[MUD-Dev] Continuity of experience in movies

[Valerio Santinelli]

From: "eric" <ericleaf at pacbell.net>
> From: "Valerio Santinelli" <tanis at mediacom.it>
>> From: "eric" <ericleaf at pacbell.net>

>>> And as soon as the old idea of the gamemaster/wizard/dungeon
>>> master being the active force in this is broken we may see some
>>> innovation in this regard.  Thats actually why my interest in
>>> muds was recently rekindled, working on that exact topic right
>>> now.

>> I do not see plots in MMOGs a problem per se. The real problem is
>> providing the same quests to every player without breaking your
>> world. What I mean is something that Ted L. Chen discussed in a
>> previous post. If you're going to provide a plot that is related
>> to an NPC being kidnapped, you cannot provide the same experience
>> to every user. Let's call the NPC Mr. McDonald (thanks
>> Ted!). There's only one such NPC. If he's been kidnapped, only
>> certain players will go and investigate on the case. If another
>> player wants to join in, that's fine. But you cannot repeat this
>> same quest forever. It makes no sense.

>> That's why GMs are needed to provide quests.

> Not true. Who kidnapped Mr McDonald, and why? That is, what *is*
> the story here. Was it orcs, to eat him? Or maybe King Ivris the
> Red to force to devulge the floor plans of his enemy King Bulwark
> the Blue's castle? If there is a motive, then removing the GM, and
> letting players play orcs and Kings (or kidnappers) could
> reproduce this "quest" in a dynamic way. As for the notification
> of said event, if Mr McDonald was just a hermit living in the
> hills, its likely no one would even notice the kidnapping, if its
> the town sheriff and then you as a deputy will notice when Mr
> McDonald doesn't show up for morning muster.

You are making an assumption that your player base is willing to
build up the story. Or better yet, it's the players that are making
their own quests.  That would be the best, but I think that this is
not realistic. In my experience, only a few players are really
interested in creating their own quests, most of them are simply
looking for pre-made tasks to accomplish to gather XPs or magic
items. What you're talking about would work well in a strong RPG
system with a playerbase made of avid roleplayers.  What I see there
is that your players are taking the place of GMs.. isn't that like
having volunteering GMs?

>> This makes sense if you're aiming at continuity in your world. If
>> you're not interested in having a life-breathing world, you can
>> provide the same quest over and over for as long as you want
>> (thus having it automated), but to people living there it would
>> surely look old that every 2 hours Mr. McDonald gets kidnapped.

>> I still do not have a clear idea about how to provide fully
>> automated quests without being repetitive.

> Remove the automation and there ya have it.

Yes, that's a way to go, but to be able to let your world work
without automation, you've got to motivate your players to build the
world themselves. This also means that you're looking for a
percentage of users that are likely to be online for a long time,
and not the casual player.  All this can be accomplished, but it's
going to take a strong effort from the world admins in the starting
phase of your game. Nothing that cannot be done, but I see it as an
harder task than it looks like.

>> But there sure will come a solution. The main problem I see is
>> that the game has to maintain a sort of knowledge base of events
>> happening in the world, and assign them a meaning. This way,
>> based on data related to events, characters, NPCs, etc.. it
>> should be able to make simple quests based on some guidelines
>> provided by the implementors.  I am going to think more about
>> possible solutions to this issue.

> I don't think this is a problem. Players are more than able to
> pass news all by themselves. They also have the ability to choose
> their own feelings about a given subject. They can decide to take
> action or not. And given the oppurtunity, players will play the
> roles of hero and antagonist. That last statement was proven in
> the first age of multiplayer online games (that is until the
> implementors banned PvP).

> There is no other solution, you can't make any system to randomly
> create interesting events in a world. And by interesting I mean in
> the true sense of story, not what you currently see in
> games. We're basically in the black&white silent movie stage of
> development in gaming, despite the near realistic graphics.

You're right about both your statements. We're still in an early
stage of development for what concerns gaming mechanics, quests
building, UI, interaction, etc..

The perfect MMOG still does not exists, and it's going to be a long
way before we will get it. There are many design issues connected to
MMOGs that can go wrong when you release the game. Everquest, UO,
and all the other MMOGs are a good base for statistical analysis of
what worked and what not.  This, put together with community
talkings, give us the opportunity to look after issues raised by
players. When you're playing, you want to have fun.  The problem is
that what is fun for me could be not fun to you.  People are
different. And in MMOGs you're trying to build a world where
different people with different interests, behaviours, etc.. are
going to live together, just like in real life. It's a tough task,
and we're not even near being able to offer a "very" good solution
to all the issues raised till now.

> I always face this question when I'm playing a game, or especially
> an RPG.  This is me speaking: "Oh NPC Guldrag you lost your blue
> key? Yeah? So what, go find it, are your legs broke?", "Hi NPC
> Dria, no I won't deliever that message, and I think your are
> foolish for offering that magic sword to do so. Sell the sword
> then hire a kid to deliver the message and keep the other 90% of
> the gold.", "Hmm, NPC Yrreth the Mage let me tell you what I'm
> thinking. I stab you with this here sword, take your treasure map,
> find this treasure. And then ride my horse down to Certilde and
> pawn it. As for the tome of knowledge you want, I'll leave it
> there so you can haunt it once you are dead."

> Its like that supposed quote from Ford, "you can have any color
> that you want, as long as its Black". Remove the word NPC from the
> above and let all those be players and my responses could be
> used. As for why a player would want you to deliver a message or
> find them a magic tome, its likely they wouldn't without a more
> interesting story.

I can't blame you. I'm thinking the same. I've had a similar
experience while playing Morrowind. If you compare the efforts put
in developing 3D engines and those put towards the AI and most of
all at innovating an old way of building players-NPCs interactions,
you see that they are unbalanced.  Providing players tasks and a
good storyline without forcing odd situations is not easy at all in
a computer game. We've got to face it. I think that this way of
interacting with players was ok when computer equipment was not
powerful enough to build complex AI. Today it seems that this is no
longer a problem. It's more of a design issue.

What I would like to see is:

  Me: "Hey! Who's that guy roaming around the town looking in every
  corner?  What are you doing?"

  NPC: "Hi sir, I've lost my blue key and I'm looking for it. But I
  cannot find it anywhere, would you be so kind to help me?"

And the NPC would look around as you do. He won't be a static
character with a conversation and a script to reward you when you
bring him his key.  And this solution would work well for single
player RPGs, too.

When you move to MMOGs you also have the chance of having player
make quests like this, but it all depends on the players, and you
cannot be sure of the quality of the results.

--
Valerio Santinelli
One Man Crew Gaming Community (http://www.onemancrew.org)
My Lab (http://tanis.hateseed.com)
HateSeed.com Founder (http://www.hateseed.com)
In Flames Italia Webmaster (http://www.inflames.it)

P.S.

Tomorrow I'm leaving for a two weeks holiday, so I won't be able to
follow the discussions on the list. I'll get back to them as soon as
I get back home.



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