a game like Illarion lives from the creativity and dedication of its players and their interaction. Illarion is not the game with flashy 3D graphics or tons of automated quests nor does stacking of gold coins or experience points promise any significant reward. Hence, one of the most important aspects is that players are involved in the daily events of Illarion, the storylines and quests. To strengthen this point, we already implemented certain measures, but all in all, Illarion is a rather static game where your individual actions only count when a gamemaster gives them an impact.
From my point of view, we have to regard two types of players: Casual players that log in once or twice a week for an hour or two and also those Illarion addicts that spend twenty or more hours a week, playing. So we also need two sets of measures to involve players, one on a permanent base and one on a event/action base.
We already made players play a more important role in town governments recently and also, the GMs involve players in building projects and similar large scale events. But we need more, maybe even semi-automated features that involve players and make them shape the land Illarion. Sandboxing is a buzzword, something every game wants to offer, but the definition of sandboxing as removal of any guidance resulted in many bad games coming out in the past.
I want you to brainstorm together with me what we can do to improve "sandboxing" and mainly player involvement. Give your points, your ideas and your opinions. As usual for a brainstorming, it is much more helpful to give your points rather than criticising the points of others without providing alternatives.
From my point of view, we should consider the following features to improve the game beyond "kill 10 wolves" quests and chatting at a campfire about it:
- Ingame mail system
It was requested various times in the past to have an ingame mail service, such as doves or letter boxes. Meanwhile, we might have the technical possibility to implement this by so called script variables that get saved in the database. These letters could basically replace the PMs of the forum as main way of indirect communication between characters. So you'd have to log in to send and receive messages from characters and also, could receive important messages about quests or political events from the GMs. As of now, such letters might not have a high priority because the forum works as substitute; but in the long run, the more reasons you have to log in, the better! - Polls and elections ingame
Back when the Troll's Bane Governors were elected ingame by the use of pedestals, we all saw the potential of such events to involve players. I can imagine having polls and general decisions within one faction also run by such "pedestals". So players could get involved in important decisions even if they are not around 24/7. As the faction membership and rank are known to the game, no abuse is envisioned. - Tax decisions
Similar to the polls above, we could introduce a method that the way how taxes are used lies in the hands of the players. More gems? Infrastructure? Guards? Buildings? YOUR decision. I can imagine that this might be a tricky task because of the unclear balance between e.g. hiring guards and gem output but with proper planning, this could be a very good feature to involve players in daily decisions. - Sandboxing - Housing within a faction
Clearly on our list, we want to provide the option to build your own house within your home faction. This shall work in an automated way so that you do not have to rely on your local gamemaster but can shape the world yourself. In theory, housing is pretty simple and most tools we need are ready. However, we lack a clear "price list" for houses and also, dedicated space for the houses. Mappers and - Sandboxing - Outside a faction
Same as above - we plan that dedicated areas outside the factions shall be available for individual housing. As such houses could harm the factions, we might apply some restrictions on the number and places. - Sandboxing - Open new lands
When Lennier designed the first draft for our new map, he clearly designed it in a way that it can be expanded. When player numbers approach a certain level, we can easily open new lands to the players to explore - and conquer. Our original three factions could act as baseline, as places of general services and as seeds. But players would be free to found new settlements, be it as colony or independent towns, in the new lands. Even if such settlements would never have the rank of a faction in terms of technical support, I am sure that players would enjoy this. With some reasonable methods, we could have decay of deserted settlements and also, who knows, maybe you can also conquer settlements of others? Or destroy them? - Large scale dynamic events
Also planned, we might one day have a framework of dynamically generated events that just happen without anyone triggering them. An ambush on the road or a fire somewhere on low scale - or big show sieges, invasions or trade events on a large scale. Players would never know what is going to happen today but they would know - something is going to happen every day.
Estralis