Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
A Civilization MMO
mCalvert
Member CommonPosts: 1,283
What I would really like to see is a MMO with civilization advancement at its core. What i mean by this is you create an MMO which starts with everyone as cavemen. You can work on your bone and wood weapon crafting, hunting skills, explore a small world, beat up other caveman.
3- 6 months later, the devs introduce a technology, stone in this case. Now you can harvest rocks, make stone weapons, hunt bigger animals, make arrows, use them to kill other stone age players. No housing yet. 6 months later comes bronze tech, wooden housing. The world gets bigger. You can make boats and set out to explore. You can make wooden and stone houses and farms, herd animals, kill other players with swords and from horseback.
6 months later comes iron age, and so on. Slowly in the game you see the world change, new strategies based on these techs, new skills, new parts of the world to explore, new mobs to kill, new weapons to kill them with. The visual scenery changes as houses upgrade their tech, herds appear, farms appear.
Eventually you get castles and cannons, wind ships turn to steam, trains appear, rifles appear, etc etc. Maybe this takes a few years. You move on to modern warfare, then may on to space based, lasers and energy propulsion. Keep in mind not everyone advances, Some peopel who cant afford upgrades stay in wooden houses, others upgrade to stone. Some fight with primative weapons while big clans modernize. Basically each expansion brings a new age. The old technologies are there, but a new tech is available (which must be researched) and then exploited. Maybe you dont have money, but only trade items, and then later currency is introduced.
Get the pic?
Comments
I know what you are talking about. I made up a similar concept once, just to get to the conclusion:
It is not possible. You would have to develop so many (visual) assets for each era and there is no chance to make the game balanced as eras are just too short. Everytime a new weapon is introduced, the chance is high that it would kill balance.
Mind that 6 months between every step is way too long. Do you want to be in stoneage for 6 months, thus paying like 90$ of subscription just to receive some new tech?
I know what a dev would say!
"Too much content to be made with most of it being wasted when you advance!"
Plus what you say...
Though you could introduce a system that allow's you to "go back in time" and play an older era. Every era could be an own instance...
Or you could allow veteran players (i.e. guild masters) to submit advancements (within the boundaries of the era - no jetfighters in stone age) to the devs, have monopoly over them if approved.
And I very much like the idea of barter until a monetary system is in place.. if at all..
Better to be crazy, provided you know what sane is...
My post was obvisouly just an idea, nothing concrete. Regarding balance, thats the whole point of tech. Whoever gets it first and exploits it wins. Thats real. I agree the development process would be complex. And 6 months was just a random time frame. Maybe you switch it once people get bored. If they like playing cavemen, let me. WHen they get bored open up the option to research new tech. Games dont have to last forever either. Once you get to space age, a meteor blast earth into pieces. The human race dies. Game over.
Your post touches on a concept for an MMO that I'm fleshing out (and will be for awhile). It includes faction based technological advancement.
Technology:
An example would be Metal Smelting. Once "unlocked" by a faction, all members of that faction would have the ability to learn Smelting. New characters could choose the skill at creation, or existing characters from other faction members with the knowledge. If your character has this ability he can then combine whichever metals you want, in whatever amounts you wish and see what comes of it.
Acquiring Technology:
A faction obtains technologies by either research, discovering lost/ancient civilization techs, or stealing them from other factions.
Research - Some sort of faction points are generated and then allocated by the faction leader(s) (player elected characters) towards research and its different fields.
Ancient Tech - A discovery of old documents in the game world which must be analyzed by the faction/players. Not a static/reusable object discoverable by all; or if it is, make it so it can be destroyed (Finders keepers!).
Stealing - Maybe faction A members run over to faction B's territory and kidnap one of their members (npc or player) and interrogate them for knowledge. Or they break into faction B's building that holds their accumulated knowledge.
Technologies can also be lost to a faction, say if all members in the faction holding the info die off before it can be recorded in some way. This would mean a faction's knowledge would be the culmination of all it's members' knowledge. Would also mean that for the research thing to work, an initial "discoverer" of a tech would have to be chosen and given the new tech.
Generation of research: Thinking on it...
Some other concept notes I'm working with to put the ideas above in perspective:
Factions are not set. There should be some seeder/base factions to kick the game off. They can also be created by players.
Characters age and die. Life expectancy is measured in playing time for that character, and affected by other factors (medical/sanitary capabilities of faction maybe? etc..). Players can create a totally new character, or as the child of their previous character, which inherits some of its parent(s)' abilities.
Conducting Research for a future MMO project.