f13.net

MMORPGS rely on the mass slaughter of tens of thousands of mobs to advance.  You would have to completely rewrite the advancement system that they all use to make something like this work.

Not to mention MMORPG combat is about  as immersive as pressing 4 buttons over and over while watching TV.

Yes I agree, once combat evolves beyond queues and hotbars and turns, then you can actually begin to worry about the interaction of human players. The world is wasted when your games mechanics can be mastered by a monkey that has 10 hours a day to push buttons.

It's the essence of the MMOG problem, fix the shiney and worry about the game later. Planetside is a step in the right direction, but it needs more to make it the next revolution of MMO genres.

I think its a good idea overall being that I always wanted to play the monsters in MMOGs anyway.

In Planetside the players are the monsters and you can play it right now.


Actually, the other game I'm playing right now is called Time of Defiance (http://www.nicelycrafted.com/todc/) and it is a MMO cross between Darkspace, VGA Planets, and Homeworld. Everyone starts out on an island in space (not sure how that works) and then you mine, colonize, and capture other islands around you to grow your empire. All the other empires are controlled by players who are doing the same thing you are. Games have a fixed length (between 7 and 28 days) and your units work while you are offline as well. The server I played on had between 10 and 20 people online at any one time (but all the empires are there regardless if their emperor is online or not).

This could easily be translated to some kind of fantasy game as well where you are a powerful wizard and you control minions who take over territory and fight other empires for you. The only problem there I see is that ToD uses travel/build time as an equalizer and I'm not sure how that would fare lore wise in a fantasy based game.

We had a pretty good discussion (http://corpnews.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=959) about this same topic recently on Corpnews. Made for some interesting conversation.

Bring the noise.
Cheers...............

I'd rather play it without instanced dungeons. Not that you couldn't have them or anything, but I think it'd be even more cool to just roam around (maybe not with too much freedom) as an orc hunting party and take the fight to the PC's. Even cooler than that would be the ability invade towns and other highly populated areas. I'm not much of an rp'er, but that'd be roleplaying at it's finest. For both sides.

How roaming monster-players fits into destro's particular vision, I wouldn't know. Haven't really thought about it.



Since you brought that up, I've been meaning to ask..Has anyone here played Shattered Galaxy (http://www.shatteredgalaxy.com/)? Kind of an old game, but it just caught my attention the other day.

stray wrote:

How roaming monster-players fits into destro's particular vision, I wouldn't know. Haven't really thought about it.

I favour the idea in principle, but it does present more opportunities for griefing. Monsters wouldn't be matched in strength with the players they might meet. Monsters could loot players and drop the spoils on the ground for their PC friend to pick up. Monsters could allow themselves to be farmed by their player's PC friends.

Not that there aren't specific solutions to these problems, but the simplest one is to say that nothing comes out of the dungeon unless the party raiding it brings it out, and assign monster players to PC opponents randomly to prevent collusion.

slog wrote:

MMORPGS rely on the mass slaughter of tens of thousands of mobs to advance. You would have to completely rewrite the advancement system that they all use to make something like this work.

Yes. Yes, you would.

This will be design nightmare to implement this properly. Usually monsters are grossly overpowered based on raw stats when compared to any given player to compensate for AI inadequacy. Additionally consider how many monsters you need to kill to advance in average MMORPG. I don’t think there is a way to move away from AI-driven mobs, you will still need them. Still I can see this implemented as an ‘event’ system allowing ‘proven’ players to play special event monsters on shards they don’t play.

sinij wrote:

This will be design nightmare to implement this properly. Usually monsters are grossly overpowered based on raw stats when compared to any given player to compensate for AI inadequacy. Additionally consider how many monsters you need to kill to advance in average MMORPG. I don’t think there is a way to move away from AI-driven mobs, you will still need them. Still I can see this implemented as an ‘event’ system allowing ‘proven’ players to play special event monsters on shards they don’t play.

I've already covered each of these points. Just as the experience value for player-run monsters could be adjusted upwards, their stats could be adjusted down. In fact, you could code the difference in stats into the world - monstering players would be assigned to intelligent creatures like orcs and lizardmen, while AI beasties could be lumbering animals and mindless undead. An orc is weaker than a tiger, but potentially more deadly.

It doesn't matter whether the monstering players play on the shard or not, nor whether they are 'proven', whatever that means. As long as the dungeons are instanced and the monsters are assigned randomly, the opportunities for collusion will be minimal.

I can envision a server-wide club of people who agree to take the fall as monsters for the others as players, large enough that they would run into one another frequently. How do you avoid that from becoming a problem?

Simply keep the monsters anonymous during play, and reward them for betraying the PCs and going after their assigned goals regardless of agreements they made outside the dungeon. In this way you create a prisoner's dilemma and effectively prevent cooperation.

An example: Bob and Fred agree to collude. Fred enters a dungeon, sees an orc, and true to their agreement Bob IMs him and says 'I'm playing that orc.' The orc doesn't fight back and Fred gets its loot.

The next day Bob goes into a dungeon, and sees an orc, which happens to played by Fred. Fred thinks about IMing Bob, but decides not to. Being a filthy Fred, Fred-Orc reneges on the agreement and kills Bob, taking his stuff and getting the reward for being a successful monster.

Bob doesn't know he's been cheated, and so cannot engage in tit-for-tat. Sticking to the agreement will now only hurt him. The Nash Equilibrium is for neither of them to cooperate, so in the majority of cases that is what will happen.

How would you handle boredom factor, what if there isn't anyone to kill player-controlled monster? Do you allow player-controlled monsters to roam and if you do allow roaming how do you prevent them from wandering into lowbie zones and griefing newbies?

Now if monsters controlled by players do you expect them to be equal in power to player character or stronger? If they are equal then why not just drop pretense and allow open-end, no-loot, no-penalty PvP? If they are stronger how do you prevent people from exploiting that by say teaming up with friends to control some spawn while trying to kill all outsiders?

sinij wrote:

How would you handle boredom factor, what if there isn't anyone to kill player-controlled monster?

A small drop in the ratio of players to monsters could be dealt with by assigning a greater number of weaker monsters. But in the case of a large difference in the ratio boredom would be self-limiting - players waiting to play one side would get bored and switch to the other side, which in turn would reduce the number of people waiting on their original side.

Do you allow player-controlled monsters to roam[...]?

No. Not allowing roaming player-controlled monsters is key to preventing abuses of the system without implementing a tortuous system of looting and targeting rights.

Now if monsters controlled by players do you expect them to be equal in power to player character or stronger?

Both. Your remaining questions aren't applicable to a system without roaming monsters.

What if most monsters could be played for free?  I mean, let people download the client and play most monsters without having a chance to advance in level, lewt, etc.  Then for the more powerful/uber mobs you charge a one-time fee or heavily reduced sub fee, giving some options of advancement and whatnot?  I suppose it could leave the "standard" subscribers wondering just what the hell they are paying for each month when people can play the game for free, albeit in a "limited" form, so that would need a good deal of fine-tuning.

At the very least I think it'd be an interesting change of pace from goblin whelps not having us ruin their homelands.

What if most monsters could be played for free?

Actually, I really like that idea.  Rather than give players a 7 day trial that essentially amounts to no real progress as a player, give them as much time as they want to play as a Monster, but also limit this system to be kind of a 'balancing factor.'  You, as a player that logs in and plays for free, get limited choices on what you want to play.  If there are a bunch of players waiting to be Orcs, you get to be an Orc today.  You also don't get to customize your abilities or equipment.

The appeal of being a PC instead of a Mob is advancement, both on the PC side and the mob side.  If you pay, you get your character, that you customize completely, and you start accruing the credits mentioned in the article.  These could perhaps even be spent on other things.

Basically, being a monster would be like having 'quick-play' characters for the free trials, that are pre-made.  Seems like a workable idea, and for those players that might want to just play the game as a strictly PvP game, with no character advancement, they could just play free, thereby making it more enjoyable for those who want the Role-Playing aspects as well.

Alakhai wrote:
ahoythematey wrote:
What if most monsters could be played for free?
Actually, I really like that idea.

Agreed.

Free accounts to be a monster sounds like great grist for grief play, even if it's just spamming offensive text.

Well, as long as monster travel was kept in careful check, there would really be no difference whatsoever in dying from a human-played monster versus an AI monster.  Both call for help when they are losing, and both won't hesitate to attack what they perceive as an easy target.

I figure the "monster client" could appeal to a good number of deathmatch players in the mood for "quake with a zing", especially if monsters can attack each other and have premade goals like "defend the cavern fortress" or "violate our mortal-enemy monsters in their precious swamplands", while the standard PC sub would probably be mostly MMO enthusiasts that want their advancement and questing, along with your average joe picking up the box at the store thinking the buxom-babe on the cover is 'hawt stuff.

W/respect to offensive text, you could always just give monsters a channel to themselves, and a public channel (maybe even with a language of their own, that players can learn, so they can hear the private channel.)

Then, if the monsters are being assholes and spamming bad text, players can ignore them, just as they can ignore other players.  (easiest way, would be to ignore either all or none of the monsters, as opposed to individual monsters.)

If it got really bad, you could even ban people from a free game, but man, that really puts you at the bottom of the social ladder doesn't it =P

Far and away the best time I had playing EQ was when they had the playable monsters in on the test server. Both as a player and as a monster.

Monsters can kill each other too.



Give monsters some kind of auto defence. Aka if a player is beating on me and I'm doing nothing, auto defend. EQ and UO already had that if you went link dead.



This was also suggested on the WWIOL boards a long time ago. Allow people to play as grunt soldiers for free. This gives lots of fodder for the paying players to shoot at.

Why would people play infantry in WWIIOL for free when they can play any number of better games (BF1942, Day of Defeat, Call of Duty, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Counterstrike, Full Spectrum Warrior, or hell, America's Army) for free also?

You've already got all of the suckers you're going to get for that abortion of a game, and they're willing to pay to boot!  Count your lucky stars, because I guarantee you that most sane people wouldn't play the game for free.

A sucker is born every minute?

---

WWIIOL was just an example as that is where I saw the thread regarding the issue.

I look at this issue in that we have something very close to this form of PVP content generation on the market already. It's called Dark Age of Camelot (cue howls of derision).

Say what you will about it's gameplay, but it treats other players in other realms as monsters. You can't speak with them in game. You can fight them only in certain areas, and you can retreat to your "grief-free" PVE environment when you wish. Of course, the advancement model creates some inequities, but that is because of its DikuMud underpinnings.

However, to contribute something new to this thread, I always thought Everquest would have been the perfect "world" vehicle for this type of gameplay, provided its advancement model was not based around repetitive timesinks and punishing gameplay.

First off, there are faction-based races that are openly hostile, in a constant state of war. Dark Elves are at war with Elves, with Humans playing both sides. Trolls hate humans, Ogres at war with Dwarves, etc. Add in the races that weren't played by characters, such as Orcs, goblins, etc. Make each "intelligent" race (i.e. a race with language and some form of civilization) a player character race, and make the antagonistic races PVP+ to each other. Each of the races speaks its own language, which those who cannot read or speak the language sees as gibberish. Characters may learn a skill in another language (and may learn more languages based on their intelligence), but there is no "Common" language. Only allow certain archtypes (scholarly types like mages) to learn languages besides their own, so that politically, each race is segregated. Each race has their own "safe areas" but, unlike DAoC, other races CAN intrude upon the safe areas, provided they organize well-enough to break through the guards. As the races extend farther beyond their home base, less guards exist, and the ones that do are weaker the farther out you go. Some areas should have no guards at all, and be nothing but PVP areas.

Player characters who "advance" in the game (and we're not talking about time sink advancement) would be able to establish outposts. Humans would make castles, orcs would make dungeons, etc. Advancement in this manner would be more political than anything else, as an individual would need followers to swear fealty to him for a length of time to gain lands. These outpost lands become instanced, and would be PVP+ to antagonist races, as well as allowing friendly races to declare guildwars on the outpost owner. Anything gained can be lost, but only with appropriate effort.

And for true accountability, it would  need single-character accounts as well as more stringent measures to ensure that each account would be played by one person only and that person would only have one account.

So yes, this game is played in fairy-tale land.

But the monster as player idea has merit; it just would take developers changing the goals of the game from time-sink to fun.

I guess WoW -sort of- has that with the alliance vs horde thing, but I'm not certain how much of the gameworld is actually pvp+/alliance vs horde.

Shadowclan orcs in UO come to mind as a good example of players playing the role of monsters in an MRPG. As mentioned above, DAoC is a similar concept also. It doesn't seem like a stretch for a game to offer even more opportunities for the players to play the role of "monsters" -- perhaps WoW is doing something along these lines.

I had a thief in UO that lived with the SC orcs before they got 'blessed', they were a riot. PKs would come to mess with them, and while they were distracted (the pks), I'd steal their reagents/arrows/weapons. I was allowed to live in the area because they liked me playing the 'takee game' with their foes.

They also got a kick out of how easy I died during sparring because I had no health or combat skills :) Good times.

Awhile ago, we thought it would be really nifty to allow players to be monsters.  It seemed like it would add some spice to the A.I. while giving players something different to try.

Keeping in mind, this is a game that is still in development... we toyed around with all sorts of variations and constraints, etc.  In some cases, player-monsters couldn't chat; in some cases they were geographically restricted; in others they could do anything they wanted.  We wanted to see if it would be as fun as we thought.

It didn't work out quite as well as we hoped.  What I learned was that player-monsters act differently than A.I. does.  Yes, I agree that A.I. needs to be better, but regardless of how good A.I. will eventually get, it is still easy to differentiate human-controlled monsters.  Why?  Because human-controlled monsters tend to act inconsistent to the nature of the monster.   That caused two basic problems we encountered:

First, the player-monsters were always the first targetted to be killed and/or ganged up on.  Player Characters would recognize them instantly and want to kill them right away which kind of defeated the purpose of being a monster if you'll only be it for a negligable amount of time.

Second, players did not like inconsistent behavior in monsters.  Player monsters would do weird and unpredictable things that just didn't fit.  For example, a big baddy lion that would attempt to fight a gorilla one time, but run screaming from a bunny rabbit the next.  It just didn't make sense and  annoyed the player character.  The feedback was the players enjoyed unpredictable, yet somewhat understandable (consistent) behavior.

Perhaps another game will implement it in a way that works better than the way we tried it.

Serafina
Lead Designer
Atriarch

I think it's hilarious and a great thing that a lion would suddenly turn and run from a bunny. Mmog players traditionally fear change, though. Inconsistent behaviour is perfectly natural, some orcs are courageous, some are cowardly, like the lion. I see it as refreshing, why should all monsters always act in a predictable manner, it's one of the downfalls of mmogs, imo, and part of why they are so easily camped.

As for the short life span, that was evident in the EQ test of monsters. It makes sense, you always take out the smartest enemies first so they don't come back to bite you on the tail. While it was possible to level up the EQ npcs one played, in practice you never worried about it and just respawned and played a different monster. Persistence simply wasn't an issue. Fun was!

This could be mitgated 2 ways.  First like sky said, if it's easy to hop right back into the game as another monster there no real penalty for dying as one.  Secondly, better use of instances/matching to try an make sure the battles between player monsters and pc's are somewhat fair.  Sticking one PM orc in a group of 10 AI ones isn't going to get it done so either make it a group of 10 PM orcs or have the PM be a single mob of strength to give the pc group a challenge.  Being able to match up strengths would be definately need; slaughters on either side aren;t much fun.



Having similar mobs react differently is a good thing, whether it's AI controlled or player controlled.  Why should every goblin always do the exact same combat routine as every other goblin?  Maybe that lion ate a drug laced berry which skewed his reasoning :).  It seems the players are saying they really don't want any sort of actual challenge or variety, they want mobs that always do X Y then Z so they can farm them most efficently.  Total predictabilty; bleh.

As to making sense in the gameworld; what, the lion broke character so they want to call the rp police?  

Xilren

Hey, Serafina, glad to see we haven't frightened you off from this board.  WHEN IS ATRIARCH COMING OUT!?!?! :)

As for the players not liking inconsistent behavior in mobs, yes, players are complete and utter pussies, MMOG players even more so. Inconsistent behavior is the whole point of making players into monsters. I see what you are saying with the lion running from the bunny rabbit, or all the player characters attacking the player monster, but that is not something to be discouraged. It's common sense. If you KNOW that the smart one is the one who can cause the most problems, you take him out first. Instancing would mitigate some of this, but honestly, most players in MMOG's who go out for PVE don't want unpredictability. Managing the outcomes is what makes good PVE players, and risk aversion is a huge part of that.

But the risk is where the fun comes from.

Hehe, I love ya man. I was trying to be nice about it :P

Another reason I dislike EQ being the genre's darling and archetype. The penalties associated with dying have turned the EQ players into some of the most pussified people around, rightly so. As I'm fond of saying, at lvl 54, my necro loses a good two weeks to a month of exp on each death. Risks? No-effing-thankyou-mam.

A lot of people like death penalties, making death sting. I prefer making swashbuckling and risky game playing the norm, and not punishing players who fail at it, thus encouraging bad, overly formulated and safe gameplay like the unholy trinity and camping and whatnot.

Tell me you didnt play Ren? Actually, ren was more of a wandering Monk I think.

Anyway, I used to hang out with the Shadowclan also, right around the time they got the Orc fort. When the PKs got bad, some times they would send a runner to my tower, as I was one of the early high  skill mages, and I had great fun, RPing an evil mage who would provide backup to the SC. To bad they usually paid me in sheep corpses and human heads.

I understand your arguments, but I don't think they directly address what I mean by consistent behavior.  I'm not talking about predictable pathing or timing, etc.  When I say 'consistent', I mean that a creature/monster acts within its nature, *not* that everything it does is 'predictable'.

The lion/bunny example in the previous post was a real-life example (since most of you would not know the names of our monsters, I used the equivalent in real-life).  In real life, a lion would not run from a bunny under any circumstance.  It is just not in the lion's nature.

Now enter a player-lion that does in fact run screaming from a bunny.  Yes,  maybe the lion is having acid flashbacks of a 20-foot killer bunny.  However, there is no way for a player-character to discern that.  There is no way for a player to research or observe or somehow figure it out.  In other words, to a player-character, that lion's behavior is completely random.

Personally, I eschew randomness in onlinen worlds.  It is a design choice that I make to avoid dice rolls where possible and to avoid seemingly random and out-of-place behaviors.  I think it is more fun to live in a world that is true to itself.

This is not a mask for predictablability.  I do not like predicability either.  However, I do prefer consistency.  It feels more natural.  Now, I fully understand this is a preference.  I have a fanatical gaming friend who can't imagine a world without randomness and who wouldn't want to.  I think it comes down to what you like.

As for when Atriarch is coming out... well, one of these days when I get around to it, I'll write a press release talking about the delay.  We had to fight some legal battles which put Atriarch on hold for a couple years.  (By the way, no creature is more predictable than lawyers.) That's over now and all is good again in the alien world of Atriana.

Serafina
Lead Designer
Atriarch

Nope, my thief was named Wade, because I liked taking npc names :) Easier to blend in, wearing default npc clothes. Playing a thief in early uo, where stealing had harsher consequences (going red) was an incredibly fun and creative and tense gameplay experience, really spoiled me.

Sera, I'll agree to disagree with you :) But this:

Cool beans!

Sera, I can understand where you are coming from with consistent behavior, especially in "lower intelligence" life forms or more instinctual life forms. However, perhaps to solution to that is only allowing players to take over "intelligent" life forms, such as in fantasy parlances, only allowing humans to take over orcs or goblins as opposed to rats, bats and mosquitos.

After all, giving a lion intelligence he couldn't have really doesn't make sense. I suppose just put the people who always type in all caps in the place of the intellectually challenged monsters.

Now there's an idea!

Serafina
Lead Designer
Atriarch
"More fun that humany possible!"

"R@\/\/R!"

Here's my 2 cents on the matter:

http://www.resvrgam.com/Infinitale.htm

It's long and I'm not sure how helpful it is but it's my experience in working on an MMOG (sorta).