Goblin Squad Member
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I know this game isn't NWN. I know its not STO. I know EVE doesn't have player-generated content. I know this is in no way a priority of the developers limited resources. I know it is not a feature that could be added for a long time. I know [insert other responses from other threads].
But, I think it would be cool to have some player created PvE. I know the sandbox isn't going to be focused on PvE, but it will still have some. May even have "end game" PvE like EVE has wormholes and incursions.
I have never tried any of the foundries described in that interesting article. Have any of you? I know Being has.
It would be cool if player created dungeons were crafted using actual resources and skills you had to gather and level in the game. Any loot in them had to come from player deposits. They could be a point of interest in your settlement's outlying hex.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I haven't tried the one in STO, but I tried the Architect system in City of Heroes, and poked at the Foundry some in the Neverwinter beta. They're fun, and I think actually likely to work better in a game with PFO's experience system (no farm speed-leveling). I think the bigger issue for PFO in particular though is the instanced nature of the content. I believe one of the design goals is to minimize instancing as much as possible, to encourage player interaction. While you could do it without instancing, it would put a hard cap on the amount of "foundry" content the game could hold at any given time, which means after a bit you'd be unlikely to see any new content.
A possible alternative would be to create them and then toss them into the pool with GW's own instanced dungeons, so that when a dungeon entrance appears somewhere, it randomly selects from the entire pool of content. There would probably need to be more of a QA process in this method than there is with the other foundries, since players can't selectively screen random dungeons the way they can picking from a list.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Towards the end of City of Heroes/Villains, I was playing more player created missions than "real" missions. The Architect system allowed great ai scripting and had some really fun stories in it. It also had countless farm maps that were basically set to allow you to level to 50 in a few days. Those I avoided.
I've browsed the Foundry on NW beta. It looks like it could be used to create some really really detailed adventures, quests, dungeons. Their dialog and world building tools seem "fairly" easy to use, although there is a rather steep learning curve. My biggest problem is the servers are only open at times when in occupied, hopefully when they go beta it'll be
better.
A similar system for PFO would be REALLY cool.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the bigger issue for PFO in particular though is the instanced nature of the content. I believe one of the design goals is to minimize instancing as much as possible, to encourage player interaction. While you could do it without instancing, it would put a hard cap on the amount of "foundry" content the game could hold at any given time, which means after a bit you'd be unlikely to see any new content.
What I am imagining is that a "conquered" wilderness hex could have a "point of interest" being a player crafted dungeon. So a player who wanted to create a dungeon would have to level crafting skills for this. Would have to gather and refine resources for the construction. There is no XP grinding so that would not be a concern. The only thing I am not getting my head around is the loot aspect.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Different games have different characteristics, otherwise all games would be Poker.
It is part of being a player of games that the player adapts well to the differences.
One thing that is different in PFO is that what is valuable is a craftable resource, not a premade ubersword.
It should not be that hard to adapt.
I've only used single-player game 'foundry' type systems such as the Aurora toolset for Bioware's Neverwinter Nights II and Bethesda's creation kits for Elder Scrolls and Fallout series.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What I am imagining is that a "conquered" wilderness hex could have a "point of interest" being a player crafted dungeon. So a player who wanted to create a dungeon would have to level crafting skills for this. Would have to gather and refine resources for the construction. There is no XP grinding so that would not be a concern. The only thing I am not getting my head around is the loot aspect.
Which leads to the last part of that quote:
I think the bigger issue for PFO in particular though is the instanced nature of the content. I believe one of the design goals is to minimize instancing as much as possible, to encourage player interaction. While you could do it without instancing, it would put a hard cap on the amount of "foundry" content the game could hold at any given time, which means after a bit you'd be unlikely to see any new content.
Although it could prove for an interesting type of harvesting complex (like a lumber camp or a mine) where a monster loots the bodies of adventurers who die inside and gathers that up for you to collect.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Although it could prove for an interesting type of harvesting complex (like a lumber camp or a mine) where a monster loots the bodies of adventurers who die inside and gathers that up for you to collect.
I LOVE THIS IDEA. Player created dungeons could be seeded with some loot by the creator then, as players die in the dungeon their bodies are auto "looted" and the few unthreaded items randomly picked get added to the mobs treasure trove. THAT WOULD BE AWESOME.
Also, GW is rightly not wanting PvE content to have lootable gear better then starter level gear. BUT if a player had crafted the loot and seeded it into a player created dungeon on purpose, then we could have PvE content played to try to get cool loot and it is helping not hurting the player crafted economy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the question would be... should the loot table be visible before anyone ventures into the dungeon? If yes, then you could use that to bait people into trying their luck. If no, then you've got to publicize it and (on the other side) trust that the creator actually put something worthwhile in there.
It's an interesting idea for a gamble. Almost a sport.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Wouldn't you think that a player crafted instance dungeon would take a party of maybe six players out of circulation for an hour at most?
I doubt the inclusion of such a feature will have significant negative impact on player interaction and may increase it. A party is, after all, interactively multiplayer.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the question would be... should the loot table be visible before anyone ventures into the dungeon? If yes, then you could use that to bait people into trying their luck. If no, then you've got to publicize it and (on the other side) trust that the creator actually put something worthwhile in there.
It's an interesting idea for a gamble. Almost a sport.
YES! Visible loot table and then the dungeon creator can charge an entry fee for trying it.
So lets say you a crazy good dungeon creator like Being. HE levels up his applicable foundry crafting skills. He purchases refined materials crafts the dungeon and the mobs. Buys an amazing weapon to seed the end boss stash with and sets a 500 gold entry fee.
If you try to solo it, when you die you lose. You keep what you had threaded, and a random assortment of your not threaded stuff is put in the treasure trove with the seeded sword.
If you are with a group, then no rezzing still applies so if one or two die along the way, they don't get back in the dungeon...
When someone or a group clears it, a message is sent to Being telling him he needs to reseed the dungeon with more loot.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm pretty certain GW is not only thinking about PGC but they are counting on it. Your belief that they may not want to devote the resources to it, is actaully the opposite for them. A good PGC system will free up their time and resources to do other things for the game.
There are a few things that GW must really dedicate their time and resources to:
1. Game mechanics and balancing
2. Server Stability
3. Chararacter Creation
4. Player interaction
5. Player Generated Content
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Goblin Squad Member
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Wouldn't you think that a player crafted instance dungeon would take a party of maybe six players out of circulation for an hour at most?
I doubt the inclusion of such a feature will have significant negative impact on player interaction and may increase it. A party is, after all, interactively multiplayer.
I thought I remembered Ryan discussing a desire to avoid instancing as much as possible for that reason. I may have been mistaken
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Goblin Squad Member
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He may well have: you have a good memory for such things. He might have been talking about what he wanted the team expending time resources on.
I also don't want to divide the population in instances. I even fret over everyone fragmenting the community because of the different teamspeak servers. I just don't think there will be all that many PGC creations that make it through quality assurance and I suspect those that do would be one shot deals, not repeatable. The dungeon vanishes on exiting was what I thought I read.
Which could mean a CR problem if someone crashed their dungeon, but ... PGC is just too valuable a creative tool to lightly pass bye.
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Goblin Squad Member
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From the "Where the Wild Things Are" blog post, the implication was that if you cleared the dungeon it would stick around for a little while for you to clear it out, then the entrance would vanish, to repop somewhere else.
I don't think this necessarily conflicts with reusable player-created dungeon trials (the sort of thing I was talking about). With the trials, no new resources are entering the system, it's seeded by the creator and those who died within. Effectively, players are gambling their unthreaded equipment for a chance at the items seeded, and that others have lost. It's not really the same sort of thing as the Foundry systems other games have that are designed to create fully fledged story arcs, and more of a player-designed challenge map.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I thought I remembered Ryan discussing a desire to avoid instancing as much as possible...
I don't recall that.
However, most Dungeons will be private instances.
From Where the Wild Things Are:
When a character receives a quest that involves a dungeon, that dungeon will be generated in the game world, but it will not be discoverable for anyone except the character with the matching quest. A party of characters, though, can share their quests so that more than one individual can search for the entrance. Generally speaking, the only characters who will find and adventure within these kinds of dungeons are those participating in a given quest.
Only the toughest dungeons will be shared so that two different groups could be in them at the same time.
There's a third kind of dungeon, the largest and most challenging type. These are often designed to have several different entrances, each of which could be discovered by a different character, and shared by several parties.
Depending on what other connotations you attach to the word "instance", I expect that all dungeons will count as "instances", the same way I expect each Hex to be a separate "instance", even if it is publicly shared.
I hate instancing. I think it's hurt the whole MMO industry. I would love to see dungeons without instancing, especially in a game like PFO that includes PvP.
But with PGC I could see using instancing. I imagine a player tailoring a nice dungeon for a group of say 5 players, with encounters and traps and such. Then having two groups enter and the dungeon is absurdly easy, likely not fun for anyone. I think it would be cool to allow either instanced or non-instanced PGC dungeons. That way the designer can try their hands either way.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hate instancing. I think it's hurt the whole MMO industry. I would love to see dungeons without instancing, especially in a game like PFO that includes PvP.
Have you played Vanguard? It was designed to have no instancing. They eventually were forced to create a half-dozen instances (they called them "shards") of the main raid dungeon - the Ancient Port Warehouse. In the rest of the world, the "dungeons" were totally public, totally shared, and totally part of the world - you didn't zone into them or out of them.
The result of that design is horrid lag when another raid walks or flies by you while you're trying to kill a raid boss. You also get the same kind of experience common to Theme Parks where people are lining up to kill a particular mob that's part of a quest that everyone seems to be doing at the same time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like instanced dungeons. My favorite dungeons in any MMO are the DDO ones. They give you quest objectives inside the instance. They have secret doors, traps, puzzle to figure out.
For a pathfinder game, having an instance where you and foru friends enter an instance to do a quests "fits" into the five us sitting around a table and roleplaying a dungeon.
If PvE dungeons in PFO are a money sink it is good for the player economy. If you can loot stuff better than the player crafted its BAD by GW has been clear that isn't possible.
I like using dungeons to "farm" crafting resources like magic essences for high end item creation...
Yep I've played games with open dungeons. By far my favorite was DAOCs Darkness Falls, when it was first opened. They made sure not to have quest mobs that got camped all the time.
The thing is PFO is going to instance most of their dungeons, so you guys will get what you like. Dungeons could be set up to not lag you out, nor be the camper havens, but I don't see that happening here. Instancing is easier.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Darkness Falls was an exceptional dungeon altogether. The symmetry was admirable.
As an exception, though, it suggests that maybe the reason instancing is used isn't so much that it is 'easier' as if it were laziness that leads to is, but that the design is so much more flexible and adaptible.
Darkenss Falls wasn't terribly flexible or adaptible.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A friend of mine played STO... the most used player crafted "dungeons" were setup as farming sites. The NPC's were setup behind "walls" that they couldnt shoot through but the PC's could.
There is no farming in PFO. You only get xp from time. You only get resources from harvesting. For player made dungeons we seem to be suggesting that the player creator puts in the loot.
I agree with you that if there is anything to grind from player created content it will be abused.
I don't want player created content to "gain" anything but the fun of playing creative and challenging PvE content. (When I am not on border patrol to keep my kingdom's outlying hexes from being invaded...)
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Goblin Squad Member
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You get recources from dungeons as well. Some of the best crafting recources will come from bosses.
Its not that its a bad idea, it will get abused.
I am suggesting that all loot in the player created dungeon is put there by the player creating. When it is gone it has to be replaced...
Once the game gets really going, youll be pretty busy patroling.
Am I the only one who thinks that sounds boring...
I've patrolled some perimeters, its generally not exciting..
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am suggesting that all loot in the player created dungeon is put there by the player creating. When it is gone it has to be replaced...
Excellent! Yes! +1!
Once the game gets really going, youll be pretty busy patroling.Am I the only one who thinks that sounds boring...
I've patrolled some perimeters, its generally not exciting..
I expect they'll try to make sure that "Patrols" are something that's generally fairly interesting because you'll have some NPCs to clean out, and occasionally very, very interesting because a group of players opposes you.
I HATED the non-instanced dungeons in EQ1 it just led to players lining up to kill mobs or waiting for a "camp" to be open to start a group. I would hate for PFO to devolve back into that.
That would be impossible because PFO hasn't been created yet, so it can't devolve "back" into anything. Also since creatures don't give Exp, they can't be camped. And actually if you were to read what Ryan has said about dungeons, the mobs don't repop like in other games. Once a dungeon is cleaned out,it will despawn and a new dungeon will appear elsewhere in the world.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I HATED the non-instanced dungeons in EQ1 it just led to players lining up to kill mobs or waiting for a "camp" to be open to start a group. I would hate for PFO to devolve back into that.That would be impossible because PFO hasn't been created yet, so it can't devolve "back" into anything. Also since creatures don't give Exp, they can't be camped. And actually if you were to read what Ryan has said about dungeons, the mobs don't repop like in other games. Once a dungeon is cleaned out,it will despawn and a new dungeon will appear elsewhere in the world.
Most dungeons. The superdungeon will surely not behave like that. I confess curiousity how it will behave, however.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That would be impossible because PFO hasn't been created yet, so it can't devolve "back" into anything. Also since creatures don't give Exp, they can't be camped. And actually if you were to read what Ryan has said about dungeons, the mobs don't repop like in other games. Once a dungeon is cleaned out,it will despawn and a new dungeon will appear elsewhere in the world.
Just as an aside, mobs were typically camped for drops more than XP. Waiting in line six hours to kill something is a terrible way to gain XP.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As someone who plans to spend a good portion of their time creating player content (more story arcs and player run events), I think player made "dungeons" would be very cool. I typically do not like instanced events, especially long running instances, because of the isolating nature of the activity.
As it stands now, dungeons will spawn, will be instanced only for the discovering player/party, and will disappear after completion. What if you simply removed the middle portion of that statement? I know some posters have stated that noninstanced dungeons leads to multiple groups in a dungeon, which can cause lag issues, but if the dungeons are relatively short, perhaps the chance of a sizable second party running across the entrance will be small enough to minimize that issue. If the dungeon are not small enough to be completed in a relatively short period, I would worry about how long the discovering party was removed from public interaction in a game that is attempting to increase such interaction. Being's idea of the dungeon scaling to the discoverer's "level" could help in that regard.
If dungeons spawned and were not instanced, you could also still have player interaction inside the dungeon. In that they are not permanent dungeons, the chance of being camped by PKers seems minimal. Likewise, if they are not permanent fixtures in the spawning location, but rather disappear after being completed, you don't get the mob boss line up either.
Having such dungeons made public upon spawning would seem to provide another opportunity for player interaction and competition. We will be fighting over territory and resources...why not over dungeons? If they are going to have resources, it seems odd that the discovering party is the only group with access to those resources. After all, you'll potentially have to defend your harvesting spot from other players (not just attracted mobs), so why should a dungeon provide exclusive rights to the discovering group?
As for the player created dungeons, as I posted in Being's other related thread, I think the best route to go is to have player dungeons tested on a test server of sorts, the best being submitted to GW, vetted by their designers, and added to the regular dungeon list. Any "loot" could be randomly determined off the same list that GW created dungeons use (e.g. cavern style dungeons draw from a resource list that fits the setting - mining nodes, gems, edible/buffing fungi, etc.). Perhaps the winning dungeon design could earn their player designers free game time or some other nice compensation for freeing-up GW designers to work on other topics.
We had also discussed a way to buy such dungeons in micro-transactions, but that's a stickier subject and risks removing more people from in-game player interaction. I did like the idea of the buyer being able to use such purchased dungeons as part of a player-run story arc and being able to slip items they made for the story into the dungeon (prior to launching the dungeon, an interface window allows you to target items in your pack to drop into the dungeon). That would be a handy tool, but may be too much to hope for.
We will see, but I'm getting the feeling that lots of people are against non-instanced dungeons because of past bad experiences, similar to those who are against PvP. Even if PFO will ensure those experiences can't be repeated. We shall see.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We will see, but I'm getting the feeling that lots of people are against non-instanced dungeons because of past bad experiences, similar to those who are against PvP. Even if PFO will ensure those experiences can't be repeated. We shall see.
It is possible that the Emerald Spire and Thornkeep will be so magnificent that one or both will eclipse Darkness Falls as the best multi-user dungeon ever. I wouldn't count out the value of a work of art based on popular opinion, which is as fickle as butterfly in a field of flowers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm getting the feeling that lots of people are against non-instanced dungeons because of past bad experiences...
That's probably true.
On the other side of the coin, there hasn't really been any articulation of the actual problems of instances, either.
What, specifically, do you see as bad about instancing? How does that fit in with Ryan's stated goals to make most dungeons private to the group that discovered them?
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Goblin Squad Member
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What, specifically, do you see as bad about instancing? How does that fit in with Ryan's stated goals to make most dungeons private to the group that discovered them?
Instancing is bad because it takes you out of the persistent world. If you are in an instance nothing you do in that instance will have an effect on the outside hex, it's sealed by it's own borders. Conversely, if you are being chased by a group of enemy players and run across a dungeon, if you enter it, you are safe from them. They cannot follow you into the instance or do anything to you. You doesn't even have to go into the dungeon, you can just camp inside the door until they get bored and move on. Even if they are still there when you pop out, you can just pop back in, because the instance it still restricted to you/your party even after you leave. I see people using private dungeons as a secure raiding base instead of hideouts, because they won't require upkeep.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Imbicatus,
I'm not convinced that "nothing you do in that instance will have an effect on the outside hex". I expect that defeating dungeons will have an impact on the Escalation Cycle of a given Hex.
I think you're absolutely right about the problems associated with private instances being used as a refuge. I think Ryan's ahead of you on this, though, since he's already talked about having the dungeons go away after a while. The real problem will be players feeling into them to perfect safety. I think it's perfectly reasonable to require characters to not be engaged in combat when they enter a dungeon.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Such dungeons are most likely to spawn in seldom visited hexes, and apparently are to have a limited lifespan.
Being, I have a very different idea of what the dungeon aspect of PvE will look like in PFO, based on the blog that iirc introduces dungeons, Adventure in the River Kingdoms (Note: This blogpost pre-dates the splitting up of hexes into smaller hex units):
3. Ruins, lairs and caverns: These are the classic set-piece adventuring experiences of many tabletop games. Call them "dungeons" for the sake of discussion. You will find these areas using abilities; once located they'll spawn on the map and be findable by anyone who travels to the correct location. If they are cleared, or if no character interacts with them for a fixed amount of time, they'll be removed from the game world automatically.Each of the three types of dungeon has different properties:
--Ruins: In civilized areas, these are fairly low-level experiences. They are often the haunts of undead, oozes and vermin. Be prepared for traps and puzzles. In the wilderness, they can be extremely dangerous, home to high-level opponents and many minions.
--Lairs: These represent the hardest and most challenging creatures in a given hex. In civilized areas, these are likely to be magical beasts, and are good sources of content for mid-power PCs. A lair may consist of one or more really tough creatures alongside other critters that live with or around the main threat. In the wilderness, these encounters may also feature aberrations and dragons.
--Caverns: These are underground spaces inhabited by the strange and the exotic. In civilized areas, these are truly challenging, with all the lower-level dangers having been long ago removed or the entrances sealed. Within, characters will find aberrations, dragons, magical beasts, oozes and outsiders. In the wilderness, caverns are a lower-power experience, and may be fairly limited in size and scope.
I definitely think your thoughts are one possibility of many, but I get the idea from this that instanced dungeons will spawn in every wilderness hex with some regularity. Of course, hexes near to settlements will naturally have more player traffic and thus there may be fewer unclaimed dungeons.
Am I missing something?
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Goblin Squad Member
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We won't be able to deliver much "dungeon" style content when we begin Early Enrollment and it will likely be de-prioritized in Crowdforging. Long term we have big plans for player created dungeon content but there is a huge platform of tools that needs to be built first.
I don't think any of us realistically expect to see player created dungeons before release, or even soon after. But I assure you, I for one am really looking forward to when it will be available.
Ryan, might I ask what your (the Dev teams) thoughts are on randomly generated dungeons vs. totally prefabricated dungeons? What I mean is, are you leaning more towards a totally created dungeon as opposed to a dungeon that's generated on the fly as players gain access to it? I know for the big dungeons they will be prefab. I was thinking of the smaller pop up dungeons.