Hello, I've had this for a project in my head I've been tossing around for a while. Haven't done much in-depth development of this idea yet, however I wanted to get your thoughts on the initial concept. It's a game, maybe game isn't the right word... Perhaps community building experiment with game like elements is a better fit. The basic idea is that players are dropped into this untouched world, in which they extract the natural resources of the world to begin building player communities in. Players survive in the world by extracting "food" resources which will be consumed. Choosing not to consume food will result in a penalty of some kind which negatively affects the player. In this way, players are encouraged to work together to take care of basic survival needs so they can accomplish greater projects. There is a construction/combination system where players can "combine" natural resources to form simple tools. These tools will provide certain bonuses to resource and food extraction, and are also the basic building blocks for more advanced tools and structures. The more advanced and complex the tool becomes, the more efficient it is at doing its job. Thus freeing players to pursue other interests. There will be a combat system, in which players and communities with excess resources will be able to to build and support armies. These armies will need to be fed and supplied as they march across the lands. Players might use these armies to steal and pillage resources and equipment from other players, or use them to forcefully persuade other communities to join their own. This is the basic idea for Project Genesis. What do you think?

Sounds like you are trying to simulate the ascent of man using nothing but entertainment software and people power. Yeah, I'm in!

In all seriousness, the key to making this work would be to create a complete set of rules covering everything. Don't script any individual event, let players find everything out for themselves.

That's right, I really want to capture the exploration/discovery/invention when players build things. Some initial thoughts about the creation/combination system is that players bring up a display, then drag different resources and equipment they have in their inventory to a combine area. If they have the correct combination of resources and tools, then the resources are destroyed while a new item appears in their inventory. The player has then "discovered" this new item. There may or may not be a way for a player to "remember" the recipe, although it's inevitable that recipe databases would be established out of game. Some tools and resources might not be used up during item combination. So there might be two different areas (a "combination" and "use with" area) to drag tools/resources to.

Also, you got it right on by saying I'd like to simulate the "ascent of man". I want there to be very little computer automation in the game. Players should be doing everything from food/resource management, to production and manufacturing, to the eventual supply and feeding of armies. As players discover and develop more advanced tools, these jobs will become more automated in the sense that it requires only a few players to feed and supply their town, whereas before it took many.

I'd like there to be more advanced pursuits other than creating armies to go out and conquer. Perhaps they could shift their resource focus to "science" or "culture" which might, for example, provide communities with in-game tools that help them better manage their empires. As communities grow larger, the need for leaders to manage the community may arise. Developing these "science" or "cultural" pursuits may open up in-game voting systems, or the ability to view several town's resources at once. Initially, this information would only be available by word of mouth between players in game.

Speaking of conquering, my thought on the control of armies is that it may be abstracted and made into a meta-game of risk. As an army commander, your view of the world would expand, and cover much more area than your view as a single player. As long as the scale was small enough to make large armies manageable, and big enough to still provide some level of tactical combat, I think it'd be pretty fun. However, if players wanted to be soldiers themselves, I'd probably new a different system entirely.

sounds similar to a tale in the desert. One problem with that game is, once any server has been up a few months new players can never catch up. Other problem with that game is, cooperative play only works well (i.e. spontaneously) if you can get all the players to hang out in a relatively small area. But distribution of natural resources, and bandwidth and rendering load from player created structures & etc, tend to encourage or even force the players to spread out.

>sounds similar to a tale in the desert.
You're right, I've taken my inspiration from that as well as a browser based game I played years and years ago. I also agree with your other points, they do pose a problem for this type of game.

As for new players not being able to catch up... They could join existing communities and fill needed roles within it. I'm not planning on a "skill" system. All players can perform equally. Their tools, however, will make an impact on efficiency. Also, for the combination system, one wouldn't need to "discover" all previous inventions to get access to more recent tools. In effect, the "invention tree" is accessible at all levels, you only require the needed resources/tools to build it.

On getting players to cooperate, they'd definitely need to be in close proximity to one another. It's also further complicated if there's a big world with few players.

As for implementation, I think this would start out browser based to simplify some development/implementation challenges.

See, in general I like gameplay where you climb a tech tree. That was the part I liked best about warcraft 2, sim city, one of the better parts of the harvest moon games and ones like azure dreams where you rehabilitate a town, games like okami where you not only rehabilitate areas but also collect techniques similar to super metroid, and games where you collect dna or energy to evolve your character like in E.V.O. or evolve your monsters like in assorted monster rancher or pokemon games. I actually subscribed to A Tale in the Desert but I quit in less than a month because of stultifying boredom. Partly that was because there was no story, partly it was demotivational to see that instead of me being the technological innovator lots of people had already discovered anything and could do in a day what would take me a month (which also made things like building the biggest obelisk in a region absurdly time-expensive and grindy), and partly it was that I got to a point where I needed to to work with other people to get any higher up the tech tree but it was way too hard and slow to travel where they were. Also I realized I hated their implementation of festivals and tournaments because in any mmo setting its absurd and rather cruel to create large group competitions where only one or a few people win some valuable reward; it's like the crappy fishing contest in WoW.

Ugh I'm rambling. Anyway the point I was trying to get to is that I have come to the conclusion that tech tree climbing is and inherently bad combo with competitive play. It would be fine to have an mmo where the tech tree climbing was comparable to a quest series that each character or player had to do on their own, its reasonable to have people gathering competitively as long as gathering is a fun minigame or a reward of combat and you can avoid problems with people botting, but if higher level characters have an economic advantage over new ones and crafting results are tradeable this pretty much instantly results in a trashed economy and an unfair and un-fun environment for now players.

Personally I would even go farther than that and say that a tech-tree based mmo is never going to be as good of a gameplay experience as a tech-tree based single player game.

On new players entering the game with established towns/communities. I feel these players would have a choice, they could go off exploring the land and doing what they wish. If they decide to join one of these communities, I feel there wouldn't be direct competition with the other members, but certainly with "enemy" or outside communities.

The community the player joins may lack a certain resource, he could be charged with going out and harvesting said resource. The player would be just as effective as more established members in his task, because the community would certainly provide him the tools to accomplish his job. The tech-tree is more of a discovery-tree. One doesn't need to "grind up" the tree to get access to the benefits it provides at higher tiers. New players just don't have the knowledge required to make the higher tier items. That knowledge can be passed on by spoken word, "hey, if you combine this and this, you'll get that". The new player has access to the tier at all times, just not the required knowledge to "build" it.

The community may not have any problems with resource gathering, there might be a supply problem somewhere. The new player's role would be to fill the need wherever it is. There's certainly the option of players becoming "diplomats" or "merchants" to distant communities. They may wish to become a general, and aid in foreign conquests. As long as players are part of a community, they can work within their community to find and establish desired roles.

In this way, farmers and resource gatherers become just as important and anyone else in the community, if not more so. So I definitely agree their job would need to feel not so "grindy". It should be implemented as some sort of mini or meta game, and could provide the sort of abstract play other roles require.