Today was my second day to play Daimonin, and it was a good. I found out a lot of things, cleaned up my interface some, macroed some stuff, gained a level, scored quests, skills, and spells and best of all a lot of people helped.
I used to play a game, back when I was interested in such things and it was without a doubt the strangest MMO I've ever played. There is a lot to be said about A Tale In The Desert. But the thing that keeps those players in that world isn't as much the world (though that has to do a lot with attracting the right kind of player to such a thing), it's the people in the game. Tale, or ATITD (I played in 3, 4 is currently being told), is about players helping each other build the world they want to live in. All good MMO's strive for that effect, but in Tale, it's very literal. You build the world. You make all the things that bind a society together; architecture, art, agriculture, skilled crafting (blacksmithing alone was a game in itself), games making and festivals. And in doing these things you don't just "kind of do your own thing", you become a part of a real group of very real people with goals as a real society. It is a very original game designed to invoke the best in people through play.
I was very pleased today to see a very similar aspect to Daimonin. It's not a large community (neither is ATITD), but the players here are mostly veterans and are more than willing to help new players (even going to painful lengths). Nothing is more exciting than to find a welcoming place where you may have the potential to become legendary, but it helps that the legends are worth looking up to.
Worthless
Actually, we once had a Community Government. There's about two members of the council still here so it disappeared over time.
--Mizza
I basically agree with your short version.
I do not think such a system would work at all well in a game such as Dai, particularly at this stage of development.
However, for the future (when we have guilds, clans, factions, multiple regions, etc) a form of user-made ingame laws might be more appropriate.
But Dai does not have the game/dev/community structure/aim for this IMO. I think to properly support such, the concept pretty much has to be there from go. I don't think this can really be added to an existing game. At least not without a lot of work.
As you say, we already have VOLs, MWs, etc which is the basis of a user-content system, though with very different aims.
Pretty interesting idea though.
Short version: Daimonin law system? Why?
Long version:
I cant speak as a true expert about Tale I only played for about a year but I did progress rapidly, read a lot, and participated often. Also anything I know is about Tale 3 not Tale 4 (in which I understand Pharaoh is dead omgwtfbbq?!?).
The Player-made law system was divided into two types - the laws that governed players and those that governed the game rules. You could think of them as "server rules" and "game feature requests". Pharaoh (who is / was the Tale's lead programmer / designer / guru / godhead, Teppy) and a group of VOL/GM's decide on which type a law is before putting it up for voting, which happened at regular intervals. In the mid/late parts of the game there is a quest that requires you to submit a new law, so new laws were regularly being created, citizen endorsed, approved and voted on. Pharaoh, as one would expect, had final say on everything.
My opinion is that the system worked well, but only due to the nature of the community. If a similar system was in WoW, it would fold due to grieving and overload (or be a source of constant pain for the blizzard).
I honestly think that Daimonin probably could support an in-game system for law creation / arbitration / approval, but not knowing anything about the end-game (thankfully!) I would wonder why it might be needed.
Daimonin already has support for VOL's and GM's (not to mention DM's, MW's, etc), it has a great web-based community/forum support system, and seems to have a community that is already actively assisting in game shaping. A law system could be fun, but I would wonder at it's value not knowing any more than I do.
My guesswork for why you may want one is:
My last comment is in line with yours - the games are very different. The goal of ATITD is to create a society, Daimonin obviously has more traditional RPG goals. I was, of course, comparing the communities. Given the differences in the two games, it does speak strongly about Daimonin.
ATITD fascinates me (I've never played it, it's subscription-based AFAIK) because of its player-made laws and governance system. A couple of years ago we were talking about the same sort of thing (I was not aware of ATITD at this time).
As an ex-player, how well did this work?
I think ATITD and Dai, for all the current similarities in the community, have very different goals.