This is just me rambling about an idea to see if anyone wants to ramble back.

I'm looking to get ideas and thoughts flowing. I have a general idea of what I want to do (I'm more technical than I am designer so I can do the technical aspect but needs help with ideas and thoughts around aspects of the game).

First off it's not an RPG. There are no levels, xp, or mana. No spells. Nothing like that.

• The idea is a large streaming top/down 2D world.
• You can purchase land (buy tiles on the map).
• You play 1 character that starts randomly in the world with basically nothing.
• The world is populated with raw resources (trees for wood, deer, bear, flowers, etc)
• The idea is basically to gather resources from the land and to build things with those in order to aid in building more advanced things which ultimately is to keep your stats (body temp, thirst, hunger, spirit, social) at an acceptable level. It's basically life in a 2D world.
• The social stat would encourage people (but not require it) to form villages, towns, cities.
• Players can make businesses that provide services that other players can purchase.

So thinking about this leads to many many resources and items to craft and what are the blueprints for all these items, etc. The system itself to code wouldn't be all that hard, but designing all of the things the game can use/make could get complicated.

Because there are so many possibilities of resources and items to make it doesn't seem realistic to do that all at once, so I thought about making the game evolve with this stuff. Basic resources that can make basic things would be available first. Then slowly but surely other resources and blueprints would be introduced (probably by listening to the players ideas).

So if you were able to put yourself into this mindset and like the game idea what ideas of resources and items do you think would work well to start with?

Some of my thoughts are:

Resources:

• wood (from trees)
• stone (from rocks)
• wheat
• corn
• deer
• bear
• pigs
• cows

Items:

• wood/stone axe (for chopping wood)
• wood/stone hoe (for farming)
• fire (for raising body temp)
• knife (for cutting food)
• small hut (for shelter)

I really want the ability to buy land to be a big point of the game. You can only make buildings on land you own and making buildings is an efficient way to get currency since you can charge people to use your building. For example you could make a simple lumbermill. This would allow players to use your lumbermill to turn their lumber into usable wood for building things. A person could do this by hand but it would be time consuming so using a lumbermill is more efficient but costs money.

Now that money is brought up the question is where does it come from and how do you get it? I would have to have some NPC's in the game that you could sell stuff too for money. I feel like I would perhaps need to adjust the price they give to be lower than the average amount that real players are giving. This would encourage people to interact instead of just using the NPC. This would be a way to inject currency into the game, but would only be used as a last resort by people probably since the amount they give a lot lower.Maybe they also have a limit on what and how much they buy? Something to keep the economy in check and slow inflation.

Like I said this is me rambling about ideas for this game that I think are interesting but complex and I don't have the details or ideas 100% thought out and just thought I'd lay them out here for others to contribute their thoughts if they wanted too.

I keep seeing survival games along these general lines. I've in the past been puzzled by why someone wanted to design them that way, so I'd like to hear about your reasons, if you're willing to go into them. :) Specific things I have wondered:

- I don't find the minimal non-RPG type of combat in most survival MMOs fun. Does some different type of gamer than me find it fun? Why?

- I don't like top-down graphics because they are usually kind of alienating (the opposite of immersive). Top down graphics are terrible for showing facial expressions, body language, details of character customization such as clothing, hair styles, mounts/pets, etc. (Maybe it's just me, but half my motivation for playing a survival game is customization, from crafting clothing and breeding creatures to building buildings.) What benefit do top-down graphics have that outweighs this huge negative?

Do you like The Walking Dead? Do you like SurvivorMan on the History channel? For me it's less about the emotional aspect and more about the execution of how you would go about surviving. I love thinking about if I have what it takes to survive in harsh/competitive situations.

- This game would actually have no combat. It's more about surviving and building an empire (business wise) later in the stages. Everyone starts with nothing. Literally eating berries and trying to find water and shelter (caveman like). It then allows a person to create businesses that help aid the entire community in advancing to a more stable society. No combat needed here. Make love not war :)

- The 2D top/down style is just an easy medium for me to try and get the point of the game across. In theory it could be transferred to any view style. Clothes, body language, facial expressions don't really play into the game. It's not story driven by me, but by the players, just as real life is story driven by it's people. The things people do make the "story" sort to speak.

I would love to get player driven governments in the game as well, but that can get complicated.

For now you can think of it as a survival game that takes you from caveman times to the modern world where the progression of that is slow and unfolds as people play. Like the ideal situation would be advancing technology in the game over actual years. Exposing new ways for players to harvest new raw materials over time, and exposing blueprints to make things from that over time too. Could maybe have world goals that need to be met before unlocking things. Like the world needs to have so many simple sawmills before the next tier sawmill can be created or something like that.

Ah, thank you for the explanation. I myself am not really into the harsher side of survivalism, I'm interested in the creative aspect of what people choose to do when given as a game world a slate which has been wiped clean of civilization. I'm interested in seeing the creative things other players choose to do, from designing elaborate buildings to dressing and tattooing themselves to breeding unusual-looking mounts and pets. I did like A Tale In The Desert, which was a survival MMO with no combat, but you couldn't actually die in it, and the whole time I played I was wishing it had good PvE combat for gathering crafting ingredients and just as a break from making bricks and growing flax all the time. I've also tried Wurm Online and Xyson online, but they both have lousy combat, Wurm has pretty dark graphics and needs a server restart, and Xyson has paywalls limiting what one person can build. Thumbs up to Xyson for recently splitting into a PvP server and a PvE server though, and also for not having guns like so many recent survival MMOs are spoiled by.

I'm interested in the creative aspect of what people choose to do when given as a game world a slate which has been wiped clean of civilization.

That's basically the idea with this game, but the reality is if that happens the start is harsh :) Before people can get creative, if based off real life, they need to satisfy basic needs. Once those needs are met and can be met on a regular basis then they start creating a society, which I think is interesting. That's the idea here. Dropped into the world with nothing. Figure out how to find food, water, shelter, etc. Those will be very basic to start with but over time the community will be able to advance.