Trasak said:Next idea, its been done in other games but I thought it would be worth posting.
Tool: Gift Wrap
Purpose: A way to give an item to another player with the item being disguised until the receiving player decided to "unwrap it".
Game Mechanics: Work an item at a specific gift wrapping work station, supplying some minor ingredients, to produce a boxed item. It would be nice if you could put a to and from note on the box.
Possible incentives: A fairly simple little mechanic to add to the fun of in game gift giving.
Trasak
As minor and silly as this seems, I would love to see this. I love giving gifts in game and being able to wrap them up before hand would be all the more amusing. ^_^
Tiskaa said:As minor and silly as this seems, I would love to see this. I love giving gifts in game and being able to wrap them up before hand would be all the more amusing. ^_^
There have been tons of simple tools like this made throughout the game industry I certainly haven't seen all of them. I did enjoy this one for basically the same reason you do so I added it to the list.
Tool: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Fashion designer
Purpose: A tool that allows players to assemble a combination of under layers and over layer models, color maps, design appropriate texture maps, grunge layer transparency settings into a “Design Pattern”. That pattern becomes a component of a player crafted item and may require extra ingredients based on the changes from the default item pattern.
Game Mechanics: As a function of the crafting system each item will have a default skin. A crafter that has mastered crafting an item has the option of going to a “Design Station” to create a “Design Pattern”. Each item will be either an equipped item or a world item (world items will be mostly furniture for after housing is implemented). Equipped items will have item slots and armor/weapon proficiencies. These combinations will dictate which physical models can be selected, note that certain chest items will over write the skins of other worn items. The base materials and secondary components will dictate which color maps, texture maps and transparency layers can be selected.
Each recipe has a list of appropriate 3d model skins, hopefully a combination of bottom layer base material and second layer details can be combined to make different looks. The base layer and each of the details will then individually have optional color maps, patterns, textures and luminosity that can be set. Once the total design is done the pattern is saved and becomes a style item that the crafter can create and either make items with or sell to other players with the appropriate skills to make.
Long term it would be great if new Base models, physical details and color pallets could be discovered based on the characters playtime experiences and item salvaging. There is also the possibility to create a tool that will allow you to create your own color maps to make truly unique looks.
Possible incentives: This will allow players to modify their own looks without sacrificing too much power and will create the possibility for specific item crafters to become known based on their stylish designs.
This one may be a little controversial based on wanting named items to be unique and recognizable. I think the truly unique items will still have obvious identifiers and could have skin options that cannot be duplicated by player crafted items. Alternatively it may be neat to be able to recognize that a player crafted item was made by salvaging a recognizable unique.
Tool: Montage maker
Purpose: A tool that allows players to create their own synthesized musical assemblies and play it within the game.
Game Mechanics: First this will need a user control to “listen” to a specific player, or group, or raid group (full orchestra) otherwise there will be no sound projected. Lots of different people performing in the same location would be really annoying if you could not single out what you wanted to hear.
I could see the tool working in two ways. The first way would be the “player piano” style where a full composition is just played in a general area, once housing is in it could be set as the background music of a person’s house. The second method would be “performance” style where each player equips a musical instrument and then activates a sheet of music to play a song on that instrument.
First off I am not a music theorist so I am going to use lots of wrong terms and butcher what is one of the highest forms of human art with my engineering logic. First step is that western music has 12 even intervals per octave and a standard piano has 88 intervals/keys. Each note is then the same wave form but at different frequencies based on which interval is played, Middle C is 440 hz. A single wave form can be recorded for a string instrument, a wood wind, a brass and a drum (there may be more base wave forms both in western and other music styles). Different instruments then have different natural frequencies that effect the resonance of those wave forms (signal noise) and dampening (treble effect).
In “player piano” style when you select an instrument sound you can select the wave form, the signal noise and the dampening. In “performance” style the instrument the player is holding dictates the output waveform. Bonus points if instruments can be found or crafted to have specific sounds so it becomes something to collect and intentionally use.
The second half after creating the wave form is creating the sheet music to trigger the notes. First you set a tempo i.e. the number of bars of music per minute. Then the time signature, the number of whole notes per bar. Next you create the actual sequence of intervals by selecting them on the 88 note scale and setting the duration of each note and any rests between notes. In “Player Piano” mode you can load any number of instruments and attach a sheet of music of the same length to each instrument then play the combinations of sounds together. In “performance” mode you equip an instrument then “read” a sheet of music then trigger to start playing the music. If you are in a group then the group leader can trigger everyone at once and if in a raid the raid leader can start and stop the entire raid.
This may be a super silly and slightly overly in-depth tool that may sound terrible no matter how hard you try to make it sound good but it could be funny. Bonus points if the raid leader can control the tempo of the group and the amplitude of specific instrument groups on the fly.
As you might guess from this and my previous tool I have been spending a lot of time this spring helping with local musical theater which made me think of the idea of in game performing arts which is an interesting cross section of human expression.
Tool: Scene Quick change stage
Purpose: A tool that allows players to place world objects on a stage, including possible backdrop image items, save the location of those objects and store them then return them to position.
Game Mechanics: This is another offshoot of both player housing/buildings and the carpentry crafting skill. A building contains a “Stage” area. Items can be placed on the stage area and arranged while the edit stage mode is active. The positions of all the items can be saved as a scene. All the items become part of the stage inventory but can be reused for multiple scenes as only one can be active at a time, any items not on stage during that scene stay in the stage storage. The number of items that can totally be part of the stage inventory and the maximum number of scenes that can be saved would be up to the developers and might be a function of how expensive the stage was. Bonus points if interior light settings could be added to the scene controls for the entire “theater room”.
This could be a specific stage area or it could be a function of each room within a building. If it were for each room in a building then players could spend a great deal of time perfecting the layout of their house and save the configuration but then when holidays came around they could decorate as they see fit without the worry of not being able to get their house back to how they wanted it to be.
This next one I know is a bit of a departure from the current game direction. I will try and spell out the pros and cons of the system as I see it and maybe that will stir up some good ideas.
Tool: Item Repair and Item Refurbish
Purpose: (Item Repair) Crafters with the appropriate skills can restore an item to its current maximum durability with the chance of lowering the maximum durability relative to the crafting skill of the player and the items level. (Item Refurbish) A crafter with the appropriate skill can consume appropriate raw materials to return a damaged item back to its original maximum durability.
Game Mechanic (Item Repair): A crafter with the appropriate skill ranks will be able to use tools of their trade out in the field to return an item to current maximum durability with a chance to lower the current maximum durability. Special tools, consumables and skill mastery much higher than the item being repaired can reduce the chance of degrading the current maximum durability.
Game Mechanic (Item Refurbish): A crafter with appropriate skills can refurbish an item with lowered maximum durability. The crafter needs to use a full location based crafting station, relevant consumable materials and an amount of raw material that match the damaged item proportional to how much the maximum durability has been decreased. The results of refurbishing an item will have a slightly variable result based on relative crafter skill level, extra consumables used and chance. The item could be brought to over 100% of the initial durability allowing it to take more durability damage before it drops into the 90% effective range.
The raw materials to refurbish will be found in the same general area that the item dropped from. An example would be that the standard weapons dropped by the npc guards could be salvaged to get the raw materials needed to repair the Kings magic sword or be mined in the hills behind the castle.
Game Mechanic (Item Durability):
All items, other than class specific quest rewards, are tradable and have a maximum durability. An item functions at full power when at a durability of 75-100+% of the initial maximum durability. From 25%-75% of the initial maximum durability an item functions at 90% of its full power. From 1-25% an item is only at 50% of its full value. At 0% an item becomes ruined and can then only be salvaged for the raw materials required refurbish the item or a portion of the materials required to craft it.
Benefits of the Durability/Repair System:
In a game where nearly all items are tradeable it will not take long for the market to become flooded with items. Due to that items that are very powerful must also be very rare to avoid mudflation over time, even then it is only a matter of time before even very rare items are readily available. When there is a ready supply of “free” monster dropped items the demand for expensive crafted items drop unless they are near best in slot items, which in itself is a form of power creep. The only crafts that have continual applications are those that create consumable items that are needed in standard play.
By introducing item durability, repairing, refurbishing and salvaging ruined items you add an organic cyclical nature to the number of items in the game. This cyclical item inventory moves crafting from a fringe source of items to the cross roads of the flow of items through the game. Every character will use items from multiple different crafts and therefor will need to interact with other players in order to maintain their equipment.
More common items with more common raw materials will be much easier to maintain as the raw materials will be much cheaper and more readily available. It may even make sense to have a crafter make a new replacement item rather than repairing the original item similar to the concept of deciding to repair a car after an accident or to total it. Items with very expensive 2ndary materials, lucky crafting results, or non craft able items that only rarely drop from rare mobs would always be worth refurbishing regardless of the raw material cost.
Rare material items may be horded in order to have material on hand to maintain even more valuable items rather than selling them to other players. This would also make a player decide if it was worth equipping their best equipment when out adventuring. While a characters mithril full plate is indeed best in slot for them the raw mithril is a pain to get and only a high ranked armor smith can safely repair it so it is only worth the expense of maintaining the items during raids. The rest of the time they will use a set of magic steel plate that is much easier and cheaper to repair and not that much worse than the mithril full plate.
Having items drop with very low current durability but a high initial maximum durability is a way to create natural crafting quests. Say that orcs occasionally drop dwarven bronze breastplates but at 5-8 out of 100 durability. You can sell the breastplates to a vendor/player for cash salvage the breastplate for a little dwarven bronze or have an armor smith refurbish the breastplate. The armor smith will need enough dwarven bronze that you would need to salvage 8-12 breastplates in order to have enough pure raw materials to refurbish the breastplate back to the designed maximum durability. It is possible that magical properties of the item will not be visible until after the item has been refurbish. The smith could use dwarven bronze from any source but if those nearly ruined breastplates are the only ready source then that would be the relative conversion rate as you lose a lot of material when salvaging. A side note is that it would only take about 4-6 5/100 durability breastplates to refurbish a 50/100 durability breastplate and would only require 2 50/100 to refurbish a 50/100 breastplate.
This system will also add a bit more prestige to equipping easily recognizable items as you are also declaring that you are able to maintain those high quality material items. Bonus points if there is a visual change to the skin of the items based on their current durability.
There are lots of other possible interaction with the item damage system including fights with things like rust monsters that damage specific types of equipment. The main down side to the durability system is that it is yet again another system to design and build as well as further complicating the item database. Some players may also not want a threat to their hard earned raid gear or the added character administration that maintaining items represent. Over all, especially considering the effect on crafting as a whole, I think a well-balanced durability system would be a true asset to Pantheon.
Back to a more light hearted, quality of life idea.
Tool: Rally Flag
Purpose: A personalized temporary in game object to mark a specific location.
Game Mechanics: A player can place a flag like object on the ground for a specific limited duration. Visibility of rally flags could be turned on or off via the user interface with selections of All on, Group leaders only, Group leaders with 4+ group members, raid officers, raid leader only or none. The rally flag could be an inventory item that you activate and ground target a specific location to place it.
The look and feel of the flags could be fairly customizable to include Guild symbols, House/Clan symbols, NPC factions, or wholly personalized symbol. The flag pole and base could also be customizable with maybe some way to indicate the purpose of the flag as well as a way to show off personal achievement trophies tided into the appearance or the optional appearances.
Possible incentives: Rally flags have many possible uses. In groups they can be a pull point for your wayward monk to return to. In raids they could be scatter rally points. In a market they could be a way advertise or locate yourself. They could be used as a method to help identify claimed camp locations. I could even see them as flags used to indicate locations for a player organized race.
Not a profound suggestion but I could see it being useful.
This idea is more a function of how players relate to each other and ways to belong to different subgroups.
Tool: Guilds, Guilds, and more Guilds
Purpose: In an MMO with sufficient population to be vibrant 24 hours a day it is impossible to know everyone and often easy to get lost in the crowd and feel disconnected from the community. Guilds are one way to make a smaller community where you can know everyone and learn to work together. Traditionally each character can only be part of one guild and each guild must decide what its purpose is. The standard guild is an Adventuring guild which is intended to focus on the combat side of MMOs and the more competitive adventuring guilds have very high standards for entry which can sometimes split you off from RL friends and family. The second type of guild is usually a friends and family guild, primarily it is a social construct where friends are able to easily communicate with each other and work toward common goals but not at the intensity of competitive guilds. In a few games there are also commerce guilds where trade skill people join together to be able to supply any item in the game and have a single point of sale for all their goods and a ready supply of raw materials. In PVP games there are also factional guilds that work together against other factions but this type of guild would only be relevant for alternative rules servers.
This proposal is to allow characters to be a part of one Adventuring guild, one household, one commerce company, and for PVP servers one warband.
Game Mechanics:
Adventuring guild: Adventuring guilds will be primarily focused on raiding and group content. The Adventuring guild system will have tiers of officers and possibly even sub guilds that are mechanically affiliated with a higher tier Adventuring guild. A general guild hall with a common storage along with a guild credit point system will be tied into raid attendance, item looting, item depositing into the common storage and other reasonable actions.
Households: Households can be considered families or clans and will not restrict what other groups one can be part of. Households will be able to link together player housing access and control rights as well as maintenance costs. Households will be great for pooling together all of your alts as well as your non combat focused friends and family. There are also plenty of opportunities to do tasks to increase the honor and prestige of your household. Households will have a head and elders who control access settings and make requests for items and give rewards based on individuals contributions. Merging a household into another household should be possible as well as flagging a household as a sub-household of a larger group.
Commerce companies: The exact structure of companies will depend a lot on how the mercantile system will work, how relevant trade skills are and the day to day needs of adventurers. Companies will once again have a joint warehouse where depositing certain goods will give credits and withdrawing other goods consume them. Individuals will be able to sell items from the storage at a price set by the depositor. The company will have a president, quartermasters, buyers, sellers, craftsmen and harvesters. At set intervals every member of the company will receive a set portion of the monthly profit. All this will be able to be done without much risk to the individual.
Warbands: I actually don’t know what exactly would be important in this group as I am not into pvp much. I am assuming warbands would be quite large and would involve being able to quickly respond to enemy attacks and organize in appropriate combat units. If any red players has any input please add it and I can flesh this out.
Trasak
Another little aspect that may have been mentioned but you could reward items for doing these so called help wanted quests. Doesn't always have to be monetary. Let's say you had a really nice 1h slasher and you recently upgraded it. You could sell it at the auction hall or you could pass it along to another person that wants to help you out by farming you some items that you need. This is under the assumption that items will not be bind on equip/pickup. It would still work on bind on equip items if you had something you won the loot rights to but didn't need.
It would be a way of getting rid of some items that you don't want to vendor because they are worth more than what the vendor will pay you. It will also keep people from having to tether themselves to the Auction Hall or whatever they decide to implement.
This would allow someone who has been out hunting and gathering up droppables to get something more for their effort. You could even add a couple of different items they could choose from. Then the others get returned to the person who placed the work order after it's been fullfilled. I'm not big on auction houses. I prefer to spend my time playing the game rather than working a market. This would cut out some of that auction house traffic.
Some of my fondest memories revolved around creating a family guild atmosphere. So anything that allows for a private invite party atmosphere meeting room would be great. Also, to add to this, meeting room idea.... when i possibly did dabble in PVP it was in The Arena in EQ1 with guildies while drinking ingame and out-of-game. So perhaps add an extra theater that is RSVP invite only for dabbling in PVP. This way you can play around and test stuff out while not getting grief.
This is a really good way to get ingame cash used up so it doesnt mess up the economy too much. Out of all the ideas i think invite only meeting rooms/areas is the best idea. This can be your player ran city with people set up to sell stuff to people attending functions.
So I just had an idea of what I think might be a fun encounter, A boss who is behind a wall of some sort, doesn't matter really, just that you cant reach the boss without paying a Toll of some sort. After you pay the toll the way is opened for you and everyone in your raid for a single entrance or perhaps a set amount of time, say 1 hour.
So now you have paid and you're in the unlocked area you then get to push through the area and fight the....I dunno, Greedy Goblin King lets say.
If you kill the GGK you get the toll you paid back plus whatever loot the boss drops. However, if you lose you die of course and you lose the toll you paid.
This is the interesting part, The GGK keeps the tolls of all who enter and fight him, so let's say that 5 raid groups attempt and fail on the boss and then you come in and beat him! Lets also say that the toll is 1k gold or whatever, so you get back your 1k gold plus his other loot, and the other 5k gold the other raids paid (in tolls) to attempt him but failed.
This running jackpot could get pretty large and awesome if the boss is hard to kill.
I think the GGK should be quite hard and always set to be hard for max lvl characters. Otherwise over lvled players would farm the jackpot for gold without it being a challenge.
I guess you could also fix this by restricting the lvl that can enter, but I don't think this would work as well as being max lvl at all times because lets say its set to lvl 30 and under, then if the jackpot got decent poeple would just twink their lvl 30ish to a crazy amount to go collect it. So max lvl is best IMO.
I would also add that the "wall" does not have to be an actual wall with a door in it, it could be a crazy wizard that opens a portal to the GGK or any other of the many many fun ways it could be done.
Also the toll does not have to be gold, it could be an Item you have to give the gatekeeper to enter, like a perfect diamond or something else of great value.
I look forward to hearing what this great community can add to this idea, whether it be positive or negative feedback, many minds are greater than One, together we can polish a rough idea into something ideal for Pantheon.
The Greedy Goblin King boss has kind of grown on me while I was writing this, so Long Live the GGK! (so his jackpot is big and awesome!)
I would also like to add that the GGK's jackpot getting large could be a good source of free publicity for Pantheon as I'm pretty sure it would be a first of its kind in an MMO and a (insert big number here) gold jackpot loot for killing a single boss would probably be a big draw to current players and potential ones. (at the time)
Tal
Moloka -
“Another little aspect that may have been mentioned but you could reward items for doing these so called help wanted quests.”
If the implementation is a text only no automated trade mechanic then items as a reward would be very easy to do and I think is absolutely a valid method. I could see it as a good way for a crafter to post his/her wares by offering a crafted item for a certain amount of harvested crafting materials needed. The biggest challenge I could see with making the quest board work for fetch quests is properly flagging the right item ID to solve the quest if you don’t already have one of the items to reference, even then the difference between a generic ID and a specific ID might be hard to differentiate.
Service quest are needless to say almost impossible to create a true mechanic and will only be able to operate on the honor system.
kreed99 -
“Some of my fondest memories revolved around creating a family guild atmosphere. So anything that allows for a private invite party atmosphere meeting room would be great. Also, to add to this, meeting room idea.... when i possibly did dabble in PVP it was in The Arena in EQ1 with guildies while drinking ingame and out-of-game. So perhaps add an extra theater that is RSVP invite only for dabbling in PVP. This way you can play around and test stuff out while not getting grief.
This is a really good way to get ingame cash used up so it doesnt mess up the economy too much. Out of all the ideas i think invite only meeting rooms/areas is the best idea. This can be your player ran city with people set up to sell stuff to people attending functions.”
Rentable spaces I think are one of the easier things to implement on this crazy thread and would likely have a pretty strong player consumption for the developer time Buck. I see this as something that could in theory be implemented along with initial city design and might not need to wait for the first expansion. The biggest reason I could see it tied into a near launch feature is if the city NPCs would occasionally hold events in these venues as well so the design time would not be wasted and any art objects made for NPC event could be part of the options for players to rent.
Talonguard -
“I look forward to hearing what this great community can add to this idea, whether it be positive or negative feedback, many minds are greater than One, together we can polish a rough idea into something ideal for Pantheon.
The Greedy Goblin King boss has kind of grown on me while I was writing this, so Long Live the GGK! (so his jackpot is big and awesome!)
Tal”
This is an interesting idea and could be a part of a certain set of challenge encounters. To steal part of an idea from my Tool: Player made challenge dungeons: E-sport all the players in the encounter area could be forced down to a level 30 generic build of their character. Any character level 30+ can participate at the same effectiveness. The encounter becomes purely a function of player skill and team coordination.
The biggest challenge with this is that it encroaches on the “story only instancing” that VR is targeting, though they have said they will use it when it is the best choice for something specific. Part of the Player made challenge tool was that the players were in charge of creating the encounter. It could be an added benefit of beating the Greedy Goblin King to help influence the next challenge configuration.
fazool said:DBG tried this and failed miserably......just sayin'
Fazool, could you provide a little more information? There are a lot of ideas in this thread at the moment and my previous post had three of them referenced. I definitely have not played all the games out there so there may be some good past industry history we could learn from, hopefully to fix the failures but possibly to abort the effort on unfixable ideas.
Trasak said:Fazool, could you provide a little more information? There are a lot of ideas in this thread at the moment and my previous post had three of them referenced. I definitely have not played all the games out there so there may be some good past industry history we could learn from, hopefully to fix the failures but possibly to abort the effort on unfixable ideas.
DBG created landmark specifically to have the player base create in-ghame assets. It was a terrible failure. A large difficulty was that it was overwhelming to moderate all the contributions for consistency and quality. Nothing is more immersion-breaking than traveling through a medieval fantasy city and stumbling upon a group of players putting on a Star Wars musical.
Go look what happened to Minecraft, The SIms, Second Life - they all degrade becuase player content erodes the integrity of the virtual world.
I think some of the social ideas here have some merit. Eq tried to have a for sale bulletin board and guild-recruiting bulletin board but no one really used them.
I think a communcation tool like a newspaper could be nice.
My objection is not to that (I love the help wanted idea). My objections is against player-created assets and player created quests and content.
fazool said:I think some of the social ideas here have some merit. Eq tried to have a for sale bulletin board and guild-recruiting bulletin board but no one really used them.
I think a communcation tool like a newspaper could be nice.
My objection is not to that (I love the help wanted idea). My objections is against player-created assets and player created quests and content.
I remember the EQ bulletin board and I never used it just as you said. But I ask myself "why did I never use it?" And it was not the idea, but the implementation,
And the #1reason being it wasn't portable. You had to stand right there. I don't have time for that! Give me a newspaper where I could browse it while waiting on or riding a boat or waiting for a mob to spawn or raid to get ready.
#2 reason was it was awkward to use.. no search or sort.. if memory serves me correctly they were like post-it's on the board and you just clicked one at a time randomly... it's no wonder nobody used it!
Make it easy to use and useful to fill downtime and I think more would make use of it.
fazool said:Trasak said:Fazool, could you provide a little more information? There are a lot of ideas in this thread at the moment and my previous post had three of them referenced. I definitely have not played all the games out there so there may be some good past industry history we could learn from, hopefully to fix the failures but possibly to abort the effort on unfixable ideas.
DBG created landmark specifically to have the player base create in-ghame assets. It was a terrible failure. A large difficulty was that it was overwhelming to moderate all the contributions for consistency and quality. Nothing is more immersion-breaking than traveling through a medieval fantasy city and stumbling upon a group of players putting on a Star Wars musical.
Go look what happened to Minecraft, The SIms, Second Life - they all degrade becuase player content erodes the integrity of the virtual world.
I never bought into Landmark. I never buy early access games and a company as big as SOE doesn't need/deserve my pledge money. I didn't link DBG to Landmark as the only thing I think DBG did to Landmark was shut it down.
All that being said I agree that player made in-game assets if left free reign can get pretty terrible. I had considered putting in a vetting process into the tool for quality controls but at the time I was just spinning ideas onto paper. Some of what I was thinking, depending on the tool, was more configuring already made objects and art styles with some specific sliders to create more unique buildings and the like.
There are a lot of challenges to having any 3d object be made within the game trying to run it so it may be more appropriate to have gray shaded solids that can have differing skins mapped onto it and the player can only really assemble the 3d objects and paint the skins. I could definitely see the need for a toggle for player created art being on or off for the reasons you stated as well. Possibly it could be a specific sensor list similar to the ignore list but only for art.
Back to Landmark though I though Landmark was a terrible failure because it was really only supposed to be a tool to create art objects that would be brought into EQ Next and was never meant to be a fully stand alone game. Again I never played it as the cost was stupid for what you got.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Trasak
FlushingToiletScream - I agree in concept but the details are critical.
There was a system in Neverwinter for players to make their own dungeons and vote on which the best ones were. Much abused because it was too easy to create content that was too easy and rewards that were too rich.
Players putting content in-game even under supervision - no thanks. We don't want leveling to get too easy or rewards to be trivialized. I know this isn't what you suggested I just want to emphasize what I consider very much needs to be avoided.
But submitting things to VR where they use their own judgment before anything whatsoever gets into the game - certainly if they think they would have time for this. Cannot hurt and can help. Especially once people get to level cap where traditionally MMOs lack enough content to keep players occupied and have to fall back on time sinks.
Not sure what you mean about player driven content. You mean the economy? Roleplay? Guild wars?
I'm all for a player driven economy though. While I'm not business man or financial person I like the idea that the community drives the economy. This was a huge appealing aspect for me when I first started playing EVE Online.
With EVE as an example the economy is relatively straight-forward. It's a simple cycle and really applies to all items produced in the game. Game has hundreds of various items, but they all follow the same steps.
The key thing here is the last step... items being removed from the game is what creates the demand. If no items are somehow removed from the game then you end up with item inflation where hundreds of the same item is added to the game / market and eventually saturates the market to the point where noone wants the items anymore, and thus all the previous steps to create the item become redundant.
Some things are constantly removed from the game, e.g. ammunition, consumable items (like planetary goods used to "fuel" stations") and so on.
Other things need to be removed manually, e.g. blow them up, break them down for resources et.c.
Having a system for breaking down items as part of supplying something else is a good thing though (typically called disenchanting). Doing that removes items from the game, which reduces inflation of items, which in turn means there will be somewhat of a demand and thus creates a demand for all the previous steps of gathering resources, refining, crafting and assembling things.
An important part of all this though is the fact that not everyone can do everything (in EVE that is). At least not without having either multiple accounts or a lot of time spent to skill up their characters. You might have spent time and effort into becoming a good miner for instance, but you lack the proper skills to efficiently build items, or to place multiple sell orders on the market at the better prices (various skills would increase how many orders you could place, while other skills would reduce the tax the stations would take for producing or selling items there).
The key for a player driven economy then is:
Items need to be removed over time for there to be a demand in the first place and to avoid saturation of the market.
Various stages for producing items should not be easily accessible for everyone (e.g. 1 character being able to do every single stage of crafting in every single craft in the game) in order for there to be a viable way to turn a profit for each stage.
Producing items should require large quantities of raw resources which would enable lower level players to be able to make some coin from selling resourcse without the market being saturated. An example here (from EVE) is the very common Veldspar ore which is refined into Tritanium minerals. The Veldspar ore is EVERYWHERE, very easily accessible and very easy for new players to mine. However newer players don't have the skills or the ships to mine vast amounts of this ore so they are unable to overflow the market. Simultaneously it requires massive amounts of tritanium to produce even the small ships like battlecruisers and battleships so there is always a huge demand for tritanium (which often gets bought up in huge bulk orders).
In other words, new players can always turn a profit from selling tritanium even if they are only a week old.
In MMO's you often find that whatever the new players are able to harvest or mine is already overflowing on the markets so they make no coin from it. Instead they can either try to do crafting with those items themselves, or simply not mine or harvest at all. Which sometimes leads to having to return to low level areas to mine/harvest later when you realize you didn't get your mining skill up high enough to get the items you need when you finally do start crafting.
Anyways.
Huge demand for low level items will create a healthy market for new players and keep the cycle of mine, refine, build, trade and destroy going.
Just my thoughts on player driven markets at least.
A lot of insights can be gleamed and examples transferred from EVE to a game like Pantheon. It doesn't have to be a huge economic model like EVE, but the basic principles that keep the EVE Online player driven economy going would still apply in a game like Pantheon. It's just a matter of taking a step away from the traditional MMO crafting model where you harvest 3 pieces of iron ore and the only thing you can use it for is to make a crappy iron sword that noone wants.
Alright I'll bite.
I'm not claiming credits to the idea as a whole. I'm giving my take on things here.
Tool: Players can put up a temporary shop anywhere safe, in the world.
Purpose: Allowing players to sell products where and when they want. Instead of using bulletinboards or auctionhouses.
Mechanic: The creation of that shop is in stages (3?).
1) First up, a small area is being perserved for the player's shop and other players can view the first stage (name of the shopkeeper, some boards and wood beams, and a timer to completion)
What the potential costumers can see; Player X is setting up shop here and will be selling at this very location in X-amount of time.
Player X does not have to be present during this stage. Interaction by other players with the shop/space is not possible.
2) Second stage, the shop is placed and the shopkeeper is "displaying" his wears.
What the costumers can see; Player X is supplying his shop and general images are displayed in the shop that explain what they are about to sell. The completion of this shop will be done in X-amount of time.
Player X does not have to be present during this stage. Interaction by other players with the shop/space is not possible.
3) The third stage, the shop is finished and the actual shopkeeper is present behind/near his shop. A timer will be displayed, showing how long this shop will be in display/remain standing.
What the costumer can see: The player X is present at its shop, the wears are displayed and rudimental interaction is possible as costumer with the shop. An icon displays how long the shop will be open.
Now for the explanation: Player Bob wants to sell things on route or in town at a location of his own choosings. He purchases or builds an item that allows them to set up a shop relating to what he's selling. The styles of shops can be:
a) General store: requires a lot of resources but one can put all different kind of resources on sale; harvest, subcomponent, armor, books, etc. This is the most expensive version of all stores.
b) Niche store: requires less resources then 'a)'. This can be, a shope purely selling one sort of goods. Harvestables, armor, weapons,potions/posions, magic, food, tradeskill-items.
With this consumable item in his inventory, he rightclicks to consume. The shop will automatically set up at his current location. This will take up a fix amount of time and can not be sped up. It can be aborted only by the owner of that shop. The shop, for example, will remain open for 10-20 minutes (don't shoot me on numbers). The shopkeeper will be standing at his shop for maximum that period of time.
While the first 2 stages of the shop are passing, the shopkeeper is able to move around the zone. And he's not required to stand there. The goal of these two prior stages, is to advertise locally that he will be selling goods there soon. So if he chose his location smartly, a lot of other players will pass his spot and view his shop taking shape. This is a kind of soft advertisement, players can view and return when the shop is near or fully active. The shop will display what kind of goods, the shopkeeper is selling and therefore if the players passing by are interested they will return.
The graphical settings: Different stores will have different appearances. The items being sold will not be on display directly, only when interacting with the shop itself on the third stage. But during the prior stages it will be visibly clear what kind of goods will be sold. Example: potion,posion shop: some general depictions of bottles and vials are displayed or possibly an iconic banner displays the style of shop. This can not be modified and will be the same throughout the entire world. This allows players to recognise the styles of shop all across the world.
The shopkeeper is about to open shop, as the automated shop is near to completion. Just before opening, the shopkeeper is able to preselect, which goods are for sale and what return he's asking for it (goods or mere coin). The players can now interact with the shop and see what the presets are. If they like it as it is, they can purchase straight away from the shop. If they want, they can choose to contact the shopkeeper and try to haggle.
When the duration of the consumable shop is over, the shop will dissappear. Prior to that a short message will display notifieing nearby players that this shop will close. Or a timer can count down near the shop can display that it's near to closing time. When the item/shop is fully consumed, the shop will dissappear and coin or trade goods will transfer into the shopkeepers inventory.
The shops themselves can be woodworking recipes or purchased privileges from a tradeskill/city faction.
Insentive: I see a lot of potential in this and mechanicwise it doesn't seem too difficult. It's quite similar to a trade or commission window. The reason of the stages seems clear as a way of advertising without the player themselves shouting around, it's more sublte but still very much visible. There is a good commercial opportunity here and it stimulates players to look around, inspect and interact with other players. There could be a very nice way to build an actual reputation as a shopkeeper.
What do you say?
Nice Barin, I was just thinking about this thread just the other day to see if I could come up with any more ideas to add to it. I have some refinements to old ideas but nothing too new. There are still many major game architectural questions that still haven’t been answered or even hinted about in the last year that would help guide the focus of this thread over all. Maybe after PA4 ends we might start hearing more?
Either way I like the idea of physical player stores over single point menu based auction houses.
Like player housing in general though the player stores end up running against the Open world VS Instanced player real estate. I favor local gated instanced neighborhoods/markets where you need to go through a portal (cleverly disguised with turns or blatantly magical transportation portals). The instances would house 25ish houses or 100ish merchant stalls. The markets would still need to have some form of menu based search tool otherwise you will never be able to find anything, but addresses only, no glowy light trails.
I think there may also be a possibility of tying your idea into the open world outpost idea VR has talked about in the past. Not entirely sure how either would work but constructing a trade outpost far from the cities that would need to be maintained and protected from monsters would be interesting. Especially if you needed to defend it for a while before it became active. There are lots of ways you could set up attracting NPC shop keepers or set limits on what can be bought or sold.
The idea of being a wandering peddler with a wagon is already pretty darn cool.
Tool: Master Architect
Purpose: The Master Architect is a tool intended to allow a player to design their own house through the uses of assembling modules once player housing becomes a game function.
Game Mechanics: A secondary design ui either in game, in client or externally through a VR website web app will be required to use this tool. The basics amounts to each building will be broken down into discrete units. For example the primary US discrete building unit is 4’x8’ and most designs are made to best utilize material with this in mind.
The footprint:
Undoubtedly the size of your building and your lot will depend on how housing is implement. This format is assuming that you will have an interior and exterior space to work with on a set lot size. First you would use a basic outline tool using lengths of discrete units or combined multiple discrete units to form your outside boundary.
The Exterior Walls:
Your walls will default be of the racial style of building allowed on your land with a drop down selector if multiple types are permitted. This style will be the source of colors and textures available as well as the colors and styles of accent architectural pieces. Each wall segment will be and extrusion above your footprint outline and below the outline will be a foundation extrusion. By selecting individual wall segments you can change the wall from plain to a door or a window. Multiple segments can be joined and modified together for larger features.
The interior walls:
Once the exterior is set then additional footprint lines for internal rooms can be created floor by floor following most of the same process for the external walls.
Stairs:
If your house is going to have multiple floors then you will need to place a stair unit on your first floor floor plan to extend the footprint extrusion up a level. There may be multiple versions of stairs that can be placed which will have different looks but to a higher level and a lower level.
Modified external profiles:
Each level, including the foundation, can be set at a different footprint than the base footprint but the available matching building units will be selective. In this way porches, balconies and arches can be possible if the building units are available.
Roof:
The roof will also match the racial styles available to the exterior walls and will represent the total footprint held at the peak point of the footprint.
Possible incentives: It takes a lot of time to create different styles of building and configurations. Not to mention that each person has their own creativity that can be drawn on. By having a relatively limited set of pre-renderd building blocks players will be able to do a significant amount of personal customization without falling into the quality control issues inherent to a fully free form block building tool.
Additionally as VR will technically have rights to all player created buildings then they will be able to utilize novel configurations in expansions to greatly speed up new content creation.
I was often accused of not playing EQ correctly. As I would just explore, talk and hang out, Looked behind every waterfall (Surefall Glade is my favorite). Search the whole floor of the ocean of tears (there aint crap down there only a shark or two. I don't know what that NPC guard was talking about in the EC, he was full of it.) I played /random 10 100 strip poker with my Wood Elf friend. Pretended to be a banker in the bank - a player did give me a 1 gp, also got a muffin once. I had a fall damage contest.
I like the idea of local chat "/say" when talking to friends. it allows other to jump into the conversation. I like concidering and inspecting people. Buffing noobs. Picnics, I been on a couple picnics.