Bioware Austin.. damm more Dragons.. or Lightsabers?

[stray]

Ugh... they are good?

Yeah, because this 2006. Almost 2007. We have graphics and sound cards now. Infocom died 20 years ago.

[Slyfeind]

Fuck pre-canned story telling in MMOGs. Add the conflict and the stories tell themselves (oh sorry.. that's niche). I remember a lot of experiences I've had playing MMOGs but I can't say that I remember any specific pre-canned quest crap that isn't covered by the fedex label.

Way back in ATITD1, I went to learn how to build pyramids. Long before I came to the world, pyramids were planned out by the people. Representatives from the seven nations of the known world gathered together, and each one went home with the plans to learn one part of pyramid construction. These representatives gathered the people of their respective nations, and everybody put forth the effort to research how to build pyramids. Some researched how to move blocks, others researched methods of finding them, and still others researched ways to fit them all together.

Seven universities across the land, and each one had a different method of building a pyramid, yet each method was needed to build one.

This was before I came to Egypt.

When I arrived, there were others who were new. We set out from our home in the Valley of Kings, on a journey that lasted days, to the seven nations of the world, to learn the seven methods of pyramid construction. Along the way, we met new people, found Sphynxes with riddles, traded our goods from the Valley of Kings, and halfway through we built a camp for us to rest at.

When we were done, we came home wiser, more experienced, enriched in trade goods and our new skills. And we started building pyramids. Soon, the Valley of Kings was unrivalled, just as it was in real life history, in its works of architecture.


NONE of that was bullshit masturbatory role-play padding. Everything happened, from the original gathering of nations, researching, travel, the fucking Sphynxes, our little camp, and the resulting Valley of Kings e-peen waving with insane architecture projects. And none of that was developer content. It was all done by the players, and little -- if anything -- was premeditated. It just turned out that way.

And yeah, that was all FedEx, and the worst kind of FedEx because we didn't have chariots in ATITD1. We had to run all that way. But at least it was player-generated FedEx. Hell, I can't even say the developers designed the systems so that would naturally occur. If anything, this was the opposite of what Teppy wanted, because he likes us to fight each other.

This is the result of no NPCs, almost no developer content, unrestrained PvP, full player freedom, a few dozen game systems in one big-ass world, and about 1,500 gamers with way too much time on their hands.

[Margalis]

My definition of "Fed-Ex" is not just any quest that amount to "go kill something" or "go get something." As has been pointed out, that's what quests are. Go accomplish something and come back.

The difference is in the level of detail. For example, here is a quest I am writing now in 5 seconds that could easily appear in any MMORPG:

"Evil trolls have invaded our valley. Go kill trolls and bring back 5 troll-spears as proof that you are doing your part to combat the troll menace!"

Yay. I wrote a quest. Someone hire me.

That level of detail is what I consider a fed-ex quest. A quest the is very transparently just go collect some crap and come back. Now you can make collection quests and things like that that are interesting. I don't mind having to ultimately grab something and come back, as long as the quest has some level of uniqueness. Am I solving a new puzzle? Fighting some really strange enemy that takes some different tactics? Doing something non-standard like following a guy around, sneaking into a place, etc?

I think what quests writers have to ask themselves is operationally how is this quest different from any other one? "Operationally" here is key because it means minus all the fluff and backstory. If in the end the quest amounts to kiling shit in the same way you've killed a hundred other things that's bad.

[ajax34i]

How about if, as you approach the village for the first time, you see a bunch of trolls, so you kill a few, and when you get to the village, they thank you, saying they had problems?  Still Fedex?  Does it depend on whether the next guy who kills trolls gets the same thanks?  Or on whether or not trolls spawn for the next guy?

Xilren's Twin, are you saying that they'll implement a system where players aren't entitled to quests simply because they pay the monthly fee?  Where the masses will fight over the lower, less significant quests, and only a few players will ever get the "Please kill that damn dragon" end-game quest?  Perhaps those who have grinded their faction / connections / equipment to the perfect combination, AND are lucky enough to be online and there when the "dragon problem" is seeded into the game?

Prophecy type of stuff? (you use "prophecies" to hint at what the proper combination of factors might be for someone to trigger the quest/event, and let the players work at it, but a reward isn't guaranteed, much like with EVE's BPO lottery?).

Heh, they could have a quest be triggered at a certain date and time, and you could guess that date and time by watching the position of the moon and a bunch of stars, on screen, and calculating their (daily) drift to see when they align.  Take screenshots, play astronomer, time-lapse photography.

[Venkman]

Quests need to be more than just XP gates for the content of that quest story to matter. Right now, quest text is irrelevant beyond the goals it frames. Some people read them, some people don't, both have the same potential for success. Polish or not, WoW sucks for quests, because all are one way: you either do it or you don't. You can't go wrong otherwise. At least in EQ, faction growth in one area could come at the expense of another, though that was ultimately just as grindable.

Quests need to result in real choices for people to care. If siding with one side means not gaining access to vendors on the other side, you can bet people will start reading descriptions.

But it's a lot more than just reading text. The entire game has to have a KOTOR-like level of player accountability in it. That's at odds with the silver-spoon content delivery we have today.

[Krakrok]

So is this fedex or not?

array mob = [ troll,skeleton,zombie,orc,ghost,demon,dragon ]
array place = [ valley,town,district,city,village,mine,forest ]
array item = [ sword,spear,claw,sash,shield,helmet,bone ]
array mode = [ kill,charm,drug,buy off,sneak past,knock out,capture ]

function MakeQuest() {
mymob = mob[random(7)]
MakeQuest = "Evil " + mymob + "s have invaded our " + place[random(7)] + ". Go " + mode[random(7)] " + mymob + "s and bring back " + random(10,20) + " " + mymob + "-" + item[random(7)] + "s as proof that you are doing your part to combat the " + mymob + " menace!"
}

Why isn't anyone using things like Eliza and fortune teller tricks to give people quests that they want?

[trias_e]

Quests need to result in real choices for people to care. If siding with one side means not gaining access to vendors on the other side, you can bet people will start reading descriptions.

More likely they will read spoiler sites telling them exactly what quests to do in order to get access to whatever vendors they want to.  A MMORPG is a bad place to tell personalized stories, as immersion and significant world consequences is/are impossible.

I do believe they are a good place to tell large, overarcing ones though.  Kind of what Shadowbane hinted at doing if they hadn't had so many problems to begin with.  And you can have the playerbase actually matter in this story and retain total immersion.  If you want to focus on story-telling in an MMORPG, this is the way to do it, not with personal quest lines.  Why does that need an MMORPG format at all?  It would be done better in a single-player game.

[stray]

Quests need to result in real choices for people to care. If siding with one side means not gaining access to vendors on the other side, you can bet people will start reading descriptions.

More likely they will read spoiler sites telling them exactly what quests to do in order to get access to whatever vendors they want to.  A MMORPG is a bad place to tell personalized stories, as immersion and significant world consequences is/are impossible.

I do believe they are a good place to tell large, overarcing ones though.  Kind of what Shadowbane hinted at doing if they hadn't had so many problems to begin with.  And you can have the playerbase actually matter in this story and retain total immersion.  If you want to focus on story-telling in an MMORPG, this is the way to do it, not with personal quest lines.  Why does that need an MMORPG format at all?  It would be done better in a single-player game.

Apparently, not very many want that either. Too communal. Too "world-y". Or something. 

They say they want a game, but they don't want that either.

What they want is camps and loot. Nothing more.

Oh, and polish.

[Margalis]

Yeah I'm not sure what real choices amount to.

If real choices means my character is going to permanently have different stats or skills or equipment or access to items then I would expect standard templates to quickly pop up. Plus you give people the chance to screw themselves by choosing the "wrong" ones.

I think most people want to customize their own characters as much as possible without worrying about boning themselves. Having someone do a quest that ends up pissing off the tribe that sells good swords is a step in the opposite direction. Or a quest that makes it impossible to do another quest to get some awesome spell. Or that locks them out of some content.

I think that type of thing is cool in a single player game because those games are shorter and they are not competitive. IMO all MMORPGs are competitive to some degree, just in a passive-aggressive fashion. You may compete for coolness or bragging rights or for a spot in a party. Nobody wants to be gimped in any sense because they chose some cool storylines to follow. You did all the evil quests? Now you can't get the spell that makes your class useful in raids yay!

If quests have real outcomes (other than XP) players will have to know exactly what those are and what those mean going in, and it will quickly become min-maxing paradise. Again in a game where you expect to play hundreds of hours people want control over their characters.

[Slyfeind]

I think if we want certain quests to exclude us from certain content, we should be excluded from content we wouldn't care about, anyway. If we like exploring and hate PvP, we might do the explorer's non-PvP quest, which gives us gear and skills which make us better at exploring, and worse at PvP; and any further PvP quests would be barred to us. A more extreme example would be playing a mage, and doing quests for mage societies, which prevent us from quests which would give us warrior gear.

[stray]

Huh? That'd work if all explorers were neccessarily opposed to pvp'ing. If.

Heh, and you said your mage example was extreme. That one actually sounds reasonable.

[Endie]

Huh? That'd work if all explorers were neccessarily opposed to pvp'ing. If.

Heh, and you said your mage example was extreme. That one actually sounds reasonable.

Except he said the "explorer's non-PVP quest."  Which rather strongly suggests that explorers who want to PVP would do the explorer's PVP quest.

Anyway, Krakrok's question is a cracker: why aren't people using Eliza-like basic parsing tech to tailor quests to what the player wants?  After all, since not dissimiliar techniques were in use on the Spectrum, C64, BBC Micro etc (language parsing in adventures, fake AI in Eliza) almost quarter a century ago, can it really be that processor intensive?

[stray]

Yeah, but he said they'd be barred from any future pvp quests.

If that means what I think he means, then it's a bad idea. What if a guy logged in one night and just wanted to do one of these non pvp quests by himself, just to fiddle around and explore? His pvp aspirations are fucked for the entire remaining portion of his gaming experience?

No.

[Endie]

Yep, I agree with you there, Stray: I think that the ability to gimp yourself forevah is A Bad Thing wherever you don't have savegames.  Especially at the early stages of a game which is hopefully non-trivial in its complexity.  I like the idea of choices, but I dislike the idea of irreversible ones.

[Azazel]

Heh, they could have a quest be triggered at a certain date and time, and you could guess that date and time by watching the position of the moon and a bunch of stars, on screen, and calculating their (daily) drift to see when they align.  Take screenshots, play astronomer, time-lapse photography.

And then you hope that you live in the right time zone, aren't at work, or eating dinner, or sleeping, or out with your family and perhaps you can participate! yay.

What I find interesting about this whole discussion, from Bioware's interview up top to many, many of these posts is the way that they're writing as though WoW's quests are all "go kill/collect 20 foozles" when in fact many of WoW's quests, and even their quest arcs involve some or many basic fed-ex factors but involve a lot more. I'm thinking particularly of the quests I'm currently re-doing int he plaguelands, but a lower-level version of the same arcing story (that includes many fed-exes included) can be found in the human areas from pretty much level 2 or so, through to.. 20ish - the Defias series of quests that start from next to the chapel, continue all throughout Elwynn forest and Westfall, and then lead to both Deadmines and later, the Stockades.

[UnSub]

You know what I want. I want a dragon game where I breed dragons. Train them. Unleash them to fight other dragons. Fucking DragonTycoon. I want to create mighty hellbeasts and unleash them on the innocent. There aren't enough games where I can do that.

Dragon's Breath Online?

... yeah, I'd play it.

Anyway, back to the first post - it's a standard "our stuff will be cool!!!" interview. The name Bioware has generated three pages (and counting) of discussion that, from any other publisher, wouldn't have made 3 replies.

[Trippy]

Smaug [from The Hobbit] is a good example. You can have a personal quest to kill an ancient red dragon; you can have a story that goes all the way through, and you can meet all these interesting characters, and eventually you end up killing the ancient red dragon. Other characters in the online world will know you killed a red dragon, but you haven't changed the world for them. And they can still -- especially when you use things like instances -- go on a quest that involves killing an ancient huge red dragon. We can change the player's personal story, and that gives players the sense they're having an impact on the game world.

How is this different than killing Naggy in EQ?

Rich Vogel, co-studio director of product development: One thing we don't want to do is NPC Pez dispensers, as I call them -- go over there, dispense a quest, and then go "vacuum-clean" a zone. We want to make sure you listen to NPCs, because choices matter. And that's really important.

It's all well and good to say that choices will matter. Unfortunately even simplistic mutli-part quests wreck havoc with the grouping dynamics of MMORPGs since everybody has to be syncronized if they want to progress together -- otherwise you have to repeat parts of the quest over and over for multiple group members. It's one of the things I find incredibly annoying about CoH and other MMORPGs like WoW have this problem to a lesser extent. Now throw in "choices" and you have even more synchronization problems.

[tazelbain]

It's all well and good to say that choices will matter. Unfortunately even simplistic mutli-part quests wreck havoc with the grouping dynamics of MMORPGs since everybody has to be syncronized if they want to progress together -- otherwise you have to repeat parts of the quest over and over for multiple group members. It's one of the things I find incredibly annoying about CoH and other MMORPGs like WoW have this problem to a lesser extent. Now throw in "choices" and you have even more synchronization problems.

Great point, exactly what I found frustrating with the larger quests in EQ2. I really wanted to Heirophant's Crook, but I could only find 2 group to do it and neither group lasted long enough to finish it, to boot we spent more time back tracking to quest to get new players caught up. Branching would make it unbelievably worse.

You need a system to reward people for helping others with their quests.

[TripleDES]

Yet another fucking fantasy MMO. Fuck this shit. I almost expected them, being Bioware, to try a different setting.

[Rasix]

Yet another fucking fantasy MMO. Fuck this shit. I almost expected them, being Bioware, to try a different setting.

GFW: Can you talk about where the game takes place? Is it fantasy? Sci-fi?

JO: We can't talk about the setting of the game yet.

[Strazos]

I don't care about setting as long as it's done well.

[Xanthippe]

I don't care about interviews unless they discuss concrete aspects of the game.  If it's too early to do that, then don't grant the interview.

[El Gallo]

Looks like a company that has ignored the truth: amateur hour is over, WoW shows the way to make fantasy MMOs that players actually enjoy and are willing to pay for.  If you grab some pre-WoW industry retreads to make your game, your game will probably suck.  WoW succeeded because it escaped that tired old mud-dev circlejerk; any game vomited up by fossils like Walton and Vogel will probably suck, just like any game made by any of the old-guard will probably suck.  None of those people came up with a game that didn't feel like it was put together by a bunch of college kids in their mom's basement, and people aren't going to put up with that shoddy workmanship anymore. 

Maybe Walton and Vogel have had a come-to-Jesus moment in the recent past; but given the loud and repeated reactions of more vocal members of the pre-WoW MMO designer cabal -- to bury their heads as deeply into the sand as possible while chanting "I was right the players will come back to me someday I just know it" I'm a bit skeptical.

Bioware's less-than-stellar history of technical excellence is also a concern.  MMOGs are very demanding on that front.

Still, I'll buy it and check it out because I do that with every damn game it seems.  Such a sucker am I.

[waylander]

I'm a fan of any bioware product, and I think they make the best games hands down. I've been real excited about learning that they were considering getting into MMORPG's, and I think that they'll end up making a quality product.  I might not see eye to eye with everyone of their devs, but the company itself has stockpiled a lot of brownie points with me over the years as they've released good products.

[geldonyetich]

Looks like a company that has ignored the truth: amateur hour is over, WoW shows the way to make fantasy MMOs that players actually enjoy and are willing to pay for.

What WoW shows is how to make a game easily graspable by a casual player.  However, the proportion of their success has a lot more to do with being Blizzard than the game formula.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: if somebody made another game just like WoW, maybe even slightly better, they wouldn't get nearly as much players for two reasons: 1. They're not Blizzard.  2. The formula has been done and so players aren't going to be as excited about it as the first time it's done.

So, don't take Bioware's developers talk of attempting innovation as a foolhearty attempt to reinvent the wheel.

[Margalis]

WoW succeeded because it escaped that tired old mud-dev circlejerk; any game vomited up by fossils like Walton and Vogel will probably suck, just like any game made by any of the old-guard will probably suck. 

Preach on brother!

Personel is always the single most important thing, and BioWare decided to hire proven failures. The best indicator of future success is past success.

AFAIK none of the core designers of WOW had ever worked on a MMORPG before. You don't need that sort of experience. As I said before, technical experience sure. It would be nice if the guy who did the network programming had relevant experience. But design/production experience? Not really.

Hiring "proven" talent looks like a good choice from the outside but their talent has proven to suck.

[Stormwaltz]

GFW: Can you talk about where the game takes place? Is it fantasy? Sci-fi?

JO: We can't talk about the setting of the game yet.

"Before we start taking questions, no, we still can't talk about the MMO's IP..."
- Ray or Greg, every company meeting for the last year.

[Morat20]

GFW: Can you talk about where the game takes place? Is it fantasy? Sci-fi?

JO: We can't talk about the setting of the game yet.

"Before we start taking questions, no, we still can't talk about the MMO's IP..."
- Ray or Greg, every company meeting for the last year.

If those meetings are anything like, oh, every meeting I've ever been in -- someone asks anyways. Generally several people do. I suggest paintguns. Each time someone asks about subject X, after being told "We won't answer questions about subject X" , shoot them in the nuts with the paintgun.

Share the pain. :)

[shiznitz]

WoW succeeded because it escaped that tired old mud-dev circlejerk; any game vomited up by fossils like Walton and Vogel will probably suck, just like any game made by any of the old-guard will probably suck. 

Preach on brother!

Personel is always the single most important thing, and BioWare decided to hire proven failures. The best indicator of future success is past success.

AFAIK none of the core designers of WOW had ever worked on a MMORPG before. You don't need that sort of experience. As I said before, technical experience sure. It would be nice if the guy who did the network programming had relevant experience. But design/production experience? Not really.

Hiring "proven" talent looks like a good choice from the outside but their talent has proven to suck.

Agreed. I could have picked anyone on these boards with over 1,000 posts and they could have written Vogel's answers for him. I want to hear from a senior Bioware employee on this project that has zero MMO experience.

[Ubiq]

AFAIK none of the core designers of WOW had ever worked on a MMORPG before. You don't need that sort of experience. As I said before, technical experience sure. It would be nice if the guy who did the network programming had relevant experience. But design/production experience? Not really.

We have a good mix.  Most of our senior designers came from Edmonton, and have credits on previous Bioware titles.  I'm the exception not the rule.  I don't think our Lead Designer (the James Ohlen quotes in the article) hasn't made a game yet that HASN'T hit a million sales. 

[Slyfeind]

Huh? That'd work if all explorers were neccessarily opposed to pvp'ing. If.

Yeah, that would suck if that was the only quest in the entire game. If.

Heh, and you said your mage example was extreme. That one actually sounds reasonable.

The mage example exists in WoW. You have a choice of rewards at the end of most quests; mage reward, warrior reward, etc. And as soon as you make an alliance rogue, you can't do the horde priest quests.

So is it reasonable to assume (besides the "extreme example") that most players don't want to be barred from any content? We hear a lot of talk about choosing one faction over another. Is that all it is? Talk?

[Slyfeind]

That's easy. You just end up helping your buddy kill the Dragon's pissed off brother. It'll say "Dragon's Pissed off Brother" right over it (although your buddy will see "Dragon".

I was just thinking about this. How far can this be taken? What if the game engine only generated one Nagafen. (And I use Nagafen because I'm fucking sick of WOW examples. :P ) Once Nagafen's dead, there are no others. But, the game creates a new dragon with a new name, and...a new tactic. This new dragon is Okrafen, and she summons skeletons to aid her halfway through the fight. She doesn't drop warrior loot, but instead drops gems. Kill her, and...she's replaced by Nagacross. Nagacross flies and never lands, and drops tradeskill resources.

Would this be fun? Would anybody bother with the dragon's lairs if the content was entirely unpredictable?

[tazelbain]

> Would this be fun? Would anybody bother with the dragon's lairs if the content was entirely unpredictable?
Sure, it would.  But current game developers don't know how to do that without making it feel kludgey like SWG or AO mission systems.

[WindupAtheist]

El Gallo and Margalis win the internets.  As for the Bioware MMO?  If it's Star Wars, I'll give it a look.  Just a look, mind you.  If it appears to be ass, I'll ignore it the way I ignored SWG.  But if it's just "Age of Everdragon: The Hobbit Chronicles" or some other generic fantasy shit, they can blow it out their ass.

PS:  Also Sly, yes, your idea sounds good to me.

[Roac]

I was just thinking about this. How far can this be taken? What if the game engine only generated one Nagafen. (And I use Nagafen because I'm fucking sick of WOW examples. :P ) Once Nagafen's dead, there are no others. But, the game creates a new dragon with a new name, and...a new tactic. This new dragon is Okrafen, and she summons skeletons to aid her halfway through the fight. She doesn't drop warrior loot, but instead drops gems. Kill her, and...she's replaced by Nagacross. Nagacross flies and never lands, and drops tradeskill resources.

Would this be fun? Would anybody bother with the dragon's lairs if the content was entirely unpredictable?

The Dragon <insert name> with <insert 1-4 random powers> is active in the <random region name>!!!  Kill <gender> to get <set of random loot class>!

We're just dancing around the same old mechanic.  Either something is instanced so that everyone gets to kill Smaug once and only once, or it's random so that <random name> Dragon can be killed by whomever whenever it spawns.  The challenge always comes back to content:  the writers, art designers, developers, and whatever else can only script so much content.  It can either be pre-scripted, or randomly generated to fill a template.  If it is pre-scripted, then you almost HAVE to ensure that everyone gets access to it at least once or you're wasting resources.  They're not going to put a script together just so that the first group of 5 people that access it get to look at it. 

But I think this is also to miss the point - it's not seeing the forest for the trees.  The same mechanics can both be used AND be interesting with the right circumstance.  Take the issue of 'choice' for example.  Access to both scripted storylines (which are instanced / replayable for everyone) and to templates can vary depending on whatever criteria.  So one person gets "Save the Princess" templates and another gets "Kidnap the Princess" templates.  Random Dragon becomes interesting if a thousand things have to be done before he's killable, and all of them involve other missions, scavanger hunts, player-created missions, wars, whatever else.  Random dragon by itself isn't interesting.