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As you say, you've played Civ games.
In each individual game, you only follow one linear path. Yes, you may play it again, and things might happen completely differently, but in a single game, it's logically impossible to experience mutually exclusive paths through the game.

Unless you reload, and try a new approach. Now I know people do this, but your point is well taken. The deeper the experience and details, the more likely I think you are to pursue a single path.

Exactly. Even if you reload and try something different, that only leads to the next "branch", where you have to choose again. No matter what you do, you're not goign to explore all these options. Most likely it'll be a linear path, with kinda fuzzy edges and a few small offshoots where you did one thing, then regretted, reloaded, and continued on another path. But the majority of the branches will still go unexplored.

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Here I think you're severely underestimating the difference in play experience. These games are not the same. I may see the same graphics each and every time-- same continents, city screens, terrain. Yet the game occurs at a higher level so that it doesn't matter.

I know what you mean, and it works fine for Civ. The reason I said it was a bad example is because I'm not convinced the same applies to your game. A RPG (or a hybrid like yours) tends to be a lot more, well, personal, tailored to the player. You want conversation options to change based on your options, you want individuals to react differently depending on your previous actions, and you want the entire storyline to progress, while *still* seeming like a consistent one, and not something autogenerated from a few fragments of data about how powerful each faction is, or who has the best technology.

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What I'm trying to express by these examples is that there is a metagame experience that transcends surface gfx/sound similarities.

In Civ, yes. In something more RPG-like, I'd like to say yes too, but the fact is that the presentation matters a lot more. You want the game to react to *you*, not to some anonymous faction deciding to send a nuke against the Zulu.

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But beyond the possibility of wasted resources, what would the gamer's main complaint be? Overwhelm?

Good question. I don't remember it ever being an issue before. [wink]
I wouldn't worry about the player feeling overwhelmed.
The only issue really *is* those wasted resources, although there are two sides to that. Of course, it sucks for you to waste so much effort on something players don't even get to see, but it might also suck to the player to know that there's actually plenty of content in the game, he just can't get to experience it, because it's all mutually exclusive. (But of course, that part is only a problem if the player feels that the game is too shallow or spread thin, like we discussed above)

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Let's say that you get used to a certain frequency of combat encounters, then manage to either unleash a flood or stopper activity to a trickle. Both could create undesirable changes that you might not necessarily forsee.

In another example, perhaps you travel through a wormhole and accidently lead back a conquering force which essentially eliminates overt combat. Now you must switch to subterfuge, stealth, and rag-tag hit & run gameplay.

Ah, I see what you mean now. But even so, how much of a problem will that really be? In the first example, I'm assuming we're not talking about random encounters, because those (if they exist in your game) shouldn't vary the frequency too much. They just get annoying anyway. ;)
So, what it might affect is the military power of one specific faction, and then, if you don't want to spend the next week fighting them, you just have to either stay in areas they don't have as much influence over, or just don't make them your enemies.

In the second example, I don't think it'd be that drastic. If you have the muscle required to rely on overt combat, then surely you can at least try to hold out against this force, or at least allow you to retreat to an area outside their influence, where you can keep playing as normal. Of course, you might fail, and have to resort to covert actions after all, but I wouldn't allow it to become so powerful it just wipes you out when you even attempt overt combat. Or if it does become so powerful, perhaps thats a good time to switch to the next epoch? This conquering force took over the entire sector of space (or the entire Earth, or whatever the current playground is), and you have to deal with that entirely new setting at some point in the future.

I see your point, but I think it can be managed. You have to limit how much these "unforeseen consequences" can impact the gameplay. And use your epoch concept to get around the truly huge changes. (If you happen to trigger some truly massive changes, just give the player an emergency exit by letting him transfer to the next epoch, where you can now create a massively altered setting.

Quote:I think this holds a lot of possibility for softening dismay that you may feel at gameplay that can swing (wildly) one way or another. If the point of the game isn't hacking & slashing, but rather worldbuilding, then maybe you get to a point you don't like and I use another mechanism I've been planning-- a "time passes, the world changes" metagame which could allow things to instantly change again.

I'm still not convinced that the "get to a point you don't like" part is actually going to be a problem. I think the gameplay implications can be managed, and from the storyline point of view, I don't see it as being a problem in the first place.

Quote:Original post by Wavinator

Quote:Original post by rmsgrey
I was thinking that having a constant "mature" form (or range of forms) of the tech would ilustrate consistent underlying "physics", while having early versions with variable stats would reflect player influence

Why is consistency important ? For immersion? I ask because I'd think replayability and surprise would be more important than underlying science principles. But maybe a focus on reliable rules would give the world more gravitas, and thus make it more enjoyable?

Keeping the framework consistent means the player has some way of transferring experience from previous passes through the game, and gives them a handle on how their actions effect the game. In the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure game, at one point, picking up an item (I think it's a screwdriver) directly causes a tree outside the window to fall over. If you don't have some consistency, then the gaame may start to feel like it's a bunch of screwdrivers tied to trees, and the only way for a player to anticipate the consequences of their actions is by using some external reference (guide/walkthrough for instance).

If the improved *name* Drive is the same in each game, then the player can say to himself "ah, yes, that's the same device as I encountered before, but with a different name because I changed history, and with a different prototype, ditto" rather than "this device is totally unlike anything in the previous game, the game must be generating transport randomly"


As an aside, it should be possible to use (imperfect) hashing routines or similar schemes for automatically generating object statistics to ensure that a given *name* Drive with the same inventor is (almost) the same in the next pass through the game (barring significant player variation).

Hi! I'm sorry if I'm restating what someone else already said, but I only read the first few posts.

This seems like an awsome idea, but maybe you're making it a bit more complicated than it should. I mean, the world IS there all the time, even if you're just starting out; what you're suggesting is simply to have some sort of scripted events happen, to propel the story forward. Since these events are pretty generic and simple, you don't really have to think about every single possibility like it has been suggested (I don't know how to explain this any better, but if your simulation is good enough, you can just at some point give the player and the factions/NPCs a way to travel to other planets, period - without worrying about any details; it's like tumbling the first dominoe piece and all the others fall in succession).

Anyways, I think you're also worrying too much about catastrophic events. Of course that if a faction is about to launch a nuclear warhead or do something that will instantly kill him/her, it should first check if the player is there. This is the sort of hard-coded stuff that you should have for the sake of not annoying the player. You don't have to do the same about every disease, or attack, or a tower's water supply breaking down. These critical problems should be solved by the player, or by the game's NPCs/factions (if they're advanced enough; I really think you need planning AI :P ). Besides, if a tower is completely destroied, there's always another one. There should be quite a few at the beggining. Same goes for the colonies, human or alien. Ideally, since anything can be destroied, anything should also be rebuilt, even if at a slow pace; this way you would ensure that everything is balanced. But anyways, assuming that under normal circumstances the player doesn't run out of whatever it is he enjoys, you can still give him the chance of obliterating all life on Earth if he wants so. Talk about replaying value ;)