I've had many different ideas for the game when I started playing, and still do. Time and experience reaffirmed these ideas, and I began to wonder perchance to say, if concepts were as easily applied in real physics as they were in one's head.
I used to create custom maps for Starcraft, using doodads and placements on a pre-designated palette of designs. I also used to roleplay on Starcraft, where players had the ability to choose any building or person they wanted limited only by the consent of their neighbors, and their own imagination. In a setting of a full-scale game however and not a custom map, a sandbox cannot be completely limitless because players would need an incentive for advancement, they would need to work for the gold to buy the items to build with, and experience points to grasp a sense of satisfaction. Most of these things go without saying... Subsequently however, I asked myself a question.
Why does it have to be this way? Why should players be left to their own design and be stunted by the growth of their own imagination, leaving only dust and debris to litter an endless wilderness with? It is impossible, if not immeasurably difficult, to have every player fulfill the complete extent of their abilities and to build and create? How far would the patience of a player last before they leave a game where they feel frustrated by a lack of progress and with it ironically, a lack of advancement?
What if it was never this way at all? I built my Hai Bei Harbor quest in two weeks, when it could take a Starcraft player about ten minutes of minor preparation to create an entire kingdom.
What if, people could borrow a little imagination from others? A database system, implemented in the game, where players could upload entire road and wall sections, entire buildings and houses, and any collection of blocks, conveniently coalesced into a car or a streetlamp, that other players could also use? What if people could build entire towns and empires, because only one person needed to invest time and patience to create a simple house?
But what if the game had more than this? Surely if such a change was implemented, other, even more drastic changes could happen which may easily make the game many times more expansive than its former renditions. What if these changes were caused by the simplest modification of an already rudimentary system?
People want to spend their times to create, build. and imagine what their city would be in the future. Precisely what makes many towns unique is the environment, which is oftentimes user-created. What if you could take your cursor, drag an adjustable red square over an area of snow, released, and all the snow you wanted in a given area, was removed and conveniently set in your inventory? On a whim, you would want to create a snowfall in a green area by clicking the snow, drag an adjustable green square over an area, and the entire highlighted area would empty your inventory of snow. What if, all this was done by a simple implementation of a mass acquisition and mass release option for all items and people could spend more time to build what they truly wanted?
What if it didn't even stop there? What if players not only had the ability to create environments faster, but were also able to create ENTIRE environments in the presence of a town stone? What if the doodad database could encompass not only simple objects, but a given set of ground work and trees that would match existing player-made biomes, which would then be able to form into existence in a town through random generation? A player could make one region of trees, dirt, and slopes, and it would save countless players the efforts of trying to emulate the same biome.
What if players could even modify one town into a series of traps and spike-falls, upload it into a database, and see it procedural-generated into an endless dungeon crawl adventure utilizing the same setup they personally placed in a design, and shared it with countless others? What if these simple, endless dungeons, could be modified even further by other players to encompass even more challenges to reach a reward block or earn experience?
What if this was not even limited to just building?
During the steep hikes in the playerbase, the players who needed towns and those who needed citizens had to run through a chaos of players to find each other. What if players didn't have to beg to join a town, and players did not need to advertise their own towns? What if players who wanted to join a town could access a matching database that matched them to a town, indicating that the mayor, or vice mayor, of that said town is online and currently in-town to assist citizens? With a click of a button on the username and name of the town, the traveling player would be teleported to the prospective town's townstone. What if, if the playerbase were to grow large enough, a localized system of communication was present for mayors to notify every matching player on the database who was looking for a town, that his town was open and ready to accept? What if a mayor who did not want to be bothered could simply turn off the system at a flick of a switch?
What if all of this was done, all the building, all the database creation, without a SINGLE compromise to the complete player-made freedom of the game?
What if... All of this was done over the course of a year and a half?
What if... This might not even be the most beneficial to the health and spirit of the game?
Because the truth of the matter is, change is scary. The ecstasy of the perfect game, a perfect MMO, is beset on both sides by the inequities of a deficiency in updates, unchanging and stagnant to be left dead in the dust. Also, perhaps the most uncertain, is the inequities of an uncertain future with too many updates, bloated, and grown beyond what was originally an innocent and loved game. Change is uncertain, it helps as well as it may destroy. All of what I have suggested is very well beyond my power to implement into the actual game, since it is not my game to change. When I stay quiet about anything, I think. I think of what may be and what may not. I think about how a game so conceptually powerful could be made even better, but I also think of how others may see change. The very first step in changing anything, is acknowledging first whether or not change is needed. How the players of this game view change is very well the decisive factor in whether change is possible.
good ideas doe.
