quote:
Original post by thelurch

That is exactly the point! Therefore any player who is trying to grow into a superpower MUST either hire other players (the newbie in question) to take care of the details for him OR be ready to make the commitment of personally making sure that each one of his 3000 reporters have enough ink and paper to finish thier articles.

If the game allows controlling all the 3000 reporters, the players will do that instead of sharing power, and they''ll hate you for making them check too.

quote:
I don''t think that will be appreciated by many ''chaotic'' players. The truth is in almost any system there is a form of chaos that can actually thrive (don''t ask for examples, ...I''m sleepy) And it can be very frustrating to keep trying, for instance to become a master criminal, or a warmonger or even a genocidal maniac, only to find out that the only reason you are failing, is not becuase your plans weren''t perfect but becuase the game simply doesn''t allow it!

By chaotic I mean the kind of player that kills his neighbour just because he can and feels like it. This kind of chaotic gameplay must not be rewarded. The Emperor in Star Wars for instance had the healthy kind of chaotic attitude. Kill your neighbour to scare your other neigbours into submission, to create a monopoly of a certain resource, to destroy evidence incriminating you, but not just for random fun. Ruthless players should do fine. Mindless chaos lovers should fail.

quote:
In my opinion this feeling of freedom is totally essential in any ''sandbox'' simmulation and so I am totally against any sentence that has the word ''limit'' in it.

There are more ways to skin a cat. If you don''t see the limit it doesn''t mean a limit doesn''t exist. Hard coded limits (one player per planet) can be replaced with more subtle limits with similar effects (transport costs between planets, increasing corruption - and less efficiency on planets away from the player''s headquarters, etc.) Your Mario example proves just this. There is no practical difference between seeing the edge and not seeing it.

quote: Original post by bishop_pass
It just doesn''t matter. Figure out the game, and along the way, figure out the options and what information to present, and when you''re all done, figure out the graphics.

It does matter, you said "figure out what information to present" which includes how to present it. I''ve been asking more about interface than graphics, and you can''t tell me that interface isn''t important, because it is, in any game. Although you can describe communication in abstract terms, it''s getting to the point where it would be a good idea to discuss how players communicate.

I'm coming into this discussion sort of late but I find it fascinating

For the most part there seem to be some great ideas but I'm a realist and I have been thinking about how you would actually implement something like this. Some people suggested a sort of extended IRC client but I think it needs to be much more than that. You could make this like a traditional roleplaying game where everything is open and there are only some base rules that act as guidelines but I feel that would deterioate into chaos much too quickly and wouldn't work very well for most people. If the game has more constraints (ie everything that is important is simulated and controlled through an interface) then everything that is possible to be done has to be programmed in. In that case there need to be some constraints in the design or it will be impossible to do. You simply can't expect to be able simulate 'life in a galactic empire' as some have suggested.

Ok, enough on that boring stuff and back to the fun part of thinking about how to make a game like this.

I think that rather than enforcing coopertation through limiting the size of a players operation (eg only one planet) or by having lots of micro-management (would you really join the game if you had to start of organizing production pipelines for another player?) I think that the limit should be as to what you can control. Let me eloborate. When you start the game you chose your 'profession' or career path (this should be alterable later in the game but you should always be bound by exactly one of these). So you could chose from military/business/politics (there should be more categories, perhaps specializations of those that I mentioned, or perhaps you chose on of the three and then specialize as you go along). The politician should not have direct control of the army or the economy but makes high-level decisions to create pacts and treaties. The General should not be able to make treaties or control the economy but should have the power to enforce his will through the army (both the politician and General would have to agree to attack another nation). The person running a buisiness would have economic leverage and would be controling the money but would have little power otherwise. I hope you can see how each of these players would be reliant on the others. This scenario is simplified with only three career choices that are very broad but it can easily be expanded.

Encourage good relations between nations by making the main way of creating income through trade. A world might make some money from taxes but make this barely enough to sustain the world. Trade is where the real profit lies so if you are at war with everyone or isolated then your world could never grow to be big and powerful.

Back to the interface. There is an old game called "Merit's Galactic Reunion" that I think could be looked at for some ideas. I haven't played it in a while so I can't go into any depth but one thing I liked was the way space battles were simulated. When a battle started you were presented with a tactical view of the battle with red and blue dots plus bigger/other coloured dots for special spaceships. The whole thing looked like a classical sci-fi movie tactical display with dots moving around and getting blown up. You couldn't do anything during the battle but you could see if you were winning or losing (much cooler than if you just got back a message "you lost" and some numbers right after attacking/being attacked).

How do you make information valuable and encourage interaction between players (after all the heart of this whole idea)? I think the most important thing would be to make it impossible (or atleast very difficult) to obtain information directly. Don't even add the option of sattelites. Maybe spies but make them unreliable and dangerous (if a spy is captured it could mean war after all). Make people pay/trade for information. How can they make sure that it is accurate? They can't 100% but they can try to verify it through different sources so that unless there is a conspiracy they can be sure that a piece of information is correct if several sources give you the same info (if they don't you have a problem and should try to find out who is lying). As for maps and other graphical information, I wouldn't add capabilities to modify it in the game, that just adds more coplexity. Let the player save a file as a bitmap of some sort that can be manipulated externally and then loaded back into the game before being sent. Also, I don't see why out-of-game communication is a problem at all. In fact, rather than providing email/websites and so on in game you could build up a whole community outside the game and have people advertising and communicating over the web (some communication will have to be in the game too of course). You could have websites poping up advertising forged maps and the like from people with Photoshop skillz for trade against in-game currency. I think that this would add heaps of exciting possiblities without having to program something overly complex.

One last note: the game must allow the addition of stuff after it goes online initially (eg more planets, new careers, new things you buy/do). That is essential for it to scale up when more people join and for it stay fun over a long period of time.

I'm sorry if I talked too much about the technical side rather than pure design but that's just how my brain works
Now I just hope someone actually makes a game like this because it would be sooooo cool!!!

[Edit: Paragraphs, dammit!]

[edited by - Oluseyi on November 3, 2002 7:07:13 PM]

quote: Original post by Diodor
Or some bully may just kill the newby for the hell of it. In all exponential growth games late entering players (or players that suffered severe defeats) don''t stand a chance since their resources are always orders of magnitude behind the remaining players.

Until the newbie does something noteworthy or draws attention to his/herself, most existing players won''t even be aware of the newbie''s existence. Anonymity is the first inherent securing mechanism in this game.

quote: If players are resources, even if they enter late in the game the already established players will embrace them into their power structure rather than just wipe them out. Maybe they have some unique crafts, maybe they come with certain unique artifacts. What''s more, if a newbie is accepted in a certain structure, his newfound allies will be interesting in teaching the newbie how to best exploit his abilities (Artifact for instance is very newbie friendly - since alliances are required to win, there are always a few players directly interested in helping the newbie out).

This is a very good idea and one that I enthuse over (see self-quote below), but not in the direct terms you appear to consider it in. A player is like a business; he/she may offer goods or services which are beneficial to other players/game entities, and is compensated in return. Since micromanagement is actively discouraged (this game is about the big picture, not overseeing minute day-to-day details, as I will expand on shortly), it is advantageous to every single player to cooperate with players who can aid their objectives and leave be those that are neutral to them as they may be useful in the near future.

quote: Oluseyi:
A new player can always provide maintenance or some other necessary service for existing players (who are caught up with larger issues). This has the beneficial effect of giving the new player an in on what some of the issues in conducting business at the scale of player X are.

quote: I wouldn''t like that the only limit on a player''s military and economic means should be the time the player puts in micro-managing these assets. MOO for instance was so annoying in this respect. I can take care of 10 planets and have fun, taking care of 1000 is boring. Besides, this game is about politics, and the time a player spends micro-managing should be limited and evenly divided between players.

Precisely, which is why the player should look to delegate or outsource as much operations/responsibility as possible without it becoming a strategic liability, which is the incentive to leave non-hostile parties be. Furthermore, overly aggressive behavior is likely to make the news which will hurt chances of cooperative relationships with other existing powerful entities. The in-built checks and balances are the competitive and compassionate aspects of human nature; there''s no reason to incorporate artificial limits to constrain gameplay possibilities.

Note that my preference would leave the possibility of a player "griefing" wide open, but would also make the in-game retribution for such a player likely very severe. The newbie can find recourse by telling his/her story to the media corporation ("GNN Exclusive!") which will galvanize many others to action...

quote: If every player can control at most one planet, there is no harm if the universe is huge.

For some reason, I find the idea of a player even controlling a planet ludicrous. It''s one of those sci-fi (completely distinct from science fiction)/fantasy space opera ideas that really holds no water, and is not reflective of the state and/or rate of human social (d)evolution. Given the population size of a planet and the possibility of other ambitious indegenes, holding on to power on one planet alone (without supernatural "Force" powers) is sufficiently difficult to make the need for one-planet limitations unnecessary. And if a person can control more than one planet, more power to them. It''ll be a great media story when they fall...

quote: The game mechanics must insure that chaotic entities will end-up in ruin, dominated by the ordered entities.

"Must"? There is no "must" in this game. We don''t "must" nothing. All entities eventually fade. Chaotic entities fade faster because they feed on themselves, because the lack of rules and order and hierarchy lowers efficiency and overall productivity to the point where self-sufficiency is no longer possible. Let players do as they please; it''ll be an interesting civics lesson and may even end up as a classroom tool for social studies/political science professors.

quote: I meant direct physical power, defined by the forces a player has direct control of through the game interface.

There are too many military-minded people around here. Military force solves nothing. It never has, and it never will. It only serves to keep violent expressions of convictions at bay, at tremendous cost to all. Physical power will always be overwhelmed by socio-political power (you''re commander-in-chief, but I convince your soldiers to mutiny... you''re suddenly commander-in-chief of nothing).

I don''t believe in limits for anything, and I think "game balance" is overrated. Some games should be inherently unbalanced, ie some roles in the game should be obviously more difficult than others, but more rewarding upon success.

Man, I turn my back for a few minutes and I'm miles behind!

quote: Original post by bishop_pass
You have reduced it to a business sim or an RTS. There is minimal to no business relationship with computer controlled dominions. The sole purpose of the game providing computer controlled dominions is to provide players with initial resources to exploit - land, raw materials, troops, workers, etc.

Players exploit these resources to control, refine, and trade with other players.

It appears there is a misunderstnding somewhere becuase that is not exactly what I had in mind.

I'm not sure I have time to explain myself properly 'cuz I have to wake up in five hours, ...and I'm not yet asleep!

Choices..., choices...

Aaarrrrggghhhh!!!
Awright, the way I understand this game it will actually need to merge some of all these elements on a low level. Nothing elaborate, but for instance someone ruling a country will have to deal with money issues, defense, international relations etc.
From the structure you have described some of these dealings will be with NPCs(Perhaps I should say 'computer entities' as NPC may bring an inaccurate picture to mind) and some of them human.
And for the player who becomes a member of a country, it should make no difference to him whether the leaders are human or not. Now in the case of a human leader another player can rise in power (whether by getting the people to love him or by killing everyone who challenges him) to the point where he takes over from the human leader, I feel it is only fair for the same opportunity to exist if the leaders are computer entities. What I see this leading to is a situation where all powwerful computer entities are taken out of the picture (becuase the computer will always be stupider than the human) and human players will control everything. This in no way affects the interaction between players, or power plays or anything else we have discussed. It just give these things a pre-existing framework within which to assert themselves rather than waiting for the framework to be built from scratch.
but if no such interaction is possible with AI entities, then what exactly is thier purpose?

quote:
If the game allows controlling all the 3000 reporters, the players will do that instead of sharing power, and they'll hate you for making them check too.

Hmmm, the goal is that if they spend all thier time micro-managing they won't have enough left to do much else. Hence they will need to delegate and cooperate.
But I don't want them to hate me

quote:
By chaotic I mean the kind of player that kills his neighbour just because he can and feels like it. This kind of chaotic gameplay must not be rewarded. The Emperor in Star Wars for instance had the healthy kind of chaotic attitude. Kill your neighbour to scare your other neigbours into submission, to create a monopoly of a certain resource, to destroy evidence incriminating you, but not just for random fun. Ruthless players should do fine. Mindless chaos lovers should fail.

Well I agree with that (it doesn't have the word limit in it ). but I think the idea in it's current state already does that, if cooperation is necessary to get far, then players like that never will. And in a civilised area of the game they will probably make enough enemies to get themselves wiped of the map (either by arrest or assasination).
Also in all this we shouldn't forget the points made at the beginning of the discussion concerning the financial cost of any kind of conflict, the fact that it should be much easier to destroy than capture and fact that a country with more enemies than friends vastly limits it's resource potential.
All these things together will go a very long way to make sure war is more or less unheard of, and meaningless conflict practically nonexistent.

And to clarify, my point about the 3000 reporters was exagerated. A player will not be limited becuase he has to do the same ,menial tasks over and over again, but becuase the bigger any undertaking is the more complex it becomes.
For instance, a small companies with minimal income will pay minimum tax, be of no interest to robbers, handle fewer clients but as it grows it will have to start considering tax cuts, security against robbery, ways of winning and satisfying much more clients, worker strikes etc. and this is tottally indepent of whatever growth strategy it has, which is what the owner is most interested in. Therefore if the player wants to be able to spend more time meeting more powerful people and rallying them to his cause, then he will have to delegate these things to other people.

Perhaps I should also clarify one other thing, I tend to see each player in the game as a person Not some God or power entity that can see through the eyes of every character under him.
If one of his factories burn down, he will be totally ignorant of it until someone actually calls him to tell him or he starts to wonder why he hasn't recieved a report from them and sends someone to investigate or he goes there to award the employee of the month.
So the game can actually be played from a first person point of view, a man in his office, with his maps, charts, videophones etc which are only updated when he (or his secretary) gets the information and feeds them into the system. He can travel from place to place, make calls etc. but at any point in time he is only aware of what is directly under his five senses!

In this way it is not necessary to impose any kind of crippling restriction on the player, as his humanity is all the crippling he needs! In this way we will be killing many birds with one stone! Selah!

quote:
Goragoth
I think that the limit should be as to what you can control.

It has the word limit in it :x( Refer to my earlier post )

As for your point concerning occupations, the ideal should be that absolutely no occupations exist as far as the game is concerned, but players fall into thier positions according to need. If they then decide they can make the occupation 'official' by registering it with the game (perhaps as an organisation of proffesionals) then when a player is joining and chooses that occupation (e.g. lawyer)the game simply gives him the tag and follows instructions given by the creators of the proffesion (e.g. add his name to list of indepent solicitors in that country) what happens from then on is totally up to him and the other players.
Since the game is not about resources per se, directly affecting a players ability to interact with them will not be very effective in affecting anything.


[edited by - thelurch on November 3, 2002 7:44:02 PM] Shucks my HTML sucks, and where can I get a list of proper smileys anyway :-x

[edited by - thelurch on November 3, 2002 7:46:33 PM]

quote: Original post by thelurch
The feeling is mutual.
I can''t wait for this game to be released so that my army can conquer whatever nation you choose to take up residence in and impose martial law that will prevent any retired ex-lawyers with wives who write books from owning fishtanks

Feh! I''ll simply unleash the killer sharks I''d have bred in my fishtank on you and become a freedom fighter/apologist.

quote: Original post by Diodor
If the game allows controlling all the 3000 reporters, the players will do that instead of sharing power, and they''ll hate you for making them check too.

Ah, but see it''s not "control" - reporters are individuals with passions and ideas and tantrums. It''s monitoring and directing and persuading, and it''s a bitch. Many RTS gamers are stuck in the micromanagement groove; it''s time to throw that out and reflect the fact that any modern organization''s success is contingent on delegation of responsibility and chains of command/authority.

quote: By chaotic I mean the kind of player that kills his neighbour just because he can and feels like it. This kind of chaotic gameplay must not be rewarded.

No, but his actions shouldn''t be inherently proscribed either. Rather, his actions should bring about swift retribution by forces that realize that he is a threat to them. If they don''t, then they deserve to be enslaved/terminated. It''s a cruel world.

quote: Original post by thelurch
Man, I turn my back for a few minutes and I''m miles behind!

Gotta love it!

quote: but if no such interaction is possible with AI entities, then what exactly is their purpose?

Such interaction is definitely necessary, and I don''t think bishop_pass'' comments excluded that possibility. Instead, I think he clarified the production resources issue. Computer-controlled domains (which are a minimal part of the game, but necessary as a simulation springboard) may in fact be headed by a simulated "president" or whatever, who may be ousted by a player or another simulated president/head of state according to the appropriate or chosen methods.

quote: Hmmm, the goal is that if they spend all thier time micro-managing they won''t have enough left to do much else. Hence they will need to delegate and cooperate.

Precisely.

quote: Perhaps I should also clarify one other thing, I tend to see each player in the game as a person Not some God or power entity that can see through the eyes of every character under him. If one of his factories burn down, he will be totally ignorant of it until someone actually calls him to tell him or he starts to wonder why he hasn''t recieved a report from them and sends someone to investigate or he goes there to award the employee of the month.

I see it the exact same way. The player has a physical location and is restricted in terms of communications to the facilities available wherever he/she is (which is why it''s so important to build an information infrastructure).

Where I differ is the idea (even the hint of the idea) of a first-person perspective. I don''t think the player or the player''s surroundings need to rendered in any form of graphical detail, as they are largely inconsequential to the play of the game and thus constitute unnecessary overhead. Instead, I think the abstraction of a text interface augumented by audio and video as appropriate is largely sufficient.

quote: In this way it is not necessary to impose any kind of crippling restriction on the player, as his humanity is all the crippling he needs!

Very well said!

I like you idea about allowing players to create formal occupational labels. Excellent.

quote: Original post by Goragoth
For the most part there seem to be some great ideas but I''m a realist and I have been thinking about how you would actually implement something like this.

"Realist"? Please. This is an imaginative conceptual treatise. Don''t spoil our fun by attempting to tell us "it can''t be done" or "that''s not feasible". If you can break with the paradigms you are familiar with, there is nothing that has been discussed so far that can''t be done. Why? Because this game''s great feat isn''t some stellar code or technical innovation; it''s good ol'' social engineering.

quote: Some people suggested a sort of extended IRC client but I think it needs to be much more than that. You could make this like a traditional roleplaying game where everything is open and there are only some base rules that act as guidelines but I feel that would deterioate into chaos much too quickly and wouldn''t work very well for most people.

Why not?

quote: If the game has more constraints (ie everything that is important is simulated and controlled through an interface) then everything that is possible to be done has to be programmed in. In that case there need to be some constraints in the design or it will be impossible to do. You simply can''t expect to be able simulate ''life in a galactic empire'' as some have suggested.

Why not?

quote: I''m sorry if I talked too much about the technical side rather than pure design but that''s just how my brain works

You didn''t discuss implementing the idea that has been collaboratively developed here; instead, you discussed implementing your own subset of the ideas here. See, some of us don''t like current games because of restrictions and trite objectives. This game has the potential to be a cure for that, by allowing players do largely whatever they want without restriction. This isn''t infeasible; I''m sure bishop_pass, myself and a few others could write up a prototype in a few days to a week.

Never be too hasty to start coding, never be too slow. We haven''t thrashed out the fundamental game mechanics, so we can''t start on implementation as yet. Once we do and have a clear majority consensus, then we can build prototypes and see what happens. Patience, sahib.

My bad. I''ve been thinking inside the box again, such a common plague these days

I can see that there are two sides here though, the people that want military action included and those that don''t (at least not much). I don''t think that there should be a restriction either way. The game should be balanced enough that a player can get by without ever using force but military dictatorships that harrass other nations should also be possible (although you do want to avoid any player amassing an army and wiping out everyone else).

Something that should be avoided is a power hirachy where newbies are delegated to menial micro-management tasks, people won''t put up with it. Even if they can rise up the ranks they won''t enjoy doing boring work for someone else. Perhaps I misunderstood that point though.

Information should definatively be limited to what the player would get if he were sitting in an office, no magical charts and maps that show everything and messages poping up instantly informing you of events. The system should only report information on the immediate sorroundings (not 1st person style IMHO but more abstracted to mean the city/nation/planet you are positioned in or depending on the scale of the event perhaps; eg you would know of a flood in the city right away, an attack on your nation right away or if a huge astroid hit your planet right away) for events outside your horizon you would have to rely on someone inside the "event horizon" to notify you. If you have good relations with other people and have a network of friends/associates/employees then you will get this information quickly (as soon as they send it). Otherwise you will have to rely on the media to tell you what is going on.

And now to be annoying again Why do you need strict rules? Same reason why communism and anarchy don''t work. People aren''t inherently good and need rules or things break down. But st00pid rules can come later anyways, lets focus on the dynamics first Oh yeah, I didn''t want to spoil anybodies fun either, sorry.

Abviously everything I say is my own viewpoint of the whole idea and won''t be the same as yours but throwing different ideas together is where the fun is.