Rift: Planes of Telara

[UnSub]

D-Sma posted in that article to apparently mock the opposition. He's a role model to trolls everywhere.

[Lantyssa]

Not really.  Good trolls elicit emotional outbursts, not mocking laughter.

[Stabs]

Actually there is a kind of parody-beyond-parody about DS mocking Trion (or is it the Gamasutra comments section drama queens) that is rather priceless.

I'm certainly not a fan but this is a gem of internet posting.

[Musashi]

I don't know if this game is slurp-worthy.  But isn't Hartsman the exact opposite of Dr. Demento in terms of game developer status?  That he pops out and kick you in the shin in a fit of passive-aggressive nerd envy, I would take as the highest compliment.

Also, prolly need a title change for this thread.

[Grimwell]

"massively social gameplay"

That there is a very insightful phrase Mr. Hartsman. Hats off. :)

I'm going to steal it and abuse it heavily. 

[Hartsman]

"massively social gameplay"

That there is a very insightful phrase Mr. Hartsman. Hats off. :)

I'm going to steal it and abuse it heavily. 

Haha - Hey, Craig :) 

Thanks, but I can claim close to zero credit for that one.  It may have even been Lars I heard it from first. 

I liked it a lot too.  It really is a concise way to describe collections of mechanics that net out to "more players arrive = cool!"

[Ollie]

I'd hate to drag any more of Dmart's insanity into this thread since we already have an 18-pager validating his dysfunctional existence, but I can't resist a tiny derail.

I honestly thought the comment on Gamasutra was posted by a joke account. You know, someone pretending to be Derek Douchelily – even though the thought of someone willingly impersonating Dr. Dingleberry of all people is... disturbing. It turns out, I was wrong. It was the man himself.

Judging from the absurdity of his drive-by, the good doctor might be on the verge of a psychotic break. Given the circumstances, quoting Julius Caesar shows a staggering disconnect between the social reality the rest of us inhabit and whatever magic land he seems to fancy. I've chalked his previous shenanigans up to good old-fashioned douchebaggery, but this might actually be clinical. Or maybe he's just gearing up to plead insanity once they go to court.
Be as it may, someone needs to up his dosage and pop those pills like they were 

/end derail.

[Stabs]

mechanics that net out to "more players arrive = cool!"

Make it so, Mr Hartsman, make it so.

Anti-social behaviour that directly stems from game design exasperates me, whether it's people you meet in Eve not wanting to play with you because you might be a spy or people you meet in WoW not wanting you because you have the wrong class, level, spec or gearscore.

We gamers are anti-social enough without game mechanics that explicitly require us to behave like jerks.

[Nija]

Please make it a single server game with the ability to message people by a unique name that ties to their account (but isn't their account name), and then instance the overland areas so you can scale to meet the population needs. Server merges FTL.

[Dtrain]

But isn't Hartsman the exact opposite of Dr. Demento in terms of game developer status?

You're pretty much dead on. Scott is a class act, as well as the genuine article.

I'm going to have to put this on the "Cautiously Optomistic?" list.

[Grimwell]

"massively social gameplay"

That there is a very insightful phrase Mr. Hartsman. Hats off. :)

I'm going to steal it and abuse it heavily. 

Haha - Hey, Craig :) 

Thanks, but I can claim close to zero credit for that one.  It may have even been Lars I heard it from first. 

I liked it a lot too.  It really is a concise way to describe collections of mechanics that net out to "more players arrive = cool!"

I think it has great potential to become the next MMO buzz-word as everyone tries to tie their upcoming products to Facebook type results. Most won't deliver, but that never stopped a buzzword eh? :)

[Ghambit]

M.S.G.

[Draegan]

Madison Square Garden?

[Lantyssa]

It enhances the flavor of your favorite games.

[Ghambit]

... and then you become fatigued and hungry again a few hours later.

[LK]

I didn't see anything in their website's video that screamed new and interesting to me. Just some flythroughs showing it was remarkably similar to a DIKU (NPCs / Mobs standing in one place, zones, fighting big monsters).

I'm really starting to despise cinematic trailers as a launching point for explaining a game. It says nothing of the fun, only the look and feel. It's especially distressing when you try to build tension by ramping up music while a single PC goes through several canned attack animations against three mobs.

I guess I could do more digging but the initial impression on that website isn't strong. If "Dynamic" is the strong keyword with the game, then you should construct a video showing that, explicitly, while creating a narrative with the sequence of events.

[Signe]

Maybe aggro was turned off for this, too, although that doesn't sound very clever if they want to express something "dynamic".

[Nija]

I didn't see anything in their website's video that screamed new and interesting to me. Just some flythroughs showing it was remarkably similar to a DIKU (NPCs / Mobs standing in one place, zones, fighting big monsters).

Yeah, you mentioning this made me realize that I did kind of cringe when the camera swooped through the little village to see all of the blocky NPCs chilling in place, with the stereotypical guy waving at you next to a wagon.

[Zzulo]

I do hope a lot of emphasis is put on improving the standard and very generic MMO combat formula. It would be disappointing to see the core of the game play exactly like any other MMO

[Stabs]

Very interesting post by Raph Koster talking about dynamic POIs in Star Wars: Galaxies, mentioning Heroes of Telara as the modern form of it.

http://www.raphkoster.com/2010/04/30/dynamic-pois/

[tmp]

Very interesting post by Raph Koster talking about dynamic POIs in Star Wars: Galaxies, mentioning Heroes of Telara as the modern form of it.

http://www.raphkoster.com/2010/04/30/dynamic-pois/

Even more interesting is a comment there from Brandon Reinhart. Guess one may hope the modern version manages to avoid at least some of these pitfalls. I mean, all of it might seem bloody obvious but on the other hand, MMOs.

[Grimwell]

I find Brandon's comment to be of greater value. It's nice to know what they were trying at the time, and how hard it was; but I learn more from what Brandon shared.

[LK]

Yeah. Brandon's comments strike me as someone who had more of a clue about what was going on than the lead designer.

[Lantyssa]

Raph was off SWG three months after launch.  I imagine he still made suggestions, but it wasn't his baby anymore.  Reinhart was Green Marine, yes?  He was intimately involved with systems design throughout the early years of the live game, so it's not surprising he has a knowledgeable take on matters.  Other than a little overlap near launch though, they were working on the game during different periods.  The spawning issues were something which became worse over time, too.

There's still the basis for a good system there, it's just important to do quality control on both the mechanics and the results.  That goes for any aspect of a game, really.  If Telara does that, then we'll finally see a good working model of what can be done with dynamic POIs and it'll become something others try to emulate.

[UnSub]

Based solely on my experience playing these dynamic-style events, the events have to deal with 1) players wanting to ignore them and 2) players growing tired of them / not feeling the rewards are worth the time invested. To some extent, there needs to be some sort of rotating process where events are given time to rest so that players can be excited in doing them, even just for the experience of it (rather than just the XP).

[Ghambit]

I dont see how they can achieve a truly dynamic system solely through scripting.  It's kind of an oxymoron.
Is there ANY indication at all that much of this model is based on GM-intervention, ala something like MxO?

I mean, why not just give your GMs a set of base rules (that can be scripted themselves) they have to abide, give them the tools and let 'em "dynamicize" to their hearts content.  I dont understand why we even need to layer all this uber tech. onto an already bloated genre, when the solution is fairly simple in my eyes.

And it's almost like "what's the point" of making a completely server-based game, when essentially you're still scripting complex events.  To me, if you're gonna ride the rocketship Dynamic, you have to have the human element involved.  Dont half-ass it with fancy code that people will still chew up and spit out and can be represented in your typical client-side single player RPG.

A "dynamic" server-side game needs to (as Raph eluded to) go back to its tabletop roots.  But use player&GM input to form and interact with the gamespace, ending up with a more perfect sandbox that isnt solely reliant on item crafting alone.  The game itself becomes the crafted entity.

Sorry if I sound out there (as usual).  But I just dont see the point of this design unless they take it to the limit.  It's a wasted opportunity otherwise, ending up being a nice toy that players still get used to after 10 hrs. of gametime.

edit:  UnSub just touched on something similar to what I'm trying to say

[Ollie]

I do hope a lot of emphasis is put on improving the standard and very generic MMO combat formula. It would be disappointing to see the core of the game play exactly like any other MMO

Unfortunately that doesn't seem all that likely, at least if an article by MMORPG.com is to be believed:

Right off the bat players will notice that Rift is indeed a traditional MMORPG in terms of interface and mechanics. We didn't get to see much in the way of different menus and that sort of functionality, but the game does employ the standard highlight and hot-bar mechanics that have become a staple of the industry.

What differentiation there is combat-wise will likely come from the class system, which Trion doesn't seem to want to share just yet.

[LK]

Developers can't trust GMs to manage game content, nor would they want to.

[Stabs]

We start to butt our heads against the dynamics of what "truly dynamic" is. The wandering monsters table from Dungeons and Dragons is dynamic, at least compared to static spawns.

However if a roll of 68 on d100 produced Shepherdess with lost lamb who turns out to be secretly a werewolf then you can expect that someone out there would get that encounter three times in their first ten wandering monsters and whine about it on the forums.

One way round this, as stated, is to time limit the encounters. After a month replace the shepherdess encounter with a lawful good goblin ranger who just wants to be allowed to do good (with two scimitars, natch). Of course people will then bitch that they never got the shepherdess encounter but I think a thick skin to player bitching is required if you want to make a dynamic game. WoW has tried dynamic events and often players have been furious, for example when a zombie plague shut down banks and auction houses. That also teaches an important lesson - dynamic events need to dominate - if players value doing their farm raids over your event they'll resent your event. Maybe if you don't get your butts out of Naxx and defend the banks you'll lose your stuff or something.

Another way would be classifying wandering encounters as one-off and repeatable and recording in each player character's dataset whether they've met a one-off encounter.

I think manually doing it is rather defeating the object of using computers to run games. Sure it's awesome to meet a GM playing some sort of demigod and I'm not opposed to that if people want to do it. Recently a GM in Age of Conan pissed on me by the Old Tarantia tradepost which I and my friends found utterly hilarious. The /drunkpiss emote was disabled for players shortly after launch but it is one of the more magnificent sights in gaming.

There must be some way to automate the human touch if you'll pardon the oxymoron and I'm sure it's one of the things Heroes of Telara are trying to figure out.

[Xanthippe]

Where are the scantily clothed babes?

[Malakili]

We start to butt our heads against the dynamics of what "truly dynamic" is. The wandering monsters table from Dungeons and Dragons is dynamic, at least compared to static spawns.

...

 That also teaches an important lesson - dynamic events need to dominate - if players value doing their farm raids over your event they'll resent your event. Maybe if you don't get your butts out of Naxx and defend the banks you'll lose your stuff or something.

...

Another way would be classifying wandering encounters as one-off and repeatable and recording in each player character's dataset whether they've met a one-off encounter.

I think manually doing it is rather defeating the object of using computers to run games.

Well, I think there are a few things here.   Number 1) Dynamic content tends to be wanted by the older crowd, which I suspect is a result of having more pencil and paper players.  A lot of us (me included) would love to replicate that DnD feeling in an MMO.  I think part of the problem is that 5-6 guys around a table playing pencil and paper can pull off dynamic content SO MUCH BETTER than 2000 people.   I don't know how to easily translate this to a system that works on a large scale like that.

As for your point about raiding v. dynamic content, I think this is where we get into "how much do most people REALLY want dynamic content" discussion.  I think the answer is actually very few.  Sure, it sounds great to talk about, but most players would probably much rather sit in Dalaran in the dungeon queue than feel obligated to rush off to some town on the other side of a continent to defend something.  Most players, I think, want to choose what to do, rather than have the game choose, and dynamic content is the game choosing, or at least comes across that way a lot of the time.  As much time as raiding might take, "Show up for 7 and we will raid for 3 hours" is actually a LOT LESS of an investment in the game than "We'll contact you out of game when a big event happens so you can all log in and participate" Anyone who ever played EVE seriously knows this.   Its one thing to plan a few hours a day or play time, and another thing entirely to set your alarm clock to make sure you get up for something, or worse yet, getting a phone call in the middle of the night (which the CEO of my corp had happen with some frequency).    Then again, that doesn't, strictly speaking, need to follow from a random encounter.


You mention manually doing it defeats the purpose, and maybe so.  Its one of the reasons MMORPGs have gotten me frustrated, and I still look back at the times i played NWN persistent worlds as my best "MMO" experience (though MMO is probably the wrong term).    In the end, I think dynamic content needs to come from people though.   Whether that be players who are somehow able to generate quests for other players, or DMs, I just don't think a random encounter system can ever really do what we want it to do.

[Murgos]

Where are the scantily clothed babes?

They are all over in TERA.

[Lantyssa]

And it's almost like "what's the point" of making a completely server-based game, when essentially you're still scripting complex events.  To me, if you're gonna ride the rocketship Dynamic, you have to have the human element involved.  Dont half-ass it with fancy code that people will still chew up and spit out and can be represented in your typical client-side single player RPG.

A human touch is great.  When you have ten people to run events for several hundred thousand, it doesn't make any sense.  They simply cannot staff to a level to afford that.  And if they have robust enough scripts for GMs to follow... they can have a computer do the same thing.

Edit: 'Cause ten people makes much more sense.

[Ghambit]

Look at it like the GM basically playing a panned-out version of the game as an RTS or TBS.  He can manage thousands of players at once with as broad or narrow a brush as he/she wants (there are toolsets out there that actually do this right now), within a certain set of constraints.  This is all akin to the argument these days to make MMOs with more powerful dev. tools even post-production.  And like I said, why go server-sdie if you're not going to take advantage??

I dunno, it just feels like a lost opportunity to do something really cool instead of generic.

[Lantyssa]

If they're so far abstracted so as to be 'playing' an RTS for GM duties, then there is no personal touch involved.  An AI can do just as good a job.