The reason many are Hack 'n Slash is it's easier to write the story hook & scenario, for crafters you'd have to write a hook that would for each type. The only MMO I've played was Star Wars Galaxies before the Not Gonna Exist came out, had a decent character, a level 9 crafter; I could do most of the low and a few mid-level combat quests, until the NGE; the day it came out I was killed by 2 level 1 womp rats, but I was able to get to get to the Kryat Dragon Graveyard, mainly because I wasn't pulling agro, walked around right next to at least 10 huge dragons and nothing happened.
OK, back to the crafter thing, there were seven or eight crafting professions, each with a different take on the crafter concept, some are similar enough they could share quests, but you're still looking at scripting around 4 quests. In comparison, there's around the same number of combat oriented professions that can share the same quest, not to mention there are a lot of player who are only interested in combat. What really irked me was when they released the Mustafa expansion, before the NGE I had a change to take advantage; but after, I had to make a new character and grind him up so that I could play an expansion I'd paid for. Never did go to Mustafa; will never play SWG or another sony MMO ever.
Personally, I'd rather see each profession get a couple tailored quests.
I don't agree with level requirements on gear; so what the 1st level has a tricked out sniper rifle, he's still not as good as a high level sniper with decent sniper rifle. Besides, PKers might be more cautious if low-level characters have a decent way to even the odds.
Here's my thoughts on controlling bad players:
you get targeted by a PKer and are killed, you get to put a bounty on them, gives those bounty hunters something to do. If they're really bad PKers the bounties will rise rather quickly. Multiple bounties on a character can be set to trip a flag at some level and allow the game to make him an outlaw; he looses all guild affiliations and any professional recognition by the government (i.e., a bounty hunter would loose his status) for really incouragable players, public humiliation: put him in stocks for an hour and allow others to lob fruit at him, tattoo him, give him a wonderful new haircut or wardrobe that truely flatters him, whatever.
RM is a good system to base an MMO on, it's just defining the characters that's the rough part
Things I would consider neccessary:
- Do not allow players to build races
- Do not use randoms to generate stats, it's too easy to just dump a character because his rolls suck, but if you have a set number of points you assign and move on.
- On a similar vein, either reduce the effect that randoms have on potentials or hide the fact that there are potentials from the players. They'll see their stats rise but won't know what the limits are, by the time they know they've hit their limits (5th to 7th level) they've already racked up a lot of time in the game.
- If talents & flaws are used most of the points should be: pre-spent based on race/profession or randomized or some combination; Again, the player should be unaware of this mechanic, I'd phase in the benefits/loses over the course of a couple days worth of actual play.
- Do not allow the players PC to generate any randoms that you will actually use.
There's a number of great books on design and concepts of MMOs, but they are $40+ each
