Would you play an MMO if it was...

[RoninaThorstone]

Designed like a you were living inside of a building sim?

Games like sim city, pharaoh, civilization, and banished have worlds that are constantly evolving based off certain AI. What if you could play as a citizen in one of those sorts of games?

For one thing, wildlife would probably act differently. If you went to get lumber from an area for your profession, the trees you chopped down wouldn't regrow very quickly. They would naturally come back over time based off the existence of other trees using some sort of logic like "random tile adjacent to existing tree (exclude tiles that are currently in use), plant 1 seedling per 6 hours of model 1-6."
Deer could be over hunted and you may have to wait a while for the population to rebound in an area.

These sorts of activities would result in changes in near by NPC villages. If you over harvest lumber, they may freeze to death during the winter. Over hunt? They may starve or be more susceptible to plagues. This would probably open up quests like, "help burn the dead bodies" or "go find a priest to bless our dead".

NPCs would be programmed to seek out and develop areas like if players or npcs find a gold vein, boom towns might pop up around it because the AI detects that it's high value land with low price or something.

Meanwhile, enemy NPCs would be out to destroy these places like... orcs razing cities. If players don't protect the city... it will burn down and be lost, possibly, forever.

The designers of the game would, essentially, have a bit of a hands off approach to the game. If people are over farming a region and cause a dust bowl that sends their shard back into the dark ages? Oh well. They shouldn't have done that. A dragon destroyed the capital city of the game? Neat! I wonder if the players will try to rebuild it.

Essentially, patches would be about adding things like quest diversity. Like, a inn keeper might have a quest for the first 5 players who talks to her to kill 10 rats. Devs would add things like tending the bar for a shift or collecting bottles from tables or whatever inn keeper themed random quests they could come up with.

Players could do anything from the mundane such as helping a farmer or as epic as joining a raid party to defeat a dragon and retake the smoldering ruins of a capital city.

Would you enjoy playing in a world where everything was in a constant state of change? Where forests might randomly burn down because of a drought? Where capital cities might be forever lost? Where the prices of goods could fluctuate wildly due to scarcity?

[unholytestament]

I would play a single player game like that, especially if the world were of a realistic scale.

And while I would most certainly want to check out an MMO like that, I have a feeling it would be a niche title.

[Dezerte]

Sounds pretty awesome.

[Stir]

Nopes. Never.
When I want real life, I just play Real Life.

[unholytestament]

Nopes. Never.
When I want real life, I just play Real Life.

Dude. You have my condolences for when orcs raided your town.

[Halicia]

And while I would most certainly want to check out an MMO like that, I have a feeling it would be a niche title.

I'd love to see how something like this would work... especially if it were a true sandbox like Eve where most of the dynamics were player-driven.

But yeah, the further you stray from the beaten path, the more disoriented potential customers are and fearful of new things.

[GamezGlitchZ]

i would give it a try

[Deleted]

Add that you can take over resources and areas in the world, and defend it from other players, or being able to attack players that claimed other resources.
Add diversity of skills.
Think Eve online on the ground without space ships. Then Im in =)

[May90]

I don't know. Since quests are to be randomized in such a world, they are going to be very-very generic, like, as in your example, "Kill 10 rats", "Collect 100 bottles" and such. It is fun to live in a constantly changing world, where yesterday you went to a forest for some deer hunt, and today that forest is burned down by a group of centaurs and you with a group of other players search for them around - from the sandbox point of view. But this game better not have any quests at all, as these quests tend to be what ruins all MMOs for me. Make a game with real players economy, where players can open their shops right on the street and sell their items for any currency they want (including custom currency produced by players themselves), where players can give quests to each other, such as "kill that huge toad, and I promise to give you my sword", where the environment is changing constantly both by players themselves, by mobs and by developers, where you don't kill 100 dragons a day and have even a hard time hunting a single deer that does not attack you as a retard, but, once it sees you on the distance, starts running away - now, that is an MMO I have been waiting for since 1997. But, no quests - for interesting quests I can play Bioware's single player games, that have something better than "kill 20 spiders".

[Charge me Doctor]

I would play in single player game like that, but MMO - hell no. Imagine, how often you wiped in 5 man dungeons in WoW? Now every time you wipe it would lead to NPCs, for example, dying out. Imagine you failed to defend village because of *reasons*, now this village is gone with all benefits. It will be festival for trolls and toxic players.

[Yunru]

I would play in single player game like that, but MMO - hell no. Imagine, how often you wiped in 5 man dungeons in WoW? Now every time you wipe it would lead to NPCs, for example, dying out. Imagine you failed to defend village because of *reasons*, now this village is gone with all benefits. It will be festival for trolls and toxic players.

Could be fixed like in Log horizon anime. If you buy the city hall you can kick any player out of the city and prevent them from taking their founds on bank and entering certain areas. Toxic players would be forced to leave a city.
Now the best part is that you could be roleplaying a evil governour.

However. It should be made like this to be able to siege the enemy city and overtrow the leader (player).

[Charge me Doctor]

Could be fixed like in Log horizon anime. If you buy the city hall you can kick any player out of the city and prevent them from taking their founds on bank and entering certain areas. Toxic players would be forced to leave a city.
Now the best part is that you could be roleplaying a evil governour.

However. It should be made like this to be able to siege the enemy city and overtrow the leader (player).

It will be very hard to manage manual kick of players from your city. And you don't know their intentions before shit happened, unless their nickname is Dick McShitter or something similar

[Tekkommo]

I would try it, but it has the huge potential of being boring as hell.

What if you're not online to defend your shit, you just lose it?

[Yunru]

I would try it, but it has the huge potential of being boring as hell.

What if you're not online to defend your shit, you just lose it?

Maybe you can hire npc guards that are very hard to beat.

[Halicia]

I would try it, but it has the huge potential of being boring as hell.

What if you're not online to defend your shit, you just lose it?

how does eve handle it ?

[Stir]

Dude. You have my condolences for when orcs raided your town.

That's not what I meant, of course.
This game idea is just so... Grindy. Convenience is a rather important part of entertainment.

[Tekkommo]

how does eve handle it ?

Of being boring as hell? It doesn't, it is boring as hell.

To not defend your shit, well I guess your ship is not there when you are not logged in. The OP was talking about Orcs raiding towns, so if not many, or no one is online, then wouldn't they lose everything? It doesn't actually matter now though, because I thought the OP meant player built towns and your own house, but he doesn't.

[Darksoldierr]

I would play it only if the "enemy" can be players too. Cities fighting eachanother and the elements at the same time. Throw in a third party AI controlled enemy, that attacks anyone, so cities or "enemies" need to group up to fend them off. They could make alliances etc. There could be different islands or continents, with many 'cities' or areas, each would develop in an entire different speed based on how much they work together rather than against each another. Or be a part of a strong brute city, that takes everything by force and lives on with the captured resources, etc

And after a while, when technology is there, you could visit or destroy other islands/continents. You could explore the strange new world, etc etc

In that case, yes. If it would be strictly PvE, then no

[Vizardlorde]

Nopes. Never.
When I want real life, I just play Real Life.

IDK irl it's illegal to try and solve the cause of most by problems by myself (violence, human rights, corruption etc), meanwhile in mmos I'm expected to kill people who cause minor inconveniences which seems to solve the problems altogether when you kill enough with the npcs encouraging me.

[Arkenaw]

Not a fan of dynamic worlds in MMOs.