WIP Nightmare Online

Discussion in 'Works in Progress' started by Yuli Ban, Jan 23, 2018.

  1. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Right, so Astral Falls is going about as well as you'd expect. I'm just not sure about it. It feels a bit too... eh, "experimental" I guess you could say. Which makes sense given that it was always a story near and dear to my heart, something I came up with I was 14 and kept tinkering with in the background of my own life ever since.
    So I needed something else. I'm putting that on the backburner for right now. I'll eventually finish rounding it out but it's become obvious that I've lost interest in it at the moment.

    Remember that safer story I kept talking about, saying I'd do it in January? This is that story and I'm already outlining it. I'm trying my best to follow the tropes for this one so I start off on the right foot, and it's already starting to come undone.

    Again, remember that thread about cryptocurrency in LitRPG? And I mentioned that the characters in Astral Falls straight up use bitcoin? Well I've decided to put that into Nightmare Online as well. And what's more, it's more integrated since it's a RL/VR split story. This led me to think: "you know, I wouldn't mind monetization in games if you could also use in-game currency in the real world". Think of RMT games that do that, and now imagine there isn't even a dividing line— you can straight up use bitcoin in the game just as you could use it in real life rather than trade out virtual gold for cash. I mean, it's already virtual anyway, so there's nothing wrong!

    Naturally, you're not going to be able to sustain yourself on loot drops. There's a commonly accepted baseline for what it means to earn money in the game— how much it costs to cover your subscription. If you're not making that much, you're not making money at all.

    This is what is driving the conflict of the story. Young kid with simple to remember rhyming name ("Mark Clark") is depressed in life, has no future because he's too lazy and depressed, and finds an escape in a virtual world, a white-hot FIVRMMORPG (good lord, that acronym) set in a gothic Greco-medieval world as if the Romans never fell but the high dark ages somehow still happened, all as part of a larger metaverse that's similar to Minecraft but with separate worlds essentially created from scratch by old users.
    He can potentially get rich in this world if he puts in the effort (which he probably won't do since he's so lazy and feels so little pleasure). He tries the lazy way out, but it pays like trash so he tries to find a new way, and he finds one, gets some virtual friends, must stop evil force— and all gets to watch the world evolve. I already have Nightmare Online 2 plotted out. I figured something like a Greco-medieval Russian Revolution would be a cool plot. Because it's only naturally something like that would happen when real money's on the line and people feel slighted when they're being used to farm money for others while receiving much less in return. Except it obviously goes wrong. Nightmare Online 3, I don't know yet. I wanna see where 1 and 2 go first.

    That's something else I loved doing with this and to a lesser extent Astral Falls. Some of these LitRPG gameworlds I've seen are cool— really cool. If they were real games, I'd play them. But others seem more like worlds that are created for the purpose of having a standard fantasy setting and familiar RPG mechanics. I just want to create the game I've always wanted to play and then play in it. That's the whole reason I'm even writing in this genre.

    A third thing from Astral Falls— remember that "free-form combat" where there weren't actually any precoded spells or attacks or special moves? If you wanted to do something, you had to do it yourself, and your proficiency increased with your level but a sufficiently talented low-level player could, with enough practice and concentration, tangle with higher leveled players who don't need to concentrate.

    In a manner, you could think of Astral Falls as a test run, a sort of "write a novel, then write a story" deal. Just about everyone done here has probably been done before, so I'm not breaking new ground. I just hope to bring a new story into the mix.
     
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  2. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Current word count: 1,226
    I'm gonna rewrite the prologue to give the story a stronger base going forward, but other than that, the story's well established. I know how it ends, I have my characters (a pretty limited cast of mains but that could change with subsequent books), and I'm not angsting over whether to have the story last one week or two or four or whatever.

    The one thing I am angsting about? The currency. It plays a big role in the story (bigger than most LitRPGs and RPGs in general) and I'm no longer sure it should be bitcoin. There are a lot of things about the currency I'm unsure about. Bitbronze is a tenth of a satoshi, then there's a satoshi, then bitsilver, bitgold, etc. for every order of magnitude all the way up to bitcoin (which is locked in at $82,632). And the more I think about it, the more I question the game currency. I want it so that you can't grind your way to wealth unless you're spending thousands of hours in the game (and there's still a $30 monthly subscription to cover on top of that), so what amount is small enough? If you could find 50 bitbronze (i.e. 5 satoshi) in a typical loot drop, you'd be slaving for hours just to earn a single dollar. Hence why I like bitbronze but am still unsure about it.

    Because you still need to support a game economy as well and most items in a video game aren't worth very much. If it weren't for monetization, would you honestly pay $3 for a decorative assault rifle? Would you pay $3 for any video game weapon except the absolute rarest, most OP BFGs in MMOs? Barring any Zimbabwe jokes, would you pay $3 for an iron sword in Skyrim? 435566!

    Still, one million satoshis = a bitbuck, or about $8.26. Some DLC weapons packs are worth about that or at least half that. If one of those existed in this game world, would a weapon bought with a DLC pack be worth a million satoshi? Would you be able to sell that weapon and buy every house in a city district?

    If you get rid of anything smaller than a satoshi and increase the amounts (i.e. bitbronze is 10 satoshis), you run into the problem of grinding being a bit too profitable (one bitbronze is close to one cent) and subsequently question about how the global economy is still functioning. But maybe it works out regardless? Or is the world stupid for using bitcoin as a common currency across virtual borders anyway?

    It's just these problems with consistency. Problems I shouldn't waste my time thinking about but are still fun to ponder.
     
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  3. Paul Bellow

    Paul Bellow Forum Game Master Staff Member LitRPG Author Shop Owner Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    How far in the future is the game? ie inflation?
     
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  4. Gryphon

    Gryphon Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen

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    I like the idea behind Bitbronze, but maybe look to the dark side of World of Warcraft for a conversation ratio? One Wow Coin = X gold. A WoW Coin is one month of playtime (roughly 15?) and can be sold for in game loot. If you used this, it might give you a good ratio to go off of for your drop rate of BitBronze. IE: How long does it take the average player to earn enough to buy a Wow Coin?
     
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  5. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    2036 is the date, but I made it easier on myself by factoring in an economic collapse (relatively important to the plot, especially in later planned books) and deflation, putting the value of the US dollar actually below where we are (the Chinese yuan is the stronger currency in this era). $1 in 2018= 65¢ in 2036. This is also a big part of why bitcoin is different in the books compared to what it is now.

    That's actually one of the things I based on this. In fact, I specifically checked out things like WoW and EVE Online for assistance. In the latter's case, it was that almost-million-dollar battle that really caught my eye. In the former, WoW Tokens and the economics behind it and the Blizzardverse factored into why I keep angsting about these things. Since these verses don't have in-game currencies (they're "Virtual Economic Simulations" which is just a fancy way of saying "monetization in gaming taken to its logical extreme"), you have to be real careful about the price of things. The reason why it can be hard to figure this out is because there are already "coins" for bitcoin in the form of satoshis.

    Since it's just a story, I could ignore all of this and just BS my way forward, but it's going to bother me.

    Pre-Edit: I actually called this a game rather than a story? Wow.
     
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  6. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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  7. Matthew Siege

    Matthew Siege Level 10 (Filcher) LitRPG Author Citizen

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    Perhaps a better example than WoW is Diablo III. For a (misguided, crazy, what-the-f**k-are-you-thinking) while there they had a real money auction house. It meant that you could straight up see the market value of gold, gems and items and you can read up on why it came undone in such spectacular fashion. Essentially, the fact that some player's time was "cheap" meant that they had an advantage over players rich in, well, actual wealth. Smart, dedicated, desperate Farmers broke that system so fast you could practically watch it happen in real time, and it showed that the pockets of some gamers are very, very deep. (There are a lot of hits for "expensive Diablo III real world auction price", but most of the big items sold for between 15 and 20k and some people made hundreds of thousands of dollars). Time as resource is an interesting dynamic, especially when everyone's time has such a different value placed upon it.

    I'm all for setting up a system and using my author powers to knock it down, but I think you need to lock down the economy for the reader FAST. Whatever games go the virtual money = real world money route in the future are going to be ripe for intrigue, dirty dealings and backstabbing, so the ground is fertile for conflict. Just don't make me have to get a calculator out to do the conversions from one level of currency to the next. :)
     
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  8. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    I read into it, and the very first thing I noticed was that it was doomed to fail considering how Diablo III works. Dungeon crawlers in general probably aren't the best games to feature virtual economies (in the vein I'm going for, at least) because the whole point behind them is getting better loot in a rather linear manner.

    The sorts of virtual economy simulators (VESes is the term I'm officially going with) that can properly utilize real money are just about required to be wide-open sandbox sorts of games where there's no set goal or endgame or win condition, where there are a wide variety of roles to play (hence the term "role-playing game!) and thus differing amounts of value one can create or reasonably expect to find.

    Another thing: the world has to be, at least on some level, procedurally generated. Otherwise, the developers will know exactly where all the best hidden treasure is by default and will have an unfair advantage.

    But I did find this:

    Real Money Trading in Games: a Cryptocurrency Solution


    Last thing:

    Word count: 3,211 words
     
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  9. Matthew Siege

    Matthew Siege Level 10 (Filcher) LitRPG Author Citizen

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    I hear you. I hadn't thought about not trusting the devs. The whole thing would have to be run by an AI if you wanted even the appearance of impartiality, I'm guessing. procedural generation is great, but someone wrote the code and salted the hashes and had a chance to exploit the system. Ug.
     
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  10. Matthew Siege

    Matthew Siege Level 10 (Filcher) LitRPG Author Citizen

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  11. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    Work on this is temporarily halted. I'm not shifting focus back to any other LitRPG novel; I just have to complete something I started but never finished late last year. I should be finished with that by early March and I can keep going with Nightmare Online right after. I'm pretty close already— my intention was to bring that story up to 20,000 words at least, and I'm already at 16,100 (then again, I stopped at around 13,000 so...). As for Nightmare Online, it's at 3,795 words.
    The current plan: 50,000 words. It might clock in a bit above that. Chapters are short; there's no getting around that one. Unlike Astral Falls, where individual chapters were reaching up to 6,000 words (and there were usually two chapters in a 'Day'), this one feels a lot more comfortable with 2,000-word chapters. I might post it to RoyalRoad before publishing.
     
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  12. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    It's been a while, but I'm back on top of this one! Yeah, I finished that first story but then moved onto a second one. Did around 60,000 words for it, but it's finished and I'm just waiting on writing Nightmare Online before I publish it. The intention is to publish both on the same day. So that's nice.

    I had to scrap the story in progress at around 6,792 words because I realized there wasn't enough meat to it. Like an unemployed butcher, I wasn't weighing the stakes. I knew what my protagonist wanted because that's literally his whole arc: he wants to become wealthy for his own sake and to rescue his family from their own personal abyss, but he doesn't want to alienate those he feels are his friends. In the original draft, however, there was no reason to root for him.

    "You'd better surrender to my empire!" screamed the madman.
    "Or... what?" replied the hero.
    The madman's eyes boggled and face resembled Niagra Falls. Curses! I've been foiled because they didn't unconditionally surrender!
    And then the men in white suits take the man back to the happy house.
    So class, what did we learn today? If you're going to make a threat, you'd better have something to back it up. You don't rob a bank by holding a bag out and demanding cash. You rob a bank by threatening to kill everyone if the teller doesn't give you money.

    That was the story's problem. Mark, the protagonist, only had one real fail condition that he ultimately worked around anyway. In the new draft, there's a lot more than can go wrong.
     
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  13. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    So the outline is finished. I'm gonna add some details to the overall plot as it develops.
     
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  14. Paul Bellow

    Paul Bellow Forum Game Master Staff Member LitRPG Author Shop Owner Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    That's the fun part! ;)
     
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  15. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    And as for today, 3,224 words!
     
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  16. Yuli Ban

    Yuli Ban Level 18 (Magician) LitRPG Author Citizen Aspiring Writer

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    So it's still at 3,224 words because I've not done much with it since the last update. Yet despite that, I can't help but become fascinated by the concept of virtual economy simulators.
    Seriously, you've just got to think about it: once the last bitcoin's mined, the crypto boom will effectively be over. Right now, there's nothing backing the value of cryptocurrencies besides pure speculation. But what if, as we discussed earlier, there was a way to turn in-game currencies into something usable in real life?

    There's just so much on my mind right now. The near future of virtual economies could become as important as real world economies, as we won't see it coming until it's already here.

    How to Make Thousands of Pounds a Month Playing Computer Games
    Absolute bonkers 'n mash! Especially the part about Chinese prisoners. That sounds like an interesting concept: got imprisoned for associating with people with low social credit scores? Now you have to play video games all day. Not for fun, but to farm gold that will be sold to foreigners. So many possibilities that already exist, and yet we've not even gotten close to the chaos that'll come next decade!

    I just feel like I need to do this story concept more justice. There's definitely something here and I want to find out what it is.
     




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