The Ducktales MMO design thread

Yes comrades! I am abusing my elite status to propose an open design doc for what could very well be the final MMO anyone sane would ever want to play, but no studio would be sane enough to build. It's the design doc version of fantasy football! Let's roll!

Carl Barks' created a timeless and unique Disney cosmology that almost every Disney property has been built on since, with a pop-cult climax with the creation of Ducktales, a game-changing cartoon adventure series that allowed peripheral characters in the Disney universe flourish and become memorable because of their personalities and not merely their signature gags.

As Disney has been absolutely whoring out their properties the past decade, it's easy to forget just how brilliantly creative and basically entertaining Barks' vision of a duckified world really was. Here was a world that accentuated every stereotype, but portrayed everybody with an equal measure of success. Even Donald Duck, a perpetual minimum wage earner and all-round jackass lives in relative comfort in the suburbs; House, garden and transportation.

Here is a complete world, with detailed geography and history, ripe for the picking. It's lore with which most people above 20 (a lucrative demographic for an MMO; young, wealthy, bored) are inherently familiar.

When Star Wars Galaxies made a big point out of letting players "meet" characters like Jabba the Hutt; Who is to say players would not feel the same thrill being given huge, rambling, adventurous globetrotting instanced quests by Scrooge McDuck with the promised reward of 1 cent? Who wouldn't like to rob banks as a member of the Beagle boys? Who wouldn't like to manage their own slice of customized and personally decorated Duckburg suburbia, keeping up with the Joneses and the neighborly quarrels that naturally results in?

Duckburg Online, a game in which you create a dog (only named world characters in Duckburg are not dogs.Perhaps other species would unlock with time?) character and build a career and neighborhood in the most loved iteration of the Disney universe.

Friends: What would you like to see in Duckburg Online?

Will Darkwing Duck be in it? Cuz he was pretty sweet back in the early 90's.

Go around skateboarding, reminds me of the rocket power skateboarding game i had for PSone.

Your hard earned money would have to buy stuff like candy with power ups, or clothing that made you look cool.

So it is like Toontown Online, with DuckTales?

Toontown already has Donald, Daisy, Scrooge, and the nephews.

--but can you do swan dives into giant pools of gold coins? That is what I want.

I'd love to be able to explore the city and stop crime in the Gizmoduck suit! Darkwing Duck cameo also a must.

I'm still trying to master the pogo jump irl.

I would play this game in a heartbeat. Will Tootsie be in it?...oh whoops I don't know that I am elite enough to post in this thread. Sorry

IG.MattBoehm said:
--but can you do swan dives into giant pools of gold coins? That is what I want.

Only if you get there before someone farms it all.

Sounds like some good family fun. Not too many rated E games out there, and I can't think of a MMO. An open-world Disney/Sims? Sounds like a winner.

I would like to see more character customization than ever seen before. People go crazy for it, and customize more than actually playing some games.

Just don't bring Marvel into it and it'll do fine.

Ok check this out, stream of consciousness time:

I imagine Ducktales online as a kind of hybrid of instanced multiplayer action game with a social hub of suburbian property management with the 3d base building depth of Dwarf Fortress. Loot and inventory is handled as though it was a simplistic card game.

Characters start out as dogs, though highly customisable through changes to body height, girth, dog type, ear length etc. There are no stats beyond this; Player abilities are defined by the equipment they carry. There are experience points and levels however. As players gain levels, they unlock new types of appearance, from cats, mice, geese, all the other Carl Barksian animals, before eventually arriving at Duck.

Every server is its own alternate version of Duckburg, a procedurally generated metropolis with surrounding suburbs. New players buy a lot in the burbs and set out to build their own tile-based suburbian home, either choosing from a few presets or going all Dwarf Fortress/Dungeon Keeper on it. Rooms are "dug" out, making for earth or wooden floors and walls when "digging" down or up respectively. After rooms are created, doors, wallpaper, floor furnishings etc can be applied to make the place look homey. Some rudimentary physics ensure players can't build hovering rooms without support. Hopefully this will result in some really surrealistic homes as players realize their limits.

To improve their homes beyond mere boxes, players must spend resources on buying furnishings, such as chairs, beds, tables, etc, and as they progress more exotic inventory such as treasures found on quests and the like. As values are accumulated, the worth of the lot rises, scoring the player higher on a homemaker leaderboard. As in Dungeon Keeper, money must be stored to be used. Money can either be stored in banks (boring), or the player can choose to build a money bin of her own. Money stored in the player's home adds to the worth of the lot.

Player lots have neighboring lots. As players move in, their neighbors can be observed by "looking over the hedge" figuratively speaking. An unofficial goal is to make your neighbors hopelessly jealous of your progress. You can go visit a neighbor at any time by knocking on her door, and if she allows it you can explore their house and examine their treasure.

Players have a "deck of cards" of assets. An asset can be anything from loot to jobs and even contacts you know. Cards in your "hand" have no value until they are played; Loot must be used for something (sold or used to furnish your house), Jobs must be played to actually earn money, and Contacts must be called to gain their benefits.

Players start out with a pseudo-randomized deck of 4 cards offering at least one job and at least one contact. Players can carry as many jobs as they want in their "hand". A job card has a number on it for number of work hours required. Players can work as many jobs as they want, but the total number of hours can not exceed 8. For instance, I might start out with a hand containing the jobs "Secretary", "Criminal" and "Delivery boy". "Secretary" is an 8 hour job, so if i choose to play that card, I can no longer play the other two. Let's say Delivery boy and Criminal are both 4 hour jobs; I can play both of them. Jobs can be quit at any time, but quitting a job in most cases discards the job card; Criminal cards are returned however.

Event cards trigger specific occurences, such as drawing a new job card.

Some cards are "random events". These cards are drawn "face down", and their effects are only know when they are played and are then discarded. Random events could be you getting burglarized, you getting a new job offer, a new mission, anything at all really.

Contacts are your quest givers. Playing a contact card can trigger various effects, such as taking you to a shop, making you some extra money, or generating a new Mission card. Mission cards can be played at any time and trigger the game's instanced worlds, procedurally generated dungeons themed by the contact that sourced it. You can invite any friends or neighbors along on the mission. The adventure component is a Zelda-esque third person action adventure, tasking you with exploring a dungeon to complete objectives. Along the quest you'll find loot, which turns into loot cards when you leave. Loot cards can be kept in your hand or sold for cash.

Completing a mission nets you experience points. Contrary to other systems, the level threshold doesn't increase, for the following reason: Every level gained offers you the opportunity of "ending the day". Ending a day returns your played contact cards to your hand, and triggers the effects of any other cards you have in play, for instance gaining you income from jobs. After all this takes place, you draw as many cards as you played the last day, giving you new jobs, new contacts, and new things to do.

So that's the flow of it really:
- Build your neat-o crazyplace house.
- Mess around with your neighbors and make friends
- Play your cards, earn stuff, buy stuff.
- Run around a randomized themed dungeon, solving puzzles and escaping monsters to get more treasure and experience.
- Draw new cards

TLDR!

I see the possibility of a really popular social networking app here.

Saw this via Boing Boing...you know what this MMO needs? Instanced dungeons within Scrooge McDuck's dreams a la Inception:

http://videogum.com/208132/caught-inception-ripped-off-scrooge-mcduck/remakes-and-spinoffs/

They could also do a tie-in and Andrew Ryan could be Scrooge McDuck's business partner!

IG.MattBoehm said:
Saw this via Boing Boing...you know what this MMO needs? Instanced dungeons within Scrooge McDuck's dreams a la Inception:
http://videogum.com/208132/caught-inception-ripped-off-scrooge-mcduck/remakes-and-spinoffs/

Good stuff, I read through more of that forum than I needed to and am dumber now...

but hey check this out...

http://i723.photobucket.com/albums/ww232/manversusbear/DUCKT.jpg