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MMORPG innovation. Spill your ideas for companies to steal!
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Why don't we back our currency with Collectible Gift Cards, then? Limited supply! Gold has to DO SOMETHING in order for it to BACK MONEY. In real life, it's pretty and can be used for electronics. In your idea, it's simply... there.
I just don't see it working out. If there's a limited supply of gold and you can exchange moneys for it, and it's USEFUL, then it will be a week before it's all been claimed by the powergamers. If it's NOT useful, then the fact that currency is backed will be irrelevant, because what will REALLY be backing the currency is that NPCs will take it in exchange for various goods. If there are no worthwhile NPCs, then currency will be useless, and we'll be trading in Stones of Jordan.
Because I'm pretty sure that, done right, it would lead to a pleasurable end to society as we know it.
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Another thought: An MMO based around some degree of VR should be possible by now. Even a really primitive one would be interesting to see. Even if we're just talking a 3D -chat room- where everyone's wearing a pair of power gloves so you can see them making crude gestures.
It would consist of nothing but people flipping other people off and saying "It's soooo bad."
Give me a more meaningful set of choices and interactions than just "fucking kill that guy for cash" for once.
No level caps. Ever.
And one does not have to build the game to accomodate that. One doesn't have to build content for level 99,999 characters.
But why not leave it open ended? If someone wants to grind boars to increase their level why not let them? It's never made sense to me that RPGs have a ceiling with regard to levels when all of the stats are numeric.
Numbers don't end. So why not let a person grind to their heart's content?
Hell, look at the most popular MMO right now, its not innovative at all. Its your standard grind till you drop MMO. But they did it right. I have no idea where I am going with this. So... yea.
My 360 is [strike]back[/strike] [strike]bricked[/strike] back!
Gold has weight. The powergamers are going to have to put the gold somewhere. That place could possibly be robbed. Even if they aren't robbed, they will want to spend their gold on something. This will help ensure that there is enough gold circulated through people.
For trade involving objects that aren't worth much, I don't see why you shouldn't be allowed to use normal goods in the trade with NPCs. The more costly objects like good armor would have to be done in gold or banknotes because you wouldn't be able to carry enough goods to pay for the armor you want. With certain trade like buying houses, the NPC would require it in gold or a currency backed by gold.
The main advantage of gold and banknotes would be that they are easier to trade with than other goods. The advantage of gold over banknotes is that gold would be accepted everywhere.
Now, few people actually carry around the scrip; The Goods has accounts with everybody it deals with, and most players prefer to keep their virtual money.... even more virtual.
Aside from the fact that it would be impossible to create content with that in mind, it would totally ruin the game for anyone lower level. Caps are in place not just to balance PvP, but to balance the entire game. Even if there was no new content after you reached say lvl 100, you could still do a lot to affect the game's balance.
Want to go kill some wolves? Too bad that level 500 warlock over there wiped them all out with one spell. Why bother getting some friends to help you kill that hard boss when the level 400 guy standing around town can kill him in one hit.
A good example of this is FFXI (Yeah I refer to that a lot, deal with it). The first expansion came out when very few people had reached the cap. All the quests and monsters were hard because everyone was still relatively low level. Fast forward a couple years, now almost everyone has a character or 2 at level 75 and the quests are a joke. They learned from that and in the next expansion put varying level caps on every quest in the storyline. So a new character could conceivably go through the storyline as they level and have the same challenge as someone who zoomed to level 75 and decided to go back through them.
Also, a game where the only alliances are player-made clans, instead of two set sides like Alliance and Horde, or good and evil, or whatever. And just like guilds in MMOGs now, you can quit whenever you want and join another clan, so power is constantly shifting as people move from one alliance to another. A game where conflict is caused by the game itself encouraging backstabbing others to benefit yourself.
I don't mind the open PVP. I don't mind being chased by 3 PKs. What do mind is the 18+ member gank squads that hunt down kill new players. It should be easy to put into play a reputation system that works only for PVP!
For example if the 18 man gank squads kills enough people the gankers will gain the cowardly title. This title reduces their ability to win in a fair fight. A solo Griefer that preys on noobs players gains the titles like Bully or Dark Knight. Which gives less combat penalties than the coward. (Also a bonus to hit and damage to the poor,weak, invalid
For the players who want a good reputation such titles such as Brave, Tough, Honorable, Merciful
This leads me to my second rant, WHY MUST WE DIE WHEN OUR HP=0? Really, characters who are beat down should fall down and be at the mercy of what or whom did the beating. There is a world of difference between MUGGING and MURDER! If you have food in your pack, that giant lizard may not kill you, just yet. Likewise, a PVP player may just want your sword not your life. If this "death" system was available then titles such as Cruel and Merciful would be easily determined. A PvP player with a Cruel title would find that their foes would fight much harder because of their reputation, while the Merciful one would find the opposite. However the merciful one has to keep from killing anyone or they must re-earn their title again.
Something like this could actually work pretty well in the game I've been thinking of. This is because you don't die in the game, period. You get knocked down, and if you don't get healed/etc in a certain period of time, you get sent to the hospital, being knocked out. Enemies would be able to 'finish you off', aka knock you out, but they wouldn't have too, especially since being knocked down would have a certain amount of time before you could get back up. Possibly for PVP, this could mean your inventory is lootable in that period of time, and it would encourage grouping, as your enemy would have to focus on your teammates who would be shooting at him while he wants to get your precious, precious loot.
3ds friend code: 2981-6032-4118
True, but look at some UO versions/etc. Getting PKed and your shit stolen sucks, sure... but most shit is easily replaceable. Lots of things are craftable. In the game I've been thinking of, personal equipment wouldn't be that important, money would be(and you wouldn't be able to loot money, being held in banks and everyone using cards to purchase things).
3ds friend code: 2981-6032-4118
It would be so freakin' easy for a developer too. I don't care about any ridiculous innovation... just some fun PvE against bandit ninjas, and some light PvP in sanctioned tournaments between nations, and then something similar to DAoC with RvR between nations. There would have to be a true outcome though somehow, and that's the only part I wouldn't be sure about. How do you explain that Sound still exists after Konoha whips their ass and 'conquers' their main village?
Anyways, with the 3 branches of ninjutsu, taijutsu, and genjutsu, it allows for tons of skill trees and thel ike. Plus, just including a few villages/countries (say 5 or so) would be MORE than enough.
And there's tons more things that could be incorporated I don't feel like hashing out here, such as medical-nin's, ANBU corps, the Genin-Chuunin-Jounin-Kage system, going rogue and being a missing-nin, etc.
So much stuff that could be done here, but it's all... gay and kiddy-fied now.
Yeah, theft is one of the more interesting things in MMOs to me. In Shadowbane, a stealthed thief could peek in your backpack, then when he tried to steal any single item (and could only get a portion of gold) he would be destealthed and need to run off. The community absolutely hated thieves for this, and they got continual nerfs, to where they were essentially useless. However, incredibly unbalanced PvP templates, where one guy could kill 10 if they weren't one of the set 2-3 best classes, were not complained about nearly as much, even though that one guy could loot everything you had in the inventory.
Thieving is a really wierd psychological issue.
I disagree with the notion that people only want open PvP so they can gank people less powerful than they are -- I know that a lot of people feel that way, but I think it's just from bad experience relating to poor design decisions.
Having open PvP completely changes how you feel while traveling across the world, while questing, while shopping, and while interacting with others. It is one of the best ways to add tension, suspense, and adrenaline pumping action into gameplay elements that would otherwise be pretty mundane -- anyone is a potential enemy, anyone can turn on you...someone may be hunting you at this very moment...is this trade about to go sour with someone ending up on the floor? Is this group of adventurers that my group of friends encountered friendly or just waiting for the right opportunity to strike? And in a feature-rich game it can also have more macro-sized consequences....is this clan going to attack our city? Can we trust our alliance members? etc etc.
That doesn't mean it has to be without consequences...UO had quite a robust reputation system, where killing people in cold blood meant you were fair game for other players, meaning their reputation would not suffer for killing you, and the guards in towns where most players congregate would look the other way if you were attacked. There were also bounty billboards that allowed players to incentivize the hunting of these players. Some players were right at home playing evil Dread Lords, and the ability to create player-run towns meant that you could exist outside the bounds of normal UO society, and truly be a feared and hunted killer. EVE also has a similar system I believe.
I also think open-pvp requires elements of skill-based game play to operate correctly. Open PVP is no fun if combat amounts to nothing more than a numbers game, where either the higher level player, or the team with the most people automatically wins. Being able to overcome the odds is essential to thrilling and satisfying player on player combat.
But if these requirements are satisfied, I think open-pvp is truly a fundamental part of really creating thrilling microcosmic societies with depth...it helps fill them with satisfying combat scenarios, politics and intrigue, and really populates the world with characters from the whole personality spectrum -- from scum to heroes, and really allows players to get involved in the game in a totally different, sandboxey sort of way.
I know this tense sort of open atmosphere won't appeal to everyone, but I believe there is a market for it as long as the game is constructed top to bottom with this sort of gameplay in mind. The hype that Shadowbane had before it was revealed to be a total mess, the amount of player run classic pre-Trammel UO shards people operate, and the fondness people recall early UO and AC: Darktide for instance, lead me to believe it atleast.
I think it has to do with how powerless you feel... at least if you're killed in a fight, you can think to yourself "I could have done X differently and won." Instead, you get "what the fuck, that's ridiculous because I couldn't fight back!"
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
Yeah I think the trick to thieving is not constructing the game around items in the vein of World of Warcraft.
If items don't hold as much power over the outcome of combat and the power of your character, and are fleeting in that they can be taken from you -- say on death, theft, or even item decay --, then there could be room for it in a game. I'm not really a fan of thieving, but I do like item loss on death, as I feel it worked really really well in Asheron's Call.
Every time someone mentions thieving I'm immediately reminded of all the naked thieves in Britain in UO infront of the bank...slowly working their way beside you...."Guards!"
Why would it be bad to have a level 500 friend who could help you level quickly?
Or, why bother restricting people to gradual growth when you could offer people the ability to create a level 99,999 right from the start?
That's one of the things of gamer psychology I've never understood. People want to level, and I think if people could create a level 70 character in WoW right from the start they would. But people are against that.
It's this weird mix of "We want it to be gradual" with "We'd skip to the end if we could." And if you wouldn't skip to the end why would it hurt of others did?
It's a very interesting jumble of ideas.
Because I have ideas.
From page 4. 8-)
More like you get to control a main character in a standard fashion and have extra characters following you that you can script, like the gambit system. The kind of scripts you'd have access to could be limited to your class/whatever to prevent over-flexibility. DAoC had a class somewhat like that, I think it was the Bonedancer, but with little control over what the pets could do beyond their general function.
You can be anything from a hedge knight to a Maester, sailor, waterdancer, lord etc. You can serve the major houses and the minor houses, and if you can earn enough fame as a knight you can start you're own lesser house with you're friends (yes, House is a fancy way of saying Guild) with a small keep. It's mostly player driven and PVP (some PVE), you know the Houses declare war and they conquer territory and such. It's possible to form Tourney's and duals and justice in the cities is harsh and hard to escape. I mean I jsut htink it would be great if done correctly, though highly unlikely.
Leveling your character is fun.
Getting better items is fun.
(Why? Why was Diablo 2 so addictive? The climb to the top was what drove you, not actually being 99 with perfect gear, but it was so well polished that just killing things was fun).
Getting rich is fun if you can use it to enhance your gameplay even more.
Brutal combat is fun.
Teamwork with friends is fun.
Making a mark on the world by getting your own lands and buildings is fun.
Achieving any of those 'fun' things in an exceptionally skillful way is winning.
And, the meat of my Medieval MMORPG system:
Instead of picking a class, you modify your behavior. If you want to be a powerful combat character who takes a heavy sword to every enemy he meets, you need to aquire high quality food and eat it regularly, train in combat skills and techniques, and rest in between, to build both strength and combat ability. This isn't a long grind, you should be able to be well into 'footman' range within an afternoon. The better you are at the 'twitch' aspects of combat, the faster you will move through training. Because of the need for rest, you will actually build skill and power faster without playing for eight hours at a stretch. The more you do something, the better you will do at it. Use a bow constantly and your bow ability will rise.
Crafting isn't terribly fun. You do quests to get 'blueprints', you get the raw materials, you build the product, and then you have a pair of rough pants that no one wants. NPCs could handle this, with shops in towns, and guilds being able to hire NPC craftsmen to work for them. It could also be an unlockable profession. Some aspects of it would be fun, but only if it meant cobbling together pieces of armor left after a battle or whatnot. I have seen some good posts earlier in this thread that made crafting better.
When you kill an enemy, you can loot everything they had. Instead of killing someone with a sword and armor and only getting a small bag of coins, you can take their weapons and armor, except it is likely to be muddy, blood spattered, battered, and generally messed up through the process of killing them or beating them into unconciousness. 'Drops' are good quality items that were not damaged.
Characters can and will die past a certain high level. Players will make use of 'wills' to cede property and belongings to other characters on their account, or other players on the server. Because of the slightly eased development process of a character, mortality is not an issue. At lower levels, they merely are knocked unconscious, or have injuries that must be treated in a town.
At those higher PVP levels, players will have their arms lopped off and be crippled for life. Players will be decapitated, trampled under horses, impaled, eviscerated, dragged from their horses and stabbed to death by a mob of level one peons, and eaten by wolves. There is no immortality. On the other hand, it doesn't take as long to make a capable character and have it leveling again.
Players will spend most of their time doing work to earn money and build skills. They could be hired by an NPC count as a city guard, or take a job with a player operated trading caravan as a mounted watchman. The better you are at something, such as archery accuracy, or sword combat, or healing injuries, the more likely that someone will pass out the gold to get you working for them. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch or endless rat field.
Unconscious - Starting off, you cannot be killed. Knocked out players wake up after ten to fifteen minutes.
Mortally Injured - you can be mortally injured, although this is not likely to happen for your first several days of gameplay. If you aren't carried back to town by companions, or treated by a healer on the scene, you will recover in two days real time. Otherwise, you will recover in one day. (in retrospect, this is quite harsh)
Crippled - More serious than being mortally injured. After a certain level has been passed, you can be permenantly injured. A crippling wound can lower your strength or agility or both, sometimes even being the loss of a hand or leg. At any time past this event, the player may retire their character as an NPC to the town or guild of their choice. After choosing a preset group of personality traits or having it automatically determined from choices made in game (WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME A MMO"RPG" LET YOU MAKE MORAL CHOICES?!), they can set the new NPC to recount tales of his exploits (automatically drawn from the game records) and even help other players with some skills if his are particularly good. Like a trainer!
Killed - Further above the level where you can be crippled, players finally meet a level where they may actually die, to anything. It isn't LIKELY that they will be killed by a mob of level one player characters, but it could happen. And it would be hilarious.
Also, you should be able to win perks, say your char fulfills thus and so requirements, like you kill and eat a lot of snakes in addition to having some poison resistance and maybe a wildland skill. You get the snakeater perk with more venom resistance. Feats, too. Every three levels you pick a feat based on your character and what you do, like a feat that increases your blocking ability or a feat that gives you enhanced dodging, pretty much like the DnD opensource material feats. Perks, Traits and Feats are awesome.
Eventually the game world would be 90% ex player chars as npcs.
You'd retire your fighter and a few months later see him working as a tavern owner if you didnt set him to just lounge around your house or your guild's stronghold.
Yes, perma-death would kind of suck. Maybe when you die you would still have the choice to retire your character to your guild or own castle/town. The reason I included it as an idea is that if you look at WOW you see people making it to level 60 and then... well, there isn't much game left aside from endless raids instead of endless boring grinding, and pvp.
In Diablo2 online, hardcore play was a LOT more fun than softcore.. you kind of had to try it and you would never really go back to softcore where your character could die repeatedly with only XP and gold as a penalty. It would suck if you spent two months getting to the max level and then died, or if you were playing a game like Anarchy Online or any of the MMORPGs with ridiculously complicated skill trees and stats.. I'm talking about something where you don't have to invest as much time to be a high end character, you just need to be good at doing it and have the right opportunities come up for equipment and employment and ultimately being a major player when it comes to owning land, and maybe even an entire village. Plus when you get to the point where you would be able to die, you would be advanced enough to not get into those sorts of situations, either through acting like the nobility would act (retinues of guards, grouping in a 'court' with their own social strata, etc) or being exceptionally cautious and cagey.
I think that the more reasons you can give players to hire other players to do things that similar people would hire similar lower class people to do in the middle ages, the better. For example, my starting swordsman might get noticed and hired by Sir Wilfred who is highly interested in staying alive, as are his guards, who are also interested in keeping him alive because he pays them, feeds them, gives them housing, etc. Working as a guard would be boring aside from that so I can see guardsmen being able to receive training from higher level guards or perhaps another advanced character in the same level or lower as Sir Wilfred, who is hired on to train the guards up and perhaps be the captain of the watch. That takes care of absolutely everything except combat- and someone who needs to hire guards would probably have enough attempts at robbery, murder, etc that the guards would have a situation to take care of a few times a day. Plus, whenever travelling through the land, there might be a group of players setting up near a road as highwaymen / bandits, or maybe the King will call Sir Wilfred to war where his guards will cluster around him on the battlefield.. and I'm just describing the simple possibilities as working as a guard or being someone who needs to hire them.
I like the idea of players being able to clear a little space in a forest and start an inn, and then have a town spring up around it.
I think grinding sucks. If you've ever played a really fun and exciting arcade-type game like Battlefield2 (off the top of my head as a good example) you don't spend five hours straight in it because you are getting a level or two. Ok, crap, wait, most people do because BF2 has levels and badges BUT IGNORE THAT. You do it because it is fun and you enjoy it. That is how the gameplay and levelling should be. People do it because they want the reward out of it, and they find it mind-numbing. It should be better than that. The combat of M&B is a big step in that direction, but I want to see even better sword combat with more possible moves, maybe even blade of darkness/prince of persia style combos and fighting moves for advanced level fighters when it comes to chewing through more vulnerable enemies. Not too stupidly arcadeish or mortal combat crap, but fancy and fast stuff.
I also think the whole deal where you buy something from a merchant for 100 gold and then can only get 15 for it by reselling is one of the more stupid trends in RPGs. Sure, you take a hit selling used, but not THAT bad.
Earth and Beyond 2
GODDAM DO IT SOMEONE (EA)
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
This.
If WoW didn't make me do the same content every week I would still be playing it. Even repeating the same instance 4 or five times gets boring, no matter how well designed they are. Obviously, the question here is if its even possible to procedurally generate content that matches the quality of designed content. Same goes for player created content of course...
One thing that I'm surprised no one has implemented yet (maybe they have) is built in environmental voice chat. Sure, theres the immersion thing, but simply hearing 2 people talking to each other while walking past them would be amazing imo. Being able to shout at your opponent while fighting him. Hiding from an enemy group and listening to them yelling out directions to each other while looking for you. Maybe this simply wouldn't work due to technical limitations, I don't know.
A lot of the concepts I have for the game have already been mentioned, or are very similar to a lot of the things I'd like to eventually incorporate, but I'll re-list a lot of them anyway, since what I see as the important thing about my project is how they'll all be integrated.
First of all, it's going to be a 2D game. This is not only because I think it'd be easier to hone a tighter combat and exploration system in a more limited and precise form, but also because I completely lack the resources to make and program a game in 3D (at least in the scope that I wish to make the game I'm working on). My current plan is to create a very simple but engaging combat system modeled very heavily on 2D Zelda games, like A Link to the Past. Each skill and ability is also going to be very distinct and functional, you won't simply cast a fire, ice, or thunder spell to damage an opponent, you will use the fire spell to light the environment on fire, you will cast ice spells to freeze enemies and bodies of water, and you'll use thunder to electrify objects and even give them charge.
The next big point is that the game world is going to be extremely, extremely vast, with largely randomly generated areas. Ideally no one player would be able to explore the entire world, and I'm attempting to make it so that the map will seem to expand infinitely in any one direction. This is crucial to the design for a few different reasons. Exploration will not grow stale, with many different combinations of climate, topography, flora, and fauna. Players will be able to have heavy affects on large amounts of the world without encroaching too heavily on other players, which leads me to the next big point.
Players will have two styles of play available to them, the aforementioned 2D Zelda-like action-RPG style, and a second style that is heavily based off of dwarf fortress. A player can choose to start their own town. They can begin with running an inn, then begin harvesting food and resources, and eventually NPCs will come to live there. These players will have extensive crafting and trading options open to them. Player politics occurring between towns will be encouraged, and eventually alliances will be formed as well as grudges. As more players try to expand their dominion, there might even be wars, somewhat like EVE.
In the meantime, as the city-building players begin to face harassment from other players or NPC groups (who will also attempt to build towns and cities, and steal your resources), they will find themselves in need of aid. They will need to call upon the adventurers. I'm planning a pretty deep quest/reward system, that will allow city builders to call upon adventurers to do anything from hunt big game to help feed townspeople, to protect trade caravans as they travel to other cities, to go after bounties on other player's heads, to even assaulting opposing player's/NPC's towns and taking out targets of interest.
In this way, the world will be almost entirely player-run, and all of your actions will have real effects on the world. Most of my ideas have been done before in some form or another, and in general my concepts aren't particularly revolutionary, however I think some of the more subtle tweaks I have planned will make my experiment a good deal different than much of what has been done before, granted I ever finish it.
WoW's crafting was so-so. Making vendor trash items just to level up crafting to be able to make useful items != fun.
Horizons' was interesting, but tool swapping got old fast, and having to do repetitive tasks to be able to buy recipes wasn't the most exciting thing in the world. Also, while they made resources infinite and localized, they did make you constantly run up and down to pick them up; why? Crafting is fun for certain people, but gathering shit isn't. If you're going to make resources infinite then let me park my toon there for an hour as I go watch a movie, then return to be able to craft.
Everquest 2's system I actually enjoyed for the most part. Loads of items to make in every tier, loads of them useful, plenty of resources to collect, and the crafting itself was both strategic and reactionary. The main problem I had with it was that at higher levels it was just more of the same, and once you got the system down you were just pushing shortcuts in reaction to the icons that popped up.
Vanguard... oh dear god no. World's most contrived crafting system. Not only do you have to craft items, you have to craft materials for those items aswell. And you can only level it by doing jobs for NPCs. Many, many jobs. Like, hours and hours of jobs. I think some people calculated that you needed to do 23 hours of crafting to level yourself from level 39 to 40.
What sort of system were you thinking about?
I want to see a Living, breathing world. We have the technology, we can build it! Strangely my idea is somewhat similar to Wurm online, I want the players to be pioneers, but heroes rather than builders and workers (though the latter careers are also available, in a fashion). I think I can only properly describe it by giving an example of play.
A player starts out as a magi, who has just finished his official training in the mage tower of the empires capitol. He is now standing with some crappy cloth armor, three days trail rations and some mageish stuff like scrolls and wands. He is directed to a few districts of the city that acts as a starting area. The city itself is HUGE, with several hundred buildings housing a few thousand npc's divided into 10 or so districts. Though far from the dynamic persons we were promised in oblivion, the streets are nevertheless full of people on errands such as buying food, drinking at taverns and so on.
See, I want the world large enough to seem real, and large enough to incorporate realistic respawning. You will still be doing fedexes, and killing monsters (or thugs, or stray dogs), but increasingly as you level up your actions affect the world around you. After a while the mage has levelled up his battle casting and learned a few spells, and feels ready to go out into the wild. He checks up on villages needing the aid of a novice wizard, and travels by coach (or train, I loves me some steampunk fantasy) to his new destination. There he is given some new quests, but is also allowed free reign in the countryside around the town. He may find an abandoned mining entrance, and through magic divine that its denizens are too strong for him to kill on his own prompting him to return to town for more people. He might find a farm, and be asked to stay and protect it from a few orcs that have threatened to murder them for going into their territory.
All this will have direct effects on certain "ratings" that every city from village to capitol earns itself. Doing quests to safeguard resources, such as clearing a mine or defending trade routes will increase the villages "safety" rating which will cause a greater influx of settlers and the "wealth" rating that will allow for more buildings to be built. A village can turn from a collection of shacks to a sprawling city over the months through the hard work of dedicated players. Naturally housing will be available, and a player might want to help his hometown with special dedication. Reputation will also be available, resulting in lower prices and people cheering at you as you pass on the street, toasting in your honor in the pubs, and maybe even raising statues of you. Of course, new challenges will appear over time, some of them great like a clan of giants moving in and requiring large groups of players to drive them off. If a town is not defended by players for a long time, its ratings might start to fall. A larger city will be less vulnerable to this though, as a high wealth rating will allow for more guards and defensive measures like towers, walls, even fortresses.
Of course, not everything in such an MMO would be desirable to control by computer. Town expansion and the starting of new settlements would probably have to be at least supervised by a GM. Eventually, some of these functions could be passed to prominent players under very light supervision, allowing players to become mayor of a town with the power to control city planning and give out quests.
Naturally, there would be several kingdoms, and as they expand conflicts would no doubt appear. Direct slaughtering of citizens does not feel like a good idea in a game of this nature, but sabotaging industries, scouting out positions and fighting out skirmishes in the wilds would all be good extensions of the ratings game. Eventually one side might have pushed the other towns security slider so far that the citizens start to abandon it, making a full scale assault possible.
I would also like more realism in combat, and lesser gaps in power between low level players and higl levels. Levelling should be significant, but not to the point where a high level character can just stand in a whole camp of orcs and go afk for a drink. Likewise a very skilled group of low level characters should have a shot at taking on opponents that are significantly more powerful than them.