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video game thoughts
I have been thinking a lot recently about Feudalism, by which I mean the system of government and a video game design that has been kicking around in my head for a long time. The essential concept behind Feudalism is to make a purely PvP (or, more accurately, clan vs clan) MMORPG, which would be dynamic enough to make such fights actually interesting, but would also support a sizable IG social structure based around the fundamental game mechanics.
That was a total mouthful of shit, wasn't it? Warning, wild game design geekery follows.
Would also note that yes, I know, no one would want to play it. But it is a cool idea, isn't it?
The basic idea is this: If you want to have a major social structure in your game, you are going to have to encourage people to kill shit together. If necessary, you can replace "kill shit" with any in-game activity. Feudalism would support this in two ways:
1) It would strongly favor numbers and tactics in combat, probably by giving strong priority to flanking and back attacks. Ideally, 5-6 intro level characters should be able to take on one of the bigger goons in the game and, even if they don't kill him, hurt him badly enough that he will feel it in the morning.
2) It would have very powerful non-combat support skill trees, most of which would require control of IG resources to operate. Thus, if you have enough people to own a small quarry, you can support a Mason, who can then build you walls which will allow you to kick defensive ass. If you have enough people to protect the iron mine, you can support a Smith, who can make you weapons and armor worth using. Etc.
This would be set up as a purely PvP game -- there would be absolutely no computer controlled mooks to kill. Thus, the main way of gaining combat experience is against other players. Because this makes the usual MMORPG racking structure totally pointless, you would need to be able to "practice" your skills to gain levels in them. You could add in various minigame structures which make practice something other than totally mindless, and that's probably going to be the main activity of the rank-and-file soldiers of the game.
In the beginning, I imagine that the game would be every-man-for-himself arena combat anarchy. But, because more people are better and there is no one to kill but other PCs, there would hopefully emerge clan based social structures. These would fight one another for resource control. It is most likely that, somewhere along the line, one clan would just get better than everyone else, and conquer the world. But, hopefully, the ambitions of the other PCs would be great enough that there would rapidly emerge things like banditry, revolutionary factions, and plots to assassinate the emperor. Hopefully, one of these would succeed, and throw the world into chaos again. Essentially, the plotline of the game is driven by the social instincts of human beings -- to form into groups around a strong personality, and to try to upset that personality.
I imagine that there would be two types of clans -- barbarian and civilized. Barbarian clans would be purely fighter-types, and leadership would be a contest of strength. They would gain resources from short, planned raids, as they really couldn't control territory. Civilized clans would have a large support infrastructure, and thus have walls, doctors, weapons, etc. But, there would be a lot of overhead, and strife between the civilian (production) and soldier populations.
The basic idea here is that little is hardwired into the system -- there are no "quests" to exploit, etc. In MMORPGs, such things are merely resources, that rival clans compete over for "who is bigger" competitions. Feudalism would take out the illusion of a storyline and allow the story of the world to develop naturally.
There are issues here. First and foremost, there is the issue of death. Because, if respawn were fast or penaltyless, there would be no way that an Empire would break up, and thus the game would rapidly get very boring. So, either, you need either a "penalty box" respawn that kicks you out of the game for, say, 24 hours or you need to penalize death. Either of these is disasterous, from a "selling the game" perspective. No one likes to die, or see their hard work go down the drain.
Here is what I would like to do: Make death permanent. It is totally unplausible from a commercial level, but damn, it would be awesome.
Here is another thought: Make death permanent, but allow a powerful player to start with a reasonably advanced PC.
Last thought (for now) on topic: Make death permanent. However, have the option to turn on "practice mode," in which most damage you deal goes away quickly and that loss results only in unconsciousness, rather than death. Thus, especially in the early game, a society could develop where wars are fought with practice swords, and no one needs to die. For instance, a barbarian raid might use this option in order to generate less ill-will from their victims. However, it would still be possible to kill the emperor, and remove him from the game permanently.
Anyway, that was my random creative thought for the day. Comments?
That was a total mouthful of shit, wasn't it? Warning, wild game design geekery follows.
Would also note that yes, I know, no one would want to play it. But it is a cool idea, isn't it?
The basic idea is this: If you want to have a major social structure in your game, you are going to have to encourage people to kill shit together. If necessary, you can replace "kill shit" with any in-game activity. Feudalism would support this in two ways:
1) It would strongly favor numbers and tactics in combat, probably by giving strong priority to flanking and back attacks. Ideally, 5-6 intro level characters should be able to take on one of the bigger goons in the game and, even if they don't kill him, hurt him badly enough that he will feel it in the morning.
2) It would have very powerful non-combat support skill trees, most of which would require control of IG resources to operate. Thus, if you have enough people to own a small quarry, you can support a Mason, who can then build you walls which will allow you to kick defensive ass. If you have enough people to protect the iron mine, you can support a Smith, who can make you weapons and armor worth using. Etc.
This would be set up as a purely PvP game -- there would be absolutely no computer controlled mooks to kill. Thus, the main way of gaining combat experience is against other players. Because this makes the usual MMORPG racking structure totally pointless, you would need to be able to "practice" your skills to gain levels in them. You could add in various minigame structures which make practice something other than totally mindless, and that's probably going to be the main activity of the rank-and-file soldiers of the game.
In the beginning, I imagine that the game would be every-man-for-himself arena combat anarchy. But, because more people are better and there is no one to kill but other PCs, there would hopefully emerge clan based social structures. These would fight one another for resource control. It is most likely that, somewhere along the line, one clan would just get better than everyone else, and conquer the world. But, hopefully, the ambitions of the other PCs would be great enough that there would rapidly emerge things like banditry, revolutionary factions, and plots to assassinate the emperor. Hopefully, one of these would succeed, and throw the world into chaos again. Essentially, the plotline of the game is driven by the social instincts of human beings -- to form into groups around a strong personality, and to try to upset that personality.
I imagine that there would be two types of clans -- barbarian and civilized. Barbarian clans would be purely fighter-types, and leadership would be a contest of strength. They would gain resources from short, planned raids, as they really couldn't control territory. Civilized clans would have a large support infrastructure, and thus have walls, doctors, weapons, etc. But, there would be a lot of overhead, and strife between the civilian (production) and soldier populations.
The basic idea here is that little is hardwired into the system -- there are no "quests" to exploit, etc. In MMORPGs, such things are merely resources, that rival clans compete over for "who is bigger" competitions. Feudalism would take out the illusion of a storyline and allow the story of the world to develop naturally.
There are issues here. First and foremost, there is the issue of death. Because, if respawn were fast or penaltyless, there would be no way that an Empire would break up, and thus the game would rapidly get very boring. So, either, you need either a "penalty box" respawn that kicks you out of the game for, say, 24 hours or you need to penalize death. Either of these is disasterous, from a "selling the game" perspective. No one likes to die, or see their hard work go down the drain.
Here is what I would like to do: Make death permanent. It is totally unplausible from a commercial level, but damn, it would be awesome.
Here is another thought: Make death permanent, but allow a powerful player to start with a reasonably advanced PC.
Last thought (for now) on topic: Make death permanent. However, have the option to turn on "practice mode," in which most damage you deal goes away quickly and that loss results only in unconsciousness, rather than death. Thus, especially in the early game, a society could develop where wars are fought with practice swords, and no one needs to die. For instance, a barbarian raid might use this option in order to generate less ill-will from their victims. However, it would still be possible to kill the emperor, and remove him from the game permanently.
Anyway, that was my random creative thought for the day. Comments?
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
no subject
But... (there is always the but...)
I'm still going to defend things / explain things / say "good point, didn't think of that" anyway...
Inbox-Outbox -- good point. I imagine that this could be handled by a low-level maintainence skill set, which drains some resources. Thus, ultimately, the world could only support so many walls, so many weapons, etc. I imagine that anyone with the skill set could handle maintainence of anyone else's work.
"No one wants to spend time doing boring stuff--" My impression has always been that the high-level MMORPG player spends most of his time hanging around, chatting with other players, waiting for one mechanical part of a giant strategy, or sitting around, waiting for baddies (read-- resources) to respawn so that he can whack them and get a tiny amount of XP. The excitement here seems to be the social interaction / levelling up, rather than the actual gameplay.
In Feudalism, there are some complications to resource gathering. First of all, a wood-cutting expedition is dangerous shit. Disrupting enemy supply sources is a time honored strategy, so you are likely to get zapped by barbarians or a rival group. Thus, you want a bunch of soldiers along, and you need to stay alert. Secondly, cutting wood is giving you XP -- just like a mechanical racking exercise would. Of course, this assumes that the digital violence doesn't hold a thrill, which is wrong.
Thus, it is probably better (new idea) to have resource gathering function "automatically" (or by NPC peasants) as long as the territory was reasonably "safe." (ie -- there had been no fighting there in the last 5-6 hours). That is probably, in the end, a much much better solution. In such cases, the PC role would be an "overseer" type skill tree which would allow the delegation of boring tasks to NPC noncombatant bots. Much less boring.
On civilization and culture -- From what I've heard, Everquest clans are quite organized. But, further, I feel that this is because civilization is not well supported on most MMORPGs. Groups are considerably more effective than individuals, but not wildly moreso -- and there is still a real incentive to be a "lone badass" and take on everything.
This is not true in Feudalism. The basic idea is that being civilized (or, at least, fighting in groups) is the best possible way to minmax. It is totally, far and away, ridiculously unbalanced. It is the giant, flaming system break which is painfully obvious and everyone uses. Yes, every niche of the game will be explored and exploited, but this will be designed to be so vastly big that it (hopefully) will overshadow any unintentional system effects.
This does have the possibly erroneous assumption that many MMORPG players are not twinks, merely minmaxers. If they are twinks (read: personally anti-social), then, of course, they have no desire to be civilized at a base level.
But... there are two important things here. First of all, twinks are vastly underpowered compared to garden-variety minmaxers. Thus, they are not nearly as obnoxious, because they are more easily defeated. The second is that the twinks will probably gather in small groups to fight (this is seen on other systems, yes?) which is what I meant when discussing "barbarian" forces that are all combat-types and gain items and such from raiding more civilized groups.
Perhaps, if %90 of the game was twinks, the game would turn into "the one bastion of civilization, surrounded by barbarian hordes." I think that this would be fun to play from either side, honestly, as long as the civilization had some strength.
Multi-PC MMORPGs -- cool. Very interesting. Essentially, it's a persistent RTS. I like this... I think that the real trick is to recognize it as MMORTS, and as such eliminate much of the cruft that comes from the RPG architecture, such as repeatable "quest" mechanics and so on...
no subject
>The excitement here seems to be the social interaction / levelling up, >rather than the actual gameplay.
Yes and no. Thats the way gameplay is now, and the truly hardcore people stay with a game for social reasons, largely. But the games are marketed as adventure games (have you seen the new Playstation commercial for EQ?) and that is why people gain interest - and lose it. I no longer play EQ because beyond a certain point (Level 20 by my *very* scientific analysis) its simply a glorified chat room. Good computer games have always been more than that, and the current generation of MMORPGs have failed to be - but thats fine, the area is still maturing.
>In Feudalism, there are some complications to resource gathering. First of >all, a wood-cutting expedition is dangerous shit.
And, unfortunately, cutting wood only holds so much thrill. I can see doing it under fire as being interesting, but I gaurentee that 95% of your player base doesn't want to be combat engineers - they want to be combatants. And thats simply not reasonable if you're trying to realistically model a society.
>On civilization and culture -- From what I've heard, Everquest clans are >quite organized.
The EQ clans are stupidly well organized. The problem isn't that - its that it doesn't encourage any real development of a society. They've found the ideal setup for a clan, and stick to it. There is no real incentive to improve it or change it. Everyone is assigned a role - often very meta roles - and they're expected to fulfill it to maintain their social standing in their clan. Which is a civilization of sorts, but I don't think the sort of thing you're looking for - more of a real-world sort of model.
>But... there are two important things here. First of all, twinks are vastly >underpowered compared to garden-variety minmaxers.
Well, I'm curious as to how you'd design it so that twinks are distinct from min/maxers. But also realize that the disruptive quality of players is much higher than anyone ever assumes. If you give people the opportunity to mess with other players, they will. You have to be incredibly careful with the controls over how they are allowed to do it if you don't want it blown out of porportion. Do not underestimate the annoying 13 year old who spends months working his way up in the hierarchy to get pissed one day at something stupid and then marches an army of other players to their death. A good example in this context is the following: do you allow walls to be moved? Ie, torn down and rebuilt?
If you do, then the players can move walls as things change, as their tactics improve, as new things are needed. Also, in an emergency they can tear down a wall to get at a threat.
But also expect annoying players to run around tearing down walls for no reason other than to mess with other people's work.
If you don't, however, then you can avoid that problem. People's works are protected and more permanent change on the world. On the other hand, now the twinks switch sides and suddenly you have a wall in front of the gate to your castle, a wall in the middle of the street, a wall facing your wall. Walls everywhere you don't want them to be.
Clearly neither solution is really useful; you have to find something in between, but if you make the rules draconian then it becomes less enjoyable to play. (Wait, I need a permit, and permission from 10 other players and have to lay a foundation which has to survive for 10 days out of game and gather special stone and ...?) Likewise, with such things you have to find the right balance between ease of Doing and ease of Undoing.
[Ego]out