This will be a long post, since I have been keeping most of my thoughts under wraps up until now. First of all a quick update – pretty HP bars are on the way soon, for players, NPCs, and structures. There is just something satisfying about seeing a chunk of HP taken out of a rectangle. Also it’s clear that when new players join the game they find it a bit daunting and aimless. The possibilities and depth are not immediately apparent to them, compared to experienced players. So I will have to create either a tutorial map, or some kind of beginner quest system to guide players who only have so much patience for discovery.

People may be wondering what my design philosophy is for this game. I will say it is a game first, and a social experiment second. When time allows I can implement changes and features to this game at a rapid pace. Most game designers can’t afford to take many risks, even in the indie gaming world. I feel that I am in a position to push the boundaries of game design early on. From that I can analyze the data, make discoveries, and finally scale back the extremes to preserve the fun – the ‘game’. Because at the end of the day a field of ruins can only say so much (that the developer made a wrong turn somewhere I suppose). Until then, we get crazy, because we can.

The game as it is pushes some boundaries. For instance the death penalties for an MMO are so harsh it can make people angry. It also makes it that much more exciting to escape death, or craft a better armor and finally dismiss the wolves which you used to fear. Discovery and risk are fun. When striking a balance between casual and hardcore – I lean towards a game that creates stories. You will get more memorable stories from a game like Dwarf Fortress than from Farmville.

The land is called Mystera and Legends are still being created years later. It may interest some of you to know that Mystera Legacy is supposed to be a prequel to the game Mystera Legends. Where Legends has full access to continents rich with magic and civilization – Legacy is just discovering the land and the only hints of magic come from deep underground (and elsewhere which isn’t accessible currently). Every failed attempt at creating a functioning town in Legacy is an iteration towards the founding of ‘Galebrook’, the capital city of Legends.

When Jabu ‘exploited’ the best way to level it caused a reaction in other players. Some joined in to compete in the arms race. Others felt a sense of defeat, thinking this is not how things are meant to be. The player Blu for instance, decided to construct a literal “F*** YOU” in the desert and block everyone’s doorways to express his feelings on the matter. The tribe now known as Frost Legion fought back against him until he finally quit, then they made a park and named it after him. This is how legends are created, and it also highlights another aspect of the game that I wanted to emerge. In Blu’s mind it was Jabu who was the villain and he was enacting Justice in the way he thought appropriate, for most other’s I’m sure Blu was the villain. The players are defining their own morality and justice – and that will continue to evolve as those who have the most power may have to draft their own rules or laws eventually. I prefer to stay out of it, even though I have and still am patching the balance issues that created that story. So how will more stories come about?

It’s been peaceful since then. Jopah has been running experiments with chickens and everyone has been repairing their walls waiting for whatever is next. Players like Hatred, Blu, and others are important to create a balanced alignment – otherwise NPCs have to be created to fill that void. Or I have to design something artificial to create conflict such as placing players on predefined teams. It might seem like the obvious thing to increase conflict is to make it easier to break into houses and steal – but I just did the opposite and increased house security. What is the incentive to have a nice secure house when you can just keep your items on an alternate mule character? How do we solve mule characters? How do we solve players logging out in people’s houses (or future houses)? What about players getting a really high level and then refusing to play anymore so they can stay at the top of the leaderboards? They can just log in for a second to negate the experience decay I added. What about people who log in on top of other characters to stack damage on walls? The list goes on.. and every problem requires a carefully crafted solution that wont break other aspects of game balance. I’ve weighed many of them with pros and cons, and I have high standards for implementing these fixes which really creates a puzzle. I don’t even like some of the ones I have implemented like 30 second damage timers and experience decay. I finally came up with a satisfactory solution to the doorway blocking problem (which was the reason walls had low hp in the first place) and that took a long while. So what about all the other issues?

Instead of going over every solution I’ve thought of let me highlight one solution that I could implement that would solve every single one of those problems simultaneously. It is crazy, but as I stated earlier, now is the best time for crazy. We can always change it later. Before explaining this let me put you into a certain frame of mind: Difficult games like Dwarf Fortress, Roguelikes, and Dark Souls have developed communities where the mantra is ‘Losing is fun!’. Basically build a tower of blocks as high as you can until it inevitably falls. You expected it to. You just wanted to see how far you could make it. Why did you even start in the first place? It seemed like a fun challenge. If the difficulty in Mystera Legacy is increased so that your life is in more danger, and we accept the inevitability of death and rebirth, then the average player level will decrease and get closer together – driving competition and conflict a bit more. Sounds like more stories, more fun. What if I were to announce a wipe right now – Mystera Legends players are used to it. Time to start over and tackle the game from another angle perhaps. People don’t really seem to protest, they had a good run and things got stale. Well I’m not announcing a wipe at this time, but I hope you are now in that mindset.

Imagine a world.. where when you log off your character does not magically disappear from the world it was born into.. but rather it just goes to sleep. It remains in the world. About as vulnerable as any sleeping person is. It doesn’t hunger while asleep, and /who only reports the current players who are ‘awake’. This shifts the game into completely new territory. You NEED a secure house, or a trusted friend who has one. Mule characters? Solved. High level hoarders – solved. Stacking wall damage – solved. Annoying guy just logged out where you were building your house? Solved. This solution is too juicy not to try. What if you die? No big deal.. you can enjoy the low stress levels for a while until you feel like having another go.

So there is a long list of pros for this solution, what about the cons? Well whenever I think of these features I think of how I would exploit it. Archery comes to mind.. shooting people in their houses would ruin this. I can make it so you can’t shoot over walls, or you can’t shoot people in beds, or I could add something like fog of war so you can’t see or target inside people’s houses. Now you see why I increased house security, and I may up it further or just add more ways to secure your house. Traps, personal guards, who knows. It will take some balancing, but Frost Legion has already proven you can have a base that is extremely difficult to break into. Nice for people who want to take a vacation but are still attached to their levels. What about people who are halfway down into the underworld and suddenly need to attend to pesky real life? I could see that being a legitimate concern, so I will consider adding an item or easier way to get back to safety.

Finally, will someone please think of the noobs? It’s hard enough for new players to break into the game, now I’m condemning them to death after they casually explore for a few minutes and think ‘Cool, I’ll come back to this game later on and continue.’ They died to a 50 hornet stings shortly after. Clearly I will have to explain what they are getting into as part of the beginner training – and underline the importance of creating a little shack for themselves, or making alliances. One thing higher level players may do is create an actual Hotel or Inn, with little rooms where new players can be invited to stay and build their own gate. The Hotel owner can put a trading counter in the back of every room where the resident can pay weekly rent in gold, feathers, stone, or whatever they want in exchange for the room and basic protections. If they fail to pay the owner can just destroy the doorway.

If this experiment fails I can scale it back to something more realistic – but how often do you get to see every old player (several hundred accounts) in a game log back in at once. It will be a purging. A story for sure.

Head over to the forums and let me know what you think. You guys have good suggestions, and maybe good insults too, as I’m sure some players will hate me for making the game even more difficult.