Quote:
Originally posted by Ghengis;167729
First forgive the long post - I don't post often and have quite a bit to say apparently.

It's easy to see how immersive games would appeal to obsessive compulsive personalities but that's not really the point. Some people work hard and play hard in order to squeeze the most quality of life they can from each minute we have on this planet. MMO's are a great way to 'play hard'.

The grind in its simplest form comes back to content. We are immersed in a world and in order for it to remain attractive we need to be challenged and interested and so there must be tons of content - like so many shrimp being fed to a whale - and that poses a serious challenge to MMO developers - how to constantly come up with more grist for the mill and make it interesting and challenging.

Also, I won't argue the merit of spending so much time online gaming except to say it is everyone's own choice. I do it with my five sons and we enjoy being an online family and I wouldn't trade our time online together for a mountain of soccer games, a parking lot of minivans, and a coven of soccer moms (it is coven isn't it?).

Here's an idea for developers and a bit of my gaming history so you know where it comes from.

I come from an extensive IT background and I work hard at computers in an online service capacity (not games) and play hard at computers after work in the world of MMO. I have seen everything from the pong console (which I received for Christmas around 1970 on a black and white TV) all the way up through EQ beta, EQ2 beta etc. Before that BBSing and before that table top at a men's gaming club including AD&D in 1973, lead miniatures (table top) Avalon Hill, Starfleet etc. Based on that experience I'm going to offer this thought to you game developer mogul types - and yes I would be interested in being part of any development of this idea.

First, to address the real issue here - the never ending quest for grist from both a player and a development perspective - the best content is player driven content. Using a culmination of MMO and milieu based genius and accidental genius witnessed from all gaming experiences over the course of a lifetime of gaming I have pieced together a game setting and architecture that would truly constitute a second generation MMO, and a way forward.

Imagine a vast world with real logistics - the kind that can only be created on a super computer like the one mapping the human genome - which BTW runs risc (reduced instruction system code based architecture) based Linux now and not just AIX. Just imagine 64 processors and a Terabyte of ram per footprint - no computer resource starvation no matter what the load...the entire subscribership online in the same world together - 50,000+ people playing together.

Imagine a central neutral starting city which is policed and where you are safe from PVP and can interact as we have been in all our MMO's but as you go further away from the city friendly patrols are fewer until only the entrance to the zone is guarded and further - open territory with total 100% PVP - the outer zones - and no means of magical travel, period and you end up where you end up. No friendly towns or villages out there either, just virgin territory with a few basic dungeons, a random encounter table and a wealth of virgin resources. Some of you might start to recognize this a 00 space from Eve-online, and that's exactly the model I'm using mixed with others.

I'm also going to use the same game for the economics model in combination with Vanguard's model. You have to build everything - houses, boats, equipment - all player built however, the resources to do this on a large scale require the setup of player owned resource based equipment - such as a mine, or a sawmill, a boat with vast cargo space or a large caravan etc, which is an expensive proposition. In addition you have the logistics of getting these items to and from market over land and sea trade routes and you know trying to do this unescorted is almost certain suicide given the number of players out there hunting for juicy economic targets like yours.

Economic moguls or super carebears who do this sort of marketeering require protection, much like the medieval merchants did from the local lords, and were willing to pay a tax on their goods to receive it.

The local lords need to build a castle - have patrols, go out hunting for bandits, respond to sightings of incursions etc to keep thier carebears safe, and continue to build thier own fortifcations (keep/castle/seige engines). In short, everyone needs these resources which make the world go round...

What about pirates who invest in ship building, but they use fast over manned and over gunned sloops to wage piracy against merchant trade routes...and setup well defended areas among a smattering of islands near your territory...they're hard to find in such a vast ocean never mind catching them...and if you do you know what they say about cornered animals...remember this isn't a respawning computer MOB these are real people who've invested a lot in their ships whom you've cornered...

The casual small guild which doesn't want to be part of any large war and decides to become a bandit guild - preying on your overland caravans - taking up residence in your vast forest...

All this content, economy driven, and provided by players themselves in a PVP world with a non-pvp core controlled by the developers, writing geopolitical events as coalitions of guilds become united and attempt to take and hold a rich region, and develop it etc up to and including the formation of towns around the player owned keeps - in the interest of economics, trade, safety and resource for further exploration, dominance in war against other factions and neighbors, and indeed, to own the coolest dungeons for miles for their own to explore and farm can only happen if you have 30-50 thousand people online at the same time.

This is going on somewhat today in Eve-online but its failing due to computer resource starvation. When 100 ships meet 100 ships in battle in a zone with space stations and death star defenses the hosting server dies of computer resource starvation and starts dropping connections etc, but other than that the game runs fine and they still set a world record with 30,000+ people online at the same time in the same MMO world.

Computer resource starvation caused by cisc (complex instruction system code architecture) systems because they don't have the resources required to do this sort of game - you would call these systems Intel or AMD based however a pSeries (Big Blue) now runs Linux. Producing a game like this on Linux would shake the foundations of the gaming community and the opensource/Linux community on a massive scale. I bet IBM and the opensource community would love to work on a game like this where the resource client code is available for both Windows and Linux, the game client is free and the subscription rate was say $20 a month. Eve-Online does run on an IBM based 64 bit optronic super blade Windows platform and is coded in Python which shows IBM's interest in a piece of this 6 billion dollar industry...

I would play that game - would you? And there's your answer to the grind, and the grist - both provided gratis (to a degree) via the players of the game themselves. There's nothing more realistic than humans hunting humans.



Very cool. I would indeed play this game. I'd even attempt to make this game. Can you fund it or know anyone who could?

Weiterlesen...