GODS: A Hypthetical MMORPG

Cafe Society
1

[WARNING LONG POST] [Yes I eschewed my hard returns…]

GODS

I originally came up with this idea by mulling over a few seemingly unrelated things: Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 5, the game Diplomacy, and why MMORPGs are often so deadly dull. First of all, why do MMORPGs suck? In my view due to 3 main reasons (YMMV of course):

  1. The game world is very static: it isn’t going to end, one side isn’t going to “win” completely & unconditionally, nothing you do seems to matter in terms of the wider world. Now I know that several games have started to implement a few changes here and there, such as an invasion by some new faction which everyone has to fight off, but it’s usually AI scripted and controlled and in no way is central to gameplay.

  2. Since everyone is a Hero, nobody really is. That is, because you might have hundreds of uber-level heroes running around, if each one was able to affect the game world significantly (at a magnitude similar to mythological-type heroes from Oddysseus to Buffy) well then the world would be in such constant flux

that your Hero’s efforts will invariably be “washed” out by the next Hero’s efforts. Frankly given the genre & game design conventions that developers have stuck with, I don’t blame them for keeping things static, as the alternative, given their other assumptions and design choices, would indeed result in chaos.

  1. Since the world can’t change significantly, even despite the efforts of the most powerful Heroes, plots and campaigns have a decidedly short-term, limited, & local flavor (in fact the entire point of an “instanced” dungeon is precisely that anything happening in it cannot affect the wider world, aside from indirect aftereffects of course, like getting an Uber-Weapon). The wider and longer-term context is typically missing, even if you have (in WoW) the Horde making a raid on an Alliance stronghold. The effects of such raids typically are short-lived and local.

  2. Another problem with MMORPGs is that role-playing (in the sense of actually playing and “being” your character) is not a requirement. Yes you can have a “RPG” server but role-playing itself is not central to gameplay. Now I don’t want to “force” anyone to role-play-but I think I have devised a middle ground (see below).

So what does Buffy & Diplomacy have in common with MMORPGs? Well in Buffy season 5 we had Glory, a powerful demigod, make an appearance as the Big Bad of the season, eventually defeated when a few of her vulnerabilities were discovered. In Diplomacy you have dealing and double-dealing as players attempt to gain an advantage over other players, whether by arms, subterfuge, or a combination of both. So I thought: what if you had various gods duking it out over a Diplomacy-type gameboard, with various superpowers and so on? My next thought was to apply this concept to a MMORPG-type arena, with a little bit of World War Two Online thrown in for good measure. Thus was born my concept, so here it is in a (very big) nutshell:
In GODS, you would have seven factions or so. The key difference between GODS and something like WoW is that the factions are not, in a sense, permanent on any given server (or they don’t have to be). Each faction is headed by a God, a poweful being who rules over his or her realm and is much more powerful than (most of) His underlings. Gods of course need these underlings (minions) to help Him keep His realm protected and in good working order (i.e. He can’t do it all Himself).

How does a God get started? In the beginning there could be a sort of a “scavenger hunt” by the members of each of the 7 factions: if one of their most powerful heroes finds a special object or completes a very rigourous quest he can “rebirth” Himself as the new God of His Realm (other possible options for choosing the first God might easily apply here as well). A lower-level hero which tried to become the God (in the very unlikely event that he somehow gained the means to do so) would be killed in the attempt, so he should ideally pass off the opportunity to someone worthy. This “natal” period would also allow players to increase their experience before phase 2 (below) starts.

Once all 7 Gods have been activated, realm vs. realm combat would then be allowed. The Gods (the smart ones) would choose capable minions to carry out their plans (diplomacy, infiltration, direct warfare, magical research, etc.). These minions would themselves necessarily then hire other individuals to further carry out necessary tasks. Right there you have a sort of hierarchy where even the “smallest” person can help out and be part of the team. The idea is that the “roles” in which the characters would find themselves (Manos the Arch-Wizard of the realm of Arthos), i.e. their position in the hierarchy and not necessarily their player class or abilities, would come to the fore and provide a basis for some actual role-playing, esp. as they negotiate with representatives of other realms.

Each God then would attempt to make alliances with some of the other Gods so as to “divide and conquer” common foes. Naturally (and this is where the boardgame Diplomacy comes in) there would (or should) be plenty of double-dealing and backstabs between realms, along with spying and perhaps even treachery by seemingly-trustworthy minions!

Each God would have a Seat of Power hidden in some heavily guarded and hard-to-reach room deep in His home stronghold (a huge gem, statue, or the like). It is from this Seat of Power (SoP) which the God (and his minions) draw his strength from and which keeps Him “anchored” on this plane of existence; destroy this item and He is no longer bound to the world and His essence passes on to the “afterlife” (wherever that is). The person who had been Chosen as the God now becomes a mere mortal again (maybe is killed). Destroying the SoP would typically involve discovering the God’s “mortal weakness” (a special item, unique spell, or other vulnerability) and using it to blow the SoP to bits.

What good does the SoP do, aside from safeguarding the God’s existence? It also (as the name implies) is a source of power from the Planes beyond, allowing the character who is playing the God to put on Her “battle” face. Normally the God would appear as a normal-sized (but glowing or otherwise intimidating) personage, but if She draws on her SoP She will assume her Battle Form, gaining huge stature and powers with which to smite enemies on the battlefield. But the SoP needs to be recharged every so often, such that the God can’t run around in her BF all the time kicking butt, and thus has to use discretion when

implementing her powers. The SoP would also allow her most trusted and powerful minions to also assume Battle Forms(Avatars) to assist her in combat. To kill a God and take over His Realm would require several things: first of all overwhelming military force, which typically would only happen if there was an alliance against one faction. Then the main enemy Stronghold would need to be breached and the SoP sought out for destruction. Once this has been carried out, that faction would cease to exist, their former homeland a ruin. Those who once fought for that faction (and survived) may hire themselves out as mercenaries (perhaps to inflict some measure of revenge). The fun starts once a major assault is commenced on say Faction X by Y & Z: Factions V & W may then take advantage of that as an opportunity to sneak up on Faction Y while their “big guns” are away at the other battle and conquer Y’s home territory!

Eventually one power may (or may not) gain total ascendancy: once that happens the world cycles again (Hinduist influence here) and is remade anew, and we go back to the beginning.

We could expand the above concept in various ways, none of which I’ll expound on too much because this is already too long: subsidiary keeps which add their power base to the main power base, and over which factions may fight for control; P vs. E would still be an option, but mainly as a means to boost minions up to higher levels and/or boost the energy level of the Power Base via artifacts or arcane means; you could have a sort of “Magic Crystal Ball” type of communication between realms; a new faction could come in at some point and “take over” the homeland of a previously eliminated faction, if the proper rituals are performed.

Possible Objections:

#1 is the apparent need for the God character to remain on station most of the time “just in case” something big happens, which kind of touches on the “MMO Player w/o a Life” concept. This could be handled in several ways: his designated high-level minions would still be able to draw on their Power Base to boost themselves into their Avatars in order to fend off enemies-as the PB doesn’t have an unlimited power source they could probably hold their own until He gets back (perhaps by being paged in real life or something). Maybe there would be a hiatus of X hours once an outpost has been conquered, letting the losing side catch their breath and call in the reinforcements before the next onslaught.

#2: Incomptency in the highest levels of the Realm. Sure-so what? If the Powers-That-Be consistently prove their incompetence I can see certain factions within their own power structure initiating coups and whatnot, perhaps even civil wars, perhaps with the “help” of outsiders. That is their right.

#3: Someone has to win, so someone has to lose, so we can’t afford to hurt anyone’s feelings. Live with it. Plus they (if they survive) can always hire on with someone else for some nicely-served revenge; this character history will add a nice flavoring to the proceedings (“Weren’t you with the FrostLords, long ago…?”). If you don’t like that winning and losing is a part of the game go play something else.

#4: With these demigods all stomping around, what good are the mere mortals? In my view they (even those without access to high-level Avatars) can still serve important roles. In battle they can protect their own Avatars (damage inflicted will usually serve to drain the enemy’s power base if nothing else) so that the Avatars don’t get swarmed and can concentrate on the most important targets. Information=power so spies should be very important in discovering intel and plots. Many other roles are possible.

Mind you I am just throwing this idea out there. There may very well be very sound reasons as to why something like the above wouldn’t be successful (either monetarily or gameplay-wise). But certainly the “mold” of the MMORPG I think needs to be broken-at the very least if every game company in existence continues to build on the EQ/WoW model, with minor tweaks here and there, I think that someone who attempts something completely different to differentiate themselves from the crowd has a chance to eke out some market share by appealing to those who are tired of the same old same old.

2

IMHO, most MMORPG’s should have the following attributes:

Power gain should be arithmatic, not logarithmic. If levels spiral upward, lower-level characters can’t do anything to anyone more than a few levels above them.

Hardcore servers should require more experience to level up or increase skills or whatever, but possibly cost a little less to use (or some other bonus for being there.

Oddball notion: the fewer players with active character (active as in played in the last 2 weeks), the more powerful their side gets. Most games have some kind of races or classes built-in. This way, unpopular or underpowered teams get automatic boosts, and over-used classes get auto-nerfs.

3

Try mixing this into a concept of MMO - Populous.

That was a game where you played a Deity, vying against a rival Deity to gain followers, increase your followers’ numbers and power, and eventually go Armageddon against the rival.

4

Heh. I’m actually spending today evaluating pitches for PS3 games … so I’ll add one more to my queue.

  1. This faction model emphasizes PvP at the expense of PvE gameplay. That’s cutting out about half the potential customer base right at the beginning.

  2. There’s a serious power imbalance between the players at the top and the bottom of the hierarchy. In a typical MMORPG the player can pretend that he’s the hero of the story, even though he knows rationally that he’s just one of a thousand heroes. In this game, when you’re a peon, you KNOW you’re a peon. It’s more honest, yes, but people don’t typically play games for honesty. People want to feel like they matter when they play a game, not that they’re just a pawn. They get more than enough of that in day-to-day life.

  3. Aside from PvP battles, what does the typical player do, moment-to-moment? How does the bread-and-butter gameplay reinforce the core fantasy of being a god?

  4. How do you enforce obedience within the hierarchy? Can people be kicked out of a realm if they don’t follow orders from a higher-up?

  5. How do you institute a coup? How do you seize control of part of all of a hierarchy?

(Note also that the answers to #4 and #5 have to be compatible with each other.)

  1. The “pressing the reset button if someone wins” idea is really problematic. People get very invested in their online personas. Wiping the slate clean creates a strong incentive for lots of players to quit rather than rebuilding from scratch.

(Of course, what will really happen is that the winning faction will stop short of absolute victory to prevent this from happening. Instead they’ll keep the server stagnated so they can continue to enjoy their position of dominance. Not a fun situation.)

When designing a game the majority of effort should go into the parts of the game that are experienced by the majority of the players. This design focuses mostly on the experience of the select few who manage to make it to the top of the hierarchy. Instead it should focus on the bulk of the players who never rise in rank at all. What makes it fun for them? How do they spend their hours? Why do they keep paying their money?

5

Good points. I’ll add a comment to this one. There could be periodic resets (i.e. each month). Everyone in the top faction at the end of the month gets a medal and then everything is reset. (Perhaps add other medals and decorations for individual achievements) If nobody is clearly dominant, there could be an interesting mad scramble at the end to eke out the highest ranking. Since things will be reset anyway, people will be far more daring and reckless at the end.

The main problem here is that the most skilled will naturally team up and dominate month after month. To solve that, perhaps force-scramble the teams every so often. FYI, the plural of “persona” is “personae”.

6

A plural of “persona” is “personae”. :wink:

7

have you ever played Eve Online?

In that, player-based factions are the central basis for game-play: alliances for territorial or RP reasons, mercenary alliances available for hire to fight for same, pirate corporations that disrupt trade for personal gain, manufacturing corporations that provide extensive infrastructure capability to fighter corporations. In short, all walks of life.

The point is that these player corporations and alliances are in no way permanent. In fact, less than 3 months ago, two of the most powerful alliances in the game world went head to head and one was totally destroyed, completely redefining the game for players getting in to a power void. It’s really an interesting political system, you should look in to it.

8

I don’t like it.

Then again, I’m not big on PvP, too many idiots out there, and this is all PvP.

But it seems to me that the victor in this system would be the faction that has the most hardcore players. That is, the faction that can give the most manhours to the game. Like in that episode of South Park, it would prove nigh impossible to kill those that which has no life. The hardcore would completely dominate over the casual. Now, that’s true in any system, but where there’s a real victory, it actually matters. For example, in many WoW servers, the Alliance players outnumber the Horde by a factor of 2:1 or more. This means that anytime the Horde and Alliance go head to head, the Alliance will win. But it doesn’t really matter, since the benefits of actually dominating the other PC faction is limited, to say the least. I’m never going to log on to find Ogrimarr in ruins and Thrall permanently dead.

9

I think that an interesting form of non-PVP content might be to have some areas specific to various world cultures’ mythologies with quests or cities to build in that theme.

Instead of a periodic reset of the entire game, it might be better to have a gradual replacement method. Maybe once one faction dies, its ‘power’ is distributed to the others, with newer factions gaining the most power, and a new faction is born. (The redistribution would be there to avoid the ‘meet the new god, same as the old god’ effect.) Balancing the actual popularity of factions would seem to be difficult.

The idea of a monarchy seems difficult to maintain - either some people are in power, and you can’t get there ever, or you can overthrow them. If you can overthrow them too easily, though, coups become commonplace.

EVE online does seem a pretty good model to look at, from what I know of it.

10

I think where a lot of complicated realm-versus-realm PVP-based games fall down because of the implicit assumption that players will genuinely be trying to attack other players, and that they will be truly playing the game as intended.

For instance, in your example, a hidden Seat of Power would not remain hidden for very long. Someone is going to blab if they think it gets them a few more XP.

For instance, if the God is wandering around, how can you be sure that He wouldn’t let his followers destroy Him so they could all partake of a huge lump of XP all at once, and another God take over with an even-more-powerful army? It could be an escalating scale. Your realm would become more powerful after a coup, not less.

For instance, if each God has a weakness to a specific thing, what’s to prevent players from gathering one of every kind of weapon available in the world and testing them systematically?

For instance, if a scavenger hunt is required for a God to manifest, what’s to prevent players from hoarding critical pieces and preventing God #6 and God #7 from appearing at all?

I see too many ways in which players could cooperate that would destroy the implicit assumption that realms would attack each other.

11

Keep it up. That was substantially more readable.

This is because the companies want to keep the subscription model going as long as possible. If you hear of a game that might end any time but still costs substantial coin to play, why should you throw money at something that might already be over?

Read Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. In short, a god feeds on the belief of his followers. The more faithful, the bigger and stronger the god.

An interesting addition to the game might be the introduction of heresies: Groups of people who attempt to draw down your pool of followers to build their own power base. This could be both the source of non-PvP action and the fundamental basis for coups. Heresy could also be a tool in your arsenal as well, to draw faithful from your opponents faiths to your own. A particularly virulent form of heresy (and the worst kind of AI enemy) is, of course, the suicide cult, which takes power from you, destroys your former food, and maybe kills the still-faithful in the process. A suicide cult in the military would be very difficult to combat.

Then the fundies would form heresies and even suicide cults and work to take down both sides. This could be auto-triggered if not enough people are attacking the followers of false faiths, either through military action or conversion, and/or triggered by the GMs running the servers. The thresholds can be fiddled with by the GMs endlessly.

12

You might look at Aces High, a MMO combat flightsim. Players belong to a faction but can change factions. You can form a squad with your mates. There’s no levelling up, but you earn perk points for successful missions which you can use to fly special planes.

13

All very good questions. I didn’t want to write just another jeremiad against MMO games-there’s far too many of those floating around (even after Lum the Mad went offline). Instead I wanted to provide what I thought was an (open-ended) alternative (specifics in the OP are certainly nothing I’m too attached to for the most part). I am somewhat familiar with Eve Online, will check that out more closely…

Specific responses:

Pochacco: I think I did allude to P vs. E in there somewhere. Provides a place to train and get some goodies when R vs. R action is quiescent. The lower-rung players I think would indeed have quite a bit to do, from scouting missions (you don’t want a conspicuous uber-hero on something like that-perhaps high-powered entities would generate some sort of detectable field or something) to border skirmishes, magical research, etc. Crafting and so on.

Remember in my model the uppity-ups can’t go around squashing every little problem with massive force, because the resource is limited. Even if facing one of the Gods a lower-level player in my conception can at least distract and drain them some. Here I guess I’m thinking of games like Heroes of Might and Magic and Age of Wonders, where large bands of lower-level units can hold their own against small (single) stacks of higher-powered ones.

More specific questions (coups and so on) I really don’t want to get into as I just wanted to provide a bare-bones framework for discussion. I’d reckon that social behavior would hopefully be self-regulating, such that you don’t want to be pissing off your putative boss, nor do you want to abuse your power too much if you are in a position of authority, else everyone will start to ignore your orders.
Yes <sigh> I realize that in the MMO community this is akin to herding cats…

Other people have refined the “victory” conditions. Perhaps there shouldn’t be a permanent victory (or just in certain servers).

Menocchio, yes, I was worried about the hardcore types dominating the game. The alliance structure tho would allow realms to hook up to fend off a powerful faction. Quartz mentioned an online combat flight sim, in AH they have 4 factions, and yes they tend to gang up on the perceived “leader” when the latter has a lot of flyers on. I don’t like artificial rules regulating this sort of thing, but sadly given how griefers and their kin work often they have proven necessary so far. Can my conception do away with that? Well that’s what I want to find out.

panamajack, I like the mythological aspects you mentioned (that’s mainly my aesthetic sensibillity saying that). That kind of richness is one of the things I’d shoot for in a game like this.

Fish, again you raise valid objections. The nitty gritty of how Gods are chosen is certainly open to revision: maybe the first player to level 70 or whatever becomes the One. A coup would generally be a bad thing, typically leaving your realm vulnerable for a while, but if the Guy in power isn’t doing his job maybe replacing him is worth it. Maybe Derleth has an idea-make it a democracy? Vote the bum in or out? Would enough players care enough to vote? Lose the “love” of enough of your people and you lose the position? <shrug>

Derleth, yours is the core question: does a company’s need to “keep the subscription model going as long as possible” preclude a more dynamic and open- ended environment? That’s what this thread is all about really. My main aim is to try to have such a game work more like the societies in the High Fantasy novels we’ve all read to death. Is there a way to make something like that work? Or will the profit motive, along with the griefers and no-lifers and casual players who really don’t give a f*** about events outside their immediate need for instant gratification? If you get enough players who buy into the core concepts could you make it work?

14

EVE is indeed the answer to most of the issues in the OP. Static gameworld? Hah!! I was in Ascendant Frontier as it folded up under Band of Brothers’ attack. With Lotka Volterra’s fall to Red Alliance and the Goons, and Axiom Empire abandoning Impass to Against All Authorities, the entire south is under new management. And if Dusk and Dawn doesn’t pull its act together, the north may follow suit in a hurry.

15

I’ve just started playing Eve Online, and it’s blowing me away. I started a thread over here asking who else was playing and their character names and such. I haven’t joined any of the player corps yet, but there’s always gossip going around about who’s at war with who. One interesting development is the Privateer Alliance, consisting of a bunch of pirates who are ambushing members of the most powerful corps wherever they can. They use a lot of guerrilla tactics and are very difficult to deal with.

16

Oh and if you want to read a tale of truly Machiavellian proportions, here is an interview with the Eve player known as Istvaan Shogaatsu. In short, his agents infiltrated the Ubiqua Seraph corporation over the course of a year, gained positions of high authority, then simultaneously assassinated the CEO, stole 30 billion ISKs worth of corporate assets, and destroyed much of the rest.

17

How does EvE solve the problem of dominance by hardcore players?

18

Lets hope so!

My old corp joined -5- shortly before they lost all their space to the Red Alliance. We moved to another region and helped form another alliance (Lotka Volterra). We were doing pretty well holding off, and at one point almost destroying, the Red Alliance while becomming one of the leading industrial alliances in the game. Then the Goons got involved and by simple numbers alone overwhelmed us (and the servers). Now we are split, some left LV to join pro-BoB forces in FATAL alliance, some are remaining in our old territories, trying to cause RA/GOON pain.

The universe is definetly changing, as it has in the past and as it always will. By it’s very nature EVE online will always have the most meaningful PvP. As painful as it is wonderful. We finally lost the 2 year fight with the Red Alliance. The leading industrial alliance in the game was effortlessly wiped out by BoB, prompting a massive multi-alliance coalition to form with the sole goal of removing the BoB threat for good. Most large alliances have been forced to choose a side.

EVE definetly has the best idea (IMO) for world/galaxy changing PvP. Sadly, the implementation is starting to face some severe problems. In order to hold sovereignty over space you need to place and maintain large structures orbiting several moons. These take a while to destroy and results in massive grouping of the playerbase in order to attack/defend. Sounds good, unfortunatly the servers have really been struggling lately. The biggest threat to EVE Online is the lag that is gradually getting worse, making even some small scale engagements unplayable. Couple that with the massive war going on and there are dark times ahead.

And then there is the corp and alliance forum… Shudders…

I’ve not given up on my hope to kick RA’s arse. Once this war is over and the dust has settled I’ve no doubt we will be fighting each other again. After we wipe Dusk and Dawn off the map. (Or die trying).

Erm, anyway…

19

Eve runs with it. The hardcore players are mostly members of the big alliances battling out in 0.0 security (lawless) space. For people who aren’t interested in all that, there are plenty of things to do and money to be made in the civilized regions. You can be a miner, a hauler, a mission runner for NPC agents, a contractor for other players, a researcher, an industrialist, a scavenger, a commodities trader, and probably more things I haven’t thought of. Also, bigger ships are not necessarily better. Tactics are vastly more important. In general, bigger ships can mount more powerful weapons, but they move slower and the weapons are slower to track their targets. A frigate can quite literally fly circles around a battleship and not get hit if the pilot does it right. I haven’t done any fleet PvP combat, but combined arms theory definitely wins over brute force from what I’ve read. It can even be easier to train for specialized combat roles than for flying frontline ships. You could probably create a new character and fly, say, a long range missile or artillery frigate with a target painter (makes the target easier to hit) within a few days, if that.

20

I only read about the game, so I may be off.
Aparently titans are nigh unkillable

and they can cloak!

granted they SHOULD be the most powerful ships, but that seems extreme.

Brian