A Plan For Effective Live Content
Carbine Studios' Senior Systems Designer Steve Williams shares some of his ideas on how live content could be effectively integrated into an MMO.
Editorial By Guest Writer on August 12, 2009
In my last article, I spoke about some of the difficulties in presenting Live Events for the Matrix Online, an MMO that last Friday took its final bow and closed down. As a former Live Events Team (LET) member, I got to see first-hand some of the issues that digital actors face in the MMO space.
To many people, the MMO is the perfect place to build tools that present fresh, live content to the player - it is a virtual world (to a greater or lesser extent) and everyone knows that a world is not always a predictable place! Against this is the increasingly mechanized experience players have - the theme park experience where every player experiences the same thing in the same way... every time.
Many solutions have been offered to this, and they fall under what I would call "automated events." This article won't touch on those, except in ways they can serve an actual LET employee.
The possible solutions I offer seek to tackle many of the issues I brought up last time in my own experience building and implementing live events for Matrix.
But first, we should touch on what Live Events offer a game over automated events and static content. The goals of a LET are often not considered to the same degree as other systems. Since this article assumes a company has an interest in the more organic feel of live events, we'll assume that design discussion has already occurred.
The goals of your LET should be simple: provide content to players with an organic, "live" feel that is neither on a set schedule nor in the same automated setting. Live Events will be human in nature - these are not situations in which you want total automation. Live Events represent the human side of the game, and more importantly, work strongly to make players feel there is an immersive layer to the game that is often lacking.
So which situations are these? Let's go back to my three event types: Meet and Greet, Hear Me, Zion, and Oh No, Bad Guys. To this, let's add one more: Guided Experience. I'll talk about Guided Experiences at the end of the article. As I break down tools and means to make Live Events work, keep these three types in mind.
Tools in the hands of an empowered employee of the company are always dangerous - the pages of MMO lore are filled with rogue operatives in the company supposedly helping this player or that one. In this case, I say - OK. Give them the power, but track it properly.
An LET employee who interacts with a player flags that player as having been "evented." This event flag is visible to any other employee of the company (CSRs, LET, internal investigations) as a "do not touch" sign. This event flag prevents an evented player from receiving material rewards from a live event while the flag persists - depending on the company's plan for live events, I would imagine a week or two weeks. This flag is invisible to players and should never be mentioned to them except in broad terms of "we have a means of ensuring an individual player (or character) does not become over-represented in live events."
This tool will go a long way toward mitigating favoritism claims from the player base - even the best buddy of corrupt Joe the LET will only be able to receive the benefits of a live event during the time metrics already approved by the design of the game. More importantly, this is an automated system which serves as a check on employees trying to circumvent the rules.
The next tool is probably the one that I have thought about the most - simulpresence. For a digital actor who seeks to speak with players, being in only one place at one time is a major piece of the scaling issue that Live Events must hurdle. Simulpresent LET characters appear on all servers in the exact same place, and perform every action and text output at the same time in every server. Thus, LET members who are providing information or just "showing the flag" of a character can literally address the entire present player base through one keyboard at one time.
The power of simulpresence should not be underestimated. The vast majority of players who encountered a live event in Matrix often asked the same questions and the environment of the meeting was often so confusing that simulpresence really doesn't add any appreciable loss of fidelity for the event.
Specifically, I'm thinking Hear Me, Zion events in which an actor is addressing a crowd. Simulpresence is perfect for this. Even Meet and Greets can work this way, if the actor is on his toes and is able to see player inputs from a few of the servers he is simulpresent in.
Added to simulpresence is an array of friendly and not-so-friendly enhancements to the actor's repertoire. At the least an actor should be able to click on a player and silence or freeze them (standard GM tools), the actor should be safe from player crowding through an impassible barrier - preferably one built into the world such as a stage or balcony. The player should be able to despawn creatures nearby (not kill, which is the common, messy workaround). Finally, each actor should have an in-character means of making their own presence felt - a fiery aura, or the ability to fire off fireworks - means that passerby can quickly identify a live events actor.
I remember in Asherons Call, the Beal Zharon live events. In fact I still have the videos on my computer from them. These add a whole new fun factor for games. Not just running around doing scripted things. Being able to actually see and be apart of live vents is amazing.
Back in the day before the NGE ruined SWG they used to have live events all the time. Tuscans attack bestine, nightsisters durring holloween. All kinds of live events.
Also EQ2 had some as well.
Lotro also had one once where a gm ran around as amothel and you got to battle them.
Live events can be done, and have been done.
City of Heroes has dosen some regular live events as well, also use simupresense. But they also mix in some dev interaction. People still talk about Positron (Matt Miller)'s comment at the Freedom Phalanx seige of the end of CoV beta where he complained in character "they all grey to me" (redicusly low level)
Anyone that has fought Positron knows he hax. :P Hehe.
On a serious note, an alternative to "live" would be to have interactive AI, such as contacts. It would not be hard. There are already a few 'choice' menus - i.e. "Defeat xx of xxxxx to help xxxxx." or "Some either story arc or not door mission". I would like to see (espeically for my villains) actual CHOICES that AFFECT the rest of the arc. For example, my ice/thermal is not really a villain at all. She is a young child who has been a victim of circumstances (yeah, I know, that's what they alllllll say but this one is truly a good girl at heart). I would have loved to have had the option of, instead of betraying a patron, to refuse to work for Arbiter Daos and perhaps having the patron somehow find a way to redirect the Arbiter's attention and wrath elsewhere or having a positive outcome so that you still end up on the path of Project: DESTINY but without the betrayal (a betrayal that Xandra would never do). I spent the entire arc thinking "This is sooooo out of character."
I would also like to make a choice TO betray that slimeball Westin Phipps, the kind of person who could make a hardened criminal go "Man, that is just WRONG." I think it would be interesting to have differing outcomes resulting from dialog choices. Yeah, it is not "live" per se, but it would go a long way towards individualizing content without the expense of paying in game acting talent.
I wonder if they will make more 'gray' content once Going Rogue is live.....
Good article...good points. I think if dev teams took more time to plan for this stuff from the very begining...IE before the world is even created then a lot more could be accomplished. I have always felt the dev teams need to spend more time on creating the content tools themselves and less time on trying to pump out that initial content to wow the potential player base. A good set of tools can take that unpaid intern or minimum wage employee and let them create as much or more content than that high paid expert coder or artist.
You know you really should have read the last thread before writing this one.
I mentioned in the last thread that the best live content I have seen in an MMO was the sages in UO. You let the players do it, if something needs spawned or done outside of what a player can do the GM does it. You would be amazed at some of the unique events these sages can come up with. Players participate whether there is a reward or not, don't remember any reward given for any of the sage events I did, but they were sure fun.
So this article is truely missing the player designer. You are just wasting your time writing the article if you don't include them.
Nice read Steve. However, from what I am getting from this(and I may be WAY off base here) is that cookie-cutter Live Events, by way of new developer tools, may be the way of the future in MMO gaming. It will allow for an increase in Live Events, a decrease in personel from the LET, GM, and Devs, as well as a more structured and less chaotic Event, but at what cost? If all the LET member needs to do is "Copy and Paste" a list of preset commands such as "Run Event 32, Reward 4, and Monsters 6B" then where is the human interaction by the Event team? I do understand that, in theory, these tools will allow the devs to free up some personel from the menial tasks of organizing, setting up, and policing the activities during, as well as Pre and Post, the Event, thus allow more time available for the LET to directly interact with the playerbase. However, do you really think that it will happen like that? Will the game company simply see the streamlining of the Live Events as chance to do more with less? Instead of normally having a LET of 6 to 8 people, will they only use 3 or 4 people instead? Are we headed to an era of Quantity over Quality in the Live Event's arena? I surely hope not as some of my greatest memories of my past MMOs stemmed from my being involved in Live Events and rubbing elbows with the people from behind the scenes, the GM's and Devs of the game.
Actually, unless i'm mistaken, SWG also does the player designed Events as well. There are numerous ingame tools that can be bought to facilitate these types of events so a GM is not really needed to spawn particular items or NPCs due to the large amount of purchasable Event items.
I think what Steve has focused on was more of a specific company team(LET) and the options that are available to them, in order to better serve the community.
However, your point of using ingame tools to run player run events is, IMHO, an excellent topic in which Steve might want to consider for his next article
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the image used to promote this on front page is damn wrong i know that most of US ppl are baptists but using a orthodox image like that is wrong
Another fascinating read. Thanks for the article Steve. Glad to see mmorpg.com giving us more non-commercial access to the industry, and more articles about the design process. Its articles like this, and only ones like this, that keep me coming back. Again thanks for the good read.
I could also see how that could come about. The "corruption" of LET's would certainly be a bad thing, and these tools could certainly be used for that purpose. What's important to remember, IMO, is that what "tools" can help start, or end, a live event, the beauty of the whole thing is the unpredictibility of the stuff in the middle. Even if you started off every event in the same exact way, the PLAYERS that get involved are what bring uniqeness. Which is why the other post about player led events has some validity too. The beauty of the mmo is that it brings all of these players together and allows them to interact/play on their own terms. While most designs "direct' players in one way or another, they can't completely eliminate the creativity and unpredictibility of the avg. player.
So, IMO, streamline the process a bit....it's cool. It just helps us get to the real meat of the interaction anyone, the real wonder of the live event process...the unique interactions between the players.
Whoever is offended by that picture needs to grow up.
I was wondering if they got permission to use that from Monty Python and the Holy Grails owner.......
Yes its one by Terry Gilliam I think.
I am a fan of live events and some good ideas are put forward here. But I don’t think MMO companies make as much use of players running their own events as they could. Once players have been spotted who put on their own events regular, why not give them some of these tools?
They could submit a script to the MMO and would not have to be able to reward the players anything. We do player planned events for no rewards all the time. Here the event organiser could place a few mobs, clear an area of the usual ones there. Speak ‘as’ npc’s and so on.
This would be cheaper and more relevant to the individual server. Just don’t give them to much power and it should work fine.
Your post is wrong. Most of the US are Protestant Christians (of which Baptists are a denominational part of Protestantism, not all). The image is a parody & intended as such on a site known for its occasional "tongue in cheek" entertainment.
Either way, I thought vulgarity was wrong?
Hypocrite much?
Please check your off-topic, "holier than thou", attitude (pun intended) at the door because people like you give everyone else in your country a bad name.
ustream.tv/channel/athene this guy started his live show not long ago,he decided to do it live
and he an lol of wow player did a live event in wow
if you missed it go to worldofathene.com to see the edited version
you can see that live things can and will happens in the futur athene is proof of that
how wil it be in the futur lol beats me
but athene is one way of doing live
Digital Actor = Dream Job
Pay me minimum wage. Pay me by the hour. :D How this would be hard to do or expensive if you had one dedicated minimum-wage digital actor per server in a game is beyond me. Give that digital actor other tasks to do as well, just to make his minimum wage job that much more interesting. For example, the digital actor could also act as a form of moderator for various in-game tasks in need of moderation. I would excel at this job and do it for minimum wage the rest of my life, if the game was good. \m/
Digital Actor = Dream Job
Pay me minimum wage. Pay me by the hour. :D How this would be hard to do or expensive if you had one dedicated minimum-wage digital actor per server in a game is beyond me. Give that digital actor other tasks to do as well, just to make his minimum wage job that much more interesting. For example, the digital actor could also act as a form of moderator for various in-game tasks in need of moderation. I would excel at this job and do it for minimum wage the rest of my life, if the game was good. \m/
Don't know about 'minimum wage", but, I admit, I wouldn't mind trying out for a Live Events Team job as well. :) I think I could be good at it. :)