I hope that we can get an intelligible discussion going on what general direction this game should take and what general direction would fit best in the Fallout setting without it just becoming one in the many futuristic/apocalytpic RPGs and MMORPG's out there.


I wrote a short statement about this in the thread "What's the first thought that comes up in your mind when you think about Fallout". There I expained that Fallout for me is all about the freedom to pursue your destiny the way you want to. It is meaning in chaos. It is a story with blanks to fill.


I'd like to expand on this subject and what I belive with it and hear from the community yoru opinions.
Now I am a die-hard fan of PvP, open-endness and sandbox style games.

The only MMORPG's I've spent any considerable time on are the following: Tibia, Darkfall, Ultima Online, Eve Online, WW2-Online and now I'm thinking about a little Mortal Online.

I've also played alot Guildwars but mostly for the PvP and saw it more like a multiplayer game than a MMORPG. So belive me that I shock my self when I say that Fallout Online should be restricted in some sense, have a plot in some sense and have quests in some sense.

I belive that what makes Fallout so special and unique is the setting. The fact that there are NPC farmers and hotell owners and small and big stories to hear and help with.

From my experience the more "freeform" and sandboxy a game is the harder this is to recreate in the long run. It requires a very dedicated core community to function and as soon as that core community is destroyed over a war or out of people leaving for other games then the game falls into a state of anarchy with PvP for the pure sake of PvP becoming the only important thing. The only exception I think is Eve Online due to purely it's extreme depth, complexity and mystery that allows for other things than war to truly be inspiring and interesting.



If Fallout Online can aim for a new Ultima Onine that would be far safer than aiming for a new Darkfall.
Ultima Online had a deep storyline, reputation system, the developers were directly involved and pushed the story forward through events and there were even a bunch of quests. None of this even *hurt* the community, the players, the sandbox element. It actually helped it.

For if we take this into a Fallout setting, who would want to be that stupid farmer doing nothing but tending for his crops and getting raqed by "player" raiders? Or who would want to be the gecko hunter? Even if its profitable in the long run. I said in my earlier statement that I wish for the game to be something inbetween UO and Eve Online because I belive that if Interpay truly can recreate the complexity of Eve Online we can move to a more free-form setting. Where the ability to hunt geckos is not only about your skill in spear throwing and your knowledge of static spawnlocations but also of tracking, knowledge of their mating seasons and what not.


The technology is there.


Considering PvP, hardcoe or not I belive demanding for a 1 death - hardcoe system is unrealistic. Even for a hardcoe PvP server. I also belive completely unprotected cities are unrealistic. Instead cities like NCR, San Fran and what not should be possible to raid with a significant force where killing the NPC guards and some or all of the player population should yeild "bannishment" results for various NCR cities that participated in the raid but also alot of nice loot from the treasury. For each assult on a city the guards should become tougher. I also think that to encourage players to fight the raiders (also players) the players inside the city should automaticly and temporarily join a NPC NCR faction and get bonus gold for every kill they make on a raider.


Overall here are some points I'd like to take up:
Reputation system: Karma for overall Evil/Good groups/npc cities and personal reputation with factions seperate depending on but not necessarily in line with the Evil/Good karma. Consequences similiar to Fallout 1 and 2.

Non-static spawns of NPC monsters. Groups of animals like Deathclaws and others should move from place to place searching for food and respawn when they die in accordance to their prefered enviroment - and sometimes in an other enviroment. So Deathclaws like perhaps moist caves, so they should mostly spawn there at "Server saves" or when nobody is near that particular cave.

An ever evolving story driven by "One-time" hard NPC-quests and developer created events, perhaps even player created events in conjunction with developers or GM's.

A Faction system. Players should for the sake of the setting not be able to create their own pure factions but join NPC factions and in this way have allies and wage wars. Like a developed Horde vs Alliance system. These alliances can change in the future and players can declare wars on even allied factions but not allied "clans/gangs" (as payer groups within factions would be called) inside the same faction. Declaring war and killing members of a different faction would ofcourse lower your and somewhat also your clans status with that faction. In the long run it would also affect your FACTIONS status with that other faction. So if all of a sudden a bunch of raiders decide to attack a bunch of previously allied Ceasars Legion clans then the relations between any Ceasar player and NPC Raider City would go down (the opposite being true aswell).

How relations would "improve" I do not know and would love to see a bunch of suggestions on.



Anyway my points aren't even as much suggestions as they are ideas of a direction this game should take. A direction where player and computer actions are intertwined. A game that is neither a sandbox nor a grind. A game with an ever evolving story!

Something that could make this MMO rather unique is the fallout-tradition of pick-pocketing.
If this feature is available, you could steal from other players. If you get cought NPC (police, military) in the town could help the victim to defend him/herself.

Fractions could be Mutants, Slavers, Raiders, Scientologists (you have to keep the fallout-humour), Brotherhood, Villagers, Mobsters, Theives and Ghouls.

I disagree with most of what you say. I'd rather not have the game focus too much on wars, and in order to promote realism and discourage meaningless random violence, I would prefer death to be final. There are already too many MMOs where death is meaningless.

One idea that might be interesting: in order to encourage players to settle down and run inns and shops in weird places, let players play several characters, but only one of them can actually travel around. The other(s?) are more economically oriented.

Then again, I don't want it to devolve into EVE either. I'd like to see a game where it pays to be a loner, and you don't need a massive clan/faction/corp to survive.

Thanks for your replies and I appologies for the length of the topic.


I fully agree with pickpocketing! It's a must It would be awesome. The more perception you have the easier you'd get an "alert" message. And ofcourse if you have your inventory open you can see it for yourself.

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Overall I also agree that you shouldn't NEED a faction or a clan.
Here's the thing though. By joining a faction or a clan that's a member of a faction you wouldn't be in some great advantage. The only thing would be increased protection and barter perhaps in your own faction, good relations with allied factions and bad relations with enemy factions. This would also encourage and enable PvP without being forced upon the players who as you say DON'T want to be part of a faction but just fool around a bit, kill someone sometimes, do a quest or two and what not.

On the topic of permanent death and "realism" what ever that may be in a Fallout-world I completely disagree. I definetly, certainly do not want a "post apocalyptic" setting with no real Fallout depth, story, theme or context. That wouldn't be Fallout and that WOULD disappoint many true Fallout fans. Permanent death is also way, way to fvcked up if you want to have free-form PvP without NPC cities, factions and what not. That would just result in a kill-feast and total anarchy. Pretty inns or not.

Something like Ultima Online with full loot drop would not make death a "joke" but would also not destroy the game.


I do like your idea about other characters "more economicly orientated"...Are you talking about multi-clienting here? Frankly that could be a good idea. You could macro a shopkeeper, inkeeper or stuff that can't be advanced by macros like miner. These wouldn't be able to move outside their designated areas without other characters logging out.

Or we could do one more thing from Ultima Online, have NPC's that you can hire in your businesses!

As someone involved with large MMO's, I would say that it is less about the Direction of the game, than the Construction of the game.

Most massively multiplayer games are nareme machines (like a state machine, but naremes are the atomic units of narrative stories).

Though games are primarily Ludic, "even a ludologist likes a good story". So, MMO's are organized into little, linked machines that evaluate your current condition and performance, on a specific set of challenges and spit out a string of naremes that are valid for your actions. This gives each player a personalized story-like experience without forcing them to linear tracks.

This method of construction provides much more replay and is true to our medium. Games, unlike linear novels and movies, are written by the player.