I'll use feudal Japan as an example (i was watching the Kenshin OVAs). The game already has a story line built in and running. Events, such as: lords meeting each other, warriors practicing, members of a clan arriving and departing from different areas at normal hours, are already in place and happen normally without player interaction. Now players pick a clan or a job class or both. A player could be a chauffeur, a gate guard, a ninja, bodyguard, samurai, escort, or even a schoolteacher. Now depending on what you do you are given different tasks during the day (and night). For instance, the cook could be given instructions to prepare dinner and depart for the night. Afterwards, he might have a martial arts class to attend afterwards. The players interact with each other but must perform tasks within a certain time frame. An example. A player chooses to be a ninja. His clan needs him to observe the cook's after night activities. Why? Because the cook consorts with an old rival ninjutsu sensei and the cook is receiving lessons from him. They both must be assassinated. So now players not only go on with their daily day to day lives but are forced to interact with eac other normally. In the example above, the cook, sensei, and ninja may fight each other in a bloody battle. Or. The ninja may just kill them both with two poison blow darts and call it a night. A sort of dynamic interaction but with a "did or did not" conclusion. Anyway, are there any games like that or even sorta similar to that?

Not that I know of. But I feel games need that type of interaction, which is why Im adding a similar type of game play to my game. The NPCs in the towns will have their own routines, affected by weather, time of day, player interaction etc. I want to give my game a sense of a 'living world'. A place where it doesnt seem like the world revolves around the player. Its a place where the NPCs seem like real people, not robots that spit out rhetoric. It will add to the players experience and make the game more of an adventure, not another FF clone.

MMO I'm assuming? I sounds like a mix of Sims and traditional RPG, which I actually think may be as ripe for exploitation as building and fighting was in the mid 90s (aka the RTS genre). The best I've seen in what you describe is specific missions, such as guarding a location in Fallout. The life elements, IMO, usually get dropped because gameplay is hard to come up with and doesn't make the heart race.

What is to stop someone from just killing indescriminantly?

Also, is every day of normal activities equivalent to the combat portion, or are you watching the clock while teaching school or whatever, counting the game hours until you can go wack somebody?

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Original post by Wavinator MMO I'm assuming? I sounds like a mix of Sims and traditional RPG, which I actually think may be as ripe for exploitation as building and fighting was in the mid 90s (aka the RTS genre). The best I've seen in what you describe is specific missions, such as guarding a location in Fallout. The life elements, IMO, usually get dropped because gameplay is hard to come up with and doesn't make the heart race.

The heart race factor is not always 100% for any game. To make them interesting though would be a great challenge.

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What is to stop someone from just killing indescriminantly?

Technically? Nothing. Another joy of the game[smile] Seriously, I wouldn't know if rules would be imposed by the game or the players as a whole. For instance, samurai have a strict code. So for any player who is a samurai and breaks that code has two choices. Become a ronin or commit harakiri.

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Also, is every day of normal activities equivalent to the combat portion, or are you watching the clock while teaching school or whatever, counting the game hours until you can go wack somebody?

I'm not really clear on the question, so it's hard for me to answer. But I guess it would be dependent type of player. The way I'm envisioning the game is that because players have different jobs within the world and have forced interaction along the way (from time to time) some players will be bored, some will hope for a break, and some will be satisified with the pace of the game.

Doesn't that sound much like Life?

scary isn't it?

actually it does and i don't know if i would like to play "life" on my computer. but i would like to recreate an ancient (or even fantasy) society and experience it through the eyes of different characters. it takes the same situation and puts a new spin on it everytime you change jobs or classes (with respect to the society).

I'm reminded a bit of a game called Prisoner of War. Set across a number of Nazi POW camps, the player had to abide by the daily routine (be present for roll call at certain times, go to the mess for meals, go to the excercise yard, etc) while also working towards their goals (long-term was escape, of course, but in the shorter term you might need to retrieve some item that someone will then trade you for something you need). So you could choose when to deviate from routine; if you missed a roll call you'd trigger a camp-wide search (and would have to make sure you were pretty well hidden), and of course sneaking around at night was always popular (not least because the guards were set up differently at night).

did that get old after a couple of hours? hopefully they weren't running the exact same script throughout the whole game. hopefully we'll find something where the player can login anytime and deal with the event of that day and be concurrent with the rest of the virtual world. for instance, in WoW, three groups of players can be playing the same event or task at three difrerent or overlapping times. of course, this is so everyone gets their chance at playing. but i would like to see something like:
Player 1 and Player 2 sees there's a bounty on a thief's life. So, they decide that they'll log off and come back in 2 hours. Well when they log back on, they see that Player 12 has already gotten the bounty and there is no way for them to do that task. Basically, they missed out, so they'll have to find someting else to do.

I always felt put-upon when CJ started to starve in GTA: San Andreas. I'm looking for gigantic floating oysters in a casino's fountain so that women will find me more attractive, and I have to take a break because my malnutrition is leading to a loss of muscle mass. So I go eat six salads, steal a helicopter, and go back to the casino fountain. That was dumb. It's not even a very cool dynamic.

Same thing with going to the gym. I'm climbing fences, carrying a rocket launcher and three rifles everywhere I go, boxing with the police, skydiving and gunfighting through buildings, but if I don't go do fifty curls once a month, I'll become a weakling.

Make sure that routine activities are part of the game, and not an interruption of it.