This is a genre generation thread: I cannot provide specific rules to make it into a game

Imagine an rpg game where:

Rule 1: Total Player Level = Sum of all Subordinates levels. This rule is dynamic. Players will level down if they lose subordinates.

Example of games that use this system:

Eve online: corporations

p2w Kingdom/War management browser games: Small kingdoms have no say and cannot affect the world.

Shop heroes: [Auction house, low level people sell goods for 10g, which big fishes burn and gain 100000g]

Vanilla Wow / Aion: in pvp, grind lvl 1 cannon fodder until you become Grand Marshal. Bug: Cannot level down = not this genre.

Player Made Hierarchy Schemes (Guilds):

1) Pyramid Scheme / Hierchical Guild: Leader has subleaders which have subleaders. Thus a pyramid is created.

Example: 1 lvl 100 player with -> 4 lvl 25 people with -> 5 lvl 5 people with -> 5 lvl 1 people each.

Rule 2: A player can only command his direct subordinates.

2) Tyranic Opression Capitalism:

Example: A lv 100 player with 100 people under him which are lv 1.

Obviously pyramid scheme is better for organising, as a single ruler cannot take all decisions himself. The micromanagement is insane.

How to prevent the pyramids from becoming rigid, thus creating big fishes that stagnate the game ?

Stagnation = guild structure never changes. Same leaders.

Imagine custom server events that happened periodically, only the same people would decide the outcome of the event = same outcome = boring.

Worst case server scenario: Tyranic Scheme: One op player abusing entire server. Rest are cannon fodder that get slaughtered.

Best scenario: Democracy: People competing against each other to influence the final outcome. Even in the pyramid scenario presented only 4 people take decisions. Bug: How do i make people that are 2 tiers bellow have a "say".

All twists and mutations of the genre are welcome, please brainstorm.

Edit: to explain what this genre is at its core:
Shop Heroes: Ponzi Scheme: lvl 1 player sell items for 1000g instad 10g the game gives them, lv10 player sell items for 10000g instead 100g the game gives them. lv 100 players burn all items the auction houses gives them to satisfy customers, each customer satisfied gives more customer arrival rates, which means you can now sell all your stock instead just letting it grab cobwebs, the "amount" burned = depends on your production speed of highest lvl items. if you have infinite crafting, you want infinite lower level item burning. Thus a hierarchy forms, newbies work for nothing in an escaling hyperinflated economy, which becomes more and more inflated. The big fish at the top, just watches the numbers grow, doesnt know what to do with them, the lowbies are just "sweeted" since the game gives them ~nothing else, therefore inflation, economy collapse, all goods now cost x1000 prices. Now if the big fish decides to quit, newbies will have no "high tier" goods to buy = encouraged to quit too.

This is how countries and capitalism works, abuse cheap labor to achieve a higher goal.

I am not saying shop heroes captured the formula right, what i say is:

Lets brainstorm to define a genre where this formula of hierarchical cooperation is fun.

Hierarchy could be used to create a server with dynamic town composition instead of static npc hardcoded by the developer at compile time.

If you make the bottom rungs of the hierarchy fun and empowering, then structural stagnation is less of an issue. The player shouldn't feel exploited/forced, they should feel like they're playing a different game, or only playing with people on their level. For example, layer 1 players could compete to control layer 2 players, but the layer 2 players don't see any game change if they switch hierarchies. Anything that minimizes direct competition across/between tiers should help

Another option is to speed up the whole aggregation of power thing and have short game cycles. Make it take 45 minutes to seize power and break the economy, and then reset the game every time somebody "wins"

The majority of players will be that lower level, wont they??? (unless you have NPC fill that in for the most part)

IF there is little incentive/interest/challenge for the majority of players to perform those low level tasks/activity/whatever without much rewards, THEN

who will play (for long)??

If this is just an overlay over the main game (have the upper level be some ADDITIONAL uber-player activities which might be interesting to reach and be a EGO thing to achieve) then how much resources towards development would be made by the game maker (for that part) if only a tiny fraction of the players can achieve it ???

(and what DIFFERENT real challenge at that high level would there be -- except just piling up a bigger cash/score number which only rewards with some cheap-to-game-develop cosmetic stuff ??)

Is the achievement hollow or is it some significant gameplay that shapes all the lower minions game experience (making those high levs 'world shakers') ??? The Problem there would be having 'power' that really isn't power to do much --- if the game -mechanics HAVE TO avoid willy-nilly disrupting all the other (majority of) Players game experience TOO MUCH.

So to summarise what you are saying is that :

Rule 3: the lower layer players will eventually quit if they have no way to reach the upper layers.

Rule 3a: One quick solution to Rule 3 is: Short game cycles. Periodically reset the game every 45 minutes like in league of legends.

Rule 3b: Yes rule 3 is what we try to avoid. But how do i create dynamic hierarchies that change ? is hard binary resets the only solution?

If people expect periodic reset every 45 min wouldn't that create an "Expectation" that players rely on and become lazy if they lose? Eg Surrender button in League of legends.

This is wrong, a game must always have a comeback, ALWAYS, if the rich people take too long to "abuse" their stuff, they should lose the economy advantage.

Research? Upgrade Tiers? How would they bridge the gap between layers?

Nature is fluid, a binary reset makes no sense, why would a rich person end up broke the next day?

Deception? Can lower layer players "unite" to trick the higher layer players? How?

Rule 4: Rule 3 becomes certain if hierarchical levels are associated with direct power.

Rule 5: One quick solution to Rule 4 is: Players of higher layers have no power advantage over the lower layers. "Minimize direct competition between tiers".

IF there is little incentive/interest/challenge for the majority of players to perform those low level tasks/activity/whatever without much rewards, THEN who will play (for long)??

The way for people to "grab power" is to "smarten up" instead being mindless sheep, letting their "produced things" get grabbed for ~"free".

So we now need to insert elements to allow interaction between layers. Lets consider the following scenario:

Rich: Capitalists, Leaders = Decision Makers. Macro-economy Managers?.

Upper class: City workers, Factory workers, Salesman, Crafters = Resource Transmuters.

Working class: Farmers, manual labor, ore extracting = Resource gatherers.

How and when will someone ascend / descend to another tier?

We can insert Natural catastrophes to create setbacks for rich people. Bug: People didnt "smarten up", people still give their items for free.

Lets follow the shop heroes formula, lets say it allows to "store" power. Now everyone in working class will eventually switch to the Upper class, Then there would not be any resource gatherers, as there wont be a influx of new players. Crafters wont be able to produce at the same pace. Then decision makers wont have the neccessary supplies to perform actions, then the entire economy will collapse. The whole world becames "destabilised" where everyone works only for himself and becames the "working class", The rich fish that had 1000000$ finds no materials in the auction house to buy and cannot keep his production. He is actually leveled down to LV 0 since he now has to work as a peasant to produce even a simple item. A peasant that worked as a resource gatherer for more time is more efficient at it than others. Therefore a native peasant will rise faster to the Upper class. However then he will slow-down his rate of growth, as native Upper class people would have an advantage if they eventually manage to reach the same tier. However, that advantage could be well lost due to technology.

Technology gives flat advantages to all players thus invalidates all xp advantage granted by previously reached tiers. Thus it acts as a soft reset by giving ~x% of max player power to everyone. Where x depends on the amount of laziness he had when playing. how often he logged, etc.

Rule 6: The goal is to introduce randomness:

You may be a beggar one day, but next day you may be a prince.

For this to happen, you need to play your cards right. When an opportunity is presented.

How will i achieve this element.

Am I right – you're talking about PvP structures for clans/guilds? But why it's a "new game genre"?? It exists in MMORPG games, for example and technically could be used in any MMO game even if the game itself does not have such things for clan management.

Yes, Pvp guilds too can belong to this genre.

why it's a "new game genre"??

Take your Typical Mmorpg.

1) Guilds will stay the same even after 10.000 hours of playing. Static and never changing. Never adapting.

2) Guilds do grant "power benefit" in "guild wars". Okay, but what about dungeons? there is a cap on people who can enter the instance.

Take your Typical Mmorpg.

1) Guilds will stay the same even after 10.000 hours of playing. Static and never changing. Never adapting.

2) Guilds do grant "power benefit" in "guild wars". Okay, but what about dungeons? there is a cap on people who can enter the instance.

I'm still not quite understand why any guilds mechanic is a "new game genre".