Fantasy themed eve online

So not a new idea but over the weekend I started to think about a version of this with some twists and looking for some assistance in a couple areas.

Specifically I'm looking for some more ideas around the land ownership and how to design that the best. Still unsure on the best route there The larger goal here is create a massive world, that's a selling point. Larger then anything else out there. That and the maintenance mechanic, would love more ideas on that.

I've been toying with the idea of letting players run their own servers and connecting them all in a huge distributed network, which is a working feature on the server side, but I keep running into the same issue. Which is that I can't think of a realistic way to allow for meaningful local modifications that wouldn't pose technical and security issues that pretty much override any benefit. But I like it as a selling point so I'm not throwing it out yet.


Ok so picture eve in a medieval fantasy setting, that's the base.

Land ownership
I'm still debating on the mechanics here. I want the world to basically grow as the player base grows, but there are a couple of ways I could do that. My first thought is that you purchase the game and you get assigned a parcel, it comes into existence at the time of purchase and gets updated in the world map. The other way I was thinking is that the world is static and all the parcels are there, but on purchase you get a claim ticket to claim a parcel. There I'm still thinking of whether you can just go claim one of your choice or if it's assigned. One way or another the new player experience of getting to your parcel shouldn't be too difficult.

Some parcels are more valuable then others, some much more. You never know what you will get as a new player or when you purchase one. Parcels have different types of resources, they might be in a region controlled by an existing alliance. I want ownership to have value but at the same time it's not forever yours in all respects. It can be conquered, although forcibly taking a parcel has drawbacks and the owner still has some yet to be decided rights. You can freely buy/sell parcels on the market. The mechanics of ownership is pretty vague right now. I almost want the appearance of ownership without actual ownership. You should be able to lose what you have, but still have some benefit of ownership that can't just be taken away immediately or easily.

Alliances
Alliances can be formed to take ownership of multiple parcels, which provides additional benefits both in terms of being able to protect parcels and probably economic as well.

Maintenance
Another twist I want to do is kind of novel but serves a purpose. Where in eve you have to login every now and then to keep skill training, in this game you have to keep a program running. When playing the game this program is basically embedded, but on mobile it's a separate app. I'm still undecided on if skills train over time, but land ownership is tied to this. Ownership is like an energy bar that refills quickly and drains slowly. It's this program running that refills it. If the bar for a parcel goes to 0 you lose the parcel. And while the program is running you get some extra benefits, and it probably keeps some npc's running on your parcel that offer some protection or are harvesting resources for you.

Regions & travel
For the world itself I'm thinking mostly water. Most of the parcels will actually be islands. In eve you have space here we have water. In eve you have space combat here you have naval and land battles. One reason for islands is that it's just easier to create the content. Plus, the world is huge and I want it to be on the scale of eve. Travel to other parts of the world when not using fast travel could take days.

Travel I'm thinking of just copying eve. Controlling territories in eve works because of star gates, they are chokepoints that you have to use to get to connected systems so if you control those you control the whole region pretty much. I'm thinking of just having special islands for this, where you can travel quickly between them.

Also like eve there will be some safe regions, but all parcels are in unsafe areas. Alliances can make travel 'safer' by simply controlling chokepoints into a region.

Metagame
A big part of the metagame is building. Parcels will be fairly big actually, usually whole islands that give you enough room to spend hours building structures, docks, roads, etc.. The building system is something I already have in place so I'm leveraging that here.

Overall the metagame is about controlling territory and resources. Alliances allow for controlling large parts of the known world.

I want it to be entirely possible for a new player to get a parcel that is in some area controlled by an alliance, but with straight forward options for what to do. Ideally it might even be a benefit to getting a parcel like that. Say if you can fast travel to a parcel from any gate in the region, then you could sell your parcel to an enemy alliance that would find having a base in another alliance's territory useful. And alliances would have to keep an eye out for new parcels popping up in their region. So as a new player if you get a good parcel in a region controlled by an alliance, you might be able to trade it for something even better or just get a large chunk of cash.

Combat
Combat is standard 3rd person mmo style, both land and sea. More of an emphasis on group combat, with lots of aoe damage but no targeting of limbs or anything like that. Combat is more strategic then twitch both on a small group level and large scale battles.


Content
I'm very focused on taking advantage of mechanics and designs that make a game like this doable for an indie. IMO content creation has to be cost effective. The world made mostly out of islands with large areas of water was largely driven by this goal. Art style I'm still trying to find the right mix of what works well and has the most content available on the asset store that I can either use directly or modify/adapt.

 

I'm assuming land parcels abutt other land parcels as new players start so that everyone has at least one neighbour & the land in the centre of the map belongs to the longest players. This raises the question of balance in that more recent players have less neighbours but have to travel through a lot of other players land parcels to get to the other side of the map whereas the older, stronger players have less distance to travel to get to the weaker, newer players.

Also, what happens to land parcels when players stop playing? Do they fall into disrepair? Can other players lay claim to them? If so, what happens if/when that player comes back to the game after a long holiday only to find all their stuff is gone & potentially any real $ they spent in the game is lost? Or do they hold that land parcel indefinitely in which case what do you do if they never come back to the game?

Eve is operating in 3D space so you can have neighbours on all planes, if you use islands you are limited to neighbours being on a 2d plane I.e. You can have neighbours next to you, Eve can also have them above you, below you etc

 

Ya I thought about that problem of how the parcels are distributed over time, new players potentially having to go long distances. Still not sure on the right solution there but I'm leaning towards just adding some hubs as the game expands. Those would be manually placed and then new parcels would be handed out near those hubs. Hubs would always be relatively safe.

I don't see how ownership can really have meaning in this game if you are absent. Life is rough, you either show up or you lose out and that's part of the way I want the game to be. Plus I can't think of a good way to make a piece of land useful if you just abandon it, I don't want there to be large tracts of land that are wasted space. Maybe one way to tackle this is that if you lose your land, you get back a claim ticket you can use to go get another parcel. So you are never completely without a parcel. But if you lose your parcel in combat, I'd have some kind of time limit on claiming another one.

If you lose your parcel then yes there would be a mechanic for other players to claim it.

 

I suppose you could swap them out for an island used by a new player & if they come back then you just whack them randomly in a place. You could always have earthquakes/volcanoes that shift islands around, cause damage, & create new islands

 

Is this an ideas thread?
Eve if its not, no I wouldnt play it. Despite the fact that, for me, eve is nothing to do with spaceships (hence why Star Citizen is NOT an EVE killer) other than for a theme, I dont like fantasy, so I'd pass

 

What is the core of your game? What is the player actually doing, on a minute to minute basis?

 

Minute to minute gameplay would be a lot like Life is Feudal, but with more of a purpose as there is actually a larger metagame.

 

The issue is that people have a very small view of EVE onlines history.
The way that eve formed was completely organically. Before eve had factions and wars and politics, despite the functionality being there, it was choas. For how long, a week, a month, a year? About 4 years of utter chaos. Fifth year, people making small clans of about 30 people, and fought together. The came the politics, and the wars, and the economy, it all grew with the players gradually and organically.
This is why games that want what eve has now dont work. Because without the organic growth, it just collapses, and with the organic growth, players go into the game expecting massive politics, they dont get it, and they leave.
Sadly, a game like eve can only happen by accident.

 

I do agree with what you are say, but there could be ways to speed up the process of banding theatergoer, reward groups more than individuals. Althought the proccess may come out quite stail

 

You hit the mark at the end there, you can encourage it, but it never works perfectly, and of course the big issue is the players expect it to, when you say its like eve

 

The eve comparison was to give some base context not as an exact comparison or how it would be marketed.

It doesn't even make sense to try and copy everything from a single game when making a game like this. There are always lessons to be learned, I doubt CCP would do it the same if they had to do it over.

The games I'm looking to pull gameplay ideas from are Life is Feudal for the building/creation part, GW2 for the minute to minute combat, and eve for the larger economy. And again not just blindly copy them but pull what works within the context of all 3 combined. Most definitely there would be more goals to guide players. Look at how players latched onto the server vs server metagame in GW2. For this game it's going to be something between eve and that, with some elements of each.

Right now I'm actually sitting on all the tech and most of the gameplay systems already implemented to pull this off. If I had an artist and a modeler I could probably get a functioning prototype out the door within a couple of months. Getting the gameplay right would take longer, but on the technical side I've done all the hard work already.

 

But this is what Im saying. Eve only has a large economy, and therefore politics, because of its organic growth. If you had said 'Eve for its player control mechanics', that'd be alright, as thats developer made not player made

 

maybe you could start with some form of AI controlled economy ( for example that is what they are hoping to achieve with star citizen (I believe)). Then pull back the amount of AI as your player base grows,