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Why don't games do this?
esardotz92983
Member Posts: 13
By do this I mean on like a hourly/daily basis.
Why don't these big name companies hire people strictly to produce random pve events throughout a server. I am talking have 2-3 low wage dudes strictly there to produce attacks on city by large groups of npc's, spawn rare named dragons or wtf ever and control them, and (use your imagination here) to fight against or with or whatever.
Some of the most memorable experiences I have ever had in a mmo were GM events and you can't tell me it is that hard to spawn random creatures in a world such as the ones we play in. I mean they did it back in UO 98-99 all be it very rarely so you can't tell me that can't do it now.
I am talking 5+ little events like this a day. It does not have to be a huge ordeal. It could Simply be some random mob controlled by someone at the company running around killing players with a special unique loot or something. Stuff like this would make someones day and really add a whole new level to games like this .
This would not affect the deep pockets of these companies int he least bit, would be fairly easy to pull off, and be super fun 
. I do not see a downside to this..
Any opinions?
Comments
Because that is a nightmare to manage.
You hire low wage dudes and you can't expect they can perform well (i..e make fun events, and give good service). Complaints and taking customer service call will be a nightmare. One minimum wage dude use the N word online and you will have a PR nightmare.
I would much rather trust a computer system, than people.
Like you would even know about, participate or care about some game makers PR with a GM event.
You trust a computer over people to do something you don't like. because you could care less if a company has a pr disaster or if they go out of business.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
These types of things are "GM Events" for a reason. Minimum wage dudes would never be allowed near the special privileges machines needed to do everything involved with big events like this. Yet, alone be allowed to access the godlike powers accounts that they would be able to do them on (hosting such an event is not nearly as simple as you might think). Why?:
- Firstly, a 'dude', working 'minimum wage' does not have the education or, experience, to even come close to coping with anything that might go wrong during such an event (if he did he would not be a minimum wage worker -and moreover with student loan repayments couldn't afford to be).
- Secondly, the company owes it to itself and to its customers to not let laymen tinker with their toys. Usually there is strict company policy against such, and it is often illegal. They would have to be full time employees, who are on the insurance, and who are added to licenses for software use (just hiring someone can cost $10,000+ upfront). So, they have to know what they are doing, fully.
To outsource this kind of work is prohibitively expensive and likely difficult at best, to find a way to do legally and securely. It would also be a slap in the face to those who went to college and worked hard to get where they are. So, you get events when the employees that they already have can afford to give them to you time wise. Also, the infrequency of the events is part of what makes them special as well.
Maybe, something like this was doable back in the day when the tech used was comprehensible by a 12 year old standards. And, when these little start ups were not taken seriously in the entertainment industry. But, things are different now. And, at least the appearance of professionalism, is a must.
What kind of gm events are you talking about? What makes them so special?
Im not disagreeing, just curious. Player events aren't any good with only gameplay to use?
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Well first off I did not say that they had to even talk to anyone if it is that big of a deal (and I don't think it is).
I think you guys are just tearing the idea apart because you can. In no way is not having frequent man made special events in a game better then same old bs over and over. You guys almost had me convinced otherwise until I was like "Wait a god damn minute!' :P
When not quoting anyone in specific (and especially when a topic is still on the first page). It would be most correct to assume that reply pertains to the OP. And if this reply pertains to the OP. Then you could take a stab and guess that I am talking about the kind of PvE events sometimes ran by GM's where -in they often take control of things like mobs and field bosses vs. players at large...I am not understanding the confusion here.
If we can tear into it (and this effectively at that). Then maybe you are wrong about frequent man made events being better then the same old. One major point made by a few here, is that it is the infrequency that makes it special (I touched on that myself). But, more importantly...it is not feasible. Your 'now wait a minute' retake was just you remembering that you had a stance and that you don't want it to be defeated (even though it has been...thoroughly). Not a miraculous re-assertion of some deeper truth. It's simply not something that would work at all. Yet, alone well if it did, unless perhaps an entire game was designed around that premise.
I agree, it would simply be like having a player controlled mob. It would clearly be doable without any of the fall-out written about above.
I had ton's of fun back in old days with Asheron's call 2 almost every week some GM events happen undead invasions overun major city's was awesome back in those days.
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I was asking you what kind of Gm events would require a college education and training and high salaried employees?
I haven't seen any random GM events that are any better than what players can do with gameplay. I was just asking what kind of event you are talking about that needs an event engineer?
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Rohan Online does this type of thing, or did last time I played, but it was a while ago. The game is still online so if your interested go take a look.
What killed this type of thing for me was the gankers that would rush to the event just so they could kill all the lower level players!
Lots of games have had some very popular GM events (I can't count the number of GM events I've done in Everquest). A few games have had some sort of Guide program, where volunteers could act as some community-based support and would have the power to do some limited events above and beyond what players can do themselves.
Everquest even had a dedicated premium server for a while, where you paid a bit higher subscription, but one of the benefits was supposed to be many more GM-driven random events in the world.
Games with healthy communities often see community-run events -- granted they aren't "All of a sudden Dragon comes out of nowhere and eats the city" type events, but nothing says an event has to be something that couldn't be done with the tools at the disposal of regular players.
So .. I guess to answer your question - games have done it, a few have done it very well. But once you start doing it with that frequency your talking about it no longer becomes a special event, and people stop participating because it's routine. It would be like having lobster and champagne for dinner every night - it's great at first, but then it just becomes blah after a few days of it.
Once a week seemed to be about as often as most games I've seen do it, and it's usually in the form of low key, unannounced, random events (so maybe the frequency is a lot higher, and since they are small events I don't see them happening). Occasionally you'll have an anniversary or some big event (GW2 has had a couple) that's pre-announced, one-shot only type events and everyone tries to show up for - those are fairly memorable, but pretty rare, and if they weren't then they are just "the game" rather than "an event".
I think this type of thing could work with a couple of modifications. It would have to be a game built around these events, not exactly a traditional MMO and it would have to be based on volunteers not paid people. The company would give a certain group of trusted players the ability to run events at specific times in certain parts of the world that players could opt in to participate in.
Kind of like an updated version of the old Neverwinter Nights game (or maybe what the Neverwinter foundry should've been).
Obviously you couldn't have anything competitive like PvP in a game like this because it would be an absolute nightmare to balance even if you could limit it to players who you were pretty sure wouldn't blatantly abuse it but if you were willing to totally throw the idea of a balanced competitive game out the window and just have some fun similar to the way pen and paper games work it could be cool.
Agreed. There's also the concerns of ample time zone covers, accusations of favoritism, and interference with other gameplay in that area. Additionally, someone needs to oversee that team of "low wage guys" and log/report their activity, especially since you've made the decision to hand over Dev/GM spawn tools and slash-commands to low wage players.
" I mean they did it back in UO 98-99 all be it very rarely so you can't tell me that can't do it now."
As someone who was part of that team and has been part of content teams for other virtual worlds since then, I can tell you that the team was most definitely not small and it was certainly not a simple task. Even at 2-3 volunteers + 1 Content GM per server, the team was still much smaller than it needed to be. Time zones were barely covered and activities weren't anywhere near as frequent as we would have liked.
Yes, one could simply drop random spawns here and there (if you don't give a crap about what your players might be doing in that area at the time) but you don't need a content team to do that. There's much more involved than triggering a town crier and clicking 'maek cool spawns' buttons.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Do you want someone that is not trained to interact with your customer base interacting with your customer base? Community engagement is a serious part of community, marketing and development.
Do you want someone who has no understanding of how to create an immersive live event experience just randomly dropping spawns and firing off scripted text macros, or do you want a more engaging and professional experience for your players? To accomplish the latter you need either professionals at the task or a professional at the helm that is guiding them.
This is why many developers turn to Alchemic Dream, Mig Squared (now defunct), or Metaverse Mod Squad for these projects.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
What kind of training do you need just to ineract with people in a decent way? This is one of the things I dislike about games today. Everything is marketing and spin. The odd time I go and check out small muds run by players for players and actually despite their obvious shortcomings in technical areas I always find the community is one of the highlights of those games. Must less douchey than the typical MMO community and less robotic than dealing with customer service. I think I would actually seek out and play an MMO that got the actual players involved in running events.
People aren't paying to play in a MUD. A MUD is also often just a hundred or so players that more than likely already know each other.
Yes, if your audience is the size of a PTA meeting, you can have one of the PTA volunteers run the events.
However, when talking about a multinational (and multi-lingual) audience of hundreds of thousands of players across multiple time zones, a brand that has to be adhered to, storyline continuity that needs to be considered, and player money on the line then you need to have organization, procedures and dedicated professionals at least on the administrative level if not throughout the team.
Again, it looks easy until you do it.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
wow, thanks for explaining. I appreciate it.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
What if you made smaller events like just on one server at one particular time in one particular area. Could that work just with players running them?
If you want to tell all the players on your other servers and in other time zones that they pay the same but matter less, sure.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I meant to spread them out over different servers obviously not have them all on 1 server. "OK, server 1 got a cool event this week but we'll make something cool just for server 2 next week". It could also be a way of encouraging people to roll alts on different servers to experience the different GM events.
I meant to spread them out over different servers obviously not have them all on 1 server. "OK, server 1 got a cool event this week but we'll make something cool just for server 2 next week". It could also be a way of encouraging people to roll alts on different servers to experience the different GM events.
Can't really comment on any technical details of this, or even the customer facing experience of this, but it wouldn't scale very well. The scaling depends 100% on adding or removing people. As you add more employees, they get more expensive to keep, and the performance of people will gradually degrade as you add more people as well. Adding more people over time is the least efficient way possible to scale something up.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I have read the thread and I do not get some people talking about how it's impossible, huge cost, not able to be done in-house or from normal gm's....
I played UO, AC, EQ, and SWG.
It was not at all uncommon in UO to encounter GM's who were playing along with other players, hosting events (from simple parties) to tournaments, to other things. Not to mention the gameplay-based events that happened in UO (Undead attack on Trisnic for example).
Asheron's Call itself was built around having monthly updates/events, that they would push out in a patch and it could be something as simple as seasonal changes (IE snowing where it was once green and spring time) to major story events like a spire appearing over a city and new "shadow" beings attacking people in the wild.
SWG was much like UO and you could encounter GM's who would help organize events and play with the players.
For this to work, like the OP is asking. You would simply need to develop the tools for such things, giving them only the control you wanted to (IE can't summon super-powerful gods or destroy cities, but can summon monsters and create stories within that games lore with minor characters. There could be a limit ont eh amount of monsters and things they can summon or play as.
Also some of you make it sound like if someone did this who made minimum wage (which isn't likely in a game studio) that they'd just run amok and break things.
1. WE have a little thing called contracts/agreements.
2. Why would they do this?
3. As I said, the developers build the tools that only allow a finite control of what can/can't be done, they will not have the power to break the game even if they wanted.
I do not see how this would be unfeasible or impossible, especially since it was done over a decade + ago.
I'd be more inclined to log into my MMOs more often if I thought there might be some live event happening that I could get involved in. Without such a feature, the game worlds are just static; seasonal events notwithstanding. I know that all of the quests are there and waiting for me whenever I free up some time. GW2's live story thing just feels like a bunch of holiday festivals strung together.
I like what the OP is suggesting.
1) So? There is a law preventing people from pirating movies/songs too. Having a contract does not mean that people will adhere to it if it is too expensive to enforce. How many DMs do a game need, and how much management is needed to keep everyone in line.
2) Because they are bad at their jobs? Because they have a bad day? Because they can't get a better job? Because they got yelled at by the boss? People screw up on the job every day. Don't tell me it is news to you.
3) No .. but they can make customers unhappy. All they need is to swear or say something in appropriate.