Could you theoretically create a round-based MMO about building a society and keeping it alive?

Could you theoretically create a round-based MMO about building a society and keeping it alive?

>Every server/game starts with a small number of players with everyone else spectating, maybe spectators can play a micro-god and make shit happen to keep it interesting for them
>Players harvest resources to give them production, food, and water
>Production can be put towards buildings, weapons, etc
>Players can "collaborate" on production projects by placing a blueprint in the game world where players can deposit production they have in their inventory
>Players can "reproduce", putting one of the players involved into a temporary state where their stats are lowered and they require twice as much food. once the state ends, one of the spectators is "born", inheriting the average of both of the parents' stats and mutating a stat of their own
>Natural events and wildlife get more and more fierce as the game goes on
>the round ends when reproduction is impossible (everyone or all but one player dies)

How could this concept be developed on? Would it even be fun?

Bump, I cant let this thread die the idea's been fucking my brain sideways for days now

Sorry to burst your bubble, but there are only a few people who would be able to play this game the way you meant it to be played. And that means no dicking around or fucking over other players. With the market being open to Youtubers, streamers, literal retards and kiddies the chance that a coop game based around a functional group of individuals building something together and sustaining it is impossible. At least on public servers. If you can host private sessions with friends it would greatly help one aspect of the game, which is building your own societal structure with a close group but you'll lose out on player interaction with strangers.

I've thought about this myself, i think a metagame reward system like cosmetics achieved through money (which you get by doing various tasks like reproduction) could incentive people to at least try to play the game well. If the combat were slow paced, the majority of players could also just snuff out the fags 99% of the time. The game itself I think would also not be very fun if people didn't start working immediately, so that's another thought I suppose.

No because people would immediately fuck it up just because they want to do that.

And in order to stop then, it would have to be policed and moderated so hard that no one would bother playing anyway because it wouldn't be fun at all.

It's that simple. You can't give people who play video games that much freedom over "world building" because they will eventually fuck it up and ruin everything either by accident or completely on purpose.

>Every server/game starts with a small number of players with everyone else spectating
this is the reason your idea is trash

Could be interesting, I guess. But these days people expect and demand instant gratification even in MMOs so I'm not sure how well this would work, especially if you're dead for good in a round.

If you'd implement some sort of reputation system per account, and then group players with similar rep it would work out just a bit better. Positive reputation would be gained by killing aggressive players, certain amount of time passed, achieving milestones (most amount gathered etc.) while negative rep would be gained through aggression towards innocents, theft, destruction of property and getting reported (no bans unless exceptionally bad behaviour). Basically just a realistic penalty system like western society has. Heck you could even throw bad players in some kind of prison map where they can play the game with similarly minded people.

Just like in the real world, there are going to be crazy retards who would decide to bomb an orphanage on a whim to appease the voices in their heads. But that's obviously not very fun in a game unless you can counter it

Maybe there could be game mechanics in place to push players into setting up some kind of police force or general government, or maybe mechanics could be more individual based so players from the get-go can cover their own ass when they need to, only collaborating as things get more situated.

Conan Exiles is your closest bet for something like this. Ark would be too if people didn't feel the need to build massive fucking structures everywhere to trivialize the game with weaponized autism and grief everyone else out of boredom. That said, Ark on a private server with friends, playing as proper cavemen in a small group is really cool and makes the world feel much more important and dangerous.

I'd prefer to design mechanics to enforce good behavior as opposed to punishing bad behavior just because someone wants to be a faggot.

In real life, governments and institutions were set up to provide security at the cost of freedom. Security is obviously a positive thing, but that's irrelevant in a videogame where you face no actual health risks.

I'm thinking that maybe the instinct of security that isn't present could be replaced by a vanity instinct in the player through a metagame shop like I described earlier. It's a tough design challenge.

They do this on gmod rp servers all the time. It's still an awful shithole only retarded people take part in.

There is a reason this doesn't exist as an MMO with what OP said. It's because it's impossible.

Also, good luck giving assholes a power trip by giving them the rights over others via a police unit in a video game.

let me rephrase
*I'd prefer to design mechanics to enforce good behavior as opposed to punishing bad behavior through meta moderation just because someone wants to be a faggot.

I wouldn't assign arbitrary classes to players, rather they would organically be assigned by other players in the group based on their stats or merit. Since they aren't inherently special, other players could easily overpower them.

There was an old gmod server which hosted a version of a wasteland roleplay gamemode set in the fallout universe. Alliances would naturally form as different players had different stats. The caveat was that there were admin enforced rules to keep the top dogs from sniping the newbies.
Maybe if individual players or small groups could never survive on their own (i.e an essential building would require far more production than 3 guys could collect on their own), people would realize that the only way to advance would be to not murder each other or something.

any multiplayer games that takes concepts like survival, or role playing, and puts it into small rounds will be successful. look at those total dogshit MOBA games, they suck but people love them because of putting leveling and gold and shit into a 20-60 minute self contained match

absolutely, its the same kind of satisfaction you get from rogue likes where you always progress with the added bonus of the dominance instinct

>The caveat was that there were admin enforced rules to keep the top dogs from sniping the newbies.

Doing this in a game you want people to grow and build on their own defeats the entire purpose of the game concept itself by having "meta gods" so to speak with "rules everyone must obey".

It will get more and more complex with more and more rules being added prohibiting more and more constriction and less freedom OR conversely, stuff that needs to be dealt with won't be dealt with fast enough in time to prevent disaster because these admins can't be everywhere at once all the time.

It's not gonna happen.

Also, an mmo with rounds, in itself, sounds ridiculous. People would not want to build up an economy, a town, establish groups only for some arbitrary timer to end and a round is over and they have to restart all over again constantly.

That makes for very boring gameplay and it becomes a race at that point, people will forget whatever rules are in place just to get from point A to point B even faster.

And also, making normal players able to overtake the self appointed "police force" so to speak at any moment defeats the purpose of them even being in any sorta control or having any say over what goes on. It cancels the other out. If a police force can easily be dealt with by some randoms nonstop, the police force holds no power and no one will ever follow their rules in the end because they have no authority.

It's too complicated to get right. It's never happening, seriously.

never said anything about a timer, the game can go on as long as players can survive

The second you mention "rounds" people will think there is some sorta timer. Giving them a reason to "survive" means giving them a reason to go around killing people and ruining others chance of survival as well.

engineering y/n

thats why the game would be designed around cooperation first. war-driven aspects of the game would have to be designed to be a net loss of important resources like food even if you win, making it not very practical in the majority of situations.
ive kinda hinted at a stat system, which could add a natural specialization aspect to the game. a player with low strength would have to rely on another player to carry production for use, but if that player had a high wisdom, they could start production on specialized buildings for the strength player to help construct. if one killed the other, they would lose out on the bonus the other provided and it would probably result in death for everyone involved.

Assholes will be assholes no matter what but you could mitigate it with in some ways. There could be some temporary barriers on settlements that you could get exiled from for certain automated or community dictated reasons. Life out side settlements is crude but possible but without the production and services of the settlement progression would be hard. Death penalties could be harsh but good reputation/karma could mitigate this, say extra spawns or insurances on your belongings. If the numbers are tuned right getting a respawn would be a net benefit to the community even if the respawn is later used to fuck shit up.

If the communities are player controlled some checks and balances should be put in place to insure that handful people couldn't just dominate everything. Like governing, protecting, producing, manufacturing etc. should rely on each other and highly specialized jobs couldn't act on other areas but are required to advance on higher tech, culture etc.

>Also, an mmo with rounds, in itself, sounds ridiculous. People would not want to build up an economy, a town, establish groups only for some arbitrary timer to end and a round is over and they have to restart all over again constantly.
you couldnt be more wrong. have you ever heard of the RTS genre?

Building things in an RTS takes maybe 30 seconds to a minute.

Were talking about a game where you actually have to put more effort into shit and plan out everything, buy land, buy utilities, manage the budget for everything, etc.

Also, that genre died for a reason. No one wants to even do THAT anymore.

People still enjoy it but the world's too fast now, nobody has time anymore, not even kids.