GIAW 01: Developing settlements in MMORPGs
Game idea a week 01: Developing settlements in MMORPGs
File under: Advancing MMORPGs
This post has been a long time coming, mostly due to the fact that I was working things out as I went along. Now that I know all the things surrounding this process, GIAWs should increase in regularity to about one or two a month.
Many of the ideas I post will fit together to build a few more complex games but I will also throw in a few ideas for short games too. While these ideas may link together into a single game, they can be separated and used as inspiration for your own ideas.
Without further ado: GIAW 01: Developing settlements in MMORPGs:
Background
This idea is part of a set that make up a new kind of MMO designed around being fun to play and revolving around the struggle for power between groups of towns and cities.
Instead of current MMORPGs or just RPGs in general where you are just stuck in a location and told to level, this type of game integrates building construction as well as city building elements to create a world that is not only dynamic and changing but also forms a story around the interplay between cities and the players therein.
So your idea is basically that of Love/A Tale In The Desert/Second Live, only with more added stupidity. NPCs in an MMORPG always suck. Games should move away from NPCs, let players cooperate, let them decide what to do, and not be constrained to whatever predefined requirements NPC Bob has given them.
This idea already exists, and has already been developed to great extent.
Do Want.
Of course, you would have to carefully put controls on larger cities and events to prevent the early, more experienced cities from just taking over everything else, while also trying to avoid EVE Online. Also, take into consideration that the majority of players would want to be soldiers.
I imagine: an entire nation of settlements entirely constructed to look like giant phalluses, arranged in the shape of an even larger phallus. This is the internet; this result is nigh inevitable.