In this case, adding a cool ecological simulation is a great tinker-toy project, and you can get really into the weeds with it, but you have to have a clearly-defined system for how it will impact the player and how the player can impact it. The core question you have to ask yourself about any game system you're thinking of implementing is: how will players derive enjoyment out of this? Implementing really cool technical solutions and simulations is a ton of fun for the developer, but if you don't have a clear understanding of why it will enhance the player experience, it could end up being a waste of dev time. Given the workload to implement a system like the Ecology system and put control mechanisms of some form to prevent players from being able to casually break the system, would you consider building an Ecology system in the game? Like say you were working on a game from scratch.
I think as soon as they thought that they knew how the players would act in the game after in-house testing, then they were working from a flawed conclusion based on incomplete data, so no matter what they did, the system that they implemented would be broken by the players. So why did I just post this? Well, I'm curious if people think that the ecology system idea is worth considering? I'm not looking to debate whether or not it could have been implemented in Ultima Online. More work means more time means higher cost. So I can see how this approach would face some pushback to implement after the fact. Now that being said, I do recognize that sort of approach would require more work to accomplish. Again, making it more challenging to kill them and thus reducing the "fun" factor. they could be made to have a higher awareness out to a given distance so that they can't be easily attacked in melee and must either be attacked at range, or immobilized before they can be attacked in melee. In the case of smaller animals like rabbits perhaps set up a system where they are "hidden" and must be found before they can be attacked, and as soon as they are found they A- flee and B- receive a temporary defense bonus so the players have to actively track them down and put real effort into killing them. Rather than simply having all herbivores right there to be attacked, make them A- harder to find and B- more difficult to kill thus making it "less fun" to kill them. The way I see it, if players were killing all animals because it was fun (and I assume for the XP of the action itself, but I didn't play Ultima online so I'm just speculating), then the solution is to make it "not fun" to kill the non-carnivore animals. This strikes me as attempting to solve A problem but not THE problem. Garriott explains that they attempted to counter this by changing the spawn rates, thinking they could find an equilibrium between how many animals the players could kill with how many animals are spawned. Rather than seeking the valuable pelts of the carnivore-type animals, that can fight back, many players simply went after all animals because it was fun to kill them regardless of what the end value of the collectibles were.
In the video, Garriott mentions that they misjudged the motivations of the players. I find it fascinating to hear about, but I'm left wondering about the system itself. I ran across this video where the creator of Ultima Online talked about their failure when it came to implementing a world Ecology system into the game. Want to be a part of an /r/MUD project? Fellow Redditors are lending their talents to an official RMUD codebase and game! Check it out and lend a hand!
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