I've been thinking of ways we can create more organic conflict and opportunity (both successful and failure types) for factions. Especially in situations where time zone issues make some gangs have less overall exposure and struggle can ensue.

One of the things we've done in open world AAA video games that have a focus on faction gameplay and district takeover, has been doing some open world content that anyone can happen upon, and fight over/claim.

Now since this isn't your standard video game where everyone but the 1-2 players are AI, we would have to design it a little differently, but here's the idea.

• A system would be in place that would do the following things on a varied but set timer
  • an IC announcement in world would be made of something rumored to be occurring
    • Example: Local radio and news channels are reporting a broken down SEMI truck carrying unknown goods
  • A set duration of X hours/days would be given for this event. All citizens (faction or otherwise) would get this IC alert and can choose to OPT-IN to the experience.
  • The system would generate 1 vehicle/prop vignette in one of X marked up areas throughout the city. It would be randomized
    • This would allow the system to help draw RP to areas of the city that might otherwise get little to no RP, including connecting sims (in other words, not JUST the main sim)
    • This creates exploration RP and emergent RP because the location of the SEMI would not be given. Players would need to branch out and explore and can RP doing so with friends, family, gang members etc.
• The system would generate a set amount of RP commodities IC'ly, randomized
  • Potential examples:
    • spray cans
    • money
    • drugs
    • weapons
    • human trafficking
    • other goods
    • street cred
• This system would generate little short lived blips of RP that folks could engage with at any time of night or day, even if they're in a time zone that would otherwise have slow traffic times etc.
• This system would create a feasible way for factions to butt heads or cooperate
• This system would also create opportunities for non-faction members to get involved with factions or become intertwined with them organically.

The only way this system would work, however, is if there was a limit to how often a faction/citizen could engage/benefit from completing a dead drop. For great examples of this kind of balancing in open world content, WOW (world of warcraft) has world quests that can only be done once per day by each character, and weekly quests that can only be done once per week per character.

This system can easily be reskinned for other types of emergent gameplay as well. For example, a quick reskin of this same system could create a missing persons app and NPCs could be listed on there as missing for small rewards and street cred. A 'hathian's most wanted' reskin could allow HPD to outsource hunting down notorious hot button criminals and put targets out on their heads.

Now this is just a vague surface level idea of ways to add to the open world of Hathian. But if Nadir is keen on the idea, I'd be happy to talk more about it. Either way, I wanted to offer the suggestion out. :3