New players can also face another problem. While the game supports player-created factions, new players will find doing so excessively difficult as time goes by. Getting new factions starting up in an aged game could pose to be very challenging. The game world can grow rather stale as powers settle in and become hard to remove. This is a big reason why ShadowBane's servers are being reset. Of course, at least the option is provided at all.
Benefits
It isn't all doom and gloom for systems like this, however. There are also plenty of positives to such systems as well. Games like this have the potential to give players the tools to dramatically affect a game world, to truly stand out amongst the rest, to form truly political intricacies, to form very strong group bonds, and more. This sort of a system has its issues, but it can also have a major impact on a game community as well.
To keep using the EVE example, because it is oh, so handy, we can really see how true this can be. There's been plenty of people out there who've expressed how EVE can feel more like living in a society as opposed to playing within a game world sometimes. Why might this be?
To begin with, I will have to counter one of the negative points. New players do not start with a faction. This can be a bad thing for the reasons listed above, but it can also have positive aspects too. As I mentioned in the last column, when joining a faction players have the ability to be surrounded by more like-minded players. This is much more true in a player-created faction game, as players are going to have much more freedom of choice. They will not be limited merely by the factions that the developers have created that they enter into right at character creation, instead they are limited to what their fellow players created. They also can spend time deciding which group they wish to align themselves with, allowing them entry into a community that fits their personality better.
Well, players have a certain power. They can get out and do something, and that something will have an effect on other people. Be that a war between two alliances, to simply a pirate attacking another player's ship. Of course, there's also the economic level too, which adds a certain ... believability to the game as well.
Politics are also strong. Players can unite and ally together and form very strong bonds as they stick it out in the universe. At the same time, amongst them, there might also be an agent from another organization plotting to take them down, or scam them out of obscene amounts of money. Alliances of corporations form together, have in-fighting as well as tight bonds. They form allies with other alliances and wage wars against others - and with politics, an ally today may be an enemy tomorrow.
It is this level of freedom that can draw people into the game and create not just a really social game, but also a believable societal structure within the game. In a game that can do this, a very strong community can begin to form.
Is This a Good Option?
Of course, if a system like this will work in a game, you have to consider the goals of the game. If you're doing anything but a competitive game (read: PvP), then probably not. If you want a game that is easily accessible for new players, then probably not unless you can come up with some amazing systems to help them out. If you don't mind a niche audience that happens to be very dedicated, then maybe this is what you're looking for.
It can be difficult to recommend embracing a system like this, but there are definitely benefits that can be reaped. My suggestion, at the very least, is that developers should learn from what works in these systems, and see if they can be applied to other types of games too.
