Not going to happen. Aside from the money issue, co-ordinating 1000 coders is a highly professional job. Most project teams are way less than that for a reason.

Too many Devs in the Kitchen....

When you have that many the message of the game gets lost and suddenly you end up with a mess of ideas that don't work well together. You couldn't just have one person in charge of a team like that so you'd end up with poor communication.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Not going to happen. Aside from the money issue, co-ordinating 1000 coders is a highly professional job. Most project teams are way less than that for a reason.

 

Which is why your integration people would have to be top notch and the project coordination extremely well defined - so groups of coders work on discrete subsystems as much as possible.

Originally posted by tixylix

Too many Devs in the Kitchen....

 

When you have that many the message of the game gets lost and suddenly you end up with a mess of ideas that don't work well together. You couldn't just have one person in charge of a team like that so you'd end up with poor communication.

I disagree - it would be poor if the project management was poor.

It is not a foregone conclusion that becuase it would be extremely challenging, that it would fail.

Most of that would be artists, designers (lore content), and scripters (script coding for content mechanics).  After a solid engine / server / db framework is in place, there really isn't much programming that needs to be done.

Organized into teams of 40, that's 25 regions at a time being worked on.  That's enough to crank out a completely new Outland sized world every month.

Possible?  yes, but it would be so huge and expensive that it would take millions of player to cover costs.

Back in the day,

way way back in the day...like in the morning of MMO's when they were still Mud's, text based and your UI...if you had a ui...was a paper doll that turned red when a limb was hurt (yea they had limb specific mechanics back then...something we still don't really do)

back in those days, GM's were people who would randomly spawn invasions, your city would be full of monsters of every type from kobolds to demon elementals...it was glorious and it never seems to work in the new MMO's

Part of the reason would probably be all the crying people would do if the race to level 100 was slowed down because they couldn't turn in a quest because some "Stupid developer" decided to do a "stupid event" but man..those events rocked you would have the entire city engaged and healers and rezzers would set up shop in the town center while low levels would scatter out of the hell that was happening or just die. You could drag bodies in most of those text based games, another thing we don't see now...probably because someone would use it to grief...but people would be dragging the dead to the rezzers even if they couldn't fight they could do something.

I would like to see those types of events happen...not content updates just events that happen and a code capable of letting people put those events into place and then employees willing to use that code to enhance the fun of the game.

They would also set up random shops where you could buy unique items, now I know it is much easier to do unique items back then because it was basically just changing text where as now you would have to recode graphics or put in new ones...still you would think it wouldn't be that hard to change color paterns and the like to make some nice stuff...

ahh well I am done talking about the hazy old days.

It would be cool if you had enough developers in a game to run stuff like this though, instead of having programmers only involved in making expansions and content updates and bug fixes and class rebalancing.

Odd isn't it - that an MMO hasn't come out where GM controlled event spawns can happen.

Create a toolset, train the people using it and hand them a timetable with flexibility and watch the player base wax lyrical about the 'living' world they play in.

All for a medium waged individual per server.

Seems strange it hasn't been done, a toolset has to be easier to program, not to mention better in realising challenging events than a precoded, predetermined, 'on-rails' system.

Cheaper too probably...

Leaving economics aside in theorey it could be an evolving server whenin it starts with minimal infrastructure.

All contenet would be player generated and developers would ensure that player daily contribution wouldf result in action the next day.say vai voting or other means players decide to create a town hall then the  very next day on a mass scale option whodul be availabe for players to clear the land , cut tress , level the ground , start building etc ...

On a larger scale daily world events could be reflected in the world

in in hypothetical tersm the concept would be amazing

I will simply leave you with a saying echoing the sentiments of others in this thread:

"Too many chefs spoil the stew."

Originally posted by Caliburn101

Odd isn't it - that an MMO hasn't come out where GM controlled event spawns can happen.

Not odd at all. MUDs pioneered it, UO tried to bring it to commercial MMOs and many have tried it since. There are several factors involved that may seem easy to resolve on the surface but present major problems. Some are

- Perceived favoritism

- Covering prime hours for all regions

- Negatively impactingplayers that are not involved (collateral damage)

- Properly training such a massive staff

- Adherence to lore and other persistent or ongoing game aspects

- COST of training/maintaining the event staff for any sizable multi-region game.

It works great in MUDs, free games and games that are more of a game than a world. In MMOs, moreso sub MMOs than F2P, they usually are limited to specific events (ex: http://ihavereturned.com/) and are heavily monitored/logged because the chance of perceived abuse is usually rather high.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Caliburn101

Odd isn't it - that an MMO hasn't come out where GM controlled event spawns can happen.

Not odd at all. MUDs pioneered it, UO tried to bring it to commercial MMOs and many have tried it since. There are several factors involved that may seem easy to resolve on the surface but present major problems. Some are

- Perceived favoritism

- Covering prime hours for all regions

- Negatively impactingplayers that are not involved (collateral damage)

- Properly training such a massive staff

- Adherence to lore and other persistent or ongoing game aspects

- COST of training/maintaining the event staff for any sizable multi-region game.

 

It works great in MUDs, free games and games that are more of a game than a world. In MMOs, moreso sub MMOs than F2P, they usually are limited to specific events (ex: http://ihavereturned.com/) and are heavily monitored/logged because the chance of perceived abuse is usually rather high.

To answer these from my perspective;

Perceived favouritism - good procedures would eliminate this

Covering prime hours - not sure why you think this a problem in a 24/7 world where there can be employees in every time zone...

Collateral damage - live controllers means live response - too many players arrive late, roll the evnt over and add more waves or iterations. Too few, let is simmer away and hit the peak once the numbers are right etc.

Massive staff? - not a problem - just ensure the toolset is good and only have this kind of controlled event now and again - the rest of the world can be scripted. People will still feel the love trust me...

Adherence to lore? - training and quality control issue - use a service provision model with a well delineated toolset, live monitoring and reiterative training and no problem.

COST - cost is negligible - as I said - have the majority of the world scripted and have these thrown in to spice things up, not as the only game in town.

Originally posted by Caliburn101

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Caliburn101

Odd isn't it - that an MMO hasn't come out where GM controlled event spawns can happen.

Not odd at all. MUDs pioneered it, UO tried to bring it to commercial MMOs and many have tried it since. There are several factors involved that may seem easy to resolve on the surface but present major problems. Some are

- Perceived favoritism

- Covering prime hours for all regions

- Negatively impactingplayers that are not involved (collateral damage)

- Properly training such a massive staff

- Adherence to lore and other persistent or ongoing game aspects

- COST of training/maintaining the event staff for any sizable multi-region game.

 

It works great in MUDs, free games and games that are more of a game than a world. In MMOs, moreso sub MMOs than F2P, they usually are limited to specific events (ex: http://ihavereturned.com/) and are heavily monitored/logged because the chance of perceived abuse is usually rather high.

To answer these from my perspective;

Perceived favouritism - good procedures would eliminate this

Covering prime hours - not sure why you think this a problem in a 24/7 world where there can be employees in every time zone...

Collateral damage - live controllers means live response - too many players arrive late, roll the evnt over and add more waves or iterations. Too few, let is simmer away and hit the peak once the numbers are right etc.

Massive staff? - not a problem - just ensure the toolset is good and only have this kind of controlled event now and again - the rest of the world can be scripted. People will still feel the love trust me...

Adherence to lore? - training and quality control issue - use a service provision model with a well delineated toolset, live monitoring and reiterative training and no problem.

COST - cost is negligible - as I said - have the majority of the world scripted and have these thrown in to spice things up, not as the only game in town.

Again, they seem easy to resolve to you. You also seem to have answered each in a vaccuum as you solve one problem by adding another layer of staff and additional hours to existing staff... then contend the next problem, Cost, isn't one.  I've done live events for Ultima Online, vMTV and EVE Online either as a lead or a member of the team. I'm speaking from over a decade of experience working on these things. Unless you have a very small playerbase of a few thousand, multiple problems from that list above rear their head. The longer you do the events, the more the problem grows if for no other reason than it becomes more prevalent.

There's several reasons devs don't do these things on a regular basis in a major MMO.  Laziness and didn't think of it aren't two of them.

"Collateral damage - live controllers means live response - too many players arrive late, roll the evnt over and add more waves or iterations. Too few, let is simmer away and hit the peak once the numbers are right etc."

I should have been clearer there. In your example, that would be players that aren't even involved. I'm talking about players that are negatively involved. Like the miner that you didn't see when dropping a field of orcs, or the guy riding through to get to his guild event when your lizardman caravan showed up, or the guild that has been prepping for a guild event in the area your event just sealed of on them.

Now, before you answer... consider your answer. Is that the answer that you feel most players would find acceptable if they were the miner or one of the guildies?

Originally posted by ObiClownobi
Depends, are they EA employees?

Originally posted by TsaboHavoc

Originally posted by ObiClownobi
Depends, are they EA employees?

 

lol if so, water and bread are not expensive, nor the dark dungeons to shelter them.

If "The Foundry" feature of Neverwinter is as good as we are being told... That will allow for plentiful content and story, generated by the users.

That is what these kinda games should be about anyways. Let us build things, let us run events, let us have a stake in the game.

Http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/09/06/the-diy-mmorpg-how-the-neverwinter-foundry-system-could-change-online-rpgs/

"Too much money and too many developers are chasing the MMO dragon, and this has created a bloated market with too much competition and too few winners."

Originally posted by Jyiiga

If "The Foundry" feature of Neverwinter is as good as we are being told... That will allow for plentiful content and story, generated by the users.

That is what these kinda games should be about anyways. Let us build things, let us run events, let us have a stake in the game.

Http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/09/06/the-diy-mmorpg-how-the-neverwinter-foundry-system-could-change-online-rpgs/

"Too much money and too many developers are chasing the MMO dragon, and this has created a bloated market with too much competition and too few winners."

Sorry about the horrible formatting.. MMORPG.com is not recognizing any spaces I put in.

Originally posted by lizardbones

You would start to get diminishing returns at some point.

Originally posted by Caliburn101

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Caliburn101

Odd isn't it - that an MMO hasn't come out where GM controlled event spawns can happen.

Not odd at all. MUDs pioneered it, UO tried to bring it to commercial MMOs and many have tried it since. There are several factors involved that may seem easy to resolve on the surface but present major problems. Some are

- Perceived favoritism

- Covering prime hours for all regions

- Negatively impactingplayers that are not involved (collateral damage)

- Properly training such a massive staff

- Adherence to lore and other persistent or ongoing game aspects

- COST of training/maintaining the event staff for any sizable multi-region game.

 

It works great in MUDs, free games and games that are more of a game than a world. In MMOs, moreso sub MMOs than F2P, they usually are limited to specific events (ex: http://ihavereturned.com/) and are heavily monitored/logged because the chance of perceived abuse is usually rather high.

To answer these from my perspective;

Perceived favouritism - good procedures would eliminate this

Covering prime hours - not sure why you think this a problem in a 24/7 world where there can be employees in every time zone...

Collateral damage - live controllers means live response - too many players arrive late, roll the evnt over and add more waves or iterations. Too few, let is simmer away and hit the peak once the numbers are right etc.

Massive staff? - not a problem - just ensure the toolset is good and only have this kind of controlled event now and again - the rest of the world can be scripted. People will still feel the love trust me...

Adherence to lore? - training and quality control issue - use a service provision model with a well delineated toolset, live monitoring and reiterative training and no problem.

COST - cost is negligible - as I said - have the majority of the world scripted and have these thrown in to spice things up, not as the only game in town.