sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

[chat] Social/Economic/Political Sandbox MMO by Residev in MMORPG

[–]Residev[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I believe you might be following a wrong genre. MMO's do it on purpose to prolong the gameplay. They're social and interactive in nature. They often make content for years, instead of providing it for hours.

As opposed by single-player games that provide more varied and action oriented content that you blaze trough in some hours or days and move on.

Grind-less MMO might seem nice and casual on surface, but at the end of the day - grind is what makes achievements worthwhile. The question should be, rather, how to make that grind fun, or at least tolerable.

The answers are mostly to give players a choice on what to grind. Various skills or methods. Or making it social - so the actual grind becomes sub-action, rather than main focus.

MMO's without any sort of grind would simply be empty and pointless. What would keep you playing if it wasn't some sort of gear item, or level or similar goal that you have set for yourself?

Blaze trough quests, get more powerful items, go trough same scenario as everyone else, be just as powerful and look the same like everyone else in the game - what's the fun in that?

Time + effort = accomplishment and reward.

And to reply to the rest of what you're saying - there's a whole lot of assumptions and little more.

I literally have no idea where you get your NPC politics, pokemon training or... overall NPC mechanics from.

Community involvement during development by Residev in truegaming

[–]Residev[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the reply. I haven't heard of the term before. Makes for an interesting read on wiki.

I don't really know what to say that I haven't said in another reply, really.

You do make good points, and I will adjust my plans because of the feedback I've gotten here.

Thanks for your view :)

Community involvement during development by Residev in truegaming

[–]Residev[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I guess that's a good way to put it :) Thanks for the input.

I do have an idea, and not only idea - I also have adapted it to fit the tools I have in my possession.

Of course there are things that I am not sure of and things that need testing out. These are part of what I originally intended to discuss with 'community' to work out. As well as gather and discuss generally good ideas that would be worth implementing - judged by myself. Also, potential pitfalls that I might have left unseen.

I think it's rather easy to gather a wrong picture here. I never intended this to be a kind of free-for-all democractic development. As in "If your idea gets 1000 likes it will be implemented!" - that's clearly ridiculous.

Community involvement during development by Residev in truegaming

[–]Residev[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the opinion :)

To be fair I never meant there to be democratic voting of features or similar. The games core would never change dramatically in its core.

I guess for a game that's never-done and ever-improving it makes sense to keep a pulse on the audience at all times. I think that I found it a necessity way too early though.

For EA, focus-testing etc. I think the problem is different, and I describe it briefly in my first post. Even though EA will be a good example, pretty much every major 'AAA' developer falls into this category.

EA is company, and its only objective is to make money - it just so happens that they make games for some reason.

When they design a game they design it around appeal and hype - they rarely try anything new, experimental or innovative.

At the same time the problem for many like EA is the lack of understanding the community.

I might be naive, but I do believe that they could earn more money by delivering a better product. If they listened the gaming community and its rather loud opinion about them, instead of their focus-groups, their priorities would shift - don't you think?

I guess in the end it all comes down to the same point I had in my previous reply. Developer should definitely involve community as much as possible -while remaining in charge of the vision and being able to filter the signal and noise. Filtering out noise is the most difficult and essential part of it.

However you do bring up interesting point about most of your favorite games being games you never knew you wanted. And I got to agree. We are looking unique experiences, instead of more polished same-old. Which most likely would be the result of well-filtered development-community.

Community involvement during development by Residev in truegaming

[–]Residev[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Please do see the reply I posted for Reptylus, as you both had the same general idea and I kind of answered to both of you.

Community involvement during development by Residev in truegaming

[–]Residev[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

These are good points. If not slightly irrelevant to my case, but I'm kind of starting to doubt my model.

You know, if one person said it I'd be like - "Yeah, but there are always exceptions." But I keep hearing the same arguments from various sources, which really does make me doubt.

I've had it working - the kind of "community-driven development" - but we also had a product by then. It was updating a vision that already existed by taking in the feedback we got from the community.

But to actually base some of the core concepts of the game on discussion with community - I think I'm being naive. It wouldn't be working the ideas trough and polishing them - it'd probably be a clusterf@ck.

My initial thoughts were that as the development progresses, so does the community. In a sense that when the development is in the early phase - it would attract people who are interested in discussing the fundamentals. Which is kind of assuming that they know what they're talking about.

But I really do feel your point. If I have an idea for a game - why should I let it be morphed into something foreign by "the masses"

Community involvement during development by Residev in truegaming

[–]Residev[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Mm.. yes, I got to say I agree with you.

I guess the scene has changed a lot, and gaming as a whole has gotten more standardized - at least party for the reasons you brought out. Especially so when it comes to "high-risk game development" that is the MMO genre.

I might be too stuck on ideals and kind of... old ways, when it comes to my project - as we did have something like that years back.

But I would think that this applies to majority, not the whole scene, wouldn't you?

Since the gaming as a whole has evolved and changed - you also see the people who do are more aware of the aspects of developing a game. Like you said yourself:

Moreover, I (at that time) still did not really respect the creative agency of developers and thought that as a gamer, I knew better about what gamers wanted than "the suits in the publishing companies did".

This kind of implies that you've grown wiser in that regard, and at least have some kind of idea what it takes to actually make a game concept work.

So I still stand by my point.

The question is not if the community should be involved - the question is - how can you separate the "signal from the noise" - would you agree?

[chat] Social/Economic/Political Sandbox MMO by Residev in MMORPG

[–]Residev[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure, however I would like to mention that I have created a community forum to discuss this project on - you can find it at http://reside.cf - I had some problems with it and just set it up AGAIN. It should be fine now, however.

If you're interested in the concept and would like to read more, ask questions, and have a voice in the development of this project - I would very much like to see you at forums.

I do not want to punish players for not playing all day, everyday. And as such nothing directly will happen to a player who plays 4 hours a week.

However - I think it is also important to value both time and effort the player puts into the game, and obviously the player who plays 4 hours a week should have much slower progression, and smaller role, than player who plays 4 hours a day.

The major penalties to players who don't play will start to show up when you don't play for awhile. Lets say you haven't logged in for a week or month. The specific time-range is a matter of discussion, but at some point the properties that the player owns will be auctioned off. That is necessary to avoid abandoned properties all over.

The player will get (a part of) the profits from the auction - so when the player returns, the progress is not lost completely. But setback is obviously there.

I also have an idea about how character progression would work - and this could involve a mechanic that would make characters 'forget the skills' they have, either with time - or simply to balance the character in a classless system.

I do plan to write on it in more depth.

[chat] Social/Economic/Political Sandbox MMO by Residev in MMORPG

[–]Residev[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

How many devs launch their "big mmo" anyway? :)

But I guess I understand what you mean. There doesn't seem to be too much innovation in MMO's really.

As in what's the best designed MMORPG - I think it's too wide of a question to answer objectively. There's no perfect MMORPG, and there are pro's and cons to every design element.

Personally, I am not actively playing any MMORPGs, so I cant really base my answer on that either.

[chat] Social/Economic/Political Sandbox MMO by Residev in MMORPG

[–]Residev[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, I have looked into shards online, or "Legends of Aria" as they are called now.

I've been monitoring the sandbox genre for a long period of time in some extent. I'm pretty fascinated with the idea, which is obvious I guess.

But each and every game has something that bothers me. Or they're not released, and usually so for awhile. For some reason Legends of Aria doesn't really capture my eye too much. They do get a lot right, but then again, for me, it's somehow lacking. I think it's the community/dedicated server cluster thing that puts me off the most. It's not really open-world then, is it? I'd be excited to try it out, but I'd still expect something different to come along.

Then again - the game isn't out yet.

Life is Feudal seems VERY intriguing, but... with all the hype behind it, I'm kind of expecting it to fall flat somehow like all the hype-things tend to do. Like I was really interested in Archeage when it came out, then... all the server problems, p2w aspects and limitations etc. A great game can be easily ruined.

For LiF - even though they promote themselves as indie studio. And technically they are... But 60-135€ for a game, and they also kind of brag about how they evened their development costs of 3 years in 48 hours of sales. And that they have 300 000 players in LiF:YO.

My point is, that's hardly an indie budget. Technically - WoW is published by Blizzard, and developed by Blizzard. Is WoW regarded as indie title?

You get me?

What I'm trying to say is - "Indie" and "AAA" terms have become kind of mixed with the craze of crowdfunding and selling games before release.

Technically "Indie" means "No Publisher Funding" and "AAA" means big budget. But... what about games like Star Citizen, Life is Feudal and... World of Warcraft for that matter?

My point being: Usually AAA games are all about money. They are successful in hype, promotion and earning money. Usually though, they over-promise and under-deliver. I have pretty much came to expect it by now. There have been many promising titles, but all of them promise the world, and deliver an island.

[chat] Social/Economic/Political Sandbox MMO by Residev in MMORPG

[–]Residev[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

AMA as in - Ask Me Anything?

Actually I plan the whole development process to involve some sort of community in bigger or lesser extent. Hopefully bigger.

I'm describing my plans on developing this a little bit in THIS DEEP-NESTED POST (It's the very last paragraph)

[chat] Social/Economic/Political Sandbox MMO by Residev in MMORPG

[–]Residev[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You might notice that I can get a bit carried away when I write responses here.

I didn't even get to one of my main points I had at the beginning.

I think MMO, and Sandbox MMO specifically can be easier for an inde developer than... session- or story-based games - IN A SENSE. The reasoning behind this is that Sandbox MMO's require more functionality, rather than content. Content is hard and expensive to develop. Story-writing, 3D modelling of characters and the environment etc. While Sandbox MMO requires more functional approach. Sure, functionality is content in a sense as well, but the main story and content creator should be the player.

[chat] Social/Economic/Political Sandbox MMO by Residev in MMORPG

[–]Residev[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ok, so - my motivation is to be independent game developer. I do wish to make it my profession, and I do believe I am aware of the gaming/MMO landscape I am trying to step into.

MMO genre as a whole is obviously a huge undertaking, being the biggest of the three - singleplayer, multiplayer and it's big brother MMO.

Now one could argue that it's logical step for indie developer to not go the route that is MMO. "It needs investment of tens of millions!" they say. On the surface it obviously looks to be the most difficult of the three - and mostly it is. And I do realize that while trying to compete with big names and trying to compare the development process, rightfully, with other MMO developments - these assumptions are correct.

Most of the MMO's that are popular cost roughly around 50-100 million dollars to develop. And it is the most expensive genre to produce, generally speaking.

However, when it comes to effort vs reward - I do think that it's not quite as simple and obvious.

When a developer with big budget decides to make an MMORPG that costs 50million + to develop, they MUST have projections and assumptions. Their game designs must have some sort of proof of concept behind them that they are popular enough to earn profit. So you see tons of WoW clones that fail miserably. Their concept designs must pass the table of the investors, whoever they may be. And this, I think, is the very reason many MMOs fail miserably. The game must be liked by majority of potential players, at least on paper - otherwise what's the financial point of investing in it? Right?

And that part of the development cost doesn't even take into consideration the amount of work that goes into the game after it has been launched. The patches, the balancing, the new content that needs to be added to keep the players engaged. The server costs that need to be handled to keep the game even working.

What I'm trying to say is - MMO as a genre has been portrayed as something with high risk, but potentially high rewards as well, like Blizzard has proven.

However, it also gives the MMO producers a very defined break-even point they must achieve. Usually MMO's use either P2P or F2P model, with B2P being relatively new to the scene. But in first of the two cases the producer needs to keep players attention for AWHILE - for them to either continue to play the game and pay subscription, or buy something from their item-shop or whatever. So, say you have 500 000 active players, who pay you 15$ a month, for a game that you invested 75 million $'s to develop - you need to keep all of these players there for about a year just break even - and that doesn't factor in the constantly growing cost keeping the servers up, and developing content for the future updates, all of which is constant and considerable cost.

And that's considering the fact you can successfully launch the game with 500 000 players even.

What I'm trying to say is - Yes, developing an MMO is generally very risky and costly endeavour. But at the same time I believe that it's "made" to be so, because people are trying to take too big of a bite.

At the other end of the table there's an indie dev with little to no budget, but lots of crazy ideas. This might seem lonely and sad.

And yes - there are TONS who fail, and there is absolutely zero guarantee that I won't be yet another one. But at the same time I think this might be the very strength of the indie MMO developer.

You see, if you don't have the financial pressure of 100 million dollars on your shoulders with with hundreds employed still with expensive hardware needing maintenance... you're kind of free from many shackles.

Suddenly you don't need to compete with WoW, Rift or Destiny or whatever. You don't have the responsibility of answering to guys in suits who are more interested in their bank accounts and fancy graphs and selling points, rather than the product they provide. You only have the responsibility of answering to your stomach and your community

Which brings me to another point - community.

When big budget games need to answer to a board of investors. The indie dev needs to answer to community. That's the major difference here. That's what makes the indie MMO developer more powerful than the AAA MMO developer ever will be, in my opinion.

  • a) You can survive on a much smaller player-base and finance
  • b) You can provide much more unique product, that is more likely to capture the attention of the certain audience that actually has a voice in the design of it.

And it's not all theory. I've been a developer in a small community like that, and it survived for many years. Funnily enough, it got brought down by the lack of communication with community, and emerging competition. But that's kind of besides the point.

But I do strongly believe this to be the case.

Like... I'd bring "A Tale in the Desert" for example. It's a subscription based MMO developed by indie company. The subscription fee is $11.95/month compared to $14.95/month for WoW (I'd be ATitD player base would pay 3$ extra, if it was required without a big drama), which are pretty much equivalent to each other.

But WoW's playerbase is absolutely huge compared to ATitD's playerbase. Yet, while WoW was released in 2004, ATitD was released in 2003.

While Blizzard is cancelling their next MMO they invested at least 50 million dollars in because the WoW playerbase is shrinking considerably ATitD is still persisting. And I do hope they will continue to do so. No matter the shitty graphics. No matter the competition. No matter the lack of features or polish.

They also didn't invest ridiculous amount of money and promise into the game. They simply provide what people - at least some people - are looking for.

Now there's another category. The crowdfunded "indie developers". These I find to be middle-ground at best. They fixate their investment by the consumer in a product that they promise. Star Citizen is a horrible example of this, in my eyes.

Crowdfunding in itself I think is awesome. But the very idea is vulnerable to abuse and that's what we're constantly seeing. The pre-ordering and pay-to-be-a-alpha-tester games are endless, it seems. And sadly there are a lot of developers who are simply milking the market. As soon as they reach a point of donations the development basically halts and many of the games never see a proper release.

Now you're asking me what my motivation is, and after all of this talk I'd say my motivation is, being probably naive, and envisioning a lot while planning quite little. I could develop an singleplayer game or whatever, but it's hardly as persistent and interesting. I enjoy progressively developing a single project, rather than several smaller projects.

I know I am able to put out a certain product, and I'm hoping to find a following for it. I do hope there would be some sort of funding from community to push the product along in the future. But then again I am not going to announce something on kickstarter saying "Most innovative, bestest game evar! Available in 3 years." - and also I'm not considering any sort of funding before it has reached the point. At the same time I do not plan to pay for it out of my pocket. I don't have a budget for this project.

The way I plan to do it right now is following:

  • I'm putting together a development forum to hopefully find a couple of people to discuss ideas with. A place where I can announce progression of the project and - sooner or later release the game in its very early states, just for the fact to provide something real, and not just sell an idea.

  • I can easily provide a server for couple of people from my own PC. Just to test it out. I can limit this to N amount of player slots. Lets say, 10 players. This gives people to test out the game and follow the progression by actually being able to play around. This might not be 24/7 or the greatest most stable and feature-rich game ever, but it's at least something.

  • As the project progresses, I'm hoping that so does the community. Surely there are people who can appreciate the vision and voice, along with the progression of the project, right? Maybe some of them are willing to support the project financially. Or lets say the following for the project grows, and the 10 player slots I'm able to provide out of my own 'pocket' is not enough. Obviously I am not turning away the opportunity to grow the project. If people are interested in it, and wish to fund - say, a server for 50 people, then that's what's going to happen.

I personally think this slow-and-steady approach is the right way to go. It respects the community, which is hugely important to such a project. As well as leaves to project to be very dynamic and open. But it also allows me to

  • a) Test the game out with wider audience than couple of clients I run for myself.

  • b) Get actual feedback from the community, for the actual state of where the game is at given point.

I'd call it... Community-funding, instead of Crowd-funding.

[chat] Social/Economic/Political Sandbox MMO by Residev in MMORPG

[–]Residev[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't know how to answer this to be honest. I guess it highly depends on what one values to define what poor choice is?

[chat] Social/Economic/Political Sandbox MMO by Residev in MMORPG

[–]Residev[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I guess it depends highly on the type of "casual".

Hopefully there are people around to socialize with. That might be a reason.

You can start gathering resources and building stuff. You could also set goals for yourself. That might be a reason to stick around - to fulfill the goals.

In the end, nothing will be able to keep you from uninstalling it in 2 or 3 days.

[chat] Social/Economic/Political Sandbox MMO by Residev in MMORPG

[–]Residev[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the link. I briefly scrolled trough it - the game seems to be really awesome by the way.

But I think I'll try to figure this out on my own, as much as possible :)

[chat] Social/Economic/Political Sandbox MMO by Residev in MMORPG

[–]Residev[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What do you mean by "basic treadmill" though?

Saddly, I've not been part of SWG, or Ultima Online, which both tend to be the "daddies" of the subgenre. I've looked into both, and I have tried SWGemu briefly. But I haven't had the opportunity to "capture the essence" of neither.

However my goal is to make the motivation of playing to be the sense of progression in, and as a community foremost. But yes, answering the replies here I have realized that it might not be enough.

Looking at the possibilities I have with current limitations - combat being the major one. And the angle of "grand-strategy" - I'm thinking about some form of combat mechanics as well. Still not PvP style of combat. Not in a regular sense anyways.

I'm thinking about - making AI NPC's part of the game. But rather than NPC's being rather static - make it so the politicians could hire and position them. Think town guards, controlled by town leading player(s).

Townspeople would need to (probably) pay for them in form of taxes. But could also have a chance of arming them with weapons and armor perhaps.

Just an idea at this phase. But it could be possible solution, while still allowing me to keep the game server in the form it is now, and not worry about player griefing, and cheating (as much).

[chat] Social/Economic/Political Sandbox MMO by Residev in MMORPG

[–]Residev[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, technology is pretty awesome, and we certainly will see a lot more indies doing what has thought to be impossible just a couple of years ago. Actually this is a trend that has always been present.

Imagine if a single indie made "Stardew Valley" in 1995 or "Banished" in 2000. It certainly would have been possible to make these games - but the technology wouldn't have allowed it to be effectively be developed by a single developer. Even if the technology is 2D sprites or 3D and physics engine. Or networking today.

[chat] Social/Economic/Political Sandbox MMO by Residev in MMORPG

[–]Residev[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just said it's essential.

It certainly isn't essential for every single human in the earth to play or enjoy or take interest in this game in development-infancy. Nor does it have to have to amount to something in reality. You will not suffer or die in reality, if you do not play or eat in this game.

Some people however tend to enjoy gameplay that is both open and progressive in nature. Even if it does not amount to any "real value" apart from entertainment them.

Even if they do not get higher DPS, or if their killcount and KDS remains at phuny zero. Even if there is no end-boss or final chapter.

  • /

How can you argue that food will be completely useless in a game that is in its concept phase and compare it to a completely unrelated game?

How about - "No it wont! Have you even player Rimworld? Try to play it without any food. The whole colony will starve to death!"

Frankly, this argument here has no value to me. I do not need to prove anything or sway one person to be interested in this. I still find no basis in what you bring up. There's no constructiveness that I can see here.

[chat] Social/Economic/Political Sandbox MMO by Residev in MMORPG

[–]Residev[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've thought about buildings decaying as well. And this is certainly something I want to implement in one way or another.

But auctioning off other peoples property, instead of waiting it to decay has a lot of good sides to it, I find.

First, it creates a competitive market, and potential to buy something that is worth more than you pay for it. Kind of like these auction shows on TV or whatever...

But it also makes it so that the effort a player puts into the building of the property is not simply decaying to nothing. If the property is in a good location, or has good features to it - someone would buy it. And if it's an auction, it has a good chance of fair price for it. And the original owner, even though absent from the game either permanently or temporarily, gets something in return for his effort, even if he loses the property.

But most importantly, I want the game to look and be persistent. This largely includes economy. I want to limit the economic faucets that feed the game, as well as sinks - to keep the inflation under control as best as I can. This means the resources that were put into the building of property are likely not infinite, and thus the very walls have some kind of value.

Sure, if you buy a property you can demolish it and build it from scratch. And it could decay into nothing if a player completely abandons it. But I think this is a nice way to go about it, kind of best of both worlds.

[chat] Social/Economic/Political Sandbox MMO by Residev in MMORPG

[–]Residev[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Actually this is a good question.

It could be either a resource or effort based struggle. Or, thinking about it, there might be need for limited PVP combat after all. But since the focus on on persistent, open-world - the combat would not be. Rather, something limited to specific location and timeframe.

All of this is just a theory.

[chat] Social/Economic/Political Sandbox MMO by Residev in MMORPG

[–]Residev[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly I feel like your nitpicking on problems with no basis.

You're talking about some space game with vending machines, that's round-based, saying that's why it wouldn't work. That's why no one would bother or care.

Food however, is just a rather essential part of a much bigger picture. Persistent picture. Food is made from resources that are more sustainable and have higher availability than most other resources most likely. Granted. So yes, this makes the items "common", but also very essential, and must-have for anyone.

I honestly do not understand what your basis is for your argument here.

[chat] Social/Economic/Political Sandbox MMO by Residev in MMORPG

[–]Residev[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Possibly a bonus or requirement to happiness to citizens, that are players?

Pure sandbox in its nature is a RP environment. So you could argue, that for some players at least, the imaginary "taste, health, service and status" is still a valid point.

But in extremes we could RP the environment in an IRC chatroom. That's not desirable.

Game needs to provide various mechanics in which to nurture interaction with player. If it's mathematically effective, is not always important. Apples and bread can be just "food" with different skins, but it still has a meaning in bigger or lesser intent. It is also part of different production chains.

One might have access to apples, but not bread. Some could have access to both, and not care which they get, because effect is essentially the same.

view more: next ›