[DixieDev]

I missed UO's hayday, but when I've played the big modern MMOs I find myself instead attracted to the idea that individual characters shouldn't be able to do everything. I feel like forcing players to interact if they want to gather specific resources or craft vital items would really help a game feel "massively multiplayer".

Are there any modern MMOs with mechanics like this, e.g. life-skill limits or some other source of dependence on other players?

[nordsieck]

> Are there any modern MMOs with mechanics like this, e.g. life-skill limits or some other source of dependence on other players?

I think Eve Online is the classic example. It's not technically true that players are limited in the sense that you mean. Rather, the limits are emergent.

The areas with the most valuable resources also have the least game provided security, so players are forced to band together into large organizations to protect themselves - essentially true virtual countries.

[ericbarrett]

In addition, in Eve nearly all items (ships, modules, ammo, even starbases) are player-manufactured, player-hauled, and player-sold.

[cottenio]

EVE is my favorite example.

There were four games I played at EA Redwood Shores: UO, Battlefield 2, EVE Online, and Microsoft Excel (because EVE).

[waynesonfire]

The reason UO will never be re-created is that it was the first game of it's kind and thus every player had only one option. In modern times, the gamer population is so bifurcated that I'm not sure it'll ever be possible to have such a mix of player types in a single unforgiving ecosystem.

[josephd79]

Plus newer game generation wouldn’t like the idea of being pk’d and losing items….

[namrog84]

One of the challenges is finding the right proportional scale.

If the difficulty or fun of say blacksmithing nice items for the community. And you have it balanced out that you expect 20% of players be blacksmith. But then either 10 or 30% be blacksmiths either items skyrocket in price and make it unobtainable to most or the floor bottoms out making it not viable for most to engage in a market.

I think its solvable but itd require a lot of dynamic based systems to scale properly based upon number of players in each categories of life skill limits.

With that said, check out a game called Eco. They have life skill limits and force cooperation on small scale (30 day per server wipe). I think you can reasonably have 2 or 3 professions of 12 and people buy and sell from each other.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

I don't understand why MMOs could never figure out how to make resource gathering as fun (or more fun) than hack & slashing.

Stardew Valley and other games - Death's Door, A Short Hike, Toem, etc - figured this out.

Why haven't any MMOs done it?

[jghn]

In early UO, say Beta through the first few months of production, I knew a lot of folks who were primarily crafts folk. The town blacksmith, that sort of thing. After a while most players developed mules who had GM blacksmith skill or whatever so it became less of a thing.

But even then there were people out there. One woman I knew spent most of her time as an interior decorator for people's houses. It was a fun element that I never really saw in other games.

I do think to a large extent it came from the genre of game being new and every play style getting mushed into one game. People looking for the more pure social RP type role will congregate in a game catering to that, while the hack & slash adventure types will go elsewhere.

[Avicebron]

I've heard Ashes of Creation is trying to implement something like this (but they don't have a release date yet, just some interesting conversations with devs on their tooling and schedule)

[asdff]

Certain minecraft survival servers certainly, if they have the player count to make it feel "massive". Sometimes servers establish group protected towns or cities (these work like linux group permissions on files but over an arbitrary dimension of blocks in the server map) and there would be shared resources, e.g. a farm or chests full of leftover cobblestone from mining for diamonds, or even tools free for use to members of the group.

[Lammy]

> forcing players to interact if they want to gather specific resources or craft vital items

"sup, u gm angler?/" https://web.archive.org/web/20030731200633/http://spla.sh/bp...

[db48x]

A Tale in the Desert.

There is no combat, just challenges of various types that range in scope from things you can do on your own to things that require the active cooperation of many people.

For example, solo player might delve into the mysteries of flax genetics just for the fun of solving a complex puzzle, but they have the alternative of buying seeds sold by other players.

[tcoop25]

https://uooutlands.com/

It is still as fun today as it was back then.

[RektBoy]

But you still can play UO in UO Outlands server, made by people who actually understands original concept, not like OSI-UO devs which turned UO, over the years, into care-bear themepark.

[Cloudef]

Old MMOs mostly were like that. FFXI and UO are probably the most famous.

[Globz]

Yes, Mortal Online 2 is the closest thing to UO to this day.