"when people realize the endgame blows"

[Jayce]

And despite their best efforts over the last year+, the PvP (which is supposed to be the core of the game, but personally I just want to avoid) has no shades of gray whatsoever, fights last seconds and you always lose.

To quote Yogi Berra (?), "More ballgames are lost than won"

[Hoax]

1.  It doesn't take a year to skill up, I would gauge at 4mo's to get Hvy Assault Cruiser + comprable skills (nothing that isn't pre-req to 5 obviously, and prob allot of lvl3's) you can probably fly Interceptors + good skills in 2-3mo's.  The problem arises from the fact you spend most of month one, training only learning skills which leaves you with little to do. 

2.  Combat itself in this game is fucking genius, not perfect but its the only auto attack system that even resembles involving a good deal of player skill.  There are so many stats to factor in, relative velocities, missile travel times, short range-long range, drones, smart bombs, ect.  Your only goign to die in 1min if you are targeted by multiple gank (pure damage setup) ships, and that just can't be avoided.  The one major failing in my mind of the combat system is there are not enough deterrents to zerg tactics.

Anyways, I'm not even a huge fan of this game like I said, but I just find it unfortunate that so few people seem to have ever played (due mostly to the slow/boring/S L O W newbie experience).

[Strazos]

It's a shame I never tried EvE...

But I'm not about to start now...no time.

[schild]

It's a shame I never tried EvE...

But I'm not about to start now...no time.

No one has enough time for Eve. Seriously.

[AOFanboi]

No one has enough time for Eve. Seriously.

Bah, Eve takes its own time. Just play some other games while the game trains your character for you. :)

[HaemishM]

But my point was, while this SHOULD be the fucking idyllic holy grail all MMOG gamers (that aren't EQ-clone loving fucktards) it doesnt' seem to work.  Am I so shallow that without a path of power advancement to follow I dont really care to play?  I dont want to think that I am, but thats how it seemed, when I would log on, check my skills, and log off.  On the other hand, was that because I had not joined a player community? 

It could be because the game is fucking boring as shit to play. I made it through about three hours before just giving up. I've had more interaction with an Excel spreadsheet. Doing things was entirely too "easy."

[Hoax]

My point boils down to this Haem:

Can I wail and gnash my teeth that MMOG's are linear piles of EQ-clone shit, when I get confused and bored if I'm given the freedom to do whatever I want?

or

Player content:  Can it possibly work?

[HaemishM]

To the first question, yes you can. And I didn't get confused by what I was supposed to do, the act of doing what I was supposed to do was fucking boring. The execution of activities, in this case, mining, was mind-numbingly simple and thus boring.

To the second question, yes, player content can work... but not in the server sizes that MMOG's are trying to foist on us. Massive = suck. Lag issues are the least of the problems. Smaller communities are tighter communities, and are generally more open to things like roleplaying. Larger communities mean more shitcocks. One shitcock can fuck up an entire game experience for an exponentially large number of people.

[Xilren's Twin]

To the second question, yes, player content can work... but not in the server sizes that MMOG's are trying to foist on us. Massive = suck. Lag issues are the least of the problems. Smaller communities are tighter communities, and are generally more open to things like roleplaying. Larger communities mean more shitcocks. One shitcock can fuck up an entire game experience for an exponentially large number of people.

Seconded.  Smaller focus, greater freedom including content creation.

I really wish the turbinites had attempted to go this route with the upcoming DDO game rather than shoehorning D&D into a typical mmorpg fest.  Not to say that it won't be fun, but it wont be the same style of game most think of when you say D&D.

Someone bring on NWN3, or Bioware next game/creation engine.  I'd be interested to see what sort of response an online game would get if for your initial purchse,  you get a set of common areas and creation tools, and then for your continuing monthly fee, the devs were primarily responsible for adding new building block for use in the toolsets, with content "modules" or "areas" created by players and managed/DM'ed by those same players.  Highly rated content could be incorparated into the official shared gameworld or something.  NWN was a step in that direction, but was never really designed to allow people true freedom of creation, nor persistance world states (plus the whole combat pacing = the sux).

Xilren

[AOFanboi]

Player content:  Can it possibly work?

We shall see.

[lamaros]

I decided to try out the EVE 14 day trial to get an idea of what some of you have mentioned.

After 3 hours of it (and I'm going to try and stuggle through more to get a better idea) I agree with HaemishM; I just went and had a shower while my ship auto-piloted between planets. A long shower.

The political scene of the game might be great fun at the top end, but when the world is so numblingly boring (and the communication tools so terrible) then there's not much there to make the place live. Uninteractive content is not fun at all. It was bad enough in WoW where I had to sit on the back of a flying animal for 45mins just to get to the other side of the world, let alone the same thing in a game where the world is just empty space. As for the scope of the game, while it must work on the macro level (because people play it, right?) the micro level was all mind-numing PvE easiness.

On the second point: I also agree that player content can work, as I've said a few time already in this thread, and while I think that smaller communities are going to have an easier time of it that large ones I don't think it's beyond them either; they just require that the population densities and player interactions in the larger MMOG fosters a whole selection of communities (that are the size of the smaller MMOGs) rather than a single large one.

If you're aiming at making a game for a smaller community chances are you'll get the details correct because if you don't you wont have a game, while if you're aiming at a big one you might tend to focus on the overall picture, but there's nothing to say a large game shouldn't be able to get the details right as well.

[Margalis]

Someday I will write a font page article on this, but player-made stories are not for free the way devs think they are.

Here is the classic example: I'm a frail wizard, and I need a basilisk tail to complete my super-spell, so I hire a bunch of adventurers to go to the far ends of the earth to get one for me. Sounds reasonable at first glance. But then you start thinking:

1: Why can't I go get the tail myself? If I'm high level I should be able to, if I'm not I don't have the gold to pay most likely.
2: Why would the adventurers take me up on my offer when XP is more valuable than gold?
3: How did I get so much gold in the first place?

etc etc etc.

Players can only give each other quests and participate in meaningful player-made quests if you make the game with that in mind.

[Xilren's Twin]

Here is the classic example: I'm a frail wizard, and I need a basilisk tail to complete my super-spell, so I hire a bunch of adventurers to go to the far ends of the earth to get one for me. Sounds reasonable at first glance. But then you start thinking:

1: Why can't I go get the tail myself? If I'm high level I should be able to, if I'm not I don't have the gold to pay most likely.
2: Why would the adventurers take me up on my offer when XP is more valuable than gold?
3: How did I get so much gold in the first place?

Not to mention
4: What happends if all the basiliks have all been killed before the adventurers get there? (i.e. failure conditions)
5: How would the adventurers even know you were hiring?
6: If they bring you a tail and you don't pay them, what can happen?
7: How often would you even need this item (one time thing, regular occurance) and does this tail have relative value, or absolute value in the game?
Etc etc

Absolutely have to be made with these sort of questions in mind.  The why's of the game need to make some sense.  But that doesn't mean it has to be needlessly complex.  Getting lower level toons to go farm your spell components for you so you can focus your high level guy on instance runs and such is a perfectly reasonable "why" to 1, and 3.  And 2 is really just a matter of opporunity; if people know you want X and you are in the area, might as well get X to resell for some extra cash.  Such already happens today in games like WoW but it's not presented as a direct quest.  It's abstracted through the auction house.  And because of that abstraction, I doubt many people consider that "player created content" at all.

You could go the other route and actually try for more depth from pcc; and of course, the more "worldy" the game, the deeper this stuff gets quickly.  Hell you could add several layers of depth to an existing game from nothing more than a crafting economy based on geographiclly specialized resources and overland travel not being trivial.  Of course, the deeper and more complex the interactions, the easier it is to cock it all up.  Still, I think a niche market exists for some of these suckers beyond text muds. 

One nice thing about the various NWN attempts at persistant worlds; the authors had full control over things like coin and loot drops, so you could have a world thats very tight on magic gear so economic scarcity can drive all sorts of actions (instead of typical heavy loot worlds where everyone is clothed from head to toe in magic gear in a min maxing stat comparing extravaganza of a fashion show).  Course, the tight worlds seem to have less appeal overall compared to the phat lewt worlds, which brings us right back to smaller focus games, which seem better suited for content creation anyway...

Xilren

[lamaros]

Here is the classic example: I'm a frail wizard, and I need a basilisk tail to complete my super-spell, so I hire a bunch of adventurers to go to the far ends of the earth to get one for me. Sounds reasonable at first glance. But then you start thinking:

1: Why can't I go get the tail myself? If I'm high level I should be able to, if I'm not I don't have the gold to pay most likely.
2: Why would the adventurers take me up on my offer when XP is more valuable than gold?
3: How did I get so much gold in the first place?

Not to mention
4: What happends if all the basiliks have all been killed before the adventurers get there? (i.e. failure conditions)
5: How would the adventurers even know you were hiring?
6: If they bring you a tail and you don't pay them, what can happen?
7: How often would you even need this item (one time thing, regular occurance) and does this tail have relative value, or absolute value in the game?
Etc etc

Absolutely have to be made with these sort of questions in mind.  The why's of the game need to make some sense.  But that doesn't mean it has to be needlessly complex.  Getting lower level toons to go farm your spell components for you so you can focus your high level guy on instance runs and such is a perfectly reasonable "why" to 1, and 3.  And 2 is really just a matter of opporunity; if people know you want X and you are in the area, might as well get X to resell for some extra cash.  Such already happens today in games like WoW but it's not presented as a direct quest.  It's abstracted through the auction house.  And because of that abstraction, I doubt many people consider that "player created content" at all.

You could go the other route and actually try for more depth from pcc; and of course, the more "worldy" the game, the deeper this stuff gets quickly.  Hell you could add several layers of depth to an existing game from nothing more than a crafting economy based on geographiclly specialized resources and overland travel not being trivial.  Of course, the deeper and more complex the interactions, the easier it is to cock it all up.  Still, I think a niche market exists for some of these suckers beyond text muds. 

One nice thing about the various NWN attempts at persistant worlds; the authors had full control over things like coin and loot drops, so you could have a world thats very tight on magic gear so economic scarcity can drive all sorts of actions (instead of typical heavy loot worlds where everyone is clothed from head to toe in magic gear in a min maxing stat comparing extravaganza of a fashion show).  Course, the tight worlds seem to have less appeal overall compared to the phat lewt worlds, which brings us right back to smaller focus games, which seem better suited for content creation anyway...

Xilren

Lets set some very basic game mechanics:

Players and NPCs have an alignment. Good, Neutral, and Evil.
Opposed alignments cannot communicate.
Every person in the world can have two, and only two, skills.

Now lets change the example a touch:

I'm a good frail wizard, and I need a herb to complete my super-spell. I have two skills, Magic Flames, and Healing.

Herbs grow in the game world. Picking herbs requires the herbology skill.

I cannot pick these herbs myself. (answer to question 1)

Thus I can get the herb off other players or NPCs that have the skill.

The type of NPCs that harvest the herbs are evil and resistant to magic. So I can't kill them to get herbs. (answer to question 1)

I'm good, killing other players just to get herbs would ruin my alignment. (answer to question 1)

So I have to get them from another player.

I might hire a good warrior to kill the NPCs and get me some. Why would he do it? Because he has skills for killing and needs gold to buy a new weapon.
I might hire a herbologist to try and harvest me some. Why would he do it? Because he's has skills to do it and needs money to afford supplies to last him while exploring the land.
I might try to find a shopkeeper who sells them. (the shopkeep is neutral and gets them form an evil supplier who trades for them with the NPCs.) Why does he do it? Because he's a greedy bastard who wants to build the bigest house and show off.

So I have my herbs now. I use these herbs to cast my super-spell, FIREBALL, when hunting outlaws. I loot the outlaws I kill and/or get a reward from those who hire me to kill them. (answer to question 3)

Who hires me to kill them? Perhaps a blacksmith who got robbed by them (the same smith who makes the warrior's weapons).

As for quesiton 2. A level based system is just asking for trouble if you want player interation to make sense, simple because of the way level based systems scale up. You can't have a level system in that vein if you want it to work easily.

----

4. If there is a reasonable market in place then question 4 won't happen exactly in that way... say for example that there is no shopkeeper, and no one kills the NPCs often. My wizard needs herbs so he hires a herbologist. The herbologist comes back with hardly anything, but says he noticed the NPCs were harvesting them. My wizard then decides to hire a warrior. The warrior comes back with a whole heap. Who gets paid what depends on what the service agreement was at the begining, was it a flat rate, pay by the herb, etc?

5. Logically, if there is a shopkeeper I would go up to him and say "I need to buy some herbs, got any?". If he says no there I'll do futher inquires. Possibly putting up an ad on an in-game message board. Perhaps the shopkeeper, registering my demand, with follow up enquiries himself. Chances are if we've played the game for a little while we'll have some understanding of how to obtain herbs. Then it becomes a matter of finding those who are able to do it. Chances are the shopkeeper will be better at it, as he does that sort of thing more often. Chances are that herbologists/etc would know where they are generaly needed and would be avaliable.

6. If you can't pay them then perhaps they won't give you the items. Perhaps if they give them to you and then you say you can't pay they'll ask for them back. Perhaps if you don't they will then hire someone to kill you, or get you banned from that city, or try to kill you themselves. We've coloured our world with PK and shops so far, so revenge and economic sanctions aren't out of place.

7. How often would I need it? Depends how often I'm casting FIREBALL, doesn't it? As for the price:

What happens if the herbs are consumed faster than they are replaced? The price goes up. What happens if they are consumed slower than they are replaced? The price goes down (though ones assumes that the herbs would go off after a time (decay), so they would reach a stable price, unless the replacement rate increases.).

Herbs grow. They are picked by the NPCs and by players. If the NPCs are killed often they wont have time to gather herbs. If they are never killed they will gather all the herbs. So:

If the NPCs are killed often then:
Hiring a warrior would net you only a few herbs for your outlay. Herbs would cost a bit.
Hiring a herbologist would net you a lot of herbs for your outlay. Herbs would be cheap.
The shopkeeper would have fewer herbs avaliable. Herbs would cost a bit. (though a decent shopkeeper would probaly hire a herbologist to take advantage and stock up their store)

If the NPCs are hardly ever killed then:
Hiring a warrior would yeird a lot of herbs. Herbs woudl be cheap.
Hiring a herbologist would yeild few herbs. Herbs would be expensive.
The shopkeeper would have many herbs avaliable. Herbs would be cheap. (though a good shop keeper would bump the price up as long as there were no warriors competing)

But maybe the shopkeeper is evil and will only sell to evil people, so their price is cheaper than the good price, etc.

The price would certainly be relative and dynamic.

Now this all seems pretty complex, but when you break it down it's still just the basics outlined above that make it work. A lot of fiddling and tweaking and balancing would be required to make it a sucess, but it's the basic concepts that drive it.

Look at WoW:

Lets say we apply the following to WoW and think how much the game would change (possible for the worse, given the rest of WoW, but it's jsut an example):

Put in player owned shops/more localised AHs.
Allow more of the faction mobs to be gatherers.
Structure rescource placement more.
Implement weight on gathered materials. (mined materials cannot be taken on flight paths, they slow the player carrying them down, and they require a shipping few depending on volume if they are to be moved from one continent to the other)

----

There's another question that will be probably be asked of the characters in my example world above:

Why do they do what they do? Why would some wizard want to run around killing other players all day? Why would some guy want to run a shop all day? Why would some warrior want to kill evil NPCs all day? People don't want to play the game as a job!

The answer is because these jobs are FUN, of course. The goal is to make the various "jobs" each character fulfil like the tasks that players enjoy doing anyway, and to give them flexibility to do a variety of them (but not all at the same time).

People like PvPing. Some might like to be more freelance PKers who go around killing people and robbing them (the bandits), some miight prefer to do it with some nobility (my wizard). Some people might like PvE content, being the masters of the Mobs, and spend time doing that (the warrior), while some might perfer wheeling and dealing and making money and trying to get rich (the shopkeepers). Others might enjoy exploring the world (the herbologist), running a city (the politician/clan leader), or large scale wars (clan members). It's not really an attempt to make a virtual world, it's still a game. It's just a game where there are a whole series of different fun things to do that have a complex series of relationships tying them together. The 'world' comes from the diversity of the population, not the game mechanics.

Looking at WoWs endgame honestly, the only people I think it truly satisfies are people who like the PvE grind and Raiding. Why? The game is level and item centric.
Looking at Guild Wars' endgame honestly, the only people I think it truly satisfies are those that like team PvP. Why? The game is built around the skill mechanic and balanced around 8v8 combat and.

Neither of those games started with an idea of what various people liked doing and tried to design to fit them all together, but that's what a virtual world is, a place where options come first.

(note: http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001298.php is interesting reading. makes one consider what kind of options have to be avaliable to cater for a large number of gamers, and re-enforces that options have to be nonexclusive and flexible)

[Alkiera]

lamaros, I like what you did there, with your example game.

Complexity in character interaction not by required grouping, but required interaction, because one player can't do everything.  By limiting what a character can do(yes, limiting!), you require them to interact with others.

Secondarily, I like that combat skills and non-combat skills are part of the same choices.  It should indicate that devs have put as much work into making herbology and blacksmithing as fun to do as fire magic or swordfighting. I'd argue that 'shopkeeper' should also be a skill choice.  It'd let you hire NPCs to manage your shop, etc.  Can put items in storage and set prices for them, heck, set buy prices for some items too, so herbologists and basilisk slayers have someplace to sell their loot.

We're starting to get more games to use this approach.  In fact, both heavy 'world' games did the the latter, in that crafting skills used points from same pool as combat skills(UO/SWG).  However, SWG never really bothered to make any of the game fun, much less crafting or harvesting.  And UO is, well, UO.  Being 2d, and having an interface with the same complexity as the average space shuttle console, along with its dubious history...

If we could get ATiTD to merge with some combat mechanics, and change character definition to something more like CoH, with relatively low numbers per server for an MMO, we might see something interesting.

Or not.

Alkiera

[Roac]

To the second question, yes, player content can work... but not in the server sizes that MMOG's are trying to foist on us. Massive = suck.

What I would like to see is more segretation of the massive worlds, where lateral movement between groups is difficult.  Guilds is one way to do that, but it's fairly limited because it's normally so flexible.  The only real way to build up communities is to have semi-static membership.  If everything is fly by night, you just have NYC Online.

[Roac]

Players can only give each other quests and participate in meaningful player-made quests if you make the game with that in mind.

What you'd need is a player-contributable mission system.  It handles the logistics of success/failure, dealing out rewards/penalties, and so forth.  Really, it's just a fancy Bazaar, except insted of bidding on available resources, you post demand for resources, and the motivation in both cases is pretty similar; you want the result, but it's more ecnomical to just pay the gold instead of doing it yourself. 

If you had such a system, it's also entirely possible to design some requirements such that they *must* go through this system.  For example, assume I want to build a house; I need 500 timber.  The only (or only practical) way is to get it through the mission system, so I put up my requirements, my payment, and it generates 50 missions that each net 10 timber.  The rationale could be anything; the only way to get the 500 timber is to go through the Timber Guild (historical use of the term Guild), who doesn't only want gold - they want lots of other things done too.  Maybe the local orcs are causing trouble in the timber trade business, or whatever.  Make the requirements such that it requires numerous points of activity; I couldn't and wouldn't want to do it all myself.  So instead of paying 1,000,000 for a house deed, I work through various PCs/NPCs, setup missions to meet goals, and put up reward money.  This in turn can create dozens of missions for players to do.  So, to address the questions:

1) You can, but sometimes it won't be practical (number of iterations required) or you'd rather not (the tail is on the other side of the world, and you have other things to do).
2) They would get XP and gold for doing it.  Getting XP for completing a mission could be built in.
3) Same way anyone in a MMOG gets gold.
4) Success/failure would have to be monitored by the mission system.  That's handled now through existing systems in MMOGs, as well as with MUD systems (I worked on one), so I know it's doable.
5) Through a common mission interface.  There might be multiple interfaces as with SWG, or just one as with Mx0, but just so that there is a system players can understand and interface with.
6) Handled by the mission system. 
7) You'd need to build it into the game to depend on the player missions.

[tazelbain]

I like when all this is going.

One issue is scale. With the housing example, everyone going to want one. So now, in game of 2000 people, you have 100000 timbers quests.  Now all your players are complaining because only rich people who can offer ridulous amounts of gold gets their quest done.

[Roac]

Now all your players are complaining because only rich people who can offer ridulous amounts of gold gets their quest done.

Er, well that's a bit vague of a complaint.  It's equivalent to saying that a Bazaar can't work because people will complain that only the lowest priced items get sold.  It's true in both cases of course, but all you're doing is identifying how capitalism works.  If there is a consistant demand for something (say, this simplified timber example), the price point is going to stableize - the market will expect 10k per timber mission, or whatever.  If you try to lowball it at 9k, you won't get takers.  Same thing with sales; if you try to sell your SuperMagicSword at 20% over market value, you're not likely to sell it.

...

So what?

[sarius]

People (as in catass farming whiners) react negatively when their items (read income stream) suddenly become less valuable, bitch on boards and organize idiotic lag-filled in-game protests.

So instead of giving them a new carrot, MMO's go nerf fucking crazy and tear everything apart.  Yeah that makes sense.

[HaemishM]

No, MMOG's never make sense. Any attempt to make them sensical dissolves into nonesense.

Personally, I'm in favor of all great, epic style items just randomly blowing up in their wielder's faces, deleting their items, and perma-killing that character as a Jagger lesson.

Def: Jagger Lesson - You can't always get what you want

[sarius]

5: How would the adventurers even know you were hiring?

Xilren

Why is it that no one ever thinks of putting a sign in MMOs?  Whether a really big billboard or just a plank on a stick in the ground.  Would seem to solve a number of these issues in "fantasy" settings.  I'm sure there's some BS answer about storage, but seriously, I don't see it.

[Margalis]

I think the issue with something like a sign is that it would become unmanageable. If every player had the ability to plant even a single sign you'd probably end up with an entire section of a city just all signs that nobody ever looked at. The same is true of things like in-game bulletin boards, I think it would just me unmanageable.

As far as player-made quests go, what would probably make sense would to have a standard way of creating them, similar to an auction house, but instead of buying items people are picking up quests. You create a quest using some standard form, maybe add some flavor text, pony up the payment and then someone takes on the quest, completes it, comes back, it's verified and they receive payment.

I'm thinking something like:

This quest is to collect (#) of item (ITEM_TYPE) and pays $. Recommended for players level #-#.

Then it's searchable, there are no payment problems, etc. It then becomes a bitch to make cool custom quests, but honestly I think those would be a rarity. There are some holes in what I propose, for example can two people work on the same quest at the same time?

But when you get down to it, all I've proposed is an auction house that is buyer centric rather than seller. That's the problem with player-made quests currently, there isn't really any point or anything to quest for. It all boils down to being the same as "looking to buy 5 tiger hides" which is essentially the same as people just selling tiger hides and you buying. I mean, I could commision someone to go get those hides, or people could just get those hides and sell them on the open market.

---

I think if people are really serious about player-made quests, they have to think through a number of examples of a quest OUTSIDE of a MMORPG and figure out how any of those could translate into a MMORPG setting. My guess is the vast majority of them won't.

Take for example the old "go defeat the super evil boss creature and win my daughter's hand in marriage" quest. In a MMORPG that would best be doled out by an NPC. And players will want to defeat the super evil boss whether or not another player gives them a quest."

Everything in a MMORPG is ordinary and repeated a hundred fold. Any time you are doing anything, 100 other people are doing the exact same thing. I don't really see player made quests working in that environment.

I would love to see someone write up 10 different types of quests from fantasy literature or games that would translate into a MMORPG. My guess is nobody (here or in the professional world) can do that.

[Yegolev]

I think the issue with something like a sign is that it would become unmanageable. If every player had the ability to plant even a single sign you'd probably end up with an entire section of a city just all signs that nobody ever looked at. The same is true of things like in-game bulletin boards, I think it would just me unmanageable.

I have the opinion that there are too many people in most of these games.  With something less than 2500 people doing shit, the shit could become manageable.  We need to back off the tech-demo Wish sizes and get more in tune with the Monkeysphere.  Call them Largely-Multiplayer Online Games or whatever.  Pulling a number from my ass, I'd like to see a 500-toon limit on any given MOG server.  You'll never read signs in a advertising forest of five hundred signs, but if there are more like 75 it becomes easier.

I guess I really started feeling this way after my low-pop WoW server was the victim of a merge.  We had enough people to drive the faction AH, but not enough to warrant a trip to Gadgetzan.  It was pretty damn nice.

[lamaros]

1000 is managable. Even up to 1500 I'd say.

And bulletin boards are much better than signs.

[Viin]

EVE does player "quests", but they are simply 'fill orders'. Ie: Bob is offering 2000 credits for 100 iron.

Depending on the area you are in, they could be offering more or less credits per iron (depending on how scarce it is).

These show up in the market place and is the only way to sell things instantly - otherwise you have to put them up for auction. (There are no NPC vendors to buy crap from you at a set price).


However, real actual quests could be an interesting 'end-game' for a lot of players. Heck, most MUDs turn their players into Immortals/Wizards after reaching max level, allowing them to create zones and quests. There's a game called Grendal's Revenge which focuses on lair building - add in the ability for other players to enter your lair - coupled that with Second Life's model of paying fees to enter another players establishment, and you could have player generated content.

Or instead of money, make the player have to earn some praise points for basic quests - generated by players who complete the quest and give it a positive rating - be able to turn in those praise points for more things to create more quests with. Eventually they'd be able to buy some space and start developing a full fledged dungeon.

There are creative people (given the right tools) who will spend months creating good content for free.

I do think the key here is to make sure the population size is not out of hand. 2000 characters per server is more than enough (not online, but created).

[lamaros]

2000 created is WAY to low. Any half large world will feel emptyish with less than 300, and less than 300 online at once is not going to happen with 2000 capped.

And I don't get this whole player quest thing. Horse before cart.

[Viin]

2000 created is WAY to low. Any half large world will feel emptyish with less than 300, and less than 300 online at once is not going to happen with 2000 capped.

And I don't get this whole player quest thing. Horse before cart.

I suppose if you *only* had players and no NPCs, yah it'd be a little empty. But the idea is that there is a finite number of "heroes" in the game, and not every single thing you bump into is another hero. Flesh out the place with NPCs. See: Daggerfall series with chances to run into other players and assist/destroy each other.

Not sure I understand your 'horse before cart' comment.. are you saying you need players before player generated content? Well yah...

[HaemishM]

The problem with player-created quest isn't in the numbers, though certainly the way-too-high server populations of our current MMOG's would make player-created quests a nightmare system to police and manage. The problem is that players cannot be invested in the game.

What do I mean? Well, quests in general aren't just "I need 5 tiger hides." Sure, that's the mechanics but the story has to be something different. What can a player DO with those tiger hides? In MMOG's today, not much of shit. They can make some cool armor for themselves or their business. Whoopy.

But they aren't invested in the world, they are insulated from it. They aren't invested because nothing they do in the world is unique. EVERYBODY has the same options in regards to those items. Why? Because no player can be given special stuff that other players can't have access to. Everyone has to have the equal opportunities, and everyone has to have the same relative power.

Player-generated missions are only going to work if the player generating the mission has something unique to gain AND unique to lose with the success or failure of the mission. Take a cyberpunk style game where you create a mission to extract a scientist from a rival cybernetics company to get him to work for you. In MMOG's today, everyone must have access to the same scientist, and whatever benefit that scientist gives you has to be equal for whoever extracts that scientist. So what's the point of competition over the mission, other than being FRIST!1!@ But if your company, owned by the player, actually lost something (say your stock price went down) if the mission failed, and actually gained something unique (a new crafting recipe that no one else had) for success, well that would be different wouldn't it? You would be invested in that mission, that quest.

But then, in MMOG's now, if it's something you can hire someone to do, it's generally easier and more efficient to just do it yourself. Since parties/individuals/guilds have to be jack of all trades in current MMOG's, there isn't any good game reason not to just do the mission yourself with your guild, as opposed to hiring someone else to do it.

Another problem with player-generated missions is that they really work best when the generation of a mission FOR something generates another player mission to oppose that mission. Which is PVP, and we can't have that, even if it's consensual.

Note that a lot of what I said above talks about things I bitch about in current MMOG's. Such as the unique content. Unique content in current MMOG's is fucking stupid because the game's are predicated on time invested > everything else. Which means the catasses WILL ALWAYS GET STUFF FIRST OR MOST. In order to really make player-generated questing work, you have to throw that shit out completely. You have to start from the ground up with that stuff in mind.

[Soln]

this might seem a stupid point BUT do players ever know what the end-game is?  I mean, do the operators ever tell them?  It sort of would presume the designers knew what the end-game was themselves, as they built the thing, even if the design is open ended (whatever that means). 

If you had a definitive set of goals (micro or macro), why couldn't you tell players that? Why couldn't you tell players "this game is about X, and here are some Y ways to participate in X, and P, Q and R are some sample achievements you can have on your way to X."  

I presume they don't because of scaring off potential customers?  I kind of would like to know what the "ultimate" is in every game -- ultimate class, abilities, place, loot, whatever.  Is this too limiting?

I actually do think there is an "endgame" built into every game, MMORPG or not.  Why?  Because it's how the designers structure their design limits.  Until there's a mechanic to give players advancement without the artificial capping by levels this will continue.  I genuinely don't understand how hard it is to design quests, content, whatever that scales to skills or acheivements so far of the players -- whether it's badges, money, friends, PvP kills, etc.  I don't have the solution, but between everything out there for the last 5 year there must be some combination that works.

Edit: sorry, just feels like to me I only learn what the "real" end-game is by paying $500 for a year+ for 2 accounts and by then -- when I figure it out -- I'm inevitably disappointed.  I'm not sure if I'm more disappointed by the discovery of the end-game itself or the weariness over 1+ year to get there.  Either way, I kind of would like to know up front, and maybe that's naive.  It seems it's not making lvl50, for example, that's the problem, it's the fault of the developers not to have the ability to scale any of the in-game content around the players of that level.  Sure, lvl10's shouldn't be able to solo high level mobs, but a lvl50 should still be able to benefit somehow from a lvl10 quest, or be killed by a gross herd of lvl10 mobs.  Maybe a better way to think about it, is "to have an effect on the world, wherein they are a participant" (so rank/fame/faction?).  No idea.

[lamaros]

The problem with player-created quest isn't in the numbers, though certainly the way-too-high server populations of our current MMOG's would make player-created quests a nightmare system to police and manage. The problem is that players cannot be invested in the game.

What do I mean? Well, quests in general aren't just "I need 5 tiger hides." Sure, that's the mechanics but the story has to be something different. What can a player DO with those tiger hides? In MMOG's today, not much of shit. They can make some cool armor for themselves or their business. Whoopy.

But they aren't invested in the world, they are insulated from it. They aren't invested because nothing they do in the world is unique. EVERYBODY has the same options in regards to those items. Why? Because no player can be given special stuff that other players can't have access to. Everyone has to have the equal opportunities, and everyone has to have the same relative power.

Player-generated missions are only going to work if the player generating the mission has something unique to gain AND unique to lose with the success or failure of the mission. Take a cyberpunk style game where you create a mission to extract a scientist from a rival cybernetics company to get him to work for you. In MMOG's today, everyone must have access to the same scientist, and whatever benefit that scientist gives you has to be equal for whoever extracts that scientist. So what's the point of competition over the mission, other than being FRIST!1!@ But if your company, owned by the player, actually lost something (say your stock price went down) if the mission failed, and actually gained something unique (a new crafting recipe that no one else had) for success, well that would be different wouldn't it? You would be invested in that mission, that quest.

But then, in MMOG's now, if it's something you can hire someone to do, it's generally easier and more efficient to just do it yourself. Since parties/individuals/guilds have to be jack of all trades in current MMOG's, there isn't any good game reason not to just do the mission yourself with your guild, as opposed to hiring someone else to do it.

Another problem with player-generated missions is that they really work best when the generation of a mission FOR something generates another player mission to oppose that mission. Which is PVP, and we can't have that, even if it's consensual.

^ That is pretty much exactly what I meant by "horse before cart". To make player quests work you need to have a game where those quests occur because they have a purpose. You need to have players who have limited skills who need to rely on each other.

The things is, when you get a system like that in place you don't really need player created quests, the player interaction will often provide questlike aspects without a formal system. (And once again I'm going off MUD experience here)

[Viin]

Oh I certainly agree - MMOs are currently a few generations behind the more advanced MUDs available. While not everything can transfer directly over, I think the 'fun' aspects can. The main issue, in my mind, has already been stated: developers/publishers are more interested in seeing how 'massive' they can make a game rather than focusing on small interactive communities. Once they realize that small communities will foster even better retention than large 'lost in the crowd' populations we might see some changes.

(There are some games going in the right direction: Puzzle Pirates, Second Life, Tale in the Desert, etc - Even games like EVE and Neocron are at least exploring other gaming styles and incoming streams).

[Pococurante]

... has already been stated: developers/publishers are more interested in seeing how 'massive' they can make a game rather than focusing on small interactive communities. Once they realize that small communities will foster even better retention than large 'lost in the crowd' populations we might see some changes.

From what I've read of Spore it may well provide the jumpoff point for that sort of cross-pollination to MOGs.  The author only partly tongue-in-cheek bills it as a massive single-player game.

But there's a huge problem in convincing decisionmakers along these lines.  Raph Koster has more than a few times here on these boards and their predecessers quoted studies that inflict the status quo of retention through mindless addiction.  I suggest that the concepts discussed here suggest these decisionmakers are shooting at an obsolete target.

[Yegolev]

I spent more time skimming this thread.  There's a lot here.  I'll throw out some half-baked opinions and ill-considered ideas.  My general bias is toward skill-based characters, against heavy reliance on combat, and toward large and interesting environments.

1: Why can't I go get the tail myself? If I'm high level I should be able to, if I'm not I don't have the gold to pay most likely.
2: Why would the adventurers take me up on my offer when XP is more valuable than gold?
3: How did I get so much gold in the first place?
4: What happends if all the basiliks have all been killed before the adventurers get there? (i.e. failure conditions)
5: How would the adventurers even know you were hiring?
6: If they bring you a tail and you don't pay them, what can happen?
7: How often would you even need this item (one time thing, regular occurance) and does this tail have relative value, or absolute value in the game?

Number one isn't too difficult.  You, as a robe-wearing, tower-dwelling wizard can't get the tail yourself because the basilisk might eat you, it's a long way for an octogenarian to travel, or maybe you are just lazy/arrogant.  You aren't high-level because levels suck dog balls and are not present in this imaginary game.  You are good at magic/alchemy/whatever but when it comes to combat, if you don't toast your opponent(s) before they close on you, you die.  Dying is bad.  Better to give some pocket change or trinkets to young cockstrong adventurers and let them risk being turned to stone for eternity.

Number two could be true or false, since we are in a skill-based game.  I think they would be motivated by what is to them a large amount of money, or perhaps it is their business to yank tails from basilisks and deliver them to merchants or wizards directly.  It might also be that the basilisk is good for something else such as eggs, meat, scales, etc.  Hardened adventureres would be required to gather the difficult-to-obtain items.

#3. Since you are assumed to be a RWTD wizard, it should also be assumed that you didn't get the tower at character creation.  Let's just say that you have been stingy over the game-years.

#4. If the basilisks are all gone, the laws of economics means that the price of basilisk parts will skyrocket.  People who used to make fancy basilisk-scale armor or used the eggs to make omeletes would have to find alternate ingredients, or fund an expedition of crazy adventurers to search for more basilisks if they have a very long respawn timer.  The world would have to be flexible enough to handle something like this... do we want the possibility to run out of basilisks, even for the short term?  I think a short-term lack of resources could be interesting if done correctly, but this penalizes the non-catass.

An interesting implementation would be changing resources.  The basilisks might all die out, but a week or two later someone finds a creature whose name is easier to type that provides similar resources.  This could get complicated and would probably required a Live Team that wasn't a bunch of lowpaid dick-licks, or smart (not Smart) programmers that could automate this.  It might even slow down Allakhazam's inevitable publication of the loot tables.  I don't see what the big hold-up is when it comes to a dynamic game world, other than stingy or misguided companies.

#5.  Adventurers could find out you were hiring easily, I think, if there was some well-designed commercial area where advertising space was available, or perhaps there is a central point for this sort of thing, like an adventurer guild.  Sounds cheesy at first, maybe, but seems logical to have a central place to hire lackeys and find employers.  Otherwise the out-of-work warrior would end up knocking on the doors of wizard towers or merchant homes.

#6.  If a person or group that had traveled far to slay a monster that a RWTD wizard could not kill decided to double-cross that wizard... well, let's rule out uncontrolled PVP because that blows.  If it was enabled, the angry adventurers could threaten or kill the wizard, but then you would have the opposite problem of preventing the adventurers from slaying the wizard once he presented himself.  This could be enforced with a contract, which I don't think should be required.  If someone wants to just make a verbal agreement, fine and caveat emptor, but signing a contract would penalize the contract-breaker somehow.  This could get messy.  A simple mechanism would be to use the aforementioned guild as a third-party contract handler, requiring both the tail and money be submitted before completing the transaction.  They could perhaps also provide an item-identification or appraisal service that helps the unwitting decide if the trinket is valuable to them... for a fee.

#7, hmmm... seems like the question is "Will an NPC buy this thing, and if so, for how much?"  My personal taste is to have NPCs buy common things.  This way someone could conceivably eke out a living as a farmer by selling <farm product> to someone in-town.  Nothing should stop them from selling to players, though.  In fact, I like the idea of pharmers actually being farmers in a game, but perhaps I'm alone in that.  This is a way for money to be created, though, so we have to be careful.  Personally, I am in favor of item decay where it makes sense.  Farm implements wear out and become money sinks.  Armor is damaged as it is used.

Rare items, I think, should not be sellable to an NPC (or buyable from one).  I can't give the checkout girl at the grocery store a lump of gold in exchange for two pounds of bacon, you see.  A metalsmith would be more than happy to make an offer on it, though, or use it to create a trinket for me.  I am not sure that I like unique or limited-availability items, since this is a road well-traveled by abusive GMs with in-game buddies.

To answer Soln's question: There is no real end game in the current MOG.  If there is an end-game, it consists of the same infinite power curve wherein people play something resembling the prototypical Vox raid for continually-diminishing gain... all the while paying the monthly fee.  If the actual game itself was fun just to play, there would be no need for this.  Expansions that add extra continents or moon-cats just adds length to this curve to make sure you don't reach the end before the devs add frogmen and a dozen more raid dungeons.  I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.  If someone makes a game that isn't just a linear combat-power-ladder, one where a player could never become more powerful than the environment, there would be no need for top-loading expansions.  You could add expansions to the "middle" of the game, like adding mounts, stocking lakes with trout, providing new crafting recipes, adding player skills, etc.  If the game itself is actually fun to play, you don't need the all-encompassing power-curve.  Perhaps a dozen little ones: politics, various types of combat, trading, various crafting lines.  I'm really reaching here, huh?

But they aren't invested in the world, they are insulated from it. They aren't invested because nothing they do in the world is unique. EVERYBODY has the same options in regards to those items. Why? Because no player can be given special stuff that other players can't have access to. Everyone has to have the equal opportunities, and everyone has to have the same relative power.

Well-said.  Imbuing a MOG with the ghost of Karl Marx is no way to motivate players, other than the petty ones who always post about class balance on VN.  Haemish is correct here, and I think his idea would have a far better chance of implementation with smaller populations of players/pigfuckers.  It would also be important to avoid mudflation in this situation since unique rewards (not necessarily items) could easily turn this into another EQ clone.  The rewards should add distinction instead of power, or perhaps provide access to new things.  It is also important that there be some class-separation, since that is what really motivates people to play the game.

About size, this is going to rely on personal preference to a degree.  My experience with a ridiculously low population in WoW showed me that it could be made to work if the world was interesting enough.  At the low levels on Crushridge, PvE was viable even though it was a PvP server.  Not only that, my undead toon could hit the wilderness and not see anyone else for a while, which was usually a good thing in Hillsbrad.  I still had that heightened sense of danger, but it was more of a Resident Evil 4 sense of danger instead of the certain knowledge that I was about to be ganked.  I had the option of skirting the populated areas, taking the long way around things, hiding in bushes and so on.  With enough players to ensure that you will never lose sight of one, this is lost.

Another thing was the relative abundance of natural resources.  I never had too much trouble finding metal pre-merge, but of course I am now competing with people who do nothing but run laps around Charred Vale or even Shimmering Flats.  Enchanters were relatively rare; now I have to turn off General and Trade when spending any significant amount of time in Org.  It's not that I'm anti-social as much as the fact that anyone I am not somehwat familiar with is very close to being an asshat.  It only takes him repeating a message in Trade too quickly in order for me to actually despise him.  The thing is, he wouldn't have to spam Trade if there weren't two dozen other people selling the exact same piece of useless junk.  I think if you are used to the buzz of a city, like someone living in a real-life big city, you could be bored out of your mind when visiting the country, so this isn't necessarily for everyone.  But compare the number of assholes in LA to the number of assholes in Anchorage.  Someone just has to design an interesting environment, and it has to be persistently interesting.  This is where people miss the real idea of a "persistent world"; they create a "static world" instead.

[Arnold]

Someday I will write a font page article on this, but player-made stories are not for free the way devs think they are.

Here is the classic example: I'm a frail wizard, and I need a basilisk tail to complete my super-spell, so I hire a bunch of adventurers to go to the far ends of the earth to get one for me. Sounds reasonable at first glance. But then you start thinking:

1: Why can't I go get the tail myself? If I'm high level I should be able to, if I'm not I don't have the gold to pay most likely.
2: Why would the adventurers take me up on my offer when XP is more valuable than gold?
3: How did I get so much gold in the first place?

etc etc etc.

Players can only give each other quests and participate in meaningful player-made quests if you make the game with that in mind.

Asheron's Call had some quests where certain components of the item came from dungeons with level limits.  High level characters were forced to buy these from low level characters, or build their own lower level characters to farm the stuff.  The devs did this on purpose because there were complaints that new quests were only for high level characters.