Mmog with the goal to survive

[Numsgil]

You will also need to be able to fight off wild animal attacks and maybe native tribes (not necessarily Human) that you encounter.

 This is the city slicker's view of the wilderness.
 
 Think Louis and Clark.  Randomly attacked by natives?  Nope, they were helped by natives who were curious.  Most had never seen a European before.
 
 Likewise with animals.  Most animals know better than to approach a human.  The few that do are generally curious.  The few "wild" animals that attack people generally do so because of either:
 
 1.  You stepped on her kid/ touched her kid/ gave her kid a snack, looked at her kid funny.  Momma bear.
 
 2.  They're in heat (bull elephants come to mind.)
 
 If I go to the nearest national park (Land Between the Lakes, about 20 minute drive) and wander randomly around, I'll be lucky if I see anything bigger than a squirrel.  Not because there aren't animals larger than squirrels but because they're terrified of humans (and rightly so).
 
 Quite contrary to games where the local fauna not only are aggressive but hunt you down.  This again has to do with the point of your game.  Is it competitive or cooperative.  Competitve games need to have constant cannon fodder for its players to sharpen their teeth on.  Any game based around combat.
 
 Um,  hehe

[Welwordion]

Yes, do not take survival as something optional, a game feature its rather a certain philosophy.
The differencies are tin the way you prefer to lif eand survive, You either do some work to get money and buy food, you go out and hunt down animals or collect fruits (if you are lucky enough to find them)
or you plant something, protect it(so nobody eats your work) help it grow and eat it once its ready.
Of course this is not meant to occupy "all" your time, its only means to give your life a basic challenge.

So to say you can create, conserve or destroy, all will take its effort and so your action will bear meaning and consequences.

[PurpleYouko]

Quite contrary to games where the local fauna not only are aggressive but hunt you down. This again has to do with the point of your game. Is it competitive or cooperative. Competitve games need to have constant cannon fodder for its players to sharpen their teeth on. Any game based around combat.

I see it as a game that can be built around whatever the heck you want. For combat lovers who want to improve those kind of skills there will be plenty of monsters. Not ones that actively hunt them down in most cases though.
For non combat based players there will be options to become a financial giant by opening shops (or massive chains of shops eventually) and manipulating the supply of resources. Options to work together or alone to clear forests and plant grain (or other resource plants) which you can later harvest and sell. You could create a small village then invite others to join you in a co-operative effort. Maybe at first you might be at peace with the native neighbors (human or otherwise) but pretty soon somebody is going to piss them off then you have to defend your new town.
Maybe as a freelance hunter/trapper you can live at one with nature and build up your skills in that area.

I see it as being completely open to do whatever you like in whatever way you like.

[Numsgil]

Have you ever played Ultima Online?

IMO that's the best game out there that balances combat and non- combat playing styles.

Unfortunately, the game is still combat based.  Most of the economy revolves around the fighters, who are basically "minting" money everytime they kill something.

I'd like to see a game where the combat is on the fringe of gameplay and the trade skills are at the center.

Fighters risk their life to harvest rare resources instead of crafters working their butts off to construct armor.

[PurpleYouko]

No I haven't played Ultima Online.

I played a bunch of their offline games and they have always been made really well.

I want to make an equal mix of combat and non combat.

Some people won't play games that are wholly non-combat and some won't play ones that are all combat. It's hard to please everybody but I intend to try.

Some games have allowed players to "mine" for gold before but that has always been viewed as a pretty lame and boring passtime in an MMO.

I don't see it working to take away all the benefits of killing stuff but I also see no reason why a giant bee should be carrying around a peice of armor and 39 gold pieces that just suddenly appear when you kill it.

I want more realism. If I kill a scabby little goblin who is hitting me with a rusty dagger then what I should get is a rusty dagger and not a +3 sword with gold inlay that's worth 1000s.
Real goodies should only be found on very tough monsters (that actually use them) or in well guarded places like tombs or the heart of a dungeon.

From the other perspective, you should be able to get just as much money by planting stuff (or gathering wild stuff in the forests) and selling your produce at market.
Other players will be specialized in crafting items like ploughs or swords which will help other players.
If the stock levels in all the shops are limited such that they can only sell what players have sold them, then the economy becomes player driven. If stuff is in short supply then the shops will have to pay higher prices and then charge higher prices.

I want to start out with only the very basic stuff available in NPC shops. Anything else must be player created.

[Numsgil]

As long as your game system is closed - that is, you're not creating any new items only changing existing raw materials, I think you'd have a fairly consistant player driven economy.

[PurpleYouko]

I twould be closed in as much as when you have used up all the available resources from one area then they are gone for ever.

It wouldn't be closed so much with regard to renewable resources like fields of corn or apple trees that can be regularly harvested.

There would also need to be some kind of mint that would release enough tokens of money for everyone to use. This would be one of the few parts of the game that would have to remain in the GM's hands I think.

One idea that I had is for players to spend their real money to buy game money in order to pay for usage of the game. That way you get free play forever if you want to live alone. You just earn a bit of money with what you make yourself. But people who want a quick fix would have to pay for it with their real cash.

Game money would also be consistently siphoned out of the system by GM owned shops. They still have to play by the rules but their profits won't be plowed back into the game.

Obviously as more players join in, there needs to be more total money in the game so a system of money in (from finding natural resources or discovering a new dungeon with some goodies in) versus money out (into GM owned shops)  has to be there to balance out the steady removal of money.
GM owned shops can also be inteligently controlled by the GMs to bypass the system to some degree. For example we could inject a few interesting items into the game from time to time. Not huge amounts of them. just a few now and then. These would become so rare that they would likely go up in value significantly to traders.

[Numsgil]

If your system is capable, player created currencies are possible.

In the early days of currency, and even in to modern times when official currency is scarce, all sorts of different small time currencies existed.

The root of currency is in the "IOU one ton of fruit" token to facilitate trade.  People who were trustworthy and actually fulfilled their IOUs became like banks, and the IOUs they issued were as "good as gold".

As currencies became more accepted, the tokens themselves tended to become intrinsically worth less and less.  Gold was first used because of its low weight and volume to worth ratio.  In modern times we use paper and even electronic tallies, things that carry no intrinsic value.

I think it would be cool if you didn't provide players and currency.  Strictly use barter in the beginning.  And barter for things people need at that.  See if the society is robust enough to come up with its own currency.

[PurpleYouko]

That might be a cool idea.  

[Elite]

How about having an 'item design' tool, so creatively inclined players can create new items to to/help with tasks. I would like the idea of designing your own dwelling too. Maybe ways of shaping the landscape too?

I like the idea of having the game based on some underlying physics and being as open-ended as possible.

[Numsgil]

The only technical issue you run into really is designing something to minimize bandwidth.  If you make it a LAN game then those issues diminish.

[Welwordion]

I suggest a resource system were the amount of normally non renewable resources like metal is counted
and the deficit (trough rusting/lost durability and broken tools) is stored into underground lava,and  once a volcano erupt the new rock will have metal veins distributed into it. Note, that stone also might be a non renewable resource, as building can go to crack and crumble.
You might even consider underground eruptions that fill caves and tunnels that were dug in the past.

Of course this requires that the undeground itself is changeable.

[HazD]

This is a very interesting topic it seems what you want is a game that incoperates many features of others for example:

1. the survival aspect of MGS3

2. the trade focused economy of Free lancer

3. some of spore's features

etc. my point is complain at companies for the games you want and eventually they will give in.

P.S. Spore is going to be a really great game based on evolution check it out with the 35 min google video.  

[Numsgil]

I'm already a Spore fanboy and I haven't seen anything besides that hour long demo floating around online.

[Testlund]

This is very interesting to me. I remember many years ago I tried a game where a guy wakes up in a biosphere, I think, where he could explore and learn how to use different stuff. Do you know what game I'm talking about? I don't remember it's name. I've missed a lot of the things you suggests in this thread. So some of you are game makers too then? Just let me know if you need a playtester.  
Also if you have tips on games that have these concepts I whould like to know.