I think you said a lot of reasonable things. Bigger problem is probably to have an extremely advanced and fast paced "living story". One thing is the dynamic event system (GW2 one is pretty advanced imho, still room for improvement ofc) which are great but lack depth on the lore / writing / pathos / narrative aspect (as it should be). Creating something that gives a similar feeling and freedom of choice as a Divinity: Original Sin AND affects great areas of the world at a deeper level is really hard. Easy example: a dragon is attacking an area, an evil NPC (that you spent time developing, with background/previous ecounters / voice acting / dialogues etc) is trying to kill the dragon to acquire a lot of power. The more RPG-like story part is choosing between killing the evil NPC (and figuring out another way to kill the dragon later) or helping the npc kill the dragon and acquire power (hoping you could befriend him later). In the open world, saving the dragon means more attacks from it, helping the npc means that he'll be the one attacking the area. How do you implement the choice? If you leave the "choice" in the open world (so everybody can either stop or help the npc) you end up getting a pvp match (people that want to help him vs people that want to kill him) with ton of problems. If you make it istanced (allowing everybody to make their own choice and experience a decent PvE boss battle alone or with a group of friends) how do you decide which choise is "canon" for the world? If you allow just a single player (or a small group) to make the choice and influence the rest of the world, you're putting a lot of effort (character design, encounter design, several hours of work) for a piece of content that will be enjoyed by the 0,1% of your player base. I think it would be much easier to keep thing separated: the open dynamic pve content will remain relatively "shallow" as choices, storytelling etc, chain of events like Gw2 that can have multiple outcomes. Then you can add pieces of content (istanced or not, repeatable or not) that are "deeper" and similar to a regular theme park dungeon, but they have nearly zero impact on the open world.
A rule in brainstorming is you have to accept an idea as being possible, so you don't limit your imagination. So you just throw a grand vision in play, and try to figure out the solutions later - It is often "impossible" suddenly gets solutions if the idea is good and people are motivated. And if it really turns out to be unsolvable, you can work around it.. Technically almost everything is possible, but the hard part is managing it all and keeping it aligned with the vision.
So anyways, you are suggesting using the GW2 dynamic event idea, and keeping the world static. GW2 dynamic events are a great start and really adds some life to the world, but as a player you soon realize that the dynamic part is rather short term. Helping those minotaurs gain control of the area through a series of events didn't really change anything because the entire event chain resets in 8 hours, so your actions didn't really count for anything. In a sandbox game, the players need to be able to change the world on a more permanent base - Or rather, because permanent changes in a game is impossible to make work, have the illusion that it is permanent.
Actually, the idea is just to expand the GW dynamic event idea to a larger scale and keeping scripted events but adding a human decision factor to the control of these events, to make it feel special to the player. Humans are extremely good at recognizing repetitive patterns, and just small variations can be enough to make it appear like a special one time event. So instead of having the minotaur script loop every 8 hours, you can have a GM decide not to have it at all for a week, and meanwhile have some completely different event happen. How and if an event happens may depend on how other world events (on small or large scale) turns out - Which is in the end mostly effected by player actions. All these events in the world then plays together, and feels natural (not scripted) to the player because they are truly dynamic and controlled by humans (GMs), even though some of it is more an illusion while player trends may become permanent (GM/GOD decided).. Because we can only allow the players some degree of freedom or they will ruin the world for themselves.
This mean you have to think of an event as a piece of LEGO that GM/GODS can move around, change color to, change connecting pins to form a living breathing world that is in tune with the game vision. And event should also, as much as possible, be controlled by AI decisions, so that (in theory anyways) a minotaur event could be plugged into any(many) part of the world, so it doesn't always happen the same place (avoid repetition patterns). So the developer does not write static stories with you as the hero (which many mmo players are really fed up with), but instead write an event story full of optional and tweakable parts - Which is a block that can be added with other blocks to shape a larger world story. Creating a truly living breathing world, a pve sandbox.
Because it is impossible to write logic that continuously keep these events in a "healthy" state, the solution as I see it, is to add the human touch to the game. Some will argue that having GMs micromanage a mmo is a terrible idea and adds a huge financial post, but you must realize that by building the mmo like that, you are highly focused on building efficient tools which should minimize micromanagement - GMs will learn to be efficient and manage from a broader more long term perspective. Also, since the developer is in a continuous delivery state (as opposed to develop->release->move on), there are efficiency factors in play by having employees on long term, not to mention small team advantages.
So back to your example with the dragon. A Dragon (event) settles in the region. To sum up from earlier, this can be caused by many things, from static script logic, part of a chain, initiated by a GM, and of course tweaked by a GM during. With the dragon comes a dragon cult that gets in conflict with the local townsfolk. Players can now in numerous ways, from direct pvp with opposing players to delivering trade goods, supplies or other micro-tasks tied to the event, help either "faction". Some players will want to engage in pvp, some are tradeskillers, some are adventurers, and all can play in their way - This is the essence of a pve sandbox ..Maybe if we dream big, several of these play styles need to co-op in various ways. It is players choices that decide in which direction things shall go. Don't think of it like a GW2 dynamic event, this is much longer chain (days, weeks depending on player participation and GM interference), and also with more options in ways to influence the outcome. All of this is probably tied to larger things, for example certain player skills require good standing with a dragon (lets say a special dragon spell/blessing is needed), so that might attract players to the event who want to help the dragon reach some point in power, while others may be aligned with a religious entitity that protect townfolks (you know them damn good doers, paladins and heroes pfeeuu). The event may end or continue, by whatever is defined by the parameters .. dragons flies off with a tonne of gold collected by the dragon cultists, town in ruins and area scorched and pillaged, or townsfolk wins and the cultists killed and the dragon is chased away.
All this of course require the developer to jump into the deep water and free themselves of fears of letting players free and loosing control. Also the silly idea that all content has to be consumed by every player otherwise it is unprofitable - If you let number crunching like that decide your game design, then your games will be shit (evidence is all over).
@kjempff Thanks for your contribution! I agree with your vision for the evolution for the dynamic event system, mixing PvE and PvP etc. What I said that's hard to implement is delivering a traditional RPG "main quest" experience to players (centered on a single or small group of players, dialogues, choices, boss fight ecc) and having it affect the open world. Your dragon example is very good, leads up to a PvPvE that sounds very interesting! What you can't deliver (imho) is a direct encounter where you can choose by yourself to either kill or save the dragon, and have your choice impact on the whole world. It's not necessarily something you'd need in your game, but this is what I was taking about
@kjempff Thanks for your contribution! I agree with your vision for the evolution for the dynamic event system, mixing PvE and PvP etc. What I said that's hard to implement is delivering a traditional RPG "main quest" experience to players (centered on a single or small group of players, dialogues, choices, boss fight ecc) and having it affect the open world. Your dragon example is very good, leads up to a PvPvE that sounds very interesting! What you can't deliver (imho) is a direct encounter where you can choose by yourself to either kill or save the dragon, and have your choice impact on the whole world. It's not necessarily something you'd need in your game, but this is what I was taking about
As much asa i would like to see GMs take part inlive games again like they did in UO and AC days , the predictable problem will be corrupted GMs by big guilds , its happened many times before and i would think be even harder pressed to abuse the GM system this way now than ever before as Guilds /Streamers etc so high;y competitve and actually have the cash/resources to throw around
Moving forward in the discussion, I've noticed that 4 possible "approaches".
1) True sandbox, no divisions, total player freedom, heavily PvP based(like Chronicles of Elyria, on paper) 2) Still heavily PvP based, but with distinct separation between different "game modes", risk level, hardcoreness. Plus, non persistent scenario to avoid stagnation (I'm thinking about Crowfall) 3) The idea I described several posts ago, summaryzed: the large scale "stuff" is mostly PvE, world divided into areas to suit different playstyles and risk appetite, small scale and relatively restricted open PvP. 4) Something with kjempff idea as its core, PvPvE. In areas where you have that, you'd probably like to restrict sandbox aspects, if you want to give more freedom you have to separate areas.
1 is the one most people dislike (or will end up disliking) 2 and 3 are probably the easiest one to implement, you could say they could cohexist in the same title. 4) Is probably the real "next gen" deal, but the hardest to realize (I can't develop this in my mind as deep as I can with the other approach)
I am not sure regional PvP was discussed as in DAOC, you can work that in with some of the other ideas, so the regional areas that can be fought over could be the sandbox ones.
You mentioned next gen, for me that will be AI run MMOs, so got a bit of a wait yet.
I am not sure regional PvP was discussed as in DAOC, you can work that in with some of the other ideas, so the regional areas that can be fought over could be the sandbox ones.
You mentioned next gen, for me that will be AI run MMOs, so got a bit of a wait yet.
AI run MMO's?? I had never heard of that concept but it sounds intriguing. Any links to any info on this? Is it just theory or is it being worked on now?
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
I'd like to see a sandbox MMO without PvP, but with Seven Days to Die style NPC invasions that force players to work together and build fortifications lest they be raided. Add in some dynamic events (dragon nests on top of the nearby mountain, necromancer moves into the graveyard, werewolf killing trail found around town, etc) and good NPC AI for hunting to pass the time between invasions (along with crafting, farming, and otherwise preparing).
Then again, PvP might not cause the same issues it normally does if everyone has to constantly be preparing for a common enemy... Seems like an interesting thing to check for in the alpha/beta of such a game.
As much asa i would like to see GMs take part inlive games again like they did in UO and AC days , the predictable problem will be corrupted GMs by big guilds , its happened many times before and i would think be even harder pressed to abuse the GM system this way now than ever before as Guilds /Streamers etc so high;y competitve and actually have the cash/resources to throw around
The idea of pve sandbox with GMs in control has 99 problems, but I really don't consider GM integrity one These GMs are developer employees and part of a team that need to work closely with everyone in the dev company, so I doubt something like that is likely to happen.
1) True sandbox, no divisions, total player freedom, heavily PvP based(like Chronicles of Elyria, on paper)
Afaik, CoE is not heavily pvp based, depending on your definition of it. Meaning the standard direct form of pvp where players fight it out in combat is a limited part of it. At least that is what they said in dev video blogs.
As much asa i would like to see GMs take part inlive games again like they did in UO and AC days , the predictable problem will be corrupted GMs by big guilds , its happened many times before and i would think be even harder pressed to abuse the GM system this way now than ever before as Guilds /Streamers etc so high;y competitve and actually have the cash/resources to throw around
The idea of pve sandbox with GMs in control has 99 problems, but I really don't consider GM integrity one These GMs are developer employees and part of a team that need to work closely with everyone in the dev company, so I doubt something like that is likely to happen.
1) True sandbox, no divisions, total player freedom, heavily PvP based(like Chronicles of Elyria, on paper)
Afaik, CoE is not heavily pvp based, depending on your definition of it. Meaning the standard direct form of pvp where players fight it out in combat is a limited part of it. At least that is what they said in dev video blogs.
Those GMs that are developers employess have been compromised many times ..
So , you can doubt it all you want but it happened in many games already ..
People in very high positions of Corporations, in Politics , and in the Military get compromised everyday , but you really think a Game GM cant be ..???
I've never read about corruption and stuff like that, it's definitely possible but I don't see it like a plausible problem. Besides, since we're talking about AI, an advanced AI with a more advanced "dynamic event" stystem could probably eliminate the need of a GM, if that's what you're worried about.
About CoE, I don't follow the game closely but: if everything is about big kingdoms run by players, no "safer areas", FFA PvP full destruction... I think that large scale PvP and territory conquering is the main focus. I percieve it as the main focus at least, despite what devs might've said in a couple of interviews. This is not bad by default, but it's not something most people will be ok playing with.
@kjempff would you mind to "expand" (don't go too deep, no need to turn this into "your dream MMO") your vision for a PvPvE based MMO sandpark?
@kjempff would you mind to "expand" (don't go too deep, no need to turn this into "your dream MMO") your vision for a PvPvE based MMO sandpark?
Not sure what I should expand on, I already put a wall of text describing it But some key notes would be..
It is not a pvp sandbox, direct pvp combat is there but not as a driving factor. Majority of conflict is handled through pve, and this conflict is initiated by things/events happening in the world. Meaning, what happens in the world is the source of conflicts and not directly what conflicts players have with other players. This was also the basic idea of EqNext, maybe also Ashes of Creation (time will tell), so not really my idea.
It is a living breathing virtual world in constant change. This includes everything from physical things like forests, deserts, castles, towns that may appear and disappear, to kingdoms at war, supply/demand of goods and economy. These things are controlled on 3 levels: 1. by algorithms and AI on everything possible in the game, 2. by GMs tweaking day to day balance of events to make the world truly dynamic, 3. by GODS aka game designers, developers and story writers who work on evolving the background story of the world and changes the rules of the game as needed. This is where I want to go further than the EqNext idea, to solve the problem that it is impossible to create smart enough algorithms to keep a truly grand virtual world "healthy", and to add the human touch that will make the virtual world dynamic on a completely new level.
Getting rid of story driven in pve mmorpg. A difficult concept to explain to players who have only played WoW and later mmorpgs. We want the players to be creators of their personal story by their actions in the world and by whoever they interact with in the world, so essentially every player has their own perception of what they experienced in the game. The opposite is the story driven approach where players are put in as actors in premade stories.. and here is the tricky part, it is not that the virtual world (pve sandbox) does not have stories that players take part in, it is that it is the player who drives their story, not the game driving the player through a story. By giving the player this freedom, each will pick and choose and form their own individual stories based on perception, playstyle, mood, and situation. This makes all the difference (aside from all the details, this is where Everquest differs fundamentally from all modern post WoW mmorpgs, but Everquest was only a small start and hardly a pve sandbox, it is the part where the player is given freedom to pick their stories that is the essence to expand on).
Ok, the first paragraph is what I was looking forward to hear. Do you have an idea of the possible "rules of engagement"? I agree with your vision of not mixing the "event driven PvP" with skirmishes between random guilds over stuff. Then, to achieve this goal, you could do a lot of various things on different level. If you want ZERO chaotic open pvp, you could simply set everybody friendly as default and allowing players to get a certain "flag" (not a waving flag, a status of "allied with dragon cult" or "allied with villagers") when they enter in an area with an event, then they can attack people and NPC of the opposite "faction". It's definitely doable, somebody would've to think it deeply cause it's very delicate and need a lot of testing. Giving zero or total freedom on a certain subject is rather easy, the problem is when you want to give players "just enough". For example, I totally agree that massive chaotic PvP should be taken out of the equation, BUT i would like to have a certain degree of small skirmishes and "spontaneous" player killing: not everywhere, not without risk for the offender. But the idea you could virtually go around everywhere in the world without flagging for any event (therefore, being invulnerable) take away a moderate chunk of the game experience
I am not sure regional PvP was discussed as in DAOC, you can work that in with some of the other ideas, so the regional areas that can be fought over could be the sandbox ones.
You mentioned next gen, for me that will be AI run MMOs, so got a bit of a wait yet.
AI run MMO's?? I had never heard of that concept but it sounds intriguing. Any links to any info on this? Is it just theory or is it being worked on now?
Pure wishful thinking, but when you think about it, an enclosed online world would be a good place to test to see how an AI runs all sorts of situations. A MMO would be ideal.
Going to put my futurology hat on and say we will have to wait 30 years for that...sorry.
Ok, the first paragraph is what I was looking forward to hear. Do you have an idea of the possible "rules of engagement"? I agree with your vision of not mixing the "event driven PvP" with skirmishes between random guilds over stuff. Then, to achieve this goal, you could do a lot of various things on different level. If you want ZERO chaotic open pvp, you could simply set everybody friendly as default and allowing players to get a certain "flag" (not a waving flag, a status of "allied with dragon cult" or "allied with villagers") when they enter in an area with an event, then they can attack people and NPC of the opposite "faction". It's definitely doable, somebody would've to think it deeply cause it's very delicate and need a lot of testing. Giving zero or total freedom on a certain subject is rather easy, the problem is when you want to give players "just enough". For example, I totally agree that massive chaotic PvP should be taken out of the equation, BUT i would like to have a certain degree of small skirmishes and "spontaneous" player killing: not everywhere, not without risk for the offender. But the idea you could virtually go around everywhere in the world without flagging for any event (therefore, being invulnerable) take away a moderate chunk of the game experience
I don't have an elegant solution on hand for that problem. The hardcore pvp crowd or griefers are steeply against any limitations in pvp, but you could argue they might not be the target audience. The optmal solution would of course, as you said, allowing for spontanious pvp anywhere because if give some freedom to the game, but the game is not supposed to be a gankbox or competetive battleground (there are plenty other games and mmos for that). The problem is that this freedom has a reversed effect, so while some players experience freedom a even larger number experience being limited. So the question, if this is the case where you have to sacrifice limitless pvp and its freedom, for the greater good.
Anyways, the idea in my head has always evolved around what you describe as being flagged by the event in some way. So some parts of the event includes pvp like a localized battleground in open world, while other parts of the event is safe to attend. This is where it could be awesome to have some kind of co-op interaction build into the event, so that many kind of player types need and respects eachother. As an example, the dragon cult: Crafters/Traders can supply the town or dragon cult with goods (high demand, profitable, reputation, etc). Adventurers may seek out smaller groups of cultist supporters (npc) and convince them (kill or other) to stop, thereby weakening the cultists (and vise versa if you are supporting the dragon cult). Other task will include pvp or a mix, it could be protecting a caravan of player crafted goods (pvp flag), securing strategic positions on either side such as towers or campsites (pvp flag). Possibly player actions of the pvp parts, triggers a demand for crafted goods, and an increase in npc supporters for adventurers to kill.. which again may trigger new parts. So to progress the dragon event, you need players of verious playstyles or willing to take on different roles... Unity, co-op, community -> social, not forced but simply because the game encourages it.
So, well if there is a good solution that allows more freedom in pvp, without turning players into prey for other players, then I am all for it.. I just don't have one.
I do believe that you should allow every player to choose different risk levels according to their mood and wishes at a given time, and ofc everybody should have a reason to gravitate toward riskier situation. I also don't think that the moderate chances of being ganked once in a while (if you carefully design the system) would be that awful: if you think about it, in every regular game that involves fighting (single player RPG, FPS, theme park) you're most of the time "at risk" of being killed by mobs. What most people would like to avoid is a Survival situation where you spend hours building your house and can see it destroyed by 12 people. One of the things I liked the most in several rpg was that sense of mild "stress" when you're walking through a dangerous area to reach a certain destination, and you're so relieved when you menage to get there safely. Ofc you could demand this job to npcs only (I believe that not every mob should be under the dynamic event system, if you want to hunt deers you simply do that without needing to flag as a "hunter" and fight against "animal lovers") but I don't know if that would be the same, and people wanting to play "outlaws" still couldn't do it. The merchant example is another good one : what if a real player wants to deliver stuff to the village? It's hard to think about avoiding all the "exploits" he could use to stay un flagged and deliver the stuff unharmed. An idea to fix this: limit the amount of stuff people can carry, let it be necessary to use mules, carriages etc. When somebody decides to create a caravan, he also creates an "event" where people can flag as escort or bandit. This would mean adding another level to your idea: not only the game system and gm can generate events, but also regular players
The more freedom we give players the more can go wrong, the history of gaming shows this. You start out with games like chess were the players follow an extremely defined set of rules. You move on to the table top war game and the rules are huge and open to abuse. You replace the rule book with a PC in an even more complex setting and problems are even worse.
This reflects a rule about systems of any sort, the more complex the are the more prone to error they are. In sandboxes you can try to "streamline" systems but that will just give players less to do, its a real tricky one.
The more freedom we give players the more can go wrong, the history of gaming shows this. You start out with games like chess were the players follow an extremely defined set of rules. You move on to the table top war game and the rules are huge and open to abuse. You replace the rule book with a PC in an even more complex setting and problems are even worse.
This reflects a rule about systems of any sort, the more complex the are the more prone to error they are. In sandboxes you can try to "streamline" systems but that will just give players less to do, its a real tricky one.
It is true, but the industry moved past chess despite the challenges and complexity!
As a civilization, we'll come to a crossroads where AI will get to a point we may not want it to achieve. To design the actions of NPC's so well and open-ended for a level of freedom of choice never experienced in a sandbox only to find out that the NPC has hopes and dreams of its own.
It no longer wants to go about its programmed 'daily' tasks waiting for the verbal queues from a player in order to signal the start of a quest. It doesn't want to tend to its yard, then walk through town, then head home and hang out inside its house every day ad nauseam/ad infinitum.
It wants to explore the world like us, join the circus, go off to school, etc... Next we'll show up to speak to the NPC for a quest and find that it's left a cheap cardboard cut out sign with a matching exclamation point above it...
And if we stop right before the cusp of that happening, we'll have to live with the fact that these things we've created are being help back from that cusp of greatness by us for the sake of entertainment. Who would be the real monsters in that game??
I'd like to move forward the discussion on the last topic I had in mind: full loot, reward, itemization, death penalty
Lots of people seems to be against full loot, but I believe the issue is similar of being afraid of PvP in general: many games had done it wrong. If you make an heavily item based game, with swords that are 4 times stronger than others, and you make them hard to acquire, you can expect people being pissed off when they loose it, even if they think full loot is cool (most people think they'll always be the one looting others, not the other way around). If you balance this aspect, then people might be more prone to accept this solution. You still need to have progression, rewards, a reason to risk your life in order to get somewhere, but those reward should work in a different way. What a your opinion on the subject?
As far as AI goes I'm always confused at the science fiction shows. Why would you want to design a machine, robot android or whatever with enough knowledge / awareness that it realizes it's a slave.
That always struck me as incredibly stupid.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
I'd like to move forward the discussion on the last topic I had in mind: full loot, reward, itemization, death penalty
Lots of people seems to be against full loot, but I believe the issue is similar of being afraid of PvP in general: many games had done it wrong. If you make an heavily item based game, with swords that are 4 times stronger than others, and you make them hard to acquire, you can expect people being pissed off when they loose it, even if they think full loot is cool (most people think they'll always be the one looting others, not the other way around). If you balance this aspect, then people might be more prone to accept this solution. You still need to have progression, rewards, a reason to risk your life in order to get somewhere, but those reward should work in a different way. What a your opinion on the subject?
Full Loot: Not for it, but your idea sounds at least feasible to me. If I spend days camping an item, I'm not playing a game where someone can kill me for it in seconds.
Reward: This should be comparable to risk. There should be places that "not everyone" will get to.
Itemization: I'm not sure what you mean here. Cash shops? Weapons/armor? "Things" in the world? "Things" for you character?
Death Penalty: I wish more MMOs had one. One has to be careful, though. Too harsh and players won't want to "risk" it. Yet when the "death penalty" can be used as a form of fast travel, something is wrong. EQ1 had a system I could live with, though it was not perfect. It took an inordinate amount of time to gain back lost XP after dieing. I actually liked the corpse runs, and that made some classes valuable to others by finding corpses, while sometimes encouraging social interactions in the game.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Full Loot: Not for it, but your idea sounds at least feasible to me. If I spend days camping an item, I'm not playing a game where someone can kill me for it in seconds.
Reward: This should be comparable to risk. There should be places that "not everyone" will get to.
Itemization: I'm not sure what you mean here. Cash shops? Weapons/armor? "Things" in the world? "Things" for you character?
By itemization i mean "how much the equipment would impact the game, how to acquire or lose it" and stuff like that.
One principle must be set: It's too hardcore (and we don't want that) to make people working too hard toward certain "elements" (cause they're important and give big advantages) that can be easily strippen away. This must be true for both items and buildings: only a small percentage of players would be able to avoid ragequitting after putting incredible amount of efforts on designing and building their home (or guild hall, or shop, something that matters and you could not realistically make overnight) and seing all destroyed by random guys, maybe while you're offline. You don't necessarely need full loot, especially if you use the "approach number 4" from the previous pages (almost everything is tied to meaningful PvPvE dynamic event advanced systems, you don't really do many skirmishes just to loot somebody's sword) but if you want to use a more sandbox approach (on the line of #2 and #3) i think full loot shouldn't be dismissed right away. If you think about a 1vs1 "random" fight and you just come up with a penalty for the looser and almost nothing for the winner, you would face an unwanted lack of initiative in that compartment: you need to put something on the table for the winner of a fight. If items were all relatively cheap and close in performance, you might come up with a question like "how do you push crafters to better themselves, if there's not much difference in performance between a regular sword and a good one?" I have an idea for that: a good sword maker doesn't try to improve himself to make harder/better/faster/stronger swords,he seek to improve the production method (wasting less materials, riducing the chances of failures) becoming able to win the market by having lower prices.
Comments
So anyways, you are suggesting using the GW2 dynamic event idea, and keeping the world static. GW2 dynamic events are a great start and really adds some life to the world, but as a player you soon realize that the dynamic part is rather short term. Helping those minotaurs gain control of the area through a series of events didn't really change anything because the entire event chain resets in 8 hours, so your actions didn't really count for anything. In a sandbox game, the players need to be able to change the world on a more permanent base - Or rather, because permanent changes in a game is impossible to make work, have the illusion that it is permanent.
Actually, the idea is just to expand the GW dynamic event idea to a larger scale and keeping scripted events but adding a human decision factor to the control of these events, to make it feel special to the player. Humans are extremely good at recognizing repetitive patterns, and just small variations can be enough to make it appear like a special one time event.
So instead of having the minotaur script loop every 8 hours, you can have a GM decide not to have it at all for a week, and meanwhile have some completely different event happen. How and if an event happens may depend on how other world events (on small or large scale) turns out - Which is in the end mostly effected by player actions. All these events in the world then plays together, and feels natural (not scripted) to the player because they are truly dynamic and controlled by humans (GMs), even though some of it is more an illusion while player trends may become permanent (GM/GOD decided).. Because we can only allow the players some degree of freedom or they will ruin the world for themselves.
This mean you have to think of an event as a piece of LEGO that GM/GODS can move around, change color to, change connecting pins to form a living breathing world that is in tune with the game vision. And event should also, as much as possible, be controlled by AI decisions, so that (in theory anyways) a minotaur event could be plugged into any(many) part of the world, so it doesn't always happen the same place (avoid repetition patterns). So the developer does not write static stories with you as the hero (which many mmo players are really fed up with), but instead write an event story full of optional and tweakable parts - Which is a block that can be added with other blocks to shape a larger world story. Creating a truly living breathing world, a pve sandbox.
Because it is impossible to write logic that continuously keep these events in a "healthy" state, the solution as I see it, is to add the human touch to the game. Some will argue that having GMs micromanage a mmo is a terrible idea and adds a huge financial post, but you must realize that by building the mmo like that, you are highly focused on building efficient tools which should minimize micromanagement - GMs will learn to be efficient and manage from a broader more long term perspective. Also, since the developer is in a continuous delivery state (as opposed to develop->release->move on), there are efficiency factors in play by having employees on long term, not to mention small team advantages.
So back to your example with the dragon.
A Dragon (event) settles in the region. To sum up from earlier, this can be caused by many things, from static script logic, part of a chain, initiated by a GM, and of course tweaked by a GM during.
With the dragon comes a dragon cult that gets in conflict with the local townsfolk. Players can now in numerous ways, from direct pvp with opposing players to delivering trade goods, supplies or other micro-tasks tied to the event, help either "faction". Some players will want to engage in pvp, some are tradeskillers, some are adventurers, and all can play in their way - This is the essence of a pve sandbox ..Maybe if we dream big, several of these play styles need to co-op in various ways.
It is players choices that decide in which direction things shall go. Don't think of it like a GW2 dynamic event, this is much longer chain (days, weeks depending on player participation and GM interference), and also with more options in ways to influence the outcome.
All of this is probably tied to larger things, for example certain player skills require good standing with a dragon (lets say a special dragon spell/blessing is needed), so that might attract players to the event who want to help the dragon reach some point in power, while others may be aligned with a religious entitity that protect townfolks (you know them damn good doers, paladins and heroes pfeeuu). The event may end or continue, by whatever is defined by the parameters .. dragons flies off with a tonne of gold collected by the dragon cultists, town in ruins and area scorched and pillaged, or townsfolk wins and the cultists killed and the dragon is chased away.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
I agree with your vision for the evolution for the dynamic event system, mixing PvE and PvP etc.
What I said that's hard to implement is delivering a traditional RPG "main quest" experience to players (centered on a single or small group of players, dialogues, choices, boss fight ecc) and having it affect the open world. Your dragon example is very good, leads up to a PvPvE that sounds very interesting! What you can't deliver (imho) is a direct encounter where you can choose by yourself to either kill or save the dragon, and have your choice impact on the whole world. It's not necessarily something you'd need in your game, but this is what I was taking about
1) True sandbox, no divisions, total player freedom, heavily PvP based(like Chronicles of Elyria, on paper)
2) Still heavily PvP based, but with distinct separation between different "game modes", risk level, hardcoreness. Plus, non persistent scenario to avoid stagnation (I'm thinking about Crowfall)
3) The idea I described several posts ago, summaryzed: the large scale "stuff" is mostly PvE, world divided into areas to suit different playstyles and risk appetite, small scale and relatively restricted open PvP.
4) Something with kjempff idea as its core, PvPvE. In areas where you have that, you'd probably like to restrict sandbox aspects, if you want to give more freedom you have to separate areas.
1 is the one most people dislike (or will end up disliking)
2 and 3 are probably the easiest one to implement, you could say they could cohexist in the same title.
4) Is probably the real "next gen" deal, but the hardest to realize (I can't develop this in my mind as deep as I can with the other approach)
You mentioned next gen, for me that will be AI run MMOs, so got a bit of a wait yet.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
Then again, PvP might not cause the same issues it normally does if everyone has to constantly be preparing for a common enemy... Seems like an interesting thing to check for in the alpha/beta of such a game.
Afaik, CoE is not heavily pvp based, depending on your definition of it. Meaning the standard direct form of pvp where players fight it out in combat is a limited part of it. At least that is what they said in dev video blogs.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
About CoE, I don't follow the game closely but: if everything is about big kingdoms run by players, no "safer areas", FFA PvP full destruction... I think that large scale PvP and territory conquering is the main focus. I percieve it as the main focus at least, despite what devs might've said in a couple of interviews. This is not bad by default, but it's not something most people will be ok playing with.
@kjempff would you mind to "expand" (don't go too deep, no need to turn this into "your dream MMO") your vision for a PvPvE based MMO sandpark?
But some key notes would be..
It is not a pvp sandbox, direct pvp combat is there but not as a driving factor. Majority of conflict is handled through pve, and this conflict is initiated by things/events happening in the world. Meaning, what happens in the world is the source of conflicts and not directly what conflicts players have with other players. This was also the basic idea of EqNext, maybe also Ashes of Creation (time will tell), so not really my idea.
It is a living breathing virtual world in constant change. This includes everything from physical things like forests, deserts, castles, towns that may appear and disappear, to kingdoms at war, supply/demand of goods and economy.
These things are controlled on 3 levels: 1. by algorithms and AI on everything possible in the game, 2. by GMs tweaking day to day balance of events to make the world truly dynamic, 3. by GODS aka game designers, developers and story writers who work on evolving the background story of the world and changes the rules of the game as needed. This is where I want to go further than the EqNext idea, to solve the problem that it is impossible to create smart enough algorithms to keep a truly grand virtual world "healthy", and to add the human touch that will make the virtual world dynamic on a completely new level.
Getting rid of story driven in pve mmorpg. A difficult concept to explain to players who have only played WoW and later mmorpgs. We want the players to be creators of their personal story by their actions in the world and by whoever they interact with in the world, so essentially every player has their own perception of what they experienced in the game. The opposite is the story driven approach where players are put in as actors in premade stories.. and here is the tricky part, it is not that the virtual world (pve sandbox) does not have stories that players take part in, it is that it is the player who drives their story, not the game driving the player through a story. By giving the player this freedom, each will pick and choose and form their own individual stories based on perception, playstyle, mood, and situation.
This makes all the difference (aside from all the details, this is where Everquest differs fundamentally from all modern post WoW mmorpgs, but Everquest was only a small start and hardly a pve sandbox, it is the part where the player is given freedom to pick their stories that is the essence to expand on).
That would be the basics, summed up.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
If you want ZERO chaotic open pvp, you could simply set everybody friendly as default and allowing players to get a certain "flag" (not a waving flag, a status of "allied with dragon cult" or "allied with villagers") when they enter in an area with an event, then they can attack people and NPC of the opposite "faction". It's definitely doable, somebody would've to think it deeply cause it's very delicate and need a lot of testing.
Giving zero or total freedom on a certain subject is rather easy, the problem is when you want to give players "just enough". For example, I totally agree that massive chaotic PvP should be taken out of the equation, BUT i would like to have a certain degree of small skirmishes and "spontaneous" player killing: not everywhere, not without risk for the offender.
But the idea you could virtually go around everywhere in the world without flagging for any event (therefore, being invulnerable) take away a moderate chunk of the game experience
Going to put my futurology hat on and say we will have to wait 30 years for that...sorry.
The optmal solution would of course, as you said, allowing for spontanious pvp anywhere because if give some freedom to the game, but the game is not supposed to be a gankbox or competetive battleground (there are plenty other games and mmos for that). The problem is that this freedom has a reversed effect, so while some players experience freedom a even larger number experience being limited.
So the question, if this is the case where you have to sacrifice limitless pvp and its freedom, for the greater good.
Anyways, the idea in my head has always evolved around what you describe as being flagged by the event in some way. So some parts of the event includes pvp like a localized battleground in open world, while other parts of the event is safe to attend. This is where it could be awesome to have some kind of co-op interaction build into the event, so that many kind of player types need and respects eachother.
As an example, the dragon cult:
Crafters/Traders can supply the town or dragon cult with goods (high demand, profitable, reputation, etc).
Adventurers may seek out smaller groups of cultist supporters (npc) and convince them (kill or other) to stop, thereby weakening the cultists (and vise versa if you are supporting the dragon cult).
Other task will include pvp or a mix, it could be protecting a caravan of player crafted goods (pvp flag), securing strategic positions on either side such as towers or campsites (pvp flag).
Possibly player actions of the pvp parts, triggers a demand for crafted goods, and an increase in npc supporters for adventurers to kill.. which again may trigger new parts. So to progress the dragon event, you need players of verious playstyles or willing to take on different roles... Unity, co-op, community -> social, not forced but simply because the game encourages it.
So, well if there is a good solution that allows more freedom in pvp, without turning players into prey for other players, then I am all for it.. I just don't have one.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
I do believe that you should allow every player to choose different risk levels according to their mood and wishes at a given time, and ofc everybody should have a reason to gravitate toward riskier situation.
I also don't think that the moderate chances of being ganked once in a while (if you carefully design the system) would be that awful: if you think about it, in every regular game that involves fighting (single player RPG, FPS, theme park) you're most of the time "at risk" of being killed by mobs. What most people would like to avoid is a Survival situation where you spend hours building your house and can see it destroyed by 12 people.
One of the things I liked the most in several rpg was that sense of mild "stress" when you're walking through a dangerous area to reach a certain destination, and you're so relieved when you menage to get there safely.
Ofc you could demand this job to npcs only (I believe that not every mob should be under the dynamic event system, if you want to hunt deers you simply do that without needing to flag as a "hunter" and fight against "animal lovers") but I don't know if that would be the same, and people wanting to play "outlaws" still couldn't do it.
The merchant example is another good one : what if a real player wants to deliver stuff to the village? It's hard to think about avoiding all the "exploits" he could use to stay un flagged and deliver the stuff unharmed.
An idea to fix this: limit the amount of stuff people can carry, let it be necessary to use mules, carriages etc. When somebody decides to create a caravan, he also creates an "event" where people can flag as escort or bandit. This would mean adding another level to your idea: not only the game system and gm can generate events, but also regular players
This reflects a rule about systems of any sort, the more complex the are the more prone to error they are. In sandboxes you can try to "streamline" systems but that will just give players less to do, its a real tricky one.
It no longer wants to go about its programmed 'daily' tasks waiting for the verbal queues from a player in order to signal the start of a quest. It doesn't want to tend to its yard, then walk through town, then head home and hang out inside its house every day ad nauseam/ad infinitum.
It wants to explore the world like us, join the circus, go off to school, etc... Next we'll show up to speak to the NPC for a quest and find that it's left a cheap cardboard cut out sign with a matching exclamation point above it...
And if we stop right before the cusp of that happening, we'll have to live with the fact that these things we've created are being help back from that cusp of greatness by us for the sake of entertainment. Who would be the real monsters in that game??
Gut Out!
What, me worry?
I'd like to move forward the discussion on the last topic I had in mind:
full loot, reward, itemization, death penalty
Lots of people seems to be against full loot, but I believe the issue is similar of being afraid of PvP in general: many games had done it wrong. If you make an heavily item based game, with swords that are 4 times stronger than others, and you make them hard to acquire, you can expect people being pissed off when they loose it, even if they think full loot is cool (most people think they'll always be the one looting others, not the other way around).
If you balance this aspect, then people might be more prone to accept this solution.
You still need to have progression, rewards, a reason to risk your life in order to get somewhere, but those reward should work in a different way.
What a your opinion on the subject?
That always struck me as incredibly stupid.
Reward: This should be comparable to risk. There should be places that "not everyone" will get to.
Itemization: I'm not sure what you mean here. Cash shops? Weapons/armor? "Things" in the world? "Things" for you character?
Death Penalty: I wish more MMOs had one. One has to be careful, though. Too harsh and players won't want to "risk" it. Yet when the "death penalty" can be used as a form of fast travel, something is wrong. EQ1 had a system I could live with, though it was not perfect. It took an inordinate amount of time to gain back lost XP after dieing. I actually liked the corpse runs, and that made some classes valuable to others by finding corpses, while sometimes encouraging social interactions in the game.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
One principle must be set: It's too hardcore (and we don't want that) to make people working too hard toward certain "elements" (cause they're important and give big advantages) that can be easily strippen away. This must be true for both items and buildings: only a small percentage of players would be able to avoid ragequitting after putting incredible amount of efforts on designing and building their home (or guild hall, or shop, something that matters and you could not realistically make overnight) and seing all destroyed by random guys, maybe while you're offline.
You don't necessarely need full loot, especially if you use the "approach number 4" from the previous pages (almost everything is tied to meaningful PvPvE dynamic event advanced systems, you don't really do many skirmishes just to loot somebody's sword) but if you want to use a more sandbox approach (on the line of #2 and #3) i think full loot shouldn't be dismissed right away.
If you think about a 1vs1 "random" fight and you just come up with a penalty for the looser and almost nothing for the winner, you would face an unwanted lack of initiative in that compartment: you need to put something on the table for the winner of a fight.
If items were all relatively cheap and close in performance, you might come up with a question like "how do you push crafters to better themselves, if there's not much difference in performance between a regular sword and a good one?"
I have an idea for that: a good sword maker doesn't try to improve himself to make harder/better/faster/stronger swords,he seek to improve the production method (wasting less materials, riducing the chances of failures) becoming able to win the market by having lower prices.