   tasks in freeform or mmos
  What else is there that could give more variety to the game than the typical mining, hunting, gathering?First, I want to define a few things before carrying on. I will define these ideas as they will be related to Sci-Fi games. It will take place both in space and on land equally. By that I mean it's not 99% space oriented but may have a majority of players who can't fly ships. While some of these ideas can be transfered to a fantasy game, some may not as easily.Military people are easy to satisfy. They are in the military to fight so that is what they'll do. What I would like to change is what "civilians" do to advance in the game. Something extra to the typical mining, hunting and gathering that is available right now.Here are some ideas that I thought up. Ship repair is difficult to do and that businesses could revolve around just repairing other people's ships. Skills will be given to mechanics to do the job much faster than a pilot could do the job. (Obviously thought has to go into making this worthwhile and interesting.)Ship tweaking might also be a separate profession. This would be the equivelant of enchanting in fantasy games. This is quite different than the actual repair of ships. While most games have items that can be placed in ships to boost performance, tweaking goes one step farther and makes manual settings of each part to help boost performance. As an example, lets say the player installed a booster engine. They can set a number of values to that booster engine if they so desire. The default values are safe to use but lets say there's an overdrive setting available. If they set the overdrive to 10 from a value of 1, they get a significate boost of speed. But negative effects of it could occur. An expert tweaker may know that a setting of 7 is actually the optimal as it has the least negative effects on the rest of the ship. And this is only the beginning. Tweaking could be a profession all of itself.Politics are starting to be introduced into these games but it's a relatively new class. Basically these people will have the ability to influence and change the area they control. We all know what the slimy, power hungry politians do anyway right? ;)Griefers. I want to actually include these people into the games. I won't make it easy but if they so desire to grief, they still can... cause they will anyway. Some games do this by just increasing the bounty on these players to rediculous amounts. I'd include these people by making it next to impossible to live in safe zones. There are few areas where they can truly be safe as a griefer and that it is up to the army or police (who will have much more firepower then griefers ever can) to make sure they stay there.Some unique classes i have thought up:Journalist. I don't know how popular this class will be. But even if only 10 people in a million actually choose this class, then it will be worth it. They will be given rewards for producing the best news coverage. Either as individuals or as a company, they produce some sort of newspaper either each day, each week or whenever they feel like it. The actual players of the game can then read it. Once read, the author gets a minor payment for that reading. So the more popular the newsarticle or newscast, the more money the journalist can make. They may even get help from the developers to report on new changes to the storyline. Basically this class will be in place to give the players the ability to emerse themselves even more into the world.Investigator. One way a business can advance is through illegal means. They could use slaves in their factories, steal from and blackmail other companies... all of which must be kept in a log. The investigator's job is to ensure that all businesses run a legal business. They can walk into a business and check the logs of the company... the company can then try and protect it's logs by hiding or placing decoy log computers for the investigator to find. If anyone has played Evil Genius, placing decoy rooms is sort of the same idea. I'm sure these last two could use some work but it's a start at inspiring a whole new approach to what players do in mmo's or freeform.
  I guess one of the reasons I'm making this post is that I would like to make / see a game that doesn't have any aspect of grinding to it. That there is enough action in the game that it doesn't have to distract you with gaining levels. It will allow players to just jump into the game and almost immediately start doing what they wanted to do regardless of how much time they spent to get there. I want to focus most of the restrictions around players towards the actual skill they have at playing the character than how long they play the character. So I guess i'm wondering what would be enjoyable as a task? or a longer term job.   ;Quote:Original post by trapdoorI guess one of the reasons I'm making this post is that I would like to make / see a game that doesn't have any aspect of grinding to it.I think that this is the million dollar question, when it comes to MMO games. I don't know that anyone can give you the crystal clear answer that you're looking for, I would suggest this for reading http://www.itu.dk/op/papers/bartle.pdf. Other Players also has some other papers that you may find interesting/helpful.But what I get from Richard Bartle's paper:What needs to happen is to look beyond the “answers” back to the original question and ask ourselves is it a question that should be answered or more how can we change the nature of the question.;  *I can’t sleep so I’ll expand on my earlier post, since this is a subject that I have spent a lot of time thinking about in general.*(btw, if my above statement is a little to zen bs for anyone. I’ll restate it in the ageless parental/teacher question of: If everyone else is jumping off a bridge, are you going to jump too?)Quote:I guess i'm wondering what would be enjoyable as a task? or a longer term jobWhy do we have/need jobs/tasks? (IMHO there are two probable original questions/thoughts to this answer, but I’m sure there is others)A: Add value to the game over all by allowing players to producing something that isn’t found or available from NPCs.B: A time sink for the players to do while not in combat.Now that we have the original, we can look at both parts together and evaluate it.A: Typically in game world players only want the best items. If a player isn’t the best at their craft, people will often pass them over for the “best” (even if what they need/want can be handled by a lower level person, only to dismay of some the “best” since they can/will be overwhelmed). This often leads grinding so that a person is the “best”. There might not be a good solution to this, but it is something to consider.B: What's in a name? That which we call a time sink by any other word would take just as long. ( Yes I’m strange, but it amuses me. [wink]) If it is only for the sake of a time sink, maybe think of more amusing time sink. Given your setting, a gambling hall/den could be a workable idea. Not only for sake of making/losing money, but a place to meet other players and socialize/network. Strip clubs, but this clearly this is dependant on your target market and rating.That’s all I have for the time being, now to try to get some sleep. [smile]   