Thread

1. deepwoods · 1790960513 · focus · HN ↗

   Years ago, I loved playing Puzzle Pirates. There were hundreds or thousands of people active at any given time, the puzzle games were fun, I loved the in-game economy. The game is pretty dead now, but I miss it all the time. I finally have time to play it again, but it's just not active enough to do all the stuff I used to like doing.

   I wonder if people would be receptive to bringing games like that back to life with full-fledged AI players - not NPCs, but player-characters controlled by AI. It wouldn't be exactly the same - there was something charming about knowing that the guy you were swordfighting could be anyone from anywhere, talking to people about their IRL world, etc. But as others have pointed out, modern MMOs are flooded with bots that make the games actively worse and have been since well before LLMs became popular.

   Plus, games might be a helpful means for folks to get used to the idea that, at this point, you have no idea whether the person you're interacting with is a human being until you meet in person.

   1. sabas123 · 1790960945 · focus · HN ↗

      Puzzle pirates used to have AI bots help you too if you couldn't find any crew. God I miss that game :(
   2. ljp_206 · 1790962298 · focus · HN ↗

      1) There is a burgeoning genre of game - that is, I know of one, called Erenshor - that simulates the experience of playing an MMORPG, but entirely offline, on purpose. I found it to be a very clever idea, likely made in reaction to many Runescape players who essentially treat OSRS as a single-player challenge with a live element.

      2) I'm very glad to see some Puzzle Pirates love. I was and still am enthralled by the idea of in-game economies, loosely-narrative-driven cooperative play driven by simple independent tasks; it was such a neat idea in such a simple package, I'm surprised it hasn't really been copied with much success, the casual/puzzle games boom notwithstanding. I've been daydreaming of mixing Puzzle Pirates with FTL as a spiritual successor, but it's a game design exercise beyond my ken.

   3. kungito · 1791047541 · focus · HN ↗

      id say the best part of puzzle pirates was how the whole economy was based on player agency. the only reason they added bot players was because of dwindling playerbase. ive long dreamt of making a game inspired by it with some of my ideas sprinkled in. i got some experimental version running on pharia.gitaki.com

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