I tried to open my online strategy game Abaria a while back to a limited testing community, but it died – and the main reason given to me by the testers was that the world was too big and they never got to interact with other players. (Linked so you can see what type of game it is.) I have experienced this 'dead world syndrome' myself in other games, and I know it is a serious problem. How should one go about starting a community? Should I start a much smaller test world that is 'full' with 20 people (total, not simultaneously online), and then move to a new, expanded world when it gets crowded? Should I attempt to implement an AI (pretty tough for persistent strategy I think) so that even with few real players there is a game to play and competition to face? Am I missing an obvious solution? I don't like having a small world because that means that when you move out of the testing stage, all the testers lose their 'work' when you have to move on. But clearly world size is an important factor in the 'denseness' of play – this is why games like Eve Online add extra space to their universe, or Puzzle Pirates add new islands to their oceans as population expands. Working with a single world map makes this difficult though. But I don't like the idea of creating an AI which would hopefully only be needed for the first few months of the game's lifetime either, particularly a persistent strategy AI which would be hard to make good. However, most online games do have computer controlled opponents that you can fight for 'free points'. What would people here recommend as a way to start out with a small community and keep the game fun? [Edited by - Bob Janova on March 30, 2009 9:00:39 AM]

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Original post by Bob Janova But clearly world size is an important factor in the 'denseness' of play – this is why games like Eve Online add extra space to their universe, or Puzzle Pirates add new islands to their oceans as population expands. Working with a single world map makes this difficult though.

I think an expanding map is the way to go. It looks from the (broken) website as if your game takes place on a globe - can you increase the sphere radius as the number of players increases? I realise this will require some fancy work to keep your triangular tiles adjacent when expanding, but it might be worth it. This will also have the added benefit of moving the large players (who started early) further apart.

Oops I thought I had an index.html in there. I'll edit the link :p

The trouble with expanding a world when it still has people on it is that some of the tiles will be occupied. You don't want to give each existing nation 4 times its previous tile supply if you double the world size (it would break things like maximum radius of influence), so I'm not really sure how an expansion would work once there are nations on the world. Nations settle tiles individually (and can move groups of units around the world) so I can't just re-centre a circle of influence around their capitals.

How about limiting the map in some other way. For example, have, outside your desired area, thousands of bandits. This is kind of like the AI solution, except it wouldn't need to be clever, just overwhelming in numbers. Then when you want to expand, you weaken the barbarians near the edge and make it a big social event to expand in to the new territory.

What you should do is to have all of the players start close together in clusters, and have AI in the boardering areas. As more players come in, the AIs give way and the world expand. I think that you will need a more realistic world, and blame the expansion of the world onto "plate tectonics" so that you can have a changing [espanding] world. The sphere of influence [rather more like a ellipsoid] will not have any changing radius, becuase the world is moving under them literally (if you can have plate tectonics) and you can simulate earthquakes and volcano eruptions that disrupt the world as it expand.

If I create an MMO of any kind, I would definitely use Plate Tectonics as the excuse that the world they see is expanding, by saying the world is so large that no one has ever went around the world yet.

Have a dungeon that blocks access to each area (say with an area of 'black fog', like in Twilight Princess), and fill them with massive numbers of powerful monsters and a super-powerful boss so that x many top-level players are required to defeat the dungeon. This ensures that the areas only open out when there's as many players as you've determined. You could even turn this into a 'global event' or storyline quest that opened up content for the whole playerbase, thus inspiring normally opposing players to work for a common cause. You could even have this effect wear off every so often so that a constant battling to defeat 'the evil that lurks below' is needed. All the players will pitch in, as they directly as well as indirectly benefit from the dungeon being cleared.

I think I see the beginning of a solution here ... have the players initially start on one 'continent', and have the choke points populated by very powerful nations (either automated or run by me with admin hax to make them too strong to defeat) ... or even impassable. Then I can open the planet in phases. I would need to do some storyline work to make that not seem artificial, but it seems like a good basis.

You should be able to keep areas locked out until your population increases. Additionally, for the story line, why not have an artificial presense (say and explorer) who is responsible for discovering new lands (or unlocking them).

Kind of like a Columbus discovering North America for the first time.

John

Placing your stuff on the map is one of the most fun parts, and it would be boring to have the same neighbors all the time, so maybe you could put everybody's stuff back in their hand/inventory once a week, and at that time expand the world if the game's population has grown a lot since last week? You could also give prizes or trophies for accomplishing particular things each week like gathering the most of resource X.