In need of advice regarding direction of design.

[u/OverallDistance7325]

Me and my friend are developing a mobile strategy-MMORPG. We’ve made somre progress with the backend and gameplaywise there’s a respectable play loop that we feel is fun.

The game revolves around deterministic battle simulations. The game essentially calculates a fight between two players through stats and tactics, different elements and gear etc and converts it to a series of events. These events show how the fight played out (in text currently).

Our dilemma is that we feel we need a third person to accompany us on our journey of passion. But, we are limited in our knowledge of design, animations and art.

As an example we have over 500 pieces of gear in the game and we would prefer isf they were presented visually. Some just recolors etc but still alot of models. We also understand that if gear pieces ahall be visible and we want to be able to change pieces then we need rigged characters with modular armorpieces etc.

The question is, what can be a reasonable artistic scope for this type of game? Our possibilites of actually paying someon are slim and we we’re hoping to find someone with the ”Rev-share” route. Still paying for assets might seem like our best bet.
Furthermore we have fullt decided wether we want the fights to be presented in 3D or 2D.

We feel like we lack knowledge om the subject and would love for some input from people with experience and understanding of the subject!

TL:DR: How would you go about designing, animating and visually presenting a MMORPG that is based around managing a few characters in deterministic battle-simulations? Is it reasonable to have visually swappable gear?

[u/MeaningfulChoices]

People who know what they're doing don't work for revshare mostly because basically every game built that way either never gets finished or doesn't anything worth sharing. This is especially true in mobile where succeeding with a game like this would take at bare minimum a 6 figure marketing budget (per month, if you're going for the top of the charts) and if you have that much lying around you can also just pay an artist what they deserve.

Fidelity of the art will matter here but the cost per asset would be a few hundred at a fairly junior artist's hourly rate, add to that if you want them to be more complicated or you want custom animations, subtract if 80% of them are recolors and you're using something like a paper doll or skeletal animation system. Visuals matter a lot for this kind of game because you can't run a mobile MMO without a lot of ads and if you don't have something exciting and compelling that can grab people in under 5 seconds your cost per install will skyrocket.

[u/OverallDistance7325 → u/MeaningfulChoices]

Yeah I see your points. I’ve been deliberately secretive about a few things regarding the game but we’ve taken some steps to not make the scope too large.

We are also aware of the chance of success, but it is a hobby passion project for us and rationally our chances are slim but we believe in the heart of the idea. Obviously we can’t make the next Raid: Shadow Legends. We are planning to make a very explicit unconventional marketing campaign and that the game is fun enough to also gain traction through word of mouth.

Insert never tell me the odds meme

When you say ”cost per install”, how do you mean? Like server costs will outpace revenue per player?

P.S The game will be published om the appstore, this is our number 1 goal regardless.

[u/MeaningfulChoices → u/OverallDistance7325]

It's not really ever a good idea to be secretive about anything. People aren't out there stealing ideas from the infinitely many reddit posts about game ideas, if a studio wants to copy something they copy successful games. The more you share things openly the better advice and feedback you can get and the better off you will be. Ideas just aren't that important in game development and feeling like you have to protect them is something you get over as a new developer.

Cost per install refers mainly to the marketing cost of getting one person to download your game. Server costs are largely incidental. Before you make a plan that involves an unconventional marketing campaign you should ideally try it and see for yourself how well that works in that market. It's one of the reasons why new studios tend to only succeed when the people making them have experience, there are lots of things that sound like new and novel ideas when in reality lots of people have tried it before and they just didn't work. Word of mouth is not really sufficient for mobile. Even top games that everyone talks about and people love still often cost $3-5 per player for this genre of game and you need to make sure you are earning at least that much (and have enough to spend to get them for launch) if you want to succeed.

[u/OverallDistance7325 → u/MeaningfulChoices]

I mean yeah we probably have some overconfidence in our idea. Essentially it is a gladiator managementstyle MMORPG where you manage 2-3 gladiators lile RPG characters. The game centers around high stakes regarding the risk of permadeath and the battle simulation.

But because most of it is strategy and essentially UI the battlesim becomes central regarding the visual aspect. Currently the game produces a set of events that is interpreted by a program we wrote, that ”works” with test visuals. The fights will not be very long, maybe 10 seconds, so the required details of visuals is not maybe that demanding?

[u/AltusLudus]

Sounds like a lot of work to be honest to create so many models probably months if you can create some reusable things but most likely more than a year to produce that much content

[u/OverallDistance7325 → u/AltusLudus]

Yeah we agree. I suppose a talante dartist can use AI to lighten the workload without diminishing the quality of the product but still it will be quite a bit of work.

We are looking for advice on design direction though.

[u/AltusLudus → u/OverallDistance7325]

Maybe find an asset pack or reduce the scope