SocialRPG, Player Driven Fantasy World

[AltarofScience]

DISCLAIMER: I know that I cannot single handedly develop a high quality mmorpg with cool graphics and ****. I am writing a text based RPG, with possibly some images that use links as maps. I do not expect even 100 players to play it. It is mostly for fun, for myself and friends on other games, I already know how to program with php/mysql/css/javascript/html/ajax/etc. This game is just a fun conceptual thing I am doing for now, because I am already deep into writing another text based browser game of a different sort. It is probably being opened to the public(mostly derived from previous game communities I was a part of, with players already signing up to play a test round) in November as an alpha/beta type thing, and completed sometime in January next year, but still mostly a private invite only server: because web hosting costs. This game is basically what I once heard called intellectual porn, its just really fun to think about and make some demos for, I do not know if in a couple years I will be in a position to still work on it. I would mainly like to discuss issues of stability, player death, and so forth. Yes my disclaimer is super long, but often with a topic like this you see people get a whole bunch of posts that are doom and gloom, can you program, don't expect anyone to help for free, we aren't going to write it for you, and so forth, and I want to be clear, I am not asking that.

I am attempting to develop a very player/cooperation intensive fantasy game RPG game.

The point of this thread is to hash out details, ask if anyone has ideas to contribute and discuss ways to create a persistent world that doesn't crumble after a few months. The game will probably start as a browser game project, but its certainly possible to code a more complex version ala 3d world mmorpgs, although, time and graphics and what not make that difficult.

Essentially the game has a complex economy based on resource production of various kinds:

crops

plants

metals

wood

stone

livestock

These items are used to create higher level items:

gems

refined metals

food ingredients

alchemical ingredients

processed stone

processed wood

And higher:

weapons

enchanted items

books

scrolls

health/mana/energy items

buildings

production capital

Items can be raised to progressively higher levels or made high quality originally.

Players produce building materials to construct towns.

Towns are military/economic/scientific/political/social entities.

Cooperation entities exist vertically and laterally entities, such as magical colleges, trade guilds, factories, towns, inns, corporations, stores, chains of stores, states, town alliances, nations, empires. The nature of a cooperative entity is technically entirely player constructed, although in game support of basic level features will exist. So, you can create tax structures, defense pacts and so forth and players will organize them in a way to replicate real world structures, or maybe develop new ones.

Unlike games such as travian and evony, every area cannot produce resources. This is where the economy comes in. Pretty much everything is player developed. There will be a portal area I guess, where players come from, and which will play a part in npc recruitment, because npcs will always be needed as menial labor. In skilled positions npcs will be useful but inferior to a player and players can buy and sell to and from npcs to some degree. I will go into detail on that if anyone asks.

The portal will be a safety zone, with minimal level services, so players can sleep there safely, but sleep won't be as effective, aka sleeping bags or beds of grass or straw. There may be a value limit on how powerful of a character can stay there, or there may not.

As an example of npc interaction:

A new area is discovered and it is far from established towns. A player with the perquisite economic power decides to found a town. He hires a work crew, buys construction supplies, gets transport for them, and possibly protection. His caravan heads out to the area. They build temporary housing, a stake wall or something for protection, get a community building of wood and canvas, or just a big tent, which is used for dining and meetings. The player may hire a foreman to run the crew. The crew gets to work on the buildings, maybe it takes a week and they build an inn or something. They may then choose to start construction on other buildings, hire more work crews, and so forth. The player can put himself in charge for a time, which limits the actions he can take during that time, and precludes movement, for extra value. He may also pay other player characters with useful skills, and depending on the value of those skills speed up production, build stronger buildings and so forth. Individual buildings are built on separate time scales and the costs are done separately. After the player makes his town, which he will probably continue to improve over time, he may not have player characters willing to come out and fill all the roles. So maybe he hires npcs, who are cheap, and always available, but do poor work in comparison. Innkeepers might have poorer food or service, or sleeping arrangements, or what have you. Armorers may be worse at repairs, cost more to repair with, be able to make only inferior gear, and so forth. General stores may have less of a selection. Ideally our town owner wants to entice players of certain trades to work in his town.

Travel takes an amount of time, so building a town close to a useful area allows the owner to possibly generate quite a bit of revenue based on services offered, and also pick up better goods with less travel time for attacks to happen. He may also install a private portal in his town, allowing him to move goods safely to his main manufacturies. Also, he may allow PCs to use his portal to move to other portal enabled areas, for a price. Obviously money needs to be charged so that players don't just use the portal and ignore other aspects of his town. He may also want to use a portal to link into a banking network, thus allowing PCs to have access to their main stores of cash and items. Towns can take a long time to build so that if someone invests a lot of money in a town, someone else can't just instantly spawn a better one. It also gives more merchant type jobs since places with rare resources that don't have towns might need to use caravans or wagon trains and whatnot.

I have some work to do, but I will expand the post later.

[AltarofScience]

Crafting Integration

I am writing a game, sort of like an mmo, but also with econ sim and all items and resources are player generated. I already can create the map, and seed resources, and create various recipes, and I have, and I will have a small demo finished before next year. But there are some big parts of the game I need input on.

One topic I am particularly interested in is the different crafting skills and their integration.

Now one issues is alchemy and crafting. Potions made by alchemists will have the ability to altar natural resources to make them more useful for various tasks. For instance, certain potions can be used in forging ingots that will later be used in creating weapons and armor. It will give them bonuses to various stats. For instance it would increase their strength, or lower their weight, much like alloys. Certain potions can also be used in the process of crafting an item, say, a sword, to give it a sharper edge. In additions, when enchanting items, one thing you can do is carve words into the weapon to give it affects. Now in general better enchanters can put more power in a word. And better materials can hold more charge. But also, the definition of the characters matters. Usually the metal smith will carve the words in, but you could also use a potion purchased from an alchemist to get a more precise engraving. Because a weapon has a limited amount of this which can be done before damaging its integrity, being more precise means being smaller which means fitting on more magic.

Further, certain professions can affect the total magic capacity of a sword. This is called, aligning the matrix. Potions or magic use in crafting the weapon could arrange its physical characteristics to be more receptive to magic. So a high level alchemist or enchanter could allow you to use a stronger spell on an iron sword than would normally be possible.

A whole bunch of professions in the game have this sort of crafting interaction. These sorts of things benefit capital, like plows or picks or hammers as well as weapons or armor. Magic can affect the power of potions, and vice versa. Magic or potions can cause crops to grow faster, and possibly magic can be used to breed new plants, although this is somewhat iffy.

These sorts of things can allow multiple classes to have better gear in questing, for instance a player with better metal craft can use better metals and forge superior weapons, but if you have lower metal crafting but high level alchemy or magic, you could make equipment of comparable quality.

Additionally various classes would be able to make cosmetic changes to items, like coloring metal or wood, and other such things.

I know many people would consider this to be incredibly complicated to code, but I am pretty sure I know how to do it without spending a lot of time.

What I am more concerned with is the player reaction. I know players love to customize, and lots of min maxers would be excited about all the ways to improve a weapon and that they can play lots of different types of characters without harming their ability to craft or quest or what not. But for casual players, I think it might be confusing to have all these options and also, players willing to spend a lot of time in game could produce vastly superior items.

I really would enjoy a game where this is possible obviously, or I wouldn't be making the game, but what do you guys think about this kind of thing?