Hello community! My first ever post, please dont flame me or tell me im stupid, if im repeating someone else its because im new to the forum. Please if you can read as much as possible. Thanks !! To break this mould of the game after game that is now being released by the games empire EA, something new has to come out. We all saw how revolutionairy half life was. And arguably it wasnt the defining game of its genre, however, its gameplay and style and graphics were revolutionairy. It was easy to pick up and play, the characters took notice from you when you toddled on past. I would not be able to tell you which was the first successful MMPORPG game, everquest? I'm sure someone would be able to tell me. Anyway my point is, these games have broken the mould, and set something new. And from their success comes a whole host of other games all trying to follow in their footsteps only with slightly different twists. (stick with it an idea comes soon, a bloody good one) Where games writing is important, is in this area. To come up with the new, and the different, and COMPLETLEY forget about the action hero who wanders through his linear world created for him killing everything in his path. Or the level 1 character that levels his way to victory in 5 long months. Sure these are successful formats, but now, as a writing community we need to "think outside of the box" Ideas that get thrown out that are completley away from the norm are often immediatley thought to be bad ideas, "wouldnt work" "too difficult". I have an idea which maybe alot of you would say that to. The idea, more of a concept than a story uses to its advantage us, the developers and the enthusaists everywhere around the globe who enjoy making and playing games. What if there were a game which completley relies on webcontent to work. If there were a world created in a game so big that you could wonder around it for days, the disk space required for it would be MASSIVE. Im talking gigabytes. What if there were so many levels for the game, so many experiences for the game that you could never finish it? My point is, is that halflifes modding became so successful that you could spend weeks months or even years playing them all. But what if you made a game that was just that. You make a top end engine, borrowing if neccesairy. And you make the beginnings of a game. A list of characters, the ability to completley design your character, even using 3d Studio max, or downloading one made by a modeller somewhere. The character in this game all start in the same place. and form then on in, they are faced with choices, of where they want to go. Opening one door, or getting onto a boat and sailing somewhere may require some downloading of an island developed by some people in france. But it is downloaded completley seemlessly. In this island, you are faced with whatever the developers have thrown at you, and you come out of this island whenever you please to go somewhere else, carrying with you anything or anyone else you got from the island with you. The point im trying unsuccessfully to make is. Could a game be made that seemlessly downloaded webcontent to make it an almost never ending experience as it is in constant development by gaming fans and players all round the world. There could be oceans, islands, dungeons, cities, sky scrapers, airplanes, spaceships, planets, blackholes, 1000's of AI characters, lakes, fields, dessers, polar ice caps, boats, jungles, rivers, mountains, caves, animals. A completley never ending discovery of new things to do, and new missions to be had. A sort of never ending morrowind. It could be ported to a community based game. What if, an area designed by a group of designers had a mission to do on it. And the first person to do this mission gained some sort of power over this area. The person in power of that area could then rally together an army, to go and take over another area. All of this online? But the servers would only serve certain areas? as there would need to be hundreds. People would say no team is big enough to complete such a task, but there are thousands of us, all waiting to develop. I've seen the talent of you all when developing under a pre made enginge. With pre made tools. Your works are fantastic. Just imagine if that could be seemlessly put together to make a complete online world. run completley by the gamers. Its THE perfect game. its not even a game its a new world. You could be a hitman in 2020 or a war lord in 1066, because a scientest from dehli created a time machine in his developed area. You could be the ruler of a financial empire, or the king of a giant island. Is it just a dream? or could this ever happen. I dont think i explained it too well. Please excuse any spelling errors or grammar mistakes.

First predicament I thought of: Game Balance. So modders can create all sorts of stuff, including items and such that can be used outside of the area that the modder created. So I go in, make a large cube world, 1 texture, you know, 1 minute worth of work. I then start scripting some ungodly awesome items, or some ungodly annoying items. I load it up, enter my cube, pick everything up, and then annoy the heck out of everyone. How do you control this, while still allowing modders to be free to create what they want? Do you only allow mods to be added after you evaluate them?

In addition, who manages the mods (server-wise)? Is it more like the internet, where the creates need to host the content, and if they ever go down/leave for good, the content is gone? Will it automatically replicate itself onto other servers that have space?

Just some thoughts.

Quote: Is it just a dream?

I would have to say, "yes". I have my own dreams as well, and I won't give up on them completely, and they're fun to think about, but reality still knocks on my door, and I have to move on for now. Maybe if you take the core idea, though (internet based mods that are automatically integrated into the world), and simply try to tone down and limit the complexity of the world (maybe a whole lot), then it might be a very interesting and feasible idea.

It sounds like you're describing a peer-to-peer MMORPG. The concept is nice, but the implementation is decidedly non-trivial. Synchronization and security are nightmarish.

Search the forums for discussions about peer-to-peer, p2p, or distributed MMORPGs. This is well-worn territory.

If you're some kind of Über MMORPG, then yes, this sort of thing has been suggested before. Many times.

If you're just suggesting a kind of roleplaying game where the community creates a great deal of content, then perhaps you should check out Neverwinter Nights - theres a huge number of modules, some for multiplayer online play, others for single player, available for NWN all of which are created by the community.

To be honest though, integrating usermade content more tightly with the actual game as you seem to be suggesting (downloading seamlessly) sounds like a bad idea, simply because there's no quality control. As Agony says, all it takes is for a bunch of morons to start creating crappy unbalanced content and spamming it all over the place and your game turns completely to shit.

Would people create quests, areas, missions, etc for other players? or for themselves? who would regulate/administer the overall "rules" of the game? Does it have a purpose or an overall theme? Could I end up wandering around for days with nothing to do and no advancement of any kind of story personal growth?
Personally, I believe that most MMORPG type of games need more structure, more purpose behind being a character in the gameworld. The fun of leveling up and growing a character can eventually wear off when there isn't much to do with those skills except fight tougher monsters. I think an idea like this has more potential for success if it is willing to scale down its scope to a more tightly controlled story/universe where there is clear progression. Maybe more like a story, where you write the first chapter, then the next modder writes the next "chapter" of the game, then the next modder, and so forth - but overall the theme of the game, and the structure or purpose of the game is maintained throughout.
Mods of games are almost always self-contained separate games, and creating a "game" where you travel from one mod to the next seamlessly isn't going to work unless all the mods share some kind of common thread to tie it all together. Otherwise, you haven't create a game as a whole, but just a character that maintains its stats and identity in whatever "game" it finds itself.

This is a cross post btw, I've answered in the other.

Quote: Original post by Kazgoroth
This is a cross post btw, I've answered in the other.

Thanks for pointing that out, I'd missed it.

I'm closing this one since the other has more replies.