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Politics and intrigue
Lord.Bachus
Member RarePosts: 9,686
When will an mmorpg succeed to finallygive us an endgame base on politics and intrigue? The more i look at game of thrones, midkemia and other fantasy epos, he more i realise this is what is missing.... A way to infuence the world trough roleplaying..
but how to put this intoo a simple mmo?
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Comments
You can't. Game of throne is written by professional writers basing on a novel (i love that show).
I highly doubt other players would come up with plot & stories anywhere close to that in GoT. Politics and intrigue in a game .. i doubt it will go anywhere beyond loot drama.
You mean like EVE? Where Alliances are fickle and trust is a hard sought commodity?
Yup, for politics and intrigue the gameplay needs to matter to the game world, getting the best stuff in an instance negates all the need for politics. You need open world PvP and resource/territory control along with open faction/guild alliances allowed to change over time
In the sense that when it matters to the game, it matters to the members of a guild, who hold the leadership of the guild responsible for their decisions.
However some people aren't interested in the why, they just shoot the people the leadership tell them to.
Three big problems.
How do you ensure others cannot spoil your fun? I would much rather play a politic intrigue SP game where a professional writer develop the story than relying on a bunch of other people on the internet.
Game of Throne won't be great if you let 100 random people on the internet decide where the story should go.
I was also thinking how would you prevent big guilds/alliances from influencing Politics in a game.
For example I'm thinking of a big Alliance like the Goons where they have thousands of players and could wield considerable influence on any election, and not just Goons, how can one avoid the creation of Elites in Politics like we currently see in the real world? -- Where no matter how you vote or what your politician that you picked actually goes through and stands by the platform that he ran on.
As much as people in real life say that we all should hold politicians accountable, that rarely happens, so I wonder how that would work in a game.
Politics in a game like EvE are not necessarily fast moving, politics and intrigue will bring the Goons down as surely as they brought down all their predecessors.
In the meantime it is right that they should have the influence in the games politics, they have created the largest alliance and are winning the political metagame. If the politics is to mean anything there needs to be risers and fallers continually.
When the Goonswarm alliance breaks there will be plenty of other alliances manoeuvring to pick up the choice pieces and to put the boot into the others.
That's one way to look at it. However, another view of it is that Goonswarm is not really winning anything meaningful. They are gettign a lot of publicity but many players simply choose to ignore them in the longrun. Ultimately most big corps are not brought down by politics or intrigue but boredom. A few key leaders get bored and either quit the game or start making stupid decisions in order to 'spice things up'.
I was once a member of a large guild where factions started forming up and disputes started erupting among the leadership. Just as the politics were heating up, a few of the key member got bored of the guild drama and simply took a break from the game. Before the 'winning' faction could start celebrating, a new expansion came up and everyone else quickly forgot about the dispute and went back to playing the game.
Unless you give guilds/corpe/factions real power over the game world, most players will quickly get bored of politics and go back to playing the game. It is like having a game of Survivor where there is no big prize at the end and people that were elimintated can rejoin at any point they want. At some point even the most dedicated competitor will get bored and stop playing.
The Goons are winning something meaningful, their alliance allows them to control swathes of 0.0 and the resources they get from that.
What game were you playing when the guild drama happened and what made the politics meaningful, what was there to gain?
I think that before deciding to make something the endgame, one should first have a working minigame based on the idea..
Eve does have this at 'endgame', and actually throughout since there is no leveling or leveling cap. Other PvP-centric games have had it as well; Shadowbane implemented resources and mines along with their city building and seiges system, and guild politics played a huge role in endgame. Alliances and enemys constantly shifting and changing, espionage, etc.
There are a few upcoming titles that might hit this as well; ArcheAge (though it sounds like seiges will have a player cap), The Repopulation, Pathfinder Online, etc.
I think you will see these types of mechanics come back as people bore with the current raid endgame or instanced PvP endgame. Although full loot no safe zone PvP is not appealing to the masses, the structure Eve has is looking to show up in many non-spaceship MMO's in the works.
Often lurking, rarely posting
It's only meaningfull if you care about 0.0. To the players who do not care about 0.0, the influence of Goonswarm is only tangental. ie it is only meaningful to the people who think it is meaningful.
The guild drama happened during the later stages of Vanilla WoW. The dispute was over changes to our raid DKP policy. The more dedicated progression raiders wanted implement a new system that rewarded agressive progression raiding. The more casual raiders prefered the old system which was designed for slower paced raiding. The progression faction consisted mostly of newer players who joined the guild primarily to raid. The casual faction consisted of many of the Old Guard, members who have been with the guild for years and joined the guild when it was an Earth & Beyond guild or when it moved to SWG.
In retrospective it was an extremely silly dispute but we were too obsessed with the raiding system that we built up that we were oblivious to how meaningless it was. Two months later the expansion hit and the issue became moot forever. It became clear that we allowed ourself to be trapped in a system created to compensate for the flawed design of vanilla WoW raiding.
What one group of players will see as meaningful politics and intrigue, another group will see as silly guild drama.
Didn't Tera try?
It just ends in big alliances circulating control/voting each other into power.
It's a neat feature, but inevitably ends up being derpy I think.
I think it's a cool idea, and I'd love to see that. But I must admit I am not sure how.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
It's only politics if it affects the game world, if not its just guild drama.
re: 0:0 politics, it is meaningful as it affects the supply and demand of the materials that drive the game. In the same way that the average joe pays no attention to politics, he is still affected by it even if he doesn't care what is happening.
Lineage 2 does this better then any game ever made but most people will never find out because you have to actually put in some time to get to that part of the game.
Yes, politics is about influencing people, you can't just jump into a game world that supports meaningful politics not knowing the people there and immediately be a player.
Encouraging player politics is surprisingly easy. Look at World of Tanks: Add a clanwars map and give rewards to those who have managed to claim and hold area. Instant politics. Drama too, sadly.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Actually, the supply & demand is really controlled by CCP. They control the drop rate of items and therefore control the inflation. There is an argument that minerals and gases can fluctuate wildly, but on the whole the prices are fairly stable (other than Hulkageddon) as is the prices of plex which will eventually be managed by a CCP bank of sorts. Null sec only matters to those in null sec, in truth the large alliances influence over the wider economy in eve is minimal as most resource gathering and mining is outsourced to smaller corps or is happening in high sec or WH. In fact, I would go as far to say that large alliances such as the goons, power is based more on notoriaty than any real political or financial power. Far from being the alliance that destabilizes the game, they have been actually a stabilizing influence in the game.
But the question is .. is it fun?
I have to deal with politics at work ... it is not necessary fun for me in a game, particularly if there is drama.
Is that a serious comment?
Well, like any player politics its just childish squabbling. I was only a field commander, I lead the battles, and left the politics to someone else. I guess some people might enjoy it, but I've always thought its nothing more than what I just said.
Luckily most players don't have to worry about such. Only your clan leadership has to deal with it. If you find yourself in a clan that is - it is completely voluntary.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
You say its always fun then? Always good? Drama too?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
RefMinor's point: People like to get serious about games, as opposed to real world dramas that are ennervating/inefficient (some thrive on it, true). And at the end of the day you flick an off switch on a game as opposed to quiting your job.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem