Like half of the people here, I''m trying to design a MMO game. Mine is nothing fancy (in fact, its mostly text based), but I''m running into a problem I like to refer to as ''bottom feeding''. Heres the setup.... once you get an account, you''re assigned both a handful of army units and a few settlements that you''ll need to defend. The whole goal at the moment (and i''ll get more creative in version 2.0... I just want to get something out the door) is to become the most powerful kingdom in the game. Ok, great. Here''s the problem.... say I''ve been playing the game for a few weeks.... and some newbie joins up. Whats to keep me from attacking him with my small army of highly trained orcs while he only has 3 basic fighters to defend with? And whats to keep me from attacking him over and over again? I could always impose the old ''you are under a state of magical protection'' for the first 72 hours of game play..... but that doesn''t really do anything. Any suggestions?

You might want to check out how games like Utopia and Dominion handle things. Both seem to have similar game play to what you''re describing.

Have the "gods of the realms" impose a rule: Killing to expand is acceptable, but only if done in a sporting manner. Thus, the justification for a rule where someone can only attack someone within a certain % range of power.

Is my land/army/equipment worth 1000 gold? And the acceptable % range is 10%? Then I can only attack people with a total land/army/equipment value equal to something between 900 and 1100 gold.

-Gauvir_Mucca

the best method is always just to make it economically unsound to do so, or practically impossible ... depending on your worlds rules ...

for 1, if your world has distances, the "old" kingdoms might be near each other (in the center so to speak) and the "new" kingdoms might be allocated on the rim ... meaning new players are nearer to each other than to old players ...

other similar options include various forms of regional pride / loyalty ... such that all players near each other, fight against one another UNLESS threatened by external forces, at which time they are inclined to band together (this might be enforced as the "will of the people" public outrage, morale, etc ...) This was, it is impossible to wage war on external regions until you are sufficiently powerfull to be at war with the whole region ...

there are many other systems ... the simplest of which is simple to make the game more defensive than offensive, or make players on offensives ripe for being picked off by third parties (so if old players go after newbies ... they can win, but the other old players will pick off their home worlds ... thereby making newbie killing a waste of their time) ...

to further reinforce this, make the "value" of civilizations rise with time / power ... so therefore anyone who leaves their home weak while attacking new players, is going after a low value prize, while leaving their own home open (and it is a high value prize).

Actually, I play Dominion : ) But I'm not very satisfied with it...

Ok, first, thanks for the suggestions.... Second, I really like the 'not economically sound' idea, so I think i'd like to develop that thought a little more.

Anyways, heres what I'm thinking... each settlement/village/town/castle the player owns will have a 'time of travel' value. So, to attack someones castle (which will be a starting resource) might require your troops to be away from the homeland for... oh lets say... a 48 hour period. The next 2 villages, etc the player obtains will only require 36 hours for other players to reach/attack.... then next 6 might only require 24... and so on all the way down to a 1 hour period. That way, it encourages players to attack stronger opponents instead of preying off the weaklings (who really wants to risk their troops being gone for that long). Of course, this would have to imply that players can't shift their troops around to their own settlements instantaneously.... but prehaps I could add a road/rail system to speed things up. Anyways, let me know your thoughts.


[edited by - Cygnus_X on March 27, 2004 11:27:19 AM]

sounds like a plausable system ... i''d have to think through the ramifications a little more to really test the design ... but it seems like a good direction ...

as for the internal positions issues, and road / rail suggestions ... YES - never let a person move there units around instantly in any game with other time based constraints ... (it would be ok if no other element of the game used time for tactics ... but not if you add the above suggestions) ... if you let them reposition at will ... you might as well simply remove the idea of position altogether, and simply have a pool of resources, available to be dispatched to any fight ... which is fine for defense, but not for offense ...

oh well, too sleepy to think deeply enough ...

Yeah, the more I think about it... the more I like it. My next thought was to allow for ''floating'' units that arn''t assigned to a city, but can automatically move to one without user input if an incomming attack was seen from afar (by a watchtower or something). Of course, watch towers can''t pick up every incomming attack.... and building them has the disadvantage of loseing land..... and they''re expensive.... but again, that might have to be a version 2.0 concept.

You could do it by having only a restricted number of Generals available. Each general leads an army (maybe with his own personality and bonuses/penalties if you want to get more character and personalization stuff into the game). You can''t buy generals, but as your empire grows, you gain new ones now and then. An army without a general can only stay and defend a location; generals are necessary to move armies into enemy territories.

Do you want to tie up one of your generals marching an army into Small Fry Castle? Maybe, maybe not...