Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
MMO Where You Control A Family Instead Of An Individual?
4507
Member UncommonPosts: 351
In virtually every MMO on the market, you control a single character who we can only assume is an only child orphan. The upcoming Chronicles of Elyria gives you a family, but still only gives you control over one of its members. What I think would make a great game concept, and has never, as far as I know, been tried, is giving the player omniscient control over an entire family.
You'd start off as a husband and wife pair, whose first names and surname you'd chose in character creation, as well as their respective attributes (strength, intelligence, dexterity, etc). You could then play as either one, freely switching between the two while the other remained in the game world as an NPC set to some task you can choose in a family management menu (for example, you could set one to gather lumber from a nearby forest while you're off adventuring with the other. The character you control would gain triple XP but would otherwise not be different). Additionally, at random time intervals you would produce children, who, although requiring you to have one of their parents assigned to raising them, mature quickly and soon become new playable members of your family with attributes and appearance intermediate between their parents. These children would also start producing children of their own once married to another player's family member of the opposite gender, with control of these children passing to the player whose surname the couple adopted upon marriage (decided between the two players, likely with the player not gaining control of the resulting children compensated in a dowry/bride price).
This process is endlessly repeated to slowly grow the size of your family, while deaths due to aging, plague, and combat (the game would have character permadeath) counteract the growth process. With large families, you could specialize your family members in a certain production sector (e.g. armour smithing) and have them mass-produce equipment, build a merchant empire by setting up player-run shops and supply lines staffed by your family members, contribute to the defence of the player-run kingdom of which you're a part by having your family members train combat and act as guards/soldiers (this would also allow massive battles of thousands of men between kingdoms since most likely only the commanders would be controlled by humans, ready to jump into a nearby family member upon death), etc.
In fact, I think this could finally make a successful game without any NPCs whatsoever (aside from mobs and livestock) possible. What do you think? Has this been done before? Would you play this?
You'd start off as a husband and wife pair, whose first names and surname you'd chose in character creation, as well as their respective attributes (strength, intelligence, dexterity, etc). You could then play as either one, freely switching between the two while the other remained in the game world as an NPC set to some task you can choose in a family management menu (for example, you could set one to gather lumber from a nearby forest while you're off adventuring with the other. The character you control would gain triple XP but would otherwise not be different). Additionally, at random time intervals you would produce children, who, although requiring you to have one of their parents assigned to raising them, mature quickly and soon become new playable members of your family with attributes and appearance intermediate between their parents. These children would also start producing children of their own once married to another player's family member of the opposite gender, with control of these children passing to the player whose surname the couple adopted upon marriage (decided between the two players, likely with the player not gaining control of the resulting children compensated in a dowry/bride price).
This process is endlessly repeated to slowly grow the size of your family, while deaths due to aging, plague, and combat (the game would have character permadeath) counteract the growth process. With large families, you could specialize your family members in a certain production sector (e.g. armour smithing) and have them mass-produce equipment, build a merchant empire by setting up player-run shops and supply lines staffed by your family members, contribute to the defence of the player-run kingdom of which you're a part by having your family members train combat and act as guards/soldiers (this would also allow massive battles of thousands of men between kingdoms since most likely only the commanders would be controlled by humans, ready to jump into a nearby family member upon death), etc.
In fact, I think this could finally make a successful game without any NPCs whatsoever (aside from mobs and livestock) possible. What do you think? Has this been done before? Would you play this?
Comments
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
A sims style game with a fantasy or medieval setting would be interesting though and hasn't been done yet to my knowledge.
Not MMOs, but sims style in a fantasy or medieval setting
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Furthermore, if it were implemented in a hardcore sandbox environment (as I think it should be), interdependence and player interaction would be natural consequences of players being forced to band together and create kingdoms composed of many families for defence against both other player kingdoms and AI threats (rogue dragons, viking raiding parties, zombie-like plagues, etc). Basically, think Life is Feudal without the grindiness and emptiness.
You would, yes, run into fewer players than NPCs, but that's how it works in almost every existing MMO anyway, and in this system each NPC has been assigned their present business by a real player who has the capability to take direct control of the NPC if they so choose (perhaps there could even be a 'request player' feature when communicating with NPCs that gets sent to their player's currently controlled character) - even selling garbage to vendors would be a contribution to the player economy, because each trash vendor is controlled by a real player who has a legitimate business plan to recycle your trash into economic product.
I would be happy if devs can give us a game that odes the ONE character idea really well.How much of gaming mmorpg's is about your character beyond the slider screen and tattoos?
After you leave the original creation screen,most of these games are more worried about taking your hand and showing not YOUR path but one they have laid out for you.Actually this dilemma is going on in all sorts of genres,nobody is allowed to think or move for themselves,everyone has to play follow the leader.
I just sum it up by calling it OPEN ended gaming.So to even imagine some developer could give you the tools to play more than 1 really well,is like lol,just give me one for now.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Aloha Mr Hand !