Lets be fair, Ranma 1/2's anime has the Kuno Family ninja. The abused little guy is a fanfic creation the Author liked so much he got his own episodes and knocked Tatewaki's manga canon minion down to largely extra, So this isn't exactly a new idea, except perhaps in scale.
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Also, making it old West/Frontier based has its own madness associated with it. For instance, the Giant with his equally big blue ox (Paul Bunyon) or the nut case riding the tornado (Pekoes Bill). Add in those long term escort quests that make you do the equivalent of taking a family down Oregon trail. Base and wagon defense missions for both settlers and Tribals. Alamo type crazy uneven fort defense missions. That some tribes are NPCs the others being near human monsters... that may ally with any given group if bribed enough. Basically, lots of us or you against the world missions that have insanely random events everywhere. That doesn't even get into some of the skin shifters and the like randomly getting into population centers.
When you get sick of that you go out, stake a claim and abuse your miner subclass endlessly. Actually, if not killing NPCs is a thing... I expect claims to eventually end up trapped like Dwarf Fortress after a while so people can go to town once in a while. It could be months before some of those guys realize that they can't log off as they get so caught up in fort defense. Crazy hermits building up miles and miles of traps over time and possibly taking down the monster armies this way. Then getting annoyed as they have to reset them all and some random group of NPCs has moved onto their lawn.
This is actually the big difference between Japanese and American servers. Japanese serves are all about co-op and the American ones have so many options for loners. Keeping with the spirit of the setting players and NPCs keep moving out of town and founding new ones. Subclasses like miner, trapper, and mountain man making players able to set out on their own and survive in the middle of nowhere. Though with the respawning monsters everywhere I expect the Tribals and settlers are much friendlier with each other as both see each other as more help.
Add in those 'Reconquista Armies' from the Mexican server (prone to take over the world armies made almost entirely of players) whatever nonsense comes in from the Eastern US and Canadian severs and everything is weird. I'm thinking the Tribals have actual fortifications set up as they'd not have managed to kill off the megafauna as it keeps respawning. Basically I see the Western US server as having two types of players. The normal ones doing all the normal quests and the like and the hard core loners out in the middle of nowhere building empires of population one. Eventually NPCs figure out that if you bring them enough resources in trade you can get citizenship in their empire as long as you keep them supplied with building materials. Which lets them expand their personal empire, which means less personal death fortress and more employed by the company store.
Maybe not what your envisioning, but with a monument to empty space like the Old West just screams a few towns to start and the rest has been filling in because of the players.
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On a side note, muskets are actually really useful if they reload by cool down timers. As long as you spend a lot of your inventory carrying enough of them you could fire constantly.
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Also, making it old West/Frontier based has its own madness associated with it. For instance, the Giant with his equally big blue ox (Paul Bunyon) or the nut case riding the tornado (Pekoes Bill). Add in those long term escort quests that make you do the equivalent of taking a family down Oregon trail. Base and wagon defense missions for both settlers and Tribals. Alamo type crazy uneven fort defense missions. That some tribes are NPCs the others being near human monsters... that may ally with any given group if bribed enough. Basically, lots of us or you against the world missions that have insanely random events everywhere. That doesn't even get into some of the skin shifters and the like randomly getting into population centers.
When you get sick of that you go out, stake a claim and abuse your miner subclass endlessly. Actually, if not killing NPCs is a thing... I expect claims to eventually end up trapped like Dwarf Fortress after a while so people can go to town once in a while. It could be months before some of those guys realize that they can't log off as they get so caught up in fort defense. Crazy hermits building up miles and miles of traps over time and possibly taking down the monster armies this way. Then getting annoyed as they have to reset them all and some random group of NPCs has moved onto their lawn.
This is actually the big difference between Japanese and American servers. Japanese serves are all about co-op and the American ones have so many options for loners. Keeping with the spirit of the setting players and NPCs keep moving out of town and founding new ones. Subclasses like miner, trapper, and mountain man making players able to set out on their own and survive in the middle of nowhere. Though with the respawning monsters everywhere I expect the Tribals and settlers are much friendlier with each other as both see each other as more help.
Add in those 'Reconquista Armies' from the Mexican server (prone to take over the world armies made almost entirely of players) whatever nonsense comes in from the Eastern US and Canadian severs and everything is weird. I'm thinking the Tribals have actual fortifications set up as they'd not have managed to kill off the megafauna as it keeps respawning. Basically I see the Western US server as having two types of players. The normal ones doing all the normal quests and the like and the hard core loners out in the middle of nowhere building empires of population one. Eventually NPCs figure out that if you bring them enough resources in trade you can get citizenship in their empire as long as you keep them supplied with building materials. Which lets them expand their personal empire, which means less personal death fortress and more employed by the company store.
Maybe not what your envisioning, but with a monument to empty space like the Old West just screams a few towns to start and the rest has been filling in because of the players.
---
On a side note, muskets are actually really useful if they reload by cool down timers. As long as you spend a lot of your inventory carrying enough of them you could fire constantly.