Story: Or, where can I get me some of that...

[Venkman]

The subject of Story has come up again, but it's currently buried in the TR thread. It's come up before So, hoping to hear what folks who don't read that thread think, it's broken out here:

It started with Vinadil:

Ok... well "dynamic" means that once me and my friends go "save the town" from the incoming horde of whatevers... that the next adventurers coming by actually see a town there instead of a quest to "save" the town.

Calandryll then provided some awesome insights into UO. Definitely worth reading the whole thing (page 6), but the summary is the best, covered across two posts:

The thing is, for all of that story telling and dynamic content, guess what the number one reason was for participation? Loot. The scenarios only lasted a year unfortunately. And despite AC having some of the best ongoing dynamic content of the time, it was also the smallest of the “big 3” mmogs.
...
Yea, don't get me wrong, there were a lot of people who enjoyed the stories. We also had guilds that were very organized and took part in the scenarios together. They were a lot of fun and I was very disappointed when they were discontinued after I moved onto UXO.

But for the most part, if the monsters didn't have what was considered good loot, the players left the monsters alone.

Ok, so the primary goal was to collect loot. However, I think this focuses too much on loot, allowing people to think "mmotard loot-whores killed UO". I think the real problem was that players were looking for a reason to participant.

The real problem with this genre in terms of story isn't the quality of the story. It's that the story doesn't matter to one's character abilities. It's the same thing we'd been discussing in the LoTRO Taxi thread. Yes, it's nice that a big selling point of LoTRO is story. However, that story, good though it is, can be completely ignored. Because, again, knowledge of that story does not contribute to you being better or worse at the game. Basically, the story and the game mechanic are mutually exclusive.

That's not a dig on LoTRO, nor any MMO. They all do it. Or, actually, don't do it.

The reason stories don't matter is because there's very little choice to make in MMOGs these days. You are either progressing or you are not. You can't make wrong decisions except those that incur XP debt or a lost shot at a rare loot. That's not choice. That's not getting the pellets.

Real stories fundamentally link to character accountability in the game. And it's not just about reading some solo quest. It's about making choices that affect the world. The last real NPC accountability system I've seen in this genre is EQ1's Faction system.

But there's a reason I said "NPC accountability." Player to player accountability is already here, in Eve, in SB, in any full PvP game where your actions affect the game world and those playing in it. Of course, this also exposes a deeper insight into just how many people want this level of immersion.

So to me we need to flesh out the NPC accountability, to bring Ultima IV back to this genre, to make stories and actions have a noticable impact on the public space, or at least zones in which people can go.

Yes, that means the game will be different three years after launch. So? The tech is there now to let the live team focus more than ever no content. And anyone who thinks MMOGs are the same three years later even now hasn't quit one shortly after launch and returned three years later.

Embrace the change. Then facilitate it. Let old timers be veteran demigods in the game, even if it's just statues named after them.

I think this is what AC1 was trying to do. Why it's only been AC1 since, I'll never understand.

[Vinadil]

As a genre that seemed to be "birthed" out of the single-player RPG... it has really surprised me how little of the true RPG feel the MMOs have contained.  While reading your post my first thought was actually of EQ as well, when my paladin had to make a decision about some Fiery Sword.  If I completed the quest for the sword, then I was KOS in Freeport (my starting city no less) and had to use the sewers and such.  It was actually interesting on multiple levels (beyond the loot at the end) because it forced me to make a game changing decision.  (Of course I think we even found a way around THAT with some simple quest exploit that allowed us to gain the faction back while invisible or something).

But, I am all for changing game worlds.  I don't even care if you use repeatable quests.  Let the first 1000 people go and kill 20 Murlocs.  But, at some point the Murlocs should be killeded enough to stop coming back.  Reserve the location on the game map where they "live" and after XX time let a small camp pop back up which sets the Quest giver back into giving the quest.

If people will believe the current setup (the one where NOTHING changes no matter what you do), then they would probably believe any nonsensical reasoning you could develop to describe why a quest line that was once completed has now come to be Again.  Players like myself would even be thrilled with small steps... and not WoW's attempt at a small step like what they required with the opening of... whatever that zone was in the desert.

In your RTS there is an enemy.  The enemy has a base.  That base is un-assaultable by You, the player, at first because he has technology and resources that dwarf your own.  With time, though, you build up your own technology and resources until the time you are ready to bring the final battle.  This just seems like a model that would fit Perfectly into a MMO.  Set your players out with a storyline that will take them 6-12 months to complete (you DO have some say over this since you can mess with things like spawn rates and mob difficulty... not to mention how much tech you release to the playerbase and when).  During that 6-12 months you work on the X-pack that reveals the new plot-line.  If you manage to create a PvP game where there are 3 PC sides and 1 NPC side (or heck multiple NPC sides), then you have even More grace with developer created content.

I know that developers who have more gaming and market insight then me have had these same thoughts... so there Must be some truly logical reason I am missing that this has not happened.  Could it be that the gamer who actually Wants dynamic content is part of a Tiny minority of paying customers?

[Calandryll]

In your RTS there is an enemy.  The enemy has a base.  That base is un-assaultable by You, the player, at first because he has technology and resources that dwarf your own.  With time, though, you build up your own technology and resources until the time you are ready to bring the final battle.  This just seems like a model that would fit Perfectly into a MMO.  Set your players out with a storyline that will take them 6-12 months to complete (you DO have some say over this since you can mess with things like spawn rates and mob difficulty... not to mention how much tech you release to the playerbase and when).  During that 6-12 months you work on the X-pack that reveals the new plot-line.  If you manage to create a PvP game where there are 3 PC sides and 1 NPC side (or heck multiple NPC sides), then you have even More grace with developer created content.

Actually, what you are describing is very similar to what we did in the second Scenario in UO. Basically it went something like this:

-Players discovered the hidden Gargoyle city and learn that gargoyles are actually intelligent and benevolent. The city is over-run with enslaved gargoyles forced to fight for an unknown master.
-Players also discover a dungeon, but they can't enter it. It's protected by a magic shield.
-Arcane Mages start appearing in the world along with their golem constructs.
-About a week later, the Arcane Mages begin spawning magic devices (they look like pillars with a control panel). These devices seem to be the first step towards an invasion.
-Players learn they have to destroy these devices to learn how the magic within them works to build their own device to take down the magical barrier around the dungeon. This invovled playing a puzzle game and destoying the devices over a period of time until enough were destroyed. This takes about a week.
-Once enough knowledge was gathered, an NPC figures out how to build his own counter-device. He asks players to deliver wood, metal, etc. to help build the device. This takes about a week.
-The device is built and the magical barrier is destroyed. Players can enter the dungeon where they learn Exodus is behind the Gargoyle's enslavement.
-Players must fight their way through the dungeon and destroy Exodus' link to this world. Doing this takes about 3 days.
-The Gargoyle city is saved and the gargoyles become NPC shopkeepers. Doing this also opened up the Glassblowing and Stoneworking skills for players to create new items. The gargoyles also share what they have learned about golems, allowing players to build their own golems as well.
-The entire scenario ran for about 6 weeks. Most of them lasted about 6 - 8 weeks with a small break in-between.
-All of this was lead up towards the LBR expansion which continued the story in a third and fourth Scenario.

I think of the four scenarios we did, this was my favorite. It had a story that harkened back to the single player Ultimas and it allowed players to really change the face of the world they played in. We also made sure that the Scenarios delivered content that could be used once the story was over, that way we weren't spending resources building stuff that could only be used once. While I wasn't happy with the technology aspects of the story (we had no choice with that) I think we incorporated them as best we could, using Exodus as the catalyst.

All of that said, I have a lot of thoughts about the problems with trying to do dynamic content that allows players to affect the world and give that single-player rpg feel. I'm a big fan of the idea, but there are a LOT of pitfalls. If I have time, I'll write something up and post it in this thread later.

[Vinadil]

I don't know if I have ever missed playing UO more than in these last few days... because this kind of stuff is Exactly what I am talking about.

[Merusk]

It's very easy to say, "Yes, all the servers will be different 3 years later, so what!?"  when it's not you having to maintain them.
 Each iteration removes the servers exponentially from the others.  In the Yew example.. suppose someone comes up with an idea that the swamp things organize and rise up against the next town.  Again, some servers will win some will lose and you have even further fractured the world

Of course, you can't do that on the servers that won, so you have a different event that fractures them as well.

Soon you have a unique lore for each and every server out there, and your live team has to know the back story and details of each one and issue content relevant to them for the past X years.  If you're doing quarterly updates and your game only has 5 servers that might not be a big deal.  How about 12 servers, something easily attainable if your game hits a mild level of popularity.

   12 servers with quarterly updates means a total of 48 unique content updates a year.  Why unique?  Well, because they'd better be relevant to each server, or what was the point of all this anyway?  If they're not relevant to that server's lore, then it doesn't matter if the world's "Dynamic" or not.

[trias_e]

I've always thought that a really dynamic story-driven MMORPG would have to be a niche game with just one server.  Otherwise, as Merusk pointed out, logistics becomes a huge problem.

The real question is how many people can you put on one server, and is it even feasible to give it a shot?

But it would be really cool to have player actions drive development.  On the small end, they kill lots of foozle A, so foozle A becomes extinct or at least much less populated.  On the large end, they fail to successfully get all parts of the uber staff of psychic energy which would have led them to defeat lord whatshisname.  The uber staff of psychic energy would have allowed them to teleport to a different planet (expansion A), but instead, they get lord whatshisname causing a cataclysmic event resulting in expansion B.

Obviously, you wouldn't be able to match that brilliant story-line in game, so you'd have to dumb it down a bit, but you get the idea.

[ajax34i]

Actually, what you are describing is very similar to what we did in the second Scenario in UO. Basically it went something like this:

-Players discovered the hidden Gargoyle city and learn that gargoyles are actually intelligent and benevolent. The city is over-run with enslaved gargoyles forced to fight for an unknown master.
-Players also discover a dungeon, but they can't enter it. It's protected by a magic shield.
-Arcane Mages start appearing in the world along with their golem constructs.
-About a week later, the Arcane Mages begin spawning magic devices (they look like pillars with a control panel). These devices seem to be the first step towards an invasion.
-Players learn they have to destroy these devices to learn how the magic within them works to build their own device to take down the magical barrier around the dungeon. This invovled playing a puzzle game and destoying the devices over a period of time until enough were destroyed. This takes about a week.
-Once enough knowledge was gathered, an NPC figures out how to build his own counter-device. He asks players to deliver wood, metal, etc. to help build the device. This takes about a week.
-The device is built and the magical barrier is destroyed. Players can enter the dungeon where they learn Exodus is behind the Gargoyle's enslavement.
-Players must fight their way through the dungeon and destroy Exodus' link to this world. Doing this takes about 3 days.
-The Gargoyle city is saved and the gargoyles become NPC shopkeepers. Doing this also opened up the Glassblowing and Stoneworking skills for players to create new items. The gargoyles also share what they have learned about golems, allowing players to build their own golems as well.
-The entire scenario ran for about 6 weeks. Most of them lasted about 6 - 8 weeks with a small break in-between.
-All of this was lead up towards the LBR expansion which continued the story in a third and fourth Scenario.

As you describe it here, though, there is no choice in this.  Players are stuck at each step until they complete it according to the prescribed script.  As such, this is pretty much like any other "quest", where the choice is "take the quest" or "don't take the quest".

[pxib]

The uber staff of psychic energy would have allowed them to teleport to a different planet (expansion A), but instead, they get lord whatshisname causing a cataclysmic event resulting in expansion B.

Either way, the developers need to have both expansion A and B in production in case the players pull off either option. Then they've wasted their time on one of the two, or it gets renamed and repackaged and turns into expansion G somewhere down the line. That's just the simplest of cases. If three or four of such branchable storylines are going on at any given time, or if a storyline has three or four available branches, the produced content rapidly outruns any possibility of recycling.

If Asheron's Call's storylines had made it more popular than (or even as popular as) Everquest, we might be seeing development teams willing to risk that kind of investment, but it didn't. Part of that was graphics and custom content, but mostly the efficient ding-grats and limited customizability made players more happy than an open-ended world with complex customizability. Asheron's Call was a more immersive world, but Everquest was a more addictive game.

At the extreme end of the world/game mess are things like Castle Marrach where story and social connections are practically all that matters. I believe that it has upwards of thirty players... almost fifteen online simultaneously!

[cmlancas]

Actually, what you are describing is very similar to what we did in the second Scenario in UO. Basically it went something like this:

-Players discovered the hidden Gargoyle city and learn that gargoyles are actually intelligent and benevolent. The city is over-run with enslaved gargoyles forced to fight for an unknown master.
-Players also discover a dungeon, but they can't enter it. It's protected by a magic shield.
-Arcane Mages start appearing in the world along with their golem constructs.
-About a week later, the Arcane Mages begin spawning magic devices (they look like pillars with a control panel). These devices seem to be the first step towards an invasion.
-Players learn they have to destroy these devices to learn how the magic within them works to build their own device to take down the magical barrier around the dungeon. This invovled playing a puzzle game and destoying the devices over a period of time until enough were destroyed. This takes about a week.
-Once enough knowledge was gathered, an NPC figures out how to build his own counter-device. He asks players to deliver wood, metal, etc. to help build the device. This takes about a week.
-The device is built and the magical barrier is destroyed. Players can enter the dungeon where they learn Exodus is behind the Gargoyle's enslavement.
-Players must fight their way through the dungeon and destroy Exodus' link to this world. Doing this takes about 3 days.
-The Gargoyle city is saved and the gargoyles become NPC shopkeepers. Doing this also opened up the Glassblowing and Stoneworking skills for players to create new items. The gargoyles also share what they have learned about golems, allowing players to build their own golems as well.
-The entire scenario ran for about 6 weeks. Most of them lasted about 6 - 8 weeks with a small break in-between.
-All of this was lead up towards the LBR expansion which continued the story in a third and fourth Scenario.

As you describe it here, though, there is no choice in this.  Players are stuck at each step until they complete it according to the prescribed script.  As such, this is pretty much like any other "quest", where the choice is "take the quest" or "don't take the quest".

Even if this is true, my understanding is that you cause the players to feel like they are contributing to a world. They didn't -have- to unlock the gargoyle city, they could've left it alone.

[ajax34i]

Of course.  Darniaq said it first, all you have is storyline that is intertwined with game mechanics / advancement.  Then he said something about choice, but that's not really neccessary.  Or maybe it is, and it just hasn't been implemented in MMOG's yet, which may have been his point.

Pxib, the one thing I keep seeing is how "half [of content] is wasted" when in fact it isn't.  Some of the shards will choose one way, others will choose another, and in the end both A and B are being consumed by your playerbase at the same time.  It's the way crowds act, as opposed to one individual making choices. 

In my opinion, the trick is this:  instead of trying to reduce expenses by reducing the number of choices you have to code for, increase revenue by increasing your playerbase BECAUSE you provide choices.  Hopefully you advertise your game in such a way that the fact that you've built choices in results in a bigger playerbase than you'd otherwise have with an MMO.  You provide A and B, and hopefully you get twice the players, or more, because of that.

I don't know if this is viable.  Probably not.

But I would love to see an MMO with an epic storyline designed for (and told from the perspective of) a crowd, rather than one hero.  With a backstory that reads something like "Stuff happened, and the population did that, did this, and they shrunk in size due to war but managed to do this other thing, and here's where we are now."  No specific persons named, no kings, no heroes, just how the mass of people reacted to events.

[Calandryll]

Actually, what you are describing is very similar to what we did in the second Scenario in UO. Basically it went something like this:

-Players discovered the hidden Gargoyle city and learn that gargoyles are actually intelligent and benevolent. The city is over-run with enslaved gargoyles forced to fight for an unknown master.
-Players also discover a dungeon, but they can't enter it. It's protected by a magic shield.
-Arcane Mages start appearing in the world along with their golem constructs.
-About a week later, the Arcane Mages begin spawning magic devices (they look like pillars with a control panel). These devices seem to be the first step towards an invasion.
-Players learn they have to destroy these devices to learn how the magic within them works to build their own device to take down the magical barrier around the dungeon. This invovled playing a puzzle game and destoying the devices over a period of time until enough were destroyed. This takes about a week.
-Once enough knowledge was gathered, an NPC figures out how to build his own counter-device. He asks players to deliver wood, metal, etc. to help build the device. This takes about a week.
-The device is built and the magical barrier is destroyed. Players can enter the dungeon where they learn Exodus is behind the Gargoyle's enslavement.
-Players must fight their way through the dungeon and destroy Exodus' link to this world. Doing this takes about 3 days.
-The Gargoyle city is saved and the gargoyles become NPC shopkeepers. Doing this also opened up the Glassblowing and Stoneworking skills for players to create new items. The gargoyles also share what they have learned about golems, allowing players to build their own golems as well.
-The entire scenario ran for about 6 weeks. Most of them lasted about 6 - 8 weeks with a small break in-between.
-All of this was lead up towards the LBR expansion which continued the story in a third and fourth Scenario.

As you describe it here, though, there is no choice in this.  Players are stuck at each step until they complete it according to the prescribed script.  As such, this is pretty much like any other "quest", where the choice is "take the quest" or "don't take the quest".

That's true. But the world was affected to a signifiacnt degree once the quest was completed, the quest was persistent, meaing it was going on whether you "took" it or not, and it was global, meaning the entire shard could participate, all at the same time. So I wouldn't say it was like any other quest. This was only our second Scenario though. The latter two had choices and consequences for failure, such as Yew remaining covered in a swamp in the shards that failed to defeat the plague monsters.

[Calandryll]

As I think more about how I feel about this, I wanted to post something quick just to get feedback. The way I see it, there are two major types of dynamic content that gives a player a connection to the world. Personal and Global.

Personal is the world reacting to you, and only you. NPC factions would fall into this category. Basically the concept here is your actions affect how the world sees you, but has no affect on the world itself. The other players don't care and aren't affected by the fact that the Drow NPCs hate you. You could expand this to be guild based also, but again, the reactions from the world would only affect your guild which still makes it personal. IMO, this is the easier of the two types to implement and I wish we saw more of this in MMOGs. Not to harp on a cancelled title, but UXO's virtue system was all about this type of dynamic world with the NPCs reacting to the choices you made in quests.

The second, Global, is about your actions affecting and changing the world in a way that affects everyone else too. An example of this would be asking the players to choose a side between two kingdoms. When the battle is over the power and allegiances of the realm change. This change would have global implications and affect how everyone else (wether they participated or not) plays the game - for example, perhaps if the evil side wins, the evil spawn in the good side's realm increases, becomes more powerful, or maybe the good side even loses control of a town. Etc. This is much more challenging for a variety of reasons and I think this is the crux of what Darniaq is talking about.

Either of these types could include linear (set path) or dynamic (making choices) aspects. Those are more of a detail within the two types.

Do those two about cover it? Is there a third type that doesn't fit with either of those two?

[Righ]

As a genre that seemed to be "birthed" out of the single-player RPG... it has really surprised me how little of the true RPG feel the MMOs have contained.

It's fairly well accepted the genre owes more to the text based combat MUDs than to single player RPGs. As for "true RPGs", you may be better looking at renaissance faires. Ew.

[Xanthippe]

Possibly a third type of dynamic content, and that would be something that has nothing to do with player input, yet the world changes. 

A spaceship lands and aliens disembark and settle, so there's a new bunch of mobs or npcs to deal with.

Expansions fall into this category, but so would natural disasters or a weather system.  Hurricane wipes out town, that sort of thing. 

Player input doesn't come into play until after the event.

[Calandryll]

Possibly a third type of dynamic content, and that would be something that has nothing to do with player input, yet the world changes. 

A spaceship lands and aliens disembark and settle, so there's a new bunch of mobs or npcs to deal with.

Expansions fall into this category, but so would natural disasters or a weather system.  Hurricane wipes out town, that sort of thing. 

Player input doesn't come into play until after the event.

Yea. Darniaq was specifically talking about player actions, but for the sake of completeness, I think adding the third type you described is important. Good call.

[Righ]

You can also have personal-interactive events with global consequences - such as the transmission of or immunization against contagious diseases. Stuff like that doesn't (necessarily) fall neatly into personal/global content.

[ajax34i]

The way I see it, there are two major types of dynamic content that gives a player a connection to the world. Personal and Global.

From how you've described "Personal", you could expand it from character to guild to alliance to realm to server-wide, theoretically, and it would still keep its essence of being "the world doesn't change but views your group differently", even if "your group" is "everyone".  It's one of those asymptotic functions.  You can expand it until it becomes "Global" in effect, but even then in your mind it will be distinct from the actual Global type.

I think you'll run into problems with your argument due to this.

Actually, you can shrink Global down to only have a localized effect.  I should probably give examples:  the NPC's changing their faction standings towards you, your guild, your alliance, everyone on the server would be "Personal", right?  A whole new continent appearing as a result of some war, Global.  But, as a result of a war, if the only change is an extra tower built into the palace of one race's cities, with 3 extra NPC's inside, that's a Global change but with a minor effect.

[pxib]

Some of the shards will choose one way, others will choose another, and in the end both A and B are being consumed by your playerbase at the same time.

Woah there. Then players on both sides will feel like they've been ripped off  because they didn't get access to the cool content over on the other server... or they'll change over to the other server and play there because it's more awesome. The fewer shards make a particular choice, the more resentful they'll be of the shards that made the rarer (and thus more "valuable") choice.

In my opinion, the trick is this:  instead of trying to reduce expenses by reducing the number of choices you have to code for, increase revenue by increasing your playerbase BECAUSE you provide choices.

Increase risk by increasing expenses in order to impress players who may or may not like your game for a thousand other reasons? I don't think so. There's still money to be made in the low risk quality-DIKU market. I'm not sure that there's actually a particularly big market interested in making a difference just for the sake of making a difference. In fact...

But I would love to see an MMO with an epic storyline designed for (and told from the perspective of) a crowd, rather than one hero.  With a backstory that reads something like "Stuff happened, and the population did that, did this, and they shrunk in size due to war but managed to do this other thing, and here's where we are now."  No specific persons named, no kings, no heroes, just how the mass of people reacted to events.

...this goes against all myth ever made. Nobody writes stories like that or makes movies like that or starts religions like that. Although Howard Zinn and his ilk provide ample evidence that history is written by the people, the people tend to prefer charismatic leaders mounted up like signposts along the way. If all the players of your MMOG can say is "Stuff happened, and the population managed to do this other thing, and here's where we are now," they're not going to feel like they're part of an epic story.

"I fought at the battle of Teapot Hill in the third of the Daisy Wars. We were commanded by General Yorgo the Impatient, but a small contingent led by Lady Cotton performed a brilliant flanking maneuver and truly won the day. Some troops wanted to overthrow Yorgo's leadership for Cotton's, and the force split when he would not cede control. All would have been for naught had a team of assassins, led by Nightwatch Doriac, not successfully slaughtered the diplomats at our enemys' alliance talks in Caer Bennet."

If you were part of Cotton or Dorian's elite forces, you feel like you truly made history. If you're part of "The Great Army of the People's Struggle" you're just a cog... but so long as every player has at least the opportunity to join Yorgo's army (or that of his enemies), they still get a signpost to point to.

"I fought with Yorgo. His glory is mine." Therein likes the loyalty, patriotism, and nationalism of which mythic history is made.

[Xanthippe]

Some of the shards will choose one way, others will choose another, and in the end both A and B are being consumed by your playerbase at the same time.

Woah there. Then players on both sides will feel like they've been ripped off  because they didn't get access to the cool content over on the other server... or they'll change over to the other server and play there because it's more awesome. The fewer shards make a particular choice, the more resentful they'll be of the shards that made the rarer (and thus more "valuable") choice.

My knowledge of server architecture is rusty and vague at best (I've never let that stop me before), but couldn't the "shards" actually be virtually combined so that there's only one shard?  Parallel shards rather than discrete shards. 

Or is that still too complicated a model for an mmo?

If not, then what happens on all affects "the world."

[pxib]

My knowledge of server architecture is rusty and vague at best (I've never let that stop me before), but couldn't the "shards" actually be virtually combined so that there's only one shard?  Parallel shards rather than discrete shards.

Absolutely. Then some created content is "wasted" and we're back to square one: A lot of risk and expense for something that isn't as effecitve a draw as addictive gameplay.

[ajax34i]

Woah there. Then players on both sides will feel like they've been ripped off  because they didn't get access to the cool content over on the other server... or they'll change over to the other server and play there because it's more awesome. The fewer shards make a particular choice, the more resentful they'll be of the shards that made the rarer (and thus more "valuable") choice.

I disagree that resentment would happen because I assumed that it would be possible to either transfer (paid, or limited), or start anew on the "better" realm without limitations.  In any case, dealing with crowds, it doesn't matter which players move.  It's like a liquid, it'll fill whatever space is provided, taking all available choices at once, proportionately to how "awesome" they are to the median.  It doesn't matter where individual molecules of the liquid go, you just make the choices equally balanced and viable, and they'll get filled.

Increased risk...  that's the same as spending more in order to have a polished game, delaying release in order to have polish or x feature, or what not.  Without experience, perhaps I'm talking out of my ass, but it should be possible to "sell" yet another potential risk if you can demonstrate it will result in a bigger profit.  I did say the aim was to increase the player base.

As far as the epic storyline, that's how history is written.  The Romans did this, the Allies did this, the Spartans did that.  People do reminisce about being in the war, personally, and being heroes or with heroes, and achieving things, and my point was that if you wanted to create a setting where players can be heroes, then you'd have to write a history-like background, not a hero-background.  I don't know how to put it...  give me "the Star Wars universe and you can be a Jedi," don't give me "Vader and what he did and you can be like Vader too."

[Venkman]

Personally that is why I emphasize NPC story that allows players to change the world rather than the more open kind. The big thing here is that unless you've got a uniserver game, you really can't afford for all of your servers to evolve over time to be completely different stages of a storyline. That'd effectively require you manage that server almost as a separate game, because there's always bugs to fix, tech to improve, people to manage, etc.

But like the WoW events, it feels very contrived.

Ultimately, I want a uniserver fantasy-themed MMOG with a compelling storyline, accelerated clock, events conducted by NPCs, events triggered by players, where the world evolves and is affected by players partaking in NPC storylines. And for Calandryll to run it :)

Do those two about cover it? Is there a third type that doesn't fit with either of those two?

Yes, with Xanthippe's add. This is the other reason I emphasize NPC story. Ultima V was a game world that was alive. The player was one additional inhabitant in a land where NPCs close up shop, sleep, are concerned for your attitude, all that thing. UO managed to keep some of this, particularly with events, but even aside from those in some cases. NPCs not at their shops 24/7. The horror!

[Calandryll]

The way I see it, there are two major types of dynamic content that gives a player a connection to the world. Personal and Global.

From how you've described "Personal", you could expand it from character to guild to alliance to realm to server-wide, theoretically, and it would still keep its essence of being "the world doesn't change but views your group differently", even if "your group" is "everyone".  It's one of those asymptotic functions.  You can expand it until it becomes "Global" in effect, but even then in your mind it will be distinct from the actual Global type.

I think you'll run into problems with your argument due to this.

Actually, you can shrink Global down to only have a localized effect.  I should probably give examples:  the NPC's changing their faction standings towards you, your guild, your alliance, everyone on the server would be "Personal", right?  A whole new continent appearing as a result of some war, Global.  But, as a result of a war, if the only change is an extra tower built into the palace of one race's cities, with 3 extra NPC's inside, that's a Global change but with a minor effect.

Actually, that's exactly what I was geting at. By personal, I meant your character or group. And yes, a group could be an entire realm IF you have the concept of a realm having it's own stats in the game. So for example, in the case of a guild, the guild's "stats" (such as reputation) may change, but everyone's individual character in the guild doesn't. When I mentioned guilds, I was thinking of the concept of a guild basically being treated as a character wth it's own stats.

Keep in mind I'm, not necessarily looking for a perfect definition either. Just something to create a baseline.

Edit: Thinking about it more, I am wondering if groups need to be a fourth type separate from personal. I think it's a safe assumption that any change to a guild would affect everyone in the guild, so yea, I think you're right Ajax. The main difference being I can opt out of the changes created in the group that affected my character. In a Global change, my only option is to leave the game/server if I don't like the results. But if a Guild change results in something I don't like, I can leave the Guild and no longer be affected by the change.

So maybe what we have is:

-Personal: The world changes only affect my character.
-Group: Guild/Faction, etc. Has an affect on all characters in the group, whether direct or indirect. Player can "opt out" without leaving the entire game/server.
-Global: World changes impact everyone on the server.
-Static: Change to the world created by the developers that players cannot influence or control and did not result because of any player actions. Usually has global implications.

[ajax34i]

So you're not making a distinction between physical changes (new continents, cities being razed or appearing, NPC races dying out or appearing, etc.) and socio-political changes (areas stay the same, but suddenly you're KOS with the elves)?

And "Static"...  that word seems to imply that the game doesn't change once it's been released, even though the situation mentioned where a spaceship crashes into the world could happen several years after the game was released.  I'm not sure what a better word would be.  Maybe developper-controlled?  Acts of God?  Random chance?  Unforeseen?

[Calandryll]

So you're not making a distinction between physical changes (new continents, cities being razed or appearing, NPC races dying out or appearing, etc.) and socio-political changes (areas stay the same, but suddenly you're KOS with the elves)?

And "Static"...  that word seems to imply that the game doesn't change once it's been released, even though the situation mentioned where a spaceship crashes into the world could happen several years after the game was released.  I'm not sure what a better word would be.  Maybe developper-controlled?  Acts of God?  Random chance?  Unforeseen?

I'm not making the distinction in this case, because both of those would be subtypes within the major types. So a Global change could be a landmass addition or a KOS change. I agree those two things are very different within the Global type though. The common theme is that the change in the world affects my gameplay. A new landmass means a new place to hunt, a race dying out might mean I need to find a new place to camp, and KOS of course means I gotta be more careful around those NPCs.

Yea, static is a bad word in this case. How about Predetermined?

[pxib]

As far as the epic storyline, that's how history is written.  The Romans did this, the Allies did this, the Spartans did that.  People do reminisce about being in the war, personally, and being heroes or with heroes, and achieving things, and my point was that if you wanted to create a setting where players can be heroes, then you'd have to write a history-like background, not a hero-background.  I don't know how to put it...  give me "the Star Wars universe and you can be a Jedi," don't give me "Vader and what he did and you can be like Vader too."

Try to write an entertaining story about the Star Wars universe without heroes. You're going to have a hard time getting people interested in a story without heroes. "You can be a Jedi" doesn't mean anything unless Jedis are heroes. It's like saying you could be a soldier, or a farmer, or a bicycle repairman. People don't start salivating at the thought of paying $15 a month to play Uncle Owen... they want to be Han Solo. At the very least they'd like to feel that Jabba or Lando cares about whether a particular misadventure succeeds or fails. Knowing that Jabba has put a price on your head is more entertaining than knowing that the "bounty hunter faction" has upgraded you to KOS. Maybe you'll never piss him off to the point that he'll use your frozen body as wall art, but imagine even being in the same guild with somebody who did.

"I upped my ranking with this faction" is meaningless. If that mechanic even exists, it should be entirely hidden. "I stole weapons from a government installation and sold them to a terrorist group" only exists if that government installation and terrorist group matter to the player. Otherwise it's just "I completed a quest to up my ranking with one faction that lowered my ranking with another." Having those facitons be player controlled is the easiest way to turn the second sentence into the first... NPC heroes (or player heroes) shortcut around the whole mess allowing your character to help known individuals and share their successes.

[Slayerik]

Hmmmm....what if you could take over towns as a guild, and NPCs guards then took on your Guild's personally set standings with other guilds.

Some people would try to be tough guys, and set everyone to hostile. This wouldnt last long. You would get smoked. Diplomacy then matters. Relations then matter. If your town has the only place you can get "X", it would be a very valuable commodity. Over time there starts to have that actual hate built up..."God I hate the 'Turdburglars Clan'. They have held 'Shitowne' for weeks and I know 'Leet dudes' and 'The Band of Brothers' dont like them...we should team up and take the place."

Guild rankings, when agreed upon, allow for FFA PvP anywhere in the world. I don't know...I'm trying to think of ways that inspire giving a shit about towns and other guilds and other NPC factions. Sorry for rambling :)

[ajax34i]

Try to write an entertaining story about the Star Wars universe without heroes.

People have written entertaining Star Wars stories without referencing any of the official IP heroes.

The player can never be Han Solo.  The MMO mechanics prevent it.  At best, the player can be is a bounty hunter, soldier, or something that has Jedi powers but isn't a Jedi (hero) and instead is as common as 10,000 other characters that have the same powers.

You can make a game whereby you try to trick the player into thinking they can become Solo, Vader, Luke, and trick them into trying and paying your monthly fee for 2-3 years.  Or, you can make your game happen in a non-descript period of time, with no named heroes, and let players, guilds, realms actually accomplish something with the world, and thus become heroes, to be quoted and emulated by other players.

In a way, we're arguing whether IP's are more popular than games where the lore isn't based on a pre-existing IP, but is rather invented on the spot.  But that's not the argument I was trying to get into; I just wanted to discuss the possibility of an "epic" story being designed so it features a group, a nation, as the "Hero", rather than one particular character.  Humanity triumphs, vs. the hero gets the girl. 

EDIT:  On second thought, nevermind.  I'm describing a "story-driven MMORTS" that lets the players affect the world drastically.  That's the problem with Internet discussions, you often reach conclusions that others have thought of already, long ago.  EVE has RTS elements, but the story kinda sucked as far as my tastes go.  WAR has some of the elements too, and maybe a good story.  I guess we'll see.

[pxib]

Heroes are inherently reactive entities. They do quests that outside forces assign. Things go wrong and heroes deal with it. In other words, something obvious has to be broken for players to fix or they can't be heroes. This requires NPCs.

EDIT:  On second thought, nevermind

Yes, it seems we're saying the same thing with different words. I don't believe folks like stories centered on "the group" rather than "the individuals", but I might be wrong. I didn't mean to imply that the player could actually be HAN SOLO(tm), but being a well-known bounty hunter is definately within a player's abilities. Han is actually a great example of what a player hero would look like. He'll do quests for anybody who pays him enough money. He doesn't have any abilities outside those of other bounty hunters, but he's got a nice ship, some powerful friends and enemies, and a lot of character and charisma. You'll meet folks like that on any RP server in any game you choose to name.

Vader is an example of an NPC hero. He's got force-powers not available to normal Jedi, and he does quests for the Emperor (who isn't a hero at all, just a plain old NPC), but he distributes most of those commands to his minions. Players could take part in battles which Vader was personally directing, and might even meet him... but he isn't out adventuring on a regular basis. He's got people to do that for him. People like you. He spends most of his time as a stationary NPC.

Leave too much initiative in the players' laps and they'll get bored. They're here to be entertained, not to entertain eachother. I don't think that having NPC heroes precludes player desire (or ability) to be heroes themselves... especially if they are acknowledged and rewarded (or cleverly punsihes) when they do.

[CmdrSlack]

One story element that I enjoyed was that Vhazilok chain in CoH where you ended up infected with the disease and had the flies buzzing about you. It gave you a real reason to continue the chain (the debuff sucked) and it also was noticeable to others. It did pretty much require that you have a group to complete the mission, but I managed to solo through it once.

I dunno, I rather liked that.  Story that only impacted me, but required I get others involved and gave a very real drive to advance the story.

[LK]

NPCs not at their shops 24/7. The horror!

Yep.  It would really suck if parts of the game stopped being accessible because of a thing like time, which could screw over a percentage of your population that wants to do something simple like shop or sell their items before going back out on the adventure.  Basic services should always be available to a player at all times (being in the same location as the player being exempt, naturally).

This is a good philosophy: "A story or setting is good so long as it doesn't get in the way of the game."

[cmlancas]

As I think more about how I feel about this, I wanted to post something quick just to get feedback. The way I see it, there are two major types of dynamic content that gives a player a connection to the world. Personal and Global.

Personal is the world reacting to you, and only you. NPC factions would fall into this category. Basically the concept here is your actions affect how the world sees you, but has no affect on the world itself. The other players don't care and aren't affected by the fact that the Drow NPCs hate you. You could expand this to be guild based also, but again, the reactions from the world would only affect your guild which still makes it personal. IMO, this is the easier of the two types to implement and I wish we saw more of this in MMOGs. Not to harp on a cancelled title, but UXO's virtue system was all about this type of dynamic world with the NPCs reacting to the choices you made in quests.

The second, Global, is about your actions affecting and changing the world in a way that affects everyone else too. An example of this would be asking the players to choose a side between two kingdoms. When the battle is over the power and allegiances of the realm change. This change would have global implications and affect how everyone else (wether they participated or not) plays the game - for example, perhaps if the evil side wins, the evil spawn in the good side's realm increases, becomes more powerful, or maybe the good side even loses control of a town. Etc. This is much more challenging for a variety of reasons and I think this is the crux of what Darniaq is talking about.

Either of these types could include linear (set path) or dynamic (making choices) aspects. Those are more of a detail within the two types.

Do those two about cover it? Is there a third type that doesn't fit with either of those two?

Xanthippe beat me to this, but I still think it is worth another quote:

What about just having changes that have nothing to do with players; aka time based? I know in a few MUDs I have played in evil portals and whatnot have opened up and wrecked major cities and whatnot. How would you have liked to see the halflings in EQ1 overrun Neriak until players helped the Dark Elves regain control of it? I think this is a good way to implement your "players have choices" schema. Maybe we should combine two and three into just one?

Edit: Yeah, I should have read the whole thread before I jumped to replying. Sorry.

[rk47]

It will work in a single shard MMO like EVE online. But as someone has mentioned, creating unique content for 20 over servers depending on how events turned out would be a little messy.

[Merusk]

It will work in a single shard MMO like EVE online. But as someone has mentioned, creating unique content for 20 over servers depending on how events turned out would be a little messy.

See, the thing about single-servers is.. they don't work either.  Sure, they're ok for the day-to-day, but it's wayyyy too easy to overload them and crash the whole 'node' or whatever you term that distribution when 1/2 the game's populace runs to that area because ther'es an event going on.  It's bad enough in EvE when they just have 2 fleets fighting.

If you were to do any kind of event, it would have to be fast, so you could wrap it up before word got out.  If you remember the old  EQ events and how badly they used to lag/ crash or leave you feeling left out, multiply that times 20 for a single server.   

[Venkman]

NPCs not at their shops 24/7. The horror!

Yep.  It would really suck if parts of the game stopped being accessible because of a thing like time, which could screw over a percentage of your population that wants to do something simple like shop or sell their items before going back out on the adventure.  Basic services should always be available to a player at all times (being in the same location as the player being exempt, naturally).

Actually, where I was going with that was it sucking that vendors were there 24/7. Nothing says "slot machine" like a world in which only the lighting conditions and sky texture change.

There's a lot of ways to handle this while enhancing immersion. Long and short though is you want an accelerated clock, and for the sorts of activities players do all the time (like getting new skills and selling vendor trash) to be always available. Enhance immersion by at least replacing the models and names of those NPCs. Or replace legit shop owners with Fences. You can sell to the Fence right away, or wait for the shop to open to get a better price.

Some people would complain, but you do know if Blizzard did it, they'd adapt.

This cannot be a system considered unto itself. If you want this level of immersion, you need to design it into a much larger system. You want to know how often you want players to go back to social hubs, how many you'd expect (not want) to be nearly-full-time crafters, how fast the average or median character levels and therefore needs a trainer (personally though, I loved the EQ1 approach of being able to pre-buy abilities and carry them with you to be learned the moment you leveled).

This could be an entire discussion unto itself, because the whole point of this thread is to highlight that a good story does get in the way of gameplay. Maybe then we could go from needing to continually attract more Achiever archetypes to getting the millions of others who like RPGs, or GTA, and so on.