I've had it... literally had it with mmos and their bland generic "kill x of y" quests. I'm sick of WoWesque (no offense to those of you that like wow, all the power to you) quests where you simply go to someone that has a thing above their head like a ! or a * or some other fancy shiny star just to receive a quest...
Im also sick of seeing the same damn "humanoid" mob stand there or pace back and forth within the same area doing nothing....
With all the advances in technology isn't it time for our game design to advance as well?
Lets make the virtual worlds seem more alive than they actually are, lets make quests that happen due to whats going on in the environment. Lets make mobs actually do something other than stand there...
For instance, lets say mobs actually built... gathered.... forged... raided...how awesome would that be that every once and awhile you didn't go look for them but you had to defend your home from raiders? Wouldn't that be cool if you saw mobs killing animals such as a dear, skinning it, then making a tent or something? Build thier own forts slowly if you let them... etc etc etc The sky's the limit with what you could do.
Now lets add quests into the mix. Well lets say that you had player cities... 2 in this example... and you had an NPC trader going from one city to another, selling wares becuase it is an established route... well lets say that npc caravan ventures too close to above said mobs, they attack him, take over his caravan, he runs to the nearest town screaming bloddy murder for help via scripted and pathfinding programming.
You tell him sure ill help, do find the caravan, kill the mobs and get a bit of money for your troubles...
Or... you could be evil... kill the mobs, take his caravan loot it, kill him etc etc etc... and get a bit of negative karma?
You see.. and this is just one small example... what do you all think? Do you think its time for our quests to evolve? I think the companies are just being cheap with this older quest system, but thats just me... let me know what you think.
Just my two copper.
program it and lets see how it works, and tell us how hard it is to program....
Everyone has idea's but no one has the tools to do it.
Sat Oct 10 2009 3:59AM ReportActually a 10 year old game gave us a more living dynamic world than todays current worlds. Asheron's Call had monthly story updates and some live events that drastically changed its world.
Whole cities destroyed (2 at least ), seaonal weather before most MMOs where a gleam in a developers eye. Events with story that brought the whole servers together to fight for the life of thier world.
Today MMOs bland to beautiful worlds that never change.
Now in 10 years you would think they could make quests more a living element of the world and based on what we have sen in games it seem possible.
So if 10 year old tech and effort can produce a more dynamic world than todays MMO worlds it likely means that the developer has realized they can give the player the same old crap for the same money. Until we stop paying for the same crap we wont get anything new. The alternative is to wait for a developer to decide to make a more evolved living game to top teh competition.
All I know is very possible to make a more dynamic world and it is long over due.
Sat Oct 10 2009 8:48AM ReportI read your article and can't stop thinking about Aion, come on guys were are almost in 2010. Even WoW gets better AI.
For good artificial intelligence, check Risen.
Mon Oct 12 2009 2:43AM ReportMMORPG.com writes:
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