Sierra Kilo

What someone needs to do is create a setting and story arc, but allow player actions to help create the auxiliary content. This could be as simple as enabling player-vs-player (PvP) strife, or as complicated as players actually generating new content.

When Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) was announced, there was talk of player bounties. A player could contact a bounty hunter and pay him to hunt down and capture/kill another player. This would have done 3 things. It would have created content for the bounty hunter players, allowing them to use their character’s skills to track and subdue their mark. It would have required marked players to avoid certain areas, making them change some of their routine. It could have also allowed the person who created the bounty to become a mark, themselves. There are certainly designs that would have facilitated this without causing too many problems. Unfortunately, the idea was cut down considerably, taking alot of the player aspect out.

Another idea I’ve had for a while is allowing players in a fantasy-type setting to create mineshafts while they mine for ore. This would create caverns in various parts of the world. I actually mocked this idea up in a basic form in a test MUD (text-based MMO that stands for Multi-User Dungeon). The player would type “mine east” with a pickaxe in his hands. In a certain room type, each wall had a value for how much mining had taken place there. When that value reached a certain point, a new room would be created in that direction. There were also chances that a room would cave-in, causing damage and sealing off parts of the mine. The really cool part to this was that rooms that were of the “mine” type would spawn certain creatures. The thinking was that goblins or kobolds would find a mine and inhabit it as their base. So, essentially, the player was creating dungeons for the system. The system would determine the difficulty level (based on the average level of the players that visited) of the creatures it spawned. It was an attempt to create a dynamic system to keep players from being bored.

Anyway, by placing tools in the players hands to make their own mark on the world, players will gain a sense of ownership and stay around for years to come. That’s a very important piece of the puzzle that hasn’t quite been done yet.