How to build a game on crafting.

Realistically, there are only two ways to do crafting. The rest is mostly extra details and customization, but two options are mutually exclusive and greatly change how things work. They are also very easy to understand, but very hard to properly put in. Decay, or no decay.

If you go with a non-decay route, then your crafting system won't really have a major impact on the game. Typically, I-lvl type progression games take this route so the 'crafting' system that the game really uses is drops. However, if you do a sandbox route, 'drops' really don't make sense. Why would a vulture have a two-handed sword?

I plan to go with Decay, and it's not just to carry through with 'realism'. With decay, you can create enough of a player market that it becomes the economy itself. With players at all ends of the creation process, You create an entire class of players that can succeed in what they want to do in a non-combat related way. You do, however, need to put some kind of barrier in the process to allow some kind of 'progress'. In EVE, this barrier is blueprint research. That process involves researching a blueprint and allowing the possibility of discovery of a new level of tech (i.e. level of the item, or a stronger version). That, however, doesn't fit a post apocalyptic society, at least in that form.

Well, blueprints will sort of be part of the equation. Let's take a sword for example. It will have a Blade, Hilt, and Pommel. Each would have a size allowance. As in, a minimum and a maximum. You could chose anything in those ranged. Then, you would choose curved, straight, wave, or notched for the blade. Server side, each of these would do specific things to the weapon, from major (making a weapon take two hands) to minor (increased damage on angled plate).

However, the root of the system is actually much more important than this. Here, we have my jewel of a system created from bits and pieces of many games all into one amalgamation of awesome...at least awesome in my opinion.

Everything in the world will have 'unit's. A tree would have X 'units' of wood. When you choose to harvest an item, you choose a unit size of X by Y by Z. Then, each unit will have properties viewable and not-viewable. These properties will be given a value by some form of in-game scanner. Of course, have to keep it realistic, but making it technology related keeps some of the sci-fi theme. So, let's say you pull a 2 x 2 x 10 unit of tree. If you scanned, you'd get:

• Hardness: 5, Flexibility: 7, Flammable: 10, Aging: 3, Bouyancy: 8

Now, when you go to make a sword, it requires an item at least 2 x 1 x 8 for the blade type you chose. Items must at least have a hardness of 3, a flexability less than 10, and an aging less than 8. Since this wood you took is within range, you can use it. The item will keep the other factors as well. So yes, you could make a wooden sword, but it might not be your best choice. So, why go with this system? Well, everything feasible in the game will have stats like this. this allows Minecraft level gathering with EVE level crafting. Just fit your items in the limits and you can make it. Of course, gathering becomes a bit interesting. Metal, cloth, rock, meat, most anything becomes a barter good. This will lead into my post Monday on Currency.

However, what if all the rock in your area is of junk hardness, and you want to build your fort out of very hard materials? Well, here is where the Caravans come in. Caravans at their end-points become markets where you can buy and sell materials...kind of. When you arrive at a carravan end-point, you have a buy and sell option. For Buy, you can either search for specific stats, items between a range of stats, or place a buy-order for an item with specific stats. Then, that caravan will spread the word to other caravans, and if there is a sell order with that item then will give you a time frame when it arrives.

When you put in the buy order, it takes your money at that time to keep things from getting out of hand. Note, the item you will get will be the first item it comes across, so you'd need to be specific since it will be chosen by whichever caravan they run into first. Selling is also just as simple, with you giving your items in a sell-order to the caravan and they take it with them selling it to the first order that comes up that is above your minimum allowed, or you can scan buy orders they have and sell yours instantly. You could also add in the option that if the cost of an item, or the offer by the buyer was too low or high, you would be allowed to approve it instead of just passing over a possible good market transaction. Also, the caravan would likely take a cut, but it would be a small amount.

These caravans, however, become an entirely different PvE element when they are traveling between towns, and that will be on the list Monday as well.

Why is Damage a number?

That question has plagued me for a long time now. With all of our advancements, we still use HP. Well, HP definately needs to go. Especially if you are going for realistic, a simplicity such as HP is a rather large barrier to deal with. So, how can you have 'damage' in a game and not have HP?

Well, here is where real life can step in. Damage becomes percentile and server side. Damage also becomes localized. So, if you attack say the left leg, and keep attacking the left leg, as long as you are able to hit your target then your attacks will slowly (or maybe instantly, depending) render that limb immobile, or worse, cause so much trauma that they may die. Injuries should be visible. If you smash an enemy with a mace hard enough, you should see the cuts from the flanges, yes, but you should also see the bruising from internal bleeding.

That last part most likely just drove any graphic designer out there insane, however here is the other issue with the current MMO market. Just because you have a great idea for a system and that technology is not close enough to make that system perfect doesn't mean you scrap it. While it would be great if all of the player models and creature models perfectly showed damage and whatnot, you could get the same success with a small HUD of sorts to quickly relay this information as well. You could even make this a skill of sorts, making it so more skill would increase detection, and skill way above and beyond your current target could even point out weak spots.

Of course, this eludes to 'skills' being part of the game, and that will be covered in a later post. Skills aside, this creates incentive for players to be selective on how they attack creatures. Something like a lizard, attacking it's chest would be incredibly hard, but it's back easy. The lizard could have strong back scales though, and it's chest scales very weak making it a risk vs. reward scenario. Luck out, or go for the consistent kill? This would make things even more lucrative for the 'skilled' FPS players. Imagine the prowess of a seasoned FPS-Sniper veteran, able to do amazing things with a bow/crossbow/gun? The skill of landing a perfect left-eye shot would be hard to do. Especially if creatures aren't just standing like logs.

However, this also makes you look at equipment with a hard, long look. In a game with exacting standards on 1v1 combat, you can create a very complex, yet easy crafting system. Remember, keeping things realistic requires you to really try to stay away from numbers in places that they shouldn't exist. Weights should be numbers, but not 'how sharp?'. Those numbers should be explanations. So, do you go for the barely-sharp edge or the well-honed edge? Very quickly, you can expect one to cost more. This would make low level combat take about as long as very high combat, and keep a natural progression of weapons. On top of that, with weapons becoming more about preference than anything, looks begin to play a role in crafting too.

Tomorrow I'll start drilling down that crafting system, as I personally believe it to truly be the base of an MMO.

Content Post: Player and Org Housing

So, you’re on a post-apocalyptic world, barren of life, and living in a colony that is barely scraping by on available resources. It’s quickly evident that one bad drought or catastrophe would be the end of your life as you know it. So, in a story like this…who’s the bad guy? Do you need one?

Here is the defining difference in MMO’s today. Most, if not all, feel they must have a major villain. Even EVE tried this at one point with Sleepers. However, EVE had completely missed the boat. They already had a massive villain in game. Sovereignty I feel is definitely the way to go when you think of PVP. But what do you do with PVP? How can you take the sovereignty system and turn it into a PvE system?

Well, let’s focus on the facts. Sovereignty works by ‘owning’ an area. You do this via several steps, such as deploying X amount of things. There is a far easier way to see this though, without months of work and research. There is an RTS out there that used the sovereignty idea, and it’s called Rise of Nations. As you built towns, your area of ‘national sovereignty’ extended. As you researched more levels of the ‘Civic’ technology, your reach expanded more. Forts and strongholds expanded this. The goal in expanding your area of control was to reduce the enemies. For anyone scratching their heads trying to figure out how this could work in a PvE pure setting, you’re forgetting the other half of the RTS market.
You can play vs. Computer AI.

So, by making each ‘colony’ its own sovereignty, each building made will expand its region. Yes, I said building. A vastly under-estimated idea in MMO’s is player property. There should be enough restrictions in place however to make sure it doesn’t look like an old UO shard, but relaxed enough to not feel like it’s not worth it. Such as one residential building per account, and one fort per org/guild/whatever, I feel that’s a close proximity to fill things. Now, with the stipulation you can only build on Sovereign Ground, and the fear of loss will keep people from building too far from a fort. Yes, that’s right, there will be environmental variable that will make it useful to build near a fort, rather than off on your own in the middle of nowhere.

For those Asocial, you will be able to build away from a fort, but you do so with the knowledge that there will indeed be many issues with this you will need to deal with. Just because the planet is barren does not mean it’s devoid of life. On the contrary, it’s teeming with life just below the surface. Sometimes, this underworld life comes to the over world, and depending on what it is it could be quite hard for a solo household to fend this off. The only plus side is solo-households would be low-value targets for anything major.

If you notice, though, content right there was made. Not only content, ‘hardcore’ content. Living near a Fort gives you access to higher ‘level’ attacks because a fort is a much higher value target. The more houses around a fort, the stronger the fort, the higher value the target is. This creates very strong enemies to deal with, depending on the amount of concurrent people at the fort. Now, the fort itself can be ‘toppled’, but not destroyed. Toppling a fort would simply remove it from sovereignty, shrinking buildable area around the fort until it’s repaired by the owning party.

See what just happened there? Bam, crafting system that has real world impact. Building creation, repair, and upgrade will be a large part of the system. Also, by taking an EVE ship-fit approach to buildings, you can make it so all building upgrades are viable on all levels, making the market for them always moving. Guards also become a commodity. Initially, Guards will be ‘created’ by these households. The more grouped households, the greater the guards created. However, these guards go to the main colony, not the fort. In turn, these guards ‘mature’ and become novice guards. If left, they continue to get better, though costing more in the long run. A cap would be put in though to make sure a single guard would not become so powerful that it would be too costly to ever buy.

So, just by adding a small feature like player and org housing, you’ve added Over world-raid content (raid is meant in the MMO style of raid, many players against strong mobs), opportunity to add in specialty items from said content, crafting needs for building, and a self-fulfilling protection ability based on pop size in areas and making sure that the guard amount only becomes an issue if orgs don’t buy it, and it makes sure that it’s based on players on to tailor fights to be challenging, yet not overwhelming or destroying things when people are offline. Oh, and of course, this won’t be the only content, this would be a small piece, but a very important piece.

Story So Far:
In a post-apocalyptic universe, the barren world your colony is on is slowly building up, desperately trying to expand its resources by providing incentive to build outside the colony walls. Markets are slowly springing up, along with well-fortified buildings to protect from the denizens below at night. You have the choice to forge ahead on your own, carving out a small wilderness living or staying near one of these large forts for safety and the chance at personal wealth in fending off the hordes of under beings.