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interactive story content
I want to help design a "sandpark" MMO. Optional interactive story with quests and deeply characterized NPCs, plus sandbox elements like player-craftable housing and lots of other crafting. If you are starting a design of this type, please PM me. I also love pet-breeding games.
Merchants - Can buy a city pass
Warriors - Can fight their way through the guard drones.
Thiefs - Can sneak through the sewers
Diplomants - Can build contacts and negotiate their way to a city pass.
Hackers - Can hack the system and disable the drones.
Writing Blog: The Aspiring Writer
Novels:
Legacy - Black Prince Saga Book One - By Alexander Ballard (Free this week)
As for stories further along the game I imagine it is hard to do any other way but without any interaction between story lines. I mean that the damsel in distress-quest is not affected by whether you previously helped old aunt Edna find her glasses or not, other than via any rewards or information that other quest gave you.
Or, here's a better idea. Since the story is largely independant of the gameplay, I could categorize players by their taste in stories: those not interested in stories, those interested in mystery, those interested in romance, those interested in politics, those interested in fighting, and those interested in stories of sadness/anger/revenge. Hmm did I leave anyone out of this categorization?
I want to help design a "sandpark" MMO. Optional interactive story with quests and deeply characterized NPCs, plus sandbox elements like player-craftable housing and lots of other crafting. If you are starting a design of this type, please PM me. I also love pet-breeding games.
While the reasons they are attracted to the theme fit roughly into the same categories as their tastes in story, I find that the means used to explore the setting background is often quite different to those used to follow a story.
Quote: You are a tall dark skinned elf who has just finished his apprenticeship as a lumberjack at the young age of 63. Your parents are wealthy traders and look down upon your choice of work, however you had a happy childhood until the age of seven, when your brother died of elf-flu. You pack your trusty axe along with the rest of your possessions into a bag, and head out to make your fortune in the world.
You could do something like this, where you give the players a few options on character creation (age/race/profession/etc...), ask them some personality questions (as a poor student, would you steal a gem from your teacher, etc...), and then use these details to randomly generate a back-story/starting location/initial goals/etc...
So if someone chooses a "rough" profession that lends itself to fighting, and answers positively to some "aggressive" questions, you could start them in arena training or something. Whereas if they choose something like a merchant, they might start training by being led through a market, or a drinking den (depending on their personal answers).
. 22 Racing Series .
quite confused at the moment.
_________________
Julius
Ford Ranger Brochure 2007 by Ford Motor Company Limited UK
Right at the character creation page the player has to answer a number of questions about his character's personality and the outcome of these choices decide the character's... well, character. Right now those choices still only affect the player statistics and some initial options the player has, but I intend to have these choices be of larger importance. The storyline of the game hasn't really been worked out yet, but I was thinking that it would be interesting to present the 'history' of the world to the player in a biased perspective. As such, someone who has proven to be pretty violent in the answers to the initial questions will 'perceive' the history differently than someone who has chosen to become a very diplomatic person. This would of course require writing the same story quite a number of times but I'll be interested to see if it will affect the playstyle of players as they progress through the game...
I'm not much of a writer, and not at all experienced at making up good plots, but I thought it might be of some relevance...
It seems that all of the archetypes you have mentioned focus heavily on character interaction. (Except for fighters, who interact primarily by attacking things without much question). I think for this to properly work, characters must be deep complex entities. An NPC must have a persona which can be explored in various ways by the different types of players. Such as a veteran soldier who may be able to improve a fighter's technique, or comment on the value of crafted weapons. This soldier may be an old bachelor, who after years of fighting in distant wars really wants nothing more than to settle down with some girl in his home town and raise a family. Each of these things would be found out by different players, depending on how they choose to react to the NPC. In addition, the PCs themselves would need to be encouraged to have deeper personalities than the typical roleplaying game.
Many NPCs may not interest certain players at all, and yet may be a primary interest to others, who play differently. The important thing is deciding what different tasks different player would wish to do, and the various ways those tasks might be accomplished by different players.
I think an MMO like this would benefit from having easily 'maxable' characters, and a world where there is a large array of things to experience, skills to specialize in, and ways to interact with the world, the NPCs, and other characters. Then, a single character would be forced to some small subset of those experiences, where choosing some path has the same meaning it does in real life, forgoing choosing another. Ultimately, that is where diversity comes from, the fact that no one person can do everything. As in economics, specialization and trade will benefit the community as a whole. And in my mind, it is this idea of community that must be emphasized, not any specific setting or cast of characters.
If I were to choose a setting personally, I would focus on one where multiple options are likely to exist. Such as a world where both magic and technology exist, and whose state of art are competitive with each other. The civilized world would consist of people who are divided on which is the 'future', and those who don't care as long as it benefits them. The uncivilized world would have lesser technology, and there magic would be of the innate, passionate kind as opposed to the learned type passed down in old tomes. The important and difficult thing would be balancing the different options so that the powergaming population will actually diversify in the world, rather than have 99.8% of players congregate to the perceived 'best class'.