Dragonica is a side scrolling MMORPG released in 2009. The game features a fast paced combat system with a strong emphasis on PvP.
The game has many different classes which not only have different abilities, but also have different stats balance. For example a warrior has a high hit point values and lower attack points, but a thief has increased attack point and low health.
Dragonica as many other MMORPG features an equipment system, which allows the player to upgrade his combat and defensive battle capabilities.
The equipment system (among other things) allows the game to create balance, as the weapon will contribute the most points to your attack.
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Weapons- each class has a unique weapon, with different attack values. With this in mind the developers can control the balance of the different classes, for example a thief will have high attack points and low health, but a warrior will have high health and low attack.
This way the game gives each class a different feelings, so every player can find a class that fits his playstyle. Some like high risk high reward gameplay, so a thief will be a good choice. Some like a more forgiving class such as a warrior.
If we were to change the weapons attack value we would have to balance the healthpoints of other charcters among other features, otherwise it would shift the classes playstyle and might create an imbalanced game,.
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Poitions- Multiple shops are spread around the world where the player can buy multiple goods and potions are among them. Using poitions the player is able to replenish health, the more expensive the poition the more health it gives.
if we were to reduce every poitions health buy some value, the player will have a harder time playing the game as you need positive health point to stay alive. The more health the poition gives the easier it is to play the game.
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Monsters speed- The game revolves around fighting monsters. The faster the monster the harder it is to dodge its attacks. Every mob in the game have a different speed, creating diversity.
If a monster has a high speed and a high attack value it will be considered to be harder to deal with than other monsters and the other way around too. Changing this value can impact the player's choice to fight this monster or not (sometimes there is no choice).
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Shops- The game has a large amount of in-game vendors that offers the player different amount of goods, such as poitions which are a vital part of the game. Since a player can barely play without them, he needs to constantly buy poitions to keep adventuring. The shops are located mainly inside big cities of the game, which are safe zones (free of monsters). This causes a lot of players to visit them often, creating a social hub around them to relax and socialize with others.
Should the vendors be moved around the game world, those social hubs might not form as other than the safe zones, players must keep playing otherwise they will be killed by monsters.
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Boss monsters- Dragonica has many dungeons around it's world, where a boss resides at the end of every one of them. The player most defeat a large amount of monsters just to reach the final boss room. The bosses are located at the end of each dungeon to create a linear increase in difficulty.
If the boss monsters will be moved to the beggining of a dungeon it could ruin the feeling of the story, as the player most progress through the dungeon before reaching it.
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Loot boxes- At the end of every dungeon there are loot boxes to be collected, giving the player his reward for clearing it. Those are the main incentive to beat the boss room. If the loot boxes will be moved to the beggining of the dungeon, the player will have no reason to keep exploring and could just collect them and leave the dungeon.
The non monster's NPC's of the game are not interesting as they are mostly idle and simply offer different dialogs.
The game monsters however have interesting behaviours. Monsters will walk around on as simple route unless they spot a player, which causes them to charge at them. In the case of a group, they will charge at the first player in sight.
In the case of bosses however, things get more interesting. The player which has the highest damage per second (DPS) will be targeted by the monster. This give the battle a more dynamic feel when the group is balanced in terms of attacking power as the boss will keep targeting different players.
As a MMORPG Dragonica has a very rich and natural economy, where player trade goods such as equipment, unique poitions, scrolls etc.. The player can choose to directly trade with other players or simply post an item to sale on the marketplace. The player can also choose to sell items to ingame vendors for a fixed amount of gold, which is the game's currency.
The item's value are set by the seller, but the actual market value is by supply and demand. Popular classes equipment are more expensive, as they have more demand (such as the thief class).
Dragonica's revenue comes from premium currency called gems, which allow the player to purchase certain goods and mainly items that change the apperance of the player.
The player has its own HUD, which shows the amount of health and mana he has and cooldown information of his skills.
He also has a minimap which allows him to better navigate the open world and dungeons of the game. In a dungeon, you know how many monsters are left until the boss room is available. Once the player starts the boss fight, the health point of the boss is displayed on the upper part of the screen.
The player can also open multiple in game windows such as inventory, quest menu, settings and more.
The game's view is 3rd person side view, which is a very unique and gives the game the feel of an oldschool fighting game.
The player has direct control about what activity he will partake in. Once he enters a dungeon, he has limited choices- fight his way out, or forfeit and lose all rewards.
Outside dungeons the player can kill simple mobs or complete quests, which does not directly change the status of the world, simply gives him rewards based on the difficulty.
A very known glitch occured in the game that wasn't intentional at first, which is called skill canceling. Some skills have a very long animation time, which makes them less effective in combat. But soon after the game launch players discovered that pressing the jump button could cancel the animation but the skill's effect would remain.
This glitch would reward skilled player who could perform this action on certain skills, creating a more advanced playstyle.
In the early days of the game the playerbase was huge. You could walk around the open world, meeting players to play with and form "parties" of 4 players, hunting monsters and bosses together.
The game's safe zones were social hubs for the player to relax and socialize in, creating a very tight community.
People who had enough of fighting for one day could gather around the town and have fun conversations, some would engage in PvP combat and other even role played among themsevles.
We all know the famous game monopoly. The game is a board game where you can see the entire board and observe other player's actions and movements.
In this variation of the game we have added a fog of war element, where the player can only see two squares ahead of him and two behind, meaning not only he can not see where the other players are, he can not even see where they bought houses unless he is in the close vicinity.
This gives the player the feeling of uncertainty, unknowing where he would step next and what is the progress of his rival.
To play on a board you need a game master who can shift the board around to hide other players and their houses, but on a computer it is easier to implement.
- Itamar: The game is very different this way, as you have no idea what or where the player is. My strategy was to simply buy where ever i landed just because i had no idea what else to do. As the game progresses you land on more houses and have more action, but at the beggining since the board is empty you don't have much going on.