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General: Outside the Box: Internet Management
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
This week in his Outside the Box column, News Editor Garrett Fuller takes a look at the out-of-game online component of the MMORPG, Dreamlords.
We all love to play video games. We spend hours in our MMOs trying to gain levels and find items for our characters. Whether we do this to stay competitive in PvP or gear up for those large raids in PvE, the point is we are always playing. What happens on the days or times you cannot play? As game designers of MMOs, you want to keep your players interested in the game as much as possible. As players, wouldn't it be great to log in and manage certain aspects of your character or army while you were away from the game? We cannot play all the time, but MMO worlds continue on without us. How about acting as part of that world without having to play? Dreamlords set up a Web based management system for players to log into and track their armies, build resources, and work on the game without actually logging in to play.
For those who do not know, Dreamlords is a game that combines MMO and RTS elements. A player's character (Dreamlord), controls an army but also builds towns and cities. The resources needed for players to develop their army must be found and then worked on to allow the player to grow stronger in the game. This seems like a regular RTS system of growth for a player. Here is the catch, what if you could manage your troops and resources from the Internet?
Read the rest of the column here.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Let us keep this INSIDE the box, sure nice idea of Dreamlord but please let it stay at that game.
I believe many of us using internet also do this at work (like now :P) but typing doesn't require a whole lot of attention nor time, now if we as "working class gamers" would have acces to our dear hobby from well everywhere we can get acces at it wouldn't that be abit to much. Sure we can limit ourselfs from playing, but just like we might write on forums we might think "well another 5 or 10 minutes in a game could do no harm" well we all know how time can fly especialy when tided up in a game. Just a thought....
Heh... so don't allow Internet access because people lack the self-control to govern themselves? Well, it may be a valid point, but I don't think it will sway any dev teams.
Personally I think this is a great issue. But, I see things like city/guild management, and economy as bigger possibilities. Sure it can handle crafting if crafting is merely a spread-sheet thing. But, many games are moving crafting out of the spreadsheet and into the FPS world, so that might not translate well.
But, things like "What should my mine in the NW corner be producing for the next 4 hours?" Or, "What should NPC George by doing for the next 4 hours?" Or, "What price should I be trying to sell/buy Product X at in Market Y?" Personally I think the more things that a person has access to without the client, the better.
For active PvP worlds there should be an up-to-date map of who owns what resources/areas, etc. Perhaps this would not be viewable by all, but I should at least be able to see MY area if I own one. If Guild X tries to do a raid on my guilds territory during work hours it would be great to get an email about it that links me to a webpage showing exactly what part and what kinds of numbers. Then provide me a way to email my guildies... boom a few minutes later we have scheduled a time/place to get together that night to face the threat. No more logging in to "Whoooaaaa, what happened here!?!?"
I agree that it would be tempting to spend "just another 5 minutes" on the game, but it's the same at home also (for me). If you don't want that problem, don't start playing at work. That's easy for me to say because I don't have access to internet at work
Anyway, it's an interesting idea. I like that a player can have more options as to allocating tasks that eat time for your character to do when you're AFK, so you can do other things when at home. Having said that, it seems even more easy to adjust the length of time these tasks take so you don't have any tasks that require only time. I mean, we all have limited amounts of time. I'd rather use my in-game time enjoyably. If this system is their answer to that problem, then it will be interesting to see if it pans out well. It does add another dimension to gameplay. Thinking about your character's virtual life while you're not playing, what they are doing, what they could be doing. It's starting to sound a bit like those Nanopets from years ago. Babysitting. It could be over the top. It could work. I guess it depends on the implementation.
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Without turning this into an ad hominem attack, has Garrett Fuller actually played this game? Did they pay him to write a positive editorial about it?
For those of us who have played this game, Dreamlords was quite disappointing. They had an amazing idea but dropped the ball incredibly hard. There were about 30-50 "hardcore" players of the game in the first month of play. Many if not most of those people let their subscriptions lapse. PvP - a mandatory part of the game required to advance - died a hideous death when it became obvious that it was strategically more worthwhile to refuse to fight most of the time. There were about five to 15 of the "hardcore" players (the Warlords) who tried to fight as much as possible to maintain Convergence ranking, but basically had their scores tanked by constant match refusals.
Changes to the game system post release smacked of Star Wars Galaxies desperation. In addition, slow web interface loading turned what should have been five minutes online managing one's Patria into an hour or two; most of that time spent waiting for pages to load. Issues with random placement into Convergences killed off another large potion of the playerbase.
I liked the game. I liked the idea of Civ married to Art of Magic (the RTS client looks and feels like nearly the same engine used in this older game). But the developers failed to play test and stress test some of the most crucial features of the game. This led to a disappointing release and a sense of purposelessness in the minimal playerbase.
The idea was sound, the delivery was flawed.