Tag: trade

Fantasy Fantasy MMO

Gaming

If I were to set about trying to build yet another fantasy MMORPG, here is what I would do…

I’d start with EVE Online.  There are many reasons for this, the first being that I don’t mind having zones.  Lots of people will tell you that you have to have a giant seamless world, but I always ask them “What seamless worlds are you playing in?”  They always say World of Warcraft.  But they are only half right.  Yes, you can run from one end of a continent to the other without zoning.  You can fly on a griffin or other travel beast and cross no zone lines.  But how do you play the game?  Most people are in instances, dungeons and battlegrounds, and crossing from one continent to another makes you zone.  Warcraft has seams, they’ve just gone a long way to hide them from you.  EVE does too, but thankfully for them their Sci-Fi setting makes it easy to throw up gates and wormholes and faster than light travel and hide them in plain sight.  In my fantasy world, I’d have large sprawling zones.  Some zones would be city zones where a large city rests at the center and is surrounded by farmland and sparse wilderness.  Some zones would be town zones where it is mostly wilderness with a sprinkling of small villages and towns, two to five per zone, just a small cluster of buildings or an inn at a cross roads.  And some zones would be full on wilderness with caves and dungeons and evil.

Players would be able to own and run the small villages and towns, possibly even city blocks in the large cities (but not the whole city – the advantage of controlling part of a city would be in the nearness of so many other people, the disadvantage would be that you have to share the city – think of cities as being the trade hubs of the game).

When you want to leave a zone, you would go to a “crossroads”, of which there might be several on each zone at the edges.  From the crossroads you would use the signpost and it would tell you which zones you could get to from here.  Players would be allowed to choose if their journey was “safe” or “unsafe”.  A “safe” journey would simply zone you directly to your destination.  An “unsafe” journey would randomly generate an adventure zone with one or more encounters that you would need to cross.  These unsafe adventure zones would have two exits, one where you start would be back to where you came from and the one at the other end (not necessarily the opposite side, the path through could wind around and end up anywhere on the zone perimeter) would take you to your destination.

The point here is that there would exist in the game shared content raids (the zones I mentioned earlier with caves and dungeons and evil) with spawn timers and event cycles and so on, and there would exist instanced travel content where a player or group of players (or raid full of players) could go thwart evil unhindered by other players (an added bonus could be that clearing a road of bandits and other nasties could have an impact on the prices of NPC trade goods between the two end points of the journey).  As well there could also be “pocket” zones that would work more like traditional instances in other game – perhaps players, from a village or town, can accept a posted bounty or task that sends them either immediately into their own instance or directs them to a nearby crossroads where they can select their instance from the signpost.

Of course, I’m just spit-balling here.  But I think this sort of thing would be a very interesting idea to pursue.  Another day, I’ll go into how I’d apply EVE’s character design/building to a fantasy game as well…

Zombies! Eclipse of the Undead

Reviews

While visiting my brother this past weekend, he was offering up to me some of his graphic novels and trade paperbacks to read.  One of those was Zombies! Eclipse of the Undead.  I was going to borrow it, but ended up reading the whole thing before I left.

Its a fairly typical and fairly decent story.  Zombies.  In this case, people have gathered for safety in a local football stadium.  The military has been ordered to pull out and leave the people to fend for themselves.  Of course, all hell breaks loose.

One of the best aspects of this particular tale is the effectiveness of showing how simply not paying attention is the biggest killer when it comes to the genre.  People get focused on one thing and forget they are surrounded by zeds, and then they get dead.

Overall, a good, quick read.  I look forward to future Zombies! trades.

[amazon-product image=”51EYhIuXdrL._SL160_.jpg” type=”image”]1600100694[/amazon-product]

Zombies: Dialog and Quests

Gaming

After mulling over the ideas in this post over at nerfbat, I thought I’d tackle it as it concerns my game design.

How would I present dialog? Well, thankfully I get out of part of it in that my only NPCs are the undead and all they do is moan. Of course, that brings up an interesting idea of do I display the moans as text or just audio that gets louder the closer they are and the larger the crowd? I like the idea of audio, even directional audio, but there might need to be an option to turn on text, just incase deaf people might want to play and not play as a deaf person. It is a role playing game, after all.

But if there are no NPCs, how will there be quests?

To understand the drive of the game, you have to understand the backbone driving force of the game: the tamagotchi.

Essentially, its a much more complicated version of that simple child’s toy… but if you boil it down, so is life and my Zombie MMO is really nothing more than a Life Simulator in a world of the undead. SimRomero, if you will.

Your character will have a stat sheet where you can monitor and manage things like how much you eat per day and how that affects your energy levels and overall health. You’ll be able to see how long your food supplies will last given your rate of consumption, and a projection of how long you will last without food given your current level of health. There might also be things like progression bars toward dementia, which can be reduced by human contact or reading books or listening to music, basically anything other than dealing with zombies.

So where are the quests? In a way there will be two sorts of quest like devices in the game…

The first will be player designed, largely including trade. If you have a stash of salt, a ton of it, and you have a need for other supplies, you will be able to set up a trade mission where you will trade X salt for Y other product until you have Z of said product. Players who stumble upon your safehaven while you are offline will be met at gunpoint and offered the quest. It will jot down in their notebook what you are looking for and what you will give for it. The twist here is that since you can specify a cut off point, like say you want oranges, 6 at a time, stopping when you have 4 dozen, its possible that player may find 6 oranges, return to you and find that you’ve already hit your limit of 4 dozen and are no longer taking oranges in trade. But that’s okay, its not a total waste since he can use the oranges himself, or in another trade.

The second will be presented in a “kill sheet” style, where you can earn Xbox360 style achievements by doing things. Kill 100 undead and you might get a title. A second title might be waiting at 500, a third at 2000, and so on. Have you been well fed for the past 30 days? Title. Killed another player? Title. Killed 100 other players? Title. Survived for a year? Title. You get the idea… As part of this, the game will include online profiles of players through the website, even the ability to make message board signatures that will include your stats (like the Xbox gamer tags). And of course, the system will include an options for hiding your profile completely, or making it viewable only to people logged in and on your friends list.

It sounds overly simplistic, I’m sure, but that’s the goal of the game: simple and fun. I don’t need to be a WoW-killer, I just want enough people playing so that maybe I can quit my “real” job.

Tools of the Trade

Gaming

Let’s just begin with the fact that I hate EVE Online.

I played it for a number of months, and in that time I mined, I fought pirates, I ran trade routes some of which I did through “zero space”. I read the message boards and I talked to people in game. I joined a corporation, I formed a corporation, and I fought in corporate wars. I was literally bored out of my mind.

But… I have to give EVE credit for one thing. The guys at CCP have over a a hundred thousand people paying to play a game that doesn’t exist. Now, before you go on a tirade defending EVE, pay attention… EVE has no designed large goals. There is no “end game”, in fact there is barely any “game”. All the stuff people love, corporations and politics and piracy and all that… player created using simple tools provided by CCP.

CCP has given you a basic economy system, and from that players have developed complex trade routes and commodities management. CCP has given you corporation structure, and from that players have developed complex politics. And so on… what CCP didn’t do was spend any effort developing story and static content, they developed no dungeons, no wide ranging NPCs (there are some low end pirates, the guard NPCs for protected space, and some space stations). They didn’t waste any effort trying to create repeatable encounters with respawning monsters, because they also didn’t create any level advancement for players.

Of course, CCP also doesn’t have 6 million subscribers, but their buck and a quarter thousand is nothing to shake a stick at.

So, this has brought me to my theoretical game design. Make tools not games if you want a deep community. Let people define the game for themselves. Now, this doesn’t mean that you can’t make games at all, but games should be small and contained.

The idea I have is what I’m going to start referring to as “city-centric” design. Essentially, a player joins the game and is initially made a citizen of one of a handful or less completely NPC controlled cities. From here they can play numerous games, be that crafting or adventuring or whatever. But, as long as they remain a citizen of an NPC city, their advancement in the game (however advancement ends up being defined) will be self only and hindered. The NPCs of the NPC city don’t care about you. So the push comes to either join or found your own player created city. As a citizen of a player controlled city, every game you play affects the city. If you decide to run caravan escort missions, every time you succeed you strengthen the trade route between your city and your destination city; every time you fail, the trade route weakens. The strength of a trade route will affect the supply and price of city specific products and resources. If you keep running caravan escorts from your city by the coast to a city in the mountains, mined ores will slowly become more plentiful and cheaper. At the same time, this makes things easier for people who have chosen to play the blacksmith game. You can also attack other cities and play defender for your own city. The people who run the city, the dictator, king, or elected official, will have control of city development… like a real time strategy game, or Sim City. They get to decide how resources are spent, the style (texture sets) to pull new buildings from, and prioritize city missions (they’ll determine if that caravan protection you just ran payed out 1 gold or 5 as a reward from the city). They’ll control alliances and animosities. And of course, when communicating with the leaders of other cities, they’ll need messengers to carry the letters, which the players can do.

So, what about PvP vs PvE? Do both. Allow the players to decide if the mission they are undertaking will be done PvP or PvE, and control the affect the result has. PvP is generally harder, so a PvP caravan escort would yield more change than a PvE escort.

Then, we can take the whole thing a step further… people who don’t want to be citizens of a city can choose instead to belong to a guild… an adventurers guild, a tradesmans guild, etc… and those guilds can buy/rent buildings in cities, as many as they can afford. Tasks performed for the guild will enrich the coffers and prestige of the guild.

My mind is racing with ideas… now I just need someone to bankroll them… Ha!

Trade Skills: The Good and the Bad

Random Thoughts

So today I decided to try out the trade skills of Dark Age of Camelot. I’ve been familiar with the old UO style, and the EQ style, and never bothered AC (are there trade skills in AC? I never cared to stay long enough to find out). What follows is, as always, my opinion.

We’ll begin with how to do them, and I’ll stick with tailoring since its what I chose to do. I talk to the Tailoring Master and say I want to be a tailor. He says, “Great!”, and I get a skill point. I buy a tailoring kit and some supplies: wool thread, leather, cloth. Deciding ahead of time that skilling up on your own just costs money you never get back, I take the option of doing consignments.

For those who don’t know, you can make stuff in DAoC and sell it to a vender at low levels of skill for anywhere from 50% to 95% of the cost of making the item (barring failures), OR you can have the master of your skill task you to make something and deliver it for him in which case you average about 120% of the cost of making the item. Yes, that’s right EQ fans, you make a PROFIT!

So I start asking what he wants me to make, I make it, and I deliver it. I started with 13 silver pieces and today I ended with 12 silver pieces. I know what you are thinking, “Didn’t he say profit?” Yeah, I did. The last task I got asked to make was leather boned gauntlets which require bronze studs. I had to pay 3 silver for 20 bronze bars to make 20 bronze studs so that I could use 1 stud for the gauntlets (yep, you buy things in amounts of 20 from what I have seen so far). So in reality I had 15 silver before I bought the bronze bars, and I haven’t even turned in the gauntlets for my reward yet. Pretty neat, eh?

On top of that, the trade skills are a tree. Tailoring isn’t just tailoring. Tailoring is just the act of making the final product. There are sub-skills like clothworking, leatherworking, and metalworking, and I earn skill in those as well depending on the content of the item I am crafting.

There are two annoying nit picky bits with trade skills though. First, when doing consignments, you have to find the people. You start to cheer and shout out loud when you get a repeat customer because you already found them. Finding people is made easier though because you can ask any guard where to find them and they will literally point the way. Of course, nothing is fool proof and they will point directly to the person, so all I need now is the ability to walk through walls. Second, at least in EQ, you hit combine and you know immediately if you failed or succeeded. In DAoC you get a progress bar. Now you and I both know full well that the game knows before you even start to display the bar that the item was a success or not, making me wait 10 second just to tell me I have to try again is a pain in the ass, especially when you end up having to try 8 or 10 times before you succeed. But then again, not having to physically put items into my sewing kit is nice, so is not having everything automatically eaten on failures.

In the end, DAoC has a more well thought out Trade Skill system. That’s plain as day. However, all EQ would need to do in order to catch up again would be to put in Trade Skill Quests where you are given a no drop note with an order on it, make the item, then return the item and note for money. Oh, that and venders where you can store buy more materials for skilling up, hunting rare supplies is a bitch.

Browsing and Wasting Time.

Random Thoughts

I remember computer games. One of the first I ever loaded on to a computer was the first of the Zork games. We also had a few of those ASCII text games, and there were things like the Door Games on the BBSs I used to frequent, like Global War, Baron Realms Elite, Trade Wars 2002, and all the other football leagues, war games, and trivia. I didn’t see real computer graphics until The Black Cauldron (you can download it here). I got hooked on Sierra games. King’s Quest, Space Quest, Thexder, Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, and other. And of course as a brainy kid who knew too much triva, I also too to the Carmen Sandiego games. And don’t forget the hours and hours I spent playing The Bard’s Tale (sometimes at night, when its quiet, I still hear the music).

So I’m surfing around the net today, looking for things to keep me busy until my new video card (Thanks Kevin!) shows up so I can try playing Dark Age of Camelot again, and I found this.

Sweeeet.

Taking me back to my days of playing text games like Zork, Stephen King’s The Mist, and this one, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I am sad to see they removed the first step of the game though. I know it personally took me about 4 hours to figure out the proper command to end the repeating of “It is dark.” was “open eyes”. Seems they removed that and jumped right into turning on the light.

It probably better this way, the world needs less insane people.

12 September 2001

Random Thoughts

Yesterday
The World Trade Center was destroyed by terrorists. The Pentagon was also attacked. Four airplanes were hijacked to do this destruction.
Sounds like some hot new action flick starring Arnold or Sylvester or even Wesley. But it’s not. It’s real.
I told some friends yesterday that I kept blinking my eyes, like I was trying to wipe away the last remnants of a bad dream. And it was true. I spent the entire day in utter disbelief that this could be happening.
There have been other attacks on the U.S. by terrorists in the past. But each of those existed in a world of “isolated incidents”. Yesterday was a concerted, organized, deliberate effort to end lives. No kid with a truck of fertilizer parking next to a building, but hijacked airplanes diving down at the world below that no amount of security or protection could avoid, let alone stop.
Terrorism has existed for a long time. But to us in the United States, except for “isolated incidents”, it was a news story, a movie, a book, a television show. It was on the other side of the glass, over the fence, in the neighborhood down the street. It was second hand, rumor. Yesterday it became real.
For thousands of people yesterday, life came to a sudden and final halt. Minutes before they were probably looking, like most of us who exist in a corporate world, forward to the weekend, even though one had just ended. They joked. They gossipped. They smiled. They laughed. They stressed. They loved. They died.
For millions of people yesterday, life as they knew it came to a sudden and final halt. The world crashed down around their ears. Some of them ran. Some of them stayed. Some of them charged into the discord to see if perhaps they could calm the storm, or perhaps just drag one life from the jaws of death and into the world of tomorrow.
For billions of people yesterday, a dream came to a sudden and final halt. The United States has for 200 years been the beakon of freedom and hope for those both within and outside her borders. The dream of the perfect life in the land of plenty is something that people from all over the world think about. Even if they never work toward it themselves, they knew it existed and that people actually lived there in safety and peace.
There is a dream that is America. It still exists, but for most that dream now seems further away than ever. Where it used to be just out of reach, within our grasp, it is now a few paces away, easier to see than to touch. And in seeing the dream, we see that it is tarnished.
We will recover. America will be strong. Woe be to those who have for the second time in a century tempted fates and awoken the sleeping giant.
Life will go on. People will work. People will live, and love, and hate, and laugh, and cry, and die. People will fly in airplanes, although perhaps giving a second glance to all those passengers who made it through the new security checks. People will visit tall buildings to look out and the beautiful skylines of cities all over the world.
But these people are not the same people from last week. They are more like those of 1941. The people of the United States today have been touched by something that leaves no thing unchanged. Its a message. “Time is short. Life is precious. Live.”
Me? I’m off to get a job. Life goes on, there are bills to pay, and I’ve spent too much of my short precious time here on this Earth doing nothing waiting for life to take me along for the ride.
It’s well past time I put both hands on the wheel.
I’m driving from now on.