A collaborative idea with the market

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A collaborative idea with the market

Postby akkamaddi » Thu Sep 20, 2018 6:11 pm

OK, so, NOT cooperative play, so chill… breathe in… breathe out… :-)

I touched on something here:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9012&p=53826#p53826
That I think would actually be an interesting idea for the game.

I’ve mentioned in the past about better market requests, as the market late the the game is mainly used to get access to different special areas, and occasionally get honey from Thora West.

Short version, have a new NPC who is 7Zee’s Humanitarian Collaboration Coordinator. She has at least one mission on Saturday, one on Sunday, and at least two Monday through Friday. Everyone gets the mission at the same time. This would also require a back-end server on Amazon Cloud Services to coordinate things, but it is not real-time, so it could be a low-end server.

From the player’s perspective, a day or two after completing the main story and getting the (really well done) ending, the you get a 7Zee mail:

Olá, tudo bem? Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Aline Moreno, and I am from the lovely city of Recife, Brazil. I am a Senior Humanitarian Collaboration Coordinator at 7Zee. 7Zee takes is place in the macroeconomics of the cosmos very seriously, and…. OK, look, you seem like a smart cookie, so I’ll share the veracidade with you, but I’m trusting you so don’t share this. 7Zee fulfills a lot of humanitarian requests because it’s good PR and great for taxes. Even so, the few of us who are Coordinators have a chance to get resources to people who need it. There are not many ranchers on that big, empty planet of yours, but a few of us have gathered resources to get schools and clinics built where people need it. A few determined people can change a community for the better. Do you think you could help? I can’t pay a lot, but 7Zee likes to reward people who make the company look good, so your efforts will come back to you. Do you think you can help when we have a project?”


After the mail, the player can get Aline’s requests in the market exchange. If she has a market pending, the “request ready” window will have a small green person icon in the top corner to make it clear one of the missions is one of Aline’s humanitarian requests.

The humanitarian requests become available if the player does not have an active requests. There is a 12 hour period when it can become available, which is at a random start time each time, and the quest will remain for 12 hours waiting for the player to accept. The player then has 12 hours to actually fulfill the request. This happens on a random time on Saturday, on Sunday, and twice during the weekdays. This gives a good, randomized period of time for players to get it, but it’s not an “all weekend” thing. So (I know that's not totally clear), on a given Saturday, the quest will become available from (picking random) 2AM to 2PM UST for any player who plays online and can receive a request during that 12 hour period. The player then has 12 hours form the time it became available to him or her to accept it, and another 12 hours to fulfill it. Due to time, a player may only be able to get one of the weekend requests, but may be able to get two done.

The humanitarian requests are for very large orders, usually 100+ each of four plorts. If the player accepts the mission, the player also gets a 7Zee mail message from Aline with a brief explanation for the mission. The mails can be templates with randomized key words.


Three quick examples, text in [brackets] can be random fill to generate multiple messages:

250 Phosphor Plorts, 200 Rad Plorts, 100 Quantum Plorts, 100 Mosaic Plorts
“Hello! And thank you! [Saints of Mercy Hospital] at [Vesta Station] has such old equipment in their Department of Radiology and Energetic Medicine that they are having to shutter services. The community of [Vesta Station] does not have resources for new equipment, but 7Zee has decided to intervene! This would replace one of their machines and keep it running for many months, and with a few ranchers helping we can make that wing a draw for medical care!

500 Pink Plorts, 300 Rock Plorts, 200 Phosphor Plorts, 100 Boom Plorts
“Thank you! I don’t know if you heard, but there was an [earthquake] at the [Island of California]. The [Einstein Magnet School for Education Outreach] was hit really hard. Part of the school requires demolition and rebuilding. This is a tuition free school that prepares many children for higher degrees in [science and engineering], and 7Zee wants it rebuilt quickly. This will handle much of the damage, but with a few other ranchers we can bring needed renovations to the school!”

200 Puddle Plorts, 100 Fire Plorts, 300 Honey Plorts, 400 Tangle Plorts
“Thanks! This is a big one! A bad [monsoon] in [India] has really harmed crop production. This is a simple requests for humanitarian aid. It’s a big ask, but we can make this go a long way!”


The player then gets 12 hours to fill the quest.

When filled, the player gets a modest amount of NuBucks, as well as a 7Zee Token of Civic Awareness.

On the back end, there is a mission complete flag checked in the system, and it is reported up to a server (the low end Amazon cloud server I mentioned earlier, the most ambitious part of this). On the online service, each mission gets a unique ID (an eight digit hex string could last decades, and the player never sees this), and a counter. The count is incremented with each ping / web request from a client with the correct metadata. (There has to be some simple way to curb hella cheating, as exploits seems the way of games now.)

72 hours after the mission available time has started, the game client does an HTTPS request to the server. If the server has tallied, say, 3000 successful mission completes, then everyone who has completed the mission (the checked mission flag) gets a 7Zee mail from Aline:

“This is wonderful! Several ranchers pulled together, and the mission to help the [school | hospital | humanitarian need] was a better success than we hoped! 7Zee has acknowledged your efforts, and has sent a special reward.”

The player then gets double the NuBucks of the original mission in a second payment, and four 7Zee Tokens of Civic Awareness.


So, to summarize,

About four times a week, at random times, there becomes a special market request that becomes available. The request is something big, easily 400-800 plorts. The request is available for longer than normal, and the player has longer than normal to fulfill the request. On the web, a server keeps track of how many players complete the request. Completing the request gets a little money and a token. If enough players complete the request, everyone gets more money and more tokens.

And with that, we have a hint of a shade of a suggestion of online play.

Other players suddenly matter, and players can affect everyone. There are still technical issues, but they are far more realistic than true online coop play. Because it’s not an all-weekend thing, players who want to participate have to find out when a requests goes live, but there is a lot of wiggly room giving latitude on play time, so we’re staying wiggly. The actual network transfer wold be small.


And the 7Zee Tokens of Civic Awareness, these are essentially a special currency.

Add two or three VacPack upgrades, slime toys, and a handful of Slime Science tech, perhaps 7Zee branded teleport tech items and a few decorations. The extended items are reasonable in price, but also cost 7Z Tokens. A decoration blueprint would probably cost 2-3 Tokens, but a teleport item blueprint would cost 10 tokens. The rewards could really be anything, with even costlier rewards being access to 7Zee’s Farm Island (peaceful island, many equipment spots) or even one or two plorts from “exotic” slimes the player could use to make Largos. It could take a few months to get enough tokens to get all the new goodies. The purchases would become visible after the first time a player completed a humanitarian mission.



This could also be done without any collaboration. If you strip out the part about reporting to a server and getting more rewards if many players completing the mission, everything else would still work in the game. It would fit in with the games awareness of social welfare, it would fit with the developed protagonist, and it would make the exchange useful for more than getting access to a few farms and then occasional extra honey. It would be a good framework to add small, new ideas to the game that is internally consistent. It would even brush up against the dreaded multi word in a good way. :-)


Thank you for your time. And, to the devs, thank you for a really unique and charming game. I have really enjoyed it.
akkamaddi
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Re: A collaborative idea with the market

Postby EmeraldPlay » Fri Sep 21, 2018 9:54 am

A̶ ̶N̶ ̶G̶ ̶E̶ ̶R̶ ̶Y̶

But really, this is cool.
My avatar was taken from Miomilla's chart.

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Re: A collaborative idea with the market

Postby Freeasabird » Thu Sep 27, 2018 1:42 pm

WOAH!, i ain't reading all that crap! Summarize it in two words.
Boom slimes, Rocks Slimes, No Pain No gain.
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