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Xerihae · 09-02-2007, 07:11 AM

This is something I've been considering for years and have been thinking about again as my increased participation in the discussions here makes me want to start coding again (damn you all!).

Every MUD I've played at has had a static time period, or a couple floating around depending on what plane/area you were in. They also have no win conditions as it's a persistent world. Why is that exactly?

My idea is to create a game that shifts through four different time periods over the course of four years, basically one time period per year. You'd start off in a fairly primitive world with basic classes and races, moving on to the more familiar medieval-style world with an expanded range of classes and races, followed by a period of industrial revolution, and then the modern age. For each period you could create a basic story outline of events that could be changed by the players so the world developed according to what people did, and to get to the new time period a bunch of research would have to be done which would give players a chance to be the one who discovered something important. You could even have it so that if the research was not completed in time the time period went backwards instead of forwards if you wanted.

My thoughts on the benefits of this are that not only do you have something that can be "won" in a way and a chance for players to make their characters names go down in history, but it presents admins with plenty of time to develop things. Coders can start off with a relatively basic world and engine, and concentrate on advancing the engine over the year (in the background) and just make the B&B (Bug & Balance) fixes needed on the main world. It also gives players a chance to have a say in what comes next, which could be useful as there are any players out there interested in history and you may end up bringing them on board as consultants because of their greater knowledge of a particular time period and what sort of things you could end up putting in the game.

The bad points of this idea is that your game remains relatively static for a year until the time period changes, and how players do the research would need to be carefully considered to stop it from only ever being the people with copious amounts of free time that can be the ones who discover stuff. My thoughts on that would be to institute a "real time" research counter like the skill training on EVE, where research takes a set amount of actual time whether or not the player is logged in. You could link this to the games time system so a piece of research takes say 2 weeks to complete, which equates to 2 months in your game.

Anyway, I was just curious as to what everyone else thinks of the idea, as it's not something I recall being discussed on here before unless I just missed it!

09-02-2007, 07:11 AM	#1
Xerihae Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Name: Chris Location: Wolverhampton, UK Posts: 358	"Winning" a MUD? This is something I've been considering for years and have been thinking about again as my increased participation in the discussions here makes me want to start coding again (damn you all!). Every MUD I've played at has had a static time period, or a couple floating around depending on what plane/area you were in. They also have no win conditions as it's a persistent world. Why is that exactly? My idea is to create a game that shifts through four different time periods over the course of four years, basically one time period per year. You'd start off in a fairly primitive world with basic classes and races, moving on to the more familiar medieval-style world with an expanded range of classes and races, followed by a period of industrial revolution, and then the modern age. For each period you could create a basic story outline of events that could be changed by the players so the world developed according to what people did, and to get to the new time period a bunch of research would have to be done which would give players a chance to be the one who discovered something important. You could even have it so that if the research was not completed in time the time period went backwards instead of forwards if you wanted. My thoughts on the benefits of this are that not only do you have something that can be "won" in a way and a chance for players to make their characters names go down in history, but it presents admins with plenty of time to develop things. Coders can start off with a relatively basic world and engine, and concentrate on advancing the engine over the year (in the background) and just make the B&B (Bug & Balance) fixes needed on the main world. It also gives players a chance to have a say in what comes next, which could be useful as there are any players out there interested in history and you may end up bringing them on board as consultants because of their greater knowledge of a particular time period and what sort of things you could end up putting in the game. The bad points of this idea is that your game remains relatively static for a year until the time period changes, and how players do the research would need to be carefully considered to stop it from only ever being the people with copious amounts of free time that can be the ones who discover stuff. My thoughts on that would be to institute a "real time" research counter like the skill training on EVE, where research takes a set amount of actual time whether or not the player is logged in. You could link this to the games time system so a piece of research takes say 2 weeks to complete, which equates to 2 months in your game. Anyway, I was just curious as to what everyone else thinks of the idea, as it's not something I recall being discussed on here before unless I just missed it!