a new idea for an MMO

Recently i came of the Elder Scrolls Online beta

and once again i find myself disappointed

games and MMO's seem to be repetitive , it is the same old story same old concept just with better graphics or functionality such as action animation or a little more freedom in how you move and fight, but the basic concept is the same

so i sat down and thought what would i like to see in a new MMO that i think would be interesting and appealing which goes against the stuff thats out here and is on repeat like a favorite record track

i also thought about what makes the current wave of MMO's boring? and here is what i came to conclusion

firstly what makes the current wave of MMO's(be they the rift's or tera's or elder scrolls online's or final fantasy's) boring

well its the same old story, collect this, kill that, gain this, unlock these skills, get this experience, reach this level

now of course without these basic an MMO or many games wont be able to function, so they are necessary, but the problem is that all these MMO's are based upon this as a system and as the end game, all of this really has no purpose

you spend hours visiting every region/alliance map/city area/quest and do the same boring thing over and over again , with a change in the size or strength of the enemies/npc's and thats about it

then you reach the maximum level and then you become stagnant

so the problem is that there really is NO purpose behind most of these MMO's except to reach the maximum ability of your character and the maximum stats and maximum level

the whole game is based upon that

so an idea i came up with is this:

we do have to use the same formula, a character has to level up, and by leveling up the character has to do quests and kill NPC's , unlock skill trees, collect items BUT now there is a goal, the goal of the MMO is to (other then level up and gain skills) gain better armor(which is already vanilla for all MMO's) visit new areas and acquire item which are specific for the whole purpose of the game which is to become one of the BOSS beasts of a region

up until the maximum level, each region has a "final" quest and that "final" quest is to acquire a piece of armor/crafting ability/crafting object

once each subsequent level is completed in each region and map, and the matching level completed, the user reaches the final and complete maximum level character with each level having a final quest collecting that specific armor piece/crafting ability/crafting item

once that is all done the character has collected 80 special items (if the maximum level being 80) and reached the maximum level

and now enters a new game, called control which is ubiquitous to only maximum level characters but takes place in all of those previous regions, however what is the purpose? well now the character has collected (maximum level) 80 items and those 80 items are his entry into the new world, where the race is on to collect a jaggurnaut set of armor, there is only one set for each region in say 100 regions scattered over the entire region/alliance

whoever gets this armor set first gets to be the MASTER , the MASTER then chooses a dungeon or city or are which they then have control,and are able to morph into a giant beast, now the other level characters all have to come together to slay this master who owns this unique armor set and and cause the armor set to be scattered al over the complete map once again , so then the race is to go and get this complete set, since there is only one set, if a character has gotten half the set, and another character has gotten the other half, if they come across each other , then in pvp battle the winner takes all

so the purpose is to control and be this master beast which everyone's wants, this way the game is always alive and interesting, obviously the details needs smoothing out but i think it would work very well and is possible with game engines

so what do you guys think about this?

I think it sounds like we're still talking about gear treadmills, but on a much larger scale. But I will say that the notion of players battling other players for control is starting to creep into MMOs more and more lately with TERA's elections (which I skipped out on before the patch came down, so not sure how it all worked), Guild Wars 1 and 2 with territory control, and now ESO's emperor concept. It's a good pvp incentive, but doesn't necessarily address the issues with PvE longevity.

I think the golden age for traditional MMO gameplay (EQ and WoW) is done. I don't imagine any MMO coming along and duplicating the same success with that progression model. But I also don't know what the solution is to create the next MMO. Maybe a continual infusion of story content released in seasons that each have their own storyline and each involve either adding new territories or overhauling old ones to reflect the change in situation. But we probably also need to rethink basic progression concepts like leveling as they come with the sort of inevitable conclusion that devs are trying to avoid, as it means players moving on to something else. Currently leveling concepts are tugging MMOs in opposite directions, with one crowd clamoring about slow leveling and the other hitting the level cap in two weeks clamoring for the level cap to be raised.

So what's the solution? How do you track player growth in a way that is satisfying and even, yet prolonged? If you can answer that, maybe you have the next billion dollar a year MMO.

you missed the point, i am saying that questing is purely for finding items which in the end come together to make one player the "boss" so the player can take on a new form that overshadows everyone, and hence everyone must defeat this new player controlled boss in order to cause the items to scatter that turned that player into this boss beast, and then they themselves can search for the items to also attain this position, seeing who can hold it the longest

kind of like a race who gets to find the items first and is constantly vulnerable to attack and for the items to be taken if they have not completed the set of items

and this can be for different maps/regions so each map has a single player boss who came to be by finding items scattered around in quests that are needed in order to make the player the master boss

kind of like the dragon balls where one person has to find them all, and everyone can fight them and take them from them, but the end goal being that he/she now becomes trans-mutated into a huge beast creature whos stats are based on the items that were found and their internal skills and characteristics

so every play has two potentials, one is their level 80 maximum character and the other a combination of items they found necessary to turn them into this beast creature plus other factors which determines their strengths suck as skills and class which this beat form takes on and is unique to that character

someone just needs to make log horizon an actual game and ill be happy

So just one person at a time out of all the players can do something cool? Basically you just created a repeating quest is all. Rinse and repeat all the while most people will work hard and try hard only to be disappointed so most of them wont even bother trying.

Its like doing epic quests back in the original everquest, they were so damn hard and at any given time dozens of people would wait weeks to get one single item needed in a long chain only to be disappointed when they didn't get what they needed because someone else got it.

Terrible idea and its basically just a painful version of what most MMO's do already in a sense.

So the whole idea behind the game is to aquire unique items and become a boss, wait until you get murdered, look for items again, someone aquires the items, kill the boss, look for items again..etc. That sounds extremely repetitive and boring. Maybe that could be a side quest, but it should NOT be the main purpose of the whole entire game.

If I'm reading this right and I'd like to think I am.... It sounds like Dragon Ball Z in an MMO? o.0

To be honest, I don't really get the full extent your idea. And the little I do get, doesn't sound different at all from what we have now.