Over the past several years I have been programming and have learned that if you want to do something over and over again you need to automate it. Taking this concept a bit further and apply it to mmo's you can thus bring in the possibility of creating a quest generator.

The generator would take into account the following:

- Various player difficulties (level 1-5) 1 being easy and 5 being insane

This is to promote variation in the quests and let the player choose how difficult their quest is.

- Npc location (where the npc is currently or where they are going) since npcs will move and migrate based on different patterens or events that happen throughout the world.

- Area location and structures (everything from caves, to rock formations, to temples, whatever happens to be in the designated quest area at the time.

- Area mob information (what monsters are currently located where or where npcs or crops or whatever is located )

- Npc exit location (basically the npc you will have to talk to to turn in the quest and either end it, or continue on in a series of chain quests)

The above information would be applied to the following quest structures:

courier - transporting of goods (various cargo size requirements and such)

assinate - kill a named npc somewhere in the world

kill - basic quests of kill x number of y monster/npc/mob

steal - steal x from somebody (ranges from food supplies, to super secret government technology)

hack - hack into various computer networks and get information, or change stuff around

guard/escort - protect the target until they reach their destination

defend - defend x settlement from invasion or siege

save/rescue - save various people from various situations

there are more but you get the idea....

Do you think this is a good idea? I would like to here the pros and cons to this idea.

What I think it would do is bring us one step closer to having unlimited content because if players wanted to they can grind till their hearts content because the game will just generate more quests with different scenarios. The important part I want to stress here is that the quests will be taken from these types that have set structures and then when those are down pat, we will give them the ability to branch, combine and manipulate the details of missions so they are new quests that don't seem the same.

I have actually been thinking about a quest generator for my game too. I will have scripted quests to, but these randomly generated quests will allow players to always have something to do when the scripted quests are done. I remember back when I played DAoC and you could walk up to a NPC and do /task to recieve a random task to perform. That was very much like a random quest generator.

I had a concept really similar to this, basically events would happen in game like, bandits attack a town or supplies are depleted at the outpost, or wood is needed to create the new tower outside town.  These were determined by random, timers or direct results of player decisions.  Basically it was to give the players a little more direction in the game and chances to make money while making the game more dynamic.

The good thing about this is it makes quests change from day to day and makes it so the players experiences are different as well as makes playing through again more interesting.  And it is easy to add new quest types in the future.  The downside is since they are random they don't have really in-depth storylines nor would you want them to since a story makes it obvious that you are doing the same thing over and over again, assuming you want to do story lines and if so you would probably want to add static story quests that never change.

What I would advise against is making the quest generator endgame content, I think it would work really well if you used the quest generator as one of many ways to advance in game to give players more options, maybe let players choose from either PvP, crafting, mob grinding, story quests, random quests, etc. or whatever you have in mind, to advance in game at any given moment.

But I think this has a lot of potential if you have different enough quest types.

I think a dynamic quest system a good idea, I mentioned my own ideas about it a while back but didn't go into any detail.

One of my personal opinions though is that small "missions"/"tasks" should not be called quests. The word "quest" is overused and IMHO should be reserved only for something of epic proportions. (That's just my opinion though)

Although it may go far to getting away from the meaningless/repetitive tasks/quests/missions that we see so much in MMORPGs, and perhaps with the combinations and branching potentials you mentioned it could even be quite entertaining, I still voted no.

The reason is, and I am beginning to feel like a broken record saying it, is that it seems like a lot of work to accomplish something that the genre already has the potential to produce all the time with out the use of any pre-programmed content, random or otherwise.

I am talking about letting the player interactions create things for them to do based on their own goals and how they align with or oppose the goals of others.

Now I am not talking about tools for players to create quests, but rather the actual development of events in a dynamic world.

Let me apply this to the above examples give by the OP:

Courier type actions would be happening all the time.  Merchants and traders would have to get actual goods from place to place all the time.  These might be their own goods, the goods of the company or guild or job-by-job contracts with anyone willing to pay the price and take the risk.  The type would be ever varying based on the situation in the world.  Some people would have ships for water transport, and in an area where piracy is rampant, these actions would be all the more perilous.

Assassination missions would depend upon the system, whether there were death penalties, or important NPC assets that could be permanently destroyed.

Kill quests in a dynamic world would actually mean something.  Ideally they would be based on mob AI and migration so that when an infestation of some sort came along, it would really cause a problem and exterminators of skill for that type of beast would be in high demand and receive good reward from those who have a vested interest in getting rid of the baddies.

In a dynamic player driven world, theft missions would be endless.  Constant competition would go into building secure storage locations and gaining the skills to infiltrate them.  So much would depend on the gathering of real intelligence, and planning for the right situation.

I usually design with fantasy in mind, so hacking will have to be left up to others, but if you use your imagination you can see how it would work in a dynamic system rather than as a random task.

The myriad situations that arise from player interaction would have endless applications to guarding/escorting people and valuables in various locations and across varying distances.  People would often be recruited as protection for basic travel in places that were dangerous enough.

Ah, and if only players built all the towns and put them under siege as well.  Any caught within the walls and in fear of the attackers would surely be called upon to take up a bow and mount the battlements.  If the defenses were breached, each blade wielded to protect the city would count for something.

Depending again on the system, other players could be captured and subsequently rescued, although this is problematic in an MMO with the down time that might be involved.  Instead perhaps we would think of this as the recovery of stolen artifacts or the liberation of important player-controlled NPC assets.  Even the lifting of a siege from a relieving army can be seen as the action that saves the town.

And, as was said, there are many many more possibilities, but just imagine how much more compelling each would be if the actions mattered and changed the game world, and were all intermingled in the complex situations that would develop though player interaction.  Then you would even have the stories start to develop far beyond the individual tasks and missions, and then, yes only then, would we really see the possibility of epic quests developing, and each can be unique to the goals of those involved.  This can never be done in an MMORPG no matter how finely crafted the quest content is, when you know that everyone is experiencing the exact same content that resets each time.  Even if unique epic quests were generated randomly, I contend that they would not compare to even a semi-epic quest that arose out of real situations in a dynamic fantasy world.

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Originally posted by ironore
Although it may go far to getting away from the meaningless/repetitive tasks/quests/missions that we see so much in MMORPGs, and perhaps with the combinations and branching potentials you mentioned it could even be quite entertaining, I still voted no.
The reason is, and I am beginning to feel like a broken record saying it, is that it seems like a lot of work to accomplish something that the genre already has the potential to produce all the time with out the use of any pre-programmed content, random or otherwise.
I am talking about letting the player interactions create things for them to do based on their own goals and how they align with or oppose the goals of others.
Now I am not talking about tools for players to create quests, but rather the actual development of events in a dynamic world.

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I think I agree with you for the most part, but I still think that a dynamic world run by the players could still have "quests", of course they wouldn't be one of the main focuses of the game, but in a sandbox-like game, "quests" could be a method of keeping the game world in balance.

If there are NPC MOBs infesting a low level player-city, there could be a "quest" that comes up the eliminate them.

If the forests are being chopped down faster than they can grow, there could be a "quest" to plant trees, or a quest to pk people cutting wood (with normal consequences of course)

Barrikor, I'm not sure I understand what the generation of a 'quest' as recognized by the game would mean in the examples you used.   If the player town comes under attack by a mob, then the residents simply decide what to do about it.  They can eliminate them themselves, or hire the job out if they don't have the time or specialized skills to do the job efficiently.

With the trees being chopped down, it would depend on the interests of the players as to what action to take.  If they need a continual source of wood then they will plant trees and enforce limits by whatever means they have available.  Alternately, perhaps there is some race or group that receives powers from the life force of trees or from some deity that would like the trees preserved.  I suppose in this case the quest could be given to the followers.

The only reason I can think of for the system to recognize a 'quest' as such is for lore/alignment reasons as in the example above, or I suppose if you are thinking of giving some kind of abstract reward, such as the outdated RPG experience points.

Alternately, perhaps you are simply suggesting that the game analyze situations and give objectives just as a way to inform people of what is going on and give them something to do without them having to look too hard or organize things themselves.

I guess it all comes down to what is the point of quests in the overall design?  Currently most quests are simply a cloak to the regular leveling up by grinding against mobs, at least as I see it.  They are simply something else to do, or a way to deliver the storyline that doesn't really affect much.

Originally posted by ironore

Alternately, perhaps you are simply suggesting that the game analyze situations and give objectives just as a way to inform people of what is going on and give them something to do without them having to look too hard or organize things themselves.

That is the reason I would use random generated quests, so that actions taken by PCs and NPCs will have more structure and other players would be informed about them so they know they are availible to be done.  Also to given people more structure to organize payments and other rewards and even the action itself, for example kill such and such gang for money is not just a informal agreement between players but actually lets players select the action and target, so now the merc who signed on can keep track of his task and the employer will know when it is complete.  So I guess I am thinking about a combination of recognizing gameworld events and player designated events, which could happen without quests, it just helps get people on the same page.

I also decided to vote no, but I will leave you with this stipulation on that vote.  I think the idea is an improvement over what is there now, but I believe that the world should be created so that players cannot possibly solve all their needs alone.  If you need something, a dragon scale or a lump of ore, you, as a player, simply create a "quest" for it for other player to take up.  Thus you spend your time or your money.

Being the Jr. economist I am, I would like to point out that when players request things from other players this solves a HUGE problem......Quests rewards in most games don't accurately reflect the state of the economy.  As the amount of money needed to buy a basket of goods rises as a result of inflation, time spent vs. wealth received from quests falls.  That is to say the reward (the literal amount) for a quest stays the same regardless of what the money rewarded will buy.  This of course affects casual and new player’s more than elder players.  Elder players take advantage of something called "first by advantage" .  They acquire the game’s best items and use them to acquire wealth, including wealth from quests. 

Now, relative to new or casual players, the elder player with better equipment can do the same quests and earn the reward in less time (presumably because of the better equipment).  If the "cost" of the better equipment were born out in increased initial cost (something like R&D) and players later on could reverse engineer those items (without the R&D costs), then you could solve that problem.......but I'm getting off track.

In a world with player driven "quests" the elder player may  choose to spend his money instead of his time.  The more quickly an elder wants an item the more they will be willing to pay. Conversely as inflation rises, new and casual players will demand more money.  That is they will demand enough to offset the result of inflation or put yet another way, as inflation rises players want the buying power of a reward to stay the same over time regardless of the level of inflation.

In an effort to stifle a possible argument/ solution, someone in another post suggested scaling the reward for quests to compensate for the level of inflation in the economy.  That only makes the problem worse, because NPC's give quests no matter what, that is the decision to offer a quest is not based in supply and demand.  If the rewards for raw materials (or assassinations or whatever) rise, the law of supply and demand kicks in.  If NPC quests were worth more to everyone, elder players would use their advantage to create even more money, thus making the inflation problem worse.

Quests can be designed to be a fantastic way to redistribute wealth.  If players at the "top" utilize players at the "bottom" to save time then, without actually coding anything, or nearly as much (as Ironore points out) you have a system that effectively defines itself and is a "natural" part of the system and in my opinion would be more fun and would increase the level of interpersonal contact between players, something I advocate.

I wanted to get this posted and didn't get time to proof....

I'm basically taking this approach with my game, at least in regards to designing the quests. I come up with some story that seems interesting to me, and then generalize it. Once the story is generalized, you can think of what factors might create that story - control those factors and you have a "random" event that is not really random. This is actually very difficult to do, so in my development I am starting with more randomness, dice rolls etc, and eventually I plan to replace all dice rolls with simulation as it develops.

For instance, I may have some random interval determining when a pack of creatures spawns in some area (offscreen of course), while later I can add an actual hibernation period, with some sort of trigger to end hibernation early.

I also have separated in my design the "random" events from trade agreements. Trade agreements will be created by npcs based on what items they actually need, and npcs will follow all economic rules that players have to follow. They won't generate things out of thin air. Trade agreements can of course be created by players as some sort of "quest".

While I don't think that this is the ideal option, I voted yes because I still think this is a good idea. It would not take much effort, and you can save development and writing time from all of the effort you might spend on all of those boring quests on something more interesting. I will be starting with these sorts of quests, until my world simulation improves, and I can replace them.

I think any game with this system would have to have some well designed quests in addition, with the random ones more like side quests to do if you are bored. Other games have used random dungeons to good effect to serve the same purpose.

The question I have for the OP and the last post is, how is money created in your economies?  Are NPC's (via quests or via attacking mobs) the only source of wealth in the games your talking about?

Originally posted by Talinguard

The question I have for the OP and the last post is, how is money created in your economies?  Are NPC's (via quests or via attacking mobs) the only source of wealth in the games your talking about?

 

Well when you boil everything down to its core, all money in all games comes from a pre-defined source such as npcs or vendors. Our game however will not feature money drops from mobs if they are not defined to have a use for it. This means that you may find credits on a bandit or trader but would not expect to find any on a boar or other animal. But can happen if say the boar likes to eat humans and stumbled upon a sleeping trader who had the money and helped itself to dinner. But these are just various situations.

Its works like the typical faucet and drain type of economy but since most money circulates it will have a limited pool of money to pour into the economy. Granted this will still be a ton of money but it will help control inflation and various other economic problems that can arise. The biggest problem that I see is that in a mmo you have people who like to store money and never do anything with it. It will be fine if they buy stuff and thus help circulate the money back into the economy but if enough people store their money for long periods of time, there is no choice but to up the total amount of input to keep things moving the way their intended. But i think this won't be too hard considering its is 100% player crafted items and their will be a huge demand to fill orders. You will end up with an economy similar to eve online's that functions much like a normal economy would just in a virtual environment.

Originally posted by Nikkons017

Originally posted by Talinguard

The question I have for the OP and the last post is, how is money created in your economies?  Are NPC's (via quests or via attacking mobs) the only source of wealth in the games your talking about?

 

Well when you boil everything down to its core, all money in all games comes from a pre-defined source such as npcs or vendors. Our game however will not feature money drops from mobs if they are not defined to have a use for it. This means that you may find credits on a bandit or trader but would not expect to find any on a boar or other animal. But can happen if say the boar likes to eat humans and stumbled upon a sleeping trader who had the money and helped itself to dinner. But these are just various situations.

 

Its works like the typical faucet and drain type of economy but since most money circulates it will have a limited pool of money to pour into the economy. Granted this will still be a ton of money but it will help control inflation and various other economic problems that can arise. The biggest problem that I see is that in a mmo you have people who like to store money and never do anything with it. It will be fine if they buy stuff and thus help circulate the money back into the economy but if enough people store their money for long periods of time, there is no choice but to up the total amount of input to keep things moving the way their intended. But i think this won't be too hard considering its is 100% player crafted items and their will be a huge demand to fill orders. You will end up with an economy similar to eve online's that functions much like a normal economy would just in a virtual environment.

 

 

You said:

Its works like the typical faucet and drain type of economy but since most money circulates it will have a limited pool of money to pour into the economy. Granted this will still be a ton of money but it will help control inflation and various other economic problems that can arise.

Please don't misinterpret my tone, but the fact that money circulates, how does that limit the pool of money in the economy??  How does that help control inflation?

Has the economy in your game been defined?

Dynamic quest generation exists in this form. Basic reshuffling of quest parameters, personalities and locations. Not hard to do, check out CoH radio misions to see one implementation of it.

Your suggesting that you can periododically shut off the faucet as needed and count on players trading among one another with cash in the economy?

I'm going to withhold my comments until I have more information.

Do NPC's Drop items?

Can players craft items?  Are player items as good as NPC dropped items?

Can items be resold in the markets or once used are items bound to the player?

How will you determine if there is "enough" money in the economy?

How will you deal with large shifts in population? That is players leaving or comming will create shortages or surpluses.

How will you deal with shifts in player behavior?  Potentially the same as above.

Money in most MMO's derives it's value from the relation of time spent it takes to collect vs the amount of goods it can buy.

You said that the goal was not to have an infinite supply of money, but later you state that in order to control inflation you will tweak the drain.  Wouldn't you be tweaking the supply?

Will you in effect, tweak both?  If so under what circumstances?

I think I can explain some issues you might run into, but as I said I will wait for more information as not to jump to any conclusions.

I'll write out a response to the economy and how it works and put it intot the economy section, but for now we are getting a little off topic.

The reason I have quests in my game is because it gives structure and order to the vast amount of combinations one could have at their hands otherwise. It gives players something to do along with giving them a task to complete no matter how simple or complicated it may be. With out some order in the world, the majority of people would be lost at what to do, simply because it will become overwhelming to them. There is no starting place for them to easily choose thus they will start to get frustrated as many do when they don't find out what they need to do. This is the ultimate peril of having an unlimited choices in a game because instead of giving them to little of freedom like in linear games, you have them too much and some become clueless.

Take second life for example, in that game you can create quests, build almost any object, put scripting to any object and have countless things to do in that game. But people don't create stuff other people can use, such as quests. If you don't know how to script or friends in the game already you are basically throwing that person into a strange place and saying 'have at it'. If you don't find somebody or a cool place to go to, you usually end up quitting the game very quickly because there is not that much for you to do, even though there are tons of stuff. Its like going to a new city and getting bored in the first 10 minutes because you don't know anything, versus going to a city where you already looked up the attractions to go and visit. Leaving it up to the gamers to find out whats going on is not something you want the gamers to have to do. You want them to participate in the event, but not have to struggle to find out if the event even is happening. Most people would rather follow orders like it or not, than have to lead themselves to doing something.

And to also be a fan of player driven content I would like to take into account the actions of players and allow them to shape the world but I also realize that player driven content would not be enough to have a game. Over and over players can interact with another through various situations and events that they have created but what happens to the player that doesn't want to get involved with other players? You cannot simply say 'if he doesn't want to play with other people he shouldn't be playing a mmo', this is silly and only a fool would believe this. How bout the one time when you just got fed up with everybody and needed to play the game alone for a little bit? I'm sure everybody has gone through this multiple times. Player driven content is a nice step towards creating dynamic ever-changing virtual world but it is simply not enough to  satisfy the various player gaming types that will play the game.

Player driven content is just another cog in the wheel of stuff to do in a mmo, nothing more and nothing less. It just provides content that is less stale and repetitive than other forms.

When i first came up with this idea of a quest generator i started with just coming up with simple tasks such as kill x number of whatevers in x location and come back. These tasks would be very easy to replicate and mass produce through out the game world but all these would serve to do is to give players tons of worthless quests to do. We can have those but they are really only meant for the people who like doing those types of quests. Other people like various types of quests thus we have the need to create various types of quests in the game. We use quests as a medium to give the npc government and cities tasks for the players to accomplish. The more quests the players complete the better off the npc government it because it has more supplies and thus the city grows and expands. Later on in the game players could choose to build their own cities and make their own quests but at least they have a city already build to compare it to. This gives players an example to follow.

This EXACT system has already been implemented in anarchy online.  It is pulled off very well too.  You can approuch whats called a mission terminol.  You select your difficulty and it will dish out a number of 5 or 6 randomly generated missions.  The mission will have you assasinate someone, find someone, hack a computer of some sort, get an item, and some more that i cant think of right now lol.  there are seemingly endless entrances to where you carry out the mission task. it can be in a building, on the side of a mountain, a secret door on a rock in the middle of nowhere, pretty much anywhere.  when you get to the entrance it takes a diablo 2 style approuch on randomly generating a dungeon for you to find the person or item or whatever your trying to do.

Originally posted by Bustion

This EXACT system has already been implemented in anarchy online.  It is pulled off very well too.  You can approach whats called a mission terminal.  You select your difficulty and it will dish out a number of 5 or 6 randomly generated missions.  The mission will have you assassinate someone, find someone, hack a computer of some sort, get an item, and some more that i cant think of right now lol.  there are seemingly endless entrances to where you carry out the mission task. it can be in a building, on the side of a mountain, a secret door on a rock in the middle of nowhere, pretty much anywhere.  when you get to the entrance it takes a diablo 2 style approach on randomly generating a dungeon for you to find the person or item or whatever your trying to do.

Ok, so you voted it was not possible? However there is a few key differences to this and anarchy's. By going off what you said, since i've never played enough of anarchy online to find this the terminal creates random quests that player can complete then creates a dungeon just for them for that quest. But what if you make the randomly generated quests affect the game world on some scale? what if you didn't generate them a dungeon but just used to world you already have to finish your task? But I would really like to know if you thinking having a quest generator in the game you are playing is a good or bad deal? Does it make content more or less meaningful, boring, wasteful? Or does it provide a ninche to give players unlimited content in some degree?

Nik,

I'm looking at your proposal from a higher level.  I know it's frustrating when you have a good idea and people cannot see the innovation.  I'm looking at your proposal at it relates to how I feel MMO's should be implemented as a whole.  Which is why I stipulated that your proposal was an improvement, but I felt there were improvements that could be made.

The reason I started asking you questions in regards to your economy is that I believe, given what you have said, your putting the cart before the horse.  Your designing systems that will bring wealth into the economy, but I don't think you understand how the economy will actually work. 

It's like designing the front end of a car, before you know the dimensions of the engine.

Look, please don't interpret what I'm writing as negative, believe me, my ideas are waaaay out of the box and because people can't see the breadth and with of my ideas they often respond negatively, so I understand.

I think your idea has merit and if you want me to judge your concept in a vacuum than I think it's a good idea.

Having said that, I need to cause more trouble and address some of your statements...

And to also be a fan of player driven content I would like to take into account the actions of players and allow them to shape the world but I also realize that player driven content would not be enough to have a game. Over and over players can interact with another through various situations and events that they have created but what happens to the player that doesn't want to get involved with other players? You cannot simply say 'if he doesn't want to play with other people he shouldn't be playing a mmo', this is silly and only a fool would believe this. How bout the one time when you just got fed up with everybody and needed to play the game alone for a little bit? I'm sure everybody has gone through this multiple times. Player driven content is a nice step towards creating dynamic ever-changing virtual world but it is simply not enough to  satisfy the various player gaming types that will play the game.

Player driven content is just another cog in the wheel of stuff to do in a mmo, nothing more and nothing less. It just provides content that is less stale and repetitive than other forms.  

Player driven content is not enough?  If you speaking only of player content as it relates to quests I agree.  If you're talking about player content on a broader level, I disagree.  I believe it's the system that defines the framework and it's the players that operate within that framework.   Failure to define a system that allows for sustained player to player interaction, will in the end fail do to lack of interest, but having said that i believe it is possible to define a system with mostly player driven content and conflict that will work.

My concepts involve a few very basic low level ideas.

First:  Players must be between what you have and what you want.  Not NPC's.  That does not mean that NPC's are not part of player accomplishment, it simply means that NPC's are not the source of virtually all wealth in the game.

Second, games like WoW, Everquest and its ilk have no sustainable endgame.  We want to believe that expansions are about new content and improvements, but hidden in there is the resetting of the economy, redefining wealth in the world via obsolescence.  I’m not suggesting that that Mode of play isen’t successful or fun.  I am suggesting that it’s overdone and any indy that wants to make a name for themselves better be willing to think outside the box.

The economy is the foundation of the MMORPG and most MMORPG’s are based in conflict.  If love of money is the root of all evil, then the desire for money is the source of all conflict in an MMORPG.  Where money comes from, how it is exchanged, what it can buy and how it is lost will define your game long before you make decisions about the types of weapons and skills and how magic will work.

Too often people try to create a world, and then cram an economic system of exchange in it.  I think that form follows function, that is, the economy of an MMORPG, is more important than how many races there are, how big the world is, or whether there will be dragons.  Define the economy and you will find that it will determine some of the elements that typically are thought to have nothing to do with the economy.

 I’m sorry if this is coming off as preachy, I’ll step off my soap box and apologize in advance if anything here sounds like it’s directed at you.  I assure you my frustration is with the industry as a whole.