World building. Where can I find it?

Denikin

What games at the moment incorporate any element of character-driven world building?



What I mean by "world building" is a sort of crafting system whereby every item, and object is player crafted, with resources that can be harvested realistically by the players.



Basically, like, where you can cut down any tree to get lumber, and the trees stay cut down for a while.



Also where you get to shape the look of the world by bulding things, like houses, towns walls, etc... And where you can plant crops, or seed forests, and so on.



There are some games where you can do this to a degree. Wurm Online, and Roma Victor are the main examples, but neither of those games are anywhere close to finished, even they call themselves commercial releases. Wich is too bad because if they were actually playable, I'd be willing to pay a considerable monthly fee to play  the kind of game that I really want to play.



And then there's Eve, wich does in many ways exactly what I'm asking for, but wich I've never been able to get into for some reason. (So far, I've had about 5 months's worth of an account on Eve over the past year, but I found that I had to force myself to play the game. I just didn't enjoy the game play.



Then there's Shadowbane, wich I really wish I'd known about 5 or 6  years ago when it wasn't so dated. Still, if nothing else exists out there that does what I want, I may give it another try.



So, are there any other games that are sort of similar in concept?  Either commercial, or free, small buisness, big buisness, whatever. I'll check out any suggestions.

Zech4

Starwars Galaxies did this and u could build ur own town for people to fly too and it actually showed up on the map it was AWESOME and SWG was the best MMORPG of all time till SOE screwed it up with CU and NGE !

Denikin

Yeah, that's what I heard.



Can you not do that stuff anymore?



And... is there any other game where you still can?



You know, if anyone knows of any, I'd even try a text-based "MUD". I know they used to have some like that out there, but that was a long time ago, and I don't remember anything about it.

Eichenkatze

SWG still has player housing and player cities, yes. They didn't get rid of that at least. However, starting your own town? Good luck. Most servers are so densly packed with ghost towns that the planet system won't let you create another city.



I know Horizons is pretty much all player-built. However i haven't played since around its early release, so i have no clue what the system's condition is now... plus i hear its gone down the drain some.



A game where you can build farms and corporations of the like.. is Rise - The Vieneo Province.

mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setView/overview/gameID/254

I tried the game. Couldn't stay with it. Low poly, crap graphics.. but its also an Indie MMO pretty much. VERY small community... i would say about 5-7 are on at a given time. the rest are bots. The controls are awkward unless you have a joystick.

but the system is interesting... but with a STEEP learning curve to it.

PunkMonk

There's a Massive Offline Single Player Game that I've been keeping my eye on. Spore. The game is crazy awesome. You start off as a germ and evolve into controlling the galaxy.

 

Now, for what you want. You described as what you do messes with the geography of the game. You can build your cities or colonies wherever you want. Under water, on your home planet, on other planets, hell, on the other side of the galaxy. Also, you names your thread "World building" and well. You make everything. The game IS the deffinition of sandbox, essentially. You make the buildings, vehicles, species, shape the planet with your UFO (that you make.) Whatever.

 

You don't have to watch the whole video, but trust me, you'll get hooked and end up watching all 36 minutes.

Denikin

I tried Horisons, it's crafting system is still too abstract for me.



If you want to chop lumber, you can't just find a tree and go at it, you need to find the area where there are a bunch of harverstable trees.



It's the same crafting system as WOW, or everquest 2 just a little more depth to it because there are more resources.



As for Rise, I'm keeping my eyes on it. It's still not finished yet. And of not-finished games, Wurm is the one that I like the most. it litteraly has all of the features that I'm looking for in a crafting-world building system.



Unfortunately, Wurm ismost likely never going to be finished. Heh, they don't even have animations yet, and it's been a long time since the "commercial release" As I said, it's too bad because I'd love to see a game like Wurm wich is actually playable.



I'm looking forward to Spore too. I have a funny feeling that it's going to be overly simplistic though, and that, other then the "creature" phase, the rest is going to be just a set of "mini-games".  I think that that's why it's taken them so long to release it actually, they probably realise that too and are working at adding content, but all I see is more mini-games. Still, I'm defenitely going to pick it up when it comes out. It's a step in the right direction, and Maxis hasn't put out something I haven't enjoyed on some level, so who knows, if anyone can pull it off, it's them.

paulscott

a tale in the desert, and wurmonline.

noname12345

Originally posted by Eichenkatze

SWG still has player housing and player cities, yes. They didn't get rid of that at least. However, starting your own town? Good luck. Most servers are so densly packed with ghost towns that the planet system won't let you create another city.



I know Horizons is pretty much all player-built. However i haven't played since around its early release, so i have no clue what the system's condition is now... plus i hear its gone down the drain some.



A game where you can build farms and corporations of the like.. is Rise - The Vieneo Province.

mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setView/overview/gameID/254

I tried the game. Couldn't stay with it. Low poly, crap graphics.. but its also an Indie MMO pretty much. VERY small community... i would say about 5-7 are on at a given time. the rest are bots. The controls are awkward unless you have a joystick.

but the system is interesting... but with a STEEP learning curve to it.

Lol I played (actually more like figuring out the controls) Rise for about 10 minutes before I uninstalled it....I have no joystick though.

nomadian

A tale in the desert kinda.
Website

daarco

AoC And Darkfall will both have empire building.

Darkfall=Hardcore   AoC=Carebear  (dont get angry with me, i just say what it is...)

So you can choose how you want to build your empire.

 

 

 

Ohh, SWG is removing all old buildings. if there is no subscription the building will be gone. So all old ghost towns will soon be a memory only

Suitepee

Doesn't Ryzom have world building?

Well try Wurm Online or possibly Second Life (no resources for building,other than your imagination).

Denikin

Ryzom is actually a pretty good game, but there's no real world building, it's just some predefined forts wich players can fight over.



As for crafting, ryzom's system is great, in terms of the crafting itself. Lots of freedom in terms of what kind of items to craft. What I don't like is that all the items look the same. You might be able to make 20 different kinds of light armour boots, made of 20 different kinds of materials, and they all have different stats, but in the end, the only difference between them in terms of look is in the colour. Gets boring after a while. I tried Ryzom almost a year ago though, so maybe they added different graphics by now. You'd think they would have, it's a major issue that a few people I played with complained about.



But the gathering in Rysom sucks. I mean, instead of trees, and mines, and like, strategic resources to fight over, there are just these radomly generated bubbling spots on the ground, wich are invisible unless you have a surveying skill, and wich you "gather" by standing over them and using your gather skill... it's not too inspiring. What ever happened to cutting trees down and digging in the earth for metals? Why not look for clay along streambanks where everyone can see it's there? Why not get lye for soap and candles and such from ashes? Why not gather leaves and straw for stuffing?



Plus, the body parts from animals you kill start to get kind of abstract after a while. Although, I'm not complaining about that, the variety of parts you could get from animals was cool, I liked that.



As for Tale in the desert, I hear that's more of a puzzle game then a real world building game. I've never tried it, but I'll give it a shot.



And Wurm, yeah, I mentioned it many times. I love Wurm as a concept, it's exactly what I'm looking for. But I can't play a game that doesn't have sound or animations, and has been primising animations for the past half a year. I mean, I think of it as "in development" but nothing ever seems to develop, ever.  Every once in a while I hear that Wurm has animations and I go check it out... and every time, I'm dissapointed to discover it's just someone starting roumours. I've given up on it. It's a joke. The only purpose of Wurm is to showcase what a good crafting system might look like if it were implemented in a real game.



It's worth checking out for that reason, and that reason only, but then my question is, where else can I find that kind of system, but in a game that's actually playable?