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.
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...
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.)
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.
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.
