Is a true "MMORPG renaissance" possible?

[YES!]

"Saying platitudes without actual information..." then proceed to use phrases like "Did you like wow? blahblah" instead of actually explaining what is not boring and generic.

Kid, sshhhhh!!!! Ssshhhh! Stop. Stop talking to me. You fucking kids are really, really getting to me. You are not smart and you have nothing to say that is worth saying. Just stop.

 

[Jacob]

lLast time I checked my ID card I'm of legal age, thus not a "kid."

 

[Scruffy]

wildstar was still boring and generic though

in my personal opinion, the main problems are:

- catering to kids

when you do that, when you get too "casual" oriented and try to immediately reward the player, you're ruining your own game and there's no way back from that

- wikis tied to a "never changing" nature of the game

if you can look up how to find X, and you always find X in the same spot, the game becomes about min-maxing rather than enjoying the ride. A more "random" approach to quests and spawn areas and such keep it fresh and possibly more challenging

- no one does crafting/economy right

Won't go too into details about this, you know what I mean, you have a character, and then you have a farming character, and then you have a crafting character, and economy becomes pointless

- even if the game is acceptable, russians and brazilians ruin everything anyway

ban those ip ranges

How was it boring and generic? In what ways specifically? Saying platitudes without actual information may be how the kids like it, but I expect more to take you seriously. Wildstar didn't do well because it was actually difficult. All the dummies and baddies couldn't even complete the leveling dungeons, nevermind cap dungeons, and all the big raiding guilds left because the raids were too difficult.

As to boring and generic, I am failing to see how. It did everything different and had tons of unique features. Did you like wow? Or pretty much every mmorpg up to that time besides Tera? Because the combat in Wildstar was far less boring than in every other mmorpg I played. Same with the leveling, movement systems, and dungeons. As well as the chardev.

I'm not saying you couldn't find it boring and generic - I just need more than platitudes and hyperbole to understand where you are coming from.

I put about 30 hours into it. It felt like every other generic mmorpg i've played until then. fetch quests, trash combat, meh crafting, etc.

"forced" exploration by "plant the flag on top of the hill" was mildly different. Sure, you could click twice and do a double jump. Fantastic.

 

[YES!]

wildstar was still boring and generic though

in my personal opinion, the main problems are:

- catering to kids

when you do that, when you get too "casual" oriented and try to immediately reward the player, you're ruining your own game and there's no way back from that

- wikis tied to a "never changing" nature of the game

if you can look up how to find X, and you always find X in the same spot, the game becomes about min-maxing rather than enjoying the ride. A more "random" approach to quests and spawn areas and such keep it fresh and possibly more challenging

- no one does crafting/economy right

Won't go too into details about this, you know what I mean, you have a character, and then you have a farming character, and then you have a crafting character, and economy becomes pointless

- even if the game is acceptable, russians and brazilians ruin everything anyway

ban those ip ranges

How was it boring and generic? In what ways specifically? Saying platitudes without actual information may be how the kids like it, but I expect more to take you seriously. Wildstar didn't do well because it was actually difficult. All the dummies and baddies couldn't even complete the leveling dungeons, nevermind cap dungeons, and all the big raiding guilds left because the raids were too difficult.

As to boring and generic, I am failing to see how. It did everything different and had tons of unique features. Did you like wow? Or pretty much every mmorpg up to that time besides Tera? Because the combat in Wildstar was far less boring than in every other mmorpg I played. Same with the leveling, movement systems, and dungeons. As well as the chardev.

I'm not saying you couldn't find it boring and generic - I just need more than platitudes and hyperbole to understand where you are coming from.

I put about 30 hours into it. It felt like every other generic mmorpg i've played until then. fetch quests, trash combat, meh crafting, etc.

"forced" exploration by "plant the flag on top of the hill" was mildly different. Sure, you could click twice and do a double jump. Fantastic.

Well, that was a great explanation. What is an example of a non-generic mmorpg?

 

[YES!]

lLast time I checked my ID card I'm of legal age, thus not a "kid."

You're a kid until you can think and communicate intelligently. You may never not be a kid. I hope with time, experience, and knowledge you one day will turn into an adult but its not looking good for you. But don't worry, in general stupid people are much happier than intelligent people.

 

[Norfleet]

I don't really know why you'd even WANT to be happy, really. Being happy pisses me off.

 

[Talby]

lLast time I checked my ID card I'm of legal age, thus not a "kid."

 

[Jacob]

lLast time I checked my ID card I'm of legal age, thus not a "kid."

You're a kid until you can think and communicate intelligently. You may never not be a kid. I hope with time, experience, and knowledge you one day will turn into an adult but its not looking good for you. But don't worry, in general stupid people are much happier than intelligent people.

You got it wrong, old fool. People past 40 I knew are successful businessman, thus intelligent (My uncle), unemployed alcoholic with shitty taste in music (My other uncle, oh and by "shitty taste in music" I mean Nicki Minaj, not me trying to shit on Led Zeppelin), and kind but mediocre parent who raised mediocre children like me (My father), which makes him qualified as kinda dumb.

Then there is you, arguing with people half your age. The definition of maturity, indeed. Educating the young? Don't make me laugh. You're delusional. Must be the burden of raising children when it's obvious you're not mentally capable of such responsibilities. Have you tried volunteering for church programs? Good for mental health you know.

 

[YES!]

lLast time I checked my ID card I'm of legal age, thus not a "kid."

You're a kid until you can think and communicate intelligently. You may never not be a kid. I hope with time, experience, and knowledge you one day will turn into an adult but its not looking good for you. But don't worry, in general stupid people are much happier than intelligent people.

You got it wrong, old fool. People past 40 I knew are successful businessman, thus intelligent (My uncle), unemployed alcoholic with shitty taste in music (My other uncle, oh and by "shitty taste in music" I mean Nicki Minaj, not me trying to shit on Led Zeppelin), and kind but mediocre parent who raised mediocre children like me (My father), which makes him qualified as kinda dumb.

Then there is you, arguing with people half your age. The definition of maturity, indeed. Educating the young? Don't make me laugh. You're delusional. Must be the burden of raising children when it's obvious you're not mentally capable of such responsibilities. Have you tried volunteering for church programs? Good for mental health you know.

Sure thing, kid. You win. Please stop talking to me.

 

[adrix89]

I have been thinking about MMORPGs for some time and I pretty much know all of its problems.

About Endgame and why everyone is rushing to it. Pretty much Leveling itself is broken from the start, you have a multiplayer game that cannot be played with other players because they will have varying ranges of levels and over time that population will reach max level.
Since 99% will be max there is no point in any content outside that so you just rush to max as fast you can. This the perversion called "Endgame". In other words its the "game" with the "leveling" irrelevant thus removed.
If you implement leveling you already failed.
Skill growth systems are much better in a MMORPG as they can be somewhat working. But even then you have some bullshit like EVE's system where your character's passively grow over time without you doing anything. Got to cash in those subscriptions! Ka-ching$$ Ka-ching$$
Something more ideal with something that implements skill decay with a limited total pool of points so you can adapt over time while still keeping some skill with a sharp edge with some effort.
The problem with skill systems is that you will be the most efficient jack of all trades build. That on top of the mind numbing skill grinding. In fact I am bit sad that leveling is fundamentally broken, I like the idea of classes with their roles and killing challenging stuff is the appropriate way to advance.

But the biggest mistake I see is not leveling or progression its the monetization. Simply put In-Game Shop kills the game dead. And I am not talking about bad pay 2 win shit.
I mean ANY In-Game Shop. Even the useless cosmetic stuff.
Why you ask? Well not only it ruins any sense of being a world but worse then that it Obliterates any possibility of a Economy.
Without a Economy you butchered any chance to have complex interaction between players. Getting stuff is what you do the most in these games, and without an economy all that stuff goes directly into the trash.
Since Big Studios will never escape from the in-game shop curse they have no chance for a renaissance.

Which brings us to the main topic what could be the "MMORPG renaissance"? You might have already guessed but its the Indie Sandbox MMO but there is a small problem:
Nobody fucking has any idea of how to do a Sandbox MMO.

Sandbox MMOs have been done in the past to a bit of success but since everything has been screwed in some way and everyone is like a blind man stumbling everywhere its safe to say they still have no idea.

In some ways Sandbox MMOs is a simple concept in other ways its beyond their comprehension. So what is it?

A Sandbox MMO is a game where lots of players generate the content of the game competitively and cooperatively. Aka user generated content.
Really simple ain't it?
So what's the problem? Do a little crafting, build a cottage there, done!
You might even say PvP! PvP! Of course Sandbox MMO is all about PvP, you get some miners and some ore, you build a blacksmith, you make some swords and you are out to kill the other guys!
The problem? They come to do the same and destroy all that you built.
But lets you implement proper defenses so that they cannot destroy your stuff. So you go out again reassured, but butting heads with enemies for no profit is pointless so you go raid! those trade caravans or resources.
And that's fine for a while until someone eventually organizes an army and puts a stop to this burns your flimsy defense and kicks your ass to another dirt entirely.

Now you might say this is not a bad story, this is kinda like EVE the little guy was thrown out but he can organize in another place do some plotting and fight a rematch in the end.
And you would be right, like I said before Sandbox games are a simple concept except I left something out, and that is the mind numbing tedium. It's boring!
Crafting is boring, building is boring, mining is boring, its all boring grinding of skills. You go through all that only for a couple of seconds of combat. You go through all that only to watch it all burn.

What you have in a "themepark" of fighting some monsters and bosses for loot, it was fun killing things then. That is PvE.
The things is that is precisely what we don't have in a Sandbox MMOs, we don't have the budget for it and even if we did we would enter the pitfall of themeparks. Why we wanted user generation was to escape from this.
Now a hybrid approach might theoretically work leaving the PvP be the sandbox experience on top, but that is not what I want you to understand, what I want you to understand is the user generation itself, because that is the key.

What Sandbox fail to do is give proper user generated content form the start.
There have been many types of games exploring many types of gameplay that can be used as a basis for interesting interaction between players both competitively and cooperatively.
But I will focus on the 3 most fundamental types of gameplay for Sandbox games:

First is Management. Base management like in Rimworld or economic management of the local economy and trade between other regions. This also where your mining and crafting is done mostly by AI NPCs.
Manual crafting and building can be done if its some fast and easy like in Minecraft. But is you are wasting players time for minutes or hours doing pointless coring tasks don't bother. Automation should always be a an option.
In the first place management is not about doing boring tasks yourself but making choices on the bigger picture.
Trade you might think something like "buy low, sell high" but more fundamentally it is about unique resources or product that you are in control that is exclusive to you that is wanted or even needed by other parties, in other words monopolies and oligarchies.
Its necessary to design for this kind of monopolies. In most cases it will be from resources in your region. But an even better case is if you have a way to tie it to a character's talents.
Every crafter wants to be that one renowned blacksmith that creates the super awesome sword. The problem is that every crafter want to grow and want things to be fair. A procedural algorithm that gives crafters some exclusive advantage in some materials and doing things and that can be further refined by some rare resources can be a interesting way.
Mangement is about managing risks, if you do not have a challenge and sources of chaos it will be boring. If your based does not get invaded you cannot see how good it is. However the difficulty needs to be appropriate to your growth, delving straight to PvP is pointless.
The thing about MMORPGs is they are continuous games that do not wait for you so passive defenses are much more important. Tower Defense games are pretty interesting games for this since its all about that kind of defenses.
You should also have the ability to setup some timeframes where you cannot be attacked at all since most of the time players will be in a certain time zone that make it impossible even by spreading over multiple players.
This things should be kept in mind even in PvP.
The "dailies" in a sandbox game can be to survive the daily wave of monsters that are out to destroy your faction's base.

Another thing about "management" in a multiplayer game is that you will also want to manage players, there are two aspects that can affect players and that is Power(progression) and Security(insurance).
Power is simple. It can be a better sword, it can be a buff to stats that can last for a couple of hours, it can be something that accelerates their growth or unlock new possibilities.
Security is possible if the games has risks, for example something like full loot drops the security would be to give them your equipment. Things like guilds can control things like a guild's wealth that everyone contributes towards.

Now you give this power and security in trade, but it does not necessarily have to be for money, if you can create a quest with that as a reward you can make them do much more complicated things. You can make them do your bidding, you make them give you authority.
"One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them"

This is what means to "manage people".

Second(I know we have come far) is Combat. This is the classical kill stuff. You want a large amounts of content to be to kill stuff that is a normal thing to do every day.
To some extent you can have some procedural generation like in Roguelikes of monster encounters. You can put some tricks like having some really dangerous mobs that can outright slaughter you in all hunting grounds to keep you on your toes.
PvP skirmishes are also great if you could make the fights fair, which is where dungeons come in. With dungeons you can put arbitrary party restrictions on gates so that you can ensure the numbers and power of the party so that when they encounter an enemy party in a dungeon it will be balanced.
Since the combat's goal is mostly a scramble for resources so competitive PvP and stealing of your stuff could do wonders to spice things up.
Also when it comes to User Generation. It can also be about User Control. Like giving players control of the dungeon like in a Dungeon Keeper game and the monster forces. Dungeons can generate resources and require player lives to develop further. Its a symbiotic relationship with the more "kingdom" or "guild" style factions.
You can also have roaming Player Monsters with its own evolution tree that is based on the slaughter and destruction of player bases.
There is a lot of interesting things you can do here.

Third is Politics. I have touched on a bit in management but politics all about authority, control and ownership.
The problem with politics is it requires something that few are willing to tread on.
The concept is simple, the game has a system in place to give you control on some aspects of the game and you own this authority.
For example you can own a house, you can be mayor of a town, you can control a guild. In the house you control the locks, who enters, and the stuff inside the house. As a mayor you can implement some laws, what is traded and not traded, who should be provided with what services. For a guild you can control the bank of the guild and how you distribute those resources.

The question is how do you change ownership? In most games you don't, you own the house indefinitely, the guild is master for life, with the only exception is if they willingly give it up. This leads to a stagnant situation. You cannot have politics without change and you cannot have politics without backstabbing.
Now the concept that few are willing to tread is permadeath. If you tie ownership to death you open up a lot of possibilities. It presents a moment of absolute vulnerability mechanically that can fundamentally change the situation.
If you permadie that ownership of the house can be in a deed that you give to a friend for safe keeping or you give to a mayor that promises you to give it back to your next "descendant", or you bury it like a pirate somewhere. It give you a moment of vulnerability that tests your relationships you built.
And if your friend betrays you or the mayor has other plans that's the start of a story. Afterall everyone has the same vulnerability, a mayor has much more to lose then your friend if you are out for his blood, but he also more options to screw you.
What they compromise, what they trade, what they agree. Like said in "management" this is the security aspect, this is "managing people".
A King might have the authority to set the new Duke, while if the King falls the Dukes might have to come into agreement on who the new King is. If the Dukes don't agree this might lead to rebellion and even civil war.
High positions and control might have a poison clock that increases with the more power and control they have giving them a limited time to reign. So the situation always changes.

Now I have to make clear that not all deaths are the same. What is permadeath can be in certain conditions. For example there can be assassin classes where their kills are permanent at the cost of being very dangerous classes to play as and with players vary of them. It can come from the risks of authority, like any death of the King is a permanent one.
Players can have a limited number of lives depending on the class until that death becomes permanent. So you can have 20 deaths before it becomes permanent.
For things like progression of levels and skills you can compact it like how MOBAs compact the leveling experience into a 30-60min round. You can make the maximum cap of 20 levels instead of 60 or 100levels and balance it so that half of your time can be leveling and another half will be spent at max level until your inevitable permadeath.
Furthermore you can unlock new classes that you can use after your permadeath through achievements.
Your gear and your wealth are contained in ownership. Your gear will have permanent decay anyway so its not like it would last you forever anyway. Some Full Loot PvP games can be worse then this as we can be more merciful with the drop rates.

Guilds are an interesting establishment because it handles permadeath fairly well. At the cost of giving absolute authority to a Guild Master your wealth is ensured by the Guild's vault and things like leveling can be accelerated through it.
Of course if something happens to the guild you are all screwed. But you can get screwed together with your teammates and have a sense of solidarity, a real bond. That you can use to power your hellbent revenge.

 

[Teepo]

If you get butthurt and defensive when called a kid, you are a kid. If you think being 18 somehow exempts you from being a kid, you are a kid. All about context and relativity. There is still much for you to learn and mature and that is where the implication of kid is correct.
kid
informal
a child or young person.
synonyms: child, youngster, little one, baby, toddler, tot, infant, boy/girl, young person, minor, juvenile, adolescent, teenager, youth, stripling; More

 

[Hobo Elf]

Roqua is an unstable child who gets emotionally compromised whenever someone disagrees with him. This is a typical characteristic for kids aged 2~5 years old. That, or he is suffering from major arrested development.

 

[Jacob]

If you get butthurt and defensive when called a kid, you are a kid. If you think being 18 somehow exempts you from being a kid, you are a kid. All about context and relativity. There is still much for you to learn and mature and that is where the implication of kid is correct.
kid
informal
a child or young person.
synonyms: child, youngster, little one, baby, toddler, tot, infant, boy/girl, young person, minor, juvenile, adolescent, teenager, youth, stripling; More

okay

 

[Teepo]

Look stripling, people just say kid to sound stylish. No need to disprove it with empirical data. It's just rhetoric anyway.



I.e. to a 45 year old a 24 year old is a kid, etc.

 

[Grorious Reader]

What a bunch of autists.

 

[Jacob]

Look stripling, people just say kid to sound stylish. No need to disprove it with empirical data. It's just rhetoric anyway.



I.e. to a 45 year old a 24 year old is a kid, etc.

I don't really mind actually, I was just trying to win an argument with Roqua.

 

[Norfleet]

But the biggest mistake I see is not leveling or progression its the monetization. Simply put In-Game Shop kills the game dead. And I am not talking about bad pay 2 win shit.
I mean ANY In-Game Shop. Even the useless cosmetic stuff.
Why you ask? Well not only it ruins any sense of being a world but worse then that it Obliterates any possibility of a Economy.
Without a Economy you butchered any chance to have complex interaction between players. Getting stuff is what you do the most in these games, and without an economy all that stuff goes directly into the trash.
Since Big Studios will never escape from the in-game shop curse they have no chance for a renaissance.

What if you could buy things from the in-game shop...and then SELL them in-game to other players?

 

[YES!]

Roqua is an unstable child who gets emotionally compromised whenever someone disagrees with him. This is a typical characteristic for kids aged 2~5 years old. That, or he is suffering from major arrested development.

I'm actually one years old so the jokes on you, you jive turkey.

 

[Hydlide]

I think the next renaissance will come when VR becomes more easily available. I've heard arguments saying that a screen on your face doesn't make a game immersive, well, have you tried a real VR set-up with controllers that let you move your hands and the ability to move around? Imagine dodging dragon's breath and holding a shield up to physically shield your allies, rather than just pressing a button for a cooldown. Or casting magic where the potency increases by doing the perfect sign in the air with your hands. Pulling out an arrow as a ranger and having a mage friend cast fire on the arrow. That's what will change the genre: True immersion. But I don't think it will happen for another 5 years when stuff is more affordable and accessible.

 

[Helton]

That all sounds gimmicky and boring as hell, tbh.

 

[adrix89]

I think the next renaissance will come when VR becomes more easily available. I've heard arguments saying that a screen on your face doesn't make a game immersive, well, have you tried a real VR set-up with controllers that let you move your hands and the ability to move around? Imagine dodging dragon's breath and holding a shield up to physically shield your allies, rather than just pressing a button for a cooldown. Or casting magic where the potency increases by doing the perfect sign in the air with your hands. Pulling out an arrow as a ranger and having a mage friend cast fire on the arrow. That's what will change the genre: True immersion. But I don't think it will happen for another 5 years when stuff is more affordable and accessible.

Not going to happen because of speed of light and stuff. You are much more sensitive to lag and latency with VR(vomit inducing).
VR is also very bandwith intensive with all that tracking and motion and when you put it on a network it will get all garbled up.

Tech that show promise for MMOs are more reasonable stuff like middleware that partition's players with variable tick rates based on distance and importance and is distributed on a network. Things like the stuff in Dual Universe supposedly.
Also a good tech to do Minecraft stuff. EQ Landmark got pretty close to that and someone will eventually attempt it.

 

[SymbolicFrank]

I also started with MUDs and played a lot of interesting MMOs in the past, at the start. And then Everquest happened.

It was 3D, easy to get into, it had a large world, and required lots of grind and dedication. It offered very little freedom. And everyone was about the exact same as everyone else in the same class.

And people totally loved the large, open world chatbox aspect. It was a really easy game: join group ("LFG!"), run up to some baddies and either press "A" (for auto-combat), or "assist" and the attack or heal button whenever it became available, and start chatting. And that was about it.

It was a big success.

After that, WoW copied the mechanics, made it even more accessible, and hit the stratosphere. And all the other MMOs died. Well, except EVE, of course.

Even things like FF14 and TES Online, with a great legacy that was easy to translate into their own, unique MMO, dumped that and copied the same EQ/WoW game mechanics slavishly.

And the only alternative, EVE online, is only interesting if you like submarines in SPACE!, or like to spend a lot of effort to scam people big time.

Then again, there's always Minecraft!

 

[Delterius]

like FF14

their own, unique MMO

now now

 

[Lyric Suite]

lLast time I checked my ID card I'm of legal age, thus not a "kid."

You're a kid until you can think and communicate intelligently. You may never not be a kid. I hope with time, experience, and knowledge you one day will turn into an adult but its not looking good for you. But don't worry, in general stupid people are much happier than intelligent people.

You got it wrong, old fool. People past 40 I knew are successful businessman, thus intelligent (My uncle), unemployed alcoholic with shitty taste in music (My other uncle, oh and by "shitty taste in music" I mean Nicki Minaj, not me trying to shit on Led Zeppelin), and kind but mediocre parent who raised mediocre children like me (My father), which makes him qualified as kinda dumb.

Then there is you, arguing with people half your age. The definition of maturity, indeed. Educating the young? Don't make me laugh. You're delusional. Must be the burden of raising children when it's obvious you're not mentally capable of such responsibilities. Have you tried volunteering for church programs? Good for mental health you know.

Settle down kid, and let the adults speak.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

*snip*

Now you might say this is not a bad story, this is kinda like EVE the little guy was thrown out but he can organize in another place do some plotting and fight a rematch in the end.
And you would be right, like I said before Sandbox games are a simple concept except I left something out, and that is the mind numbing tedium. It's boring!
Crafting is boring, building is boring, mining is boring, its all boring grinding of skills. You go through all that only for a couple of seconds of combat. You go through all that only to watch it all burn.

What you have in a "themepark" of fighting some monsters and bosses for loot, it was fun killing things then. That is PvE.
The things is that is precisely what we don't have in a Sandbox MMOs, we don't have the budget for it and even if we did we would enter the pitfall of themeparks. Why we wanted user generation was to escape from this.
Now a hybrid approach might theoretically work leaving the PvP be the sandbox experience on top, but that is not what I want you to understand, what I want you to understand is the user generation itself, because that is the key.

What Sandbox fail to do is give proper user generated content form the start.
There have been many types of games exploring many types of gameplay that can be used as a basis for interesting interaction between players both competitively and cooperatively.
But I will focus on the 3 most fundamental types of gameplay for Sandbox games:

*snip*

Your post is too long. You're lucky if anybody read beyond the first paragraph.

(I'm addressing what you wrote about sandboxes.)

Every since I played UO, I discovered an interest in sandboxes. It has stayed with me. When I played Wurm Online in 2012, that was my next big sandbox experience. I've played off and on. It has been amazing. Nothing really compares.

What I specifically want to address is this part:

It's boring! Crafting is boring, building is boring, mining is boring, its all boring grinding of skills. You go through all that only for a couple of seconds of combat. You go through all that only to watch it all burn.

I don't know how else to say this, but maybe it's not your kind of game? What you describe as an "answer" is more an anti-answer. I get the impression you're just trying to rationalize your own personal likes--not acknowledging they're personal. And sandboxes aren't exactly "simple concepts". It's just like anything. A lot more thought goes into it than I think you realize.

I also think grind will always be part of these games because players are always looking for ways to get ahead. They'll look for even small advantages until their bones bleed. This usually results in some kind of extreme grind or metagame. This doesn't mean there're no ways to reduce grind because there're. I just think it's impossible to completely prevent it.

A more reasonable answer to some of the problems I've encountered in sandbox MMO's, like Wurm Online, might be:
1) deeper skill system, involving more actions and assessment
.... this is about reducing repetition in skill use; so it's not mindless repeated clicking
.... lets also understand not everyone will enjoy certain things or skills--even with less repetition
2) more interlinked at lower and upper skill levels to facilitate an economy involving all the players
.... otherwise the lower skill levels are much more likely to grind--for value
.... the objective is to prevent a one-sided economy in which the higher skills always supercede the lowers
3) dynamic monster AI (war) zones
.... players don't have to live here, but if they do, the monsters will coordinate, form parties and raid the player settlements
.... this is to counter what I see in Wurm Online as a mid to late-game lacking survival elements

That's all for now.