Should world ecosystems be directly effected by PC action?

ArchivedUser

In other terms can and should areas blight if over sourced?

If an area blights should it cause predetory animals to move in closer to civilization for food (people and livestock)?

If predetors move away from wilderness should this cause Agro Monsters to follow for the same reason?

Should regular monster areas get over populated if not culled by the Adventurers and cause huge difficulty to the artizens' when they are gathering resources in what was previously a rather safe location?

ArchivedUser

I say yes because it will create an organic way that the game will self balance PC types, RP and economy. 

It'll also get PCs moving around the world bringing influence from one location to an other promoting dynamisim and agents of change.

It'll create an organic method of new content.

ArchivedUser

Already plans for it in game, though not on the scale envisioned by EQNext. Some of the people at IS now worked on that, so you may see some of that cross-over.

ArchivedUser

Yeah this is something i really want to see too, that players actions, node changes and seasons are effecting heavily to whole environment, mobs and especially those creatures behaviour. 

ArchivedUser

I like the fact that not only static resource nodes deplete.....but we have mobile resource nodes that migrate too. Trackers will be invaluable. That in itself is pretty awesome.

ArchivedUser

Yes to everything you said!

ArchivedUser

Would be nice, but I voted no because I think this would take too much development time, and too much possibility for bugs that would later on need to be fixed, or content tweaked and tweaked over the time, for a game feature that is not so crucial.

World will be beautiful even if ecosystem is not dynamic. So I prefer development time go into other more important features.

ArchivedUser

Gothix said:

Would be nice, but I voted no because I think this would take too much development time, and too much possibility for bugs that would later on need to be fixed, or content tweaked and tweaked over the time, for a game feature that is not so crucial.

World will be beautiful even if ecosystem is not dynamic. So I prefer development time go into other more important features.

Fair point it's definitely possible to sink time into ecosystem to a detriment to the game as a whole. However, with out an organically balancing ecosystem it is near impossible to have a manually balanced economy let alone an organically balanced one.

If a manually balanced economy is even possible it would always appear contrived and also never possibly be fair. If we have artizens hacking the unholy hell out of whole forests they should cause an ecologic and economic collapse. Or Rangers and Druids should be out there keeping them in check. If the artizens never need to worry about that then there is no need for Rangers or Druids. The game quickly atrophies to nothing more than fighters, wizards and clerics hunting monsters in dungeons the occasional artizen crafting anisilarries and even less crafting wonderful things and then practically none all together because there is so little reason and no fun to play an artizen so the game further degrades to pay to win either internally or externally (IRL money for IG stuff). Eventually the game is just a pretty PvP simulation and most of that is only in the arenas because anything else is just too much effort or so mundane it is only good for new players for like the first 5 days or 100 levels; Which ever comes first.

I think it is critical to get the ecosystem right so economy can even have a chance. So the game as a whole can survive and be great instead of at best survive and be mildly entertaining. The truth is that if some one is not looking for this than what are they looking at AoC for? Why have AoC if it is just going to be mildly entertaining like everything already out there is?

In short though there is a lot that a good MMORPG needs to have to be good. If it doesn't have a good economy which is only possible with a good ecosystem it is not possible for the game to be good as a whole. It can only be at best mildly entertaining.

I sincerely hope and expect that Intrepid Studios understands this and is indeed looking to support the game as a whole with a solid foundation. Foundations are at the bottom of a structure. The bottom or most common denominator of all things is that all things have interdependency on all other things. Regarding the circle of Creation, Life and Existence; the ecosystem, if there is not a balanced ecosystem nothing else can be successful.