Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

It"s what works in nature. Success+1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 ad infinitum. Defining what constitutes the next step is the constant debate. Where do we go from here? And if you want to be successful I think you have to take small steps.

If you want players to feel Heroic, create a world in which they can do that. Other than EQ, I"ve yet to really see a "hard world". Doubt we ever will again unfortunately, but as others have stated we are in the age of entitlements now where everyone must be equal and be able to do/get anything anyone else can/has. The world was harsh and unforgiving, but it also made you feel damn heroic when you accomplished things. It also fostered a great community because you *had* to work together to accomplish things, be it grouping, raids, epics, etc. Only reason to get together these days is to run raid instances /yawn

I"ve never seen a game where it"s the players vs the world, where the game world actually PUSHES BACK. Where there is something so powerful actively fighting against the races of the PCs that they must be active... or suffer consequences. What if cities were attacked on a somewhat regular basis, unless the players actually went out and prevented it. Boss_01 is going to send his army at a lesser elf city unless the players either defeat him (the army is delayed a week or two) or the players defeat said army attacking the city (resetting the attack again in 5-7 days unless boss is defeated - rinse and repeat). Make the attacks last say, 12 hours with a certain # NPCs killed to repel the attack. Such a window of time allows many people to participate. Should the players fail or not bother trying, you spawn a version of the city in ruins, overrun with these bad NPCs that you kill to take back the city. Dynamic world (on the cheap).

As the population bulge rises in level, adjust these timers for longer durations so lowbies aren"t losing their merchants and skill trainers in convenient places because no one is around to keep the evil hordes back. The higher level players can come back for some stompage of greys or such, yet still gain some reward from the higher level "good" NPCs who recognize that these high level people spent time helping out with something they really needn"t have. Hell, stick in code that if these high level guys do show up, then one or more level-appropriate mini-bosses spawn. Give a reason for the higher levels to help out the lower levels. Talk about feeling heroic.

Hell, just tie in higher level events such as these that by defeating slow down the attack timers of lower level stuff. Have multiple of these events run concurrently, all on their own timers, so every day or two something new is happening. You just make a large starting city or two perma-safe so there is always at least one base to push forward from no matter what happens.

There are a lot of ways to keeping a world like this somewhat "fresh" by cycling events and adding in smaller effects. No group has killed miniboss_04 in that corner of the zone so every downtime another spawn grouping changes from native animals/NPCs to whatever the enemy is (which could suck if the only way to get some TS component is from those mobs that are being replaced). On the other hand, the further the players "push" back (by zone control, killing bosses, etc) the influence of the enemy, the harder and harder said enemy NPCs and bosses get, to the point of impossible to kill (after all the enemy can"t ever truly be defeated or... what"s the point of the game?).

I can go on all night about a world like this, but you get the idea. I can"t think of anyone who"s even tried anything like this. Talk about bringing the community back to mmorpgs (something missing since EQ). Or even server competition/bragging rights.

(sorry for getting so far off topic)

Possibly a controversial request, but..

When the time comes in your game that I think, "I"m a bit broke right now, I need to go make some money", please don"t force me to fight over tradeskill items with bots and classes_who_are_better_at_farming00. I"m fucking sick to death of WoW"s "Oh go farm some primals little buddy!" gold accumulation method.

Dare I say it, but I actually miss making gold by taking two or three friends and doing say BoT minis, or shit even camping Golden Efreeti Boots back in the day. Those made you enough cash to last a while. Also as a flip bonus, if you restrict the big gold makers to concerted efforts between people who play with some sense of synergy, your gold bots become less of an issue.

Ukerric said:

That"s mainly how World of Warcraft "won". No revolution, all evolution, lovingly polished, pruned. No Vision? to meddle: if it"s not really fun for most, redo it.

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Yeah I think I should have also stated "Find what is bad about these games, and replace it with a better mechanism."

Grave said:

I"m going to go with more dynamic content as well, though I disagree with Gecko"s extreme version. What he describes would never work in an MMO.

I"d like to see things like the world changing based on day/night, season, and so on. Weather changing as the season does, complete with snowfall during the winter, etc. would be really cool and immersive. A lot of work too, though, admittedly. From a gameplay standpoint, maybe certain events or quests are only running during a certain season. Maybe certain tradeskill goods become more or less valuable depending on the season. Stuff like that.

The Day/night cycle could effect anything from what creatures are roaming at what time of day to certain quests only being available or doable at certain times. You could have a graveyard area that might be graverobbers and cultists during the day, but at night the dead rise out of their graves and roam around. Or, maybe there"s a quest to slay vampires and collect a certain type of dust from their remains, but the catch is the dust is only valuable if the vampire is awake and active when killed. The player would need to wait until nightfall to find the active vampires and fight them. Probably very simple to do, and yet it would add a lot of interest and replayability to the world.

I"d like to see NPCs actually going about their daily activities during the day, and going to sleep at night. A city could change completely in the hours of the night as the rogues and assassins make it their own.

Speaking of that, in a similar vein I just want to see city life be more interesting in general. In a next-gen game, I want to see huge sweeping cities that I can explore. I want to be able to actually sit down and just "play" without ever leaving the city if I want to. Give me an assassin"s guild to join and some "daily quests" that give me marks to track down within the city and eliminate without getting caught, Assassin"s Creed style. You could easily come up with various other little mini-games for other types of characters that would give players something fun to do in between adventuring. You could simply ensure that everything the player needs is easy to get to (AH, Bank, etc all close together in a place that they can reach easily, the rest of the city can be for other things) and the size of the city would never be a hindrance to people who aren"t interested in the other stuff.

If you implemented a system like this you could also take it to another level and actually track time as it goes by. Let"s say a year in game was 3-4 months, so 3 times per RL year you could patch in a little update that represents this passage of time. Maybe new structures are erected, or new leaders appointed, new events take place, wars reach a conclusion, etc. This could be sort of like the monthly content update that Asheron"s Call always had (very cool) except you don"t need to do it quite that often.

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Nice Post. I"d give my left nut to play in a game with this immersion.

I am absolutely on board with the "livelier" cities thing. I think there is a point of diminishing returns that you must be absolutely careful with but ya, I agree that it would be awesome as heck to be a PC and walk into a city that looks every bit as if it is operating and working just fine on its own. People with "business" are doing just that.

People aren"t always "home" or "in distress" or "at work" but there is at least an appearance that they are "living" beyond standing around with a yellow ! above their heads waiting for the next "hero" to come along and save their lost cat.

But this is also one of those danger areas we tend to get ourselves into when we think "How cool would it be if.."

Ok, I get it, once maybe. How cool would it be if Freeport ran itself and everyone had things "to do", the NPC"s that is. Man that would be cool, sort of. I mean Boston runs just fine without me, people, and lots of them, are ALL busy and going from here to there and NONE of them need me to quest for them. Having said that I don"t drive into the city to sit back and watch it happen.... I might, I don"t know, but certainly not more than once

What we "think" might be interesting, innovative and cool, sometimes is a hell of lot less cool when we really dig into what it would mean.

Ya that"s a great idea! I love the thought of quest givers not always standing in their same location, handing out the same quests. But how much do I like it when I"m "second man in"? And that quest I needed to progress a quest line has an NPC who"s "not home"? I have to wait 45 minutes of game time for him to "come home"? Huh? Ok that sucks....

I make the same mistake many do in sometimes thinking of MMO content like I think of single player RPG content, I think many do. I am sure a bunch of people can come up with 10+ solutions to the problem above but at the end of the day the bottom line is if 1-2 people are "enjoying" something and the other 8 out of ten are not, that sucks for 80% of the people "experiencing" that "cool thing".

There are always solutions as you mentioned. Implement them.

1) The NPC"s that leave the town, maybe just more of the excess in the town do, preventing the quest problem? Just the "militia" leaves?

2) NPC not in place because it"s off doing something else? Why even have to communicate like that? Why click the ! - why not be able to mail the NPC information, spelling out its name if you want to (this is after you"ve already communicated with it at least once), being able to receive quests like that, communicate several ways to PC"s, NPCs too, how could that shape the game?

What if you send out a bird to give him the message, why cant the AI of the NPC be better than scripted communication through ! in a stationary position to give/receive? Why aren"t birds part of the game that send/recieve messages on the fly along with the normal mail system in EQ2/WoW.

Ngruk said:

at the end of the day the bottom line is if 1-2 people are "enjoying" something and the other 8 out of ten are not, that sucks for 80% of the people "experiencing" that "cool thing".

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It depends on what you"re talking about, and also how you handle your variability. I have to respond with there"s always a solution again (that is, for the bigger scripted variability/events and possible town events).

The things that aren"t involved in a seamless algorithm are always a concern.. With that said it"s not like everyone was involved with Kerafrym The Sleeper, people just heard about it - and were pretty amazed. Pissed off? Yeah I"m sure that was the case, but at the same time happy knowing that that type of variability can exist in their game, and that the development is achieving that sort of progressive mentality in their lore. The Sleeper is easily one of EQ"s defining characters, not just because of the lore behind it, but because of the event, the hardships, and the stories that were told from that massacre. Bring that back.

The point of diminishing returns is a good one. I think we can relate that to other things besides just cities. Quite frankly things that would be subject to diminishing returns wouldn"t necessarily need to be large scale things, rather small scale anomalies that happen outside of the basic algorithm. To make that clear, we wouldn"t be seeing ten kerafrym type events in one year. Finding the sweet spot between variability vs constants is where everything lies.

Ngruk said:

I mean Boston runs just fine without me, people, and lots of them, are ALL busy and going from here to there and NONE of them need me to quest for them. Having said that I don"t drive into the city to sit back and watch it happen.... I might, I don"t know, but certainly not more than once

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I hear you. I think there"s a certain psychological value to realism in a fake world though, something that wecan"tdiscredit, especially in something that truly innovates itself from the pack. In EQ how many nights did you leave your computer on, character near the water while people ran from BoT to PoK book? Not to mention with the PoTranquility sound still on.

Hell, WoW kicks you off the damn server. WoW is all about the combat, the structured instanced zones, which are important...but where"s the magic? Where"s the personality in that? I"d argue on WoW"s behalf that the art pallet they used is fascinating to a degree, there"s a certain use of coloring that draws people in and is easy on the eyes. There"s got to be more than decent art in the world to create a psychological attraction though. This is just my opinion on WoW really - I actually quite like WoW, but I feel It"s too structered. IE. The zombie event is awesome.

Not everyone cares about anything more than strict structuralism which I well understand, but the next big thing, in my mind, enhances the aspects of structuralism and introduces the variability of a world that"s truly magical.

Ngruk said:

People aren"t always "home" or "in distress" or "at work" but there is at least an appearance that they are "living" beyond standing around with a yellow ! above their heads waiting for the next "hero" to come along and save their lost cat.

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Sadly that reminds me of EQ2...I remember in Qeynos that girl that always would run around chasing her cat and crying.

Some of your comments seem to be interested in accepting current problems with MMO"s. I don"t know if that"s because you cant hint at innovation on your end, but I"m a bit concerned there.

Ngruk said:

Ya that"s a great idea! I love the thought of quest givers not always standing in their same location, handing out the same quests. But how much do I like it when I"m "second man in"? And that quest I needed to progress a quest line has an NPC who"s "not home"? I have to wait 45 minutes of game time for him to "come home"? Huh? Ok that sucks....

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I love this idea too. The main frustration from something like this for me would be wanting to finish that quest so that you could make room in your quest log to pick up someting else. Managing the number of quests you have, having to decide which to delete here and there to make room and whatnot, is simply tedious. Its tedious in Warhammer, it was tedious in WoW, it was tedious in EQ2, and there"s simply nothing fun about it. I"d like to see the whole "limited quest log" done away with. Then make an unlimited quest item inventory like Warhammer has (WoW should steal this, and probably will), cause managing your inventory to make room for quest items is just as tedious. The problem is mostly solved for me with those two things. I wouldn"t feel the need to wait around for a quest NPC, because I don"t have to free up quest space or get rid of the item. And I know I"d run into the NPC eventually. And then once you did turn it in, it"d feel like more of an accomplishment somehow.

Ngruk said:

Ok, I get it, once maybe. How cool would it be if Freeport ran itself and everyone had things "to do", the NPC"s that is. Man that would be cool, sort of. I mean Boston runs just fine without me, people, and lots of them, are ALL busy and going from here to there and NONE of them need me to quest for them. Having said that I don"t drive into the city to sit back and watch it happen.

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And yet, your actions, as well as those of your "allies" have had profound impact on Boston, both in terms of its prominence, economy, discord, and how other "NPCs" behave. Don"t tell me you"d forgotten about "04 so soon!

In MMOs, defining events involving a multitude of individuals/guilds should play a part in dictating the content, layout and economy of various cities and provinces. WAR has taken a step in the right direction, where players" actions take a proactive role in defining the world and the capital city"s state.

To me, the best way to provide a realistic, dynamic aspect to the typically NPC world is by providing some kind of disillusioned or revolutionary sub-aspect to each realm. As a rough example, in Freeport of EQ1 there were really three groups: the lawfully allegiant supporters of the Militia/Lucan D"Lere, the underground movement of rogues/smugglers assisted by the Shadow Knights and Necromancers, and the devoutly pious Knights of Truth, all struggling for control of the city and its priorities. In a next-gen MMORPG, I would expect players, based on their prominence between both players and the computer-regulated realm, to dictate just which aspect became a key player, thus determining the economic and "quest-based" direction of the city, as well as giving economic discounts/penalties to persons/guilds based on their personal allegiances.

The problem, here, arises in players anticipating or being predisposed to favoring one path amongst others. On the one hand, you can resort to penalties for the winning/alternate bonuses for the losing side. Or perhaps, you can open other objectives to the winning side so that they are prompted to expand their influence, offering a chance for a rebel group to overthrow them in the capitol while the winning faction seeks to expand their power/influence.

Server-side dynamics, where NPCs behave differently based upon the time of day, the world looks/acts different based upon season are one thing, but providing a balanced, player-driven economical/political/ecological habitat to enjoy is, in my opinion, the current Holy Grail of MMOGs.

Ngruk said:

Ya that"s a great idea! I love the thought of quest givers not always standing in their same location, handing out the same quests. But how much do I like it when I"m "second man in"? And that quest I needed to progress a quest line has an NPC who"s "not home"? I have to wait 45 minutes of game time for him to "come home"? Huh? Ok that sucks....

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This goes back to what I was saying about making quests more heroic.

If you"re thinking about this in WoW terms, yeah it would never work and it would just annoy your players when they couldn"t go round up all the quests they wanted to do at once. Like others have said, they"d want to get it out of their quest log and move on or something like that.

Let"s instead assume we have a game that has fewer overall quests, but these quests have multiple objectives and "mini-quests" built in to them that automatically update as you progress through them. The individual quests are larger in scope, feel more important to the player, and take about as long to fully complete as a couple of WoW-style quests combined. Each step would award XP and some steps would even give rewards, depending on how long of a quest chain we"re talking about here.

The end result would be players would move out of the WoW mentality of just grabbing every "!" they see and moving on. Instead, what quests they take on might be different from player to player, or even from character to character if you"re playing an alt. Rather than a linear line of progression that you follow, you wouldn"t exactly know what the story of your character"s life would be like. You don"t know exactly who you will run into or what adventure you might find. Of course, if the player knew ahead of time what quest they wanted to take, they could always ask a guard or something where a particular NPC was at the moment. You could implement some system that allowed players to track down NPCs no matter where they were in the city.

My point I"m getting at is in answer to how much you"d like it the second time around. You could have a completely different experience on an alt than your main character had just because you took a few different quests that led you to different areas or told a different story. You could even deliberately try to find a different path than you previously took by visiting different locations, maybe going to the tavern to find a quest or two rather than the local temple.

As for the waiting 45 minutes to progress your quest: like I mentioned above, we"d need some sort of system that allows us to find NPCs at anytime. I realize most MMO players are all about instant gratification these days, so I"m not trying to condone too much "realism" in the sense that a player actually needs to wait all night for an NPC. We need a good mix of immersion and fun. So, if the NPC is about his business in the city, visiting the market square or something, just let us ask people if they"ve seen them. Or, just implement a QuestHelper type addon into the default UI. Sure seems like enough players want it as it is consistently the most downloaded add-on in WoW. If the NPC is asleep or something, you could allow players to wake them up with a knock at the door, though ideally they would want to be grabbing some quests that are only available at night and wouldn"t mind waiting until morning.

Fewer, Longer quests is something I can totally get behind.

The new generation of MMOs has killed Quests. They"re Errands.

Kuro said:

Fewer, Longer quests is something I can totally get behind.

The new generation of MMOs has killed Quests. They"re Errands.

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Precisely. And as long as the player is receiving XP / some reward whenever they complete a major objective, they"ll still feel that sense of accomplishment even if they don"t happen to finish the entire chain in one sitting. You still keep the benefit of WoW"s quick questing, which is allowing people to play for very short sessions if they need to, but you don"t need to dumb down the quests as a result.

The fact that they would automatically update as the player advances also gives the feeling that the player/character is smart enough to figure out what is going on and what the next logical step might be. That"s part of being a hero. We don"t need to run back to town every time and ask some NPC, "what do I do now?"

I actually liked LOTRO"s chapter system for this type of questing. Your natural leveling progression usually ensured that you were current on your chapter quest progression (with a few exceptions). It fell apart at higher levels with forced grouping, but till then was win. Granted, part of that was the lore.

Ngruk said:

So maybe you mean something like a story, that had players involved directly in the outcome? And maybe that outcome had a tangible meaningful effect for the winners? And maybe a tangible meaningful butdifferenteffect for the losers?

Interesting.

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Stories are good but I would imagine it would take to much development time and effort to maintain that continually. I would think if your game consists of community driven events it will go a long way into creating this effect. Think of the War Effort for AQ in WOW, or what may be the Territory Control mechanic in WAR to siege capitol cities.

Apostle said:

I cannot, off the top of my head, remember what the mmo was, but there was one that had community projects.

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A Tale in the Desert.

Ngruk said:

One thing, that has not been done, but you feel is either a must in next gen or a serious differentiator that could set a game apart.

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Are we talking about a DIKU kind of game? Larger servers for one. Also flexible content which means scaling of dungeons etc. I don"t think we have the tech for truly dynamic content in MMOs yet.

Grave said:

This goes back to what I was saying about making quests more heroic.

If you"re thinking about this in WoW terms, yeah it would never work and it would just annoy your players when they couldn"t go round up all the quests they wanted to do at once. Like others have said, they"d want to get it out of their quest log and move on or something like that.

Let"s instead assume we have a game that has fewer overall quests, but these quests have multiple objectives and "mini-quests" built in to them that automatically update as you progress through them. The individual quests are larger in scope, feel more important to the player, and take about as long to fully complete as a couple of WoW-style quests combined. Each step would award XP and some steps would even give rewards, depending on how long of a quest chain we"re talking about here.

The end result would be players would move out of the WoW mentality of just grabbing every "!" they see and moving on. Instead, what quests they take on might be different from player to player, or even from character to character if you"re playing an alt. Rather than a linear line of progression that you follow, you wouldn"t exactly know what the story of your character"s life would be like. You don"t know exactly who you will run into or what adventure you might find. Of course, if the player knew ahead of time what quest they wanted to take, they could always ask a guard or something where a particular NPC was at the moment. You could implement some system that allowed players to track down NPCs no matter where they were in the city.

My point I"m getting at is in answer to how much you"d like it the second time around. You could have a completely different experience on an alt than your main character had just because you took a few different quests that led you to different areas or told a different story. You could even deliberately try to find a different path than you previously took by visiting different locations, maybe going to the tavern to find a quest or two rather than the local temple.

As for the waiting 45 minutes to progress your quest: like I mentioned above, we"d need some sort of system that allows us to find NPCs at anytime. I realize most MMO players are all about instant gratification these days, so I"m not trying to condone too much "realism" in the sense that a player actually needs to wait all night for an NPC. We need a good mix of immersion and fun. So, if the NPC is about his business in the city, visiting the market square or something, just let us ask people if they"ve seen them. Or, just implement a QuestHelper type addon into the default UI. Sure seems like enough players want it as it is consistently the most downloaded add-on in WoW. If the NPC is asleep or something, you could allow players to wake them up with a knock at the door, though ideally they would want to be grabbing some quests that are only available at night and wouldn"t mind waiting until morning.

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I like this line of thinking, and it sounds somewhat like what was announced from the Bioware people for their SW:TOR MMO.

In reference to my earlier post regarding dynamic content, yes it"s extreme to want things overtly dynamic, but the failures of dynamic content in the past were more so a design issue with games based around the "rush" feature and one boss limitaiton. If the overlord of dungeon X dies, then that shouldn"t be the end, Demon Lord Z should show up. Or fanatical Paladins. Or a new faction. It"s not difficult to have continuity, it just shores up the respawn of the same guys over and over in what I think is lazy design.

If the design were changed so that they had more risk and a sense of accomplishment then the underlying heroic system wouldn"t be as necessary. Defend that town from the incoming dragon. Fail? Town"s gone. It will slowly be rebuilt but that kind of meaning and even limited dynamic content would make a world alive, instead of the carrot on a stick loot gathering exercise MMOs are today.

I agree with the need to take baby steps into the world of dynamic content due to both the limitations of the content and the maturity of a large number of MMO players, but at the end of that cycle should be a living, breathing dynamic world without respawns and with the depth and challenges of the old pen and paper sessions, allowing for thousands of simultaneous players to make an impact and see an alive world in front of them.

Kuro said:

Fewer, Longer quests is something I can totally get behind.

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The problem of fewer/longer quests is that, quite simply, you play even less in groups. Having lots of quests in progress allows you to team with other players, to advance them. If you have 20 quests in progress, your same-level friend may have 6 or 7 in common with you. If you have 3 quests in progress, the odds of having any common ground is close to zero, which makes grouping... more and more irrelevant.

(for this discussion"s purpose, I call "quest" any quest step. A "grand quest" is simply done by stringing a couple dozen individual WoW-style quest, each requiring the previous step to be completed)

In fact, if you only have a few "grand" quests, they all have to be soloable. If all your quests are now at a "need a group" step, then you"re stuck, until you can find teammates at the same quest steps to progress, and people will find that situation unacceptable while levelling.

I am not sure I agree with this. If there is a smaller quest pool, then doesn"t it stand to reason that more players will have more quests in common if there are fewer to choose from? The key is going to be allowing you to group up on these quests regardless of phase or step you are currently on.

Longer quests that you don"t have to do in exact sequence is partially a key to making this fun, viable and at the same time allowing you either style of play, group or solo imo.