Goblinworks Founder
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I've been playing MMO since Ultima Online. I tried them all (well, the most popular and some unknown. MMO tries to recreate in some way tabletop RPG. The AI tries to recreate what a GM would usually throw at you in a pen and paper game. What if what is really missing is some human interaction? Let me explain.
I know that PFO is really looking to involve players to a point that they create their own adventure and interaction, and that is awesome. I think we could push that farther with GM interacting not only to "unstuck" us but also to push a person or a guild to do some action. Just like some goblinwork employee, logging in as a king or regent of some area of the game where a guild has established themselves pretty hard. He appears wit his royal guards (AI) or what not and have some good GM vs Players interaction!
I know this could be heavy, but at the end of the day, once the system is online and working, there is so many writters working for Gobliwork that would like to play for sure! :)
Anyway, that kind of interaction existed in games like Ultima Online and I tought it was great at the time. Since that period, in-game GM are only inclined to to some custummer service task and I find it lame.
Cheers!
Disclaimer : English is not my first language so sorry in advance for any grammar or syntax mistakes!
Goblin Squad Member
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I agree with you. Everquest did that also in the beginning years, with gm run events and interaction with the community. Now it seems most games are put on autopilot from the beginning. Also, I am fairly sure some of the actual players wouldn't mind taking turns being moderators for the chat channels if needed, as well as coming up with ideas for both player run and gm run events.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Having the ability for goblinworks employees log in as some sort of big nasty monster sounds *amazing*. You *thought* you were going to clear that dungeon....until Mr Dancey trots up behind you with a Bugbear Barbarian and wipes you out. The unexpected can be fun, and I bet the employees would get a kick out of it as well.
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Goblinworks Founder
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Having the ability for goblinworks employees log in as some sort of big nasty monster sounds *amazing*. You *thought* you were going to clear that dungeon....until Mr Dancey trots up behind you with a Bugbear Barbarian and wipes you out. The unexpected can be fun, and I bet the employees would get a kick out of it as well.
Exactly my point! :)
I love running pen and paper games as GM. What I love about it : Throwing fast balls to players that were under the impression that their plan was perfect and everything is under control! Now, the goal is not to let the game become impossible, but just to "break" the now famous website that will walk you through any quests.
"How to beat that Giant Troll, do this, but be carefull because he sometimes gets help from his Giant serpent pet....."
Or, could you imagine a player guild, well installed in an area, dominating the ground and being the master of their own universe...until... from nowhere they receive a warning to not perform any hunting or illegal activities since this GM led Theives guild is now "in control" of the area. Consequences could be terrible...
:)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Or, could you imagine a player guild, well installed in an area, dominating the ground and being the master of their own universe...until... from nowhere they receive a warning to not perform any hunting or illegal activities since this GM led Theives guild is now "in control" of the area. Consequences could be terrible...
:)
Showing up in a few different areas is one thing. But they would have to hire an event staff to do things like run a thieves guild. And players are designed to be each others content, hiring an event staff to be live content sounds like it goes against their goals...
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Having the ability for goblinworks employees log in as some sort of big nasty monster sounds *amazing*. You *thought* you were going to clear that dungeon....until Mr Dancey trots up behind you with a Bugbear Barbarian and wipes you out. The unexpected can be fun, and I bet the employees would get a kick out of it as well.
Why limit it to employees? How about a lottery system for an occasional chance for the players to do so? Players would be under no obligation to do so, of course, and progress when they're playing the Bugbear Barbarian won't help their main characters, but it would have a certain appeal. By making it random chance and giving all players both a chance to take the role and a chance to turn it down if they don't feel like it, it seems like an easy way to both expand the player experience, inject some levity and changes of pace into the game, and have a hilarious legitimate griefing engine.
Edited for bad grammar
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Goblin Squad Member
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Having the ability for goblinworks employees log in as some sort of big nasty monster sounds *amazing*. You *thought* you were going to clear that dungeon....until Mr Dancey trots up behind you with a Bugbear Barbarian and wipes you out. The unexpected can be fun, and I bet the employees would get a kick out of it as well.Why limit it to employees? How about a lottery system for an occasional chance for the players to do so? Players would be under no obligation to do so, of course, and progress when they're playing the Bugbear Barbarian won't help their main characters, but it would have a certain appeal. By making it random chance and giving all players both a chance to take the role and a chance to turn it down if they don't feel like it, it seems like an easy way to both expand the player experience, inject some levity and changes of pace into the game, and have a hilarious legitimate griefing engine.
Edited for bad grammar
Wow this really is a great idea!!! Good one and hope Ryan sees this!!
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Goblin Squad Member
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... and have a hilarious legitimate griefing engine.
Um... if its all the same, no. The griefers'll find enough ways to ruin people's games without deliberately providing them the tools to do so.
Edited to add:
To expand on that - the bounty system would be pretty useless to rein in the griefers, if the bounty was for a_bugbear_01 and not Bojangles the Asshat Griefer. And it doesn't make sense to put out a bounty for Bojangles when it was a PC run bugbear that killed you over and over and over.
-- Lady of the LazyLeopards
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Goblin Squad Member
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Um... if its all the same, no. The griefers'll find enough ways to ruin people's games without deliberately providing them the tools to do so.... and have a hilarious legitimate griefing engine.
Agreed I think it's an amazing idea but not griefing, for an RP mechanic I think it's brilliant!
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Agreed I think it's an amazing idea but not griefing, for an RP mechanic I think it's brilliant!Um... if its all the same, no. The griefers'll find enough ways to ruin people's games without deliberately providing them the tools to do so.... and have a hilarious legitimate griefing engine.
My apologies to you both; "Hilarious griefing engine" was a shout out to both the game that gave me the idea (Left 4 Dead) and a review of it which used that turn of phrase in a very tongue in cheek manner. The Zero Punctuation reviews used that phrase in a review which used some rather offensive language.
Valve, the developers of the L4D, spoke at length of how they made changes in the engine to change the game and minimize griefing in their videos and director's commentaries.
Nothing says look only to your game's genre when looking for ideas.
Aside: the AI director is another idea worth a look...adjust the difficulty on the fly based on how a group of players is doing.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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EVE was negatively impacted by employee favoritism in the past and occasionally to this day. Many instances with Band of Brothers comes to mind. So I'm a tad cautious of encouraging direct developer/GM (i.e. Admin) involvement with players and especially player groups.
While I admit some of their more recent events (before I left) where they started throwing humans into the mix of NPC special event fleets was an interesting change... I'm just not sure if the impact on RP (which is what Dalix and others seem to be after) it will be effective or even beneficial, it could be negative.
I think The Doc CC is more on target with an AI director, although such as system needs to be watched for abuse by players.
I like the idea of Star Trek Onlines foundry system player created adventures. Some follow some plot, some are terrible creations but most are great designs and can be rated accordingly. They even have a way to vote on the adventure as other players and reward good stories with game points to spend in game.This in my opinion would make a great addition to most mmo's or this one as players or gamemasters can create thier own adventures for others to use in the game. Elder Scrolls and Never Winter nights also (solo or small group)had these options with predesigned tilesets and items to make your own dungeon or town or creation.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Dorje: Oh, absolutely agreed that any system has to be watched for abuse. If the system is unable to accurately gauge the potential (for lack of a better term) firepower of a group, then it becomes a gameable system. In something like L4D, there are relatively few variables which the AI Director needs to track. (Ammo, remaining health items, grenades, progress through the level, remaining choke-points and crescendo events, how much damage each particular attack has done, etc. Not exactly simple, but certainly not too complex.) In a game with the complexity of a typical MMO, it would certainly lead to a fairly large combinatorial explosion of possible resources the players have for tackling problems. Furthermore, if the AI misjudges or doesn't recognize some of those resources, the whole system breaks.
That said, a good human GM can tackle the infinitely more complex P&P game without thinking twice. Surely a machine can in principle be coded to do the same, though whether it is feasible is another question. Some things humans are intuitively able to do are notoriously hard to code.
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Goblin Squad Member
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While I like the idea of player created scenarios/dungeons, that is a toolset that I would save for an expansion pack or later down the road.
Secondly, the dungeons shouldn't be able to give loot that lasts outside the dungeon. And the creators of the dungeon shouldn't be able to gain much by making dungeons, unless players pay to access them. It is too easy to game the system with rewards.
I suppose they could limit points for creation by the character or adventure level. The points being spent on buying items and rewards and such. Such as you have 1000 points on a level one dungeon and a ring +1 might cost 100 of those points etc in your design..i dunno just some ideas
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Goblin Squad Member
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If I can create a dungeon that gives out loot, then I can make a crazy easy dungeon that gives out loot. Now, I only let my friends in. Suddenly, we have a cash fountain. Plus, it sounds like Goblinworks isn't out to have a bunch of static content in the world. Player created dungeons would be static. I could see it as that player created dungeons went in the pool for what could randomly spawn in the world, as long as they were approved by Goblinworks.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If I can create a dungeon that gives out loot, then I can make a crazy easy dungeon that gives out loot. Now, I only let my friends in. Suddenly, we have a cash fountain. Plus, it sounds like Goblinworks isn't out to have a bunch of static content in the world. Player created dungeons would be static. I could see it as that player created dungeons went in the pool for what could randomly spawn in the world, as long as they were approved by Goblinworks.
Well they have actually mentioned lots of static content, modules specifically.
But yes I am also in the group of, there should be little to no reward for them. IMO I can come up with several dozen uses for them that do not directly involve making rewards appear into the world.
Guild trials, IE a guild makes a dungeon, then they make completing that dungeon a pre-requisit to join the guild. Logical, practical, useful and more or less abuse proof.
2. Random events, Someone could construct an intentionally insanely hard dungeon, and put a reward at the end of it for the first person to complete it. That reward comes straight out of the person creating the dungeons pocket, nothing new is added to the game via this system. Take a look at red vs blue in eve, it is a huge succesful event within the game, all rewards in that game come out of the pocket of the players running the event. New fans are drawn, yet no wealth is added to the universe from this, and actually quite a bit is lost as the players are blowing eachother to bits.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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2. Random events, Someone could construct an intentionally insanely hard dungeon, and put a reward at the end of it for the first person to complete it. That reward comes straight out of the person creating the dungeons pocket, nothing new is added to the game via this system. Take a look at red vs blue in eve, it is a huge succesful event within the game, all rewards in that game come out of the pocket of the players running the event. New fans are drawn, yet no wealth is added to the universe from this, and actually quite a bit is lost as the players are blowing eachother to bits.
Now that has some interesting possibilities. Inevitably in MMOs large quantities of "junk" are generated in the process doing various tasks. I remember how much low-level and even some mid to high level items some of the Corps I was with EVE ended up having sitting around in its vaults. If a BYOD (Build your own dungeon) system required the "owner" to supply a stock of items or in some other way depleted their resources to offset loot awards that could be one way of getting that "junk" moving again. This really puts most stable BYODs into the control of kingdoms as "theme parks" for their PC constituents or maybe visitors. KotBL (Keep on the Boarderlands ;p ) maintains a BYOD called the Caves of Chaos.
In terms of loot abuse outside the system Onishi describes, if the loot is geared to the overall threat level of the "encounter zones" then hard fights for good loot remain hard fights for good loot. In other words you let the system determine the loot not the builder. Obviously it would need to be monitored for abuse as it goes. Like an AI Director it could watch for things like types of characters in the encounter that have an advantage, levels, damage taken/dealt, many of the same things live GMs keep an eye for when deciding how much of challenge and encounter really was. This way encounters that built as to be hyper-easy wouldn't grant any loot or really low end loot.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In terms of loot abuse outside the system Onishi describes, if the loot is geared to the overall threat level of the "encounter zones" then hard fights for good loot remain hard fights for good loot. In other words you let the system determine the loot not the builder. Obviously it would need to be monitored for abuse as it goes. Like an AI Director it could watch for things like types of characters in the encounter that have an advantage, levels, damage taken/dealt, many of the same things live GMs keep an eye for when deciding how much of challenge and encounter really was. This way encounters that built as to be hyper-easy wouldn't grant any loot or really low end loot
I still see no abuse proof method for fairly calculating out difficulty. If you give me 30 set monsters in P&P when I am crafting a dungeon, with the exact same monsters aranged one way, I could make an easy dungeon designed to be a simple run for a level 5 party in which I don't expect any of them to go below half HP. Aranging those same monsters in a different way, I could make a brutal dungeon that will almost certainly result in a couple deaths for a level 9 party. And even that varience is just in things that I would likely do as a DM to make the game fun. Which is drastically different then if I had an ulterior motive. IE intentionally putting things in completely useless places, IE making a moat of lava, surrounding 10 uber trolls with no ranged weapons, allowing players to sling fire arrows and spells across the moat and snipe them with no risk.
If they eliminate terrain advantages, make sure every monster has a ranged and mellee attack etc... (all of which would be necessary to prevent putting enemies into positions of being like a fish out of water), then what is the fun or excitement in designing a dungeon at all. If the machine is always equal to the sum of it's parts, who needs engineer at all?
and from there we get to the point where the only fair system, is GM monitoring. Want to estimate how many GMs it would take to test and rate every dungeon players make?
I do have to give a second point, modules as a whole are also a huge risky mess to balance rewards for, even when you eliminate player modules from the equation.
Based on the descriptions of modules, and the descriptions of lairs.
Steps for running participating in rewards from a module
1. Go to large city that is central hub for modules. (estimated time 4 mins, risk none)
2. Decide on the module you want, call out for a group to the large collection of players who are already gathered to play modules. (estimated time 10 mins, risk: none)
3. Clear module collect loot, place loot in storage in town. (estimated time 1 hour, risk: Medium)
Steps for a lair
1. Search wilderness for lairs hideouts etc... {watch out for bandits, PKers etc...} (estimated time 1 hour, risk high)
2. Once you find a lair return to town to gather a group (Estimated time 20 mins, risk: High)
3. Gather group in nearest town, return to lair (Time 20 mins, risk high)
4. Clear lair with team (time 1 hour, risk medium).
5. Now carry loot back from lair to town, this may take several trips with carts (time 40 minutes, risk Extreme as wagons will very likely draw bandits.)
Ballancing a reward for modules, that will make people want to do lairs, instead of doing 3 modules in the same time... pretty much demands little to no reward in terms of money for the modules, unless you limit the rewards to being like quest rewards, IE only one a day (total, not per module) etc...
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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And all of those terrain elements go into calculating "encounters" in the Pen and Paper game. Taking the same 30 monsters and spreading them out over the whole dungeon is not the same and packing them all into the same room. Each encounter point is distinct.
The P&P even gives a GM the option of arbitrarily deciding if an encounter was either easier or harder then listed. In a computerized system that 'arbitrary' nature needs to be codified and detailed, things like terrain advantage for example.
In your example of 10 Ubertrolls with no pathing options to the players, taking various factors into the overall encounter number that's not something that is a challenge. Thus little to no reward. Monster power alone shouldn't dictate loot in such a system.
The way to handle loot balancing is not body searchers but a final reward after the encounter/dungeon. That way you don't have an issue of player stopping mid fight to try and game a particular encounter.
Again we are assuming Player made dungeons here, not "official" themepark dungeons.
Unfortunately such a system is still likely beyond the scope of most MMOs.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Unfortunately such a system is still likely beyond the scope of most MMOs.
Exactly, proporly calculating that out, and assuming the level of arbitraryness, is a task right up there with projects such as, Watson the computer designed to play jeopardy, or teaching a computer to play Go at the level they play chess at etc... It may be hypothetically possible, but it is years away from practical for a team to develop it, and decades from being within reason for a game developer to be able to implement such a concept.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Exactly, proporly calculating that out, and assuming the level of arbitraryness, is a task right up there with projects such as, Watson the computer designed to play jeopardy, or teaching a computer to play Go at the level they play chess at etc... It may be hypothetically possible, but it is years away from practical for a team to develop it, and decades from being within reason for a game developer to be able to implement such a concept.
Unfortunately such a system is still likely beyond the scope of most MMOs.
Certainly it would prove extremely difficult, but what if a system merely checked to see if the proposed encounters were draining resources from those who challenged those encounters at an expected rate? Such a system would be algorithmic, and all it has to do is flag an encounter/event for review by a human being. If no such system already exists in many an MMO, those folks aren't doing their jobs.
Also, I love the idea of creating dungeons you mentioned even if no reward is offered. I doubt that players even need a practical reason to create them. Let's face it, Minecraft is as popular as oxygen for a reason. If I make a creepy necromancer, I sure as heck would get a thrill out of building some thematically appropriate crypt full of ghoulish horrors for him/her to caper about in, and I don't need a reward for doing so. And if I can host my friends' crusade to "purge" his crypt, that's just fine with me.