Players actually create the world, not just make buildings Options

[MNZ]

Well, I don't know if this is already the case. But what if the world started out empty, and the players (and NPCs) actually get to create it. A couple of guys make some buildings close together, turn out to be shops/houses. They increase, people naturally start going there for trade/etc. The town-to-be's inhabitants decide to start building a keep (and perhaps walls and a gate later) and now it's officially a town! They call it something and whatever name becomes popular makes it to the map (if there will be some kind of world map, which is not a good idea. People should rather MAKE maps, and perhaps be able to make them into items and sell them. Which is another idea, there should be some kind of 'paper' items ingame that can be written/drawn to but that should be difficult to impliment and store).

Slowly more towns will come up, some will grow to become huge cities, some might die. But the trouble is if the players decide to not work together and perhaps fight each other on lands. That'd be a good thing if it happens later on, you'll get a 'natural wars' effect! But if this happens way too much to a point of not being able to establish any kind of settlement but little huts which eventually get destroyed, then that's not good. Player behaviour is unexpected, and there's a little luck into it (or perhaps not).

Also all the work designing cities/etc going on now will go to waste if this is implemented, which is not a good thing either....... anyway, just ideas

[glibdud]

On the one hand, I agree. Giving people the ability to pop up structures wherever they want and letting them build/govern their own villages would be very cool. On the other hand, I'm afraid giving people too much freedom like this will result in all sorts of unexpected consequences. One of things I loved about Star Wars: Galaxies was the ability to drop a house anywhere you could find flat land, but after a while it became one of the big annoyances... everywhere you went, the landscape was littered with old harvesters.

I'd prefer that there be some sort of 'city planning' interface, available on a limited basis to characters who have somehow earned the privilege of using it. They can zone out areas to make the city work efficiently, and submit their plans for review by game officials (and possibly also a committee of other characters who plan on being involved in the area) before it gets implemented. That way you still have player-planned and -built cities, but the game officials can decide how much control they need to maintain to prevent overdevelopment.

As for cartography, there's some talk of that in another thread somewhere... sounds like we can expect that to happen when the time comes. I'm looking forward to it.

Nice ideas!

[MNZ]

There won't be overdevelopment if buildings grow old/unmaintained and fall apart. May be having city planning as you mentioned might be a good idea, but just imagine if it could work out without... and also buildings will have some value in PW (I hope), I never played Star Wars: Galaxies but it seems harvesters were a temporary kind of thing that just harvested materials and it's job was over after the ore was. IMHO, if implemented, this idea can be a fate-decider. It could make PW the most famous of MMORPGs.... or a big flop with random buildings all over the map and eventually no 'world'. I think this might be based on the initial player base, but I'm not sure. As I said in the first post, just ideas.

[Maxwell]

I like the idea personally, it would be neat as a new player to stumble upon a ruined city that was devastated by a plague and find some treasure. Or to have simple little town that was beautiful. I played Star Wars: Galaxies and I loved the player built towns some were beautiful. Though I hated how they were empty all of the time.

I believe what makes a town is the atmosphere. If there is a lot of hussle and bussle people walking about a town, its seems like a city, now if there is nobody in the city, then its seems like the city is dead.

I guess my idea is that you need to actually have citizens (i.e. people who pay taxes or own a business or a house). There needs to be some way to determine citizenship. Once all of the people decide to becomes citizens then you can build your town or your city. Say for just numbers sake to build a village you need 30 citizens. About 60 for a town and 150 for a city. People can come into your city and do whatever, not just the citizens. Now there should be some benefit of being a citizen, this could vary city to city as the owner sees fit, or maybe it could be implemented into the game.

If you have no idea what I am driving at, the simplified thought is that there NEEDS to be activity within the city, other wise its a ghost town.

This post has been edited by Maxwell: May 3 2007, 10:02 AM

[MNZ]

What if you could build a bank/storage??? and hire NPCs to work there. That is a SURE way to get activity! Not in a single MMOG is there no hussle and a ton of people around each bank. Also there should be other buildings that you could make and hire NPCs to work in. After a bit of thinking I re-realised that people in an MMORPG are diffrent from what they are in real life. I don't think many will build a house and 'settle down', because that's the main reason most play MMORPGs --- to not settle down! So to actually have the players build a town and have the town 'alive', you need to have NPCs doing the boring parts of life.

Also allowing people to create the world will allow for a more natural world, so to speak. Eventually the cities will start becoming specialised in a certain thing: mining, farming, alchemy, etc.

Aso what if when a character is first created s/he starts in a certain part of the world where all people of that species start. Eventually you'll actually have people building little towns that finally unite into a kingdom. It could go as far as they assign a king and you actually get natural politics without having to 'emulate' it through events.

Then again, who knows how a random non-related bunch of people will react togther. Nothing of what I mentioned, while perfectly reasonable in real life, can necessarily be what happens in an MMORPG and everyone might just stick to being a hunter-gatherer hehe. It'll be one hell of a mess then.

[John]

The major draw back of adding something so dynamic is that you lose all ability to implement anything static in those areas without it have dynamic rooting... for example, quests. All quest givers would now need to be dynamically placed, able to dynamically respond to their surroundings or simply give bland and uninteresting quests that wouldn't contradict anything.

I think this idea would best be implemented as a frontier, you have the story world, perhaps where you can build with strict automatic moderation, RP'd via council requests etc with NPCs. Then you have the frontier, a deadly wilderness that players must tame in order to freely build on, and then they have to fight to protect what they've built.

[RicoSuave]

MNZ,
That's an interesting idea. My preference though is to have landscaping, terraforming, structures, and all those types of prohibition of player movement be strictly controlled (or carefully monitored) by the administration staff.

My reasoning is thus, and please feel free to criticize if you wish (I'm secure enough in my thoughts and love to have my mind changed to better ideas than my own):

1. Exploiting -- There are always people who use the game mechanics against others. No matter what game you play, you will find some who just wish to go about having their own definition of fun whether it be exploring or adventuring. There will be some people who will put up structures or terraform the land to interfere with those other players. Whether it be rerouting players to a dead-end where they are attacked or simply putting up a "conveniently-located" shop in the middle a group of friends trying to build a city exactly to plans they've imagined. I'm sure we can all think up a combined hundred of ways this could be used as an exploit.
2. Buggy code -- The amount of coding that will need to be done to implement that system will probably be extensive. Thus, it is bound to hit a few bugs here & there (probably not that many though due to our outstanding staff). With dozens of bugs being discovered a month (some crashing the server, others just causing heartache), it is probably a wiser decision to allow the scripters to get a design working and have to be easily fixed if something goes awry. It is emensely easier tracking down a bug if you know what caused it than trying to get a player to duplicate it and figure out why it's occurring.
3. Land-desecration -- As mentioned earlier in this thread, there is bound to be houses, shops, etc. throughout the land if players are allowed to build wherever they wish. Not much is more disheartening for me ingame than to be enjoying some aspect of the game visually, aurally, logically... when all of a sudden, something dissonant destroys my Suspense of Disbelief. For example, seeing someone's farm (complete with livestock and outhouse) right outside a dragon's lair. Here I am having spent perhaps weeks with my party tracking down this monster, when I come to discover that some player's idea of a joke snaps me back into reality. Reality knowing that I'm simply playing a game, instead of having an adventure. You might say, "Well, it would be neat to see that dragon destroy the player's farm et al;" to that I respond that the GMs could just as easily place a destroyed farm there from the get-go.

Because I don't believe in just disregarding an idea without trying to improve upon it, perhaps what we could do instead is to have certain tightly-controlled areas be for building to your heart's content. Perhaps the King has proclaimed an area of land to be colonized. Then I say, build away! Or have shops, stores be prebuilt and rented or leased from the local governments. Charging taxes would be a great money-sink to the game as well as perhaps a way to calculate NPC action. Taxes from rented/leased shops or houses could build roads, walls, subsidize farming, pay for my extended vacation to the Whispering Islands of Adventuria... the possibilities are endless!

[Anigav]

I agree with Rico mostly, though it would be a cool idea. The reason there couldn't be just an open wilderness when the game starts out is that there is already going to be a tremendous amount of back-story. It doesn't make sense to have highly developed language, culture, and technology unless there is already some sort of settlement to begin with.

However, what the previous posters said about colonization is also a pretty cool idea. I think with an appropriate quest system, users could take part in the development of an unexplored area of wilderness in a very controlled, specific way, which also has a lot of dynamic potential.

It's a Paradox, I know, but say that there is an area of forest which a regent wants to develop. He (or she) could give out quests/comissions to survey an area and design the town (maybe hiring the highest level surveyor/cartographer). Then he could give out quests to clear the area of animals and trees. At the same time, people are hired to collect raw materials such as stone etc. Finally, once the buildings are built, players and NPCs buy them and populate them and voila! you have a new town.

However, the success of the operation would be in question because other leaders would not want a new town built, not to mention the locals might be angry that these outsiders are taking their land.

Of course, I've gone far in to too much detail. So I guess I'll shut up.

[MNZ]

Yeah you guys are probably right.... there's too much that could go wrong, but if it went right it'd be cool.

What if the whole backstory is actually going on in a land far away, perhaps an over-populated continent. Someone finds new lands and of course everyone rushes to make place for themselves there. So humans for example, may start at a shore somewhere where all the humans land. Other species in a similar way but a diffrent place. Other species may be the locals.

The colonizers will have orders to perhaps build so-and-so and make place for themselves. There should be a leader who gives out jobs, an NPC (who could, while not roaming aimlessly and giving out jobs, be controlled by a GM for sometime for added realism). This person here will give each one who demands a job (ie. quest) something as he likes. There could be exploration quests, wood/other material collection quests, building planning and making, etc. No one should be allowed to simply build something anywhere as everyone pointed out, after some rethinking I agree... it would be a hell of a mess. Each race will have there own set of leader(s) and there own set of goals. Some race might be interested in getting rich, some other in establishing control (and getting rich), others in settling down (and getting rich), etc. There's one thing to this, a whole bunch of NPCs should land before (or with) the players and have some kind of little primitive stalls that sell basic things (some tools, some weapons, food, etc) and each species must reach from his homeland with some basic things too, necessarily some tools to survive (lets say they are all poor fellas with no life back at home, hehe. There's these little reality gaps that someone has to fill). Eventually these NPC should grow with the community (I'm asking for too much AI).

The locals will already have an established community, buidings, cities, etc (maybe say at the center of the new continent) all with highly advanced smiths and banks and what not. They too should have goals (or maybe not), and what if they found out about the new comers and some are sent to meet them (depending on the race, meet them with swords or meet them with gifts)

I went too far with my imagination this time.... too far. Just thinking out loud that's all... it'd be crazy difficult to implement this I guess.

[Dwilf]

These ideas would be very cool in a game where all they players start on some uncivilized new continent or world. They arrive with nothing and have to start out colonizing this new world. With Stone Age tech (and maybe primitive magic & religions) players start to make thier way. Flint blades, plant based stuff like reed woven baskets, simple bows and snares for hunting.
Towns will appear, tech will evolve once people start to get sorted out and life becomes easier once resorces like metal ors ore found and some folk work together to get a smithy going.
NPCs can work farms and stuff if players start them up.
GMs can make life a bit more interesting with wild beasts and goblins to give people some trouble.

[MNZ]

Yeah that's exactly what I proposed in the previous post. It would add much more fun into the game IMHO. And it would make life easier for the quest writers (at least relatively )

[Minthos]

http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&...-8&oe=utf-8

[MNZ]

Oh goody. Others have already thought of and implemented all this.... but that's just natural, people of the same time think of the same things. This sucks.....

[Alexander]

Oh goody. Others have already thought of and implemented all this.... but that's just natural, people of the same time think of the same things. This sucks.....

Sucks? Hell no! You people can do better then that game. Example idea:

Give people complete freedom on where they can build, the world is theirs for the taming but! The developers shape the landscape.

You people want the actions and choices of the players to matter? Good, then let them chart their own course in the world and let them build their own civilisation. Let the history of the world be blank and write it as the players make their mark on the world and each other.

The setup is simple, you create a big world and spread limited resources over the land and under it. Now you place the Monoliths of the Gods on the world, these will function as starting locations for the first flood of characters. This will go to the history books as the time of creations dawn, the first intelligent beings (as far as they know) have arrived, created by their gods. Notice that you don't need to have all races ready at start of the game, more races can be added in this way at later points in time and if you give each race's starting location a good range between others little danger of conflict needs to be present. You could make it so that it would take a week or two of real-life time before you managed to walk from one starting location to another, maybe even more.

Now, as the first beings of their race walk around their gods monolith they are of course fresh and of little idea of what is to happen next. These divine monoliths could function as NPC with which a GM can give orders to a community and thus not only issue forth the first commands but can latter lay quests upon selected individuals. The first command could be to build a small village, the god could teach his minions how to hunt and build as that the knowledge on how to build the first few buildings is laid upon the first players. They are given the knowledge on how to construct the very first stone-age tools and buildings.

Eventual more and more players will play the game and the first settlements will grow larger and you might even have groups who split off to form different settlements further away and explore the world. If you work with ToA calls Innovations you can have character gain new insights or ideas while they perform their daily tasks. A character could for instance gain the insight (and thereby the ability) to create a new tool or an improvement to one while building his house if that tool is related to building structures. In this way a character gain new blue prints for tools and buildings either by working or by praying at their monolith. You can also make it so that a character can share his knowledge by teaching other character their own abilities so that these can be passed on between people.

Ok, so eventually you will get so many people in the game that the settlements grow so big that territorial wars might erupt between them. The players themselves shut be left the choice on how to settle this, will they work together and share ground and resources or will they fight to keep them for themselves? Once War erupts (no doubt it will) the simple hunting spears won't be enough anymore and people will start to concentrate of the art of war blooming an entirely new industry as weapons and armour made for war become available as well as many siege machines.

So in this way people really control the course their race and world take, no need for GM's really but they can be put to use! GM's can concentrate by meddling in the affairs of these mortals and implant changes in the cities and wilderness alike. For example is a small settlement was a victim of a war and was left ruined and abandoned normally nothing would happen to it but a GM could take on the job to make it a haunted town filled with undead perhaps, souls who could not rest after what has happened. And the GM could work out this work as far as he wants from just leaving filled with undead to actual spread roomers about it in other settlements to creating preset dialogs for the undead. But just as easily they can spread general trouble in towns with rat infestations that suddenly pop-up to expected meteor swarms that threaten the entire settlement. They can endlessly trouble the player populace with quests that divert from ordinary boring life.

Even conflicts between gods could come in the picture. We all know that some races don't go along well together but why is this and who is against who? You could hold in-game polls that allow the players to set the attitude of their god toward the other races and other gods and in return you can have GM's thro the monoliths order their people to make war on some or help others.

But back to the monoliths for you can do great things with this and they have their consequences. Because what if in the event of a war taking a turn for the worst and one race finally loosing? Can these structures be destroyed? I would say yes it shut be posible and even if destroyed who says it has to be the end of that race? There could be survivors left after the war who scatter across the world and settle anew and breed more of their own kind. In this say settlements of your own race could also act as starting places for characters. Can then an entire race become extinct? Why not I would say, some will make it while others won't and are lost. But what about all the work put into their creation, all the development? Well, while you no longer have them as a possible race you might still be able to use what you have and implement it in a different way, perhaps with the extinction of the race it was doomed to go to hell and the race become a race of devils or demons ready to plague the game world.

And who is to say that the player races really where the first to start? You can always come up with world shattering story plots to scare the players with alien races suddenly coming out of the future, demon gates opening from hells unknown, elemental forces suddenly becoming sentient and lots more stuff to keep them on their toes.

[Exudos]

Hmmm, this sounds an awful lot like something I posted in my religion post, haha... Oh well, as long as it gets out.
I think we should be able to shape the world to an extent, using a freeform building tool, alot of my ideas have been already stated in here so, keep it up guys. I do agree with the fact that GMs and Devs should have to agree with the building places.

[Alexander]

And for people that might think that this monolith things limits a character's choice to who to pray it doesn't have to be so.

Those gods connected to the monoliths are just the racial gods that made the races; you could still have nature gods and elemental gods and moral gods. And just because you've bin made by one god doesn't mean that you’re not free to worship him or one of another race.

It is more of a means of how to place people on the world.

[Anigav]

Well, the game can be open-ended without it being complete anarchy, which is, honestly, probably what would happen if players were spawned in an empty world. Players should run the world (at least part of it), but history should play a role and so should NPCs (sorry all those NPC haters out there) because games aren't very unique if there is no back story and no one to facilitate that back story.

[Alexander]

Well most games have a back story so not really having one is more unique. But don't you think history could be written as the game goes along? I mean things will probably move rather fast so you'll have a big city in no time and secondary settlements soon enough.

But even so, you can make stories about how the world came to be, a creation myth so to speak.

[MNZ]

I still like the idea of races on a mission to colonize new lands. It lets you have a backstory going on back at 'home' (which perhaps later in the game can be visited) and still gives the players control of the world.

[MNZ]

http://www.projectwish.com/index.php?s=&am...ost&p=10673

Exudos seems to have already proposed this in that post. My mistake.