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Vision

Document: Game Design Vision
Status: Exploratory
Last updated: 2026-01-10

1. What is Atherion?

Atherion is a fantasy anime-style MMORPG centered around instanced progression, meaningful cooperation, and long-term character identity, rather than short-term power spikes or mandatory daily routines.

At its core, Atherion is a game about becoming an adventurer in a living world, not racing through content tiers.
Progress is expressed through recognition, mastery, and access, rather than raw numerical levels.

The game blends:

  • MMO-scale persistence and social structures
  • Action-oriented third-person combat
  • Strong PvE focus with optional large-scale open-world events
  • A long-lived, continuously evolving endgame pillar (Everspire)

2. Core Fantasy

“You are summoned into another world — not as a chosen god, but as one of many adventurers who must find their place.”

Players begin their journey as newly summoned humans in the world of Atherion.
They are not unique heroes by default; instead, they earn their reputation through deeds, cooperation, and contribution.

Key fantasy elements:

  • Adventurer guilds, bounties, and ranks
  • Dangerous unexplored depths (Everspire)
  • Companies (player organizations) with economic and social power
  • A world that needs adventurers continuously, not once

The fantasy intentionally avoids:

  • “Save the world once and it’s over”
  • Singular main-character narratives
  • Hard resets that invalidate player identity

3. Design Pillars

3.1. Instanced Progression as the Backbone

Decision (current):
The core endgame progression happens in instanced content, primarily Everspire.

Rationale:

  • Instancing allows tighter combat tuning and higher simulation quality.
  • It avoids open-world zerg degeneracy as the only viable endgame.
  • It supports both solo and group-oriented players without fragmenting progression.

Open world content exists to:

  • provide scale, atmosphere, and social presence
  • feed resources, stories, and context into instanced progression

But it is not the sole endgame path.

3.2. Long-Term Identity over Short-Term Power

Decision (current):
Player progression focuses on ranks, reputation, access, and crafted identity, rather than infinite vertical leveling.

Examples:

  • Adventurer Rank instead of character level
  • Profession mastery instead of generic crafting levels
  • Recognition by guilds, factions, or companies

Rationale:
This supports:

  • horizontal longevity
  • less pressure to rush content
  • fewer hard resets between expansions
  • clearer social roles (“this player is known for X”)

3.3. Cooperative Play without Mandatory Grind

Decision (goal):
Atherion should reward cooperation without requiring excessive playtime or daily obligation.

Rationale:

  • Casual players (7–10 hours/week) should remain valuable.
  • Hardcore players should gain depth, not exclusive dominance.
  • Companies should value reliability and specialization, not raw hours logged.

This directly informs:

  • reward structures
  • crafting and trading roles
  • company incentives

3.4. Combat That Feels Responsive but Scales

Decision (exploratory):
Combat is third-person, action-oriented, and supports movement and dodging.
The classic “holy trinity” is a likely direction, but not locked.

Rationale:

  • Anime fantasy strongly suggests recognizable roles.
  • Large-scale content requires role clarity to remain readable.
  • However, strict class locks can harm flexibility and creativity.

Current working assumption:

  • Roles exist as behavioral identities, not rigid class cages.
  • Hybridization is possible, but specialization is rewarded.

This pillar remains intentionally open.

3.5. High Uptime, Low Friction Live Service

Decision (hard constraint):
Atherion is designed around no forced maintenance downtime as a player-facing experience.

Rationale:

  • Modern players expect to choose when to update.
  • Long maintenance windows break immersion and trust.
  • Games like GW2 and Warframe demonstrate better models.

Implications:

  • Soft patching with grace periods
  • Draining instances instead of mass disconnects
  • Seamless reconnect and migration flows
  • Backend architecture must support this from day one

This is a non-negotiable design goal, even if implementation is complex.

4. What Atherion Is Not

To avoid design drift, it is equally important to define non-goals.

Atherion is not:

  • A daily-checklist-driven MMO
  • A single-player RPG with MMO dressing
  • A purely open-world zerg-based experience
  • A gear-treadmill that invalidates past effort every patch
  • A PvP-first competitive esport MMO

These exclusions help constrain future decisions.

5. Player Promise

If the game succeeds, a player should be able to say:

  • “My character matters even after months away.”
  • “I can contribute meaningfully without playing every day.”
  • “I know why I’m doing content, not just what to farm.”
  • “Updates don’t lock me out of the game.”

This promise should be testable against every new feature.

6. Open Questions (Intentionally Unresolved)

These are not problems to solve yet, but areas to revisit:

  • How strict should role identity be in combat?
  • How much solo progression should Everspire support long-term?
  • What percentage of power should come from crafting vs drops?
  • How visible should Adventurer Rank be socially?
  • How many players should a single open-world instance target?

These questions will be refined in subsequent documents.

7. Relationship to Other Documents

This vision informs:

  • world/everspire.md → core progression pillar
  • technical-design/architecture.md → uptime, instancing, scalability
  • gameplay/* → combat, progression, companies, monetization

If a future system contradicts this document, this document must be revisited explicitly.

End of document.

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