My shift in direction from a carefully designed world full of interlocking quests to a procedurally generated sandbox required me to rethink a lot of the stuff I'd come up with for RetroQuest during my initial development period. For most of it this meant simplifying things, but after just wandering around the random world with a bare bones test of the wandering monster system (also known as "Nothing But Bandits") I'm convinced on the right track here.

The RetroQuest I was working towards felt like a mash up of the original Ultima Trilogy, later console RPGs like the early single digit Final Fantasy games, and MMOs. With the random world... well, it doesn't have that touch of classic elegance, but it does have more of that old Ultima Trilogy feel than it did before and I like it.

This makes me feel good about the stuff I'm giving up. I'm looking at a lot of the more complex features or intricate content I had planned and realizing that paring it down and simplifying it will also help preserve the vibe I'm going for

Simplifying things and scaling them back have also given me a new plan of attack for completing the game. I'm going to do it in phases.

Phase one is to finish everything I need for the game to be played as an Ultima-style dungeon crawler with online features. Overworld. Underworld. Dungeons. Combat. Encounters. Not a whole lot of locations (towns and dungeons)... just enough that players are never *too* far from a city. The initial game is going to be very bare bones when it comes to content. Not a lot of quests that aren't in the form of "Go ye forth and slay" or "Take a message."

Last thing in that list is going to be the social aspect: communication, party mechanics, PvP.

When all that is complete... when I have a whole online Ultima clone... then I'll add the crafting/gathering/building stuff. I want to have the space in the game staked out for where it will go (and to a large extent I do), but I want to make sure the game is playable at low levels without it. (Not at high levels, because crafted equipment is going to be part of the standard progression.)

And then... the content. New quests, more towns, more dungeons. Eventually, additional continents.

I have multiple reasons for approaching it in this order. It seems easier to make a complete adventure game and add the building than the other way around. But the other part of it is that if I make sure it stands on its own as an Ultima clone without the crafting and world-shaping, then even if I run out of time or interest I can still have a finished game.

Now, I'm not simplifying -everything- here. I'm just making the decision to keep most things simple so I can have the complexity where I want it. The calendar system, for example. Oh, the calendar system. I love my calendar system. I've basically tried to make a horoscope/auspice system in every vaguely fantasy-related game I've made on BYOND and this is the first time it's really come together. It's not something that casual or uninterested players will have to pay a lot of attention to except maybe to be a little more careful about picking fights on a Day of Blood during the Month of Peril, but a savvy player can learn in order to get the most out of casting big magic, taking on bosses, and crafting powerful items.

Another thing I'm not simplifying at all? The character creation system. Still there. Still deep on the customization. But I want a game world that's simple enough for players to make their own fun in it, whether it's hacking and slashing or building and socializing.

(Sidenote on the subject of hacking and slashing vs. building and socializing - host controls for encounter rates are going to be a must here, with the possibility of turning them off for anyone who isn't actively hunting for a fight. One person might want to run a hack-and-slash server while another might prefer that to be an incidental part of the game.)