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Single Player Game, Classic MMO Design
No Story:
Traditionally, Single player games opt to deliver a linear experience usually facilitated by a narrative. We've chosen to not have a main story in our game, and to offer open-ended gameplay for players to make their own story with. This allows us to spend more time building the world and implementing more mechanics and systems for you to interact with.
Zone Based:
Legends Of Old is a zone based game. Each area of the game is its own unique zone, connected to other zones. This allows us to have much more control over the feel and difficulty of each area, as well as implementing much more believable NPC behavior. Since a large part of our gameplay design is based around simulating an ecosystem, breaking up the world into zones makes the most sense for Legends Of Old. It also allows us to make content much more quickly when it is broken up into separate zones since we don't have to deal with the added complexity of a truly open-world design.
Auto Attack:
Combat in Legends Of Old is based on the concept of auto attacks and casting spells. When you engage with an NPC with auto attack on, your character will swing their weapon until either of you meets their demise. We chose to go for a more relaxed pace of combat, eschewing the modern trend of high-APM style gameplay. The true difficulty in Legends Of Old is understanding all of its underlying systems and mechanics and using those to your advantage.
Casting spells is one of the most important aspects of combat. Due to relatively long cast times and large mana costs, knowing which spell to cast and at what time is the key to surving any encounter. There is a wide array of spells to choose from, ranging from Direct Damage, Damage Over Time, Buffs, Healing, Heal Over Time, to utility spells such as Root and Snare, spells that cause it to rain in the zone you are in, spells that lower the aggro radius of NPCs, and so on. We have spent a large amount of time developing mechanics to make the gameplay varied and interesting in Legends Of Old for all classes.
NPCs Respawn:
When an NPC dies, instead of being permanently dead they will respawn after a duration at a spawner. They do not necessarily respawn as the same type: That is to say, if a Spawner spawns a Snake and it dies, the spawner may spawn a Beetle next time. This allows zones to feel dynamic and full of change over time, as well as allows us to spawn Rare NPC types which can drop valuable, rare items on death. A large part of the fun is in the exploration of figuring out what mobs spawn where and what their routines are, and trying to divine how to spawn rare NPC types for their treasure.
Race:
The choice of a race in Legends Of Old is a very important one. Our world is not one of universal peace, but one of distrust and sometimes outright hatred. A Troll would not be welcome in a Human settlement, and conversely a Dwarf would be slaughtered if they were discovered in an Ogres dwelling. This choice directly affects your gameplay experience, with certain races having a more difficult time travelling the world due to being Kill-On-Sight by most of the population, or in the case of the larger races being unable to physically fit into certain areas without the aid of magic.
Death Penalty:
While many single player games do not have a large death penalty (or a death penalty at all), we have chosen to include this as a core design pillar. While exploration and experimentation is a huge part of the game, there must be consequences for failure. Dying yields a 10% experience penalty and being sent back to your bind point. We plan on offering a permadeath Hardcore mode for those seeking even more challenge.
Replayability:
Your first character will struggle a lot to progress in Legends Of Old until you become more familiar with its mechanics. However, once you finally have gotten to a higher level, you can directly affect your next character: By placing items you have acquired into a shared bank, you can transfer high level items to another character to have a leg up on the competition right out of the gate.
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