Personal anecdote: I've been playing Blockland for a long time now and I've witnessed CityRPG's birth and I've witnessed it's growth. Over the years I've had good and bad experiences regarding the novelty game-mode. After a play-through on iPhone's CityRPG, where I made somewhere close to $10M in-game cash and purchased a 128x256 lot on which I began building probably the biggest building on the entire server, I came to a pretty depressing conclusion which made me realize how incredibly flawed CityRPG is at a fundamental level.
Note: This is all personal opinion so don't crucify me if you find something you disagree with. The idea here is to discuss innovation, not necessarily to bash on Iban's invention. While I respect the original inventor, I'd prefer it if people didn't use this topic to relentlessly defend the obsolete nature of current CityRPG's. If you enjoy them as they are, Visolator is coming out with a very well maintained re-coded version of Iban's original dream and I wish him the best of luck.
But for now I wanna talk about CityRPG's from a gameplay perspective.
Reforming CityRPG
The basic perspective.
In it's current state CityRPG consists of a relatively small linear gameplay goal. You progress through an education system by paying money, which you then use education points to progress through a job system (also by paying money) and in the end the idea is to achieve the highest income possible. This is essentially what all player related stats boil down to: gaining income. What do you do with income? Earn money. What do you do with money? Not much. At the end of the day, people build their wealth up and up and they have absolutely nothing to spend it on besides guns (resulting in huge RDM'ing sprees that just usually do nothing constructive at all except inconvenience other players), property (the amount of property a player can own is usually limited), and food (which requires a negligible amount of money either way and there is basically 0 consequence for not eating)
The problem with playing CityRPG is that you are not playing CityRPG. You are endlessly waiting to play CityRPG, and the wait never ends, because there is no conceivable form of gameplay. CityRPG's are often populated solely because you need to be waiting in-server to progress at any given time. People won't leave because they've already spent an enormous amount of time waiting and they're waiting to finally start having fun on the server, but it never truly comes. It's like an abusive relationship. It's emotional torture.
In it's current state, a player in the CityRPG has two end games:
- Buying a stuffload of weapons and killing a bunch of usually defenseless people.
- Buying a stuffload of property and building random stuff.
So, in conclusion, CityRPG is basically an over glorified delayed version of the two most incredibly basic Blockland gamemodes. Freebuilds and deathmatches, just extremely limited.
So what does CityRPG lack that makes a gamemode successful? A goal.
All successful gamemodes have some sort of structured goal or story.
- A deathmatch is simple. Kill other players, gain the most points in a certain time frame.
- Original game modes, such as Solar Apocalypse, also have clear goals. Manage your resources, and the last man standing wins.
- Another example is pizza delivery. Deliver the most pizzas as fast as possible to beat all your opponents.
- Even controversial gamemodes like Jail RP, usually ridden with design flaws, has the ultimate goal of escaping the prison.
- Role-plays such as Family RP and Military RP are a bit open ended, with goals generally drawn up by the host and players within. However, even though CityRPG has 'role playing game' in the title, there is very often little to no RP structure. Most of the role-playable subjects in the game are handled by the gamemode instead of the players.
Instead of roleplaying or working towards some sort of common goal, players are just left with the very basic foundations of an authoritarian freebuild. You just have to do a bunch of mundane bullstuff before you're allowed to build anything. And you have to dodge the bullets of some RDM'ing richard-wad who used the cash he earned (by idling overnight) to buy a bunch of assault rifles despite already being in the server jail 15 times for the exact same thing.
Giving the players something to do.
Any kind of decent game mode gives the player an engaging task which is preferably dynamic. In a deathmatch you are given a range of weapons and you have to blow stuff up. In solar apocalypse you have to look for resources. In order to progress in CityRPG, you have to do a 'job', most of which require you sitting around waiting for your next paycheck. The best way to earn money in CityRPG is to remember to leave your account idling overnight, which is a design flaw. Some servers elected to just simply ban idling instead of addressing the inherent flaws that cause it. Sitting around does not make for a fun game-mode.
Another personal anecdote: I can't remember who was the host, but I recall a certain CityRPG where the host attempted to combat this by causing your in-come to decrease over time, and could only be restored by doing a small mundane task that was somewhat related to that job. I was a lawyer on this server, and in order to retain my income, I would walk around the city, looking for people who had demerits, and I would pay 1 of their demerits for $1, making my in-come full for at-least 3 ticks. This isn't really fun. It's just boring maintenance.
So here's my idea. Every job must have a unique engaging task for the player to accomplish. These tasks will begin somewhere close to 9AM game time and end somewhere close to 5PM game time. At the end of the week (or day, doesn't matter), you receive a paycheck which is based on your base-income (relating to the job) but is heavily modified by the amount of tasks you have done over that period of time, and slightly modified by the economy. This doesn't necessarily mean this is the ONLY way to make money, however, as certain jobs can have their own unique side tasks and quests. However, that is essentially the idea, no more idling, the player must work through the day to maintain his income. If a player fails to do any tasks over an extended period of time, he may be suspended from pay or fired completely, forcing them to restart their career path.
So, what do I mean by tasks? Well I have a couple ideas. Here are some examples of jobs with an idea of what their tasks may include.
Builder - Must repair roads which develop pot-holes, may have to build small template builds around the city in empty lots. If there are multiple builders working on a project, all players earn a teamwork bonus. This may encourage builders to come together to form construction companies.
Demolition - Must tear down abandoned lots and damaged property. (I'll touch on both abandoned lots and template builds later)
Fire-fighter - Occasional fires will break out (only on abandoned lots or pre-determined lots) which they must put out. If there are no fire-fighters online, no fires can start.
Doctor - Has to work in a hospital, this one is a bit complicated and probably has an element of fantasy. It involves bots... every once in a while a patient is admitted to the ER with a random scenario concerning their visit. Doctor must determine the right diagnosis from a certain set of options. (kinda like a quiz, I could think of a few ways to make this less mundane than it sounds). Also, my idea is that when a player dies, they can either pay a size-able sum of money to jump right back into the game (free if there are no doctors online) or spend a small amount of time in the hospital. Doctors will receive huge bonuses for treating players.
Police Officer - Has to patrol certain areas of the town, may have to respond to some small NPC/Bot based situations.
Truck driver - Drives a truck between warehouse and store, delivering stock.
Pizza delivery - Drives a car between pizzahut and homes delivering pizza. Basically the same thing as truck driver but on a smaller scale with less pre-requisites.
Street cleaner - Cleans up trash he finds around the city, cutting grass and polishing streets.
Scientist - Collect samples from nearby plants, identifying them. Obviously this one is just an example of how far we could take the task system.
All these ideas are up to suggestion and debate, I understand some of this might be an unrealistic. But the idea is to give players something to do. Recently I joined a CityRPG and one of the jobs was 'Greedygoy', which was literally earning a large amount of money to sit around and be Jewish. I'm not kidding. This is unacceptable game design. In most CityRPG's we have a labor system which isn't ENTIRELY flawed. Cutting trees and mining rock is more engaging than sitting at home doing nothing. But it's boring, repetitive, and just generally awful... I have a few ideas to combat this with things such as 'safety inspectors', prospectors, mining equipment. Same for lumberjacking (logging machinery) and even fishing (instead of clicking on 'lake bricks' you have to drive a fishing boat/trawlers out into the ocean.) Obviously the idea isn't to complicate things further than they need to be, but rather make it somewhat dynamic. Even with these things, labor would probably still be the most mundane job, but would be much more dynamic and much more engaging.
The point here is Jobs are essentially the life-blood of the CityRPG gamemode model, so we ought to take them into greater consideration. Rather than jobs just simply existing as an initial investment and an income, they should exist as committed mini-games, different for each job.
forget bounty hunters. If you want the power of arrest, go become a cop. Bounty hunting is a stupid broken concept that has no place in CityRPG. I feel like bounties in general were just hamfisted into CityRPG with no forethought just so someone could say "i make new feature!!!!". Nobody even uses bounties. My opinion anyway.
Education
I don't want to completely get rid of the education system, but I find the current accepted system gimmicky as forget. Go toss a bunch of hard earned cash into a machine, wait 2 minutes, and BOOM you're prepared to be a doctor. I'm not saying you have to go to a lego university and sit through in-game lectures though. Instead, I was thinking something along the lines of a pre-character set-up. When you get in-game, you have to set up a character, and when you set up this character, you choose a degree. Medicine, law, science, labor. This will determine the majority of your career future choices. Kinda like the Dead Island character selection menu. but not really. From then on-ward, you work your way up the career chain through experience, rather than tossing more cash into the magic college machine. An added benefit of this system would be the addition of replay-ability factor.
Lot Abandonment
Most lots in CityRPG only need one thing to exist. Admin approval. As long as you come on the server once in a blue moon and your build doesn't look like total garbage, it's free to waste space as long as it needs. This is a problem for me, and a perfect opportunity to give the players something to maintain.
If your lot receives regular visitors and is maintained often, then no problem. Your lot is doing okay. But if you neglect it, it's going to start falling apart. To maintain your lot you have to go to your lot and pay some money to keep it maintained (I could think of a few more complicated ideas, like trash piling up, but i'd imagine that'd get complex), paying your electric and water bills ect. This means you are visiting your lot and you are still invested in it. If your lot receives regular visitors this will prolong it's life, but it will not save if it if you abandon it.
My idea is that lots that have been neglected for a very long period of time could start to 'break down' before it is abandoned, small bricks start to break or disappear, and it becomes susceptible to fire. I have some offish feelings about this but I think it would be a cool feature. After around 1-2 weeks in-game time of a lot being completely neglected, it becomes abandoned. At this point, all the stock inside the building is sold, and the building no longer belongs to anyone. Anyone who has a demolition profession is now allowed to come to the house and begin tearing it down for money. Abandoned lots cannot be reclaimed or purchased by anyone. I had an idea that drugs could be planted inside abandoned lots but I'm not sure how that idea would work out.
Construction/Destruction
I've touched on this a few times already so I'll go into detail now.
I've had an idea that I think will play really well with the basis of CityRPG and Blockland. Building. This specifically revolves around the tasks concerning the construction job. As a builder, you will earn money for building, but not just anything. You wont earn money for spamming 1x1 red bricks all over the place. Instead, you will be given projects, and building them to the blueprints will earn you large amounts of money. This is not only a good way to earn dosh but also much more engaging than doing jack stuff. I'm not entirely sure how something like this would work, so brainstorm with me, here are some ideas.
- Building projects will generate in random empty lots at random intervals (from a set of pre-built templates)
- They are usually pretty generic but fill up empty space.
- Usually take the form of small corner stores or small houses.
- Upon completion, go onto the real estate market, keeping real estate populated with property, and providing players who are challenged in the building perspective a nice prebuilt shop to sell merchandise.
- Build projects could appear in the form of buildings made of ghost bricks? Something along those lines, to give the builder a 'blueprint' of exactly what to build. I guess it wouldn't HAVE to follow suit exactly to the blueprint, but extra money is given for planting the right bricks in the right position and in the right color.
- Construction is also in charge of road maintenance. Over time, roads will break down and pot-holes will form. Pot-holes that are not fixed will eventually be payed for by the city, thus hurting the economy.
My idea is that for a random civilian to place bricks for his home or whatever, they will need resources which costs money. On the other hand, builders have access to infinite resources. It may be preferable to civilians to design blueprints rather than build their own houses, and have a builder do it for them. Builders receive huge bonuses for building player-made blueprints. Obviously this feature would be entirely optional, just an interesting idea.
Destruction is the trade dealing in tearing down old, dated buildings and paving way for the new. My idea is that the server starts off with large amounts of abandoned buildings. Armed with only a hammer, demolitioners will break down these buildings a brick at a time, earning money per brick. This means that larger demo projects result in larger payouts. Completing a demolition project quickly will result in a bonus.
Shop-keeping
As it currently stands, shops in CityRPG consist of a lot and a bunch of evented bricks. That's it, no maintenance required.
When I used to play San Andreas online, I was a part of a Cops and Robbers server called SACNR where people could own stores. It would make them a weekly base in-come, but nobody could buy from your store if you didn't have stock, so I believe that should be introduced to CityRPG. Owning a store is preferable because it gives you a nice weekly income, and extra in-come for selling to players. The only thing is: You need stock. This means you will either have to:
- Import stock from overseas for a sizeable amount of dosh (much cheaper if there are no industrial buildings on the server)
- Visit an industrial warehouse and have stock shipped to your store.
- It is ultimately cheaper to hire a truck driver to deliver stock to your store. All truck drivers are notified when you have payed for stock (assuming you are not importing from overseas) and they will be tasked to deliver the stock from the designated warehouse to your store. Truck drivers receive a large bonus for delivering to player-owned stores.
All purchases from a store will earn the owner a basic profit, so no more vendors stealing all the business by selling their products at $0 profit. Your prices and your profits will be determined by the amount of customers you receive and the amount you invest in your store.
What can stores sell?
Earlier I mentioned that the only things you can buy in this entirely money-based gamemode is property, guns and food. So how can we change that? I'm not sure, but I find that GTAV takes a somewhat distantly parallel buying system to CityRPG when you look at it closely enough. My idea was that, well, maybe we can make the player buy clothes. You want a red shirt? Gotta go to a store that stocks it and buy it. You want a decal on that shirt? Gotta buy that too. You can access your clothes from a special GUI system I guess, or something along the lines of a wardrobe brick. Here are some other ideas:
- Buying cars. Instead of buying vehicle spawns, we could buy cars themselves. Steal the insurance system directly from GTAV. Buy different colors for your car. Make a command to summon your car in-case Blockland's forgeted up physics system fails you.
- Buying decorations for your home. Some potted plants and hanged art, ect. Flaunt your wealth with expensive decorations.
- Ect.
Obviously you can still buy food, and guns. Guns are a bit tricky though... we have to ask ourselves why we need guns. We may need to stop intruders breaking into our home, but why would intruders break into our home in the first place? Maybe we can store money in our homes as a loophole to prevent paying more tax/med fees/rent? This brings me to my next point, which can be found in the following post.
