A few questions on World Building, and a sneak peek at what I'm working on

[Endrenesk]

I'm stumped, as usual.
I can think up some amazing, awesome ideas for stories, but they all die in the water, and never reach land.
So, this time I'm going to play the long game, where I build a web of ideas until something takes shape, kinda like Bob Ross's paintings.
Writing is not my forte, and I'll start out saying that I apologize if you don't see the story until a year later.

The basic premise is that this world's main focus is going to be on a game, a rather special one at that.
In the land of XXXXXXXX, ANPCs fight for survival; for their lives are short and limited-
Two kinds of ANPCs exist: The ones just born have a week's worth of time to earn enough points to not be deleted, and the ones who already passed that requirement are not safe either- If they score too low for the month, they are deleted.
Why? All to make space for the server's data, of course. They don't have the space for a million adaptive, thinking and evolving characters, so why make space if they can just delete them and make space for more?

The classes of the characters I hope to be unique, but that's probably unlikely, as I've been influenced by a many good stories already, such as .Hack// (SAO is good in theory, but bad in practice) Log Horizon, and a couple other miscellaneous medias.

A long time ago, I had an idea for a story that would revolve around an NPC that developed as we humans do, and suprise it was a human all along that lost their memories, etcetera.
Now, I might merge that with this- and see how it goes.

So, now for the main part, that I've been wondering about. How do I go about such a big idea? I'm not going to worry about story or characters until I have the basic idea of this world. It's a videogame, so I have to think about how PVP, Quests, and Missions work, will there be raids, guilds? How do players show dominance? Do NPCs try to cheat the system? How?
I've got this big giant mess to work out, and I'd like some help.
Who's with me?

[fsarbolaez]

I can think of one way NPCs can cheat the system: Glitches (e.g. Phasing through solid objects; Overpowered; Disabled life timers)

[vsock]

If you're gonna be going as in-depth with your world as you say, you've gotta start with a strong foundation. Spend as much time on it as you need. You'll be able to keep the world more consistent this way as you build on it.
Or-
You could just wing it. Establish a simple setting and deal with the problems (pvp, quests, ect) as your protag encounters them.

If you wanna get real specific with your world-building, this is the place I go to: worldbuilding.stackexchange.com
It's also fun to just browse other creator's questions about their own worlds.

[glennsong]

@Endrenesk Wow that is a lot. It almost sounds like you're designing a JRPG. I wonder if it would be useful for you to browse D&D rulebooks and jRPGs and come up with core stats for your game world. Then you could use those and build character sheets.

Since this is happening in a computer (I assume that since you mention SAO and .hack), there's also that Matrix aspect of the world where there's the NPCs are inside and something is outside observing/using them. So then, why are the NPCs instanced for? Is there some higher goal that forces beyond their simulated world are trying to achieve? What you're describing also sounds a bit like running a genetic algorithm and doing some kind of computational darwinism. Figuring out the bounds of their world help you limit the scope of your idea.

Also, do these NPCs really get deleted? In game programming, objects that have served their purpose will stick around in memory and be overwritten (the pooled memory is reused), so these guys could become corrupted which might be a fun thing to play with.

[sarrowsmith10]

Also, do these NPCs really get deleted? In game programming, objects that have served their purpose will stick around in memory and be overwritten (the pooled memory is reused), so these guys could become corrupted which might be a fun thing to play with.

I don't usually read computer game type comics (although I liked SAO, so.. who knows), but I really like this idea! Corruptions could be the bad guys! Almost like Nobodies in Kingdom Hearts. Maybe even your main character could be a Corruption, trying desperately to be good, but sometimes they can't control their actions because of their data partially being deleted or overwritten.

[J.Z.Castillo]

mmh, the premise does not leave much space to form friendships since it sounds like a very cut throat type of world, win or die, type of thing. A work around could be to have quests that are very dangerous but if they are cleared they will provide enough XP to last for a month, or two months, etc, so you have to form a group to clear them and at the end the XP is shared among the group members. The more experience the more deadly/difficult it is so even if you get a big enough group many will die, adding their collected XP to the overall bounty collected at the end of the quest and also being deleted, freeing space in the server.

You could also have rogue guilds that go around killing players to collect their XP and elongate their lives in the game. It sounds interesting and the world doesn't seem to be too complicated, you can definitely flesh something out of this and get more complicated, if you want, as you go along.

[Endrenesk]

I just binge played a good portion of freedom wars, and it's given me a few ideas.
all of these are some great suggestions, and I'll try to elaborate on them.
*Glitches are a pretty high probability story wise, due to the nature of it all. It'd be a little boring if everything went to the plan of the game, unless the game's plan was pretty horrific/twisted. That also begs the question; is the game itself sentient?
Does it have a representative being that is sentient for it?
*If I tried winging the story completely, I'd probably get stuck at the second page and stop.
Creating a concrete, defined world is more likely.
*D&D could be useful, but that's more for bare bones planning to flesh out, and that's kinda. . . bleh. a month of research.
Okay, so a quick break (sorta) SAO is an isolated world, separate from the real one. Even the person pulling all the strings involved is inside the isolated world. Sure, the existence of the isolated world affects the real one, but that's because people didn't know that the user would die upon removing the. . . uh, VR headset.
.Hack is kinda different, in that while it is also an isolated world, people pass in and out of it, and it's also a host to the main amount of AIDA, mysterious glitches, and even comas. It's kind of amazing, because it's so... well, "mysterious". Probably my favorite series too, though there's just so much to explore.
*NPCs get deleted. Corrupted NPCs will not follow logic, and neither will the way they become so.
*The main character being corrupted sounds like the start of a really, really bad harem, such as Infinite Stratos. (worst anime)
*This last comment reminds me of the more expected RPGs, and sounds quite logical- After all, who solos a raid? While friendship doesn't seem likely, that doesn't stop people from trying. Sure, it's possible you and your friends might be dead tomorrow, but you keep trying to live anyway. Simple.
*Rogue guilds sound like an attractive idea, quite honestly.

Now some of the ideas I'd been thinking on. Opinions are welcomed and encouraged.
*Death Clocks. Freedom Wars was not the only influence (see Death Note and Devil Survivor) but definitely the trigger; in freedom wars you're trying to reduce the million year sentence of servitude, through donations and missions, but the plan here is to increase the amount of years to live through missions and or donations.
*Not all missions are standard, of course- A mission where the user gets rid of glitches/corrupted npcs could easily be a special mission given to moderators or highly trusted players- if word got out that there were missions such as that, or the things they were getting rid of existed, what ever would happen?
*The reason .Hack Comas are so special is because they are often caused by the game itself; whether through getting data drained, or having your soul stuck in the game and severed from your body, they're both very daunting and haunting.
*Speaking of data drain, it's not so unreasonable to say that such a thing could exist.
(Dang, that's a long post...)