User blog:ChishioKunrin/How much work would go into a RWBY MMO?

This kind of started as a comment, and it ended up reeeeally long, so I decided to make it a blog post and clean it up a bit to make it a little easier to read and less daunting.

An MMORPG would be a lot of work, especially if you want there to actually be a lot of customizable options for your weapon.

MMOs are more work than single player games
With a single player game, you come up with a story for the player to follow and build the world around that story. You don't have to build the entire world, just the places that the player will go for the story and maybe other places for sidequests and such. They could go the sandbox route with Grimm Eclipse, but so far, it's not looking like they will. In single player games, you can have loading screens, so you don't have to build such huge maps, and you don't have to make it possible for the player to manually travel from one place to another rather than, say, going up to an airship and hitting X/A/Left Click.

With an MMO, you have to build a whole world where players can manually travel to one place to another without a bunch of loading screens, though dungeons are often separate instances from the world map and thus have loading screens upon entering. The story is presented through a main story quest, and there are a whole lot of side quests the player can do. Many MMOs occasionally update the game to add new stuff and even new stories, to keep people interested. They evolve. So, a RWBY MMO wouldn't be something where they could just finish it and go "Done" like they will with Grimm Eclipse.

Weapon customizability
A lot of people will want some kind of super customizable weapon system, so we don't end up with thousands of people running around with differently-colored versions of Ruby's scythe and thousands of people running around with differently-colored versions of Yang's gauntlets, etc. They'll want a wide variety. But that kind of thing would take a lot of work and planning for skill trees and models, especially considering how varied the combat options have been shown to be in the show itself. We've seen... For a wide enough variety for it to be really fun and not have tons and tons of copies being used, they'd have to make categories and skill trees for all that stuff.
 * Melee + Ranged weapons, not to mention the variety of ranged weapons used. We've got handguns, a gatling gun, a rifle (Pyrrha's seems to be different from Ruby's sniper rifle), a sniper rifle, shotguns, a flaregun sort of thing (Torchwick)...
 * A Melee + Dust weapon (Myrtenaster)
 * Raw Dust (Cinder's style is just using raw Dust, but she can use her lava Dust to make obsidian swords)
 * Plus, there's an option of training your Aura to the point where you can use Aura-enhanced martial arts like Ren and create shields like Ren and Cinder have done.

Melee + Ranged
What kind of ranged weapon do you want to add to your weapon? Let's say they go with letting you choose from a certain type of handgun, a rifle, a sniper rifle, and a shotgun.

What kind of melee weapon do you want to add? They would probably have to make it to where you can only pair up certain melee weapons with certain ranged weapons. So, you choose your ranged weapon first, and then you choose from the melee weapons that are available to be combined with that ranged weapon.

They'd have to make models for all the possible combinations and make sure that they can feasibly transform and give them transformation animations. It'd also be nice to be able to choose the colors on your weapon.

The melee weapons would have their own skill trees. I'm not sure about the ranged weapons. I mean, we don't want it to just be that the player clicks a Grimm, chooses "Attack," and then just sits there hitting "Melee" and "Shoot," right? There should be different attacks that the character does with their weapon.

Melee + Dust
This might be a bit less varied, but judging by Russel's daggers, it seems that there are a variety of different melee weapons that can act as instruments for directing Dust. So, you could probably choose from a rapier, a pair of daggers, maybe gauntlets. The weapon would have a certain number of slots for inserting Dust vials. There definitely wouldn't be enough slots to have one of every single color of Dust. Myrtenaster has six slots and Russel's daggers appear to only have five slots. The number of slots could vary from weapon to weapon. Perhaps gauntlets have the smallest number of slots.

Raw Dust
Perhaps the options would be between Dust-infused clothing and infusing Dust within your character. You would have to choose which type of Dust you want to specialize in.

Since Dust is activated by Aura, and the narrator in World of Remnant: Dust said that using raw Dust requires a level of discipline so it doesn't get out of control, I would personally make it to where the player has to make sure to level up their Aura alongside getting new skills in their Dust skill tree. If they try to use a Dust skill that's a higher level than their Aura skill level, there would be a percent chance that using that skill would just injure their character instead of attacking the enemy. The higher that skill's level is than the player's Aura skill level, the higher the chance it'll just injure their character.

I would probably personally make infusing Dust in your character a harder route than using Dust-infused clothing.

Aura
All players would have an Aura skill tree. This skill tree would be much more integral to players who choose to be raw Dust users, but other players would have the option of pursuing higher level Aura skills.

Semblance?
I'm not sure what they would do for Semblance, other than have a bunch of pre-set Semblances to choose from. It would be far too much work to find a way for players to be able to create their own unique Semblances.

Character customizability
Aside from the usual "Male or Female," what hair style and color, what eye style and color, what skin tone, what body type, etc etc, we'd also have race/species. Choose Human or Faunus. There'd have to be bonuses that the Human has that the Faunus doesn't, in order to encourage people to play Humans, so we wouldn't have 90% Faunus running around. Because, really, if the population isn't balanced, it's kind of dull that way.

Human
Some of the Human bonuses could be rooted in the discrimination toward Faunus, such as lower prices for Humans. I dunno. There are probably some other good ways to encourage people to at least think about playing as a Human. Some of those bonuses would need to be useful in combat.

Faunus
Having a great amount of character customizability would add more work in the Faunus department, since players would want to get to choose what kind of animal feature they'd want. The Faunus could have whatever bonuses come with what animal feature the player chooses to have. Perhaps...

Rabbit ears - Have a passive skill that slightly lowers cooldown time on skills. This plays off of how rabbits are known for speed.

Bat ears - Have a skill where the character "listens for enemies." This temporarily raises evasiveness, as it makes it harder for enemies to catch the character off-guard.

Monkey tail - Something having to do with how the tail is prehensile. Perhaps an extra equipment slot, which opens the way for the character to hold a Dust crystal with their tail and channel the Dust's energy that way for Dust attacks.

Cat ears - Have a skill that temporarily sharpens the character's vision, increasing their accuracy and increasing the percent chance for a critical hit. This plays off of cats having really good night vision and great attention to detail when spotting potential prey.

Fox tail - Because you know there will be people who demand to have one. I dunno, maybe a passive skill that slightly increases the amount of lien you earn? This is playing off of the "foxes are sneaky rogue/thief type characters" archetype/trope/whatever.

Wolf ears - Again, because you know there will be people who demand to have it. Perhaps a passive skill that gives the character a bonus for being in a party with other players. Maybe that bonus is a slight increase in defense. This is playing off of how wolves live in packs and are much better hunters when they use teamwork.

Kingdoms
Should they go through the extra effort of making to where players can choose to be native to a certain kingdom? If so, what would that bring to the gameplay? Would the player's native kingdom be the main place where they get their quests? Would being native to a certain kingdom open up exclusive clothing options?

This could open the way for competition events and possibly even wars, between the kingdoms.

Timeline
What about the timeline of the events? Would the MMO take place in an alternate timeline, separate from the show? Would it take place alongside the story of the show? Having it take place after the end of the show would be difficult, since they wouldn't want to spoil things for us.

Having it take places before the start of the show could also present problems, as they would have to figure out how long ago before the start. The Faunus Revolution would be a difficult event to implement because the Faunus are supposed to win. Game events where players compete need to be open so that whichever side wins, actually wins. There's also the fact that the MMO could run for years, and they would need to keep coming up with events for stuff happening before the start of the show.

The easiest route would be for the MMO to take place in an alternate timeline.

So... yeah, there would be a lot of work to put into building and programming an MMO, as opposed to a single-player game.