SANDBOX SOLVED (Signed ME)

[Emdash]

First, I want to say, if you are not going to read this, plz leave. If you commit to read it, please finish it, and if you need clarity, just ask!

Second, I am going to this in stages. I want to address what I feel happened to Mortal Online/2 (because that was the first thing that got me thinking about sandboxes, anyway.)

Also: I have definitely said parts of this before. Ahem.

People always say that there is no game like Mortal Online, and that is overall true, but I think it appeals more to imaginative player because I would argue a lot of the things that are happening in the gamer's mind are not actually happening in the game. In the beginning, sandbox theory felt like they wanted to lean too heavily on what was happening in the gamer's mind and just add tools.

Mortal Online 1 was based on this and the idea of FREEDOM. It was a jank game, but due to that, it truly was unique. It was carried by a lot of people who could cause things to happen in other people's imagination and thus it felt like something was happening.

Mortal Online 2 differed because they wanted to mitigate loss and insulate players from grief. It was decided that a person who wanted to negatively affect everyone's gameplay was bad. I left before they put trinkets in MO1, but the biggest difference, in my opinion, is trinkets/mastery/clade. This totally changed the way the game was played.

THUS, my first conclusion is that although a sandbox allows for great freedom and that players are imagination driven, when you add in real mechanics like outpost buffs and soul-bound bonuses, it changes the way the game is played. We can see this and NOBODY CAN DENY THAT AT THIS POINT. This is important, because it blows away the 'create your own content' argument. There is now a binary choice between creating content and progression. Because all of the 'tangible bonuses' are progression buffs, the game became about setting oneself up to farm efficiently.

This is the DEATH OF MO2, because MO1 didn't have that and the people who stayed HAD to create content because that playstyle was not devalued in relation to farming mobs / doing tasks.

This happened for me in MO2 Sard. I farmed up, I formed up with bros. I was just waiting for something to happen so I could get involved, and nothing really did!

THAT WAS PART ONE. I am going to make another post for the actual idea. This is my idea. There are many like it... no, but when someone does this and succeeds, I want you to think of me, all you bros who doubted me!

 

[Emdash]

If you consider MO2 world and remove all farming to progress, you are left with a sorry state. There are dungeons and points of interest. There is territory control and there are guilds. What do we get? We get people spamming strongholds by everything of value and mega-nutcup alliances. There is not actual content because there are no tools that reward content creation. The best you can do is hope you get blessed with a free sub and a purple name.

That is why I believe the game needs a complete rework. The idea was that there was no end game, but since the end game was just farming to progress, if you don't do that endlessly, there is still no end game!

The game is based on TC. It should be based on towns. It should move out from towns and the structure of the game should support NOT the growth of mega farming alliances, but it should create a structure where players can exist.

The essential sandbox tension is STRUCTURE vs CHAOS (or simply anti-structure, which is the same as structure except built to oppose the existing structure.) How do we take the mechanics of MO / sandbox and change them to make the game create a medieval fantasy world?

I believe that changing the guild / alliance as the main entity to town / area is the first step. So, say Tindrem, instead of hundreds of people in BadCo, put those spots for the city of Tindrem. They are then citizens of Tindrem. And go outward from there.

Like, instead of clade / prom farming, consider every bonus you can get from 'boosts' and rework it in your mind. Instead of just getting more pierce damage, make it so that you choose a role and get to choose bonuses that are related to said role. The roles can be: basic roles that you choose when you make your character, 'chosen' roles (which would be like society roles that require you to fit within a system of an area / system) that have a bit more bonus, and oppositional roles which are like chosen roles but instead of being chosen to be part of a system, you can choose to take one.

So, there is basic role (like free agent, mid bonus,) society role (within system, good bonus,) and oppositional role (good bonus, but more designed to be AGAINST a societal structure.)

Then you see how there can be societies that can compete against opposition OR compete against each other and form units within that, or they can simply be an outside existing basic role not committing to either side. Once everyone gets a 'tag' within that, it will be easier to create a rule set that affects people's behavior as well because the bonuses will make it so only the most deviant would take a role simply to troll and they would likely be removed quickly.

The ONLY possible downside I can think of is that the society roles would be exclusive, but the fact that there are oppositional roles, the more exclusive and cancer that the society gets, the more people that can fight against it until it refreshes.

GfG. I didn't go super deep on every single aspect or address shit like 'what becomes of TC??' or 'what kind of rolezzz??,' and there are many ways you can take it from there, but that is the basic principle that will make pvp sandbox work, no matter how 'hardcore' it is, because there is an underlying structure and the conflict will make logical sense.

 

[Jackdstripper]

Did you play MO1? Because what you suggest was veey close to how TC worked back when it was first released. Guilds could build a string of free placement control towers from their keep to any town, and then they would capture it. They were then able to get a percentage of the taxes (never worked right) turn guards off, ban other guilds or individual people. Of course you had to defend your towers at all times as they were easy to destory. It was a 24/7 endevour with endless pvp, logistics and power shifts. It was awesome. There was huge pride in being able to control a town, and they were bitterly contested all the time. none of this timers garbage, It was on 24 hours a day.

Unfortunately it was abandoned when too many guilds started turning off guards in blue cities and making life too hard for nubes/solo players.
Still the idea was amazing and all they had to do was remove the option to mess with the guards. Or maybe only allow red of the controlling guild to enter town. Instead they scrapped it.

This sieging system we currently have is the absolute worst thing SV has ever come up with.

I will admit that your "roles" systems kind of escapes me, but the basic idea i undestand is to make TC actually count. Make keeps actually worth having and fight over. That is absolutely lacking right now.

 

[Emdash]

Did you play MO1? Because what you suggest was veey close to how TC worked back when it was first released. Guilds could build a string of free placement control towers from their keep to any town, and then they would capture it. They were then able to get a percentage of the taxes (never worked right) turn guards off, ban other guilds or individual people. Of course you had to defend your towers at all times as they were easy to destory. It was a 24/7 endevour with endless pvp, logistics and power shifts. It was awesome. There was huge pride in being able to control a town, and they were bitterly contested all the time. none of this timers garbage, It was on 24 hours a day.

Unfortunately it was abandoned when too many guilds started turning off guards in blue cities and making life too hard for nubes/solo players.
Still the idea was amazing and all they had to do was remove the option to mess with the guards. Or maybe only allow red of the controlling guild to enter town. Instead they scrapped it.

This sieging system we currently have is the absolute worst thing SV has ever come up with.

I will admit that your "roles" systems kind of escapes me, but the basic idea i undestand is to make TC actually count. Make keeps actually worth having and fight over. That is absolutely lacking right now.

yes I played MO1. I will try to explain.

So, let's look at it from the perspective of a new player.

As a new player, you come in and you choose your race and all, and then you pick a ROLE. Like a class, kind of? Like say you pick MINER, and all of the shit you'd get as a veela or from orbs / rings could become perks you could pick and choose from. You would be unaffiliated from anything at that point, and of course you could change what you wanted. Maybe even mix n match, but let's not get too complex.

Then, let's say you go to Tindrem, well Tindrem has spots for MINERs as well, but those miners are tindrem miners. They should probably get more buffs than an unaffiliated simply to encourage players to make a choice. Then, you can define a more complex system because you not only can you deal with how people treat MINERS but how they treat TINDREM MINERS.

Yes, your play style will extend beyond being just a miner (if you want,) but that will be what buff you get and how you are treated. Again, I am going with what could be easily added (imo,) because there is room for mixed roles and all that, but the main idea is...

Define each person as a unit. The unit right now is guild. The whole game is defined by how guilds compete with guilds, but if each person was a unit, and structure was created from that, there would be so many more possibilities. So many more types of competition. Faction, banditry, and there could still be guilds / groups within, too.

Then you can really start to develop the game and have cities / areas develop based on what its role-players ( no pun??) are doing, allow for more spots within the structure as it grows, etc.

It WOULD be exclusive and it WOULD require a hierarchy of players (the way I see it, at least,) and that could be a flaw.

Gonna make a post after this one... so (cont)

 

[Emdash]

One of the things that people might not want is that in a game this small, the same player can be playing many different roles on different characters and influencing different things, 'gaming the system' if you would. But this has been a part of MO imo so that it should not be discouraged, but it should be accepted and made to where someone driving the game from any angle is a positive, as much as possible.

So, what do you do if a town grows and becomes a mighty zerg metropolis and oppresses everyone? Well, that is why I said opposition role should be an option, too. Could go to a straight opposition role or just a role like a lot of people want to play, build a little TC around the town and raid raid raid.

Then that's when you could add in 'anti zerg' bonuses for the opposition if an entity got too OP, and it would WORK because people would have invested and declared their loyalty, opposed to being an undefined unit has allies / wardec targets and... a bunch of other undefined units (other guilds, blueberries.)

I mean, I could go so deep on this shit, but I don't want to enter dreamland at this point. The main point is just that they should try to build social structures that are based on how you want to play around the place you call home. Opposed to being like yea you are dumped into the world and then when you join a guild, you can actually make progress by building TC or watching your guild prom counter rise.

All of those 'scores' can be put into a city, and it would make a lot more sense.

Another 'problem' is how to make TC make sense within that, but it wouldn't be focused on developing every PoI (because that wouldn't be the most meta thing you could do anymore.)

PS: I am def anti turning off guards just like I am anti wardec in town. Those just don't have enough pluses. Could definitely change the way to guards behave based on your faction and how you interacted, like a more advanced flag system.

It's like rep but REAL rep, more than just one number. But I am not gonna outline every situation and how it can be handled, just use your imagination and think if each player was affiliated with an area (or not, but would get bonuses if they were,) how much more easily they could reward people for who they killed, who they didn't kill, what they gained, etc. Or punish them.

The sandbox theory was that all that shit would handle itself and then let people have tools, but that is the hardcore pvp sandbox flaw imo. I think it is proved by how tasks and mastery influenced the game play loop. IF there are mechanics to support rewards, people will do it. There needs to be a framework to allow there to be an end game that isn't just zerg sieging zerg.

 

[Emdash]

Also, (haha) it could be done without specific roles and just citizenship / opposition declaration. The role idea is just to add flavor. Can start w/ citizenship and allow factions / opposition, pvp.