Pixel Pets(MainNet Release), Crypto Hero (MainNet Release this month) and Chain Team Tactics (MainNet in April) are games developed by three different teams within the NEAR Ecosystem.
These three teams gained a lot of experiences working with NEAR and connected over the last months and found a lot of synergies between them and discovered the possibilities to make another much greater project together within the near ecosystem.
Based on existing experiences and multiplayer framework tooling (from previous games), these 3 teams plan to merge into one bigger team and found a new DAO based game studio (name not decided yet) to create a NEAR protocol based MMORPG game.
How will the grant be used?
- Develop the MMORPG
- Rework some parts of Crypto Hero and Chain Team Tactics to be more compatible with the NEAR Ecosystem (Paras compatible NFTs for example) and build up more partnerships with other projects within the NEAR Ecosystem.
- Stack up the team with another artist, unity developer, web developer and rust contract developer to finish the MMORPG and to maintain the existing games.
- Marketing costs
- Infrastructure costs to run the MMORPG for at least 2 years.
What exactly will the new team work on?
- Maintaining and updating Pixel Pets, Crypto Hero and Chain Team Tactics. This will be much more efficient since we can use the skill synergies of the different developers and also don’t work on the same tooling at 3 different teams.
- Working on opensource tools like the unity connection for webGL projects and a gamified indexer, so also other Game Developers benefit from this new team.
- And of course to developing the MMORPG.
Tell us more about the MMORPG!
The core idea is to utilize the base concepts developed in previous games to create an innovative way of bringing the NEAR ecosystem for hundreds of players consecutively.
The game’s main focus will be on socializing with other players, exploring a big open world together, forming alliances, going into quests together, going into wars, trading and bargaining items and more.
This focus will be heavily inspired by old-school MMOs such as Tibia, Runescape, Ultimate Online and even some other games like Guild Wars, Diablo and Minecraft
The MVP consists of a real-time combat system combined with a free movement system, making the game have a more modern feel to it, while keeping its underlying mechanics and objectives pretty old-school. As well as the fact that the game will resemble, artistically to some of these games.
Some more details about the MVP
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The World
With a frustrum culling system that has been implemented in previous games, the MMO will have a huge world to explore, containing multiple cities, dungeons, biomes and more. This is only possible due to tools that we have already developed in the past that will aid us in making it completely seamless - with no loading times in-between zones. -
The Movement
With the physics system recently developed and showcased here we plan on having a real-time free movement that contains real world physics for maximum freedom in terms of exploring the huge open world that we are planning. This is no small feature, its the core concept of the game, wandering the world is where players will spend most of their time and making sure this mechanic is well developed and polished is our main goal. -
The Combat
Similarly to the movement system, the combat system will also take on a more modern stance, with physics and a hitbox system. There will be no target-able abilities and most importantly, skill is going to be a huge factor when it comes to performing attacks and defending yourself. This is the second most important mechanic in the game since killing monsters and fighting players is a big part of what players will be doing in the game. -
The Items
Items are the component that glue all systems together, without them, there is no reason to explore, no reason to kill monsters, no trading system, no quests and specially no reason to kill other players. Items are the core value of the game and they represent wealth at its most fundamental aspect. You can get items by doing quests, by killing monsters and by trading with other players. Other than that, we do plan on allowing items to be traded as NFTs, in a system we call “Tokenization”, where you can transform an in-game item into a “Token Item” and trade it using the game’s token exclusively. -
The Quests
Quests in the game will be a simplified concept of gathering groups, usually they will consist of places of high danger, where you will need a group in order to clear out - or places with a lot of mysteries, where you will need to solve out secrets in order to gain a prize. There will be no underlying system of parties or instances - quests will be spread out in the world naturally and can be done in any way the players wish so. -
The Trade System
Trading, very similarly to quests, has no underlying systems apart from a “safe trade system” where both players, when next to each other, can accept on a fair trade with an interface. The reason for this, is to encourage socialization (which is also true for the quests) and bargaining. Players need to instead, advertise their items in a bazaar, where other players can message them to organize a meetup in the world where they will effect the trade in a safe place. This also applies for tokenized items, which can only be traded with Tokens. -
The PVP
We like to think that Player versus Player is a consequence of other systems - not a core mechanic. It is what happens when you need to impose your presence in the world and is the flame that ignites wars and conflicts. For this reason, we do plan on making different servers where PvP rules differ - traditionally, PvP will be enabled outside of safe zones, where you can attack other players and be marked as an attacker for that period of time. But in other servers, PvP is optional and can only be done if both parties agree (similarly to a duel). This way, if you do not like getting randomly attacked, the optional PvP server is the best fit.
