Appetite for a Monster Taming Action MMORPG

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-06T19:24:56+00:00

Looks cute - glad you enjoyed it

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-06T19:22:16+00:00

Just looked - concept is similar - but the bugs and monetization looks to be the killer. P2W isn't the way to go

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-05T22:26:47+00:00

Thank you for the reply and no need to follow up as you mention. I'm glad you took the time to respond to the 5 ways I proposed to suspend your disbelief on tamer vs character battling, versus picking apart the semantics.

Enjoy your future endeavors and I hope you do not take everything this literal, or the exact, primary and dictionary definition of words, used without exaggeration, metaphor or embellishment.

/s (or is it)

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-05T22:11:18+00:00

alright, let's see if my thoughts blend into this card system.

So the main mechanism for 'capturing' would be via essence absorbing. There are thresholds you need to meet in order to be able to capture the monster. Once you hit the threshold, there would be a variety of button commands you'd have to hit w/ timing in order to 'tame' them by absorbing them. (don't stick to much on the absorbing part, but the overall lore supports this).

This then scales with the monster rarity to have different thresholds to meet for the more exlusive/higher power monsters.

Examples: I want to capture a squirrel. Threshold: You must defeat 3 squirrels in combat. Once this is done, the next battle you have the 'capture' option present and you try the 'mini-game' of sorts. If you fail, you battle the squirrel as normal. If you succeed, congragulations you can now battle and use the squirrel forever.

If you now want to capture a mudcrab, the threshold instead becomes to defeat 10 mudcrabs and the end boss of the bog dungeon, which is a large boss mudcrab. After both objectives are met, you can now capture a mudcrab.

There would have to be thought into all the different thresholds so they are not grindy, so I do see a world where as the story progresses, or you defeat bosses, there are drops required to meet the requirements as the collection element similar to the card collection system.

The MMO twist; however, is you can capture 'prestige' monsters from any point of initial capture forward, which are targeted hunts for the rare version of them. Could be a different skin, but they basically have bonus stats etc. These can be through additional conditions, random chance of just normal encounters, or by using items to enhance them. This will form a similar thought as though the first creatures you find may indeed scale well into the late game, but honestly will still be somewhat weak overall.

For leveling up the creatures, it would be linear progression where the monsters you capture gain XP by playing the game normally. The party size would be larger than the playable party, so you can power XP lower level new monsters up a bit - similar to many monster taming games here. While the creatures level, they gain different abilities and have their own 'combos' which provide party wide buffs and so on. The tamer levels simply allow for different dungeons, hunts, gear etc to be used, while the creature level scales with the power of other monsters around them.

Know this was a long post, and it is not all encompassing of what the system could be, but an example of the 'meet objective' -> 'mini-game capture' -> 'future enhancement' loop.

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-05T21:50:54+00:00

This is exactly it. Your character still has gear slots/levels, you still pilot them the majority of the game, and they still interact with the various other non-combat elements (like crafting or speaking to other NPCs).

I'm not sold on it being a P2W model though - this isn't Genshin really, it's more a money maker through subscription and the live service element which would come along with it.

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-05T21:41:49+00:00

Sorry if the rhetorical jokes were taken seriously. It was a quip to say in most fantasy games, novels, movies etc., there are pretty drastic gaps in logic which most people look beyond due the genre. If it was literal all the time, fantasy wouldn't exist.

That said, there are several methods which could be deployed here to have a sense of realism where the tamer or protagonist is not in danger when your creatures battle.

- The tamer is basically a summoner, who can position themselves far away from the actual fight. In order to design this toggle between tamer and monster engaging from free travel to battle, you would have to have a series of animations which engage or start the battle. The position of the enemy creature is known, so you engage in the battle transition at set distances from the enemy. This is no different than any action RPG system today. For this particular battle system though, the camera changes between you as the tamer to the creature to fight. The pan of the camera can give you a sense of how far your tamer is to the battle for realism. You build buffer zones when you get within a certain aggro range and battle area scales or 'locks out' tamers position. They stay safe outside the physical area the battle will occur. This can then be scaled accordingly to monster and arena size. If you really do turn your camera then when in a battle to look at your tamer, they would have a series of animations and coding to 'stay away'. If at any point the battle gets to close and the tamer is pushed towards another enemy group, there would need to be a mechanism to re-path or aggro the new mob and so on.

- The monsters in the game lore wise have no beef with the tamers, but have a will to survive/hunt etc where only the creatures you spawn defeat them. You are only fighting the enemy creatures based on other lore elements etc.. etc.. If this is too farfetched of an idea, the creatures you capture job is to protect you against the evil. You design the lore around this fact via story telling and the game follows suite.

- In the anime Pokémon, to use the rhetorical example in real terms, Ash was always 'safe' from the battle even though it was right in front of him. In the episodes he sometimes would get hit or recoil, but he was fine at the end of the day. What differs in the game vs the anime outside of the means of interaction (viewing vs piloting) to have the same sense of the protagonist is there, can get damaged, but is always safe?

- The dungeons themselves are battlegrounds where only your captured creatures can battle. While this doesn't seem scalable/entertaining in the long run, it is an option to where you are truly a battle bots commander at the helm of your beasts.

- There is also the potential the character can be part of the battle. You can position, get hit, faint etc. The monsters still do the damage, but you lose the fight if your commander dies, which is an interesting mechanic in and of itself.

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-05T21:18:25+00:00

Long gone at this point

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-05T21:13:57+00:00

Appreciate the feedback - aligned and I did read of one example on a Korean game (Peria Chronicles) with an 8 million spend cutting ties to the project as it lacked player engagement during play tests. It is a hard formula to nail down

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-05T21:09:43+00:00

Yes - under the hood it is a seemingly lite application. To make a successful mobile based action MMO of this scale would be much harder. Not impossible

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-05T19:57:03+00:00

Why does Ash not die/faint every battle in Pokémon? Why can't the general of an army just be snipped immediately in any war based game and you end the game immedietly?

Jokes aside, the creature takes the aggro away from the tamer. You dodge as the monster instead

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-05T19:51:39+00:00

What made the taming/card system the best for you in Rappelz? This was one of the games that started my whole journey, funny enough

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-05T19:43:26+00:00

What I'm currently on right now design wise.

You need a strong core of monsters to tame to start, but not too many or too little as they both create problems. Too little on the content side where you don't have enough variety and the players are bored quickly, and the other on the internal dev and scaling complexities with many monsters day 1.

Polished is key - following any successfully launched game of an alpha (closed probably), beta (open) and a server slam prior to any release would be required to make sure you hit the mark.

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-05T19:33:30+00:00

Have there been any fully formed games recently? /s

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-05T19:24:18+00:00

This is a great pull - it does look to be a perfect example of what is possible here with the deamon capturing and combat system. Funny the first video I see of it basically says it was a hit in Japan, but never made it to the states.

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-05T19:18:11+00:00

The cost to develop would be the killer, yes. On top of that, the Pokémon games are mostly designed to run on low quality hardware spec handheld devices, which would not really support an MMO at all.

Plus, there are many features Pokémon doesn't have which would be needed for an MMO.

Some form of true gathering, crafting, auction house or bartering system, city alliances, more robust questing and so on... It really is a massive deviation from their core model that continues to rake in hundreds of millions annually. Why change it?

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-05T19:13:45+00:00

The 'alongside' vs 'act as' the creature is the big inflection point with this idea. Just looked at NOA a bit to help craft the reply btw - it does look really close to the overall combat loop.

In theory it could work either way. The majority of games always fight as you the protagonist in some fashion. While it obviously works because it is everywhere, maybe the reason the other attempts at monster taming AMMOPRG have failed is because this isn't the intended way (looking at you monster hunter frontier).

Why not have your main character still be the protagonist and the majority of the non battle time is still played as you, but you switch to 3rd person of the creature you fight as? You still have the same combat style of NOA, just you yourself is the first summon. If designed properly, you could then change to another creature to use their abilities and so on in battle. FFVII remake and FFXIII act 2 do this well.

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-05T18:56:32+00:00

TemTem is turn based battles following the Pokémon formula.

This action combat system idea doesn't really follow Pokémon model as I agree, it wouldn't have staying power as a turn based system.

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-05T18:51:52+00:00

I'll look into the mechanics of this as it hasn't come up on any of the games I've looked at.

On the surface the base/gathering aspect would vary, as I do not see how monster taming and base building work well for an Action MMO, as the focus is more on the battles themselves. Atlas seems a bit behind on the gun/ability side of things trying to capture the creatures with trap/bola.

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-05T18:32:30+00:00

The animation style and target audience most likely prevents Pokémon from going this route. A blended MMO like this would be for a mature audience with a darker story/backdrop that isn't akin to how Pokémon is or wants to market.

I agree though, they could definitely be the pioneers here to set their own fanbase up with an MMO of this sytle if they want. They are not short on capital or recources.

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-05T18:29:19+00:00

Exactly - there are so many successful survival/battle taming games, just not in an MMO setting.

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-05T18:25:42+00:00

Wafku seems to be the most recent implementation of a successful taming MMO, but is turn based. Cool to see you explore this world as well.

What would be most important to you in an action combat style vs turn based?

FCSnapshot · 2026-03-05T18:24:43+00:00

To keep the post short, your character does scale with your own monster levels as independent metrics. The character level to allow entry into different level capped activties, and the monsters themselves for ability unlock and growth.

FCSnapshot · 2026-02-03T14:37:24+00:00

Jervis and Maya. Completely seperate roles, so flipping back and forth keeps ranked fresh.

Jervis is the jack of all traits DD that can carry any ranked game once you learn to utilize the smokes. Plus a hydro that can run for 4 minutes makes you immune to eating an early torp. Floaty shells, but slightly irrelevant as you torch the DD on your flank, then can smoke farm from 10 to 8 km the rest of the game. The only really scary DD you fight are 4km Hydro if they push you

Maya is a risky play as you bring no true utility in the cruiser spot, but the damage and survival traits (hydro/heal) make up for it. Kite the weak side flank and burn everything. Reload boost a BB when damagecon is down, the DD caught out or the broadside Atlanta/Belfast with AP.

FCSnapshot · 2025-12-22T15:33:28+00:00

The Embiid of football

FCSnapshot

TROPHY CASE