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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  The Gaming Graveyard  |  Archived: We distort. We decide.  |  Topic: The Fabled Principle: Virtual Worlds 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: The Fabled Principle: Virtual Worlds  (Read 10287 times)
HaemishM
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on: October 01, 2004, 09:42:19 AM


ajax34i
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Reply #1 on: October 01, 2004, 10:31:28 AM

One problem with the current MMOG's is that the world is created FOR the player.   Everything the NPC's do is only done in the presence of players, for the benefit of players, and extremely scripted.

Perhaps someone could make a large scale world where NPC nodes (villages, cities, static wildlife, migratory wildlife) function independently of players, and relatively ok.  With daily schedules, wants and needs, migration patterns, whatever.  And give the player the ability to influence the patterns of these nodes with his actions so that villages grow, become prosperous, and are grateful to the player for that.  Or get burned to the ground by a band of player "bandits."

Kinda like a sim, but then anything with "independently functioning AI" becomes a sim by default.

As for current MMOG's, the whole "create a character, and gain items, power, and prestige" model is getting kinda old, too.   Wish they made a "look, we have an epic story to tell, wanna be a part of it, participate, and see how it ends?" MMOG.
Xilren's Twin
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Reply #2 on: October 01, 2004, 11:36:02 AM

Personally, I've come full circle on this.  I no longer want a deep, masive virtual world in a popular mmorpg because I know the 1000's of random chuckleheads who play these things would fubar it in record time.  In other words, if I am going to allow other players to affect me in these negative (and postive) ways, I want some reasonable expectation of playing only with like minded people.

That sort of deep gameplay including oppotunities for loss and effect on the gamewold, is proabably going to be restricted to small niche games with manageable populations.  As Raph mentioned in a thread on Terra Nova recently

Quote
I tend to agree that this comes down to issues of governance. Freedom is not maximal when there are no rules; it is maximal when there are rules correctly applied. We have a lot to learn about applying rules correctly in environments of greater scale, lessons that unfortunately, muds by and large did not teach us because of the smaller populations.


Which is why I expect the sorts of depth and freedom you want from much smaller scale games and look to things like NWN2 (and hopefully others of it's ilk) to drive that sort of world.

BTW, Fable for its nice bits, was not really a good basis for mmorpg type interactions.  Consider, if you had npcs reacting to player reputations and looks in a typically mmorpg, you get more then 10 players with different reactions together in the same area and it would all break down and look terrible.  It works in Fable b/c you are the only one getting those reactions; its probably not worth devoting processing power to for NPC to react organically to everyone.  Seeking out a pc who's know for orc slaying only works if there aren't 500 of em in a 2 mile radius.  Having much more individualized player experiences is again, another reason smaller scale is where you would want to do.

Xilren

"..but I'm by no means normal." - Schild
HaemishM
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the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring


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Reply #3 on: October 01, 2004, 11:49:24 AM

Quote from: Xilren's Twin
BTW, Fable for its nice bits, was not really a good basis for mmorpg type interactions.  Consider, if you had npcs reacting to player reputations and looks in a typically mmorpg, you get more then 10 players with different reactions together in the same area and it would all break down and look terrible.  It works in Fable b/c you are the only one getting those reactions; its probably not worth devoting processing power to for NPC to react organically to everyone.  Seeking out a pc who's know for orc slaying only works if there aren't 500 of em in a 2 mile radius.  Having much more individualized player experiences is again, another reason smaller scale is where you would want to do.


You're right on the track of where I'm going with this article, something I left unstated.

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Shannow
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Reply #4 on: October 01, 2004, 01:43:11 PM

Frankly I think you just need to take the massively multiplayer part out of it.

Eventually computers will be powerful enough and AI smart enough that a virtual world can be created for each player. Players will rather play in a world where they can be the focus of the world and they can truely change that world around them.

Someone liked something? Who the fuzzy fuck was this heretic? You don't come to this website and enjoy something. Fuck that. ~ The Walrus
Arnold
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Reply #5 on: October 01, 2004, 03:39:17 PM

Quote
If the town is a merchant-heavy town, the players will need the town. Most developers are loathe to inconvenience the players even the tiniest bit, so they can't remove the town from the players use without huge backlash.


Turbine replaced the most popular town in AC1 with a giant, smoking crater.  It pissed of lots of whiney players, and I'm sure all the devs got a good chuckle out of the feedback.  For those who didn't play AC1, it would be like destroying Britain in the heydey of UO.
Krakrok
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Reply #6 on: October 01, 2004, 04:37:16 PM

Give us back full loot, you bastards! *sob*
ahoythematey
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Reply #7 on: October 02, 2004, 09:04:21 AM

Ahh, the destruction of arwic...lovely moment for MMOs.  Would've been beyond hilarious if they destroyed the arwic subway as well.  Much whining would've ensued.
plangent
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Reply #8 on: October 02, 2004, 07:29:15 PM

Quote
That sort of deep gameplay including oppotunities for loss and effect on the gamewold, is proabably going to be restricted to small niche games with manageable populations.


You should give Ryzom a shot if that's what you're looking for.

Homo sum.  Humani nil a me alienum puto.
Soukyan
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Reply #9 on: October 02, 2004, 08:42:19 PM

Quote from: plangent
Quote
That sort of deep gameplay including oppotunities for loss and effect on the gamewold, is proabably going to be restricted to small niche games with manageable populations.


You should give Ryzom a shot if that's what you're looking for.


Yes.

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Roac
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Reply #10 on: October 04, 2004, 12:02:10 PM

Quote
I tend to agree that this comes down to issues of governance. Freedom is not maximal when there are no rules; it is maximal when there are rules correctly applied. We have a lot to learn about applying rules correctly in environments of greater scale, lessons that unfortunately, muds by and large did not teach us because of the smaller populations.


I call bullshit on Raph.  He is correct on the first two sentences; he is incorrect that MUDs did not teach these lessons.  It would be correct to say that devs were poor students.  There is an important lesson of scale; the potential power for people to be troublemakers scales with population.  In a game with 20 people online vs one of 2,000 people online, the would-be troublemaker has an easier time both finding marks and avoiding persecution due to administrative overhead in the larger world.  

However, as any MUD admin of a MUD with more than 20 concurrent users should be able to point out, it doesn't take long before the need for automated rules, player justice, and player organizations comes into view.  Ideally, all three should have some overlap; player organizations (guilds, clans, etc) can have some influence over the constrains of player justice, which both activates the automated rules, and has limited effect over them.

-Roac
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"Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us." -SC
SuperPopTart
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Reply #11 on: October 07, 2004, 12:31:53 PM

Haemish,

You are, without a doubt, the bane of positivity.

And I say that with much love and admiration.

I am Super, I am a Pop Tart.
Paelos
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Error 404: Title not found.


Reply #12 on: October 07, 2004, 01:04:20 PM

Coddling the playerbase in any online game leads to the lowest common denominator of fun because it removes the challenges from the game. I don't play games to wipe out everything with absolutely no effort, and I certainly don't play them if the skill requirement is how long I can go without showering in my room.

The biggest problem was that they go from trying to please everybody all the time and end up pleasing nobody ever. Then they try to please what they think is their base, the whining catasses, and end up displeasing the remaining majority players left without consideration. Until they can buck then trend of paying attention to the least satisfiable group, they will inevitably fail on the mission of making a game that is lasting fun. Design your game from the middle portion of your playerbase instead of the top. Don't make entry so ridiculously hard that you discourage new fish from swimming into your little cesspool. And stop focusing on the minutia in the hopes that regular people will love your fabulous new little hats. We want a game, not dress up you overpaid codemonkeys.

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Raguel
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Reply #13 on: October 09, 2004, 04:06:15 PM

Nice article. It's funny that we judge mmos by what they *don't* have, but then again if the companies want us to play for years on end then they better deliver the goods so to speak.

The next mmorpg I play will allow both players and npcs to be proactive.
Raph
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Title delayed while we "find the fun."


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Reply #14 on: October 09, 2004, 04:47:17 PM

Quote from: Roac
Quote
I tend to agree that this comes down to issues of governance. Freedom is not maximal when there are no rules; it is maximal when there are rules correctly applied. We have a lot to learn about applying rules correctly in environments of greater scale, lessons that unfortunately, muds by and large did not teach us because of the smaller populations.


I call bullshit on Raph.  He is correct on the first two sentences; he is incorrect that MUDs did not teach these lessons.  It would be correct to say that devs were poor students.  There is an important lesson of scale; the potential power for people to be troublemakers scales with population.  In a game with 20 people online vs one of 2,000 people online, the would-be troublemaker has an easier time both finding marks and avoiding persecution due to administrative overhead in the larger world.  

However, as any MUD admin of a MUD with more than 20 concurrent users should be able to point out, it doesn't take long before the need for automated rules, player justice, and player organizations comes into view.  Ideally, all three should have some overlap; player organizations (guilds, clans, etc) can have some influence over the constrains of player justice, which both activates the automated rules, and has limited effect over them.


The potential power for people to be troublemakers scales exponentially with population. Yes, problems start to kick in at low populations, but the type of problems seen at 500 or 1000 or 2000 are way way more difficult to manage than the ones seen at <150, which is where 99.9% of muds spent their time. There's only a few dozen muds (out of tens of thousands) that achieved peak simulatenous larger than 250...

You know very well I'm not one to knock the lesons learned from muds. :) I'm just saying they didn't have populations of that size on the curriculum.
Sky
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Reply #15 on: October 12, 2004, 07:24:49 AM

MUDs were also much less mainstream and had a higher average intelligence in their playerbases, at least the earliest ones, from back when computers weren't for sale at walmart. You want to make it mainstream, you take the negative effects that come with that.

I think Guild Wars will end up as the most egregious offender when it comes to hacky sploity bad player behaviour. Every broke-ass gamer I know is waiting for that one, it's just screaming LCD.

Which is cool by me, less LCD in pay titles, hopefully.
HaemishM
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Reply #16 on: October 12, 2004, 08:38:14 AM

As many posters in our own little incestuous community are so fond of reminding us, intelligence is no indicator of maturity. Maturity, or lack thereof, is the main hindrance to good community in games.

Fargull
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Reply #17 on: October 12, 2004, 11:06:30 AM

Quote from: Raph

The potential power for people to be troublemakers scales exponentially with population. Yes, problems start to kick in at low populations, but the type of problems seen at 500 or 1000 or 2000 are way way more difficult to manage than the ones seen at <150, which is where 99.9% of muds spent their time. There's only a few dozen muds (out of tens of thousands) that achieved peak simulatenous larger than 250...


Raph,

You think it is bad print?  What I mean by that, is that populations are just large enough that word of mouth becomes the foremost method of communicating mechanics in game, not via documentation printed and ordered with the game, or found on the official sites.  I think the constant nature of re-inventing the wheel that happens across the game mechanic to balance and stave off the whine is creating a self fulfilling prophecy of escalating the customer service issue.  Hell, in broadcast channels you always hear questions and answers being bounced back and forth, most of which are correct, but when something is wrong it is usually a bomb.  And while I do not discount that bad advice as potential greif play, I half to wonder if so much information that is created at the founding time of the game that with in short months it becomes meaningless if not diametrically opposite of the initial wording.

Has anyone to date done a study on how much change happens between birth and maturity with in a MMORPG of the intial preceived rule set?

"I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit." John Steinbeck
Roac
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Reply #18 on: October 12, 2004, 11:14:05 AM

Quote
The potential power for people to be troublemakers scales exponentially with population.


That's why MUDs of any size try to make ways to divide people up into manageable chunks.  Newbie area, normal area, expert area.  PvP+ and PvP- areas.  Caps on zone members.  Profession guilds, clans, etc.  Escalating, exponential growth on penalties (our MUD has that, for certain in-game crimes, like PK).  

The problem is that if you don't take action to segregate and legislate players mechanically, the number of people a single troublemaker can hit goes up linearly, but the number of troublemakers also goes up linearly.  Instead of disrupting a single person, a troublemaker can disrupt a group; and find groups with regularity.  From the group's pov, they are no longer just fending off one guy, but a series of them.

But it shouldn't be the case that MUDs are the only source of this lesson.  Scalability issues of this type are always in play when you have more than one variable in the mix.  Here's an example that's relevant to MMOGs:  all else being equal (terrain, training, equipment, etc), if two military forces face off, the power of each side is not linear with the troops present, but exponential; if you are outnumbered 2:1, then the opposing force has 4x as much power on the field than you.  This theory predicts that if A has 10 troops and B 20, B will win with around 16 troops remaining (square, subtract, square root).  The reason is that while the number of troops increases linearly, each troop is counting against two metrics; the ability to deliver death, and to receive it.  Again, two variables, so as n->inf., O = n^2.  Here enter "force multipliers" (gear, training) whose goal is to make one troop disperportionate to the opposition.  Or, for game terms, "uber gear" and "zerg" tactics.

Or, to turn this to a comp. sci. problem instead of a social or military one, why is it a bad idea to allow anyone who wants hop into the same area, and try to have a battle?  Why does that lag the server to high heaven, when the server works fine if you pair off and move the people to remote areas?  Again, we have the same issue at play.  Each person counts against two metrics, even though the number of users rises linearly; once to send a message (whether a /say, or combat messages) and once again to receive them.  This is another n^2 issue.

Quote
I'm just saying they didn't have populations of that size on the curriculum.


If one were to try and learn lessons from MUDs, they should try and target the successful ones (peaks > 250, or the top 5% most populated, or whatever).  While failures can lead to lessons learned, most of the tens of thousands of MUDs you mention failed because of lack of volunteer interest or poor leadership instead of this or that design decision.  Stock code and unseen admins do not a successful MUD make.  In this case, it would be easier to look at the successful MUDs and work back to figure out what lessons they got right that the unwashed masses did not.  

Quote
You know very well I'm not one to knock the lesons learned from muds. :)


I know.  I still call bullshit, but that's not to jab everything else you've brought to the MMOG table from MUDing.  I call bullshit because you're trying to argue that the above lessons weren't there to be learned.  I don't think devs (not you, or just you) were looking to start with.  I think people failed, and continue to fail, to do their homework.  This is one example; it shouldn't take MUDs to teach that some factors do not scale linear with population growth, for any industry, computer game or otherwise.  We had a global chat line on our MUD, but we understood good and well that if we had 2,000 simultaneous users, it wouldn't be near as functional as it was with 150 users.  Even with 250 it became crowded.  Why wouldn't we expect the same with other levels of player-player interraction?  There was a post not long ago about how M59 has implimented logging of potential cheats, and banning everyone who gets caught.  I did that in our MUD for a gold dupe that was uncovered when I was a college sophmore - I really didn't (and don't) think that it was a huge logical jump to drop that in.  It turns out that worldwide, unrestricted PvP+ is a bad thing for new player retention; there's a reason most MUDs who enable PvP restrict it for newbies.  I spoke with Seraphina (Atriarch) somewhere around 2000, and at the time she didn't grasp the fascination that UO players had with rares collection or with clothing dye.  This is an example of how players are taking MMOGs into areas they weren't really intended to go, but it generates sales and game interest, and would be of supreme importance to anyone wanting to get into the genre.  How can people be well into development, or post-release, and not understand these concepts?  Hence the oft cited criticism towards devs or pubs, "do you not play the games you make?"

I realize it's easier to be an armchair critic than to be the one doing it, but I honestly don't see why the same mistakes are being made.  For that matter, MUDs asside, devs seem to remake them in the context of lessons learned (or not) in the MMOG industry.  If the argument went around cost of development, managerial issues, or whatever behind-the-scenes things that we don't normally have access to, it would be more believable.  I just don't buy the argument that the lessons weren't there to be learned.  *I* learned them, and I don't do this for a profession (maybe I would, if someone would do a MMOG in .NET).

Quote
There's only a few dozen muds (out of tens of thousands) that achieved peak simulatenous larger than 250...


Then call me privledged, I guess.

-Roac
King of Ravens

"Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us." -SC
Sky
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I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.


Reply #19 on: October 12, 2004, 11:57:18 AM

Quote from: HaemishM
As many posters in our own little incestuous community are so fond of reminding us, intelligence is no indicator of maturity. Maturity, or lack thereof, is the main hindrance to good community in games.

I concede the point. Exactly so.
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Reply #20 on: October 21, 2004, 06:03:09 AM

Quote
As many posters in our own little incestuous community are so fond of reminding us, intelligence is no indicator of maturity. Maturity, or lack thereof, is the main hindrance to good community in games.


A retard pulling for the group is bound to incite immaturity in otherwise-stable players. Stupidity is an important factor in this equation, if only because it helps cause immaturity.
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