The Ultimate Blockland RP - A Theoretical Discussion

[Doomonkey]

I think a set of "bones" should be released, which people could customize to their needs, and there would be a few pre-made modes for it.

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[Killer2]

Stop with this ALREADY!

Ephi's right, and I hadn't realised it before. RPs need to have building in them. Medieval RP, Egyptian RP or w/e don't really include free building. City RPs are too open ended and get boring.
Building randomly: No
Building to achieve a goal: Yes

A big problem is raised when I hear this.

The problem is you can only do so much for building something to achieve a goal. And, you also only have a limited amount of things to build before you can't do anything at all.

For me, a good RP would be the people having to make buildings, in order to achieve a goal, and yet still being able to expand so you can create more buildings, even if it has already been made.

I also say that fighting should be apart of the RP, because the second thing of Blockland that is unique, is that it isn't just a building game. it's also a fighting game. Defending areas, attacking area, and etc. would include that aspect.

And the last thing that should be in this RP is the imagination aspect. This RP should be compatible for any theme(s). Because, everything in Blockland, when it comes to TDM's, Buildings, Mods, whatever, thrives off imagination. This game couldn't have been created, without imagination.

[Red_Guy]

Mr. Wallet's "Rise of Blockland" remains the best game-mode I've ever seen in BL. It was focused around building, and was constrained by a simplified economy. Structures had purpose (to sell the resources necessary to play the game). Even in its simplest form, the game-mode earned itself a hearty core of dedicated players, but I think the idea could be developed further.  Starting with More interesting surroundings, more ways of using the resources you have earned, and methods to encourage better buildings, would all make the game-mode more interesting.

This is very close to what ive been trying to come up with in my own experiments -- any clue where to get more info on it?  doing a search didnt help much.

One of my own pet peves with a lot of RPGs is the game world is always static. Vendors always sell the same stuff (theres almost always vendors). they stand in the same place - except for a few who run on standard routes.
the "stuff to do" is always the same:  Kill X of monster Y. go collect X number of Y widgets, go talk to an NPC.  with a few variations here and there - everything falls under those basic types.  Blockland's building mechanic has the ability to change all this.
Ephialtes idea to build a bridge across something is a really good example, but once one person has done the work.. its not really needed anymore. 50 bridges across one river makes it into an underground stream...
That can be taken care of by some kindof a decay - but if my bridge is eventually going away.. im not going to put a whole lot of effort into building it.

Ive tried to add a building stuff component to the mining mod I run - but other than for use in primitive forts in a deathmatch, theres little incentive to build anything.

The other big issue with building stuff is it takes up space on the server, and eventually the landscape will fill up, and nobody can go anywhere (brings back bad memories of starwars galaxies MMO).  Decay and maintence can be put in place so stuff thats abandoned will eventually go away - but then it eventually turns into a "job" just to keep your stuff alive.  Nobody wants to see their hard work vanish in a server crash or have it dissapear when they go on vacation for a week.

Im all for adding a building mechanic into a RP style game, but unless we can solve the problem of having it run for a really long time.. its going to be really hard.

[agentbanana]

Blockland Main Adventure mode.

i that idea

[Nitramtj]

Laremere basically gave my solution to the dull RP problem. The problem with the space station build/rp was that I had to manually check every module that was flown up. Also, many people wouldn't get the concept in their minds and would build nice looking modules, but they didn't fit the restrictions. That's why I'm working on brick manipulation scripts right now, just very slowly.

[Ministry]

To be completely honest, i think the pinacle of Ultimate Blockland RP's was Mr.Wallets Rise of Blockland, It did pretty much what your asking. the buildings had purpose and some of the buildings (costing a lost of time and dedication to the mod) looked awesome. and it felt like a bare bones mod, with some more work would be the best RP mod.

For another mod to come out similar, but with more indepth work to it. you could get the RP you want, it wasnt just a grind it made you feel like your buildings were worth something.

The worring about people that dont/wont put effort into their builds isnt really something you can restrict it will always happen, people will think effectiveness not, niceness. Although during Mr.Wallets RoB i did always buy from the nicer looking buildings, and incorperating this with Ephi's idea of the Engineer class there can be some more purpose in some of the jobs, to sum it up, If you have a nice building people will buy from you more often than from a building thats just a red brick house with a giant signs.

The Engineer could have special build permissions such as public service building, the ability to build under the roads and such. Even if you wanted to make the mod more RP, you could have electrisity and consumption, somebody has to deal with the work it would take to wire up peoples builds. there are countless ideas for jobs and such that could go with such a mod.

As for fighting, i say this game was first a Building game. Lets keep it that way, the minigames feel like they were made for children, to keep them happy while the big boys build, i havent seen a minigame worth the time to play it in quite some time, last time i enjoyed a minigame was Ephi's Zones DM, because that was funny.

Edit: Obviously with special building permissions needs some restraint on the Engineers. so i think maybe an admin approved player should take this role.

[Barnabas]

RoB had a great resource managing part, but I felt it far too slow paced, even for my standards and it did not really play like an RPG. I barely saw anyone interacting with other people in a role taken up by themselves. And yes Mini, I also had that "half-finished" feeling.

Wedge had many rather nice posts on RPs, I hope he won't mind if I share them with you.

http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=19854.msg282154#msg282154
http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=50116.msg834609#msg834609

If you follow those links, you may find many more rants by various people.

[Ministry]

Wedges ideas sum everything up really, combing it with ours and a faster paced version of RoB. And i think we might be onto something.

[heedicalking]

Adding weapons to an RP automatically makes the RP 10 times harder to make successful. If you add guns, people will use them. A good RP would require players to actually work together.

The problem is that this game is full of kids who just want to shoot people no matter what. Whether they have paint, a hammer, or fists, they will attempt to kill you with it, for no reason at all. People will spawn in a city RP and immediately attempt to Flash Mob everyone with a hammer.

Another problem is that 3/4 of the community lacks any type of skill at building. People play blockland, a game where you build stuff, and look for TF2 and call of duty subgames. I bet 1/4 of the players haven't even attempted to build something for the sake of making a nice looking build. Then you get your RP full of generic cube shaped houses, shops, towers, bridges, and so on. When I play on an RP, I actually want to be able to tell what I am looking at. I don't want to be walking down the street and see a building called "shop awsoom" that is 64x64 bricks wide, 5 bricks tall with absolutely no interior detail except some light up buttons that sell you explosives.

In any CityRP, the main goal of half the players is kill. They sell food, work in mines, sell clothes, ultimately so they can get weapons. They don't actually want to be "Hey, I should make a good foodstore to contribute to the city and make it look nice, while getting customers who like the fair priced server I give them", it is more of a "im gona make a food stroe and get money then buy rocket lancher"

Most RPs are stuck in the city theme, and that isn't really what I see becoming great. The city idea has been tried numerous times and it is becoming worn out, and I think it is tiring. I think that a blockland rp should drift away from the city theme and focus on something new. If you want to make a city, you can do it without a mod/minigame and do it without people killing you constantly.

[Ministry]

An Evolution, tribal/medieval type of RP with all of what we have discussed would be a perfect RP i think.

People need to eat and most people want to kill stuff, so give them the not so important job of hunting for food.

People need recources to build ( i know this is like adding the grinding aspect) so there can be people that have to collect resources to build.

To sum it up quickly, theres a job for most people, and it builds an enconomy, People need food, people need resources to build homes and shops to sell goods, But it would have to be goods that can only be sold in numbers, not unlimited ammounts, giving the game stock and purpose/demand for people to actually get into it.

Personally, i think its a great idea and it could really be a very well played RP.

The hunters cannot harm each other and to survive this RP people are demanded and have no other option but to work together really.

[Wizard]

SurvivalRP had many of those aspects at its development height.

[Thorax]

SurvivalRP had many of those aspects at its development height.

That was probably the mod (Aside from GC's weapon pack) that I was most looking forward to.

The primary objective was ever-present: to survive. That's what would have kept players playing.

After that player had gotten into the flow of surviving, they would probably have either: A. Teamed up with players to make work easier and faster, thus giving them more time to expand and explore. Or B. Raid and kill other players to gather their resources.

The players that chose B. would be annoying at first, but they'd eventually die out as it is harder to fight 1 vs >1.

And after a while, certain groups would rise in power and a power struggle would occur.


As for other RP's, it is a smart idea to add a "killing zone". In medieval RP's, having an Arena keeps players from randomly murdering townsfolk. Also, by awarding some kind of small reward to victors, you could even get them started on taking a role and having them fight in the arena on the side.

Just my thoughts, though. I've never made an RP, and in general, I hate them for the reasons already discussed.

[Wizard]

I'm going to get survivalrp made.


if I ever get off my lazy ass and script

[heedicalking]

If an RP is going to include fighting (survival rp), then you it has to be difficult for one person to go on an all out killing spree. In City RPs, one guy would just get a rocket launcher and kill everyone, and would require no effort to get another. If an RP mod was to be made and it included fighting other players, weapons should be difficult to get.

A Colonization RP, the one I was attempting to make, would feature you forming a colony by building bricks, but bricks cost wood to place. You can fight and make peace as well as trade. Alliance system should be built in because saying "who wants to team" generally doesn't work. Having a built in teaming up system would allow people to work off of one big resource pile, use the same spawns, use custom chat, and so on.

[Wizard]

Obviously the goal of surviving goes above the goal of killing everyone, so it'd be difficult to go on a spree.