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Dream game
I think it's safe to say that we've all played games, we all know what we personally like/ dislike. We all have different tastes for various reasons. I'd like to share some ideas that I feel would make all sorts of funs.
Without considering the technical/ financial / time constraints on building a game here are my ideas and the reasons for them. Feel free to share your own or comment on mine.
My idea is a game where you have virtually complete freedom of choice with what you do, however in the game world it's realistic enough so that there's consequences to everything you do/ not do.
So a 3d world, imagine Elder scrolls minus magic or weird races (just humans and animals).
Let me expand a bit more.
Imagine a game world, looks like Earth, except there's no civilisation, no buildings architecture or NPCs, no pre scripted story. The game start is that you just spawn into the world. You don't get to choose appearance or gender, you just spawn into the world naked. no tools or weapons. The only initial choice you have is, give your person a name.
So in this world you've just spawned into (as if by magic, but yet there's no magic in the game), you have to find a way to survive and clothe yourself. If you so choose. If you die, it's permadeath. Your characters body stays there till it rots away, or some other players comes along and buries you some how.
if you wanted to you could just keep spawning in new people, running to one particular area in the game world and just letting them die, piling up a bunch of dead bodies. if you can manage to do that. Since the world is basically a planet, to navigate to one location is no small task.
If you choose to survive and 'raise' your person, you have to start finding resources, crafting tools etc. But starting from scratch you're piratically a cave man/ woman. You'll probably need to start with crafting blunt object with rocks and sticks. Find way to chops tree build shelters eventually 'ageing' up. Going from sticks and stones to bronze and irons etc.
If you spot other players, you can work together, build a small village, start pooling resources so by co-operating you can age up faster together. Or if you've crafted superior weapons, you can totally find small villages and raid them for their resources. Could be considered griefing if players have been playing longer than others, especially with permadeath.
A mechanic I figure that can compensate for being 'griefed' is that, if you've built up a village with several players building can be assigned with a function.
For example a house is where you can store you're own items + resources and it's a place for you to spawn in the world. If you person dies, If you've built a building assigned as town centre, for example, you can spawn your new character directly there, walk to where your house is and essentially take over your previous characters possesions. If you haven't been robbed.
So town building, as you age up your town building resources you can start spawning NPCs (as if by magic). Why would you need NPCs? Since the world is stateful, when you're not playing, you need a system that will protect your town/ things from other players who just want to go around robbing, killing and stealing. So if you're like the self elected town leader, you can go to the town centre, look at the bank of resources your town has and spend it things the town may need.
Communications in game should be voice only, otherwise written on in game paper which has to be delivered or posted in some way.
So for example, if you've rallied together with a bunch of dedicated players who want to suggest improvements, by mechanic of the game they have to go to the town centre and post there suggestion on the bulletin board.
So if you're the town leader about to make some changes to the town you'll be prompted to look at the bulletin board first. Essentially it's like having a game forum, but all within the context of the game, as not to break any immersion.
So NPCs, if I wanted to spawn guards for example, I will need to make a person, so I may need some spend some meats. I need to give them weapons and armour, so I need to have those otherwise my guards will be ill-equipt. Want more guards, you need more resources. Need more resources you can gather them as players, or deploy an NPC.
So the gameplay grows exponentially, you can move from doing alot of grindy gameplay, or less grindy co-op gameplay, to just sustaining a town. Which gives players more freedom to explore and adventure time with other human players. But since it's a stateful world, you need to get the world to a state where there are NPCs to run things for you in the background.
If a rival town decides to conquer your town, demolish everything, but in doing so win all the resources that were in your town, when you come back to the game having probably be killed off, you'll have to decide to spawn in the rival town (if they want you) essentially being force to ally, or spawn somewhere else and start again.
So there's non-cooperative, cooperative and competitive elements to this game, which gives you freedom to do a variety of things. Kill, cooperate or go solo. There's stick and carrot for each choice, so each choice is fair in a sense, but the results may or may not be desirable depending on which perspective you're taking.
But what this means is that if this game has been running for say a year, and you've just started the game, you're a nub. The world would look populated and alive, there's builds burnt to the ground, castles built up surrounded by guards, some dude built a 100 meter tower in the middle of the forest, and just snipes out any player he sees with some bow + arrow contraption.
The sum of all the mechanics equate to an always changing world, there's always something to do, and it's meaningful when you do it. The value of information is high since you need to know who the trust worthy players are, where to go, where not to go. Game content is essentially all user created, so no two towns/ cities would ever look alike since a player has decide the architecture and the layout of each building, each building is based on the materials they're made with, like everything else.
What I really want to have happen, is essentially the world is divided into continents, and if you want to, if you've built your 'civ' big enough, you can send your army of human players across the water and have mahoosive battles, maybe even on the water.
NPCs who control things in the background, are almost like players in themselves, that you have to level up or equipt with the correct tools to make certain things happen. You could just have NPCs build a docks on both continents, then build a town on the other side, and start a trade route. Send NPCs down into the deepest mine, so if the cave collapses, your character is safe.
Maybe after a year or two all players in the world essentially all cooperate and build one ultimate city, that has the best everything, there's nothing left to do except PvP. Or maybe there'll be 4-5 ultimate cities/ countries that just constantly battle it out. With a commander telling which cohorts go where attacking who with what. sending out scouts to find out where the other armies are. But all real players.
I think that'll be awesome.
So lets see what we have.
World sized world
permadeath
crafting
User generated content
PvE
Coop
Solo
economics
trade
immersion
sim city?
rts
role playing?
maybe it's a good idea I don't know. Probably alot more to think through.
Without considering the technical/ financial / time constraints on building a game here are my ideas and the reasons for them. Feel free to share your own or comment on mine.
My idea is a game where you have virtually complete freedom of choice with what you do, however in the game world it's realistic enough so that there's consequences to everything you do/ not do.
So a 3d world, imagine Elder scrolls minus magic or weird races (just humans and animals).
Let me expand a bit more.
Imagine a game world, looks like Earth, except there's no civilisation, no buildings architecture or NPCs, no pre scripted story. The game start is that you just spawn into the world. You don't get to choose appearance or gender, you just spawn into the world naked. no tools or weapons. The only initial choice you have is, give your person a name.
So in this world you've just spawned into (as if by magic, but yet there's no magic in the game), you have to find a way to survive and clothe yourself. If you so choose. If you die, it's permadeath. Your characters body stays there till it rots away, or some other players comes along and buries you some how.
if you wanted to you could just keep spawning in new people, running to one particular area in the game world and just letting them die, piling up a bunch of dead bodies. if you can manage to do that. Since the world is basically a planet, to navigate to one location is no small task.
If you choose to survive and 'raise' your person, you have to start finding resources, crafting tools etc. But starting from scratch you're piratically a cave man/ woman. You'll probably need to start with crafting blunt object with rocks and sticks. Find way to chops tree build shelters eventually 'ageing' up. Going from sticks and stones to bronze and irons etc.
If you spot other players, you can work together, build a small village, start pooling resources so by co-operating you can age up faster together. Or if you've crafted superior weapons, you can totally find small villages and raid them for their resources. Could be considered griefing if players have been playing longer than others, especially with permadeath.
A mechanic I figure that can compensate for being 'griefed' is that, if you've built up a village with several players building can be assigned with a function.
For example a house is where you can store you're own items + resources and it's a place for you to spawn in the world. If you person dies, If you've built a building assigned as town centre, for example, you can spawn your new character directly there, walk to where your house is and essentially take over your previous characters possesions. If you haven't been robbed.
So town building, as you age up your town building resources you can start spawning NPCs (as if by magic). Why would you need NPCs? Since the world is stateful, when you're not playing, you need a system that will protect your town/ things from other players who just want to go around robbing, killing and stealing. So if you're like the self elected town leader, you can go to the town centre, look at the bank of resources your town has and spend it things the town may need.
Communications in game should be voice only, otherwise written on in game paper which has to be delivered or posted in some way.
So for example, if you've rallied together with a bunch of dedicated players who want to suggest improvements, by mechanic of the game they have to go to the town centre and post there suggestion on the bulletin board.
So if you're the town leader about to make some changes to the town you'll be prompted to look at the bulletin board first. Essentially it's like having a game forum, but all within the context of the game, as not to break any immersion.
So NPCs, if I wanted to spawn guards for example, I will need to make a person, so I may need some spend some meats. I need to give them weapons and armour, so I need to have those otherwise my guards will be ill-equipt. Want more guards, you need more resources. Need more resources you can gather them as players, or deploy an NPC.
So the gameplay grows exponentially, you can move from doing alot of grindy gameplay, or less grindy co-op gameplay, to just sustaining a town. Which gives players more freedom to explore and adventure time with other human players. But since it's a stateful world, you need to get the world to a state where there are NPCs to run things for you in the background.
If a rival town decides to conquer your town, demolish everything, but in doing so win all the resources that were in your town, when you come back to the game having probably be killed off, you'll have to decide to spawn in the rival town (if they want you) essentially being force to ally, or spawn somewhere else and start again.
So there's non-cooperative, cooperative and competitive elements to this game, which gives you freedom to do a variety of things. Kill, cooperate or go solo. There's stick and carrot for each choice, so each choice is fair in a sense, but the results may or may not be desirable depending on which perspective you're taking.
But what this means is that if this game has been running for say a year, and you've just started the game, you're a nub. The world would look populated and alive, there's builds burnt to the ground, castles built up surrounded by guards, some dude built a 100 meter tower in the middle of the forest, and just snipes out any player he sees with some bow + arrow contraption.
The sum of all the mechanics equate to an always changing world, there's always something to do, and it's meaningful when you do it. The value of information is high since you need to know who the trust worthy players are, where to go, where not to go. Game content is essentially all user created, so no two towns/ cities would ever look alike since a player has decide the architecture and the layout of each building, each building is based on the materials they're made with, like everything else.
What I really want to have happen, is essentially the world is divided into continents, and if you want to, if you've built your 'civ' big enough, you can send your army of human players across the water and have mahoosive battles, maybe even on the water.
NPCs who control things in the background, are almost like players in themselves, that you have to level up or equipt with the correct tools to make certain things happen. You could just have NPCs build a docks on both continents, then build a town on the other side, and start a trade route. Send NPCs down into the deepest mine, so if the cave collapses, your character is safe.
Maybe after a year or two all players in the world essentially all cooperate and build one ultimate city, that has the best everything, there's nothing left to do except PvP. Or maybe there'll be 4-5 ultimate cities/ countries that just constantly battle it out. With a commander telling which cohorts go where attacking who with what. sending out scouts to find out where the other armies are. But all real players.
I think that'll be awesome.
So lets see what we have.
World sized world
permadeath
crafting
User generated content
PvE
Coop
Solo
economics
trade
immersion
sim city?
rts
role playing?
maybe it's a good idea I don't know. Probably alot more to think through.
Comments
You send orders to your armies via runner. Reports come back about their locations and dispositions. Sometimes runners get intercepted and you miss an update or an order fails to get there.
You can move yourself, as the King/Emperor/General/whatever, to be closer to the front. But, now you're more at risk, and your orders for the other borders of your kingdom are increasingly delayed.
Last you heard, your army under General Arslan had London under siege. You sent an order to complete the conquest and then march half the army back to the capital to garrison against vague threats from the East.
Now, a barbarian army is ravaging the Eastern provinces and marching on your capital. You send a runner to call the full army back, breaking off the siege if necessary, and further send for the northern armies to march eastward and try to cut the invaders off.
Will the northern army make it in time? Where exactly is the barbarian army currently? How safe is the lightly garrisoned capital? What if the siege has already succeeded?
More importantly, do you know that Arslan and his army, weary of constant marches and underpaid, are marching back not to assist but to overthrow?
THAT is the game I want.
The concept has me drooling abit.
The main thing that makes that concept so appealing is that player choices enrich the world, because of the effects they would have.
Deciding to kill the 'ruler' instead of socially within the game agreeing with the other players to vote out that player out of that position could dramatically change the next sequence of events.
Maybe you made an agreement with the rival ruler to betray your king in exchange for some super rare something, or a position of command, but now you have to escape the assassination with your life. So maybe befriend the actual player is a tactic for luring the ruler into a trap so you can assassinate, and escape unscaved.
As the rival ruler, do you honour that agreement to the assassin? You can decide, to execute the assassin on the spot, because you don't want traitors under your command. lol
That might mean as an ex-assassin, you're now an outcast and have to basically find ways to survive in the world as a lone ranger. Living in a lonesome cabin you've built for yourself in the woods. Only venturing out to rob unsuspecting players and to hunt.
So it becomes a player driven narrative as opposed to being pre-scripted and linear story that just repeats itself over and over.
So it's like from day one of the game, you're creating a world history for this game, that other players can observe outside of the game, and see how things develop.
A game that makes stories. Rather than a game that is a story.
With this new generation of games, if it's genuinely a new generation there needs to be drastic innovations.
One is like, 3rd-person action game with dozens and dozens of pre-made fantasy classes ala WoW, LoL, etc.
They all have 4-8 skills (depending on class) and don't level up, no equipment to unlock, nothing. They are full power, usage is skill based.
Game is fully PvE. Lots of really hard dungeons/raids that require anywhere from 5 to 50 players.
Essentially, yes, end-game WoW that I've never gotten to experience. But without simple tank/spank mechanics.
The closest game that matches your description that is actually fun to play is the Combat Mission line of games.
Rules make games. Give me games with strict rules and a very small area of choice, but make the choices FUN! This is why Angry Birds is so popular. There's almost no choices to make, but every outcome is fun. Shit falls over and blows up. That's super rewarding.
How the hell are you going to make a game where anything is possible fun? If anything is possible 99% of it is going to be boring. Restrict people to the 1% that isn't boring, and you might be on to a winner.
The closest mechanic would be something like the recon mechanic in the Wargame:(EE/ALB) games which requires a wide range of optical and radar coverage to track enemy movements.
A combination of game mechanics that would give a sense of freedom, a sense of consequence and meaning to choices. Such a game requires time investment.
You want a game that is sophisticated enough to incorporate all these complex systems, but simple enough so that it's not a complete drain on your life.
I'm seriously asking: what is the fun/entertaining outcome you are aiming for in such a game?
You have to use your imagination to understand what kind of scenarios would lead to making satisfying decisions.
The fun aspect would be the sandboxing, UGC and combat.
If there is an equal chance that I will have fun not playing your game compared to playing your game, why would I ever play it?
Tell me where the fun is!
It might not be "fun" per se, but it would be very interesting.
Dazzle's dream game sounds like work with no goal. Not even a "well done".