I think you're forgetting a few essential things about MMORPGs. I think a lot of designers forget these, too, or choose to gloss over them.
- Any economy which does not have an (out) box as big as the (in) box will simply inflate. Therefore, if you want a working economy (and your support notion falls here, I think), you have to include a notion of entropy.
- The notion of entropy does not mix well in a persistent world where a given individual is not on all the time. Does your character/their assets degrade while they aren't there? If you build a wall, how fast does the wall decay? If your character existing is all that it takes to keep the wall up, then you have the creation of mule characters; characters who do nothing but sit and maintain infrastructure while you're off with a different character doing whatever, but still benefitting.
- The notion that no one wants to spend time doing boring stuff. I don't want to sit while my character 'chops wood' for the palisade my clanmate is building. Thats not fun.
- People do not have reasons to create civilizations in MMORPGs. They just don't. A low level societal structure arises, yes, but the sort of thing you're talking about has many more underlaying foundation levels that people do not have the time or interest in. A civilized cultural example is the Romans; but can you honestly see PCs forming legions, maintaining their ranks and files for better shield protection, and so on? Simply because they're part of a 'civilization'? Knowing that anywhere from 10 to 90 percent of your player base are adolescent boys out to screw up the system?
- MMORPGs are excellent models of Darwinism; the structures that arise are the ones that make the best use of the system in place. But expect every niche of that system to be explored beyond the ability of the programmers to forsee.
Honestly, I think the next interesting iteration of MMORPGs will come when the design leaps from one-to-one Player-Character interactions to where players go anyway; one-to-many interactions. Imagine, instead of being part of a clan, playing a clan. You can take control of any one of those characters in the clan, tell them what to do, watch them grow old and die, have the resources they gather at your disposal, etc. You can have one or more of them be 'leaders'; champions that you spend time developing while the rest sit around and build walls and whatnot. But then random person x is going to have a hard time wiping out your clan; they can't just kill you, they have to kill all of you. Further, you can develop your corner of the world, and if you develop it well, take part in the play between nations - which often ultimately boil down to the interactions of particular characters in charge.
I expect the technology needed to handle such huge worlds (where a given player of the 10k+ online at a time is handling anywhere from 100 to 100,000 characters) will be here soon enough. Its mostly just scaling up what we have already.
But in order to achieve the sort of interaction you're looking for, such outside of the box solutions are needed - especially considering the complications of the online environment and the need to focus on fun interactions.
no subject
- Any economy which does not have an (out) box as big as the (in) box will simply inflate. Therefore, if you want a working economy (and your support notion falls here, I think), you have to include a notion of entropy.
- The notion of entropy does not mix well in a persistent world where a given individual is not on all the time. Does your character/their assets degrade while they aren't there? If you build a wall, how fast does the wall decay? If your character existing is all that it takes to keep the wall up, then you have the creation of mule characters; characters who do nothing but sit and maintain infrastructure while you're off with a different character doing whatever, but still benefitting.
- The notion that no one wants to spend time doing boring stuff. I don't want to sit while my character 'chops wood' for the palisade my clanmate is building. Thats not fun.
- People do not have reasons to create civilizations in MMORPGs. They just don't. A low level societal structure arises, yes, but the sort of thing you're talking about has many more underlaying foundation levels that people do not have the time or interest in. A civilized cultural example is the Romans; but can you honestly see PCs forming legions, maintaining their ranks and files for better shield protection, and so on? Simply because they're part of a 'civilization'? Knowing that anywhere from 10 to 90 percent of your player base are adolescent boys out to screw up the system?
- MMORPGs are excellent models of Darwinism; the structures that arise are the ones that make the best use of the system in place. But expect every niche of that system to be explored beyond the ability of the programmers to forsee.
Honestly, I think the next interesting iteration of MMORPGs will come when the design leaps from one-to-one Player-Character interactions to where players go anyway; one-to-many interactions. Imagine, instead of being part of a clan, playing a clan. You can take control of any one of those characters in the clan, tell them what to do, watch them grow old and die, have the resources they gather at your disposal, etc. You can have one or more of them be 'leaders'; champions that you spend time developing while the rest sit around and build walls and whatnot. But then random person x is going to have a hard time wiping out your clan; they can't just kill you, they have to kill all of you. Further, you can develop your corner of the world, and if you develop it well, take part in the play between nations - which often ultimately boil down to the interactions of particular characters in charge.
I expect the technology needed to handle such huge worlds (where a given player of the 10k+ online at a time is handling anywhere from 100 to 100,000 characters) will be here soon enough. Its mostly just scaling up what we have already.
But in order to achieve the sort of interaction you're looking for, such outside of the box solutions are needed - especially considering the complications of the online environment and the need to focus on fun interactions.
[Ego]out