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[Seth]

Every now and again I start playing a lot of browser based game like Ikariam, Travian, and of course MyBrute now that Derek started a thread about it 

But I'm always disappointed!  Either they only let you play 3 times a day or 100.  I mean, I feel like this genre could have a lot more to it.  Think about it--an MMO but with and enforced total gameplay of around 15-30 min a day.  But it instead turns to either something you have to keep up with constantly or you have little control over.

Here's an idea: if you've ever been to the Dwarf Fortress forums you'd know there is always someone coming along asking for it to go mulitplayer, which would be difficult to work out, to say the least.  But I was thinking that a much simpler version of the game might work in the browser game genre.  Every person plays a single dwarf (or human) and is randomly assigned to a fortress (or town), or picks one with their friends, and you can move around the town and build stuff and get jobs.  You start out with no property and have to do work for other people or for the fortress in general and gain money, and eventually you could buy property (i.e. a 10x10 square of grass tiles) and build your house on it.  There would only be a few jobs, like Builder, Miner, Cook, etc, but enough to simulate a self sufficient economy.  So it wouldn't be practical for a Blacksmith to join a fortress where there are already 20 guys making swords.  You'd only get like 15 turns a day.  There could be committees and governments to actually run and design the town or public buildings, which could have just like one vote a day or something. 


but, post your ideas.

[Traveller]

For an idea like that, you have to look a little deeper and say "Where does the challenge come from?"  If it's other players your fort competes against, then you do have to keep up every day, otherwise you fall behind (and have whatever bad things are going to happen to you from losing fights, happen).

It would be very interesting to see a game like that that is NOT competitive, and where you actually don't impact the world beyond the extents of your fort...essentially you have your own little game for you and your friends.

MyMiniCity kinda did that.  But it was very very simple.

[RadLab]

Dwarf Fortress Online...  

Here's an idea:

When you create a character, you start as an adventurer. You can start in the wild or in a town of your choice.
As an adventurer you can go from town to town and visit dungeons. It is also possible to switch to "Paysant mode" if you are in a town. If not, you can create your own if you have at least 6 other players with you.
As a paysant, you are confined to your town's area, but now have the possibility to build and become someone important (manager, book keeper, sheriff, etc). To this you can add an Eve Online like system in wish you assign your character to a specific task (building, crafting, fishing, etc) while you are not playing. Towns can have certain rules enforced by players (like RP, working, not consumming to much resources, etc).

The competition between adventurers would be about having the best equipment, collecting the largest number of postcards, killing reknown monsters. Between the paysants, it would be about having a job and being respected amongst their community. The way jobs are acquired is something else to think about (could be elections).

[Seth]

I think the EVE online idea where your guy is always doing stuff would probably would work better, and more like Dwarf Mode of Dwarf Fortress, and would require even less input for you to get stuff done.

Adventure stuff sounds neat but I think it'd be prudent to keep this game simple?  And yeah (in response to Traveller) I was thinking a game like this would be best if it were non competitive, but cooperative.  The challenge would come from making sure your community works well enough together to make a survivable (and eventually increasingly sophisticated) fortress, otherwise people starve to death or migrate to other fortresses.


But nobody else has any other idea for how to make a unique browser game?  Does no one else really see that their could be unrealized potential in this genre?

[Gorgoo]

Instead of a competitive or noncompetitive game, it might be interesting to incorporate the two, with players willingly switching whenever they want to.

Here's an example: (Note: Setting is not as important as mechanics in this one. Feel free to substitute the generic fantasy examples with whatever genre you like)

The game would probably be similar in format to, say, Kingdom of Loathing, but with less of a focus on puzzles and more on tactical battles. You'd have a customizable party or limited spell charges per day or something similar, which requires you to plan somewhat before going "adventuring". You'd then gain more of those as rewards (or you could gain money to buy more), along with, possibly, some extra things like equipment to fine-tune a strategy even more.

Meanwhile, though having more party members/spells lets you customize your strategy to, say, easily work around a certain boss's abilities and defeat it, they don't make you objectively better. There wouldn't be "Level 2 Knight" and "Level 4 Knight". there'd be the Knight, with some powerful defensive capabilities that let him soak up damage and distract the opponent, and the Paladin, who is weaker but can heal partners and is extremely powerful against the undead.

Players could then compete against each other in a way that's similar to a card game. They set up their party or spell list, meet in a chat lobby, and initiate a game against each other, possibly with some sort of "wager" system built in to allow for party members or spells going to the winner or loser. Along with this, you would have player-run shops like most online games tend to, and possibly player-run "guilds" to allow for some sort of cooperative element (Team adventures, possibly). If everything is kept turn-based, this should all be able to run in a browser, possibly with time limits for each player's turn to prevent someone from holding everyone else up.

The problem with all of this is that, for any interaction to occur, players would have to be online at the same time, which only makes those parts feasible if there's an organized time or if the game is popular enough to almost always be active.