You imagine a balanced lifelike world. And it appears so. But only a few days after you've started.
Then it appears you've built almost everything possible. You have a base. A palisade. Have them crops. Breeding animals. You are close to make steel.
But the picture that comes to you next isn't that pretty.
You realize that soon you'll have only 1 thing ahead - grinding for better qualities. But why would you do that - you ask yourself.
To compete with others, right? Wrong. They have attributes meassured in thousands.
But where's all the player interaction, politics..
Where's pvp..
Apparently not for you..
Most of people who just started to play simply hooked because of permadeath idea. What's that? Where is that thing? You either drowned or killed by someone OP.
Something obviously is wrong..
So i thought about all that and i'm proud to present you my view on how to make this game GREAT, based on a few simple steps.
Core idea is to maintain rather than go to infinite numbers.
//Attributes and skills
Every character is loosing attributes throughout time.
You'll have to maintain your attributes rather than going to infinity.
Same for abilities - learn curiosities and maintain your abilities.
Go down on qualities of food and curiosities and your character eventually will weaken.
That's close to how it works in real life. The best balance you can get.
It'll be quite a task since everything is exposed to decay. ->
//Decay
Every item in the game has a quality, right?
Idea is to make things decay by losing qualities.
Over time - most of things, especially food.
Over usage - tools.
If the quality reaches 0 - tool breaks, food turns to spoil.
If you repair something - it'll increase or decrease the quality, based on quality of materials used.
Why qualities? - It fits perfectly.
Say we have a good quality sword. It's sharp, balanced well.
Now go bash things with it - not that sharp anymore, bend, and a hilt almost broke.
This will make a game much more complex thus significantly increasing the gameplay value.
Example with crops.
With decay: Plant the crops and whatch them grow cause when crops are at full grown stage they'll start to lose quality.
So you're better collect them ASAP.
How it works now: Just plant the crops.
Now count the number of activities that can be affected by decay. Here's our possible gameplay value multiplier.
And it is big.
//Aging system.
People age. So why doesn't hearthlings do.
Idea is to give Hearthlings a new variable for age representation. The older they get - the faster they lose attributes/abilities.
If they have lost 80% to the maximum average of attributes they have ever had - they die.
Of course it's possible to maintain those for some period of time but eventually death is inevitable.
//Inheritance cap
Idea is to cap the attributes using formula with maximum average stats and a length of life of your ancestor. Kinda like breeding.
Intended to make players survive for as long as possible. Thus rewarding playing smart and providing additional threat of degradation if acting stupid.
Props: - It was a problem to cap stats. Cause people would have nothing to do after some point. No more!
Now there's a cycle of life and death with a constant need to do things!
- Harder to have alts -> harder to have bots.
- Much more meaningful gameplay.
Of course all those things i mentioned work best if properly balanced.
Personally i think it's way too much when someone can single-handedly kill a bear with a bare hands.
The less is gap between abilities of players - the more players can compete with each other, making
world more interesting place, making the game more tasty for more people to come to play.
We can have a trully living and breathing world, where nothing is eternal and every action has a purpose.
