Ok, so I was thinking about the difference between players, and how certain people seem to prefer certain types of gameplay.  There are alot of people that want to kill stuff. Lots that want to farm. Lots that want to build. Lots that want to socialize. Lots that want to play the AH. Lots that want to lead and lots that want to follow.

So here is the thought. Take a fairly open game world and populate it with a decent capacity for farming and building.  Include a good variety of tools to build walls, buildings, bridges, vehicles (suitable to the lore of course), armor, weapons, elixers and food.  Include merchants to sell products made by the crafters (essentially an AH but each would only sell specific types of items) Players in this portion of the game can farm resources, learn crafting, build stuff, and vendor stuff. There isn't any killing unless it's to collect meat, and there is no quests except to gain experience from crafting or gathering so you can level up your crafting or gathering. This portion of the game is either F2P or B2P.

The other payment option (B2P or P2P) is the themepark portion. These players go out and kill all manner of ferocious beasts, gaining wondrous loot and buying all the wares of the crafters. They raid, they explore, they PvE, they PvP, etc. They also have the chance to collect rare materials (dragonscales, ettin hides, etc) that they can commision crafters to build into armor or weapons etc.

The split model allows for players to play the portion that they want, and isolating aspects of play from others. Nobody wants to be killed from some gank squad while they are mining an iron node. The F2P or B2P aspect of the crafting side puts more people into the development of the game world, improving the world for the people that are paying to play the themepark aspect.

thoughts?

I agree with the general idea, but IMO it needs some serious work.

First issue- are there seperate "clients"?

By that I mean is production a "facebook" game (more akin to farmville) while the combat handled through a standalone client.  Or are you leaning towards a singluar solution?  This doesn't sound important to most people, but it is a critical question.  Personally, I think that multiple clients is the way to go for a number of reasons I won't get into just yet.

Actually the answer to that question determines all the questionsand issues to follow.

Claire: Oh, we got both kinds. We got Country *and* Western.

I'm of the opposite viewpoint; I think games need to specialize more, and tune their advertising to reflect it, particularly to the non-target audience(s).

It's the trying to cover every type of player at once that's causing all of this player dissatisfaction.  So many people grab a new box for a game (because it's NEW) without bothering to examine the features for what might appeal to them before spending the cash.

Originally posted by ghstwolf

I agree with the general idea, but IMO it needs some serious work.

First issue- are there seperate "clients"?

By that I mean is production a "facebook" game (more akin to farmville) while the combat handled through a standalone client.  Or are you leaning towards a singluar solution?  This doesn't sound important to most people, but it is a critical question.  Personally, I think that multiple clients is the way to go for a number of reasons I won't get into just yet.

Actually the answer to that question determines all the questionsand issues to follow.

I was thinking multiple clients.

In response to Icewhite - the reasoning behind my thought is that so many people just simply want to contribute to building a world, so why not use that effort productively.  There can be a complete crafting and gathering metasystem that appeals strictly to the types of people that are interested in that sort of activity.  This actually takes work away from the developers, and breathes life into the core of the game. The entire structure of the sandbox gathering/crafting portion is in all essence allowing those players to build the environment.

The themepark portion is completely separate. They could essentially be sold as two different games, which they really are, they just share the same map. If the developers stole a page from GW2's book and used dynamic events, it would allow them alot of freedom for interacting with both sides. For example: Iron ore is mainly farmed withing a certain area. This area becomes overrun with rabid killer sheep preventing the mining of this commonly used material. With the crafters unable to access the nodes, the prices skyrocket and heroes are now spending an excessive amount to repair their gear. Heroes fight the horde and save the day, and their costs go down allowing them to get back to raiding and adventuring.

If I get what you mean correctly, it's something that doesn't even need different clients. Just a class role that determines what activities you can do in the first place, play a farmer or a soldier when you feel like it, whatevs.

The only reasoning for two clients would be to keep one playset from stifling the other, for examples, PvP trumping builders and traders through usurping claims and robbing people of goods. You simply couldn't have a game like that if you wanted to keep the current idea in focus, and it would seem like you'd need one client for players to build in, and another to mirror that world (and constructions), and then let the PvP element fight in and a tear it down. The latter aspect would have to feature instanced and reproduced maps after a time, though, as there is no way to rebuild on the map, just reseed it. Because of that, I would stick to a single client and just determine limits on what kind of PvP interactions can happen. Even something as simple as defined factions can protect players from themselves, but if that's not along the lines of this concept at hand, then consider only having event-based PvP. Like certain areas open up for FFA here and there, and then instanced group/solo battles joined from queues. World-PvP is a no-no.

Originally posted by GTwander

If I get what you mean correctly, it's something that doesn't even need different clients. Just a class role that determines what activities you can do in the first place, play a farmer or a soldier when you feel like it, whatevs.

The only reasoning for two clients would be to keep one playset from stifling the other, for examples, PvP trumping builders and traders through usurping claims and robbing people of goods. You simply couldn't have a game like that if you wanted to keep the current idea in focus, and it would seem like you'd need one client for players to build in, and another to mirror that world (and constructions), and then let the PvP element fight in and a tear it down. The latter aspect would have to feature instanced and reproduced maps after a time, though, as there is no way to rebuild on the map, just reseed it. Because of that, I would stick to a single client and just determine limits on what kind of PvP interactions can happen. Even something as simple as defined factions can protect players from themselves, but if that's not along the lines of this concept at hand, then consider only having event-based PvP. Like certain areas open up for FFA here and there, and then instanced group/solo battles joined from queues. World-PvP is a no-no.

The main reason I thought two clients is to use the F2P sandbox crafting/gathering to create a vibrant world which is active and everchanging. The sandbox players are seen gathering and building and changing the landscape with houses, buildings and walls. They are seperate from the themebox heroes and essentially work like manned NPC's as far as the other client goes. They can't be killed, or trifled with but they can still chat. This would be substantially different then how the themepark players gameplay would be like, so I assumed seperate clients would be the best solution.  

The other thing is that there is no direct selling between sides. The c/g players put up their wares in an AH and anyone can buy them (c/g or heroes), but they can't be heroes and go completing dungeons for loot. The heroes can AH their loot  and anyone can buy them but they can't build houses or weapons. This stops people from taking advantage of playing both sides.

I see your point about having one side tearing down the constructions, but I wouldn't include that except maybe in certain areas.   I would be worried that having one client leading to problems but as I'm not a programmer, I can't honestly say which would work better.

I sort of agree with GT here.

Personally I fail to see the need for the crafters to be inside the world.  Gathering is an awful mechanic, the bane of crafters and economies.  Removing it entirely is Nobel prize worthy.

Earlier I mentioned Farmville, it's a surpisingly good starting point.  Much like farmville, I picture starting people with an area of land.  They can then develop it, using the land to produce raw materials (which enter at a realtime rate).  At this point it is important to note a key difference, I'm not talking about just crops and livestock, you'd be able to mine and log as well.  Another difference is many more processing buildings.  To be self-sufficient for metal work, you'd need a mine, foundry and shaping facility (forge or machine shop depending on setting).

A big advantage I see here is in accessability.  The crafting portion could be lite enough to be played on a cell phone, and could be placed on FB or flash game sites.  That is a level of access few if any full fledged MMOs have capitolized on.  Add to that a game that ups the challenge (dynamic markets), offers more advancement (I can picture some deep tech trees in this) and you are talking one amazing ad campaign for the traditional MMO portion.  If it caught on, we might even need a new acronym to reflect the unique model (might I suggest MCORPG- massive composite online role playing game).

BTW sorry if this seems like a hard sell on a different direction.  In a way, I think it would be harder to do what you seem to be attempting and really I'm not seeing the payoff for that effort.

Originally posted by ghstwolf

I sort of agree with GT here.

Personally I fail to see the need for the crafters to be inside the world.  Gathering is an awful mechanic, the bane of crafters and economies.  Removing it entirely is Nobel prize worthy.

Earlier I mentioned Farmville, it's a surpisingly good starting point.  Much like farmville, I picture starting people with an area of land.  They can then develop it, using the land to produce raw materials (which enter at a realtime rate).  At this point it is important to note a key difference, I'm not talking about just crops and livestock, you'd be able to mine and log as well.  Another difference is many more processing buildings.  To be self-sufficient for metal work, you'd need a mine, foundry and shaping facility (forge or machine shop depending on setting).

A big advantage I see here is in accessability.  The crafting portion could be lite enough to be played on a cell phone, and could be placed on FB or flash game sites.  That is a level of access few if any full fledged MMOs have capitolized on.  Add to that a game that ups the challenge (dynamic markets), offers more advancement (I can picture some deep tech trees in this) and you are talking one amazing ad campaign for the traditional MMO portion.  If it caught on, we might even need a new acronym to reflect the unique model (might I suggest MCORPG- massive composite online role playing game).

BTW sorry if this seems like a hard sell on a different direction.  In a way, I think it would be harder to do what you seem to be attempting and really I'm not seeing the payoff for that effort.

I think it would be financially beneficial to have an MMO with the crafting system you describe. If we are focusing purely on the gameplay perspective. I do worry that it would produce homogenuous crafting products. But just for integrating casuals and allowing various freedoms I think its brilliant.

As a realist I would prefer to have gathering of some kind but I understand that I am in a tiny minority and that the game would have eve level subs if not being a total failure.

I think you may be able to put in some gathering aspects of this. You could grow various kinds of plants but you would have to buy them from someone or find them in the wild first.

Another problem related to homogenuous production among all crafters is that the produce of the system would be so much greater than the needs of the economy. With automatic crafting you would produce so many different products so easily because of automating the tedium that crafting would become far to easy and common and effective. I guess you could limit it in some way.

Yah I'm sure there are people out there who want to destroy buildings.... So griefing the builders  is easy since the builders would probably have no means to defend. And dont say other people would help the builder because MMOs are full of people who dont care what happens to the guy right next to them. 

What is the downside that you see to games like UO, Puzzle Pirates, Istaria and EVE where you have both in the same game world?

Originally posted by Loktofeit

What is the downside that you see to games like UO, Puzzle Pirates, Istaria and EVE where you have both in the same game world?

To be honest I have never played any of those games so I can't say anything about their downsides, except EVE which is a game that I didn't play much.

I'm not trying to solve a problem with other games. I'm suggesting a way that you can use F2P to benefit the developers by making them (f2p players) create the world, and use P2P to enjoy the benefits of  this dynamic world.