Originally posted by Lizard_SF

Originally posted by pojung

As far as the flavor text and artwork is concerned, I'm sure these are things that shouldn't be too hard to do, considering, again, that a company encourages the most hands off approach they possibly can. Don't 'task' the developping department to draft up x quests, but rather ask them to draft up senarios based on trigger events. Don't ask the artists to draw specific models- rather encourage creativity, and take even the scrap work and incorporate it for the 'lesser rewards' if you will.

It's about the approach, but nowhere is it harder or require more work when done properly.

 

Wow.

There's so much wrong with this, I don't know where to start...

I hereby offer a simple challenge to anyone who thinks this sort of things is easy.

Get the Neverwinter design tools.

Build a simple world -- a town, a small dungeon, a couple of starting monster lairs -- and put in all the dynamic, self-modifying, scripts you want. You can do all the things you want to do -- add/delete NPCs, change the terrain, alter quests, all dynamically script driven.

Do that in a way that can sustain, let us say, a mere 16 concurrent players for a week or more of play, without manually going in to fix/change/enhance things. Write the scripts that can keep modifying themselves to provide a constantly changing world that remains consistent and logical to the players. (That is, each change in the world can be traced to a player action that would logically cause that change.) Be sure to allow for the creation and deletion of characters during the course of play, and correctly handle/respond to abandoned/dead storylines.

You don't need to create assets or game rules or any of the other hard work of game design. All you have to do is show how you'd write the algorithms. It's simple, right?

Let us know when it's done, then challenge us to break it -- because real players WILL try to break it, they won't "play nice", they won't "do the right thing", they will try to break it just to break it, because that's what players do. If you can make it unbreakable ANY dynamic, if we can't find anything we can do to cause paradoxes (i.e, one NPC tells us to kill someone who a player has already killed, etc), if we can't find easy exploits or end up running your engine into a dead end (it will keep generating new content no matter what we do, and it won't be constantly repeating content with just the type of monsters and the number of them varied), you will probably have something well worth showing to investors as a proof of concept.

It's so easy to design these systems? Show me.

The NWN toolset is not designed to properly handle such content, that's the main issue. There has yet to be an MMO with the proper design to facilitate enhanced script driven dynamic alterations to the game world. Once the core framework exists however, it is as simple as creating logic rules and then generating the 'default' world.

Originally posted by Torik

 

Of course the tradeoff is that with templating you lose the ability to 'fine tune' the experience. 

While I am not in game development, a large part of my job as a programmer is to streamline code modules so they can be reused, preferably in a dynamic setting.  This means that we can adapt larger portion of our codebase to a new client's requirements without having to code everything from scratch.  However,  this leaves the result rather 'bland' and we then have to do a lot of 'hand coding' to make the program more functional and appealing to the particular client. 

When playing MMORPGs the quests and mobs that I remember the most are those that offered a unique playing experience.  These are the one that go beyond the basic templates and put more of a personal touch that is not replicated. 

I would liken those examples to, say... CoX with it's instanced, "random map, baddies grouped in 2's and 3's, thing to blow up/kill/pick up at the end" missions to a LotRO epic quest.

Or, compare SWG's(all flavors) mission system of "generate a critter spawning rock 400 meters away for players to destroy for 6000 credits" compared to "The Waterworks" in DDO.

As you say, a game that could be affordably made, but much of its content unavailable at any given time while putting out 100's of new quests every month... well... you'd have to be able to just puke that content out.  Heck, CoX can sit back and let PLAYERS make their content, and I STILL doubt they're putting, say, 100 missions in per month.

Oh yes, players.

I think what illustrates this best is this pdf document about "grid fu". It deconstructs and exploits the mechanic that ccp coded to properly simulate a solar system and break down players interacting with stuff into computable parts.

Honestly, read it. If you think players won't be able to break something, watch how a group of players managed to break and modify one of the core mechanics of eve..

Originally posted by batolemaeus

Oh yes, players.

I think what illustrates this best is this pdf document about "grid fu". It deconstructs and exploits the mechanic that ccp coded to properly simulate a solar system and break down players interacting with stuff into computable parts.

Honestly, read it. If you think players won't be able to break something, watch how a group of players managed to break and modify one of the core mechanics of eve..

There will always be players that will break game mechanics, whether they be for dynamic, or static content. Both will still require monitoring, bug fixing, and enhancement. I don't think anyone is claiming that you could simply set up a dynamically driven MMO and walk away. Rather, that you can set one up where most of the content is influenced and altered by player interaction, so devs can worry more about tweaking, bug fixing, and new assets, rather than with trying to keep churning out loads of manually created content just to keep the playerbase content.

Originally posted by otter3370

But isn't that what mmos do already?  As you progress new areas and content are made available.  It's different everyday you play.  You can choose what you're going to do that day.  Are you going to do quests or missions, farm mats, craft, explore, meet new people, chat with old friends, etc.  As long as you don't let the mmo become a job or a chore to do, and not let yourself fall into a rut, there are many things that have the potential to be entertaining. 

Every mmorpg is a brand new world to live and explore.  What you describe sounds too much like RL to me.  I get enough of that, lol.  I play mmorpgs to escape it for a while.

What many mmo players seem to fail to realize in this is exactly what you said, while we start a game unable to access some seventy five percent of the content we are just as quick to forget once we do access that content the ride it took to get there and it doesn't help when you get the feeling of dejavu with so many mostly similar games.  But for me this isn't so much of a problem as I can recall playing tons of RPG knock offs of Final Fantasy and I never felt the "nerd rage" that mmo players so frequently display on boards like this.

I was thinking about the state of mmo's last night before bed and for once I felt sorry for mmo devs out there most really don't realize what a difficult task they have ahead of them.  You make an mmo and charge people the same amount that Bioware is charging for say Dragon Age or Bethesda charges for Elder Scrolls two games that most game players will toute as the cream of the crop, we can even add shooters like HALO, or COD and while an mmo will provide us with maybe hundreds more hours of entertainment six months later if we feel like we need to move on from the game we mostly turn right to the internet to trash the reputation of said game.

While I can in ways agree with what the OP said in that it would be nice for a game to be designed in much this way I fear that it wouldn't change the constant glut of complaining we get about what is offered to us.

Sure, but don't forget that those dynamic systems have to be absolutely bullet proof. Players will try to deconstruct and exploit any dynamic system you can imagine, and as you can see in the pdf, will even reverse engineer rather complex mechanics.

If you introduce a fully dynamic quest system, you might face players manipulating it rather effectively.

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Originally posted by demented669

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Originally posted by Bookkeeper

MMOs talk about the grand adventure, but they give you the same day over and over again.  You kill the same things over and over.  Everything stays in the same place, every day is the same as yesterday.  The same guy hands out the same lame quest, to everyone, everyday.  Everybody does the same lame quests.  Time has no meaning, players have no impact.  The MMO genre will continue to stagnate and bore the game community until some developer steps up and makes a changing living world.  One where time moves forward and tomorrow is different than today. 

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Likewise agree! There is hope, there is at least 1 game in development (I can't remember the title off hand) that promises a much more dynamic world.

Originally posted by Ceridith

The NWN toolset is not designed to properly handle such content, that's the main issue. There has yet to be an MMO with the proper design to facilitate enhanced script driven dynamic alterations to the game world. Once the core framework exists however, it is as simple as creating logic rules and then generating the 'default' world.

I am reminded of an ancient joke.

Recipe for Lion Stew:

First, catch a lion.

Coming up with the "proper design" is not nearly as trivial as you seem to think. And about the stupidest way to do so would be to tell developers to "just make anything", and dump this into a running game filled with paying customers. Even static content for MMOs needs ludicrous amounts of testing just because there's so many different things a player might do to interact with it. Trying to imagine a model for dynamic content which isn't very simple ("Get me 10 randomobject from randommonster") and can be robustly added to by developers over time and which won't lead to endless bugs and exploits is headache inducing.

We can make it even simpler, if you wish. Let's presume you have the WoW game engine for purposes of a common baseline of classes, races, monsters, etc. You have a scripting engine which can do unlimited changes to the world in response to player actions, with all concurrency issues settled on the database side, meaning, if someone kills an orc and 0.01 seconds later someone tried to talk to the orc (which was alive when he clicked 'talk' and dead by the time the command reached the server), the "talk to" command will never go through, and if he somehow dies mid-conversation the conversation will terminate instantly with a "Gaaak" message. The magic genie who gave you this engine is colored purple, BTW. Just so you know.

You have 3000 players who will log on tonight. They plan to spend, randomly, between 10 minutes and 10 hours each, today, playing. They will be logging on, and off, randomly throughout the night. You have no guarantees on how long any one will stay or how much they will accomplish in their session. You are guaranteed that if they spend five hours doing something, then log off, then log back in an hour later and can't finish what they started, they WILL be pissed.

Describe your script engine that will give ***all[1]*** of them something to do while constantly changing the world. Make sure nothing you do leaves a player frustrated or bored enough that they'll quit. Assume your player base consists mostly of sociopaths whose only joy is in breaking the rules, whether its the rules of your game world or harming the fun of other players, and any possibility you give to them to do so can and will be exploited.

Tomorrow, BTW, another 3000 people will log on. About half of those were the people who logged on today, 1000 are people who didn't, and 500 are people logging on for the very first time. How different is "tomorrow" from "today", exactly? What kind of experience are the newest players getting?

[1]I have to keep pounding on this because people Just Don't Get It. You're not talking about 4 or 5 players, or 40 or 50. You're talking about THOUSANDS concurrently and possibly MILLIONS over the course of a game. Almost every idea of "how it should work" sounds lovely as long as there's only 5 people on the server and they all log in at the same time and they started playing the day the game shipped. It tends to fail once you change any of those variables.

Originally posted by Ceridith

There will always be players that will break game mechanics, whether they be for dynamic, or static content. Both will still require monitoring, bug fixing, and enhancement. I don't think anyone is claiming that you could simply set up a dynamically driven MMO and walk away. Rather, that you can set one up where most of the content is influenced and altered by player interaction, so devs can worry more about tweaking, bug fixing, and new assets, rather than with trying to keep churning out loads of manually created content just to keep the playerbase content.

Well, first, content teams and dev teams aren't the same thing.

Second... uhm.... are you saying a game with "player influenced and altered" content is *EASIER* to maintain than one with scripted content?

If so... uhm, whoa. The player is the enemy. The most important thing any MMORPG can do, the thing they MUST do, is constantly protect the game from the players. The more power the players have, the more work the game developers must do to protect the game from them.

Originally posted by batolemaeus

Sure, but don't forget that those dynamic systems have to be absolutely bullet proof. Players will try to deconstruct and exploit any dynamic system you can imagine, and as you can see in the pdf, will even reverse engineer rather complex mechanics.

If you introduce a fully dynamic quest system, you might face players manipulating it rather effectively.

That's where the monitoring and tweaking comes in. Some players will always attempt to exploit any given game system, and chances are they will always succeed on some level, eventually. Whether it is dynamic or static it doesn't matter. So the dynamic systems do not have to be bullet proof, they just need to be coherent enough where they cannot be influenced in an overly negative fashion without a great deal of effort, which can also include internal flags. In those cases, it allows those monitoring to more effectively catch and mitigate the issues, and the trouble makers.

Take WoW for example, which many consider one of the most static MMOs ever. It still has more than it's share of exploiters and flaws to be exploited.

Originally posted by Lizard_SF

Originally posted by Ceridith

There will always be players that will break game mechanics, whether they be for dynamic, or static content. Both will still require monitoring, bug fixing, and enhancement. I don't think anyone is claiming that you could simply set up a dynamically driven MMO and walk away. Rather, that you can set one up where most of the content is influenced and altered by player interaction, so devs can worry more about tweaking, bug fixing, and new assets, rather than with trying to keep churning out loads of manually created content just to keep the playerbase content.

 

Well, first, content teams and dev teams aren't the same thing.

Second... uhm.... are you saying a game with "player influenced and altered" content is *EASIER* to maintain than one with scripted content?

If so... uhm, whoa. The player is the enemy. The most important thing any MMORPG can do, the thing they MUST do, is constantly protect the game from the players. The more power the players have, the more work the game developers must do to protect the game from them.

I never said it was easier to maintain, but I didn't say it was any harder.

I am saying that it would require less focus on maintaining a playerbase via manually developing every scrap of content. Every quest, NPC spawn, doodad location, etc. This would in turn allow more focus in manpower and assets on tweaking, bug fixing, and developing new art and mechanics.

Originally posted by Bookkeeper

MMOs talk about the grand adventure, but they give you the same day over and over again.  You kill the same things over and over.  Everything stays in the same place, every day is the same as yesterday.  The same guy hands out the same lame quest, to everyone, everyday.  Everybody does the same lame quests.  Time has no meaning, players have no impact.  The MMO genre will continue to stagnate and bore the game community until some developer steps up and makes a changing living world.  One where time moves forward and tomorrow is different than today. 

I agree. The genre took a worrying turn when everybody started copying everybody and no one bothered to innovate or change. Who here thought 10 years ago that the genre would still be largely unchanged in its core mechanics today?

I for one believed we would have moved on to more creative things by now.

As much as it sucked, Tabula Rasa had a changing world in that towns and outposts would frequently be attacked by large numbers of mobs, and drop ships would dump mobs on top of you at semi-random places. NPCs and mobs would also fight each other in random places, so the world didn't feel entirely stagnant. It was somewhat interesting for a time.

Mobs respawning does seem like an area that could be improved on. I mean mundane camping  of the same spawns for countless hours has been a staple of basically every MMO, including Darkfall.

I could see something like a map with various objective points like towns, outposts and bases that roving bands of players and mobs fight for being somewhat more interesting. Instead of mobs poping up in the same defined places for eternity, a huge horde or something could enter the map and proceed to objective hop while slowly splitting up, and the faster the players kill off the horde the better the rewards. There is basically a set number of mobs, but with the size of map, numbers and difficulty a campaign could keep players busy for a while.

What many of you are missing is, That developers want to controll what the playerbase are doing. What CCP has done with EVE is a great risk. Letting the players have to mush impact can have disastrous consicvenses.

But I personly feel that it is time for developers to take more riks, fails like WAR, AOC, AION and many others should show them that new thinking might be needed. Im allready certain that THe old republic will crash and burn... all the PvE focus will crush the game.

A new audiance where intruduced to MMOS when WOW came out, the new games that launched with WoW like EVE for example allready had more sanbox like feels, but WOW took it back to basics so the noobs could learn what had gone before. Now that crowed has like the rest of us started to hunger for something new. And that Is The player controled MMO... What blizzard now needs to do is look at the sanbox games and do what they do best make the next gen Sanbox game for their loyal fans (cough 10m last i looked) 

Something new is needed but someone with money has to be the first to try it and I think only Blizzard are up for the jobb.

Untill they come out with this new inovating game I sugest that all of you that are tired of the themparks, head on over and join the Elite gamers like myself in EvE. Themeparks are for girls, noobs and carebares, Real men play EvE remeber that ladies...

Originally posted by Lizard_SF

The magic genie who gave you this engine is colored purple, BTW. Just so you know.

Bummer... I woulda preferred chevy orange... ;)

Originally posted by Zlayer77

What many of you are missing is, That developers want to controll what the playerbase are doing. What CCP has done with EVE is a great risk. Letting the players have to mush impact can have disastrous consicvenses.

I agree, except we may disagree about motives.  I don't think it's that devs(generally speaking) want to control what we do; they want to have enough control over the game world that they can create a consistent game experience.  You're right about Eve; it was a big risk, but they knew better than to hand the high sectors over to players to fight over; those areas remain static until CCP decides to change them.  In any sandbox game, there have to be limits.

But I personly feel that it is time for developers to take more riks, fails like WAR, AOC, AION and many others should show them that new thinking might be needed. Im allready certain that THe old republic will crash and burn... all the PvE focus will crush the game.

LotRO is PVE focused, and it's doing pretty well.  So's WoW, obviously.  the issue isn't PVE, IMO, it's content, period.  All the games you mention are lacking(though Aion I dunno from PE, just heard that's the case).  you can't offer just one good mode of gameplay in a MMO and expect people to play longer than 3 months.

A new audiance where intruduced to MMOS when WOW came out, the new games that launched with WoW like EVE for example allready had more sanbox like feels, but WOW took it back to basics so the noobs could learn what had gone before. Now that crowed has like the rest of us started to hunger for something new. And that Is The player controled MMO... What blizzard now needs to do is look at the sanbox games and do what they do best make the next gen Sanbox game for their loyal fans (cough 10m last i looked) 

The next game Blizz might make, for me, doesn't matter if it's sandbox or themepark or neither.  If it's fun, I'll play it.  Devs are beginning to learn that appealing to gaming ideologues doesn't pay the bills.  Nor does it pay to appease their backward, regressive thinking.  A game is a game, and it's either fun or it's not fun.

Something new is needed but someone with money has to be the first to try it and I think only Blizzard are up for the jobb.

I suppose, though I don't know how you come to that conclusion.  WoW wasn't really anything new when it came out; it just did it all right, had more of it, and had a solid and perfectly timed launch.  I would suspect the same to occur again with this next game.  They'll take the best of what everyone else is doing, and put it all together in a sinergistic package that's solid and feels right.

Untill they come out with this new inovating game I sugest that all of you that are tired of the themparks, head on over and join the Elite gamers like myself in EvE. Themeparks are for girls, noobs and carebares, Real men play EvE remeber that ladies...

This bit is too funny... and a bit ironic.  Well, by your declaration... since only "real men" play Eve and themeparks are for girls, etc, I hope you're enjoying your sausage-fest while us "noobs" and "carebears" are havin' a blast with the ladies... LOL!

Originally posted by Bookkeeper

MMOs talk about the grand adventure, but they give you the same day over and over again.  You kill the same things over and over.  Everything stays in the same place, every day is the same as yesterday.  The same guy hands out the same lame quest, to everyone, everyday.  Everybody does the same lame quests.  Time has no meaning, players have no impact.  The MMO genre will continue to stagnate and bore the game community until some developer steps up and makes a changing living world.  One where time moves forward and tomorrow is different than today. 

This would seem to be an obvious point, but its not...  I had never even thought about it before.  Seriously true though.  There needs to bee an MMO like Darkfall - except one that doesn't fail in many ways.  A game that it almost entirely player-driven.  A game full of risk and adventure where you have to make your own fun.  Sounds sort of like runescape, except good, now that I think about it.

I think the importance of "questing" needs to be taken down a notch.  I liked the runescape quest system, where there were relatively few of them  - and they really were challenging, rewarding, epic adventures. 

Anyways, enough of my ranting - but theres my hope for the future.

EDIT:  This is what Runescape used to be, now they've messed it up royally - so much so that it is now unplayable for me.  The economy is no longer truly player-driven, the danger factor is way down, and the combat and graphics still suck.

Originally posted by Zlayer77

What many of you are missing is, That developers want to controll what the playerbase are doing. What CCP has done with EVE is a great risk. Letting the players have to mush impact can have disastrous consicvenses.

But I personly feel that it is time for developers to take more riks, fails like WAR, AOC, AION and many others should show them that new thinking might be needed. Im allready certain that THe old republic will crash and burn... all the PvE focus will crush the game.

A new audiance where intruduced to MMOS when WOW came out, the new games that launched with WoW like EVE for example allready had more sanbox like feels, but WOW took it back to basics so the noobs could learn what had gone before. Now that crowed has like the rest of us started to hunger for something new. And that Is The player controled MMO... What blizzard now needs to do is look at the sanbox games and do what they do best make the next gen Sanbox game for their loyal fans (cough 10m last i looked) 

Something new is needed but someone with money has to be the first to try it and I think only Blizzard are up for the jobb.

Untill they come out with this new inovating game I sugest that all of you that are tired of the themparks, head on over and join the Elite gamers like myself in EvE. Themeparks are for girls, noobs and carebares, Real men play EvE remeber that ladies...

Are you foreign and/or eleven?   Because there are a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes in this.  A lot.

Originally posted by Nihilist

As much as it sucked, Tabula Rasa had a changing world in that towns and outposts would frequently be attacked by large numbers of mobs, and drop ships would dump mobs on top of you at semi-random places. NPCs and mobs would also fight each other in random places, so the world didn't feel entirely stagnant. It was somewhat interesting for a time.

 

Mobs respawning does seem like an area that could be improved on. I mean mundane camping  of the same spawns for countless hours has been a staple of basically every MMO, including Darkfall.

 

I could see something like a map with various objective points like towns, outposts and bases that roving bands of players and mobs fight for being somewhat more interesting. Instead of mobs poping up in the same defined places for eternity, a huge horde or something could enter the map and proceed to objective hop while slowly splitting up, and the faster the players kill off the horde the better the rewards. There is basically a set number of mobs, but with the size of map, numbers and difficulty a campaign could keep players busy for a while.

The CP's were a pretty good idea.  I really liked the way the mobs spawned in TR.  They didn't just fade into view; you heard the sound of that drop ship and you spun around to check your back.  TR got the "YOU ARE IN A WARZONE" theme right.  Some terrific tactical ideas, too.

I just figure all that came at a high cost.  Worthless crafting.  not enough content for even 1 toon.  Limited special abilities, many of which were shared by all classes.  All the innovation in the world isn't worth squat if the core gameplay is shallow and focused on one mode of gameplay.

With these CP based options apparently coming to GW2, we may see them done right this time around.

Well, no one said it would be easy to make a  dynamic world where time moves on and players can have some influence on the progress of the world.  But just because something is hard does not mean it cannot be done.  I'm on the design team behind such a project.  No game engine that existed when we started could have made our game work.  It has taken a dedicated team of programmers and designers five years to get this past the concept to a working prototype.  But make no mistake, it is possible.  

Many of the points you are making about why this is difficult (or why you think it cannot be done) are absolutely valid problems that had to be overcome.  But they have been overcome.

Enough game content seems to be one of your main sticking points.  Well, it was certainly one of ours.  We found the answer in more new technology.  We designed a tool to construct content faster and easier.  This is not your fetch me ten goblin skulls questing.  Each quest we build is over 12 hours of play (if you hurry).  The stories are deep, the episodes within a single quest many.  All the way through the quests you are making choices that change the quest.  But it's not a simple branching model.

A story is written, then that story is put through a proprietary tool that helps vary the quest and construct portions of it on the fly.  This means that although the concept of the quest is written, the details of the quest are created at run time, and the player's past and present are factored into the alterations done to the quest.  This creates a quest that is neither simple auto generated content, nor all hand made effort by scripting.   These are tailored quests, each worthy of a fantasy novel.   Just fifty of these quests would take an average players (note the word average) about two years of time to complete.  Now, everyone isn't average, there are those that will chain themselves to the computer and have food delivered and play 24 hours a day.  Can they power through the content?  Sure. 

Here is a news flash... we don't care.   Yes, that's right, if someone wants to power through two years content for the average player in two months, get to it.   They still get their monies worth, even if they take it all at once.   It's like complaining that a speed reader can power through the Lord of the Rings books in two hours.  OK, so?  Let them.  It will take me about ten to twelve hours.  Either way, we read the books.

Anyway, we're tired of people telling us what we can't do, which is why a group of us who have worked at various game companies for years, and been constantly told what we cannot do, decided to go ahead and build Citadel of Sorcery.  We purposely took on the hard choices and made it vastly different.  Will some people hate it?   Sure, but we don't need to please everyone, that's impossible.  What we can do is make the game we have always wanted to play, and that's exactly what we're doing.   Now that the game engine is 80% complete and the world is up and running.  Most of the issues we have faced are behind us.  New problems will arise, but contrary to the posts of some people in this thread, nothing is impossible.

Jatar

Designer at MMO Magic, Inc.

Citadel of Sorcery project.