Here's a cool idea for a MMO kind-of-RPG that has never been well implemented Suppose in the beginning we have a world (quite a big world). It's initially divided into countries (provinces, states, counties, doesn't matter). The world is populate by bots, that is, they are taking all the governmental functions. Then, as the world gets populated by humans, they advance in levels, and compete with the bots on some election (or tournament?). The high-level chars become rulers of the land, and from an RPG kind of playing they shift to a TBS or RTS-like. That is, now they control their states and fight between each other using the low-level chars as units - for a price. The low-level chars gain exp and awards for their pride and courage :) In such a way the high-level chars do some work in the world instead of PvP, PK and other stupid things.

Actually, this has been looked at by so many MMO's, and quite a few of the new ones are considering it, including the one I've approached about. :)

looked on - right, but never implemented well. When i said 'rulers' this meant not moderators but actual rulers who send orders and control the low-level chars

Shadowbane did this on a low level.

When you formed a guild/clan you would start buying buildings, eventually you would have a large walled city, and you could expand to have multiple cities. Groups could be formed of up to 10 people if I remember correctly, and the leader of the group controlled everyone's movement and formation. The leaders of the city could also hire NPC guards to patrol the city and they would attack invading forces, the city leaders could place them where they liked, but could not control them directly.

I haven't played the game in a long time, but it was a really great concept, and was alot of fun until I started having major technical issues with it.

Going even further, into the RTS-esk gameplay is a little tricky, taking away complete control of a players character so a few "top" players can have fun doesn't sound appealing to me, as a player.

i also have the idea of player controlled government.

I thought it would be cool if you start with 1 state/province/town and it is surrounded. As the player count grows players could break off and start here own town/state/province. Would be hard to implement and it would be limited to a specific number of towns (server max).

To my mind the hardest restriction is not the number of towns, but the degree of player's control over their look and feel, the number of possible customizations. If all the cities have a fixed plan (or one of few fixed plans), then it's easy to make lots of them. But if you can build cities with your own plan, and possibly designing the look of buildings, its a major problem to go with a lot of cities.

However, if you're up to an MMORPG, you should think about the fact that there are lots of players, and thus there'll be a lot of cities when they turn high-level. A solution is that there are several (maybe a lot) of fixed cities, and they just get populated by players. What is bad about it is that it's a little boring to play.

I think mostly the reason it isn't implemented is because it becomes a complete game in and of itself. I know Star Wars galaxies has a political class tree and you can become the mayor of a player created city. I believe the control is somewhat limited though.

If you can pull it off, I'm sure it's a feature that many people will enjoy and it can also keep people involved. A lot of people really like that type of game play, and it really hasn't been done well yet.

If you are going to attempt this, you really need to write up a solid design plan from a technical perspective. There are a lot of potential pitfalls involved and a lot rules involved to be coded. Such as how to maintain a balance of power or keep people from abusing power. Granted, that sort of thing happens in real life, but in real life you don't have a choice. In a game you can leave and just spend your money somewhere else. Also if you don't make your system clearly defined upfront and before you start developing, this will become an aspect of the game that will never seem complete or worse you wind up major flaw that can no longer be easily fixed.

I have a completely designed document outlining this from a technical and political standpoint regarding my specific project. first thing, it is extremely complex from a design standpoint and if you're thinking MMO it will be very demanding on your server cluster. From a technical standpoint it wasnt exceptionally difficult(to design, i havent implemented it)

Your mileage may vary but i looked to civilization(Meyer) for the abstract and built from there.

A very strong point to the idea is that it theoretically allows players to generate context or meaning for the whole game world. You're not just taking on a fake plot to stop a mad mage who's going to take over the world-- Player PEOMP_DADEE really is going to take over the world unless you stop him--and hopefully assassinate him for his out of character name (sorry, brief rant).

Here's the real problem: What real gameplay does a given political unit / state / whatever have? So I conquered the empire and gave a bunch of low-level noobs something to do; so what? Why is my empire any better or worse than anyone elses? Why am I worth fighting for? Am I just a name for you to join up with, or does the feel of living under my rule differ from that of PEOMP_DADEE?

I think to make this real you'd have to give rulers some serious admin and scripting privledges over the domains they rule. If you tell me that Mordred's land is corrupt and evil, and King Arthur's is good and just, it won't amount to a hill of beans unless I actually see and experience these things. Rulers would need some control of monster spawns, prices (via taxes), equipment availability, and death and rezzing of other players. In fact, they should even be able to modify a player's leveling, boosting it or stripping it. Otherwise, their power is just a hollow title.

Also, organization is critical to the functioning of real states. Spontaneous mass events like riots or surprise attacks would be tough to make fair because of the asynchronous nature of player attendance. What do you do when a bunch of your generals and captains are offline? You'll probably need to solve lots of disputes with timed contests, similar to how the Romans would sometimes agree to specific battles at a chosen time and place. This would allow a ruler time to marshall forces.

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Original post by x_gamer_x Going even further, into the RTS-esk gameplay is a little tricky, taking away complete control of a players character so a few "top" players can have fun doesn't sound appealing to me, as a player.

How about shifting the paradigm so that, in battle, the ruler / leader only "suggests" attack locations by dropping rewards on the map? Say you badly want a sapper that's running toward your walls to be killed NOW. You'd click and drag some sort of reward bag or flag on top of them. In your interface, you'd have flags / bags of multiple value, and the players that killed him would get that money.

If a ruler had to hand out money to generals, and generals had to apportion it among captains, etc., you might create a semi-realistic chain of command that motivates players without making them slaves.