Community, is it size based?

So, let's talk about community size for a second. No, not total game size, community size. Previously, it was decided that each colony area would be the "server" of each place. But, how large?

Well, there are a lot of factors here that are often overlooked. First, real size. How far can you actually see?

A good for here would be to use a school. I feel a good in game colony sizes would be about the size of a standard university. From the top of the highest building, you could see the whole place, and perhaps a bit farther party the walls for safety reasons. Remember, the player will be on a hostile barren planet after all.

Larger than this, the colony and alone feeling would be diminished. This also brings about another aspect of the community, NPC's. Some games have as few as possible. Others, there are non-essential NPC's running around everywhere. Here is where I like to draw upon my DM Roots. In Dungeon and Dragons, when the DM sets up a scene, that's what it is. NPC's are actually a shapeless blob until someone talks to them, and after talking they return back to that shapeless blob. But, how would you carry this over to a Visual game?

The answer is actually simple. Remove NPC's from being important. They should remain a shapeless blob, moldable clay only made manifest when the ENVIRONMENT needs it. If you force the player to constantly interract with NPC's over and over, I feel this is what kills individuality. Yes, you completel this quest, but so does the next guy. And the next guy. And even the next guy. You don't feel important, unique, or special. In fact, next time do do that 'quest' you pretty much don't even read it. One of the largest failings that this system of massive amounts of quests does is what is happening in WoW now, people just skip the text and follow the objectives.

Let's face it, the quest system has been in existence since RPG's were around, and I think we've honestly grown past that. They deserve to stay in Single Players. 'Quests' are how you turn progress-lists into leveling tools, it just isn't necessary in this day and age. I'm all for the questlog being replaced by something more like an adventure journal. This would be the first major feature, and major features are usually make or break. Remember, this feature will remove the need for constant NPC visiting. However, this is more a mechanic issue, so it will be addressed later. That said, the world will need not as many PC's as an Everquest or WoW, making it easier to keep that colony feel.

Back to the shapeless blob. Think of when you are at the mall. Do you see each person, or just a sea of faces? Now, here is where it gets interesting. When the player moves around, how will they be moving? Will they be traveling like anyone else, or will they take shortcuts? That's probably a dumb question of sorts. However, being post-apocalyptic of sorts, we won't have tons of cars or vehicles, and while solar is still possible, thats something we'll cross later. Animals however are a possibility, so it may look more like a circular wild-west town from an old western.

Why that style? Well, anyone that would be a traveler or stranger would probably take the 'walking across the middle/street' style of travel and the townsfolk would just take normal routine paths along the edges. With this, you can keep random NPC's walking around, but most likely people won't even really 'see' them, kind of like guards in most games.

Tomorrow, we'll tackle the dead horse. Environment in real mmo's, which is combat heavy.

Sandbox or Themepark? That's a bad question to start with...

Essentialy, the idea behind a sandbox MMO is to be as nonlinear as possible. However, a theme-park MMO is one where you are essentially led around on a string as far as what to go to. But, let’s be honest here. It’s not that. Here’s what we are really debating.

Stated End-game or Open End-game:
That’s what we are really talking about. Or, an easier way to put it, developer stated end-game or user stated end-game. When you finally look at it in this light, you see that you can actually combine them. A common term for an MMO that achieves this balance is a ‘sandpark’ mmo. EVE could be considered this of sorts, as there are factors that give players enough influence that allows them to create their own end-game through wars and economy. In a game like WoW, in stark contrast, you hit 85 and are directed by item levels which way to go. It’s kind of the gaming worlds nature vs nurture. However, I think that these days, it’s time to build a better mouse-trap

The Cheese:
First, you have to have a good hook. I think this hook is where you become a specific type of MMO, and commonly what happens in blogs and possibly just normal chatting is people think of the type of game they want to play first, and it just doesn’t work that way. You need a good launching point for your story. From here, you can go a few ways, the most common being something realistic and believable, or something completely fantasy based yet following a story. Science Fiction usually follows the believable, with Fantasy choosing to follow ‘lore’. That’s what I’ll be focusing on tomorrow, Logic or Lore, since that single choice nudges you toward a specific genre. This is typically where most games start. The ‘What’. Or if you prefer the cheese.

The Project:
What, you thought I was just pontificating about MMO’s? Heck no, I’m out to make one. Logic and Lore aside, it comes down to open ended story or a fixed story. Now, I’m not really a fan of fixed story, so open ended definitely seems the way to go. This is going to probably end up being more sandbox less theme park, but here’s where you have to stop and back up three steps. You have to make some hard choices that you might have already made and not even thought about, but will color the entirety of your project. Are you going to let the type of MMO dictate further choices? If I choose sandbox now and try to push myself in that mold, I’ll run into issues later if I need to add in theme park pieces. Alternatively, if I paint myself into a corner with theme park pieces, but suddenly need a feature with randomness and lack of repetition, will I already be too far into a theme park design to even back up? So, before painting ourselves into a hole, let’s go back those three steps to what real game makers think of first.

Audience:
See? I said three steps back. Before design, before genre, you need to pick a person. Rather, a personality. This also comes down to how large do you ‘want’ your game to be? WoW size? EVE Size? Rift Size? Angry Birds size? Here’s another common pitfall to those in the blog world. They tend to think of what they specifically want out of a game and rate it from that, however, they usually fail to see what they like and merge that with their original ideas. Now, we know mechanics that work. Leveling, Items, and Abilities. These have been around since DND, and they still exist because they truly are the most identifiable signs of ‘progress’ in any game. Stretch one of them out too much though, and you have the dreaded ‘grind’. So, how much is too much? How many levels before you dread having to get the next 5, 10, or 20? Of course, that’s hard to say till you drill down your audience. Now, instead of going after say the ‘WoW’, ‘Rift’, or ‘EVE’ audience, let’s do it the old fashioned way. Let’s go after the Sci-Fi RPG player.

As far as Sci-Fi genre goes, there really has been a void of good MMO’s in this area. Fantasy ones seem to outweigh the Sci-Fi ones in this field, but I don’t believe it’s because there aren’t many Sci-Fi lovers out there. Recently, you do have SWTOR pulling ‘some’ Sci-Fi fans, but here is where theme park takes an ugly turn. If you don’t like the lore, you’re left out. Especially with so much emphasis on the ‘polish’ of the game, or immersion.

So, how do you fight this? Well, my tactic is simple. I’m going for 0 immersion. Anything that happens above that is a bonus. By not forcing myself into trying to force the player into the world, it lets me focus on the mechanics that need focused on. If the world is rich in the right ways, and you make the interface non-intrusive, immersion takes care of itself. Here is where, many times, MMO’s fail. They try to hard making you feel like the hero, only to remind you in 4 seconds that the server is full of heroes.

The Ruling:
To start, I am working on a sci-fi based MMO that will focus on the player’s plight with things happening TO them, not them trying to save the world like a lone ranger.