This is intended to be a somewhat living document, so I don't have to post a new one as my understanding grows and develops, and so I can get something out sooner rather than waiting for time to create something perfect. As such, I'll lock this topic, but feel free to discuss the vision in other topics in the forum.

Vision: SkyLords is a fun, fair, and competitively balanced Real-Time 4X MMOG which respects player time.

Components:
* Fun - this is the primary goal. More fun also means more players will stay.
* Fair and competitively balanced is crucial. If new players can never catch up to veteran players, they will not stay. Growth should be lateral and have limits. This also means the game cannot be "pay to win". This also implies that the best strategy should depends on what other players are doing, and that this should tend towards extremes rather than a mediocre middle.
* Real-Time + MMOG means that players can see and interact with one another meaningfully, and that we have enough players to interact with. Events such as alien incursions and the warp are related to this.
* 4X relates to games like Elite, EVE, and Alpha Centauri. The X's are eXpand, eXplore, eXploit, and eXterminate. SkyLords should have strong and clear presence of all 4 elements. Current features include planet captures, nearby and probes, planet production, and fighter battles. eXterminate could use some improvements.
* Respecting player time means minimizing optimal daily play time and grouping timeframes for daily actions together.
* Real-Time and Respecting player time are somewhat in conflict, as available playtimes do not always easily line up.

Other goals
* Fulfill as many of the promises at https://www.skylords.com/game/features as possible such that they aren't overclaiming.
* Fix the code so it's easy to maintain, so my time w/SL can be spent playing the game rather than fixing bugs.
* Responsive to player input, allowing a sense of co-ownership and co-design in the game, w/in the bounds of the vision.

__________________________
SkyLords Head Programmer

Spelled: I I R I (not irii, irri, or iri).

Force of nature.

Respecting player time is one of the most challenging elements of the current vision.

It runs somewhat contrary to the design of most MMOGs, or even most free-to-play games period, which optimize for "engagement". Engagement means dragging the player back to the game as often as possible, often deliberately creating addictive loops. There are a number of popular tricks which I aim to avoid; one method to avoid many is to minimize use of randomness. Some is fun, and fun is good, but rewards for example should typically be predictable; unpredictability should ideally arise mostly from other player's actions instead of random number generation.

This also conflicts slightly with the current design of SkyLords, which is fairly typical for an online game of the era it was first designed in. Nowhere near as predatory as current mobile and Facebook games, but certainly designed to generate advertising revenue via engagement. Assault travel time is an example of one of the most significant issues here. It is somewhat middling, which frequently encourages multiple returns to the site throughout the day. Example systems which are designed to respect time include the buildings queue and resource updates, which give full rewards if logging in only once a week.

This component implies that high value actions should be somewhat limited and possible to complete quickly with a short daily login, and that further time should only be directly related to fun, rather than increasing potential future fun. Income negative or neutral actions can be relatively unlimited, such as posting in the forums.

__________________________
SkyLords Head Programmer

Spelled: I I R I (not irii, irri, or iri).

Force of nature.