My thought on the game is that it will be destroyed utterly shortly after release.

So it will mainly be an example of the hope and naïveté of the dev’s, combined with the vast levels of self centerdness of modern gamers.

As a backer, I hope for the best, as a person who’s lived in this world a while? Lol, I expect the worst.

Hmm ... that's a rather pessimistic outlook. There are good examples of on-line communities acting up to their responsibilities though. And both the world of game developers and the gamers they serve are part of actively learning communities. Moreover, SBS has gone through great length to provide systems and support community involvement to optimize the chances of success. Are there any specific aspects you think that are underestimated or overlooked that feed your sentiment?

There was a period shortly before the Kickstarter campaign that a few of us looked at CoE as Caspians thesis for his sociological doctorate.

In all honesty though as far as how the world will turn out. There will be small safe havens where those who have strong communities can protect their production centers but beyond that expect the same basic level of interaction as folks do in eve’s null space. Or if I don’t know you and you aren’t on my team you are dead.

I also do not expect the RP aspect to survive more than a month or so after launch. Balls, marriage ceremonies, and other RP opportunities cost resources and very quick I expect communities to realize to survive the min/max mentality must be served if not outright embraced and resources spent on things without a decent ROI will be ignored in favor of more productive activities.

I think the biggest potential flaw of CoE is its almost complete reliance on players for any of these great systems to work.

Let's look at banks, for example.

Even something as "simple" as having a safe place to store your money/goods is 100% reliant on players. You want it to be secure? Someone needs to research locks/safety features. Someone needs to install those things. Someone (potentially NPC's) needs to stand guard.

Despite all that, the bank manager could still potentially just walk off with your goods.

I absolutely LOVE what CoE/SBS is trying to do. However, as Daniel said, I just don't think gamers have the maturity to handle it.

Additionally, from a different angle, what happens when key people get bored? Or take a break? Or have some personal issue come up?

Everything in CoE appears to be interconnected. What happens to the economy in a small settlement when the blacksmith disappears? Or the town sheriff decides he doesn't want to do that anymore? Or the local banker picks up and moves to a bigger city?

Yes, I am aware that NPC's will be able to fill roles to a certain extent (how well they will be able to fill those roles is still unknown). However, let's assume they will be able to do a perfectly acceptable job.

Now, you have a different issue. EVERY time you "replace" a reliable NPC with a person, you have inserted a weakness into the system. That's one more role you have to worry about. One more person you have to keep an eye on so they don't abscond with XXXX. One more person that might just not feel like "doing their job" today.

The players themselves will be what has the greatest potential to ruin this game.

However, knowing how players "are", having almost 20 years of evidence showing how they have a tendency to ruin things, and are the reason "we can't have nice things", if SBS isn't taking steps to account for this, then we might as well just check out now.

Any system that relies completely on players for it's success, with no "back-up plan" is doomed to failure. Even EVE, with all its craziness, has safe banks/hangers.

To answer the original post, in short, there is definitely a potential for people to study the sociology of the game and community, and although not my cup of tea if someone joined explicitly with the intent to study interactions that is a viable way to play the game.

Having backers whose intent is for it to be a social experiment might ruin things though. Lets say company A says they will invest 100k in the game so they can study social interactions. SbS is then in part liable to facilitate the social experiments and we are deviating from what this is supposed to be, a game.

To touch on the pessimism in this thread, all I can say is stop looking at this as a game and look at it as a world. If you have a big reputable bank and one of the branch managers robbed the branch and vanished what happens. Well first that bank either refunds lost money and damages, or they lose all trust in the clients and they go under.

Lets say the sheriff Does want to retire and go work on his fletching, what would happen in the real world? He would quit and be replaced! Maybe a baron steps up into the empty sheriffs spot and his guard captain takes his. Obviously at launch there will be kinks to work out, but like minded individuals will naturally band together, either for order or for chaos and eventually we will find our equilibrium.

Posted By AlteOgre at

Pondering some of the actual forum subjects and the main systems CoE will use, I wondered to what extent CoE can be considered "an extraordinary social experiment" worthy of study, and if that could be considered such a distinct aspect of CoE that it is worthy of specifically promoting in order to attract audiences that might normally not even think of playing an MMORPG like CoE.

When searching for "social experiment" on this website you only find a few hits, but when googling for "chronicles of elyria" and "social experiment" you hit a serious number of instances where the game is referred to as a social experiment. An example is this article, presenting a number of features that could make CoE qualify as a social experiment. Based on what I now know of CoE I would confirm that CoE covers a lot of social aspects worthy of studying and that the game is worthy of promotion with people that would otherwise pass the opportunity. I am very curious to hear how others view this, in my view, intrinsically overarching theme of CoE.

Just to kick-start some discussion, here's a number of aspects that I find especially intrigueing in the light of this becoming an MMORPG uniting thousands of players of various cultural and social backgrounds:

• Players with a modern day societal and educational background join to define and shape communities and societies in a feudal system.
• The way players will deal with OPCs taking care of their characters needs in their absence.
• Religiously sensitive aspects like the notions of same sex marriages, contracted child delivery and various aspects of SBS's Soul Engine like reincarnation.
• The trust both SBS and players will need to guard regarding the self-sufficiency of the in-game community to solve in-character conflict, and the potential risk of out-of-character interventions (including in-game "griefing" and other out-of-character conflicts).
• The way players will deal with families consisting of NPCs, how they will try to influence their NPC familiy members to live 'up to standards'.
• How the system of fame, reputation and affinity can affect player behaviour.

How would academics of social studies view the game and the behaviour of its players, and how these relate to the broad variety of player backgrounds? Think Sociology, Political Science, Anthropoloy and Jurisprudence for example. Which research questions would they be most interested in? To what extent is CoE truly unique and does it introduce novel aspects, or new feature combinations? How will CoE compare to earlier 'experiments'? As the Dance of Dynasties is well on the way, and Map Selection and KoE upcoming, the 'experiment' has already started in various ways. Monitoring behaviour of people and groups of people in this game('s preamble) could already have become a full-time job if this would be taken seriously.

How could one succesfully use this theme to create interest? Which types of players could be lured to join in with the prospect of partaking in this extraordinary experiment, and with which arguments? Might it be possible to attract sponsors of various backgrounds with the motive to support CoE as "an extraordinary social experiment"?

A lot of questions indeed. I'm sure I won't be able to answer them all, but I'm curious, and that's why I'm throwing this out for you. ;)

To me, this is one of the more exciting aspects of COE. You could add to this:

1. The creation and governance of emergent and voluntary online communities (in this case, with virtual laws and law enforcement and not just social rules and TOS).

2. The psychology of dual identities created by computer game aided fantasy and and day-dreaming. Especially when the characters live and die -- meaning that one of the alternate identities is a family group and not an individual (or is an individual, but not the same individual).

3. Possible testing of alternatives to real world systems of social control and responses to deviancy without the risks real life failure would have.

Exciting days.

Posted By Beathan at 07:53 AM - Wed Oct 10 2018

1. Possible testing of alternatives to real world systems of social control and responses to deviancy without the risks real life failure would have.

I think that one is a bit interesting because, unlike the real world, you can't do many things without a contract. Many of the things one might do in secret in the real world would require a contract in the game. As such, responses to those behaviors would by necessity be different.

The social experiment that I’m most looking forward to observing is: Role Players enter an open world pvp game.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a game that had so much to offer an RPer, yet was open world pvp.

For this: Also include not just heavy RPers, but players who aren’t pvp minded.

I think back to Archage. I couldn’t begin to count the number of solo players or small groups who tried to take cargo across the open sea and ended up loosing it all. After a short while, safe zones were extended and large tractors introduced, so players could avoid pvp entirely. Well, that killed the game imo, because a large part of the game was effectively eliminated. Note: there will be no safe zones, no safe spaces. Even if a town is secure, a bandit guild may get tired of players running to the safety of the city and group to take the city down in hopes of forcing the player base into the open.

Many RPers will pick their starting locations, communities, professions, etc based on non-strategic reasons. Many won’t be properly defended and supported. How will they respond to various forms of player interaction beyond their control?

I predict many players will be easy targets for bandits at launch. Will they adapt or quit? How long will it take to adapt?

Posted By KipFoE at 08:52 AM - Wed Oct 10 2018

The social experiment that I’m most looking forward to observing is: Role Players enter an open world pvp game.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a game that had so much to offer an RPer, yet was open world pvp.

For this: Also include not just heavy RPers, but players who aren’t pvp minded.

I think back to Archage. I couldn’t begin to count the number of solo players or small groups who tried to take cargo across the open sea and ended up loosing it all. After a short while, safe zones were extended and large tractors introduced, so players could avoid pvp entirely. Well, that killed the game imo, because a large part of the game was effectively eliminated. Note: there will be no safe zones, no safe spaces. Even if a town is secure, a bandit guild may get tired of players running to the safety of the city and group to take the city down in hopes of forcing the player base into the open.

Many RPers will pick their starting locations, communities, professions, etc based on non-strategic reasons. Many won’t be properly defended and supported. How will they respond to various forms of player interaction beyond their control?

I predict many players will be easy targets for bandits at launch. Will they adapt or quit? How long will it take to adapt?

Yes, but remember that nobles and mayors and such get early access to build working cities and secured road networks. If we do our jobs, we will have built defenses and other systems to address banditry before most of the bandits join the game. It will be the bandit cities, built for banditry rather than to oppose banditry, that should face the brunt of the banditry. And that is as it should be.

Posted By Viktoriusiii at 09:44 AM - Wed Oct 10 2018

Posted By Malais at 3:10 PM - Wed Oct 10 2018

I also do not expect the RP aspect to survive more than a month or so after launch. Balls, marriage ceremonies, and other RP opportunities cost resources and very quick I expect communities to realize to survive the min/max mentality must be served if not outright embraced and resources spent on things without a decent ROI will be ignored in favor of more productive activities.

THIS is actually the first thing I think will go better then you think. (im generally on the skeptic side of the debate :D)

but they have said that they will reward special behaviour. Someone who travels the land might get a knowledge perk or something.

In the same way I can see them giving this sort of "RP stuff" (feasts, tournaments, sitting in a bar) some other beni. Like "your mental health has relaxed in a bar with friends" (sat down 3 hours in a tavern and drank beer) +2 workspeed "Your spirit has been lifted by the recent event (marriage, tournament)" +10% boni on EVERY skill for 2 days.

This is, I think, the easier thing to do.

I agree. If we could have balls and parties in Fallen Earth (and we did), we certainly should have them in COE. That will be especially true of they provide benefits in the reputation system or in story points (and they should).

Posted By KipFoE at 08:52 AM - Wed Oct 10 2018

The social experiment that I’m most looking forward to observing is: Role Players enter an open world pvp game.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a game that had so much to offer an RPer, yet was open world pvp.

For this: Also include not just heavy RPers, but players who aren’t pvp minded.

As I recall, Ryzom was like that. While the starting zone didn't allow PVP - once you left it, the entire world was. I remember towns being attacked, etc.

Aye, forgot to mention it, but the gossip system will play a key role in the way fame and reputation can help or frustrate players to achieve their ic (and ooc) goals. Those who master the player (social) skill of observing and listening carefully (and effectively use the info they gather), will likely be more succesful in achieving their goals than others.

(Added 'gossip' to the first post)