My biggest goal for GameTwo is to create a game where the players can have a real effect on the game world. The idea is to get away from the static worlds of traditional MMOs and move to a model where the players shape the game world every time they log in.
GameTwo's players are hovertank drivers in a cooperative PvE war. The world has been taken over by enemies, and the players' goal is to win the war and retake the world. This is a big task, which may require months of effort. The players start out weak, in a constrained area, beset by enemies on all sides. They must push the enemies back, struggling to secure the key resources that will let them continue the war.
A typical play session involves joining a group of players to fight the enemy, either offensively by trying to take over territory, or defensively by protecting land from attack. The game is pure sandbox; there are no quest hubs or missions. The players decide where to attack or defend, and they live or die by those decisions.
A big difference between GameTwo and traditional MMOs has to do with levels. In a normal MMO, each player levels on her own, tackling harder and harder content in level-appropriate zones. However, this system won't work well in GameTwo's open-world sandbox, because there are no zones. Everything is one big world; everyone fights the same enemies.
The approach I'm trying is to have all the players level up simultaneously and cooperatively by researching better equipment, such as weapons, armor, and engines. Once something is researched, it is available for anyone to use. The research is paid for with resources extracted from the world; the idea is that the players will work together to secure resources, which are then spent on research projects to improve the players' capabilities.
Research is democratic; each player gets a voice in what technologies will be worked on. This dialog shows some research projects in progress:
Each player can direct her share of the resources to whatever research project(s) she deems worthy. Projects with a lot of popular support get more resources, and hence they complete more quickly. In this way, the players chart their course together, working on the technologies that they think will help their collective war effort the most.
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