Red 5

[HaemishM]

I think it's more the "In UO we had monster spawns be finite, and everything was dead in a week's time."

Because we all know MMOG design really hasn't much progressed past the UO stage anyway.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, exactly: meta-gaming is about knowledge of the world. As long as the cause-and-effect relationship of things is sufficiently complex, and sometimes has unpredictable results, it's a way more compelling level to be pulling to get your little bit of fun for the night.

Of all the many things that get said about what didn't work in early UO, the argument that you can't have dynamic spawns because the world got emptied too fast is the single most annoying claim. It's a function of the size of the fucking world + location that create player density + location and rate of spawning nodes. If I placed a refugee camp of 10,000 human beings in an oasis in the middle of the desert with only enough date palms to feed 500 people/day and enough water for 1,000 people/day to drink, everyone would die very fast. Does this mean, "Never create population density of any kind in the real world"? Make a big world, spread people out (while giving them means to bridge distance quickly in order to group up for social and economic purposes), and make the time cycle of spawning appropriate to the size of the population and the world. That's all you need as far as this aspect of the problem goes.

[Venkman]

... diku playability/fun.

This is where your idea for combining the two types goes wrong.

Not my idea. I just picked the same two headliners we've been talking about for nine years 

Anyone can solve the problem. It just takes the things in combination that very few actually have. Because of what Khaldun said:

"what has to develop dynamically is not the player but the world."

How many studios even think along these lines? It's a competency that's been beaten down by market forces. Either the studio doesn't think along these lines or they're not permitted to by the publishing side.

None of what I've said says these are bad ideas. And none of this means it ain't ever going to happen. But what will make it happen is a surprise indie-hit that gets huge enough to melt servers, or a company enlightened enough to realize it's enough of a competitive advantage to put serious money (and therefore talent and resources) behind it.

What the game is at that point becomes interesting.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, I think it's going to take a relatively simple design in graphical terms and other terms that nevertheless implements a dynamic world to demonstrate just how appealing people might find it.

[Lantyssa]

While I am all for dynamic worlds, I don't think it has to go that far.

I'm mearly commenting that equating diku with fun is one thing holding people back from getting out of the "this is the way it's done" mindset.  A diku could still have a dynamic world.  They're different mechanics not needing to be dependent upon one another.  We're convinced that ding! has to be ranking_number++ instead of any of many different rewards which players could find enjoyable.

Diku has its upsides for developers in that they can create guided content and balance it to that range.  It has its downsides in restricting players to that area, and if there is a lack of content or your balance sucks, the game suffers horribly (see AoC, et al).

[Ratman_tf]

I always thought that the answer to complaints about EQ1's static spawn camping was to have that mob linked to a repeatable quest. So if group X wants a shot at the shiny shoes, they go get the quest then go into the world to whack the fozzle and take his shoes.
That way everyone gets a shot at the shiny shoes, instead of just the catasses.

Now, WoW put that into instancing and ran with it in the creation of these scripted theme park dungeons. And while I do like how they've implemented it, I also miss simulationist games like UO and SWG where shit happened in the "real world".

[Jerrith]

1) I log in. Let's see, what shall I do tonight? Listen to rumors in the tavern. Hey, they're talking about the vampiric dagger of Rat Lord Fred. This guy will give me a map for ten coppers. Fun, let's do that. [somewhat randomized adventure ensues, dagger acquired, fun results. Log off].

This is exactly the sort of adventure I'm talking about / want to see.  In the right world, the map can lead you through a mix of instanced and non-instanced spaces, making sure there's a Rat Lord Fred for you to kill at the end.

2) I log in. Let's see, I'm level 15, and I need to train up my new skill in dual-axe-wielding. I must find and defeat the Axe Mangler, who is wandering somewhere in the northern wilderness. [Much hunting ensues. Can't find him. Turns out he's been dead most of the time because three other players hunting him for the same reason found him first. Log off, no fun.]

There's the first, obvious approach of putting Axe Mangler in a instance only you can get to, to solve the problem, but I think we can do even better than that.  Have something happen that encourages the three other players to all join up with you, and then have the four of you fight Axe Mangler together. 

3) I gather clues to a new adventure, but it's one of only three totally scripted variants of the same adventure, so I just look it up on a cheat site. Or the clues don't matter at all, actually. I remember in Asheron's Call 1 early on that people were often convinced that you had to gather clues or information about some of the new content in order to find it or access it, but what actually happened was that whenever the content went live, somebody already knew (probably from knowing a GM or developer) where the new place was and the information was spammed over chat within an hour or two, everything was essentially scripted. Don't have variant pathways unless you have variant outcomes, and don't have variation unless some aspect of it is meaningfully random or unpredictable. If there are clues or mysteries or riddles or unknowns, they've got to be generated by something other than a script fragment.

Yeah, this is the random, but not unique scenario we should avoid.  Even if you have a bunch of options, it's probably not enough.  Anyone remember treasure maps in UO?  I (vaguely) remember the out of game / cheat site maps people would make, showing the location of every buried treasure a map might possibly lead you to.

Yeah, I think it's going to take a relatively simple design in graphical terms and other terms that nevertheless implements a dynamic world to demonstrate just how appealing people might find it.

It might not be necessary, but it's good path to take.  If only my weekends and evenings were longer. :)

One implementation detail question for you all:  How would you feel about having the game ask you how long you want to play, when you login and/or enter story mode?  If you're going after Axe Mangler, and you've joined up with the three others looking for him, you don't want to be in a situation where you have to leave 30 minutes before the group is going to get to him.  If you don't mind it asking, would you prefer it to be out of character and precise (I want to play for 3 hours & 45 minutes, on a UI screen), or in character and more broad (when asking for rumors at the tavern, the barkeep asks if you're willing to take a short (15 minute to 45 minute), medium (1 hour to 3 hours) or long (4 to 6 hour) journey). 

 

[Ratman_tf]

One implementation detail question for you all:  How would you feel about having the game ask you how long you want to play, when you login and/or enter story mode?  If you're going after Axe Mangler, and you've joined up with the three others looking for him, you don't want to be in a situation where you have to leave 30 minutes before the group is going to get to him.  If you don't mind it asking, would you prefer it to be out of character and precise (I want to play for 3 hours & 45 minutes, on a UI screen), or in character and more broad (when asking for rumors at the tavern, the barkeep asks if you're willing to take a short (15 minute to 45 minute), medium (1 hour to 3 hours) or long (4 to 6 hour) journey). 

I think that's a real sticky question. I'm sure we've all had a night where we wanted to do X activity, and some guildies had to bail due to RL. I think putting time constraints and an expectation that the character will be logged in (30 minutes, 2 hours, etc...) for a specific time would make me feel constrained.
 It possibly might make me not want to commit to any activities like that, and play at my own pace instead by seeking alternate things to do.

[Bzalthek]

Conversely, there are times (I at least) log in the evening with only the intention of wrapping up some niggling thing I forgot to do, 30 minutes at most, and the next thing I know it's 4 hours later.  When something is fun, the tendency is to keep doing it unless a more pressing concern arises. (For example, work.  Or for the less misanthropic of us, sex.)

Our desired / expected / realistic time-frames when it comes to playing and fun are often completely disparate.  To predetermine a time-frame seems to imply that success is guaranteed (barring any colossal fuckup), which equates to a lack of challenge (unless not colossally fucking up is a challenge for you).  Add in the factor of group play, you now deal with several paradigms of game play vs. real life, and it's not rocket science to know how much of a variable other people are.  From the RL emergency causing your party members to leave, to sitting 3 hours LFG, how much you want to play and how much you need to play are often drastically different.

Unless your challenge levels adjust according to your forces.  But then why group to begin with if you can just solo it?

[Jerrith]

I think putting time constraints and an expectation that the character will be logged in (30 minutes, 2 hours, etc...) for a specific time would make me feel constrained.

Presentation would be important.  I'm not quite sure of the ideal wording.  Players needing to leave early seems like one of the biggest obstacles to such a system and asking how long seems like easy, but perhaps too constraining solution.  For the people remaining, it's not a horrible problem - you could try to match up another player, and if that fails, bring in an NPC character.  I'm more concerned about the player logging out.  If he's always getting long stories and leaving at the beginning, it's going to get frustrating.  (Of course, then the game could notice that and start giving shorter events instead, perhaps looking at a playtime history?)

Our desired / expected / realistic time-frames when it comes to playing and fun are often completely disparate.

Very true.  Perhaps it would be completely optional.  Use historical data to set a guess as to how long they're going to play, and perhaps provide a window where they can enter something else, if they know it's going to be a non-typical play session?

To predetermine a time-frame seems to imply that success is guaranteed (barring any colossal fuckup), which equates to a lack of challenge (unless not colossally fucking up is a challenge for you).

For the default level of content, yes I think that would probably be the case.  There's a fine line of too easy to avoid, but success usually is guaranteed if you're doing "level appropriate" content, isn't it?  There's a few ways this could be handled.  If you're going after a well known target, he'd always be at a constant level of power, and if you don't bring enough power, you'd simply fail.  Challenge could also be another factor you indicate on a suggested playtime UI.

[Slyfeind]

There's the first, obvious approach of putting Axe Mangler in a instance only you can get to, to solve the problem, but I think we can do even better than that.  Have something happen that encourages the three other players to all join up with you, and then have the four of you fight Axe Mangler together.

Yeah, but then it's perceived as forced grouping, and that's no fun.

One implementation detail question for you all:  How would you feel about having the game ask you how long you want to play, when you login and/or enter story mode?  If you're going after Axe Mangler, and you've joined up with the three others looking for him, you don't want to be in a situation where you have to leave 30 minutes before the group is going to get to him.  If you don't mind it asking, would you prefer it to be out of character and precise (I want to play for 3 hours & 45 minutes, on a UI screen), or in character and more broad (when asking for rumors at the tavern, the barkeep asks if you're willing to take a short (15 minute to 45 minute), medium (1 hour to 3 hours) or long (4 to 6 hour) journey). 

Interesting. It could be exploited, as I would be sorely tempted to assign the shortest time possible to every quest, and just plow through the content. Of course, the rewards could be greater if you choose longer quests, but that could result in the players with the most time getting the best stuff. Unless...you could interrupt and resume your quest at any time. Say I took a 4-6 hour quest, and played it for one hour a night. It might take me all week, but I'd get it done in my own time.

That might defeat the purpose of it though, since it seems you're talking about 4-6 hours in one session.

[Khaldun]

It seems to me that what you're shooting for is something where the content isn't the hurdle you jump for progression, but progression is only the impetus or structure for serving content, where you're actually excited to go find the Axe Mangler because who knows what will happen when you do. If you succeeded in that objective, then grouping up with a bunch of strangers might not be all that satisfying, and would just take you back to the understanding that the mission is just another round on the treadmill.

[HaemishM]

Too bad the Axe Mangler couldn't be another real person with their own missions and objectives offered by the game that are somehow counter to your own, causing you to have a conflict not attached to a war that has no significance to the world.

Oh wait, it could, but no one is bothering to do that.

[Tmon]

oo bad the Axe Mangler couldn't be another real person with their own missions and objectives offered by the game that are somehow counter to your own, causing you to have a conflict not attached to a war that has no significance to the world.

Oh wait, it could, but no one is bothering to do that.

 I wonder how it would work out in practice, I think population levels would be a real problem especially a couple months after launch when most of the population has moved on to the late game/end game content.  Also cross teaming to exploit the mechanic would probably be a huge problem.  I like the idea, I just don't expect any of the mainstream developers to do it when it's safer to just make a WoW like game with a slight twist and I don't think a small indie team would have the resources to release anything worth paying to play.

[Ratman_tf]

Too bad the Axe Mangler couldn't be another real person with their own missions and objectives offered by the game that are somehow counter to your own, causing you to have a conflict not attached to a war that has no significance to the world.

Oh wait, it could, but no one is bothering to do that.

What if Axe Mangler is never online when you're ready to finish your quest? (etc... etc... other people suck, etc...)

[Slyfeind]

Too bad the Axe Mangler couldn't be another real person with their own missions and objectives offered by the game that are somehow counter to your own, causing you to have a conflict not attached to a war that has no significance to the world.

Oh wait, it could, but no one is bothering to do that.

What if Axe Mangler is never online when you're ready to finish your quest? (etc... etc... other people suck, etc...)

Maybe then the quest isn't available.

That could lead to people saying "Looking for someone to start the Defend Mangler quest so I can start the Attack Mangler quest!" And all of a sudden the PvP is not only meaningful, personal, and immersive, but it's also consensual! That's like getting xp and loot for dueling, and you get a story out of it too, additional objective, holy crap! Meta-gaming is looking better and better all the time.

[Venkman]

I'm a big fan of the concept of procedurally generated missions. But so far we've either had semi-ok scripted content as part of large story arcs, or we've had UO-Posts/SWGandAO-Mission Terminals. Quite a spread there. It really does require a special type of programming and production competency to bridge that gap.

One implementation detail question for you all:  How would you feel about having the game ask you how long you want to play, when you login and/or enter story mode?

I think this is an important question. I have no idea what research has been done on this, but I always get the impression that the most successful games that really capture players are because they come to it with an impression that is so very different from the result:

"Oh, I'll just log in and do a quick Daily/turn-in"
"Wtf? 3am?!"

This correlates a bit with casual online games. People really do not expect to play World Mosaics for two hours. I mean heck, each puzzle takes a minute at most to complete. But you forget the time when you play it.

Maybe I'm unique, though I doubt it. I'm pretty vanilla yogurt as a person 

[HaemishM]

Too bad the Axe Mangler couldn't be another real person with their own missions and objectives offered by the game that are somehow counter to your own, causing you to have a conflict not attached to a war that has no significance to the world.

Oh wait, it could, but no one is bothering to do that.

What if Axe Mangler is never online when you're ready to finish your quest? (etc... etc... other people suck, etc...)

The quest would be generated based on who IS online.

[Ingmar]

Hell the MUD I worked on did this, back in like 1994. Shady NPC lurks around tavern, sells you a map, little themed area is generated somewhere out in the world, follow map to area, have a little 2 room adventure, collect loots. It was very popular, if a bit bare bones in modern terms.

CoX does this (nearly) with newspaper missions already too, come to think about it.

[Sjofn]

Hell the MUD I worked on did this, back in like 1994. Shady NPC lurks around tavern, sells you a map, little themed area is generated somewhere out in the world, follow map to area, have a little 2 room adventure, collect loots. It was very popular, if a bit bare bones in modern terms.

I fuckin' LOVED those treasure maps. I spent an embarrassing amount of time doing those.

[HaemishM]

Hell the MUD I worked on did this, back in like 1994. Shady NPC lurks around tavern, sells you a map, little themed area is generated somewhere out in the world, follow map to area, have a little 2 room adventure, collect loots. It was very popular, if a bit bare bones in modern terms.

CoX does this (nearly) with newspaper missions already too, come to think about it.

Are the newspaper missions leading you to conflict with other players?

[UnSub]

Hell the MUD I worked on did this, back in like 1994. Shady NPC lurks around tavern, sells you a map, little themed area is generated somewhere out in the world, follow map to area, have a little 2 room adventure, collect loots. It was very popular, if a bit bare bones in modern terms.

CoX does this (nearly) with newspaper missions already too, come to think about it.

Are the newspaper missions leading you to conflict with other players?

Nope. Basically it's mission objective, bad guy type, instance starts nearby, slightly personalised.

[HaemishM]

Nice first step, needs more cowbell.

[Ingmar]

What you talk about does sort of exist in the PVP battleground zones. I don't remember the exact details of it, but you could go to an NPC and he'd offer you a little quest to go kill a specific player in the zone from the other team, with some minor reward for doing so. I remember doing it on my blaster a few times, was a neat little feature.