So we’ve established that musical genres are basically classes in other, less rock-powered games. That’s cool. But a lot of artists like to sample things from other genres. How do you allow that to fit in?
Simple. You take a page from Final Fantasy XIV. The game’s ability system at the moment really doesn’t reward or allow wholesale copying of one class into another… but it does allow you to pick and choose choice bits from other classes you’ve leveled. Much like picking and choosing choice bits from other musical genres, and… all right, it pretty well explains itself. Let’s move along.
Dynamic events from Guild Wars 2
No, they’re not really dynamic. But that’s all right. They’re still a way to have regular content in a game that doesn’t necessarily focus around quest hubs. And when that content takes the form of an impromptu jam session, it makes perfect sense.
Seriously, having a musical MMO gives a lot of opportunities for content that revolves around more than just combat. Maybe one of your musical idols wants to have a jam session. Maybe you just get the urge to start smashing things. Maybe you’re getting mobbed by adoring fans. There’s a lot of chances for (usually ridiculous) events that won’t require you to beat up anything.
Put in some full-featured minigames for things like “avoid giving groupies your phone number” and you can enjoy the sublime beauty of defeating Cthulhu with the power of progressive rock, then running away from a group of teenagers trying to find your hotel room.
On that note, there needs to be at least one piece of repeatable content allowing you to mess up a hotel room in creative and horrible ways. You remember that scene from Walk Hard with a row of sinks getting pulled out of the wall? Yeah, bingo.
Mayhem missions from City of Heroes
In fact, let’s go all out. Sometimes, you need a whole mission where your only real goal is to look awesome and do a whole bunch of stuff, and City of Heroes has the answer. The only difference is that this isn’t a mission to rob a bank, it’s a mission to stop zombies from overrunning the city or to destroy an evil temple or whatever.
If you haven’t played these missions, you lost the chance to play something awesome. More relevantly, the player is dropped into a map and told to run to the bank, grab the loot, beat the cops, and get out. You start with a strict time limit, but you get extensions for doing other mayhem-related things. Like smashing parking meters, or beating up other groups trying to get the loot, or robbing a store on your way to the bank.
Imagine that in this setting. You get dropped into a zombie invasion, and you’re told to go rock the head zombie to death. Along the way, you get more time by eliminating other zombies, leading people to safety, and possibly stopping the people responsible for the zombie attack in the first place. Or you’re thrown into a concert and you have to play a set, but you get more time to play by destroying vampires that are attacking concertgoers for some reason.
There’s more that could be done here, I’m sure. But this is a place to start for making a game that’s all bards, all the time, and not just a bunch of guys with lutes. (Meaning no disrespect to the guys with lutes. You’re awesome.)More exciting game content click here FFXIV Gil to understand in detail.