by Finsternis » Sun Sep 12, 2010 8:53 pm
Guys, I hate to break it to you, but the *exact* game you're describing, which meets *all* your criteria exactly, already exists. It's called "Eve Online".
Ben's requests, for example:
1) The number of things to cart around is staggering. Thousands and thousands. Also, you can buy (or mine) raw material and manufacture your own stuff to sell. You can also set up automated mining facilities and refineries on planets.
2) The universe has thousands of systems and something like 40,000-60,000 people playing simultaneously in those systems (not "realms" like most MMORPGs).
3) Admittedly, there are jump gates. If you had to travel interstellar distances in real time it would be pretty boring.
4) As for market range - when you start, you can see all prices at all stations in a solar system while you're in it. As you train your skills, you can see into other systems. You can never see into ALL systems, but at max skill you can see prices across humongous regions. The same is true for the range at which you can place orders, trades, and purchases.
4) As for "flow of play", it follows he classic game flow of the best space trading games: "Do whatever you want, go wherever you want, whenever you want."
5) The economy is so complex they hired a real life economist who issues reports. Also, the economy is affected in realtime by in-game happenings? War in one region? Make a killing as a war profiteer selling shit to the combatants. New region discovered with lots of one kind of resource? Prices drop. Etc. In terms of market interface, EVERYTHING is available with charts and graphs and numbers. Want to see he price history of an item and what it was selling for in various systems recently? No problemo. Right click and get a nice chart. Want to see what things are selling for in systems along your route? easy to check. Inflate demand. Corner markets. Find the biggest price differentials and exploit them.
6) The "increased depth and difficulty in actually getting where you're going" is what Eve is all about. How much risk you take is completely up to you. If you don't want to fight other people and just want to trade peacefully, you can do that if you stay in lawful space. Wantto make more? Try some of the more dangerous areas. Risk == reward. It's as dangerous as you want it to be. face as many or as few bad guys (players and NPCs) as you like. And the complexity and variety of ship systems is amazing. People can (and do) spend hours upon hours equipping their ships (but you can do fine without doing that, too). "Understanding your ship and its limits before deciding whether or not the trip is worth it" is pretty much the basis of the whole game. getting where you're going safely (assuming your destination is dangerous) is a real art and skill. And if most of your route is safe but you have to cross some dangerous space, you have to decide if it's worth it or if you should choose a longer, safer route (yes, you can choose any route you want with awesome mapping and waypoint tools that show how dangerous each system is, etc). It's as far from "push a button and you're there" as it gets.
ICJ's "bounty" feature is in there. It's easy to place bounties, and tons of people have them on their heads. Collecting them takes a lot of skill, though. and, yes - if you provoke them! - things do indeed "get very personal with the various Bad Guys in the universe". grudges go on for years between players, corporations, etc.
Death is handled exceedingly well. It's a great balance between "death wipes out out of the game" and "death means nothing". Like this: You have a clone. If you die, your clone is activated, and you are back at a base. If your clone is not up to date or you don't have one, you lose skill points. Also, clones cost money - the more skill points you have, the more they cost. The worst part is, of course, even if you die with a clone, the ship you were flying is lost with everything aboard (you can get insurance, but it ain't cheap). This can get very expensive if you were in a high end ship with lots of cargo and equipment. There are escape pods which can save you if you're quick enough, but they can also be shot down, and even if you live, your ship is still gone. As Ben requested, it can hurt a LOT - depending on the risk you were taking.
As for user interface, it *looks* complex, but you don't have to use everything or even know what it all does - not right off the bat. Many people are scared off from Eve by the learning curve - it looks complex and intimidating, but the important thing to remember is that you learn organically. It's not as if you have to know how everything works before you start. Once you know how to fly around and buy/sell stuff, that's all you need to know to be a trader. The rest will come organically as you need it know it.
And the graphics are gorgeous beyond belief.
Eve is like real life - big, complex, and open ended. It is what you make of it. It doesn't even have to be an MMOG. If you want to play it like a single-player game filled with NPCs, you can do that. Be a solo trader, don't talk to anyone else, don't join a corp, just fly around and trade. It's like a single player game with really good AI. If you want to form a corporation and have a lot more collective power, do that. Do as much or as little of each thing as you want and as your interests and goals change.
If anyone is interested, I can get you a trial code and I'll spare you the newbie grind by staking you enough cash to get a decent ship with decent equipment and some left over to start trading with.
Seriously, guys - it's right there. If you're willing to spend 4 hours trying out some new game that you don't even like that much, spend the same time trying out something that already *has* all the stuff you say you want.
Guys, I hate to break it to you, but the *exact* game you're describing, which meets *all* your criteria exactly, already exists. It's called "Eve Online".
Ben's requests, for example:
1) The number of things to cart around is staggering. Thousands and thousands. Also, you can buy (or mine) raw material and manufacture your own stuff to sell. You can also set up automated mining facilities and refineries on planets.
2) The universe has thousands of systems and something like 40,000-60,000 people playing simultaneously in those systems (not "realms" like most MMORPGs).
3) Admittedly, there are jump gates. If you had to travel interstellar distances in real time it would be pretty boring.
4) As for market range - when you start, you can see all prices at all stations in a solar system while you're in it. As you train your skills, you can see into other systems. You can never see into ALL systems, but at max skill you can see prices across humongous regions. The same is true for the range at which you can place orders, trades, and purchases.
4) As for "flow of play", it follows he classic game flow of the best space trading games: "Do whatever you want, go wherever you want, whenever you want."
5) The economy is so complex they hired a real life economist who issues reports. Also, the economy is affected in realtime by in-game happenings? War in one region? Make a killing as a war profiteer selling shit to the combatants. New region discovered with lots of one kind of resource? Prices drop. Etc. In terms of market interface, EVERYTHING is available with charts and graphs and numbers. Want to see he price history of an item and what it was selling for in various systems recently? No problemo. Right click and get a nice chart. Want to see what things are selling for in systems along your route? easy to check. Inflate demand. Corner markets. Find the biggest price differentials and exploit them.
6) The "increased depth and difficulty in actually getting where you're going" is what Eve is all about. How much risk you take is completely up to you. If you don't want to fight other people and just want to trade peacefully, you can do that if you stay in lawful space. Wantto make more? Try some of the more dangerous areas. Risk == reward. It's as dangerous as you want it to be. face as many or as few bad guys (players and NPCs) as you like. And the complexity and variety of ship systems is amazing. People can (and do) spend hours upon hours equipping their ships (but you can do fine without doing that, too). "Understanding your ship and its limits before deciding whether or not the trip is worth it" is pretty much the basis of the whole game. getting where you're going safely (assuming your destination is dangerous) is a real art and skill. And if most of your route is safe but you have to cross some dangerous space, you have to decide if it's worth it or if you should choose a longer, safer route (yes, you can choose any route you want with awesome mapping and waypoint tools that show how dangerous each system is, etc). It's as far from "push a button and you're there" as it gets.
ICJ's "bounty" feature is in there. It's easy to place bounties, and tons of people have them on their heads. Collecting them takes a lot of skill, though. and, yes - if you provoke them! - things do indeed "get very personal with the various Bad Guys in the universe". grudges go on for years between players, corporations, etc.
Death is handled exceedingly well. It's a great balance between "death wipes out out of the game" and "death means nothing". Like this: You have a clone. If you die, your clone is activated, and you are back at a base. If your clone is not up to date or you don't have one, you lose skill points. Also, clones cost money - the more skill points you have, the more they cost. The worst part is, of course, even if you die with a clone, the ship you were flying is lost with everything aboard (you can get insurance, but it ain't cheap). This can get very expensive if you were in a high end ship with lots of cargo and equipment. There are escape pods which can save you if you're quick enough, but they can also be shot down, and even if you live, your ship is still gone. As Ben requested, it can hurt a LOT - depending on the risk you were taking.
As for user interface, it *looks* complex, but you don't have to use everything or even know what it all does - not right off the bat. Many people are scared off from Eve by the learning curve - it looks complex and intimidating, but the important thing to remember is that you learn organically. It's not as if you have to know how everything works before you start. Once you know how to fly around and buy/sell stuff, that's all you need to know to be a trader. The rest will come organically as you need it know it.
And the graphics are gorgeous beyond belief.
Eve is like real life - big, complex, and open ended. It is what you make of it. It doesn't even have to be an MMOG. If you want to play it like a single-player game filled with NPCs, you can do that. Be a solo trader, don't talk to anyone else, don't join a corp, just fly around and trade. It's like a single player game with really good AI. If you want to form a corporation and have a lot more collective power, do that. Do as much or as little of each thing as you want and as your interests and goals change.
If anyone is interested, I can get you a trial code and I'll spare you the newbie grind by staking you enough cash to get a decent ship with decent equipment and some left over to start trading with.
Seriously, guys - it's right there. If you're willing to spend 4 hours trying out some new game that you don't even like that much, spend the same time trying out something that already *has* all the stuff you say you want.