now that that's all out of the way (if you even read it -.^), I would like to know:
If you were to create your own MMORPG, what are some key things you would absolutely want/not want in your game.

Keep in mind that this game is going to have a style/feel similar to that of Runescape/WoW, though it will be completely unique and its own.

We want to do what other games have done wrong, right.
We also want to make this a game that we are sure players will enjoy and want to play, which is why I'm asking you guys. (Who better to ask than gamers, right?)

Question 2:
Questions 2 & 3 aren't as big of a deal as number one, but I would like to hear the ideas of those who are willing to share them.

In many games, the buying and selling of gold is all over, and it can greatly hurt the game and the economy of the game.
What are some things you guys would do to combat this?
Note: We don't want to implement something, such as a trading-cap, that would punish the players that don't purchase gold.
It's almost a question without an answer, but maybe with your help we can come up with a good solution.

Question 3:
This question is about players modifying their game client to cheat.
Example: hacking their client to tell the server "I picked up an iron sword" or "I attacked player x and did 1000 damage."

To prevent this, a lot of that stuff is run on the server (how much damage was dealt, what the drop was, etc.), though not everything can be done server-side.
Checking to make sure clients haven't been modified is a whole new ball game, and at the current time that's a no go.

Do you have any ideas? (Anything that could prevent them from cheating, make it so their cheats are less effective, etc.)


Thanks a bunch guys.
You may not think so, but questions as simple as this can greatly help to improve the game!

-Dave

[Victor1261]

My answer to question 3 would be to not have the client tell the server what to do. The examples that you provided can be done server side. The drop system could easily be done server side in which the server knows what to drop or if you kill something and it is supposed to be a random drop, you could use math.random() and assign a int value to different items, blah blah blah. The answer to the damage hack would be to simply have the server know how much damage each weapon deals and not have the client tell the server how much damage it would like to do.

Hope this helps!

[Myskillzownu]

My answer to question 3 would be to not have the client tell the server what to do. The examples that you provided can be done server side. The drop system could easily be done server side in which the server knows what to drop or if you kill something and it is supposed to be a random drop, you could use math.random() and assign a int value to different items, blah blah blah. The answer to the damage hack would be to simply have the server know how much damage each weapon deals and not have the client tell the server how much damage it would like to do.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the advice -.^
That, however, still leaves open some big gaps.
The main one that comes to mind being the fact that the amount of damage done is one thing (and can easily be done server-side), but determining if there is supposed to be damage done in the first place is a whole new ball game. I.E. User1 says he attacked User2. There are times when both players may be in a pvp area, in which a server check would be useless here. Who's to say User1 didn't actually attack User2?

I can think of checks for a lot of scenarios, but I'm sure there will always be some genius that finds a way to cheat some how. That and if the server ran a check for every single action that took place for every user, it would get pretty laggy.
I really hope people decided to support this game on kickstarter, as I would absolutely love to be able to hire a professional for this aspect, if nothing else.
Writing any code is one thing. Fixing bugs and make something truly secure is something else entirely.

[clawstrider]

Question 1:

Would want
Fluid combat (Well, not spamming "1" over and over again, with the odd 2 when you have enough x).

Little "grinding" (Kill 10 rats as there are too many) instead (Hold off the invading rats while we muster a counter attack).

Interactive landscape (If possible) (As in, avoid WoW, where you do 5 quests, yet the guy is still stuck ontop of the mountain when you look at him).

Varied and balanced classes and weapon types (If you do classes), and attempts to make them balanced (No "top route" that if you don't spec/use, you're doing it wrong).

(No don't wants, as its basically a do want in reverse)


Question 2:

Don't have an easy way to get money via bot (Say: Get money from quests or w/e, not from attacking 1000s of mobs).

An "auto detect" system that reviews a player's change in balance, and what they've done. If they have gone up a lot, and not sold anything, it triggers an alert, to one of you guys. You can then look through his trade history, check what he has been up to. If you see "Myskillzownu gave clawstrider $100,000 for nothing" then maybe take a closer investigate. It might show up wrong occasionally (Say a guy giving his alt some money), but if the guy has a history of big numbers for nothing, it could help you.


Question 3

Movement hacking: I was looking at my light as I typed this, and I have no idea if this is possible, but its worth a say:
You could have it so it doesn't check it constantly, but every few seconds, to see if the movement is faster/odder than normal (Like the lightbulb's current is flickering, not on constantly, but too fast to see (Too fast to hack). I guess people could make a work-around, but if you did a check every 1-5 seconds at random times, it should be pretty foolproof.

Damage: Check the player each few seconds, give the damage a possible range. If the damage strays outside that range, check it again. If it is constantly too high, either take it all server side, or send the owner's damage reports to one of you guys.

Loot: All server side is the only way I can think.



ADVICE

If you're going Kickstarter, I suggest you finish a tad more than the chickens and sword idea. Once done, its always worth going to This guy. He has just under 700k subscribers. I've seen him feature a few kickstarters, which were really going nowhere (From lack of publicity). If it was good, they were funded over the max within hours. I suggest sending him an email, once you got a bit to show, he might help you reach your goal. I don't know, but good luck anyhow!

Hope I helped ^^

[Myskillzownu]

Thanks for all of the tips & advice; definitely taking it all into consideration.