f13.net

Question of preference for you all, been wondering about for awhile.

Would you prefer a zone that dynamically generated spawn based on the size and configuration of your party (CoX, SWG, UO)? Or would you prefer static/canned content built as a quasi-puzzler to be figured out (Raids)?

I'm on the fence. I feel like I should want to have a new experience in an area depending on how I got to that area, what decisions I made, who I'm with, etc. But it needs to feel authentic, as in, I shouldn't be able to immediately tell something is different. This is the part that always bothered me about CoX's instances: you knew there wasn't a world there because it just changed itself to rise to your whim. SWG did the same thing, but I didn't care because most of the time I was only in the wilds because a Mission Terminal or quest sent me there, and the game didn't render those until you were close enough for them to spawn in anyway (because spawning them before you got close caused all sorts of early problems).

At the same time, the puzzler/Raid aspect is also rewarding, because you get a clear sense of mental progress over time. Even if you keep failing the overall encounter, as long as you and the team have been paying attention, you'll inch your way further to and through the final boss because it never changes. So you know even though you're going to fail this time, you'll have learned something that'll help you next time.

As a gamer, I feel like I should want the game to dynamically scale without being obvious about it. But as a former Raider, I feel like that would break the paradigm a lot for PvE Raids and therefore a sureshot way of retaining players.

Where do you fall?

I lean towards static. If a game came along with dynamic spawns that didn't also feel generic and computer generated then I could easily be swayed, I'm sure, but that isn't really the case right now. Particularly in the case of encounter design, the state of scripted encounters is years ahead of procedurally generated stuff right now. I'd rather fight, say, Van Cleef 5 times than random_Freakshow_boss twice, simply because not only is the encounter designed to actually work a particular way and thus reward particular skills, Van Cleef is an actual character with voice acting, etc. The same thing applies to a lesser degree with 'designed' instances with fixed patrols, little scenes with the guys standing around, etc.

The CoX style stuff has a long way to go to catch up with fully designed encounters as things stand.

A mixture of both.

Hand tailoring spawns means some sanity checks and potentially interesting encounters.  Spawns which can present a challenge or change things up a bit are nice, too.  Many games have a system which handles both, however they keep things simple.  (I'll use WoW since it's the big one now, though it applies to many games.)

Take a generic sub-environment and there are two dozen spawn points which might spawn two or three types of mobs.  You have bunches of individual mobs that just wander in their little spots.  Occasionally you have a rare take one of their places.  Then you have a few 'story' mobs with fixed locations for quests.  It works, but it's not very exciting after you've been through the area once or twice.

With a dynamic system you can do things in a couple of ways.  Do you have mob difficulty scale ala CoX's boss mobs?  Do you just make larger/smaller spawns like what they do in instances?  It might provide a little more challenge, but it is still essentially the same.  A truly interesting dynamic system needs to come up with an entirely new population of mobs based on either environmental factors (Ryzom tried, but I don't know how it worked out since I didn't make it past the newbie island), party composition, or even just a more extensive pool of critters to draw from.  Can mobs reinforce themselves to build an encampment or cause infestations like Tabula Rasa and Conan were supposed to have?

AI and capabilities also plays a factor here.  MMO mob AI is dumb.  We can avoid the discussion about why that is, but suffice to say that an AI which can pull unexpected actions and cooperates with nearby creatures can make more static spawns seem dynamic.

Then all of that depends on your world.  Is it instanced?  Randomly generated or hand-crafted?  Wide open or constricting?  Level or skill-based?  Are you meant to take hordes of enemies or fight one-on-one?

SWG and UO didn't generate spawn based on your party back in the olden days when old people like me played them. Maybe they've changed.

I like static spawn because I like worldy games more than theme park games, and I like to get to know what type of stuff is in which places, and where it's safe to go on my own and where it's not, instead of having it change around me. I like the idea that the world has a bit of a life of its own. I also prefer open worlds to instanced worlds, which I guess follows on.

If it changes over time, or randomly (within reason) or as a result of player actions then that's cool. The idea that it changes within half an hour because my party configuration changed doesn't appeal to me.

So I would say static content, or perhaps consistent is a better word for what I mean (but not raids particularly).

I too think I lean static for big encounters and dyanmic (somewhat) for outdoors/non-critical encounters. Specfically because of what Ingmar notes: static can lead to more interesting encounters including fleshed-out characters with some sort of story. Things can change up within of course, but within a narrow set of variables.


To quibble: SWG always dynamically generated spawn, but only in outdoor environments. It was hard to notice but it was there (and they talked about it at some point, I believe in beta, with some name for it I can't recall). Basically, there was a mix of static lair spawns, lairs spawned by mission terminals, and lairs spawned by players being in the area in a certain configuration and numbers.

I think you're partly right about UO though. The only thing they dynamically spawned was those News Posts (rescue NPC X, capture point Y) that were basically mission terminals as well (same method: go to location X then the lair spawned).

You are asking two different questions, or at least there's two different ways of interpreting your single question.

CoH has static spawn points (barring a few exceptions) but the makeup of that spawn can vary based on various factors. Because they are static you can learn/memorize those spots and adjust your strategy/tactics based on that knowledge just like you can in a game like EQ or WoW. You can even do a proper "dungeon crawl" in CoH if the map/mission is conducive to such a thing and you don't intentionally skip content. I used to love to lead trips through the Frostfire mission, for example. The dynamic composition of the static spawn points doesn't change that.

Most missions in CoH, however, aren't completely "hand crafted" in the same way EQ and WoW are. I don't think you'll find anybody here who doesn't prefer hand-crafted encounters/maps compared to the more "cookie cutter" form most CoH/CoV missions take.

There's no reason why you can't mix both concepts, however, (dynamic spawn composition + hand crafting) and CoH/CoV does have maps/missions like that.

I like being able to adjust the difficulty level of encounters personally. However that doesn't really change your sense of progression through a difficult encounter. As long as the difficulty level is held constant you can still track your progress. And even if it's not held constant you can still get a sense of your progression. E.g. in a game like EQ even though there wasn't an explicit difficulty slider you still had an implicit one which was who you were fighting with, and yet you were still able to progress and get better even as the people you were fighting with constantly shifted.

As a sidenote spawn points in UO were static when I played. In fact you used to be able to "trap" spawns inside your house if you happened to build right on top of one. The spawns felt "dynamic" cause the mobs moved around after appearing.

Well, ideally I'd prefer a dynamic spawn that isn't based on my level/party, but on some sort of dynamic world system that keeps things changing/evolving/"alive." So, if I find an orc settlement, then I come back a couple days later and maybe a nearby dragon has taken it out or something.  Then maybe the orcs move back in and rebuild after a couple days, or maybe it isn't orcs at all, but some other group of NPCs that rebuild on that spot.  I guess that is technically dynamic, but it isn't really what you are asking I don't think.  Given the two options as you've described them, I guess I'll take the static.

This sort of thing has been discussed since the MUD-days and Raph attempted to create a "virtual ecology" for UO with mixed results. You can read about UO's system here:

http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/03/uos-resource-system/
http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/04/uos-resource-system-part-2/
http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/05/uos-resource-system-part-3/

As Darniaq said, SWG did have dynamic spawns based upon the players in the area.  When the system was working, it happened far enough away that you would never realize the table was weighted towards your level.  (It did not prevent the extremes though, so you could still get some of the incredibly rare spawns like Great Plains Stalkers.)

Unfortunately they got seriously borked at some point such that there were a limited number per planet and once spawned they never despawned.  People riding their bikes between points or to missions would cause the limit to be reached and that was it until someone took out a lair.

That kind of thing is cool from a "I am wearing my world designer hat" perspective, but it doesn't really add anything to the gameplay. It probably messes with any kind of narrative you are developing for your game as well. Like, what fun would Duskwood be if it wasn't full of Zombies because the Orcs swept them clean? Part of the fun and development as a player is learning that there are Gnolls in the Hills, or the river is full of Murlocs and planning appropriately.

True, but also a little bit of randomness or dynamism would be nice. WoW has the same exact mob spawning the the exact same spot, with the occasional patrols thrown in for atmosphere. But there's always going to be (Makes up an example) 3 naga on top of the rock in the cave. Always. Maybe mix up their classes, or have them spawn 5 feet to the left, or not spawn if the lever is pulled, some-goddamn-thing.

Most spawn points in WoW are already shared between several mobs. In your Naga example, each spawn location can spawn (for example) a melee Naga or a caster Naga.

There is usually some variation in the sub-types too. You can have the frostbolt spamming Naga, or the sleep you then heal itself to full Naga.

I definitely prefer the freedom of access that dynamic spawns allow (i.e. no team size/comp requirements). One thing that's important to note is that, much as I like CoX (the poster example of dynamically spawned content), there are a lot of bits and pieces of its execution that could be done better to address a lot of the problems people have with the systems.

For example, on villain side, it used to be that the conceptual reason behind the difficulty settings was that Arachnos was using its propaganda network to influence people's perceptions of your prowess, and could therefore control whether people gave you easy or hard missions. It was never a particularly strong justification, and it went away with the new difficulty system, but in the right game something similar could make sense - say, a sandboxy environment where your character chooses their own tasks rather then being funneled through a series of predetermined missions.

For a good mix of handcrafted set pieces into dynamically generated environments, just look to any decent roguelike or diablolike.

This is always what I wanted or even better a world against the players system where the players can build out but the farther from some center of civilization they get the more the world tries to destroy what they have created.  There was a game waybackwhen that was trying to make pretty much my ideal MMO or close enough to it but it never got out of vaporware which is no surprise since they were aiming well past the moon dunno if the devs involved ever ended up making anything or being a part of anything.

http://www.rpgplanet.com/features/firstlooks/charr/


Oh how silly and naive we were back in 2001!  *swoon* The whole interview is like that, imagining really cool sounding concepts that 9 years later we still have never seen.  This part made me sad.

Ok. Let's go for a specific example that I'm familiar with. General Fangferror in Azshara. You've got the melee naga, the caster naga and the ghostie dudes. Pretty much all you're going to see there normally. But there are two rare spawns too. The lady (whatshername, I forget) who spawns like once an hour, and General Fangferror, who spawns once every 12 hours. That made it a little more interesting than the usual spawn point, because there was a chance that an unusual mob would be there. Maybe not earth shakingly different, but those two added a bit more interest.

Well, yes and no.  The sort of exploration I enjoy is really only possible once in such a case.    I mean, what you learn in my example, is that there is a good spot for a settlment at spot X.  You don't always know what is going to be there, but you know its probably going to be a spot of interest.   While knowing the world is nice, knowing the same spawns from 2005 when you head to Ashenvale, or whatever, makes the whole thing a lot less replayable as far as I am concerned.   As someone who really likes games where I can legitimately explore, I think that kind of system would make the game almost endlessly replayable.  Of course, the problem with exploration that I think rarely gets mentioned by people like me who enjoy it is that one of the important things about exploration is that it is possible to find nothing, and thats what, in the end, makes it more of a fringe gameplay style.

I guess I must have vaguely known how it worked when I played the game, but I forgot all about that. In theory it sounds like a pretty good system actually.

My preference depends on how you define "dynamic spawn."

One enemy for each player in the party? Yeah, for specific fights. The average crypt hallway spawns should be static, but final fight rooms would ideally sculpt themselves to challenge the party.

Mobs automatically scale up with you? No, with one very specific exception.

Content is designed for a level range. If I'm 40, I should blow through a 20 encounter like a god of war, and I should be curbstomped by a a 60 encounter. If you strip that out entirely, you get Oblivion, where you never feel like you're getting more powerful. I think I understand why they did that (constant challenge theoretically means a consistent level of fun), but I don't agree with it.

Bearing in mind my Asheron's Call roots, I feel an exception should be made for story dungeons. One of the frequent and legitimate complaints was that our monthly story patches were mostly designed for the content-hungry high-level crowd. The casual players and non-powerlevellers never had a chance to experience them. If I'd had something like CoX's giant monster code, I would have used that in the story dungeons, so a group of skillful level 20s would have the same chance to "change the world" as a group of skilled level 60s.

I'm going to go with a mixture of both static and dynamic spawn population and static and dynamic spawn location.

My only experience is with creating MUDs using simple scripts for varying degrees of entertaining fun, but when you're creating a boss encounter or a cool dungeon sometimes you want to use a static spawn to be able to tell a story or create a very specific and defined environment/atmosphere.  However in a dungeon leading up to that boss I would like to use dynamic spawn locations so every trip through the dungeon is different.  I hate going through WOW dungeons and seeing the same trash packs over and over again.  It's dull and unimaginative. 

From the perspective of a designer I would say you would want to mix everything together to create a good blend of entertainment and keep the staleness factor down but you also don't want to create a dungeon where it becomes a pain in the ass to run.

As a player I like change, and I like things being a challenge each time I run through it.

Worst example now is WOW.  Same dungeon, same mechanics, same trash every single time.  It comes to a point where you just run through things.  Especially evident in the TBC dungeons where they were all just hallways connected to each other.  Grinding for badges now is annoying.  You clear trash, bludgeon through a boss script or some other event and keep going.  Eh.

You can start a whole new thread about dungeon design.  WOW's dungeon design has been shit since vanilla.  Dungeons like BRS and BRD, Scholomance and Strat have not been repeated.  Now it's just a one way street that you run THROUGH and not play IN.  Why can't we have a dead end, or a maze or something interesting?  Dynamic spawning would at least shake that up a little bit.

LOTRO's dungeon design is the best, I think, of all current games.  I only tried one WAR dungeon and it was kinda fun.  AOC's were all broken when I played.

Anyway, big tangent right there.  From what I've read, Trion's Heroes of Telara might be trying something like this.

I really like the idea of story dungeons which adjust like that.

There are ways to handle the god-like or curbstomped aspects, too.  One is to let players choose their difficulty like CoX.  Another is to let mobs scale, but have the option to let them be fragile, weak, average, powerful, or godly.

Look at WoW again.  There is the option for regular and heroic dungeons.  It is a very primitive version of this in action, but limited to their instances.  There's no reason different parts of the world cannot be scaled to differing needs.

Some of them were tried and turned out the players simply hated them. The NPCs taking fight actively to the players sound fun until you have your players bitching on the forums the game did something they didn't feel like doing at the moment. Like ganked them while they were going to craft or just wanted to have a chat with another player while idling on a spot.

Because the playerbase complains when 5man dungeons have complexity beyond "faceroll for epics."  Unfortunately, I think the hidden part of this conversation is that dynamic content is generally much more difficult, and difficulty leads to complaints from you "casual" playerbase, who are focusing on this content to begin with.   People like that they can go roll through knowing exactly where every trash pack is, etc.  Hell, I'll even admit that when I was playing WoW badge farming I mostly liked to see if I could run UK in 20 minutes and shave a minute of our run time.  

Anyway, I guess my point is that, to some degree, the general population has already spoken on this matter with the kinds of dungeons they've liked in WoW.



I liked WAR dungeons as well, but specifically because they weren't instanced for just your party.  You could run into other parties in there, there were public quests that led to bosses, this is dramatically different in terms of both design and play experience than the standard 5man instance.  

They were still static though.


If I can make one last point here, its that one of the things about dynamic content, is that I think you have to have a player base that is sympathetic to that style of gameplay.  You have to have groups that enjoy not knowing, and I think the MMO population at large likes knowing, which is why sites like thottbot et al. are so popular.

Agree about WAR dungeons.  Dynamic Public Quests.  Instead of static step in the PQ, each step is evaluated and the next is chosen based on how well everyone is doing.  That way you have options for 1 dude to solo to a 100 man guild, but individual steps can be scripted and all the steps make sense story-wise and theme-wise.

A game actually tried that?  I don't believe you.  Also player bitching comes from entitlement and expectation and the fact that this is the internet.  The fact that somebody somewhere might bitch about something doesn't mean its a bad idea quite the contrary really.

That doesn't really address the point of not feeling like you're growing.  If a group of mobs are 'average' and I go to that dungeon at level 20, get through it, and go on my merry way, then at level 40 return and those mobs are scaled to my level and still 'average' I don't feel as though I've grown in power at all.  If their power relative to me is always based on a difficulty level, again, I don't really feel as though I've grown in power.  So yeah, hard levels are important even in the small scale because it's more fun to be able to say 'I'll come back in 2 levels and this will be MUCH easier' or to say 'in 20 levels nothing here will be able to scratch me,' bwahah.

And having bosses scale is also not something I would ever advocate either, because that completely eliminates the 'go back and kill things with ever-decreasing numbers of people.'  One of my favorite things about EQ from the Velious Age all the way up to the point where they started making shit instanced and require X number of people because of one reason or another, was that as the years, levels, and expansions went by, I could go back to ever more difficult things with less people and defeat that which was once the greatest threats in Norrath.  Also important was the fact that the rewards for killing a lot of that stuff remained relevant for a long time (and good twink gear, especially).  That made things fun for a long time when I would otherwise have been bored and drifted away, so if a dynamic system takes that fun away, then I say it's no good for me.

So I suppose I'm strongly in favor of static spawns, but I also wish they would behave in a more dynamic fashion.  That is to say, if we have a fortress of enemies with scouts, lookouts, patrols, guard bunkers, etc, have these things react in a manner that makes sense to me. If the lookouts or patrols spot you approaching, the walls and entries get reinforced with additional troops, but if you get in without raising the alarm, you'll find a lot of the enemies in a weaker state (since they're unprepared) in their bunks (note they should absolutely give the same exp and drops even if they are weaker at this point).  Improving the AI of enemies so they behave more intelligently makes them much more interesting than having their spawn pattern adjust to your levels, and it achieves this being 'dynamic' in a way that doesn't feel silly.  The same sort of logic can be applied even to difficulty to some degree as well.  If you have to go through areas A, B, and C in order to reach area D, then what the enemies learn about you in areas A, B, and C can adjust area D to better cope with your group.  In this manner they can prepare themselves in ways to combat say, the classes in your group, in a way that again, makes sense.  If your group is heavily ranged, perhaps they will prepare themselves to counter that to a reasonable degree, thus increasing the challenge and difficulty simply by setting up the proper counters to your group's tactics.

I enjoy knowing what is possible to know. I'm a numbers person, totally willing to spend as much time looking up stats and calculating percentages as playing the actual game. So it really bothers me when, e.g., I have a +10 agi hat and a +8 str hat and the game doesn't provide me with the information to know which one is better to wear.

Thing is, you can always do optimization problems given whatever system is in place. If that system involves random dungeons spawning random bosses with random attacks that give random loot, that's fine - it's just more probabilities for the calculations to take into account. It doesn't hurt a player's abilities to min/max, it just forces them to go with *average* efficiency. So there's still plenty of room for Thottbott-ability in dynamic systems.

That might just be me though - I couldn't really give a crap whether the umpteenth hallway full of trash in Nexus bends to the left or the right, which is one reason I think I would be a bad tank. I would constantly lead my groups off cliffs and whatnot.

Anarchy Online had their "alien" NPCs attack public cities as part of their story development before launch of game expansion. It was very short-lived due to player feedback. The expansion also adjusted to the player attitude and the "aliens" would only attack player-owned cities when the players pressed the "attack us" button rather than whenever they pleased as it was initially considered.

Of course; negative feedback is a clear sign you're doing something right :why_so_serious:

I also agree that mobs shouldn't scale to your level in different dungeons.  It would also be difficult to do in the same game space as other people unless it's instanced.  I enjoy non-instance events.  They can be more fun.


Most people want something right away that they don't have to commit a lot of time too.  Which is fine, but that doesn't mean you can't have multiple ways of doing things.  You can have dungeons that are large and complex and have different parts to rewards different things, like BRD.  A full clear takes a shit load of time, but you can also aim for specific bosses etc.

People want easier and faster things, and if you give it to them, then they'll want them even easier and faster.  It's human nature.  It's what Blizzard is doing now.  It's making boss fights easier and quicker in some of the older heroics.  I don't think there is anything wrong with it given their setup.  With a new game you can change that and the expectations of the playerbase.  I'd like to see a more dynamic game where you go in to play the game and not to play through the game for an eventual reward.

I do too, but I think its more interesting if say are say, in some sort of dungeon/cave, if you want to know what is ahead of you, to have to send in a steath class, or some sort of mage with an invisibility spell, to you know, actually scout ahead and report back.   I think its also my preference for "in character" behavior.  I need to preference it by saying I don't necessarily mean "sitting around and chatting for 2 hours" which is generally what anything resembling RP means these days in MMOs.  Rather, the ideal MMO for me is one in which I don't meta game at all, nor do I have to.  While I am very much into the spreadsheeting etc when I play MMOs, I do it because its a survival trait, I'd much prefer a game where it doesn't matter (if there could ever be such a thing). 

I'm kind of getting way off topic here, but I guess I have in my mind some sort of "pure" RPG experience in my head in which the game world is alive, and players are there to "live" in that world, whether that means cleaning out a dungeon or making pies, and to me, there needs to be some sort of dynamic nature to a game like that, lest it be possible to simply look up everything you need to know about everything online.   It'll never happen, but eh, its always what I come back to when I get into these theoretical MMO discussions.

This.  I'd love for content to be dynamic to the point that those visiting the hardcore enthusiast sites have little to no advantage over those that don't.  I want to figure out mechanics empirically.  I want balance to a point that trading items/stats/spells really does change the game without making me feel inferior.  

To answer the subject of the thread: Dynamic.  As much dynamic and random content as possible.  I don't want to have a plan for some quest loop or dungeon crawl.  I want to react to the world around me.

The complaints about the old world dungeons have nothing to do with difficulty and everything to do with the time they take to run. Don't confuse the two; some people *will* complain when they perceive things as too hard - see: heroic Halls of Reflection - but many, many more people will complain if you throw a 4 hour chunk of content in front of them. That's really too much for any game to ask people to commit in one sitting for its core small group activity.

Sounds boring as hell like realistic run speeds.

My answer uses a different word entirely, and draws from things a few have said before me in the thread.

I want my spawns to feel organic.

Please note the use of the word *feel* in there. I don't care if it's scripted and fixed, or if it's completely off the RNG, I want it to feel natural for the state of the game world. I am more of a "world" player than a "game" player when it comes to my MMO's; and want the world to feel plausible within it's own conditions. (Note, I didn't say I want a reality simulator, just plausibility. Suspend my willing disbelief in a consistent manner.)

If you have to script it, force it, or force a flexible version of it, I'm ok with that. If it's just a magical and well written RNG generator pulling from a series of tables, that's cool too. Keep all of that behind the curtain, I won't look! Just make sure it feels right.

I've used the word organic in other forum threads in years passed.  Can we have an MMOG that you react to the world and not a static script?  Seems like a hefty endeavor.

Sounds like sort of an MMO Turing test.  It doesn't matter if whatever is on the other end is actually a dynamic "live" world, just as long as it can fool me into thinking it is.  I basically agreed with all of what you said though.  Very much would prefer worlds to games.  Unfortunately, while it might be an even moderately popular idea here, I think in the MMO population at large, it probably isn't.  As soon as someone has to figure out for themselves what they are going to do with their time in game, you start hearing complaints that "there is nothing to do."

The average gamer always attempts to minimize risk and maximize reward.  If you throw in the orc village/dragon (gives more xp, but chance to have a dragon roast you) and a basic orc village (less xp, but mostly safe) 8 out of 10 players will go for the latter.  And if you don't provide that latter content, then ultimately they'll just up and go to another game.

Even CoH became familiar.  At some point, veteran players have the tileset down and can mostly navigate the levels blind, just like a WoW dungeon.  Time to get there is different, but the endpoint is the same.

The point is to seek out appropriate content.  You don't charge headlong in only to find a dragon that one shots you, you scope it out, say "Oh, wow, looks like a Dragon was here recently (smoldering ruins, whatever), and you go somewhere else.  Likewise, you could go there and find out that the orcs have moved and now goblins are living in that place, and maybe goblins aren't as much of a challenge for your group, so again, you go look elsewhere. 
Similarly, a higher level group might here wind of the fact that a dragon has taken out the orc camp and they might starting gathering some friends to go fight it.

Thats how I envision such a system working at least.

Definitely static spawn for me. Dynamic spawn is almost going up to the devs and saying "Oh hi, can I have another monster here cause I brought a friend?" And the dev goes "Why sure you can, my boy! Sure you can!" And the dev hands them another mob, then the players go "Yay thanks, can we have some ice cream too!" And the dev goes "Sure you can, sure you can!" Then everybody gets ice cream.

^_^  :heart:  :heart:  :heart:

I want to turn a corner and find a dragon then realize "Holy crap this is a BAD PLACE TO BE." Then I want to die. I want that shit all over the place. I loved those big red-con giants and griffons in EQ. Maybe some times I'll find stuff that's too easy for me, and I'll be bored. But that's a price I'm willing to pay.

I think a lot of people want unexpected experiences like that. The problem with static spawns is it only ever happens once per encounter/monster, and then you know.

I gave two different options.  Using only that system then you cannot have what you want.  There's nothing saying that has to be the only adjustment.  My second of the two was that players choose the difficulty.  If you want to go through Dungeon X at a level 20 rating when you're 40, then why not?  If you could choose to do the dungeon at level 10, 20, 30, 40, etc rating then it allows both you and the designers that much more control.  These don't have to be exclusive adjustments.

And while there is that player desire, it also makes life much harder on developers since they have to create enough content to fill every level range.  If the system can adjust to its players dynamically, then the burden only becomes making quality content while not worrying so much about whether it fits your players' abilities.  (That was such a pain in my MUD days.  Lower levels need stuff to do, but the high levels are getting bored.  Or all the 40-50 zones are crap.)  Let the players wander where they want.  If they can further adjust the difficulty to match their play style, all the better.  Single player games let us do it, right?

I totally agree. I think this is something that should deliberately target the niche. Explorer types will love it, and roleplayers could too as it creates a great tapestry for their play; but I wouldn't want to budget something like this on the hopes of a million players. Something much smaller could be possible and profitable, as long as it's not hyped as the Next Great WoW Killer, etc.

The real problem is finding someone who wants to fund a niche product.

That completely destroys any sense of a plausible world to me.  Why can I select how difficult the enemies are going to be in a particular area?  I want the world to feel real and internally consistent, and settings like this ruin it.  I agree entirely with Grimwell in that I want it to feel like a world that feels plausible, and that mechanics like that should be behind the curtain.  Throw a 'difficulty setting' or an option to select what level my enemies are at me, and there is no feeling of that whatsoever.

I agree.

The way WOW put in Heroics is interesting and fine with me.  Have a max level version and a level appropriate version.  Allowing it to go beyond that is messy.

You want a plausible world yet you want to be able to crush an area?  You're asking for contradictory things.  A plausible world have a low power curve and you're never going to be able to return to crush those orcs who tormented you at level 10.  Why are foozles in Area X so much weaker than Area Z?

On top of that, I'm only throwing out examples of what is possible.  Maybe you don't have more control than "a little easier" or "a little more challenging".  What's allowed is a fundamental part of the design.  Things are things which could be done.  That doesn't mean they should.

My ideal world is something like Guild Wars where the level caps out quickly and your strength is based on skill synergies and small equipment upgrades.  Dynamic spawns could still work in this system.  My ideal does not mean it's everyone else's.  That also doesn't preclude some of these concepts from working here or elsewhere.  It's one part of the whole.

Not necessarily; considerable differences in technology/other areas of development do make it relatively easier to conquer certain areas, even in our own world and through our own history.

edit: on a very vaguely related note, just what the hell is happening in that AV picture?  :uhrr:

A diffierent solution to this is to have all mobs of X type be similar level. Rats are level 1, orcs are level 5, dragons are level 20. You start in the rat-infested basement, end up in "Here be dragons" territory.

AV picture?  Mine?  It's a red panda hugging a stuffed dragon.

Still doesn't explain why I can barely feel this level 5 orc stab me in the face fifty times, whereas that level 15 elf maims me with a throwing knife from 50 feet.But you're just selectively deciding what belongs in a 'plausible' world, and what concessions to make to the game - probably shaped mostly by what you're used to. Counterpoints: In a mostly static world, how is it plausible that...
- all the people in the Dark Castle reappear in the exact same spots doing the exact same things every time I kill them?
- I'm an intrepid adventurer living in a world of danger, yet every week I can't think of anything better to do than run through that same damn Dark Castle again?
- the Dark Overlord's glowing armor have a 93.2% chance to vaporize whenever he dies?

If you frame the adventure correctly, randomized dungeons with customized spawns can actually make a lot more sense - exploring the Forest of Mystery is a lot more mysterious and exploratory when you're setting foot on new, unmapped ground every time. And if you're a bit lower level, just choose the part of the forest known for coyotes and not for rabid grizzly bears.

Anyway, there's no reason why the two concepts can't coexist in a game. I think a fleshed out, handcrafted overworld dotted with lots of endless random Diablo-esque dungeons would be neat.

Which is a different arguement entirely.

Climbing the level ladder actually makes me feel like my character is getting weaker. I can burn through mobs at low levels, at med levels things start to slow down, and at high levels, it takes 25 people doing their damnest to kill just one guy!  :uhrr:
At best, you're treading water, or maybe running on a treadmill?  :oh_i_see:

All this talk about whether or not content should scale to the players seems to have overlooked the opposite possibility - allowing players to scale themselves to the content.  It seems this would make the content developers' lives a bit easier than doing it the other way around.  The key, it seems to me, is to still adjust the rewards appropriately.  Mentoring/sidekicking mechanics in several games already allow players to adjust themselves to some extent, but so far all the implementations I've seen miss getting the reward adjustment right.  It seems they all err on the side of underrewarding someone who adjusts their level to tackle other-leveled content, probably due to some mix of the amount of work it would take to figure out exactly what would be a reward appropriate to a wide range of risk, and also to the need to avoid EVER making a mistake in that calculation which would overreward under some circumstance as players would soon discover then abuse the hell out of it.

Another problem is the question of dynamic vs static is vague.  As others pointed out, there are multiple answers based on just what KIND of dynamism you are talking about.  I personally hate "spawn points" unless they make some kind of sense for why mobs suddenly appear out of thin air at that point.  Having a game where mobs spawn out of logical places is something I haven't seen done yet in any MMO, with the exception of attackers from dropships in some game (was that Tabula Rasa?).  I guess the biggest problem with that is that player density in these game worlds is way too high to support realistic-seeming monster spawns.  You can only fit so many caves, barracks, or whatnot in a given area, and once they were all occupied by players, there would be nothing left to do.  Randomly spawning a new nest out in the open which then spawns more critters is just as silly as the spawning the critters there themselves.

Given all that, I do appreciate when the devs put at least a little effort into hiding the staticness of a spawn by providing multiple possible spawn points for the same mob, varying the mob types and/or difficulties, having the mobs wander around, interact with each other, etc.  The more of those little things they combine, the easier it is to overlook some of the absurdities of the whole situation.

This. Just recently I ran some tests in City of Villains and found that it shouldn't be too hard to solo a brute to cap in under 30 hours by using the mission architect to force-exemp yourself to level one when the time/reward ratios are all out of whack. It's not such a big deal because a farm team can PL you in less time than that anyway, but in a more solo-centric game this sort of abusability could be a huge concern.
which brings us back to the old uniserver vs multiserver, open world vs instancing arguments. Covering a lot of ground in this thread!

I wonder if a hybrid of randomly or procedureally generated instanced content that had to then be tweaked by a human (gm/designer/elder player) would hit closer to the mark of having both dynamic and static content.  Start with a themed random map, some spawns and loot with in, and overall victory condition/goal and mini boss fight of some kind, then let a human sanity check and tweak it.  Granted, there are always limits to how many building block assets you would be talking about, but having public areas like typicall mmorpg zones with radomized static spawns, and doors/gates to the instanced "partially hand crafted" that you would typically go through once.

Sounds like a niche game, or even an expansion of the NWN type concept involving player submissions that have to be sanity checked by the devs.
Having not played CoH/Cov with the Architect module, how has that affected the way players use content?  Are players primarily consuming the dev made zones and missions or the player made ones?

To quibble with your quibble, it actually wasn't hard to notice at all if you knew what to look for.  Back in the pre-CU days anyway.  As with just about everything it tried, SWGs spawning concept (didn't they call them dynaspawns or something like that?) was a great-sounding idea with a horribly under-thought and buggy implementation that probably set the whole industry back a decade on ever trying the like again.  As your character or group moved around in the world, new spawn camps were triggered in your vicinity, generally in front of you, or in some direction based on the facing or direction of travel of you and your groupmates at some point in time during the decisionmaking process. There were no levels then, so the game used some sort of seekrit algorithm to determine what would be an appropriate spawn for you.   Sounds cool, but the devil was in the details which the SWG team were clueless about.  

As noted, there were a limited number of spawn camps allowed per planet so once they were used up, you could travel off into the wilderness and never EVER see another mob, unless someone killed a camp and you happened to be the lucky ones to trigger the next spawn.  The camp limit, unfortunately, was an absolutely necessary hack to prevent every planet's inhabited areas from eventually filling up with spawn camps as dense as the spacing limits (if there were any) let them.  Because the only mechanisms they had for despawning camps was: players kill camp, players abandon the sector of the world the camp was in allowing the server to unload it, or the daily server resets.  And the conditions for spawning new camps far exceeded those few criteria for despawning them.

So another detail was that any player or group moving around and exploring (or prospecting and harvesting) rather than killing everything in sight caused far more spawn camps to be added than they removed from the world.

Yet another detail is that you might never see a camp spawned for you, if you were moving too fast (once speeder bikes were implemented) or if you changed directions a lot.

Compound this with the more difficult the camp was, the less likely some other group would bother (or be able) to take it out.

And finally, there did not seem to be any controls on how many camps were spawned in a given area or how close to each other they were, other than the planetary (and possibly sector) limit(s).

The result was lots and lots of spawn camps left in the world at any given time that were created as content for people who were no longer playing in that part of the world.  This was dramatically evident at the more remote and difficult worlds in which each landing area (which was generally a safe area) would be surrounded by a solid ring of spawn camps.  Literally as you left the LZ your radar would light up with a curved wall of red dots, thinning out the farther from the LZ you managed to get.  Blow through a weak spot in the RROD (years before MS reinvinted it  :why_so_serious: ) and you could then wander the planet with relative impunity, provided enough other players remained busy grinding the mobs (and respawning them) around the spaceports and cities, or not killing mobs at all.

Another less than wonderful but very visible effect was you'd have this vast plain with absolutely no mobs anywhere to be seen, except for a large concentration of them right on top of this really sweet mining spot (which looked rather like an endless field of refineries).  Naturally, most of these mobs would be of the hardest type for that area, since the weaker ones were easily removed.  Too bad for you if that now-ugly industrial hellscape was the once-scenic site of your house!  If you were really unlucky, you could even have some uninvited guests attacking you while you were inside decorating or whatnot.  Naturally, they could see and attack you through the walls of your house but you couldn't fight back until you could get outside.  :awesome_for_real:

So, the lesson developers learned?  Don't do random spawns.  Don't adjust spawns to player abilities.  Don't try to make things dynamic, lock everything down.  And most important of all, don't try anything new.

All the WRONG lessons of course, if you want better/more interesting/new experiences.  But when such a visible and expensive project fails so spectacularly, none of the money people care about the details of WHY it failed, only THAT it failed and anything remotely like it MUST BE AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS.  Because they wouldn't understand the details even if someone competent explained it to them, and what's the likelihood of them hearing that explanation from someone competent, given the competency of the "experts" they trusted their money with to do the job in the first place?

tl;dr dynamic spawning is FAR FAR harder to get right than the static equivalent, so unless you are willing to commit the resources to getting the right people and giving them enough time to get it right, you are FAR better off going with static spawns and MAYBE giving them a semblance of dynamism with VERY carefully controlled variability.

As far as actual content, that's still mostly in the realm of dev-created stuff. More than anything else, the mission architect is used for farm teams - a tank, a couple good AoE characters and a support character or two can blow through huge spawns of customized gimp enemies at an alarming rate, generating tons of "tickets" (currency for salvage and recipe rolls) for themselves and anyone else on the team, and also powerleveling anyone who isn't already 50. I don't think taking additional characters reduces ticket rewards, so even lowbies and lolstalkers can get invited to farm teams from time to time, and it's absolutely the fastest way for most characters to level.

A lot of people also do create bona fide story arcs in the MA, some of which are pretty well done. The majority, needless to say, are not. So if you want to go that route you can either try your luck selecting missions at random, or just play the highly rated ones. But the only surefire way to avoid missions whose objectives include killing every enemy on a giant outdoor map and also clicking on 138 glowies is to avoid the MA altogether, which is what most people do.

A lot of people avoid MA like the plague because they associate it with farming and PLing, and conclude that anyone who goes there is a cheater who hates fun and enjoys kicking puppies. To an extent there's a "MA for farming, dev content for everything else" mentality which is sort of a shame since some of the MA arcs actually are really good.

Other uses for the MA include creating challenge maps for other players, testing mechanics in a controlled environment, and as a way for AV-killer characters to fight AVs without having to actually plow through their associated mission arcs and TFs (including ones that would normally only be available to opposite-aligned characters).

Totally. I'd be fine with the Dark Forest Full of Spiders having a few static spawns, a boss in the center, and a bunch of random spawns in the forest. Simple, easy, and bit unpredictable in that Spider X isn't always going to be at X,Y co-ords every time you visit the forest.

SWG is a bad example to use of why it's hard.  It's not hard, they simply didn't believe their garbage collection was broken.  We were told as much when we brought it up and they wouldn't believe us.

The spawns were also a likely cause of increased poor performance since all those lairs were never deallocated.  It was simply another reflection on the poor management of the game.

This is bat country?

Also, you've just described WoW.  Randomized mobs with constraints and (minimal) behaviours created in appropriately themed zones.  The neckbeards would claim it's not random, because the game needs to be capable of completely unpredictable and undesirable behaviours which would utterly horsefuck anyone who isn't a catass in order for them to be satisfied.  Like all of the dragons moving into Stormwind's auction house, boy would that rock.

But all of this is bullshit.  The only problem with batshit fucking insane levels of realtime procedural world generation is that is creates the potential for the game to grief the players, and grief is derived from the loss of time /played to bullshit that the player did not want to do and does not enjoy.  Corpse runs, repair bills, loss of consumable buffs, the requirement for player to re-buff each other, and other death penalties can fuck right off, then the developer can do whateverthefuck they want, and the players really no longer have any legitimate reason to gripe, because all they lost was the fifteen seconds while Cthulu raped them with his beard tentacles, and I know an absolute shitload of people who would laugh at the chaos if it wasn't for the fact that it cost them play time doing stuff they enjoy.

Like Nebu was hinting at, as soon as you start removing the potential for min/maxing (and because MMO's are essentially time sinks, all min/maxing tends to boil down to time invested versus gains) you can focus on making a good game.  What a novel concept: punching the player in the dick only makes him adverse to dick punching.  It makes him a cautious player, adverse to risk, exploration, learning, and all the other shit that people would want to do if they didn't get punched in the dick for it.

I've personally never really understood this argument.   Part of it is because I, mainly, do not play MMOs for the "game," at least not in principle.  I like the idea of being a part of that virtual world, as I've mentioned earlier in this thread.  If you don't want that experience, I'd say don't play an MMO. (Yes, I realize the vast majority of MMO players don't want this experience, and most MMOs don't even try to offer it anymore).   If the cards land in such a way that you get hosed, well, thats what happens sometimes, and other times the cards will come out a different way that is in your favor.   People have this desire for unhalting progress, but I don't mind taking steps back now and again as long as it fits within the context of the game, and it is CERTAINLY worth occasionally "losing" because the game does something you didn't expect, if it means well...that the game does things you don't expect.  Besides, when losing is a real possibility, winning is that much better.

There's where your though processes go astray.  Repair bills and death penalties are a game mechanic.  Taking a visit to the blacksmith might be world, but forking over the gold is game.

No. In WoW I start off killing level 1 wolves, then I move along to level 5 kobolds, level 20 ogres, level 40 wolves, level 50 dragons, level 60 ogres, and finally I finish up killing level 80 kobolds that would totally anklebite those pussy dragons to death if you ever put them together.

It was completely jarring to me when I started playing WoW that any given creature comes in dozens of varieties, some dozens or hundreds of times more powerful than others.

To the original question:

I'd want both, for variety. But I think I prefer static spawns when that's the only way of generating enough challenge, and dynamic spawns when that can do it. Borderlands is a great example of this, because for all its faults, when you're on the right part of the difficulty curve with a few friends, it can throw some really interesting puzzles just by having a certain combination of guys.

The problem with dynamic COH missions and the like is that once you get down who's supposed to do what in your group, you just do it. Maybe your numbers are high enough, maybe they're not, but that's beside the point.

It is telling that in most MMOs, the game you're playing pre level cap isn't the "how do I win this encounter?" game, but rather the meta "how do I maximize  my XP?" game. I think a large part of that is due to being unable/unwilling to offer a fun experience to players on a mob to mob basis.

This is a hollowed tradition of CRPGs!

Put me in the "Organic" camp.  I think AI is the next big hurdle in order to move the genre forward.

Here's the big wish list:

• Mob types which have agendas: reclaim territory, avoid certain areas, etc.
• Agendas sectioned into trees to keep things interesting; allow for variation based on circumstances.
• Ability for GM's to control agendas in order to follow major story arcs.
• Variation with mob types.  While an agenda is progressing, splinter agendas could be formed by lone/small groups of mobs.
• Ability for mobs to capture/control areas: fight with other mobs, take over spawn points, control buildings, etc
• NPC's which can react to certain agendas: give warnings about an agenda in progress, send out NPC's to counter, offer rewards, etc.
• Different ways of sabotaging or stopping a mobs agenda.  The deeper a mob is into an agenda, the better the rewards for stopping them would be.

Shouldn't be too tough to implement  :why_so_serious:

So a dynamically generated world with dynamically generated quests.

That's what I want too.

Nobody's been able to build it right though. Either it's skill or budget that holds them back unfortunately.

I think the other problem is that people want a more predictable environment.  For each one of us that wants not to know whats happening, 1000 other people want to know exactly what they are going to log in to.

EDIT: My point being that sufficiently skilled or budgeted projects probably aren't going to spend  alot of time on that anyway, and the closest we get is something like Cryptics "genesis" system or "omega system" each of which are just subpar random mission generators.

Yea, if you're coming from WoW, you want that kind of predictability. So is this a business possibility only if this goes into defining a new market?

I'd guess the technology is the biggest constraint.  You can't just spawn a mob when a user enters an area, you need to persistently track everything always.  Tracking tons of decision trees, coupled with predictive pathing to determine the best agenda is going to put a big load on your servers.

Budget is probably a close second.  Coding all those decision trees and minutia in order for things to feel lifelike would take a lot of time and money.  Until someone makes the sandbox equivalent to WOW, companies seem content to shit out DIKU clones in hopes of one sticking.

This sounds a lot like the old "FPS where you play a grunt or a peon" idea. Except, like most MMOGs, there's no way for either side to actually win.

How would a PvE sandbox be more engaging than the mindless PvP back-and-forth in Planetside or DAoC's frontiers? Go to sleep with a small fortress and mining camp, wake up to discover the barbarians have recaptured it. Sure, theoretically certain areas could get locked down as "safe" for longer periods of time, or the NPC forces could be weak enough to make holding them off a bore rather than a challenge... but ultimately what's the point? Nevermind the computing difficulties, what makes this stickier than PvP sandboxes have turned out to be? Sure "nobody's ever done it (except Tabula Rasa  :why_so_serious:)", but what makes it worth doing?

Easy, allow genocide.  :drill:

Allow the players to pick a group and win. If they all side up with the orcs and kill every damn elf in the world, let them. To Hell with your investment in art assets, it's a neat story.

The risk there is that the map eventually becomes monochrome though right? It does. But if you allow players who jump through the right hoops the opportunity to create an elf camp where none exist, they can nurture it and bring it back. Throw in some active GM support who do things to keep the world interesting, and it should work. Worst case possible? Declare the game "WON" and open up rifts to a new dimension/continent and have a mass of new enemies surge through to change the balance.

Pack that in a good story, and be honest about the reasons you are doing it and people will thank you.

Because, at the end of the day, every game we play has a lacking answer to "what's the point" of you don't twist things to keep them fun.

That's a slippery slope, and a difficult sell.

Players may be upset they never had a chance to save the elves. Players may even be upset that others were given the chance to kill or save them, but now they no longer have the opportunity. The genocide of the elves might be a great story if it takes years, but not if it takes weeks. Either way, a year later it might not even be a footnote, especially if there have been multiple win states, strange invaders, and new continents since then. The story gets less and less interesting the more of those invaders (and occupants of those new continents) turn out to be thinly disguised elves.

All I'm asking is whether the thanks will be worth the extra effort. What makes this more fun than a PvP sandbox?

Wakfu is attempting this with their ecology system :

http://www.wakfu.com/en/discover/features/11-creature-families.   (http://www.wakfu.com/en/discover/features/11-creature-families.  )

There is a point, in any deign, where you have to answer these questions with a simple "So." and move forward. If you have budgeted appropriately and targeted the right people, not pleasing some folks should be a fair consideration - if they are outside your target/budget audience to begin with.

If you don't, you get into that "Let's make a game for EVERYONE!!! It will be great!" trap, and then you are screwed.

Plus, my point about letting people start a small elf camp, or invasions from another dimension, opens that door back up.

...and I'd kill my systems/design team if they let it happen in a week outside of beta. :)

I dunno, I thrive off that kind of thing.  I LOVE lore, but not just like, lore written by a fiction writer, but actual lore created by the players through their actions.  If I was reading a "summary" of past events that had some sort of Elven Kingdom that was actually overthrown by orcs and was no totally off the map or reduced to rag tag bands of elves plotting their return to power, I would drop what I was doing, buy the game right way, and never look back.

I don't care if I never got to see the Elves in power if I started playing after that, who cares if I didn't take part in their overthrow, as a participant in that world its a part of your history none the less, not to mention the sorts of stories that get created going forward. 

Case in point, these kinds of stories about ISK stealing, spies in 0.0 space, etc, are what got me to play EVE Online in the first place.  I didn't really care about playing a sci-fi space based MMO, I cared about playing in a world full of economic and political intrigue, where the history of the game world is literally the history of player action.  In this way, the lore/history of the game is in a way very much "non fiction."   One difference being that in EVE there is still a lot of NPC factions that are effectively "static" (or at least, any 'movement' is developer determined) and not going to be effected by player fighting/schemes, etc.  A game that could take that to the next level would be close to my "holy grail" in MMO gaming.

The counter-point to that would be, trying to ensure every bit of content is always available to everyone locks your game in the form of amusement park where nothing ever changes no matter how many blowjobs the NPCs give you for your great deeds. Which is also something the players (not necessarily the same group who gets upsed over missing out) don't appreciate much, which makes it one of these "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenarios.

They're trying to work around that with the things like 'phasing' in WoW and such but i'm not convinced this is good route to go given in the end player still knows it's all faked and nothing they ever do makes any actual difference.

Yeah, these are basically two audiences that want different things, and there's no telling how large the audience that wants a changing world is, because nobody has done that really well in my opinion.  WoW has done the static world reasonably well, and their execution, budget, polish, and marketing allowed them to expand the market to a point that nobody even imagined back before it released. 

A similar level of execution has not been reached for a 'changing world' game, perhaps partly because the technology to make a really good 'changing world' with really logical behavior on the part of the AI and long-term planning and changes simply isn't here yet, and partly because to do it to the same degree of 'quality' that WoW has, I believe the needed budget would be considerably larger than what WoW had.  Someday a game of this sort may be made, executed and polished well enough and people will flock to it in numbers thus far unimagined for that type of gameplay.

As for 'eventually,' technology could reach a point (and this is probably quite some time away due to various things, especially the massive cheap storage that would be needed) where the game could essentially record everything that ever happens, allowing you to go back in time and participate in 'historical events' that actually happened.  You might be restricted from altering those events, but for the players that want to have a chance to participate in everything, this would create a living history full of events to go back in time and participate in.  Or run in a 'simulator' or whatever.  That concept seems like the eventual 'best of both worlds' dream scenario.

But yes, a world in which I can actually affect things in some way and those things actually become part of the history, shaping future events, is exactly what I would like.  It's why I wish EVE was a game that I didn't totally hate the mechanics of, because it seems to be the closest we've ever come so far.

Frankly, I think phasing is actually worse than purely static, but each "phase" is still static, and on top of that, now if I am in the same exact spot of land in the game world, but in a different phase than someone, its as if they aren't there.  Its basically like little time travel bubbles in the world.  Didn't like it when I heard about it, and I still don't after experiencing it.

Yea. In my opinion, the only way the "changing world" model can really work is in an open world setting with full land ownership and warfare like Eve. Since the development process of skill needs for making AI do this is so unique to how the industry is otherwise set up, it makes more sense to shed the responsibility back onto the players themselves. You just need to get them to realize they are the story, the history, and the content.

Eve so far is the only one that has been able to figure this out. SWG and UO both tried it but then the teams changed and the direction of the games changed.

Random points:

 - Ryzom tried to have a more organic ecology and it looked good, but it's not enough to make the game interesting. Having predators attack prey and herds move in formation are really just nice cosmetics. I'm aware that people are discussing real, meaningful impact, but that can have some far-reaching consequences (such as: if all the orcs are dead and a key quest has a "turn in 10 orc bones" as a requirement, you are going to have some very unhappy players).

 - ChampO has the system where citizens run up and give missions to players in a much more 'normal' way than having contacts just stand around. In beta, a lot of players complained that they didn't want citizens bothering them, then the missions were too far away and what the hell kind of role were they playing anyway - did they look like a superhero? Players want to play the game their way (which is also why players really hate smart / realistic AI).

 - MxO had the experience in using a live team to try to generate events that they'd just as often run into players who didn't care as those who did. So they would waste a lot of time setting up a situation for a player - engaging them, trying to run an event in front of them, which was responded to with a "wtf u wat i log of".

In conventional terms, I like dynamic spawning because I enjoy playing a game. The odd static spawn is fine.

What more MMOs should be aiming for is the Diablo-mix of dynamic and static spawns / locations. Or EvE's single huge universe with a mix of everything, shaken up by player PvP.

The Ryzom system could be seen in SWG as well if you happened to be in the right place at the right time. EQ1 experimented with it in the Shadows of Luclin expansion. There were two different zones that had mob rotation (as one was hunted down, the other shows up).

I think the key here is that the quest ecology would need to be as dynamic as the zone/area ecology. If you took the quest to kill 10 orcs and there's no orcs around, then the game should give you credit for finding any 10 orcs in the game world. And if they've been eradicated from the game server altogether, then you simply missed your time at helping so move on to another quest.

Your ChampO example reminded me of the spawning note from earlier. I love the little touches some games make when they spawn creatures in another room but you don't know it until they open the door and jump you. Or you seem them climb out of the ground or teleport in with sfx or anything other than just fading into view because the game said it was time to.

Finally, your MxO comment reminded me of the GM Events from UO way back in the day, particularly Yew and Vespar invasions. Those were good times. Constantly going battles with associated quests that eventually ended. A lot more fun and fluid than collecting 10,000 wool to open the AQ gates in WoW.

Overall, I'd want a mix of dynamic and static in the way SWG intended plus having a Live team that was about Live content rather than just being about keeping the servers from eating themselves.

I guess part of the problem is that audience then?

I remember playing Neverwinter Nights on a PW server that had a very strong community.  The admin/devs for the PW worked with the player base very closely.  They ran DM events that players were always incredibly eager to get in on.  When the players did something that should change the world, they opened up the editor and changed the world to reflect those things. It was enforced RP, all chat was in character (except for whispers I guess).   It was always my dream for MMOs that I would have that kind of experience, but with 1000s of players, instead of dozens.

Everything was static, but the fact the the DMs were able to pull the strings at opportune moments made everything feel great.

Yes. The ratio between DM and player has long been the problem though. Companies spent so long funnelling resources to keeping the game live that players became accustomed less and less interaction, until eventually "DM" was just some blue name who keeps the forum riffraff in line.

The audience isn't the problem. They just aren't the same that the genre started with, the 70s-80s era ex-D&D players who were looking for enough of that experience but in a graphical environment. Those people still exist, but they're the minority of the playerbase these days.

And 40 levels of nothing but ogres is the answer?

I think Darkfall Online actually handles this pretty well.  There is enough variety though that it isn't just "Murder goblins, then the next thing, then the next thing, and then when I'm sttrong enough, I'm just killing X all day."  Though there is a bit of that.  Then again, that isn't a level based game to begin.  My point is though, you can manage variety while still making the world seem somewhat logical, instead of having level 80 kobolds that look in every way like the level 5 kobolds, except slightly bigger and bluer.

Yeah, the trick is to have a wide and shallow power curve where 98% of the game's content isn't either worthless grey or suicidal red at all times.

As i understand it the opposite approach (i.e. grey/red 98% of the time) is there to enforce players proceed through their rides without straying off-path and going to places out of order, turning the whole carefully crafted illusion of ongoing storyline into mess.

That's the theory. But there isn't an MMO I can think of with a narrative so tight going off the rails is a bad thing. Most of the modern games only want to put you in a certain order to ensure you don't get steamrolled by red-con stuff in a zone too high for your level. Maybe there's a story in there, but it's usually restricted to the zone or merely to serve as the reason to get to the next one, never both and never a binding narrative from level 1 to cap.

Again, this is because the players have evolved to not expect it.

But isn't that reversing the cause and effect? I mean, if there's no intention for the player to follow zones in certain order then there's no reason to make the zone that's 'too high for your level' just steamroll you in the first place (instead of just being mildly higher challenge)

Yes and no.  I mean,  the idea of levels isn't just to make people follow a narrative.  Look at the Dungeons and Dragons monster's manual.  Monsters generally have a single level, or a smallish level range.  There is a reason there are jokes about killing goblins and kobolds by the 1000s.  CRPGs have adopted levels because it was in pencil and paper games, and then the MMO genre did the same thing.  It seems to me the reusing of monsters is mostly just a matter of keeping art assets down.

My point being, yeah, they do want to keep you from going to the red stuff, more than the other way around.  In Dungeons and Dragons, the DM can just put in whatever monster he wants in a certain spot, but in an MMO, the level 50 stuff is in a certain area, and you CAN go there at level 3 if you want.  Its just going to ruin your day.  Hell, anyone who has played alliance side WoW can probably attest that they accidentally wandered into the Burning Steppes their first time through Red Ridge mountains only to find a near end game zone.   

RPG basically just means "character progression" these days anyway, and the modern MMO is basically just about guiding the player through that progression, not about story, or anything else.

The reason it's set up this way is to separate players from content inappropriate for their levels. The only reason that is even the case is because of the reliance on levels to provide progression through a game.

You could have a game entirely based on narrative progression and not have levels at all (finish a story segment> choose from X abilities instead of finish a story> get XP> get level> get abilities). But that's risky when it's been proven that the diku-inspired XP>levels>class system sells so well.

This is what I mean by this sort of game being for a completely different market.  The issues you note in ChampO and MxO are issues of the player being there for a different kind of game than that mechanic/interaction is designed for.  Of course, most of the game is still designed for the market that doesn't want these things, so these small changes are unwelcome to most of the players.  This doesn't seem like something that can be worked into gradually, but something that the game has to be entirely designed for from the start.

The quest issue you mention only exists with static quests.  A changing world cannot have static quests, the quests must be generated in much the same logical, evolving manner as the rest of the world.  If there are many orcs nearby, the human settlement would be giving orc-killing quests.  If the orcs are all gone, the orc-killing quests would go away too, because the humans aren't worried about orcs.  They'd be replaced with quests about whatever the humans are worried about at the moment.  Now if we build a world where NPC's can level in a way, we get a more interesting setup here where the quests can actually be interesting and relevant.  An orc pawn kills someone - a player or an NPC of a faction that is an enemy of the orcs, and levels into an orc centurion.  The orc centurion then needs to kill several more people in order to level into an orc captain, which eventually levels into an orc chieftain.  At that point he gets a randomly generated name and either founds his own orc camp, or takes over an existing orc camp without a current chieftain.  The nearby human settlement, in response, puts out a quest asking for the head of the nearest orc chieftain.  Once that chieftain is dead, the quest goes away, switching to the next nearest orc chieftain, or just disappearing until another orc chieftain is close enough to be an issue.

But in order to work and attract a large audience (if one exists), all of this has to be done really well.  So far the games that have tried haven't done it really well, partly because the technology doesn't exist, and partly because the development budget for this kind of thing is hard to come by.  UO tried it, I think, and either the technology or the amount of time spent on the programming of it was insufficient to do it really well, so it came out in a state that nobody liked.

The obvious issue is that without any way of actually knowing how many players such a game would attract, there's no way to know how much to spend on making it, and certainly no justification for spending the tens or hundreds of millions it would take to make it huge, highly functional, and polished to a shine.  Perhaps in time there will be an evolution of this kind of game that leads to its own 'WoW' type that shows people that a market exists for them.  Or perhaps not.

But overall I don't buy that the audience that wants this kind of game is the minority, not necessarily.  That's the same thing people said about MMOG's in general before WoW came out, then someone did it well enough to attract a huge audience.  I expect there's a similar possibility for this type of game, if it were done well.

Look at EVE, I mean, I guess the accepted number is 300k.  Lots of people have multiple accounts too, so who knows how many individuals are playing it.  But lets say it is 300k. Thats a very polished game, and it doesn't have Dynamic PvE content, but the PvP is very dynamic.  I guess you could argue that it is a PvP/PvE divide more than a static/dynamic divide, but I think its pretty clear that most people don't like EVE, regardless of how much I, or anyone else, insists that its the best MMO on the market for a variety of reasons.

EVE would be great if the mechanics of, well, everything - moving, fighting, understanding shit all about your own character - weren't so horrible in my opinion.  I've tried their free trial a couple times due to interest from things like reading the EVE threads around here, and the game is so obtuse I can't even begin to play.  Everything feels like a chore to do.  Some people enjoy it somehow, but when the most basic mechanics put me off of the game, the depth and dynamic content can't capture me because I never get that far, even if I am already very interested due to what I've heard.

In most games I pick a class that defines my general abilities.  In UO I could pick from several skills, but the list of possible skills wasn't anywhere near as huge as that of EVE and I could generally understand what they all do.  Going through character creation in EVE made me feel like I need to go to a class for a week just to understand my options.  EVE has some of the concept down pretty good, but it's behind one of the least friendly games to actually play that I've ever tried.  If someone made a similar game that was well-polished and most significantly, easy to get into and play even if it has tremendous depth, it would be closer to what I'm talking about.  EVE just drops you into the middle a pool with no shallow end, and says "here, learn to swim."

It seems as if the only way to have a true unique experience every time you log on would be to have perpetual new content or with PvP.

It does seem pretty damned silly to have to hack your way through a bunch of wolves milling around aimlessly.  Maybe there is a better way to have the mobs interact with the environment once they spawn to make it more interesting.

I just... I mean, I'd love all these grand world changing ideas and mobs taking resources and unionizing and holding teas to do diplomacy and all that, but I feel like you just need combat that feels solid (so many MMOs miss this), that has enough levels of interaction to make it interesting (bye, CoH), and scales in difficulty to # of people/difficulty setting/power level/current situation. This is not so tough, especially in a genre that people are totally used to creatures spawning with no rhyme or reason.

Plenty of non MMOs have hit this difficulty curve of letting the players win, but pinning them just at the edge of their skill level just fine, and give the players tweaks (difficulty settings, grinding for added help) to make up for unexpected differences in player skill. Most MMOs start from the premise that hitting 1 a lot is what their average player can handle.

More to the point, most MMOs start from the premise that most of their players aren't playing for the engaging combat.

Most MMO players are barely capable of pressing 1 a lot.

I'm doubtful. I'm pretty sure if you limit the population to just people with an 80, a group of median skilled WoW players would tear through a level 80 MC. Sure, you need to have a difficulty level  for the player who hasn't played video games before, and you need end game for people who are hopeless. But playing trains.

I'm firmly of the opinion that you could do a modernized UO, grab several hundred thousand people easy, and then keep them basically FOREVER. Or if you prefer, an Eve with less spreadsheet but more tits and house decorating. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

The only thing is it would have to be an actual professional game with well-designed systems. It can't be a semi-vaporware indie shitpile that courts nothing but griefer faggots ala Darkfall. It can't be SWG with its ill-fitting IP and stupid beardy shit like HAM and permadeath alpha classes.

EvE with more tits and house decorating? Bring on World of Darkness Online.  :awesome_for_real:

More seriously, you can't do a modernised UO because what UO was isn't going to attract that couple of hundred thousand players at launch. EvE has worked out by slowly growing through word-of-mouth and having the time to get over a horrible start.

I see a lot of people in this thread calling for more emergent game systems and I really like that idea... in theory. The reality is that MMO history has repeatedly shown that handing emergent systems to players is much the same outcome as handing orphaned altar boys to Catholic priests. Again, EvE works because CCP allow for a lot more of the extremes at the edges and shrug off player complaints.

Any heap of shit with decent marketing muscle seems to sell half a million boxes these days. They just can't keep anyone.

Since it's the interactions between humans that provides the best kind of dynamism I think it's clear why the closest examples of world altering games all had PvP as a major part: Eve, UO and Shadowbane.
But, it also seems that the PvP game style itself brings with it so much extra baggage that I wonder if you could at a layer to make a PvE game with players dealing with content structured by other players.
Cloud shaping time (sorry for the length)

A game where your hero starts in a capital city to learn some basic skills and resources (money, gear, equipment).  The goal is to head out into the frontiers of the realm to explore and eventually, found your own homestead with the goal being to build it into a prospering town.  So you leave town either solo or with friends, heading out of the safe areas into the wilds looking for a good place to stake your claim.  You could have fairly standard open world with wandering mobs part here, but also the landscape itself should have resources that would obviously effect any place you want to build: forest could provider lumber, lakes and streams water and fish, mountainous regions mining, plains for farming, rare stuff, etc.  You claim your land which gives you a say 10 mile radius where other players cannot enter unless invited, you build a house and deal with any critters in the immediate area.  At that point, your goal shifts to defense of the homestead and resource gathering to expand.

This is where the vs part kicks in.  The challenges you face each day would be "encounters" made by GMs (or even other players) that are suited your level and home base size.  Maybe initially when it's just a house you have to deal with local logical predators like your typical single wolves, bears, mountain lions and the like, with the occasional chance of a bandit, poachers or enemy humanoid thrown in and the rare chance of something stronger: oh crap, and owlbear!  When not fighting, you could do resource gather (mini games is what I'm thinking) in order to grow your homestead.  Think of it as a combo of typical mmorpg first person stuff with civ style building on the shadowbane town level.

As you grow your home, you would employ npc's to take on more of the typical gathering process, and have to defend your space from more challenges.  If you say are harvesting the local deer for yourself, perhaps the pressure throws staving wolf packs and mountain lions your way, or lumbering might lead to fights with dryads and elves.  Perhaps a goblin or orc scouting party from nearby caves finds you. etc.  You could keep ramping this up as your character and town continues to expand; larger towns get more area (say your 10 miles becomes 20), then you may be dealing with more structured challenges like heading to the goblin cave and taking out the local tribe, or fighting off a pack or rampaging wyverns, or discovering a necromancer haunting an ancient burial mound.  From the city building side you could have your own shops and trade goods, and send carvans to other towns, invite other players in to yours to help deal with stronger challenges, pay taxes to your nation (or even eventually rebel).  Or you could leave your npc's/guildmates managing your town and head to higher level towns to lend your skills.  This could ramp all the way up into collections of towns banding together to form their own nations and dealing with challenges of invading armies, or your armies invading other places.

Any way you get the idea.  Giving people their own mini sandbox to play in as part of a larger overall sandbox.  The encounters would be random, but pulling from a set of ones that were designed by people rather than pure RNG.  A level 5 town could have any one of say 20 encounters depending on what buildings they have, resources, land area and character who runs it, so each characters "story" would be different.

Eve with any tits at all would probably double its player base immediately.

I'm new to the thread and didn't read through all the responses, but here's my immediate thoughts:

1.  Dynamic based on character level, gear, etc. would help with the issues WoW has for me.  Older instances now look silly because the "powerful" villains are now chumps and worth nothing.  The storyline still works somewhat if everytime I go there the instance is a challenge rather than a race to get the same old thing at the end.

2.  If the instance changes according to your level, gear, etc. then it better scale the rewards too.  The race for emblems in WoW heroics now is pretty silly if you look at it from a macro level.  I'd much prefer hitting fewer instances per night if they were challenging and gave greater rewards.  As it is now, I hit multiple instances as quickly as I possibly can to get the same emblems from each.

Example:  Since a group consists of characters with item levels of 215-230, there will be 1.5 more mobs and their hps/power will be tweaked by 1.125.  However, each character will be rewarded with 5 emblems rather than 2.  Take the time to pull correctly, use CC, etc. and it will take maybe 30-40 minutes.

Dren, that idea is retarded. What is the point of getting gear if it only going to scale up the difficulty? Nothing ever gets easy, annoying zones stay annoying forever.  :oh_i_see: This was the stupidest fucking thing about Oblivion.

Take Deadmines: Van Cleef is little more than the leader of a thieves guild, which is an appropriate challenge for a group of low level adventurers. However, one who slays dragons on a weekly basis SHOULD be able to crush him with ease.

Rendakor, this assumes that gearing up has a point, or is important to the core game design. In many games it is, but not all.

His post was about WoW. He even argued that he wanted to change how he earns emblems (gearing up), so the point stands. Now, you can certainly go theory-craft up a game where this is not the case, but please don't argue that dynamic mob scaling would help make the WoW badge grind any better.

Whoops! Reading is hard. I missed the WoW part, where gearing up is highly relevant.

The only thing that dynamic mob scaling would do in any grind to make it better is offer a higher variety of targets to attack. Which isn't much variety at all.

This is exactly what I disagree with when I say that this hasn't been tried well enough to make this claim.  A lot of people didn't think the EQ-like MMO had the potential to pull in 10 million+ subscribers.  WoW did it in a polished enough manner to do so, and changed the landscape.  I suspect there very well may be an audience for a modernized UO, but it would have to be done very well and be highly polished in order to draw and retain a large audience.  But exactly like WUA says, it has to be a professional game with well-designed systems and an IP that fits the concept well, and none of the crazy shit that SWG had like HAM and forced interaction with dancers and whatever.

Well, this could be a sticking point actually.  I think one of the things that has sort of been lying under the surface in all this conversation is the assumption that players are either going to be working with each other or against each other.  One of the reasons WoW is so successful is because you can never deal with other players if you don't want to.  Here, other players would have an impact on your experience all the time, even if was indirect, and probably often directly.  While I agree that it has yet to be done in a "well enough" manner to really call it for sure, I think there are some parts of it that have, and one of those things is that the vast majority of players only want to have contact with other players, direct or indirect, on their own terms and on their own time table. 

There's a difference between a game where the normal/best way to accomplish a goal is to interact with another person, and a game that has FORCED INTERACTION™. Running up to the public forge in Britain to buy a new sword from a player blacksmith is the former, sitting with your thumb up your ass in a cantina going "GOD DAMN MIND WOUNDS I WANT TO PLAY THE GAME" is the latter.

The former represents a player coming up with a task which is best served by interacting with someone. The latter represents the developer screaming "HEY STOP PLAYING THE GAME, IT'S TIME FOR SOCIAL INTERACTION!" while everyone flips him off and goes AFK.

In the end, if the player is confronted with "I need to interact with some people to do the thing, and I don't feel like it right now" in both scenarios, are they really that much different to the average player?  If I want to collect ore, but its too dangerous because the orc NPCs have a dynamically generated raiding of the PC settlement going on and I need a group of people to do it safely, is it really that much different in the actual experience of the player, from having to wait for a dancer to get rid of their debuff?  Either way, your waiting around in town for other PCs.

My point is, I think the playerbase needs to be open to/happy about the idea that they are going to need to be interacting with other PCs regularly, or else thing sort of thing isn't going to go well.  If you go in with the mindset that you are going to need to interact with other players, sometimes even when it isn't convenient for you to do it at that moment, then whether  you are looking for an escort to keep you safe while mining, or looking for a dancer to remove a debuff doesn't really matter.  If you go in with the mindset that you are simply going to do what you want, when you want, to hell with anyone else, well, I don't know why you're playing a multiplayer game in the first place, let alone a game like the ones we have been discussing hypothetically in this thread.

But that's a huge issue Malakili - MMO players hate most other MMO players (often with very justified reasons). PUGs are despised in many games for a reason.

A lot of it comes down to the issue that cooperation is much harder than conflict. In PvP, you see an opponent, you knife them in the back, teabag them while insulting their father's sexuality and it's all cut and dried. Cooperation requires talking, making clear objectives, working together for a period and not stepping on each others' toes too much (or failing horribly and blaming each other for it). A knife to the back is much simpler.

It's not just a matter of whether I want to go do what I want when I want.  I can accept reasonable mechanics that cause problems or situations that I need other players to help me solve.  A dungeon that I can't survive alone is perfectly reasonable, or an example of a rich mining area that the orcs have moved into and I need help clearing them out or at least watching my ass while I mine.  But when the mechanic is obviously forced in specifically to require me to 'interact', I'm being forced to stop playing the game in order to do that.  A dynamic world creating a situation where I need the help of others in order to mine ore is logical, rational, and reasonable.  A game mechanic that tells me that periodically I just HAVE to go do some 'social interaction' and is obviously shoehorned in specifically for the purpose of forcing me to do this is not.  If I can't go do my dungeon, or go mine, because I don't have enough friends online to do it with me, that's one thing, but if I can't do it because the game says 'You must now sit in a cantina for X amount of time' that's an entirely different story.

Economic, i.e. crafting, interaction does seem to be the most fulfilling for a lot of online gamers. 

Define a lot.

I think most MMOG gamers just like killing shit and getting teh loots.  The real trick is making the killing and the looting fun, which is the point of this thread; content delivery.

We've had the related discussion about down time before.

A game should very rarely force downtime on someone.  There should be lots of activities for players who want downtime have something to do.  Forcing it on them makes them resent it.  Likewise, the tools and options should be available for socialization to anyone who wants them.  Forcing players to use them when they don't want to is equally as bad.

It's a really simple concept:  Give your players lots of choices but try to never force them to use them.  Give them alternatives where possible.

And surprisingly, dynamically spawning content can fit with that idea, too.

This is what my argument was about Warhammer from the beginning.  Most said they could give a shit about the PvE aspect of the game or the crafting, even though they were both quite lacking.  There will always be down time with PvP and the hardcore players who are online 24 hours per day will not tolerate down time.  I still think that with a more robust crafting system and better PvE implementation Warhammer would still be able to populate a significant number of servers on a regular basis. 

Yeah, downtime is bad, but I think its how the player views downtime.  I think a lot of people assume any thing that isn't combat = downtime.  Even if you go back to the cantina example from earlier posts, rather than looking at it as "not playing the game" or "downtime" look at it as an opportunity to meet new people, make yourself a cup of tea in and do some character planning, etc.   These can be very enjoyable experiences, but players get it in their heads that they need to be out killing, gaining exp, getting loot, etc, I think changing that mindset is important.

Not just important for MMOs in general, but important for this conversation, which is about dynamic content.  If a system that uses dynamic content in the way a lot of us have been talking about, you'd have to have a playerbase that is willing to look at the MMO as a virtual world, or even as a virtual playground, but not simply as an engine of character advancement.

  I think its pretty plain that static content is superior if all we are talking about is players killing shit and getting loot.  They can kill exactly what they want and work towards getting the exact loot they want.  To me, implicit in truly dynamic content is the necessity of the player willing to engage with the game world as a world, and less as a "game."  Otherwise, all dynamic content is doing is changing the shape of the thing you are clicking on before pressing 11111111.

After my experience with WOW, I would actually argue that most people don't really want a dynamic world.  I think semi-dynamic, with known variable possibilities for mobs/mob action would probably be best received by the average gamer.  A lot of this depends on what you're shooting for, I suppose.

Wasn't the conventional wisdom in the past that downtime in MMOs was a good thing?  I remember reading a bunch of stuff on how developers thought that downtime was necessary for community building and they found ways for people to congregate in hubs to encourage social interaction and community building.  So it was an attempt to manufacture social circles that would, in turn, encourage peopel to stay subscribed longer.  

I personally hate downtime, but assumed that games would have some of it purposefully engineered into their game to help develop social circles aiding in retention.  

The thread isn't about what most people want.  It's about what you, the individual, want.  At least that's how I read it.

I want dynamic.  Everyone else can play in their own scripted sandbox.  

Most players disliked being made to visit the cantina.  There were, however, dancers and socialites who loved going there.  They enjoyed that aspect of the game.  Some combat types would have gone anyways, but they'd rather have done it on their time rather than in the middle of a hunt because a deranged mantigrue plagued them so all their wounds were maxed.

Then holocrons came about and people felt compelled to become dancers.  All the people who enjoyed being in that scene were driven away.  The dancer-for-a-week people resented it.  It destroyed social structures which had existed for a year in a matter of months.

Forcing it on people is BAD.

Discussion about what the average gamer might like is surely always relevant because games don't pay for themselves.  Any game will have to be somewhat monetarily successful to avoid a Tabula Rasa fate.  It really comes down to how far can you vary from the WOW prescription and maintain monetary viability.  

I like a little scripted in my MMOs.  I just don't have the time to put in anymore in the sandboxier games to make it worth it, e.g. Eve and Fallen Earth.  It comes down to this-  I don't want to have to spend 8 hours in-game to accomplish something any more.  That's why I've been spending most of my time in LOTRO.  It's been getting a bit boggy lately, though.

Unlike Oblivion, I'm not saying ALL CONTENT would scale.  Not sure why you would make that jump.

You took a pre-60 obvious levelling instance to make a point?  I'm talking about instance that were considered end-content for each expansion.  I essentially said this when relating the lore of "god-like" bosses being trivial now.  I'll spell it out for you.  Level 60, 70, and 80 instances.

True, but heres the thing, I don't want just dynamic.  I want a dynamic world in which I am playing with other players that are approaching the game in the same way.    Maybe that isn't part of the discussion, or supposed to be part of the discussion, but if there is a dynamic world and orcs are attacking the city, I want a group to play with that wants to protect the city not wants to kill the orcs for their loot.  Its not quite role playing, per se, at least in the sense of going around talking in character all the time, and putting on some fake typed accent.    Just that idea of buying into the world as the reason for playing, rather than the meta reasons like loot collecting, etc.  To me, thats what a dynamic world represents.  So, just applying some dynamic concepts with the default player base means I would log in and see this. "Oh, how lame, I hate when the elves are in the area, their loot sucks"  and frankly, that would kill the whole thing for me.

I took a "pre-60 obvious levelling instance" that is being updated to a level 85 heroic for Cataclysm. End game content.

UO around 2001 or so. You could teleport pretty much anywhere you wanted at will, PVP had already been nerfed by Trammel, virtually all the PVE content was soloable, and there was no real downtime. Yet it was a very social game. Almost the entire economy was player-to-player. You could go days or more without interacting with an NPC except to kill them.

I point this out because there seems to be this idea that a worldy/social type of game has to beat your dick with a hammer one way or another, when such is simply not the case. Really anymore WoW just feels terminally soulless to me. I got that achievment and pug pet for grouping with 100 random players a while back and I couldn't tell you one of their names. Not one.

Thinking about this question, I wonder if dynamic content would be more susceptible to griefing (i.e. some cap-level player runs through your area leaving a wake of high level mobs behind)?  Would dynamic content also require significantly more instancing to overcome this?  That being the case, I'm envisioning a trade-off between dynamic content and world-like feel. 

Well, dynamic doesn't necessarily mean it has to scale to the players.  You could still have areas that are generally low level, but dynamic within that range.  Then again, I realize there are several different discussions going on here, and the dynamic world discussion I've been having in which the world evolves partly due to NPC "decisions" and player actions, is a very different discussion than on simple dynamic spawns.

On that I agree.  Dynamic could cover a wide range of game mechanics.  Ability, individual behavior, environment, evolution, etc.

My ideal game is going to improve on all these, but I think if any game could do just one of these areas well then it is a huge step forward.

Sadly, I'm starting to believe what was suggested in an earlier post (or maybe another thread); that we're more likely to see derivative, platform-style games being churned out in the near future. 

I'm not anticipating anything really novel coming out for PC in the MMO genre for quite some time... if ever.  It's too big a gamble. 

You saw that already with every single MMOG that has come out since WOW.  WAR, AOC, AION, a shitton of Korean games, and others I'm not remembering.

Sounds amazing, but that's not a game design issue. It's an audience issue. If everybody who liked MMOs wanted to put effort into reinforcing the world's fiction, creating their cooperative stories, and taking care of their own immersion then Ultima Online would be what Everquest was in our world. It, and its clones, would also have the same population and low-expectation production values it has now because everybody who's been playing the DIKU games we know today would be throwing their money at offline or network games instead or... hey, maybe just watching TV.

Most people are more easily entertained by consumption than by creation, even cooperative creation. The lowest common denominator is the most profitable by dint of numbers, so big budget video games were destined to go the way of Hollywood blockbusters. If you want a self-directed, purposeful, worldy MMO you need to accept that it will have inspired but limited graphics, deep but poorly designed gameplay, negligible bizzare GM involvement, and a tiny but dedicated population. Think W:AR minus the budget.

Yeah, this is why I've kinda of, at least for now, given up on big budget MMOs, because I simply don't think they can (literally) can afford to make the kind of game I want to play.  Shopping around for smaller projects seems to be the way to go.  Love has promise.

That's a false projection though. People weren't coming to MMOs because they were either buggy, grindy, or both. It wasn't some fundamental dislike for the game mechanics though, because class based stuff and RPGs had existed for a long time even then. Heck, I was force-respawn grinding treasure chests from Buccaneer's Den in Ultima III :-) When freakin' scamville games are knocking off MMO mechanics, you know you've got a mass marketable mechanic.

Nah, what WoW did was bottle up all the mechanics that were popular already and just did them right. Right pacing, right amount of content, right QAing, right IP.

What they did was create a game for a market that existed, just not playing MMOs. What they very much did not do is invent something new and hoped people would show up.

Which is why people think so much of the other out there thinking is, well, out there.

Or:

There is (obviously) a gap between social and forced downtime. However, EQ taught a lot of players that they would be social when forced to stand around in queues waiting for mobs to spawn and some lament that they no longer are forced to wait in queues because they feel that this destroys the immersion / social aspect.

These people are idiots.

Social hubs are a great idea but they are really sidelines to the main show. Important sidelines (especially if there aren't other ways of communicating / contacting players in-game) but sidelines for the main part. Or hygiene factors rather than motivators, if I was to wank it up.

Big stupid superhero movies make the most money. Other types of movies still get made.

The audience that wants games or MMOs at all is in the minority.  I suspect that the level of money to make an online game that would be dynamic enough to satisfy a subset of those gamers, however small or large that subset might be, is going to require a big budget.  It's just not going to be feasible anytime soon on a Darkfall budget. 

Not necessarily.  I mean, if you look at a game like Love, it is totally procedurally generated, has AI that builds its own towns, and attacks player towns, etc.  The world can be modified by players, and so forth.  Of course, that game isn't really what you would call a fully featured MMO by any stretch, but is a least proof that this sort of thing can be done with minimal resources.  The game has its issues and certainly isn't the end all, but it does show that dynamic content doesn't REQUIRE a huge budget.    I'd love to see more creative projects like Love that push the genre forward a bit.  Its barely an MMO and definitely isn't an RPG, but it has a lot more going for it that the latest DIKU ripoff.

MMOs aren't movies though. "Paranormal Activity" was made for $11000 and it looks good enough to suit its purpose. A MMO made by a small team is going to cost multiples of that $11k and would look awful, which ties into your "it has to be professional" barrier.

Besides, the movie industry acknowledges its indie film makers to some degree and their output (not all of them, of course, but some). Indie games, especially indie MMO developers, don't get any of that kind of respect. In MMO terms, the only kind of titles that attract attention are the AAA ones - Love is being noted for curiosity value only.

Well, my point is that you aren't satisfied with it.  We may see people try, but they will fail to make anything worth a shit.

And that's the problem - indie games are where things are going to be shifted up but they don't attract that much attention from the mainstream, while the mainstream complains that there is nothing new for them to play.

I sometimes compare MMOs to the PnP RPG market, where despite claims that people want something new and innovative D&D remains the once and future king. Sure, D&D has moved with the times in terms of mechanics, but its core remains pretty consistent (kill enemies, loot, level, repeat).

Pretty true, although to be honest I've enjoyed almost every pencil and paper RPG i've ever played.  This however, is way more likely to do with the fact that I am sitting around a table with a group of friends than anything else.

The scales are different, but the proportions still work. By some estimates, Club Penguin cost about $6-8mil to get to launch. That's done just fine even with its not-even-passably-substandard graphics.

Lightweight Flash MMOs are sort of the indie sleeper hit equivalent. Unless they're specifically made that way because it's the lowest-risk/lowest-investment approach. But those you can see coming a mile away :-)

True, but we are in an industry where some loud voices that argue titles like Runescape and Club Penguin shouldn't even be considered MMOs, or even where they are totally ignored despite being some of the most successful titles.

We are in a part of the industry that chooses to ignore the other parts. If someone were to claim Webkinz wasn't an MMO, I'd listen. There's shared persistent spaces, and PvP (through playable games as proxy), but play between players is not nearly as prevalent as player against game.

But someone saying Runescape or CP aren't legit MMOs, their understanding of the industry probably starts and stops with the latest Blizzard press release. Might as well start saying Wizard 101 or FusionFall aren't either. At both the experiential and the technical level, some these are often times more of an MMO even than WoW, though none as much as Eve.

I suspect this is the same type of person that doesn't think a movie is "real" unless they can go see it at a Lowes or that stage shows aren't real unless they're actually in Manhatten, or some other equally uninformed bullshit.

Good thread...makes me wish someone was still working on the kinds of games I want. Raph's resource system is exactly the kind of stuff I want in my games, and that kind of thinking was what got me so excited about SWG (which an early beta visit soon killed). I want a dynamic, explorable world. I loved stuff like the griffon in EQ1 EC or the Giant and/or banshees (or whatever they were) that occasionally ravaged the lowbies in Oasis. I want unpredictability.

I like the idea of things getting scarier and more dangerous the further from civilization I go. If player housing stretches into the wilderness, the current residents either remove them or move along to greener pastures. Roaming bands of humanoid NPCs (war bands, gangs, whatever) that can show up in odd places, ramapaging dragons, rare ore/wood/plant spawns- I want to be surprised and excited by the world, not sitting around with a stopwatch waiting for the static spawn to pop again.

Definitely put me in the world v game camp. I have A LOT of games to play. Not too many interesting worlds to explore, live in, and change.

The problem is that 'worlds' have small populations, use NPC / mob population 'cheats', be absolutely huge and / or place restrictions on what players can do to actually maintain them as world. If 100k players crashed an area, chopped down all the trees, kill all the wildlife and shove up houses everywhere, it pretty soon becomes the source of complaints that there is nothing to do and houses in good locations are unaffordable. It doesn't take long to explore areas, particularly with people hacking game maps and related activities.

I admire the intention to build a world, but imo reality is always waiting to give such attempts a sucker punch.

I actually agree, I've started to think that a multiplayer RPG is a better way to go here.  I've said several times (maybe in this thread, I don't remember), that NWN PW servers were the best "world" experiences I've had, and that was with an extremely limited engine.  The part that made it work was that DMs and players worked together in moving the world forward.  It was very much a collaborative effort.  I don't think that sort of experience can be recreated on a large scale, or with the standard MMO playerbase.

If I remember what I've read from some obscure and PR-speak massively articles and the like, Heroes of Talara is probably going to tackle some of these issues.