MMO Communities (was RE: [MUD-Dev] MMORPG Cancellations:Theskyisfalling?)

[Douglas Goodall]

John Arras wrote:

> And that's EXACTLY why I post onto this list every once in a
> while. Who cares if nobody's gotten this right? If you find it
> interesting (as I do) then try things. Try to come up with ideas
> about how to implement. Write code. Test. Make mistakes. Instead
> of thinking that you "just didn't do it right", think of it as
> "you just didn't do it right, yet".

I think some problems are unsolvable. For instance:

  1) Players want to find good mobs to kill quickly.

  2) Players want to change the world.

I don't see how these can be reconciled. My system allowed mobs of
various kinds and levels to spawn in different places and move
around. Mobs reacted to the players, both directly and indirectly
(i.e. kill rabbits and there are less rabbits... and there are also
less wolves and more grass). This did, indeed, give the world a very
dynamic feel. Yesterday's hunting grounds were often barren. A zone
was never twice the same. But this prevented players from finding
good mobs to kill in a reasonable time. Instead of just having the
travel time from a meeting place to a well known camp, players had
to spend most of their time looking for a camp. Once a good spot was
found (and its location revealed in chat), it was quickly filled
with players and just as quickly emptied of mobs. Fighting mobs can
be fun. Hunting for mobs can be fun. But wandering around aimlessly
(at typical MMORPG travel speeds...) is never fun.

This could be solved with some kind of "hunting" skill that gave
clues, but that's Yet Another Skill that a group (or solo player)
requires. It could be solved with stricter limits on the population
sim, but that makes the world less dynamic and begs the question of
using a population sim in the first place.

There was also the problem of skill... Zones could contain any type
of mob and therefore any difficulty of mob. Players could walk out
of town and get one-shotted or they could go to the furthest dungeon
and find it full of rats. Again, this made the world very
dynamic. It also made it No Fun. Again, this could be solved by
limiting what kind of mobs can go where... But then you're back to a
non-dynamic world that happens to have a really inefficient spawn
algorithm.

I did solve one (mostly aesthetic) problem of randomness... There
were "types" of zones which had a list of "themes," which had a list
of allowed mobs. For instance:
A Dungeon is a type of Zone.

  Cave is a type of Dungeon.

  A Cave can be a Hideout, a Dragon's Den, or a Necromancer Lair.

  A Hideout contains at least one Bandit, and may also contain
  Bandits, Vermin, Slaves, and Treasure Chests.

When the "boss" of a zone was killed (or the zone received certain
event messages), it could change to a different theme. Over a long
period of time, it could even change to a different type of zone
(i.e. from jungle to dessert to grassland to forest).

Unfortunately, zones had a tendency to degrade to less desirable
types. Players could spend resources to influence how the zone would
change, but there was no reward for doing so since any player could
take advantage of the zone (a Tragedy of the Commons). This could be
solved with private property and the necessary enforcement... But
restricting content to a minority of players is personally
distasteful (even though all successful MMORPGs do this one way or
another).

It was very cool to watch a population build up and spread out. To
use another fantasy example (the original game was space-based):
players aren't killing enough Orcs in the Mountain of Doom. Once the
Orc population is higher than what the region can support, it
triggers an event. The type of event depends on the theme. Some
creatures might suicide or fight each other or generate a plague,
etc. The Orc theme says to form a Horde, choose a direction, and
begin ravaging the countryside. If the Orc theme gains enough zones
from other creatures (including players), they settle down again
until the population density goes back up... But this is a ton of
work just to see an Orc Horde, which could have easily been done
with random() or a GM command, and I doubt many players care about
the difference.

Even worse: If players really like hunting Orcs, they'd never see a
Horde because the population would always be low. And if players
don't like hunting Orcs, they'll be forced to fight alot of them.

As for the code itself, it's nothing special (except, perhaps for
the visual skill system and the auto-nerfing--mobs/items/skills were
nerfed behind the scenes based on popularity, which wasn't a popular
feature). I suspect I'm not allowed to do anything with the code (or
even have it). Or reason #230 for leaving the game industry: all my
good ideas now belong to lawyers.

If I could do it over again, I wouldn't use any dynamics and would
make everything instanced. Dull. Unambitious. No illusion of
changing the world. But it's easy and less likely to cause all kinds
of social problems.
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