Genesis: the world, to the players

I was looking at Vanguard's concept art and it made me think about other ideas in my dream mmorpg completely unrelated. The idea of the game world finally truly in the hands of the players.

What should this mean? You can follow what made me think again at that idea. You can go admire some of the concept art for Vanguard, the environments in this case.

People say it's cool, but at the end that's just a backdrop. Even WoW has some places that make you feel the sense of wonder, but it's still just a passive frame. Think about the capital cities for example. You just go there to get quests, take the gryphon, repair, buy/sell. At the end you aren't really there because that place is owned by passive NPCs.

The world, to the players

So the idea: whould you want to own one of those places? That's the point. I want to give that kind of awe inspiring, fantasy world to the players themselves. Not to passive NPCs. Those luscious palaces should be owned by the players. They should live there. Their homes.

What we have instead? Well, Ultima Online gives you bigger or smaller houses that you can completely customize, EQ2 gives you instanced room that you can fill with garbage, DAoC gives you a few house models that you can buy on a pre-defined, generic land. I mean, the players get the crumbs, the NPCs instead get gorgeous palaces, castles, temples and so on. How's this fair?

I want that kind of immersive and yet incredible world that you can see from the concept art in some games. But then I want to take those zones and tell the players: here, this is all yours. That's the idea.

What we have instead? We have instanced PvP spaces, where you can fight around an handful of same-looking keeps. Without context, without "feel". Just four walls and a flag in the middle. How's this fair?

So let's overthrow this status. Let's be subversive. We take the best artists and world builders and we make them create the most luscious, fascinating and awe inspiring world. Something that can totally make your jaw drop. But when it's time to populate it with mindless NPCs, we invert the trend and, as God with the Eden, we put there the players and say them: this is all yours.

That's the idea. The world, to the players. It's theirs. They do with it what they want.

The context: the war and full PvP

Then we need to give them something to do. It's a game, afterall. So we say: this world is PvP. Fight for your domains.

And it's here that you learn that the world is persistent. There's is no "castle in a pocket", no private rooms. You see that palace and you want it for you? Ok, go take it for yourself. Fight for it. Your house isn't a safe place because there's war in this world and nothing you have is secure here. You have to protect your domains, you have to find allies, you have to coordinate.

There are two factions at war (with a third not directly involved in the war), you pick your side, with the possibility to betray it, if that's your choice (permeable barriers). You can then switch sides or even establish your own faction, and fight your own war against everyone else.

The conquest system

The world is big. Too dispersive for PvP? No, because we take inspiration from wargames and use a simple conquest system: you can only conquer adiacent regions to your domain. You can then lay sieges and annex regions to expand your domain. The PvP should be easy to locate and reach because it should focus on a "battlefront", the border between one faction and the other. Always visible on a map.

You can then penetrate in enemy lands, if you want. But you cannot siege inner locations that way. To reach those places you'll have to escape patrolling guards and move past roadblocks. If the guards find you then everyone will know where you are. While you cannot siege and conquer regions outside the battlefront, you can "pillage". The pillage is a possibility, but it has also a purpose. During a pillage you can damage enemy structures and steal or destroy their resource.

Full loot and economic system

This world is full loot. But wait. You cannot kill other players and steal their hard earned magic weapons and armors. The idea is instead that you can loot or destroy the resources that are used at the higher level of the community. The economy of the conquest system. The game is based on a similar model of an RTS. You'll have to gather resources such as stone, wood, iron and gold. Build farms to produce food, horses and so on to include a degree of complexity and virtual world.

The RTS: NPC bots for the boring duties

But then it's not your character to have to be in charge of those boring duties, because we value "fun" in games and we don't want any downtime. So we wait a moment and think what we left out of this game. We left out the NPCs. And that's the idea. We take those NPCs and we use them to perform the boring tasks. We tell them to mine the gold, to go cut wood, to produce food. All this while you, as the player, can leave them work and go fight for your realm.

A completely BOTTED farm system. The paradise of goldsellers and farmers? We'll see (two paragraph below).

You will want to create groups of guards, patrols, spies to defend your territories while you aren't watching, or plan the best strategy for an offence. But those guards need the food, they need the weapons, they need armors, horses, carts to transport your goods and so on. That's the RTS level. You don't smelt iron to produce weapons to be used by players. Because the players have spiffy magic items bound to them and they would cry aloud if they'd lose them. Instead you smelt that iron because your guards need to be outfitted. You need to breed horses for them to patrol better your territories, you need to give them food so that they don't get ill and will fight strongly.

RMT out of the door

That's the purpose of the "pillage". To destroy those resources, damage buildings, weaken your enemy, kill or kidnap those guards to use them as slaves in your own mines. The world is full PvP, and full loot. Say hello to goldsellers and farmers, this is your game. But to be preys instead of predators. The iron you produce doesn't log out safely with you. There's no untouchable vault. Your enemies can pillage your city, set it on fire and destroy all you have produced. They can decide to break in your depots and instead of setting them on fire, take what they find for themselves. But their pockets cannot hold tons of wood, gold or iron. So they would need to bring there their caravans to take those resources and move them into their territories. But those caravans only move on roads and are slow and are easy to spot.

Those farmers who want to use the game for real money profit won't be banned. But they will have to play along the rules of the game. And they will have to protect what they gathered and they will have to take the risk of losing *everything* after a well executed pillage by the enemy. Say hello to all those lone farmers who aren't even capable of coordinating together. This is no solo game. You cannot conquer the world and manage your territories alone.

And those are some basic features of the "dream mmorpg", described exactly as they were originally thought, in that order.

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I was also thinking about brainstorming sessions. The way game companies work on the inside is kind of inscrutable for me, so I don't know if they do already brainstorming sessions. The idea is that you gather all developers around a table. If the group is too big you can divide it into smaller groups but everyone should participate, not just designers. So maybe one day you take designers + programmers, the day after designers + artists and so on. During a brainstorming session everyone is at the same level and has the same right to speak. There's one coordinator and a blackboard. Each of these sessions shouldn't last much more than 30 minutes and the only purpose is to gather all kind of crazy ideas. You provide a theme, like "PvP and massive battles" for example, then everyone can raise his hand and start with an idea, while the coordinator lists all the ideas coming up on the blackboard.

The "rules" are quite simple, the ideas proposed shouldn't stay within limits such as time constraints, budget, technical possibilities and so on. You just say whatever passes in your mind and that you think could be cool, without analyzing at all. The purpose of a brainstorming session isn't about planning the development. Not all the ideas will be used. Their purpose is just to suggest someone else another idea, a source of inspiration. You go with the flow without stopping with your reason to analyze and judge the idea itself. Only after the brainstorming session the ideas will be pruned, analyzed and then, maybe, slowly enter the production.