Submitted by alderneyvamp on Sun, 2009-10-04 04:27.
That sounds like a game I would love to be a part of. The credit rating idea sounds shit hot. The secondary XP (the one you give out to others) could be called Influence and could be tied to the amount of players you affect. For example if a Underground Crime Boss keeps setting bounties on a group of players who have taken it upon themselves to set up a police force in their sector.* Like guilds you can assign your self to one or several groups. So as the underground crime family gets larger ther bosses influence increases a little bit, but if the boss can set big enough rewards (or incentives like, we will stop hurting your friends) and have other groups start doing their missions, say a group of elite mercenaries or perhaps even some traders who find the laws being imposed to restrictive, then your influence gains a massive boost.
So as you spend Influence, if you do it in smart and intelligent ways, you can get alot more back (the Influence stat would probably be a divided one like HP so your max score goes up and your current score is 'spend' and regenerates slowly back towards your max. Or have it so the points regenerate at a rate depending on what your score it.) You could use your Credit Rating (CR) in a similair way. Keeping pitting your CR against merely buying things for yourself and it might just stay the same, or get worse. Lending portions of your CR to others temporarily could mean getting more back in the long run.
I know this is getting complicated now, but perhaps investing in a business (for example) will see it's physical building grow and develop and their wares increase.
I'm not saying there should be no NPCs, but perhaps they should always be in the employ of a PC. A guard is always guarding something for an actual person, you'd think twice about just killing him. Same if someone had an interglactic trading house and had employed captains to transport his goods, one would be silly to simply raid that vessel without thought of how to cover your tracks and protect yourself if you invoke someone elses ire.
Hell if this had only a 100 people playing in a relatively small star system, it would be more involving than most MMOs I've played (not slating MMOs, I do play them.)
*As you mentioned having staff members play certain characters, the game could start with a rich and vibrant culture, which will slowly be completely run by players, perhaps maybe with only a few 'storyteller' staff hanging around rather insidiously in postitions of more advisotory roles (after a few months no staff member is player the head of a religious cyber cult, but still maintains a role as archbishop or whatever.)
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Don't steal... The Government hates competition.
I think we just invented a new genre.
That sounds like a game I would love to be a part of. The credit rating idea sounds shit hot. The secondary XP (the one you give out to others) could be called Influence and could be tied to the amount of players you affect. For example if a Underground Crime Boss keeps setting bounties on a group of players who have taken it upon themselves to set up a police force in their sector.* Like guilds you can assign your self to one or several groups. So as the underground crime family gets larger ther bosses influence increases a little bit, but if the boss can set big enough rewards (or incentives like, we will stop hurting your friends) and have other groups start doing their missions, say a group of elite mercenaries or perhaps even some traders who find the laws being imposed to restrictive, then your influence gains a massive boost.
So as you spend Influence, if you do it in smart and intelligent ways, you can get alot more back (the Influence stat would probably be a divided one like HP so your max score goes up and your current score is 'spend' and regenerates slowly back towards your max. Or have it so the points regenerate at a rate depending on what your score it.) You could use your Credit Rating (CR) in a similair way. Keeping pitting your CR against merely buying things for yourself and it might just stay the same, or get worse. Lending portions of your CR to others temporarily could mean getting more back in the long run.
I know this is getting complicated now, but perhaps investing in a business (for example) will see it's physical building grow and develop and their wares increase.
I'm not saying there should be no NPCs, but perhaps they should always be in the employ of a PC. A guard is always guarding something for an actual person, you'd think twice about just killing him. Same if someone had an interglactic trading house and had employed captains to transport his goods, one would be silly to simply raid that vessel without thought of how to cover your tracks and protect yourself if you invoke someone elses ire.
Hell if this had only a 100 people playing in a relatively small star system, it would be more involving than most MMOs I've played (not slating MMOs, I do play them.)
*As you mentioned having staff members play certain characters, the game could start with a rich and vibrant culture, which will slowly be completely run by players, perhaps maybe with only a few 'storyteller' staff hanging around rather insidiously in postitions of more advisotory roles (after a few months no staff member is player the head of a religious cyber cult, but still maintains a role as archbishop or whatever.)
____________________________________________________________
Don't steal... The Government hates competition.