The Ultimate Blockland RP - A Theoretical Discussion

[Bushido]

this is all just theoretical discussion. brainstorming.

except for what me and des are making, which is secret

[Ad Bot]

[Thorax]

I'm planning making 1 or 2 now.

[Wolfie]

I like Wedge's idea of shopkeepers buying their wares from a central source, dubbed "warehouse" if you will. Another idea: for the Zombie Mods, use something like the Block City mod, except with food, water, and other valuable post-apocalyptic valuables as the resources. Players spawn in a wrecked, barren village surrounded by fences and barricades. Zombies can damage these and eventually may break through. Players may build to repair or add to the barricades. Each resource can do something specific to its type. Wood, metal and other building materials could form barricades or even shacks en masse, while food and water are taken back to a communal barracks at the spawn village, and can restore health, or possibly a hunger meter. However, pillagers from holdouts nearby might also invade and steal these resources if they go unchecked. Gasoline and ammo, and weapons may be found in some buildings, and certain resources can be used to make simple weapons, such as Molotovs, clubs, spears, etc., etc. Players could work together to keep out the infected and keep their supplies going. Whaddaya think?

[heedicalking]

I like Wedge's idea of shopkeepers buying their wares from a central source, dubbed "warehouse" if you will. Another idea: for the Zombie Mods, use something like the Block City mod, except with food, water, and other valuable post-apocalyptic valuables as the resources. Players spawn in a wrecked, barren village surrounded by fences and barricades. Zombies can damage these and eventually may break through. Players may build to repair or add to the barricades. Each resource can do something specific to its type. Wood, metal and other building materials could form barricades or even shacks en masse, while food and water are taken back to a communal barracks at the spawn village, and can restore health, or possibly a hunger meter. However, pillagers from holdouts nearby might also invade and steal these resources if they go unchecked. Gasoline and ammo, and weapons may be found in some buildings, and certain resources can be used to make simple weapons, such as Molotovs, clubs, spears, etc., etc. Players could work together to keep out the infected and keep their supplies going. Whaddaya think?

That's not an RP, just a complicated zombie deathmatch.

[laremere]

I would disagree.  If the players are roleplay as survivors of a zombie outbreak, then it's an RP.  A gamemode would be just shooting zombies.

[Killer2]

I would like to expand on that.

You also want to make the weapons balanced. This is so you want to keep some weapons and still have new ones. Abusive weapons should also not be used.

Will you continue working on that eventually. If so, I have a good idea on how to have populations, assigning jobs to bots, etc.

Um... Anyone want to respond to this?

[Bushido]

it's a comment

what's there to respond to

[Killer2]

it's a comment

what's there to respond to

I would just like to see what you guys think, plus I want to know if Heed noticed anything he should reply to.

[rkynick]

I would just like to see what you guys think, plus I want to know if Heed noticed anything he should reply to.

Please, give me a moment to delve deep into my mind to find a response to "the game should be balanced."


Anyways, none of these ideas will work. For example, in blockland, an RP means "no goal." There's structure, but no objective. When the structure isn't deep enough or flexible enough to provide fun on it's own, the lack of objective really hurts.

I've run some little personal experiments with objective in my Rock Raiders-themed mining RP(G?).
For example, in one scenario, I gave the team a simple objective: mine through some hard rock (very difficult, some tools can speed it up though) and cash in on the resources on the other side.
There was a great deal of teamwork and such involved as we basically plowed through to the hard-rock-- everyone crowded around the loader-dozer (which I made to be crowded around with some buffs) and starting mining about. It was good fun and certain moments presented themselves such as dynamite mishaps which reinforced the feeling of a need of teamwork.
Once the objective was complete, and with no real followup objective, the fun sort of fell off.

In another scenario, I gave the players the ability to kill eachother with laser rifles that served no other purpose. They had to be bought with resources that were shared by everyone. It was easy to ignore the chance to go on a wild rampage because there was objective. Thus, when someone finally did snap and started firing it made it that much more intense and RP worthy.
Eventually we ran him over.

In the final scenario, I presented an objective that was too hard to reach and unrewarding. The fun died out before it could be reached and shortly after everyone had explored the structure of the game through and through (there were about 12 tools that could be used and a few vehicles, each tool and vehicle had its own powers and abilities).



So when it comes down to it, any blockland game needs Objectives and Structure. Most of them are built on structure without objective or objective without structure.
If the objective is too hard to reach and objectives before that are far and few between, the player can lose interest. Similarly, if the objective is completed only to repeat itself, the player can lose faith that what they're doing has an impact.

Put simply, blockland is a game that asks the player to draw their own objectives. It works well in that respect.
Blockland RPs are games that use structure to take away the player's ability to create objectives for themselves. Many of them do not fill the gap.
Many of them also tend to isolate the player. But that's for a different discussion.

We need blockland mods that can reduce the player from a weapon-spawning vehicle-riding jet-flying demigod into a man of plastic without actually limiting the player. As a point of comparison, consider the change between Creative Minecraft and Survival Minecraft.

[Barnabas]

That's the thing about RP's. Give the players no objectives and they'll become bored and not follow rules. Give them too many objectives and it stops being an RP and becomes more of a TDM or something of that sorts.

...

So when it comes down to it, any blockland game needs Objectives and Structure. Most of them are built on structure without objective or objective without structure.
If the objective is too hard to reach and objectives before that are far and few between, the player can lose interest. Similarly, if the objective is completed only to repeat itself, the player can lose faith that what they're doing has an impact.

Put simply, blockland is a game that asks the player to draw their own objectives. It works well in that respect.
Blockland RPs are games that use structure to take away the player's ability to create objectives for themselves. Many of them do not fill the gap.
Many of them also tend to isolate the player. But that's for a different discussion.

...

I agree on that with you. There are many ways of giving purpose to them, either giving them a string of objectives, or one of the players (usually the host and a few other admins) become "game masters" to add some narrative to the story, giving a background to the events.

IceBlue's Bluzone is a perfect example for that. There was a background, people had to work on the background of their characters and this made it more enjoyable.

Those both elements can be combined too, so if the "game masters" are tired or uninspired to give goals, a wide variety of goals should be generated.

...
Now players must claim land for their faction. They do this through a 100-click challenge. I'll start with the Field.

To conquer a Field, a player will need to harvest crops from it. First, the player must grab the plow tool from the Spawn Area. They then head to the field they want to conquer and, using the plow to hit, start clicking on the baseplate. After 15 clicks, they will have plowed one row of dirt. They need to plow 4. By 60 clicks, they will have plowed 4. Now they must plant seeds. This is accomplished by clicking twice on every row, bring the total clicks to 68. Now they need to water the seeds. By clicking 3 times on each row, the seeds will have sprouted and their total clicks should be up to 80. Now the player must harvest it's crops. There are 20 in total. After they click on each one (making it disappear), everything on the baseplate will disappear and the player will now own that land.
...

I'm not too sure about this one, since it sounds like another click-o-rama, which is something that spoils most RPs for me. It is dull to click at the same looking objects just to see them disappear.

So RP system makers should consider spicing up their games with various kinds mini-games. Puzzles, mini-challenges are a good way of breaking the monotony of the game.

Also, have you noticed that most class based-RPs are rather restrictive? Just because you are a policeman, why couldn't you make the best steaks in the whole neighbourhood? If you are soldier or a palace guard, why should you be barred from enjoying the joys of fishing? Maybe the solution to this could be what Wedge said, instead of letting classes determine the skills, it should be constructed from the ground up, thus having skills as the priority. The rest about skills, penalties, restrictions have been said by others.

Also, Doomonkey mentioned that it could be a great idea if this was modular. Maybe it is impossible to determine what is the "Ultimate Game-Mode", it could amend the restrictiveness of many RP systems.

And lastly, we should not forget about the factor of "emergent gameplay". Sometimes people create or react situations which were not taken into consideration by the creator. How could this be dealt with?

[Thorax]

I'm not too sure about this one, since it sounds like another click-o-rama, which is something that spoils most RPs for me. It is dull to click at the same looking objects just to see them disappear.

I was thinking about that as well. But I can't really think of a better way to do it. I mean, I could use the same method as the capture points where you have to stand on them until you capture it. But that's kinda boring and too easy to capture things quickly.

What about making it so that you have to stand on the area until you "Capture" it, but that would only be the beginning. As soon as you capture it, you'd be teleported to the "legal" room where you have "fill in paperwork" to claim your land. This "paperwork" would actually be a series of jump challenges and such.

[rkynick]

Also, Doomonkey mentioned that it could be a great idea if this was modular. Maybe it is impossible to determine what is the "Ultimate Game-Mode", it could amend the restrictiveness of many RP systems.

And lastly, we should not forget about the factor of "emergent gameplay". Sometimes people create or react situations which were not taken into consideration by the creator. How could this be dealt with?

We need to define a series of rules to the universe and add elements to said universe.

If we can lay down some groundwork in this topic, I can set up a test session.
We're mostly saying what it should be like without providing any examples to work off of.

[Nitramtj]

While we were working on the space station on my server, showing people the station and process of adding a module was enough to get them really excited and want to build (even me who barely builds). We had no real clear objective, it was just a fun process to go through, and 'cool.'

[Zloff]

I've been working on an RPG using VCE events, and I was always thinking about problems like the ones you listed. I want my RPG to have everything, but it's quite hard to make things perfect. But, one thing that you should never do is make people do something they don't want to do; don't make them play the role of someone they don't want to be. Add alternatives, and I'm not talking about just classes. I'm talking more about, jobs or life styles, if you will, such as gladiator(for the fighters), adventurer(for the stricter RP'ers), etc. I'll just list some random ideas that I am using/may use in my RPG:

-Ditch PvP areas; make more organized arenas, with prizes for the winners and runner-ups. An arena also puts some purpose to the RPG/RP, and will push people in to wanting to become better to become a champion.

-Add a story to the RP/RPG, don't have people walking around earning stuff just to buy more weapons used to kill things that restarts the cycle all over again. Add a story that revolves around a purpose for the whole RPG/RP.

-Add challenge to earning resources, don't make players just click things and get resources by chance or after a certain amounts of clicks. In my RPG, I have these fish events where you would have to click the brick to lower how far away the fish is, but after a second or three from clicking it, the number would start to rise, as if the fish was trying to get away, causing you to use more strategic clicking patterns, while still clicking as fast as you could :3

-If you can kill outside of PvP areas, make sure you always have an automatic justice system. For example, in my RPG, if one player kills another, it adds to their score(I ONLY use the score for this justice purpose). Sooner or later, if the killer gets killed, they touch the spawn brick where they re-spawn, which is rigged with events that check the player's score, and put them in a prison-like area for a set amount of time depending on their score, which is erased after they are released.

[Thorax]

Just an idea for the thread:

Each person could post a short summary of an idea for an RP they will try to make. Those summaries could be pasted in a list on the OP so that everyone can see the different ideas without searching the giant walls of text.