A Modest Proposal

[unclean666]

I am a solo player and I have no prob with what this game is going to be a few months from now.
I welcome the challenge I think it will be fun as hell when the game takes off with now safe zones and ect.

[ifireallymust]

I should have looked at who started this thread before I came in here. Another soloer whine-fest from ifireallymust, who really has no idea how this game is going to play out over the next few months. He's cool with making our eyes bleed with this speculation though.

If there is an ignore feature, I invite you to put me on it, thus saving your precious eyesight.

But kindly don't troll me.

[Dagon]

I totally agree with ifireallymust on the soloplayersituation. And this thread is just a hint to the join-a-tribe-crowd that it cant be the answer to everything.
The arguement that we are playing in a postapocalytic world and that this is not a nice place for homesteaders isnt valid as well, since the only thing that is gone (more or less) is society. That means there should be a place for smal groups/soloers. I plan to play this game with 2 friends and we are planning to occupy a smal junkpile in the mountainarea with 3 homesteadareas.
The problem is, and that what ifireallymust is pointing out in a lot of threads, that this wont be possible for everybody (maybe even not for us 3).

There should be enough room and basic ressources for everyone and the rare stuff shouldnt be of use early on.
Right now junk is needed by everyone and nobody wants to share it, thus leaving the soloers/smal group players in a bad position.

[Bridger]

DDO was built from the ground up with the idea that grouping would be necessary to progress. It was a natural design choice, based on the desire to port the pen-and-paper paradigm of Fighter/Wizard/Cleric/Thief to an MMO.

The developers have since devoted a large portion of their energies to finding ways of getting around the need to group their design choice inflicted upon them.

The lesson seems fairly clear: MMO should be a vehicle that allows the option to group when you want to, and to succeed on your own when you want to - though the degree of that success can be the occasional price of the choice either way.

[ifireallymust]

It seems that a lot of us, in a lot of different games, are determined not to put our in game characters' fates in the hands of internet strangers. So nice not to be alone...in wanting to be alone!

Well, and in my case, I'm so anti-authoritarian that not only can I not stand for anyone to tell me what to do, I also can't stand to tell anyone else what to do!

[Dagon]

When it comes to the matter of telling someone what to do i hope for this game that the community will build up a kind of society that is based on logic. I mean in a world where we are free to do what we want we will most likely find rules of conduct without announcing them. If the mindless-grief-we dont care-gang doesnt prevail this game can maybe develop into the best simulation of early human society. This would give room to both homesteaders and tribes and will mostly lead to interaction based on satisfying needs (trade for goods, creating security) and the more violent variants will be less dominant.

The problem here is of course that a lot of people say that its just a game get over it, lets just min max the sh*t out of it and tyrranize our fellow gamers...

[ifireallymust]

When it comes to the matter of telling someone what to do i hope for this game that the community will build up a kind of society that is based on logic. I mean in a world where we are free to do what we want we will most likely find rules of conduct without announcing them. If the mindless-grief-we dont care-gang doesnt prevail this game can maybe develop into the best simulation of early human society. This would give room to both homesteaders and tribes and will mostly lead to interaction based on satisfying needs (trade for goods, creating security) and the more violent variants will be less dominant.

The problem here is of course that a lot of people say that its just a game get over it, lets just min max the sh*t out of it and tyrranize our fellow gamers...

Happily, I'm thinking the min/max tyrants are actually the minority for once. But logic and humans don't usually go well together, and I sure don't want to depend on my fellow humans to be logical. And then there is that other type of human (like me), logical to the point of being unreasonable, which can sometimes be worse than not being logical at all.

But what gets me is this: Either a large minority or an actual majority of MMO players want the option to solo, yet devs seem to avoid giving us that option whenever possible. So there must be something extremely difficult about developing and maintaining a game that caters to both solo players and team players.

[Dagon]

What i mean with logic would be, that after a while a amount x of the homesteaders would move to bigger settlements, playing solo inside a tribe ( without dealing with tribe rules, because of the safety. Think of it like living in a town instead of living in the woods in real life. And the homesteaders that are staying in the wildneress will, through this, get more room. After the settlements developed to cities their demand will rise (espacially for food), this will enable the homesteaders to produce food (future features like farming and catlleherding) and other ressources (smal amounts of ore and building materiell) and provide the tribes with it.
By doing so the big tribes will become depended and will have a need to provide security for their hinterlands.

Of course this is a ideal vision of this game from my view and MMO-communities until today showed me that this is most unlikely to happen.
But if Jordi thinks in somewhat the same way and will provide the game with the proper mechanics i could envision this.


Such a gameworld would be ideal for soloers and homesteaders, since they could be productive outside their own little area without beeing forced into a bigger tribe.

[ifireallymust]

What i mean with logic would be, that after a while a amount x of the homesteaders would move to bigger settlements, playing solo inside a tribe ( without dealing with tribe rules, because of the safety. Think of it like living in a town instead of living in the woods in real life. And the homesteaders that are staying in the wildneress will, through this, get more room. After the settlements developed to cities their demand will rise (espacially for food), this will enable the homesteaders to produce food (future features like farming and catlleherding) and other ressources (smal amounts of ore and building materiell) and provide the tribes with it.
By doing so the big tribes will become depended and will have a need to provide security for their hinterlands.

Of course this is a ideal vision of this game from my view and MMO-communities until today showed me that this is most unlikely to happen.
But if Jordi thinks in somewhat the same way and will provide the game with the proper mechanics i could envision this.


Such a gameworld would be ideal for soloers and homesteaders, since they could be productive outside their own little area without beeing forced into a bigger tribe.

I wouldn't want to live in a city, even as a solo player, if I could help it, but I could see a lot of players doing so. I could also see cities getting the majority of their food from the farmers in the future and protecting them when necessary. Pretty sure it won't devolve into serfdom, simply because it's easier to quit a game than it is to quit life. And if any city state does arise and try that bit, I will happily join the hinterland revolution, with a pitchfork in one hand and a torch in the other! (Actually, that would be really fun.)

[Dagon]

(Actually, that would be really fun.)

And thats why i am interessted in this game, it could become a nice "society in a nutshell" simulator, including mechanics and processes that arent commen in the modern western world.