"Race for the Cure"
 

Basically the codename of my project I've been making on Horrification. What with Rudora coming out and screwing my chances of becoming hosted/classic, this is the new plan for the server. It's not all of it, but it's enough to get the gist of it. We only need GATs.

The continent has began to fall ill of a deadly disease, the origins of it unknown. You've ignored it until your family has finally fallen ill to it, and finally decide to begin to work for finding the reason, how to stay away from it, the cure and all that jazz.

Here's the clincher: The cause of the disease will be randomized on your first login, meaning that for one person, it could be the mushrooms all around that are causing it, and for another, it could be the wolf monster that is often hunted and killed, to be eaten, or being spread by an airborne means from trees. It's literally impossible to predict from the endless amount of possibilities, making no two experiences the same.

Now, you've gotten your random selection: How are you going to go about inspecting for this disease? Of course, inspecting these objects would be wise, but you've got almost no foreign knowledge of signs of the disease, or anything. But luckily, there are many people around that have some knowledge of the disease, perhaps even people behind the disease; but these people are hunted commonly, and therefore they must ask for a favor, for you to kill someone out to kill them.

But, who are you going to kill? Not just some poorly scripted NPC -- a player in a PK zone will be randomly selected as the target; when you find this player, a "duel" begins. The duel is a simple battle, however, neither can leave that level and must fight to the death. If others come into the level/are in the level, they can freely participate as well.

So, how are you going to fight him? The battle system is unlike any other; instead of basing the game on stats, there is only blunt weapons in the game (sorry, mages and archers, but Graal simply isn't that kind of game), but these blunt weapons aren't simply S-bashers; each and every weapon has four special skills, which could make your wooden sword more valuable then your steel dagger if you can control the wooden sword's skills better.

The skills? They're not just 4 for everything, 4 for a SINGLE WEAPON! For example, the wooden sword could have a skill called "Skull Bash", which smashes the wooden sword unto the receiving player's head, perhaps destroying your blade, but delivering a lot of damage! But you don't just have these skills; you have to earn them.

How?

Each sword has there own seperate EXP; instead of an overall level and EXP, weapons have there "weapon EXP", which is gained every time you successfully land a hit on a player, or on an NPC. So, I attack with my wooden blade, and I fight an enemy and hit him 5 times, and I get 10 EXP for each hit, that's 50 EXP. but what do I use it on? To purchase these skills.

Skills aren't just there for you; you must earn them through combat. As you get enough weapon EXP to purchase the skill, you can purchase and use it freely (No MP/restrictions, but weapons can break from overuse.)

Feel free to give feedback, and we're hiring GATs and GANIs.

Nice idea.
Could use some work though...

Where, exactly?

wow, i recognize some of this... runescape? 1 exp per 1 damage? nice idea though

You're comparing a full-scale exp system to a skill-based system where exp is merely a type of currency in this case?

The "hunt" thing.
It should copy some sort of level and the two players battle-it-out. On other people's screen it looks like they are standing side by side, looking at eachother. When a player not battling touches one of them, they can view the battle.

No, wherever the two players find each other, they battle-it-out. This will lead to great battles and greater moments where others jump in on your duel and try to make the job even harder or easier, and they can't leave that level they found each other in, anyway.

Letting out the fact that it's a MMO and other players should be experiencing it will ruin some really great moments.

I'm a bit curious, if there won't be any NPC battles(I'm assuming here... you weren't exactly clear) it seems like this will heavily rely on playerbase. What happens to those who play at the low-playercount hours?

There will be NPC battles, I'm sorry for not being clearly, mainly with monsters and whatnot so you could examine their remains for the disease, I don't plan to go into the hosted stage for more then a day until I apply for classic (I'm going to completely have the server finished before I even consider public releases at all), so the playercount should stay relatively high. In the case that it's too low, you'd simply have to try another time. If our playercount is at one point to a low point, we could script a baddy for that, but I expect some success with this idea.

The server isn't in a foreign language, so I don't think it will ever be in that "1-2 players max" lifetime. It'll be a new server and naturally be flocked for quite a while.

Sounds fun Good Luck :)

But for how long?
THats important, I think

This sounds really fun, id actually pay to play a game like this :P

I'm not really going to consider a low playercount until it happens. It's unreasonable to prepare yourself for a lower playerbase when you come out and it's flocked for a few weeks AT LEAST.