After discussing with a few people, trying to analyze the past Col worlds and thinking over the results, there were a few things appearing that seems to be important. First, player interaction is important, likely the most important point of them all. Almost anything that can encourage players to interact with each other can make the world live longer. Secondly, it has to be easy for new players to get in, without a fresh supply of new players the world will die when the old players lose interest. Thirdly, the world can’t be in a perpetual state of war, cold or not, if there is a threat of losing everything.
Let’s go through some of this and see what can be found.
Player interaction:
Studying Col 1 eventually leads to the point where it got stale and boring, which begs the question, why? That which happened in Col 1 was that people grouped together in various towns, building with each other in tiny groups, interacting with other towns only in rare occasions. Quite a few towns died early due to the lack of interest of those managing these towns, be it lack of content, player interaction or lack of stuff to do. The towns that lasted the longest had a huge amount of player interaction, where the towns themselves were interacting with other towns as well.
I remember that back in Col 1, I was fortunate enough to be part of a town with a huge amount of players, one time it was the greatest power in Col 1. We actively tried to find ways to involve other towns in various RP situations, and we managed to kick-start some form of RP war. This made people interested in Col again; many hopped on to see what it was about. Unfortunately, this didn’t work out as well as intended and the interest dropped before any real action actually took place. Col 2 was released before we had a chance to try again.
Nonetheless, it was an interesting event to watch, since unique and far-apart towns communicated and interacted with each other, forming alliances during this event. What we did was basically setting up a backstory based on the unique towns and the world, then act on that. Of course, we did research first, trying to figure out some of the lore of other towns first.
I’m getting sidetracked here, however. The main point is that player interaction is basically required to be required, for a long-lasting world. It would be amazing to see this happen due to various events, they don’t even have to be story-driven. It’d even be possible to use larger towns as the base for various events, using staff help to make them even more fantastic. This would encourage players to visit each other more often, and come together.
Another way to encourage player interactions is to bring them all together in a common story – make the world come alive and give everyone a reason to participate. If we look back to Col 1, everyone were separated, there was no story behind everything and players had no reason whatsoever to connect with each other apart from trade (which failed, and I’ll return to that). Players must have a reason to interact with each other, and this should be heavily encouraged.
Different types of player interaction
This brings us to Col 2, which based its player interaction heavily on player-versus-player combat. This did see a good amount of success, if measuring it based on player activities and playtime spent. There was a huge uproar when the cold war started, everyone were arming themselves, trying to build the best defenses and attack forces, getting the upper hand over their enemies. Many forged alliances, taking a side in the conflict.
The problem was the force driving everything. I will make a bold claim and state that it was the fear of losing everything, rather than the desire to have a war, that forced players to continue playing. Evidence that suggests this is that players, who were already established within a big town, did everything they could to prevent their work from being destroyed. Many people spent unhealthy amounts of time building defense systems, to keep attackers away. While I personally wasn’t directly affected by the warmongering, my friends and allies were. This directly affected me, as I felt inclined to help with what I could, and more than once I spent unhealthily many hours late into night doing what I could to aid them.
Another piece of evidence that supports my claim is that the biggest, most established forces joined together, forging an alliance between them. This split the player base (according to my observations) into two main groups – the defenders and the attackers (other groups existed, but they remained mainly neutral and can be ignored for the sake of this argument).
While this may not be strictly true, my observations support claiming that all defenders were allied, under one common alliance. These were the builders, those that found fun in building massive structures and, as far as I can tell, the “politicians” of Col 2 (hence “Colitics”). The attackers did in some incidences group together, but according to my observations, they were always in the minority and usually lone wolves. According to rather extensive database gathered by my fellow players, this claim can be supported. We didn’t have info on many attackers, simply because we didn’t find players who fit that description. Personally, I can think of only two, three people tops, who actively sought out active and destructive war. If we compare that to the around seventeen people participating in the forming of an alliance that desired peace or the very least, not an active war, it sounds safe to conclude the vast majority of the playerbase didn’t want active war, or even war at all.
I hear people desire “Colitics” again, which under the arguments provided here will be beneficial to the server and is likely something that we want to encourage. However, a problem with this is that we run the risk of running stagnant, where the “world borders” are mostly fixed and as such there will be little reason to continue these politics. At this point in time, I predict player activity will decline, eventually leading to a dead world. I can’t think of solutions to this problem, but it might be something we should, as a community, attempt to put effort into finding a solution to – one that does not eventually run stagnant.
On the topic of active war
Several times it has been mentioned the massive stress this has put on players, in their desire to preserve their hard work. For some players, they clocked in at months of hard work building; of course they don’t want to lose all that in an instant. Nobody in their right minds would spend months setting up giant towns, massive harbors, a huge fleet then have waste it all in a few hours or days, seeing it all fade away in a war.
From the attackers’ point of view, they would likely have put up lot of efforts making their own machines of war as well. I doubt they would be willing to see the work they’ve poured their heart and soul into vanish in a fight as well. I remember that there was one incidence which could have led to an active fight where materialistic losses were had. A massive group of players headed out to destroy a force threatening their town, but the player (players? My intel isn’t solid here) behind this force avoided the attack by playing the rules, simply by not being online. When nobody else was online, this entire force was relocated, hidden and spread around the world in various locations.
Both these incidences are good indicators that players don’t want to lose their belongings. Yet, I hear that players want war in one way or another. So how can this best be resolved? Expanding on feedback from others in this thread, as well as trying to extend on other viewpoints that have been mentioned during the discussions I’ve had with others, there are several ways to proceed. I will make a list further down in this section. Many of these suggestions can be used together. Each and every one of these methods has their pros and cons, which have to be discussed. Due to time constraints I’m not able to put those in here, but a good system must consider all sides before being put into use.
There is one thing that must be made abundantly clear, and must not falter at any point in time over the course of the server. Allowing the destruction of player property, be it buildings or other mechanics, against the will of the players owning said property, must not be allowed to happen! This will only cause harm to not only the players themselves, this will directly affect player mental state, player motivation to build and even play at all (why play when you can lose it all?). In the long run it will lead to a “good person/bad person” segregation, and likely bring the toxicity that PvP combined with destruction brings. The community runs high risks of being torn apart and ultimately I predict, with a high certainty, that it will lead to the death of the survival aspect. In extreme cases, I fear this could lead to the death of Brohoof altogether.
The only reason I can imagine we’d ever want to allow open destruction of player property, is so that some players can have fun destroying other’s work; this in an unbelievably pathetic reason and can only bring grief and harm. On a build-oriented server as Brohoof, is doesn’t make sense either, not even the slightest ounce of sense. We cannot allow open destruction to be allowed! I will clear up any misconception; I refer to open destruction, as any player being allowed to destroy another player’s possessions without consent from the targeted player
Evidence for this claim lies in our experience from Col 2; players had to quit simply because they couldn’t take the stress! I got stressed too, even though I had nothing to lose myself! I was stressed because I didn’t want to see my friends’ work being lost over someone’s petty desire to see a town burn, and did everything in my power to actively fight that from happening.
Possible solutions for a potential PvP system
- Have PvP forcefully enabled / leave PvP to the choice of individual players by having a toggle (exclusive or, can’t have both)
- Enable / disable PvP in certain zones, this gives players who absolutely don’t want PvP a safe havens and players who really want PvP a place to carry out their deeds
- Force one PvP state (on or off) in combination with PvP events (Battle arenas, war events, PvP “time zones”, peacetime event and so on)
- Allow towns to define their own “ranks” (military, civilian etc), where certain ranks are protected from PvP
- Encourage Player-versus-Enemy/Server rather than Player-versus-Player (Having a “bad side” that is staff-run, hostile enemy monster surges, story where a villain must be stopped [with consequences if failed to stop?], and much more. A (big!) bonus here is more content and more diverse gameplay)
- Wars (and thus PvP between relevant factions) must be declared and approved; these wars may or may not be staff controlled
Disclaimer: this is merely a list I compiled from previous suggestions and most aren’t mine; some may be worded in a way that is colored by my personal preferences. My personal opinion is that we heavily encourage PvE and have safe havens for those that don’t want PvP; other than that, my viewpoint on PvP is fairly neutral.
Problems the solution for a PvP system must address:
- Certain players absolutely don’t want PvP, and that certain players want PvP. This is unlikely to be perfectly satisfied with a vote and most definitely cannot be allowed to be resolved with a “first past the post”-vote, as that usually caters to the minority.
- It must not lead to harassment of a part of the playerbase. Players must be guarded to prevent a toxic player from ruining others’ fun. Rules are unlikely to be sufficient; the protection should be baked into the system itself.
- It shouldn’t force players to avoid playing, for example in fear of loss of property/possessions, leading to a fear of dying.
- Players mustn’t lose their property (buildings, land etc), possibly not their belongings either, unless they allow that
- We are a small, closely tied community of hopefully friendly people, not a bunch of hoodlums and hooligans; discourage toxicity and encourage friendly fights, where people don’t hate each other afterward a fight. We see each other again over and over; grudges stay.
- The system must be sustainable. It must allow new players to enter, and it must not discourage players from continuing playing.
If the system can’t address these issues, or fail to deliver, either right off the bat or eventually in the long run, then it should be either drastically reworked or expunged (basically becoming a PvP toggle). This mostly applies to any PvP system that relies on having PvP forced on without the players necessarily wanting that. Failing this, it’s likely to cause long-term damage that can’t be repaired.
Trading with each other
This is another concept that didn’t deliver on its premise in any of the Col worlds. Why? To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. It’s possible to be a combination of many different contributing factors, and this section will basically be my speculations, trying to understand what happened.
Let’s have a look at the world state from Col 1. Players quickly moved each direction, settling in various towns, building their own places and generally being left on their own little bubbles. They didn’t often leave them, or interact with their neighbors. The main form for player trading was basically one of two people just moving to some random place looking at the trade signs, seeing what was available, or asking every now and then if someone sold that specific goods.
What I believe was the big issue here, is that everybody were so isolated from each other, and I’m not talking in distance. The player interaction wasn’t in place for this system to be sustainable; player didn’t travel enough from town to town, leading to “ghost markets” in towns that did try to set something up. I’ve gone through the Col 1 from a backup and had a look; it’s the same everywhere, the shop situation looks just miserable everywhere.
A fair reason was brought to my attention; players might just not want to trade, at least not what we think of as “trade”. Sure, people are selling various items for some money, but these items are usually useless (such as bows, swords and so on). Very few people actively tried to produce goods and sell them - even less bought from them.
A system that was brought in that could have altered things was the biome-based growth of trees and resources. Again, this potentially could have worked, but the sustainability wasn’t there – it didn’t help that the market wasn’t developed enough either. Whenever players accumulated money, there was hardly anyone who sold the resources they needed. For example, in Col 1, the Changeling Hive had a huge demand for stained clay, sand and cacti. I think we only once or twice were able to buy something and that only in a small quantity. I asked many times if people were selling, but they weren’t. In the end, we found it easier to go grab everything ourselves, completely ignoring the trade system because it didn’t work. All in all, the biome-distributed resources just made everything worse, because now not only didn’t people sell, but we also had to travel kilometers to find the resources we needed.
In Col 2, it got even worse as ore was now distributed on islands, where you basically had to move from one island to another to find the resources you needed. Trade was really close to non-existent here; people actually deliberately attempted to monopolized resources to prevent others from getting them; examples being the volcano with diamonds, mesa island for clay, and cactus. The system backfired horribly.
What can be done? That, I can’t answer, I simply have no idea. Dealing with an economy on a server that has a large community is already hard enough, doing it for a community the size of this? I’ve been trying to look for sensible solutions, but I’ve come up empty-handed.
Closing words
I know this is a big post, but there’s a lot of important material that must be considered and discussed in order for this world to become a success. When it comes to a massive part like PvP, that beast must be dealt with in a proper way; failure to do so will harm everything in the long run. If we neglect to care for the new players and those that might be standing in weaker light, that will cause player deterioration, eventually leading to ghost towns. It is crucial that we strengthen the community, by building bonds between people, get them to interact with each other in a way that benefits everybody, including the server as a whole.
Remember that anything that takes place in the survival side of the server will spill over to the creative side. If we encourage teamwork, cohesion, fair play and good sportsmanship, that will be reflected elsewhere. On the other hand, if we encourage foul play, harming weaker players and generally attacking others who don’t want that, this is going to reflect over as well.
The general consensus seems to be that we make this survival world based on Equestria, so let us stay true to the atmosphere that is associated with it. Let us, as is implied by so many people, make a friendly and cheerful environment that Brohoof ought to be.