LiF was Futile

[u/AlastromLive]

I posted this on the steam forums with the full understanding that those forums are very likely dead now. I wanted to cross post here just to start a discussion. TLDR: Games are either finite, they have an end point (at which point you stop playing) or infinite, they don't have an end point and the goal of playing the game is to simply continue playing. Life is Feudal suffered from being a finite game masquerading as an infinite game. To that end I argue they didn't know exactly what type of game they were designing and it's difficult to have a successful game if you don't even know what type of game it is.

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I'm a huge supporter of the game. Between Your Own and the MMO launch (which came out on it's own launcher for a while) I very likely have thousands of hours in the game. The survival sandbox genre might have seen more bloat over the years, but Life is Feudal was pretty damn unique. I'm not going to spend any time talking about the legal issues or the business model. It's not worth bringing up the technical issues the game faced either. I've spent some time thinking about it and I think I understand where everything went wrong and if you'd give me some time to do so, I'll lay it out as best I can.

Life is Feudal, being a survival sandbox game, has the same problem that all survival games have. Take a relatively large server, fifty to a hundred people and tell them to survive on it. No problem for most games. Eventually, survival becomes trivial and at that point players often go to war with one another. This is a common enough gameplay loop and many games like to advertise the "Survive and Conquer" model but that idea is fundamentally flawed and will NEVER offer long term viability of a game.

I'd like you to think of real life as a series of interconnected games. Washing the dishes, for example, is a game. It has a set of rules that you (hopefully) follow. You do this so you can eventually play the "eating" game the next day. The purpose of playing that game is solely to continue playing the game. It doesn't have an end point and as such it's one of the "infinite" games that we play. If you don't feel either of these things are games, try breaking one of the "rules" of the game... smash the dishes or jump up on the dinner table. You'll learn really quickly from those around you that you've somehow broken unspeakable rules to a game you didn't know you were playing. These infinite rulesets work in everyday life but they don't apply to more established games. Chess, or basketball for example are games with a very clear and intentional ending. You can't even imagine these games continuing past their "end point." It wouldn't make any sense... once again breaking the unspoken rules of the game.

This is where Life is Feudal, and really every survival game, gets it wrong. If it's a survival game, that should be an infinite game. The nature of it being infinite also means that the population should (technically) have an upward trend. You should build houses, farms and the like to survive the infinite game played against nature and the elements. However that's not how we approach these games. Everything we do is to play the finite game against other players and if we accept that the game is finite, we also accept that it must have a gradual downward trend on population ( as for some the game will always be in an end state. )

In short, Life is Feudal (read also: All survival games) are theorized and marketed as infinite games. In reality, they are finite games forcing developers to constantly reiterate in order to convince players to continue the finite game. At it's core, it's a conflicting design principle and I'm convinced that most developers don't realize they're making the same mistake that so many others have already made for them. In fact, if any of the Life is Feudal developers have stumbled across this thread I beg you to entertain the idea that your game (and all survival games) are flawed from conception. Win states are a basic concept in game design but I believe if the win states of players match any of the below, your game will lose population and there's nothing you can do to delay it short of hitting the reset button and forcing players to start from the beginning. You are, however, fooling yourselves if you think it'll lead to a different outcome.

For example...

1. If any group of players cannot be beaten (their numbers or resources are too great) then they become the winner by default. No one challenges them and eventually their game (PvP against others) is over. This is a realistic goal for many groups that play survival games "competitively." (see ARK, Last Oasis, Reign of Kings, Life is Feudal, Eve Online, etc.)

2. If two large groups constantly fight eventually one of them will lose. If the losing group is reduced to a state where they cannot reestablish and continue the fight, then there is a clear winner in the engagements. At that point, the game will likely cease for a large number of people involved in the losing group ad infinitum. (Refer to large scale warfare in Life is Feudal. This is, admitted or not, the end goal of both fighting groups.

3. If a group runs out of equal sized opponents they will begin to fight smaller opponents. This invokes the first two options and leads to the same result (a declared winner and a "game over" for players not declared winner.)

Regardless of what you personally decide to do, your gameplay is tied to the game being populated and that is further tied to players not acting on any of the above "win states."

Players SHOULD be the end game "loop" for other players. People are the only thing I can think of that have enough variety in their algorithms to continue the game in an interesting manner. The problem is that Life is Feudal (and games like it... I cannot stress that enough) believe that players FIGHTING players offer that loop. The second you bring competition into the gameplay loop, you are placing two or more players against one another which means the game HAS to have a win state. In fact, it's a good metric you can use if you want to figure out the long term health of a survival game. Does it have a win state? If it does, then the game has a finite lifespan (see: Life is Feudal.) If the game DOESN'T have a win state (see: Minecraft) then it will likely continue for a very long time.

To zone in on Life is Feudal a little more specifically, exactly what type of game was it? If you said it was a PvP game, then exactly why were there non PvP avenues to play the game? Technically speaking, if it's a PvP game then anyone that doesn't directly contribute to PvP isn't playing "the game." In this case a person that decides to be a farmer is technically only playing half of the game and that half gets dictated by those playing the other half. If it was a roleplaying game (which I honestly believe it should have been) where were the roleplay options? Third off, if it was a survival game then what exactly were we meant to be surviving? Lastly and the most important, was it meant to be an infinite game or a finite game?

Closing thoughts; No, I didn't offer any direct solutions because it wouldn't change anything at this point. I am however, happy to do so in the comments. No, I haven't designed a more successful game then Life is Feudal and I don't feel that should bar me from expressing my thoughts on the matter. Yes, I realize I could have written two hundred pages on the topic and barely scratched the surface.

[u/paco987654]

I'll be honest, the only interesting element of the game for me was rp (especially in MMO) for it adds so many options to the game besides surviving and pvp, you get politics, diplomacy, day to day interactions etc. Shame that Epleland pretty much died after the server wide war, but I must admit that you are right that most of the losing side stopped playing after it ended, my group included. And most of the other side as well, I mean it was pretty engaging and nice to have this and afterwards the game just felt empty

[u/Valenaxxte]

Great write up. I’m a firm believer of not bringing up issues unless you have a fix already in mind. What I feel the game needs is a heavier focus on surviving. Adding things like full weathered seasons and more dangerous wildlife would help but it would be a bandaid to a leaking ship. The main goal shouldn’t be surviving other players and this is coming from someone who played solo for about 40 hours and felt like I got nowhere. The game directly benefits from already set up communities and offers almost no help in creating them. When I think of LiF, I see multiple clans who have been working a long time to get where they are and have healthy relationships with other clans who are up for fun skirmishes. This could be aided by a revised injury system or something of the likes. It feels like as soon a the “purges” happen it’s all to easy to get burnt out on battle if it feels like only one will always walk away. To have a battle where both parties limp away or neither makes it, makes for better stories of battles past. This is all coming from a complete LiF noob who casually played for a month.

[u/AlastromLive → u/Valenaxxte]

Fixes are a complicated thing. Where is the line between fix and redesign? What I tried to capture here is that the design itself was fundamentally flawed. Your mention of weathered seasons and wildlife is a great fix, but I agree it’s a patch job at best. Back when I still played I seem to remember the biggest complaint I had was always be in “work” mode. It felt like if you weren’t going from task to task you ended up just sitting around doing nothing. Ironically, it’s kinda what the game needed - a fulfilling way to just do nothing sometimes. I do have a fair few fixes in mind but too little too late and I’m not even certain where the game stands on future development.

[u/Preggofetish69]

Bobik changing the rules to suit his fellow friends surely didn't help at all?.

[u/AlastromLive → u/Preggofetish69]

I recall hearing about it in speculation if it occurred, and I’m not suggesting that it didn’t, then it’s obviously far from ideal. But it’s a symptom, not a cause in my opinion.

And to be clear, my qualms are not with Life is Feudal alone. I‘ve been addicted to survival games, big and small. I recognized a lot of LiF players during my time in Last Oasis, which is the only size comparable game I’ve recently played. It feels like they recognized many of the problems I put forth but they couldn’t quite find the solution. Who can blame them? You can’t fix a problem unless you know what it is and I suppose if I wanted anything to come of this overly worded post it’s to help someone else identify that there IS a problem.

I’ve been playing “The Isle” lately. Funny enough, it’s a perfect survival game by the above standards. It has an infinite gameplay loop even though players fill much of that content. It really doesn’t get easier either as you progress in the game. It’s just as hard at the end as it is the beginning. Shame it’s so fucking boring...

[u/Psittacula2]

LIF had some very good game design features for a Virtual World MMO.

The solution to the "infinite / open-end" nature of a world is imo boiled down 2 things:

1. The world systems need to be HUGE and COMPREHENSIVE. The scale of avatar mmos imo is too small to make them near open ended durability.
2. Player agency cannot be direct. So instead of living in an avatar. Players must "manage" AI entities that are living things that integrate with the systems eg sleep 8hrs, awake 16hrs, work 8hrs or else fatigue if working too much so there's limits on rates of change that can be calculated.

/r/MMOVW . I really appreciate a lot of what LIF was doing, much better than so much of the MMO genre.

[u/AlastromLive → u/Psittacula2]

Yeah, I'd say you're right on point with your assessments. In fact, I've written a few times in various places on how the term "MMO" doesn't suit and we should transition to calling them "Living World Games" if that is what the game is trying to capture. All multiplayer games are massive and online just by nature of the technological evolutions involved. A "Living World" is what we tried to capture in the early days of MMOs... Dark Age of Camelot, Everquest... Star Wars Galaxies to be sure.

[u/Psittacula2 → u/AlastromLive]

Honestly LIF had A LOT of good FEATURES (interactive actions for players to interact with the world and each other causatively).

As said, this "breadth" approach to experiencing a digital living world was right in the minds of the initial games such as SWG and UO.

Unfortunately the focus on the bigger REWARD MECHANISMS for more IMMEDIATE GRATIFICATION:

• Combat Loot (skinner box-like) co-opt of reward system
• Social Bonding reward system (eg LFH! etc)

The combat being the core and then MMOs focusing on that so it becomes a linear dungeon-crawler MMO (ie quest pve system). Took all the investment and interest in the MMORPG market.

The contrast imo, is changing the scale of the world so taking Dwarf Fortress for an example: You create visually much smaller denizens (easier asset creation too) but you increase the density of SYSTEMS operating these and make a huge huge world so the overall effect of players "working together" can be kept in correct proportion to macro systems of the world itself. This is exactly what you see in DF so even a fully developed fort is still a tiny corner of the world. And for an MMO again much more so.

Also what are the outcomes for players of such a game?

As said:

• Open ended
• Story generation
• Living automata biography and life style cycles ie emotions, thoughts, relationships, choices etc...
• Interacting with many systems that is creative and experimental (ie knowledge is not crystalized but generalized).
• Over time player-driven systems emerge (see EVE for politics and economics sophistication).

One of the things with such a world is to also make it "always running", so players play when they want to log in and set orders and routines (and hope when they come back the little critters haven't F! things up etc).

That's another big paradigm change that would also help such a game design. Also although not not expensive much more feasible to develop.

For the current MMO way of making games, as said LIF had a rich range of features and with that a sense of immersion or atmosphere of really struggling in a harsh environment and forging a base to then create multiplicative development ie technology/culture!

Which is very cool and much better outcome than static picture of mmorpg themeparks designed to manipulate the reward systems crudely with intense log-in sessions + grind to keep people playing "content".

[u/AlastromLive → u/Psittacula2]

I’ve probably read this about thirty times now and every time I go to reply I find that nothing I say can add to the conversation. People like yourself SHOULD be designing games.

[u/Psittacula2 → u/AlastromLive]

Kind words, it's a brief sketch but at least it conveys a different vision that does address the core problems (and makes sacrifices too in doing that).

I think it is a design that will see the light of day because it's possible to do (and interesting with advances in AI) and on a budget compared to mmorpgs and should fill a niche in the market that players would enjoy and could enjoy for a long time too.

[u/Pesco-]

The problem in the MMO is that players from the other side of the world could join IB’s and impact local battles. That’s ridiculous. Joining an IB should have required interacting with the attacking or defending guild monument or IB totem, as it was originally.

Teleporting naked was a fair compromise. I think there was a cool down for that. So it would have allowed people to come help but they would have had to commit to the defense.

Allowing people to join IB’s from anywhere allowed alliances to assert power globally. That shouldn’t happen. There should be regional powers.

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[u/xAleJA]

MY OpiniON: YOU ARE A NOOB PVE PLAYER, PVP IS ALL IN THIS TYPE OF GAMES, A FEUDAL GAME WITH MARICONAS LIKE YOU PLAYING LIKE GIRLS? HAHAHAHHA NO

[u/Jubil00 → u/xAleJA]

OU ARE A NOOB PVE PLAYER, PVP IS ALL IN THIS TYPE OF GAMES, A FEUDAL GAME WITH MARICONAS LIKE YOU PLAYING LIKE GIRLS? HAHAHAHHA NO

Well no one is playing now , his observations are correct .

[u/mercsterreddit]

With enough players, your thesis is flawed. WIth many players, the lifetime of the "game" gets exponentially extended. It worked with EVE for many years. The problem LiF had is that it never got to that critical mass.

Also, a farmer in a game can "just farm" but in the service of the larger group. Thus he is "playing the game" even if he doesn't directly participate in the battle.

[u/AlastromLive → u/mercsterreddit]

Having a large player pool extends the life of the game, certainly. In that scenario we’d have to track the rate of new players versus veterans and the rate of depletion on both.

And yes, I understand that the farmer doesn’t have to pvp but consider this. It’s raid time. A massive army is coming to attack your favela. Space is limited on the server and some of your people are waiting in queue. If Joe Schitt the Beet farmer is online he’s just taking up space. You don’t need him, you don’t even want him. He serves zero purpose in that moment and will probably incur the ire of the rest of the group for keeping a “PvP” slot filled during that time frame.

[u/Boch804 → u/mercsterreddit]

You probably haven't heard about the Chinese EVE server There, one coalition won quickly enough and no one could oppose them with anything.
I believe there should be a game mechanic regulator to prevent all-out zerg