Thank you for your response. I think you are spot on with the concern as well as respectful of my project idea. As far as my former games, I'll admit they were mostly learning experiences for my partner and I and more of how much we could accomplish in a few months time instead of taking on the project with a more passionate approach.

I understand that most MMOs with millions thrown at them still fail, but I wanted to try because of the social aspect. The defining principle of this game is the multiplayer interactivity to be fun and charming. I suppose there are ways to scale back that design principle to avoid being an mmo, and I'm willing to pursue that if necessary to still succeed as a game once the supposed team gets to talk about feature slashing. If that were the case, I'd likely ditch the Nakama servers for a Firebase solution that would be a soft multiplayer system. Basically, squeeze out as much interactivity as possible between players without being realtime similar to the multiplayer aspect in Death Stranding.

It may be a pipe dream to assemble the squad capable of producing a lucrative MMO, but like your kite surfing example, this is the game I want to make. I would struggle to have the devotion required for most other projects. I appreciate everything you address. If I fail to keep together a team, I think I'll still persist on in some fashion making the barebones framework for a multiplayer experience at the very least that could benefit myself or others because the online mechanics are what I'm most attracted to with development. I will watch the GDC show you mentioned as I consider how important it is for this game to be an MMO and whether or not that is ultimately necessary.