Cognisant
cackling in the trenches
- Local time
- Yesterday 12:12 PM
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2009
- Messages
- 11,393
Imagine a game that rewards it's players for creating content.
It's a mix between the crafting of Minecraft and questing of most any MMO, my point's more about the implementation of these mechanics than the mechanics themselves, y'see if a player needs to make something then they need the materials to make it, obviously, and the the more difficult they are to obtain the more valuable said object will seem to be, given how difficult it is to acquire, obviously. But what's interesting is that this one player's desire effectively creates a quest for other players, in effect one player is creating content in the game for the other players... and you're all looking at me like I'm an idiot because that is also obvious.
But what's not obvious is the potential benefits of fucking with this, figuratively.
Unless you can somehow turn this into a sex game, then kudos to you.
It's common practice for items and so forth in MMOs to be sold and bought for real world money given that, as an investment of time they have a real world value, but what if we turned this around so that people who invest a lot if time in the game can make real world money? Yes I know there's people in India already farming money.
I'm not talking about farming, no I'm more inspired by Proxy's story about the EVE universe where he participated in a mass-participation, highly organised blockade of a trade-hub-thing which resulted in real world fiscal gain by the perpetrators. That's people abusing the system, but what if the system was designed in such a way that encouraged this form of self organisation by players, the organisers of which potentially earning enough money to fiscally justify spending long hours in the game world.
It all comes down to taxation, which could be some bullshit magic tower that whoever controls automatically gets people's money at set periods, or perhaps taxation is just for landowners and the towers are like magic artillery cannons, so you pay taxes to whoever controls the tower or they blow the fuck up whatever you've built.
Understandably this means whatever is built has to be a lot stronger than Minecraft blocks, which gets back to the whole crafting thing, if you want to chop a new entrance into somebody's house you'll need an axe (weapons will do but take longer) and setting fire to the building will burn the whole thing down, it won't get you inside. A cobblestone building will require a pickaxe or some kind of sledgehammer, which will still take a realistically long time (about 15-20min to make a hole to crawl through) and that's going to be quite loud, not something a thief will do.
I figure if there's other people around nobody's going to try breaking into places, first of all because they don't know whose place it is and getting stabbed in the back sucks, secondly because nobody's going to get upset by someone murdering a thief trying to break into their home, and finally because whoever controls the tower has the manpower to do so and a vested interest in making the area safe enough for people to locate their property nearby, so the safest place to be is near the towers where assumedly the most "law enforcers" will be.
Now do you see what I'm getting at?
Also one person could control several towers, he would have to go to each one to gain control but once in control he could fire them all from any one, so in theory an empire could form, indeed I find it likely that the first group to get organised will capture most if not all the towers, only to lose them later as traitorous tower guards take over and other groups form to challenge the empire, eventually this turns into a kingdom arrangement where those who have more prosperous lands and therefore more troops (more people interested in protecting the stability of that area) become king's amongst lords (the other tower keepers) who can rally massive armies against other kingdoms, the army generals potentially becoming lords themselves.
It's a mix between the crafting of Minecraft and questing of most any MMO, my point's more about the implementation of these mechanics than the mechanics themselves, y'see if a player needs to make something then they need the materials to make it, obviously, and the the more difficult they are to obtain the more valuable said object will seem to be, given how difficult it is to acquire, obviously. But what's interesting is that this one player's desire effectively creates a quest for other players, in effect one player is creating content in the game for the other players... and you're all looking at me like I'm an idiot because that is also obvious.
But what's not obvious is the potential benefits of fucking with this, figuratively.
Unless you can somehow turn this into a sex game, then kudos to you.
It's common practice for items and so forth in MMOs to be sold and bought for real world money given that, as an investment of time they have a real world value, but what if we turned this around so that people who invest a lot if time in the game can make real world money? Yes I know there's people in India already farming money.
I'm not talking about farming, no I'm more inspired by Proxy's story about the EVE universe where he participated in a mass-participation, highly organised blockade of a trade-hub-thing which resulted in real world fiscal gain by the perpetrators. That's people abusing the system, but what if the system was designed in such a way that encouraged this form of self organisation by players, the organisers of which potentially earning enough money to fiscally justify spending long hours in the game world.
It all comes down to taxation, which could be some bullshit magic tower that whoever controls automatically gets people's money at set periods, or perhaps taxation is just for landowners and the towers are like magic artillery cannons, so you pay taxes to whoever controls the tower or they blow the fuck up whatever you've built.
Understandably this means whatever is built has to be a lot stronger than Minecraft blocks, which gets back to the whole crafting thing, if you want to chop a new entrance into somebody's house you'll need an axe (weapons will do but take longer) and setting fire to the building will burn the whole thing down, it won't get you inside. A cobblestone building will require a pickaxe or some kind of sledgehammer, which will still take a realistically long time (about 15-20min to make a hole to crawl through) and that's going to be quite loud, not something a thief will do.
I figure if there's other people around nobody's going to try breaking into places, first of all because they don't know whose place it is and getting stabbed in the back sucks, secondly because nobody's going to get upset by someone murdering a thief trying to break into their home, and finally because whoever controls the tower has the manpower to do so and a vested interest in making the area safe enough for people to locate their property nearby, so the safest place to be is near the towers where assumedly the most "law enforcers" will be.
Now do you see what I'm getting at?
Also one person could control several towers, he would have to go to each one to gain control but once in control he could fire them all from any one, so in theory an empire could form, indeed I find it likely that the first group to get organised will capture most if not all the towers, only to lose them later as traitorous tower guards take over and other groups form to challenge the empire, eventually this turns into a kingdom arrangement where those who have more prosperous lands and therefore more troops (more people interested in protecting the stability of that area) become king's amongst lords (the other tower keepers) who can rally massive armies against other kingdoms, the army generals potentially becoming lords themselves.
