These are not “PLEASE IMPLEMENT THIS NOW” suggestions. More long term brainstorming for levels 20-69. Maybe even 30-69.

One of the worst things a game like this can do is become stale, and the best way for a game to become stale is for the high levels to be exactly the same as the low levels, just with bigger numbers. Low level play -needs- to be different than high level play. You can get around this problem with good enough writing… lord knows that Final Fantasy follows this formula… but why patch up shoddy gameplay with a good story when you can have both?

Right now, you can only pwn forums by basically ****ting it up. Heck, right now, as an emo, I go into these forums and start whining about my love life in a thread discussing, say, fishing limits in north carolina. Now, with forums that don’t really have tight knit communities, and with poor content moderation, I can see that working, as people start ganging up on you, and all the ****ing collapses the place in a big ole pile of psycho-drama. But what about when you find forums with moderators that… *gasp* ...care!?!

If being a simple bumhole could get you banned outright, tactics would need to be changed. At low levels, I think the gameplay should be about the same, but as things get more sophisticated, so should the techniques.

Here’s some ideas in that vein. They should be great timesulative.

Idea 1) “Lurking” to build strength in order to deliver a better killing blow.

This could be made a gameplay mechanic by forcing us to pwn threads with n attacks or less, forcing our attack strength to be high enough to pwn it quickly. Too many attacks, and you’re banned. Now, just keeping quiet is no fun, so instead, I’d say that you’d have to pretend to be a valid member of the forum for a little while… and because these forums are all so stupid, doing so would damage your OWN ego. But when you deliver your little bomb of psycho-drama, being a respected member of the community will make your attacks do more.

Basically, you’d have a new meter— forum respect. As you attack, or are attacked, it goes down. As you damage yourself with “blending in” posts, it goes up. Resource management at its finest. You’d of course have to balance this with your desire to require less consumable items though. Maybe more (and more effective) self healing abilities?

Idea 2) Initiating Forum Splits

Right now, we’re engaging in flame wars of us versus them. The clbumic flamewar psychodrama though, is where the entire population of the forum becomes polarized, everyone going at it left and right. The mods can’t ban EVERYONE, ‘cause then no one would be left! This would be a little tricky to set up, but I think it could be simulated in game.

Instead of a zero to whatever linear bar, we’d have a balance scale added, in order to show the balance of power between two “factions”. The desired result would be the two factions being evenly matched, for greatest camouflage. What you would be doing is feeding one side of the issue or another, getting a balancing act going on. Forums should start with one side having full power, so you have to work at feeding the other side… and there should also be threshold at which point one side is crushed, forcing you to get past that threshold to even start, requiring a strong attack to begin with… requiring “respect” (idea 1).

Once there’s enough flaming going on around you, you should be able to pwn threads without getting banned. Of course, once you’re allied with a side, pwning threads will shift the balance of power, requiring maintenance there. Using moves to adjust the balance of power wouldn’t pwn threads, but it would get you flamed by the other side.

Idea 3) Politics and Democracy, maybe a little hacking

With diligent enough moderators, even these sorts of things can be suppressed, banning topics of discussion entirely. If the moderators were to get into the fight itself, of course, that helps your cause. On lower level forums, they’d automatically get involved. On higher level forums, you need to manipulate things to your advantage.

Best way to do this? Sock puppetry. This may take multiple forum visits (give more forum visits at higher levels to compensate… of course, weaker forums would be worthless to attack at this point). Set up a polarized style attack, not on the forum’s topic of discussion (Star Wars vs Star Trek) but rather on the moderation practices of a mod. Get a mod replaced, preferably by your sock puppet. Resume as normal.

This would be almost a “stealth game” type thing, failure on having your sock puppets discovered.

Well, that’s what I can come up with. Any thoughts? Other ideas?