Alternative Advancement?

[Krakrok]

I was reading the thread about permadeath (don't derail this thread with permadeath) on BrokenToys and on Ubiq's blog and there was one post talking about "heroic acts" and another talking about using concepts from Super Mario Brothers (such as extra lives). Which got me thinking about alternative advancement mechanisms. This can be broken down into two different alternate advancements. The first being "heroic" deeds and the second being mechanisms borrowed from platformers. The main goal probably being to bring in other things besides combat as forms of advancement. Also keep in mind that combat is still part of the system but not the goal.

The answer to my own question is probably that these are MMORPGs and these types of things are not normally seen in RPGs.

Heroic Deeds
What if the advancement mechanism had no levels, no experience, and only minimum skill advancement (say 5 hours using a skill and it is maxed out). Now add in heroic deeds. Doing heroic deeds would gain you fame. Examples of heroic deeds might be if you came across a player (or NPC?) that was about to die to monsters and you saved them from death. You would receive fame from doing the heroic deed. Fame does nothing to increase the power of your character. You would not be able to "camp" doing heroic deeds. The opportunity to complete them would happen and you either seize the opportunity or it's gone. Talking to NPC X to get a quest to kill NPC Y would not be considered a heroic deed.

Other heroic deeds might be giving money to NPC beggers or feeding NPC beggers (this is a take off of the UN game where you feed people in a war zone instead of fighting the war). Or how about saving an NPC or PC from drowning? NPCs could randomly fall in to a river and if a PC was around they would be able to save them and gain heroic deed fame. Maybe how much fame you receive is based on the importance of the PC or NPC that you help or save. And by importance I mean okay so you saved the Mayor of the town. The Mayor talks to lots of people everyday and he passes on his "opinion" of you. Only people he talks to know the "fame" about you. The Mayor NPC literially would have to walk around and talk to other NPCs.

The problems I see with this are, is this idea just the same old experience system called fame instead? Is the "Mayor mentions your fame to people" just a more complex faction system? Is the heroic deed system really just todays "quests"?


Platfrom Mechanisms
One of the posts talked about the "extra life" part of platformers. What other mechanisms from platformers could be incorperated into MMOs? Extra lives? Boss monsters where you have to figure out their achilles heel to defeat them regardless of your "power level" ingame (and before anyone mentions spoiler sites my response is randomize the achilles heel)? What if instead of defeating a boss monster it retreats to fight another day? Run and jump puzzles? Text answer based riddles? Randomly generated mazes (to combat spoiler sites)? How about the ability to actually climb trees in game?

There really isn't enough space to go into all the platform mechanisms here but over on GameDev.net there is a good article about Difficulty in Dexterity-Based Platform Games. The Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance engine has run and jump + RPG mechanisms so it CAN be done.

Is the reason that there are minimum puzzles and other platform style mechanisms like run and jump in MMORPGs because people who completely suck can still excel in time based advancement mechanisms? Would mentally challenging gameplay help or hurt retention rates?

[Margalis]

The first part of what you are saying reminds me of many games, for example Tactics Ogre for the GBA, where you can gain abilities by doing something like "kill someone with a counter-attack" or "kill 5 undead" or "dodge a hit with less than 10 HP left." The problem is if you don't know what they are then it's just kind of random, and if you do know what they are you try to game the system to get those situations set up.

Using your example if you don't save that NPC from drowning you don't know you've missed out; or if you KNEW it did something you would always try to save them assuming it conferred some sort of reward. It basically boils down to collection quests but instead of collecting items you are collecting situations.

[Jayce]

The Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance engine has run and jump + RPG mechanisms so it CAN be done.

AC1 has some dungeons that are very run & jump.  I'm thinking mostly of the Atlan fire stone cave and some others.

[tazelbain]

I agree that we should get rid of quest vending machines.

[|3o3dha]

I agree that we should get rid of quest vending machines.

I personally found AO's system quite pleasant. Mind you, I only played the free offer for about 2 weeks, but it was nice to always have something to do instead of just camping.

[MaceVanHoffen]

I agree that we should get rid of quest vending machines.

I'll never ever play another game again that doesn't have some version of quest vending machines, be they NPC's or whatever.  Dungeon crawls with thousands of other morons getting you killed (see: Everquest) and randomly wandering through instanced dungeons/zones killing foozles got old fast.  Quests and missions that are tied together via some storyline, or even isolated ones that at least have some interesting text, are SO where it's at now.

As to the idea of OP's alternate advancement ... There's only so many ways to make advancement happen in an MMO, and they all are timesinks.  In fact, all videogames almost by definition are timesinks.  That isn't a bad thing, for me, as long as the timesink is fun and interesting.  But because all time-based advancement is really the same mechanic, what matters is the windowdressing, or immersion.  Previous games (again, Everquest) had such little in the way of immersion that you could see the wireframe of the game underneath the crapulent design.  That's what I think gamers object to, not advancement and timesinks in and of themselves.

The idea of Heroic Deeds is nice windowdressing.  The old experience paradigm it may be, but honestly, everything is.  At least with this idea, we have something that gets the player involved in the game world.  If it was random enough, it might even be fun the second or third time around with new characters.  Players could have very different experiences based on what Deeds they chose to execute.  If the game world responded to the player based on his Fame, e.g. NPC's shouting things like in City of Heroes, then you've got a way to have players affect the game world in a way that doesn't negatively impact another player's experience.

The problem I see is that you'd have to make the Deeds be homogenous, without a "best" path through them.  For example, if doing Deeds gave abilities, players might quickly realize what the best abilities were and farm Deeds to get those, leaving the other non-optimal Deeds untouched.  Ditto if Deeds gave you items, or money.  You'd have to give enough of a carrot to get player's interacting with your Deeds system, but make that same carrot available in all possible paths.  Or maybe, different carrots that cater to different players/characters who take different paths.

[tazelbain]

I don't think quests are bad, just the npcs that sit around handing out same quests over and over again.  And the silliness of missions terminals in SWG and AO is mundane and boring.

Quest Systems are slowly moving forward. 

[WayAbvPar]

I would like to see some sort of randomization on the quest givers- make them wander, make them not give quests to all comers- find a way to make everyone's game experience unique in some way. This would probably be a nightmare to implement, since it would have to be balanced (or the boards would explode from all the wailing, rending of garments, and gnashing of teeth for those who didn't get uberloot A), and there would probably be have to be even more quests available (so everyone always has quests to do, but aren't always the same ones).

It would go a long way toward making the world feel bigger, and like the 2nd or 3rd time through with a new character is a somewhat new experience.

[Kail]

I'll never ever play another game again that doesn't have some version of quest vending machines

Yikes, that's pretty strong.  Maybe I'm being blind to the obvious, but I don't see how ye olde Questgiver is going to prevent (or is in any way related to) the things you're complaining about.  "Dungeon crawls with thousands of other morons getting you killed" are entirely present in games with Quest vendors (see: World of Warcraft, among many others), as are instanced dungeons and treadmills.  Quests and missions tied together via a storyline would be nice, but I've never seen that in any MMORPG, nor do I think it's really possible to do with thousands of people hitting the same guy (or terminal, or whatever) for the same Quests.

As to the idea of OP's alternate advancement ... There's only so many ways to make advancement happen in an MMO, and they all are timesinks.  In fact, all videogames almost by definition are timesinks.  That isn't a bad thing, for me, as long as the timesink is fun and interesting.  But because all time-based advancement is really the same mechanic, what matters is the windowdressing, or immersion.  Previous games (again, Everquest) had such little in the way of immersion that you could see the wireframe of the game underneath the crapulent design.  That's what I think gamers object to, not advancement and timesinks in and of themselves.

It's not, in my opinion, the fact that games take time to play that really hurts titles like Everquest, it's the fact that time is all it takes to play them.  That, for me, anyways, is the appeal of something like alternative advancement.  The idea that some aspect of my character's advancement is due to me, the player, any my own strengths and weaknesses, rather than my spot in line as we all shuffle down the developers' perfectly balanced and paced path to level sixty.  I don't know that it's really accurate to call the difference between the two "windowdressing," or else we'd see more crossover between the two groups of players.

Platform game based advancement (in the form of traps and puzzles and so on) sounds like a good idea to me, because it re-emphasizes the dangers of travel: moving from point A to point B is the challenge, not just how many red slimes you have to kill when you get to the end.  FedEx quests, for example, are currently extremely boring because there is no challenge in moving from one place to another.  You just march down the path and eventually get paid.  If there was some challenge to travel, though, suddenly there's a whole new set of quests you can implement.  Frodo's story in the Lord of the Rings novels, for example, was a travel-based challenge: the difficulty was in getting from one place to another, a task which is trivially simple in almost any current MMORPG.

The idea of giving bosses weak points and attack patterns also sounds like an interesting idea, albeit really difficult to implement in 3D.  I'm also not sure how it would work in regards to balance, since if you get five (or more) people whomping on the same boss, one of them's going to hit the weak area by sheer chance, most likely.  Multiple players seem to be a significant problem for most plaform mechanics, I think, just in the sense that if you're not sure how to get past a certain spot or something, you just have to wait a few minutes and watch someone else do it.  The only real solution I see for this is to instance everything that's supposed to use this platform style design, which could be a problem if it constitutes most of the world.

[MaceVanHoffen]

Yikes, that's pretty strong.  Maybe I'm being blind to the obvious, but I don't see how ye olde Questgiver is going to prevent (or is in any way related to) the things you're complaining about.

It is strong, and I don't think one prevents the other.  It's really more that games that lack questgivers have no other way to advance but kill foozles side-by-side with people who are mostly little better than pond scum.  That latter bit isn't the fault of the game, though :)  At least with quests and what not, you have an alternative.  They are related because both give players a way to advance, with one being clearly superior.

It's not, in my opinion, the fact that games take time to play that really hurts titles like Everquest, it's the fact that time is all it takes to play them.  That, for me, anyways, is the appeal of something like alternative advancement.  The idea that some aspect of my character's advancement is due to me, the player, any my own strengths and weaknesses, rather than my spot in line as we all shuffle down the developers' perfectly balanced and paced path to level sixty.  I don't know that it's really accurate to call the difference between the two "windowdressing," or else we'd see more crossover between the two groups of players.

See, that's the age-old argument of player-skill-vs-character-skill, and I don't want to rehash that here.  Suffice to say that if you want player-skill to dictate the advancement, by definition you want a different type of game than what is being discussed.  The Hero Deeds system as described above represents time- and character-based advancement.

[Swede]

Why not design game mechanics towards the encouragement of player run quest?
 While problematic it shouldnt be impossible - trade could be viewed as a "quests" already, should one simply rewerse the process (ie. make "adboards" where items could requested).
 Get influenced by some sports pvp wise - make pvpkills steal a small portion of str from you, only retreivable if you, or somoene you lease out the right to, mangage to kill the offender (ie bounty hunting). Incidently, a system like this would also both encourage pvp (you can gain str!) and penalize deaths (you lose the str you collected) indefinitly..way to go..


problem is the storyline.. hard to make a playerrun storyline where everyone will participate.... maybe guild politics and conflicts are enuff story for a game?

[Kail]

It's not, in my opinion, the fact that games take time to play that really hurts titles like Everquest, it's the fact that time blah, blah, blah.

See, that's the age-old argument of player-skill-vs-character-skill, and I don't want to rehash that here.  Suffice to say that if you want player-skill to dictate the advancement, by definition you want a different type of game than what is being discussed.  The Hero Deeds system as described above represents time- and character-based advancement.

Ack, my mistake, I thought you were talking about platforming elements rather than the Heroic Deeds thing.  I suppose I should have twigged to it when you said that in the first sentence.

The idea of having heroic deeds sounds good, but yeah, I don't know if it'll end up being that much different from quests.  There are only so many different ways you can stumble upon someone in danger before it starts getting really contrived.  Also, I'm reminded of a feature I heard about in City of Heroes, where citizens would get mugged and go plead for help from the hearest superhero, who would generally decline based on the fact that it wasn't in his level range.  Plus, there are problems with designing a game system where the player wanders around randomly in the hope of eventually coming across something (e.g. someone in danger) rather than setting out with a specific destination in mind.

[Alkiera]

Plus, there are problems with designing a game system where the player wanders around randomly in the hope of eventually coming across something (e.g. someone in danger) rather than setting out with a specific destination in mind.

Have there be a reason for travel, or reasons to explore.  Allow for safe ways to travel, like roads, but which don't take the most direct route, and 'short cuts' that are more dangerous, but faster and hold the potential for heroism/proffiteering/caves full of phat lewt... If you can survive.  Heck, ideally the game system can arrange things so, other than other players, such things are nearly always 'dangerous' without being either deadly or a pitiful joke.

Alkiera

[Krakrok]

I guess CoH does have "save people from being mugged" heroic deeds and that by level 12 I was very tired of saving people from being mugged. I think another piece of the blog post which I read but didn't repost here was the observation that the "heroic" figure in most stories isn't the most powerful person in the story. AKA the goal of the hero in most stories isn't to be the most uber killing machine whereas the goal in most MMORPGs to is to be the most uber killing machine.

[Alkiera]

I guess CoH does have "save people from being mugged" heroic deeds and that by level 12 I was very tired of saving people from being mugged. I think another piece of the blog post which I read but didn't repost here was the observation that the "heroic" figure in most stories isn't the most powerful person in the story. AKA the goal of the hero in most stories isn't to be the most uber killing machine whereas the goal in most MMORPGs to is to be the most uber killing machine.

Aye, frequently fantasy main characters are of the 'right place, right time' sort, in that they happened to be there when it was important, and so got tangled up within the story by helping someone else, or foiling an early plot of the badguy, thus putting themselves on the badguy's radar.  Book then becomes 'dealing with the badguy', which may or may not involve killing him, (but often does) but doesn't neccesarily imply you have to become the Avatar of Combat beforehand.

On the other hand, the WoT series is very much like an MMOG...  Rand is grinding his way thru all the content before facing the big badness, or something.  Might explain why I got bored after book 4.

Alkiera

[Daeven]

Since we are talking about quest systems, allow me to yammer a bit. Fist to set things up, here are the givens: the environment is non-static, with dynamic flora and fauna, and an economic system that implements supply and demand.

So, how would quests work in this setting. Fist off would be the traditional ‘vendor’, a Mercenaries guildhall. Imagine a factional based dynamic quest spawning system. The other implementation would be reactive based on the environment. Say you have a blacksmith. Since the economy is based on supply and demand, the blacksmith would get low on stuff. Thus, a blacksmith quest would be ‘I’ll pay you X for each ingot of refined ore you bring me’. Now, he wouldn’t tell you *how* to get the ore. You could dig it up and refine it yourself. Go to another city and buy it on the cheap. Steal it from another smith. Raid a caravan. Whatever. How you complete the quest is up to you.

Another dynamic of such an environment is that because the ‘NPC’ factions are dynamic, they react to conditions. So say an Orc tribe moves into the area blockaiding trade. Eventually, *every* quest from the NPC’s will be, effectively, “save us from the Orc’s”!

How would such a ting be possible? Well have any of you played The Sims? In essence every object has ‘desire attributes’ that are modified by inherent descriptors of every object around there. If you drive down the ‘safety’ value of the environment, this will cause the creation of ‘safety’ increasing quests. And so on.

In other words, the environment needs to utilize Emergence to make the game react to the actions of the players. From here (to tie this into the subject) fame is rewarded to those who complete the tasks given to them, with the fame points being modified by how significantly the player impacts the environment of the gamespace.