I guess a lot have seen the reveal from Everquest Next. And i thought how cool would be such Voxel Engine for Pathfinder Online.
As much as i know they are using the Voxel Farm Engine (voxelfarm.com), which can work together with the Unity Engine.
As Pathfinder Online is in a rather early development cycle it would be possible to switch to this Engine and utilize the possiblities of Voxels.
What do you think about the Idea? And is there any realistic chance that Goblinworks will look into this, and maybe even use it?
Goblin Squad Member
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Hi Apraxis - Welcome to the PFO Forums!
Same thought also while watching some of EQ:N Voxel Farm - Engine
It's a good sign for future uses possibly? But I can't see it being necessary for the design of PFO, immediately. For when PFO (if successful) wishes to change the animation of eg timber collection, into a more graphically gratifying representation, then having voxel stages to the cutting down and collection of timber, from tree to trunk and branches, to logs, to stacking them for transportation etc, would be nice to see. Equally the engineers or sappers sent to destroy a bridge, and enjoy the graphics representing that process more micro showing the time and coordination necessary of the various skills of the team.
Given what we know about PFO, it would be embellishment to existing systems than necessity or enhancement of graphics more than gameplay?
What would be interesting is the procedural generation of the -(z-axis) for mines and dungeons. Now that would be interesting for various parties finding a dungeon as well as sieging a mining party who dig in.
There's also the use on sieges of settlements and buildings themselves... so maybe if it could be used in specific cases but limited. Players tearing down the mountains, raising the rivers would cause chaos. Maybe the deities...
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CEO, Goblinworks
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What we can't figure out is how much instancing is going to be a part of EQ Next. With destructible terrain, if it's not highly instanced, then the higher the character density the more destruction the world will be subjected to. From where we're sitting, we think the game has to be very highly instanced, or it will just be a ruined moonscape. That seems to argue against the first "M".
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Goblin Squad Member
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I see it being a boon during sieges, if done correctly. Also, I don't want to see the chaos that I saw in the EQN reveal in PfO. It was excessive. While it looked cool, if there is no point in it being persistent, then all it ends up being is something that looks cool for a little while. Then immersion is broken when you come back an hour later and it's back to normal.
Using it for sieging is different because people will have to rebuild that settlement over time and it would diversify what siege damage could look like.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What we can't figure out is how much instancing is going to be a part of EQ Next. With destructible terrain, if it's not highly instanced, then the higher the character density the more destruction the world will be subjected to. From where we're sitting, we think the game has to be very highly instanced, or it will just be a ruined moonscape. That seems to argue against the first "M".
City of Heroes was highly instanced, but I don't think you could seriously claim it didn't include the first "M". I agree on the moonscape though, they'll probably have to make some areas off-limits for redecoration.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What we can't figure out is how much instancing is going to be a part of EQ Next. With destructible terrain, if it's not highly instanced, then the higher the character density the more destruction the world will be subjected to. From where we're sitting, we think the game has to be very highly instanced, or it will just be a ruined moonscape. That seems to argue against the first "M".
I believe they said something along the lines of most destructibility being temporary, No idea how long. But say someone destroys a forest or bunch of holes in the ground, it will regenerate. Not sure if its hourly, daily, weekly or what.
I think they also said something long the lines of purchasing a plot and only you and people you allow can destroy, construct on that plot.
The permanent change the talked about is say building a new city which is a 2 or so month public event for the players to take a part in.
Yea, if they had full unrestricted destruction you would have disposable servers that turn into ruined moonscapes before they reset like Minecraft.
What we can't figure out is how much instancing is going to be a part of EQ Next. With destructible terrain, if it's not highly instanced, then the higher the character density the more destruction the world will be subjected to. From where we're sitting, we think the game has to be very highly instanced, or it will just be a ruined moonscape. That seems to argue against the first "M".
In addition to the statements about the temporariness of the damage to the areas, they ALSO talked about how weapon tiers increased the amount of environmental damage that was done. A weapon that coincides with the lowest 'Tier' of gear does the least damage to the landscape. Just from the stuff from SOE Live, there are at least 5 tiers of character level and it was alluded that there was different gear for each character tier.
They also alluded to the fact that the characters being used in the demo were the max level. I'll admit that a lot of this is reading between the lines, but it's the only thing that makes sense to me. If it takes several months(or longer) to reach the highest tier of weapons(and skills) a lot of the novelty of being able to destroy things will fade for MOST players over that time. Of course there will still be people who just want to destroy things. I'm sure that GM's and probably even Guides(basically a player GM) will be able to deal with such things.
Also, they said that many areas will be immune to damage from players. So Qeynos, Freeport, and other major cities won't be affected by such things from players. If each server is designed to generate a few dozen 'instances' of each area or zone, even if they don't have loading screens between zones it seems as if this would also keep this kind of damage to a minimum.
On top of this, they've said that the server will track every one of your actions. Is it too difficult to imagine that it would also track this kind of behavior and automatically shunt players of a more destructive bent all to the same instances of a zone. Heck, you could even determine that randomly, depending on how many 'destroyers' were in a particular instance.
The ability to create dozens or even hundreds of instances of an area seems to fit with most of their stated 'Grails'. Combined with everything else, it seems like it should work. There will always be people who just want to destroy other people's hard work. It doesn't seem that difficult to get around them considering all of the crazy effort they've already put into new things for EQ Next.
Also, I wanted to ask what you thought of EQ Next Landmark. I know(working on my Comp Sci degree with an eye towards making games) that art assets are one of the most expensive and labor intensive parts of a video game. Is it just me, or is EQ Next Landmark the most ingenious part of all of this? They're literally getting their players to do one of the most expensive, laborious parts of making an MMO for them... It was easily the most shocking and cool part of all this for me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What we can't figure out is how much instancing is going to be a part of EQ Next. With destructible terrain, if it's not highly instanced, then the higher the character density the more destruction the world will be subjected to. From where we're sitting, we think the game has to be very highly instanced, or it will just be a ruined moonscape. That seems to argue against the first "M".
Have they said the terrain won't regenerate itself? If it won't it will be a ruined moonscape within 24 hours. If terrain repairs itself fairly quickly though, I can see where it could work on a massive scale. Areas with large battles and constant fighting would look like a ruined battlefield but that's a plus in my opinion.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Also, I wanted to ask what you thought of EQ Next Landmark. I know(working on my Comp Sci degree with an eye towards making games) that art assets are one of the most expensive and labor intensive parts of a video game. Is it just me, or is EQ Next Landmark the most ingenious part of all of this? They're literally getting their players to do one of the most expensive, laborious parts of making an MMO for them... It was easily the most shocking and cool part of all this for me.
It's very good for "Engagement" which no doubt if it's F2P factors in. Then when players make something, they will wonder about it's potential applications in-game (Retention). And there's land buying so that's probably where "Conversion" to paying customers comes in and/or earnt in game? Even the classes seem to take something of a leaf from LoL. I think mostly the scale of the game world (how big a Fortress of Doom players can create etc) and how much interaction players can get out of it seems it's strongest suite. I think they said a thousand per server somewhere. Ah what the...
Some quotes on Land persistence:
Players will be able to permanently build on land they acquire—details on that are a bit sparse—but day-to-day, combat related creation and destruction isn’t persistent. The world heals the same way corpses fade out over time, Georgeson tells me.
And land payment:
All this will take place in persistent worlds, servers which will house a thousand or more players with “chat, and guilds, and marketplaces, and brokers, and all the things you expect in an MMO.”
To keep land ownership civil, players will get a flag with which to stake their claim. Their area, which can be expanded with more flags, will be protected from other players, while the unclaimed parts of the world are for free-for-all building. Georgeson also mentioned the possibility of “trustees”—players you explicitly allow to build in your territory—and experimental continents for group projects.
Players will also be able to sell their creations on Player Studio—similar to Steam Workshop—which Georgeson hopes will take off, earning money for both the creators and SOE. Even beyond direct sales, if one player builds a tower template and another buys that tower and uses it to build a castle, then sells the castle template, the original tower creator will still earn a cut automatically.
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“[Landmark is] kind of practice mode for EverQuest Next, because when you get to EverQuest Next you’ll actually have to earn your land,” said Georgeson. “You’ll have to fulfill quests and stuff like that to get a land grant from the equivalent of a duke or baron, and then you can start building on that. And a lot of the stuff you create in Landmark might be able to be brought over, as long as it fits the art direction.”
On Latency (ugh the journalistic style in the full article):
"How the heck is latency going to work with all the destructible terrain and stuff?"
"There isn't really any latency involved - "
"At all?"
" - Well, there certainly is latency but we have synchronization mechanisms in place. We've added some new synchronization mechanisms so that your effects - for anything that has latency involved we can synchronize things that are quicker to happen at the same time. We could go really technical. In terms of the way Planetside 2 does things, there's something called back timing so that you see things played out in the right time frame for other players and everything can be synchronized very nicely. It also has to do with movement compensation and making things, the motion of other players looking very smooth. "
"We have a lot of systems in place to handle latency."
"And we are aware of the technical challenges that go into something like a fully destructible world and we have solutions planned and some in place to deal with the types of things that your question is addressing."
"Since Planetside 2 is a first-person shooter, there's a lot of really great latency addressing technology coming from it."
"So, you're building on stuff that exists in Planetside 2?"
An affirmative nod. "Very much so."
I will say this it looks cool and could add to the game,
but given the "get it out the door and working" thought, I don't think they have time to put this in and it could cause other problems with what they had envisioned PFO.
That and adding it now would be feature creep.
Yeap. That is of course a problem.. especially as they are already in production.
But on the other side, it could enable a lot of stuff, which might add to the game.. especially a game like Pathfinder.
There are just a few questions to answer:
- How difficulty is it to implement this technology in the existing framework
- How much performance does it actually cost? What would be possible to go around of that?
- How much time and money does it costs, and how much additonal time and money will it cost.
- Can we realise our targets with it?
- What additional benefits do we actually have?
A lot of those answer cost even time to find out. Like to build a test suite first, try how things can be included in existing framework.
A few thing we can at least discuss.. like what additional benefits would be possible with this technology.
About the performance issue. As much as i remember from the world building panel.. they said something like that the world is prodecural generated, so say have basicly just to save that and not every voxel.
And therefore the world heals beak to their original state.. which defeats somewhat of the purpose of a voxel world and reduces it somewhat do a gimmick.
Another point made was that they actually transfers voxel objects into meshes (3d polygon object) and vice versa on the fly.. to save the permanent changes.
Nevertheless with all possible problems and drawbacks the theoretical possibilities from such a voxel world are amazing.
For better graphical represtantion for:
- cutting trees
- maybe even for some crafting professions like smithy, carpenter
- siege warfare, catapults, mining(military)
which would all just temporary voxel changes for some time
But even more important would be permanent world changing possible with it, like
- digging actually a mine to find different ores
- building stuff
- overall changing the world
how all that could work out, and how much performance all that would cost.. i don't know, but i think it is worth thinking about it, or even to waste 1 or 2 weeks to test some stuff. I don't know how much of a problem it is to get the voxelfarm engine just for testing purpose.
Anyways.. just a view thoughts from me. But i think that voxel engines will play a big part in the future.. maybe it is to early to do it in a big way(permanent changes) on a greater scale like for a MMO, or Pathfinder in particular. But i guess we will see a lot more of that stuff in the future.
As much as i know the new ID6 engine from carmack will also based on voxels.
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Goblin Squad Member
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.....
There are just a few questions to answer:
- How difficulty is it to implement this technology in the existing framework
- How much performance does it actually cost? What would be possible to go around of that?
- How much time and money does it costs, and how much additional time and money will it cost.
- Can we realise our targets with it?
- What additional benefits do we actually have?
For better graphical represtantion for:
- cutting trees
- maybe even for some crafting professions like smithy, carpenter
- siege warfare, catapults, mining(military)
which would all just temporary voxel changes for some time
i.e. rock takes more work than dirt.
But even more important would be permanent world changing possible with it, like
- digging actually a mine to find different ores
- building stuff
- overall changing the world
I like the fact you could mine your own mine, the problem would be griefiers and theivies entering your mine and doing what they do best.
Agreed, the build a building would be nice. But it'll be hard to attach complex functionality and programming to it, would enable settlements to grow unchecked in some ways, and greifiers would be having the time of their life wrecking settlements.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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Also, I wanted to ask what you thought of EQ Next Landmark.
I think history teaches us that it is very, very hard to be loyal to two masters.
If you want to beat Minecraft, beat Minecraft.
If you want to make a new branch on the MMO tree, make that branch.
Trying to do both at once is a big stakes-raiser without a correspondingly valuable payoff.
I don't think the idea that a bunch of people will Minecraft a plot of land with your tools leads to a large volume of high-quality content that you can integrate into your game world. My experience working with large distributed teams of people attempting to create to a consistent and cohesive world is that most people who try are not good at it - and I'm talking professionals, not talented amateurs.
Still, Sturgeon's Law tells us that 95% of anything is crap, which implies that 5% may not be crap. Finding the non-crap will be the challenge. (And I honestly think there's a decimal point and some zeroes missing from that 5% figure).
RyanD
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Goblin Squad Member
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I see the huge appeal of this and at the same time the huge technical problems it introduces. I understand what Ryan Dancey just said above.
But I see three clear parts of the game, where restraints can be done and still get the full appeal without using a voxel engine.
A Castle building tool.
A Farming tool.
A Crafting tool that's similar to the spore creature creator engine.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What we can't figure out is how much instancing is going to be a part of EQ Next. With destructible terrain, if it's not highly instanced, then the higher the character density the more destruction the world will be subjected to. From where we're sitting, we think the game has to be very highly instanced, or it will just be a ruined moonscape. That seems to argue against the first "M".
That sounds less like a fantasy MMO, and more like an environmental science simulation. "Play as the ancient Easter Islanders! Watch your civilization collapse as you exceed the carrying capacity of your farmland! Or play as Oklahoma farmers in the early 20th century, and watch your farms turn into a dust bowl during a drought (procedurally generated by our random weather simulator)! Create your own Appalachian moonscape with mountaintop removal mining! Poison your village water supply and air with mercury-based gold mining and cadmium dust!"
Historically, we got away with a lot because the planet is really big, and we had a relatively small population. I agree with Ryan: At the population density of the average themepark MMO (several thousand players on a world map of about 75 - 100 square miles), the moonscapes would take over the landscape pretty quickly if they weren't instanced.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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My gut feeling based on the trailer is that EQ:N will be mostly instanced to a 'group' sized set of people, that each 'zone' will reset every time everyone leaves, that only a very small portion of the landscape is actually destructible, and that the practical destructive effects are binary- either the bridge is there, or for movement collision, it isn't; with no room for a damaged bridge.
That last is based mostly on watching the trees at the end as they are destroyed and then clip through the monster as they fall down. Once the trees are 'destroyed' the rubble doesn't interact with other objects anymore. Then they use a jump cut technique to hide what happens to the portion of the building which is destroyed, implying a small number of unique states of damage to the building.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My gut feeling based on the trailer is that EQ:N will be mostly instanced to a 'group' sized set of people, that each 'zone' will reset every time everyone leaves, that only a very small portion of the landscape is actually destructible, and that the practical destructive effects are binary- either the bridge is there, or for movement collision, it isn't; with no room for a damaged bridge.
That last is based mostly on watching the trees at the end as they are destroyed and then clip through the monster as they fall down. Once the trees are 'destroyed' the rubble doesn't interact with other objects anymore. Then they use a jump cut technique to hide what happens to the portion of the building which is destroyed, implying a small number of unique states of damage to the building.
While I agree with your thoughts on instancing the play field, the destruction is actually more fine-grained. The voxelfarm tech enabling the destruction allows real-time set operations on voxelised meshes. It is quite neat. As for the trees: voxelfarm does not handle physics so my bet is SOE decided to avoid a lot of pain and made do with particle effects rather than break the system with unnecessary complexity.
You should google the voxelfarm dev blog. There's lots of little fun stuff that might be of interest to you :)
What we can't figure out is how much instancing is going to be a part of EQ Next. With destructible terrain, if it's not highly instanced, then the higher the character density the more destruction the world will be subjected to. From where we're sitting, we think the game has to be very highly instanced, or it will just be a ruined moonscape. That seems to argue against the first "M".That sounds less like a fantasy MMO, and more like an environmental science simulation. "Play as the ancient Easter Islanders! Watch your civilization collapse as you exceed the carrying capacity of your farmland! Or play as Oklahoma farmers in the early 20th century, and watch your farms turn into a dust bowl during a drought (procedurally generated by our random weather simulator)! Create your own Appalachian moonscape with mountaintop removal mining! Poison your village water supply and air with mercury-based gold mining and cadmium dust!"
Historically, we got away with a lot because the planet is really big, and we had a relatively small population. I agree with Ryan: At the population density of the average themepark MMO (several thousand players on a world map of about 75 - 100 square miles), the moonscapes would take over the landscape pretty quickly if they weren't instanced.
Landmark is a separate game. The only things in common are the voxels used to build them and a single continent on each 'world' of Landmark that has SOE enforced Norrath(EQ's 'world') artistic direction. At SOE Live, the EQ Next devs said that they'll run contests with several requirements to build certain types of buildings. The example was given was a temple to the god of plague to be placed in a specific zone. They'll give general dimensions and some features they're looking for and then let the player's votes guide them to the best content. They'll take what they like the best and plop it down in the game with the player who created it's name on it somewhere/somehow.
As far as the destructibility goes, they've said that areas they don't won't destroyed can't be affected by other players. The examples given were player housing/guild housing and major cities. Players won't be able to just demolish Qeynos(one of the main starting cities in EQ1/EQ2 and, at least for now, the starting city in EQ Next). Other areas will respawn/fix themselves every so often. There aren't details yet, obviously, and this will be part of what the Betas are for...
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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While I agree with your thoughts on instancing the play field, the destruction is actually more fine-grained. The voxelfarm tech enabling the destruction allows real-time set operations on voxelised meshes.My gut feeling based on the trailer is that EQ:N will be mostly instanced to a 'group' sized set of people, that each 'zone' will reset every time everyone leaves, that only a very small portion of the landscape is actually destructible, and that the practical destructive effects are binary- either the bridge is there, or for movement collision, it isn't; with no room for a damaged bridge.
That last is based mostly on watching the trees at the end as they are destroyed and then clip through the monster as they fall down. Once the trees are 'destroyed' the rubble doesn't interact with other objects anymore. Then they use a jump cut technique to hide what happens to the portion of the building which is destroyed, implying a small number of unique states of damage to the building.
Oh, I'm sure the technology allows for the rendering and manipulation of those meshes. I'm thinking more about the AI needing to me immune to pathfinding manipulation, along with the requirement that all practical changes always remain synched between all players.
I'm thinking of EQ:N as an action-adventure RPG with sandboxy elements at this point, but I'm not paying a lot of attention at the moment.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My wife will almost certainly make me play EQ Next; I don't expect to be satisfied with it. Unfortunately, I'm not sure I can expect her to be satisfied with PFO, either; she's very fond of doing quests - the more the better. We'll see whether or not I can redirect that energy towards accomplishing things in PFO without having a story-centric quest line to follow.
My wife will almost certainly make me play EQ Next; I don't expect to be satisfied with it. Unfortunately, I'm not sure I can expect her to be satisfied with PFO, either; she's very fond of doing quests - the more the better. We'll see whether or not I can redirect that energy towards accomplishing things in PFO without having a story-centric quest line to follow.
All I can say is that SOE and the EQ Next Devs really are promising the moon at this point when it comes to this. They have said that because of the new 'emergent' A.I., quests with question marks over people's heads are going to be completely gone. In EQ Next(according to the reveal last week) there will be no 'spawn points'. Monsters will be created and released to go to where they please as determined by a list of wants and needs. Orcs like gold and killing adventures, and dislike guards and getting beat up. So they find a place that satisfies these requirements. If too many of them get killed by adventurers, they move or go running to the orc boss for reinforcements. There is no set place for this. While servers will likely be the same at launch, one of EQNext's big promises is that the different servers can be completely different as far as these things are concerned. East Commons Highway on 1 server may have an enormous orc camp. On a different one it could be kobolds, or nothing at all!
They've also promised that exploring will be what gets you into adventures. You're walking down the road and find a farm being attacked by orcs. You can choose to help the farmers, help the orcs, or ignore it and walk away. Depending on a variety of things, this can get you rewards from a variety of sources.
There might be a bounty board asking you to clean the undead and cultists out of a graveyard, and offering cash for doing so. There are also going to be really large scale public quests(in the 2 to 3 month long variety) ending in permanent changes to the world. That's about as close as EQ Next gets to traditional quests... according to what they've revealed so far.
Anyone who has played MMO's for a while has seen games that have promised the moon and fallen short, but the tech that they've shown off so far is impressive. Between voxels, scrapping the holy trinity and the new A.I. they've already added things that I've wanted as a gamer for years in my MMO's. It still remains to be seen if they can pull off any of this in a way that works and isn't a disaster, but if they do...
WoW.
;)
Couldn't help it. It really could be the next really big thing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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EverQuest Next Worldwide Debut
Part 1 (start at about the 26 minute mark to skip to the meat)
The one thing that really stuck out in my mind while I was watching these - aside from the "I bet it's not persistent" thought I've already mentioned, is that it's all PvE. It surprised me when I realized how thoroughly I've bought into Ryan's arguments about Open PvP making everything else meaningful.
All of those "Dynamic Quests" are pulled from a matrix of options, and all of those options are defined by the devs (zone builders, content creators, whatever you want to call them). Likewise, the "Rallying Calls" are PvE designed by devs, even if they do have lots of variation coded in. Watching all of that, I just couldn't shake the idea that it's going to get boring and repetitive, and it won't be long before that entire matrix is decoded.
The Human Interaction in PFO will always hold the promise that you'll be surprised by what happens next. EQ Next, not so much...
EverQuest Next Worldwide Debut
Part 1 (start at about the 26 minute mark to skip to the meat)
The one thing that really stuck out in my mind while I was watching these - aside from the "I bet it's not persistent" thought I've already mentioned, is that it's all PvE. It surprised me when I realized how thoroughly I've bought into Ryan's arguments about Open PvP making everything else meaningful.
All of those "Dynamic Quests" are pulled from a matrix of options, and all of those options are defined by the devs (zone builders, content creators, whatever you want to call them). Likewise, the "Rallying Calls" are PvE designed by devs, even if they do have lots of variation coded in. Watching all of that, I just couldn't shake the idea that it's going to get boring and repetitive, and it won't be long before that entire matrix is decoded.
The Human Interaction in PFO will always hold the promise that you'll be surprised by what happens next. EQ Next, not so much...
Let me state this up front. I played EQ1 from launch, for over 6 years. I loved that game. I would lie if I said I wasn't hyped about this.
That being said, they haven't even talked about PvP. There were many questions asked about PvP and the EQ Next Devs always answered with, 'We aren't allowed to talk about that right now' or a variation thereof. However, the Devs have spent a LOT of time talking about pulling inspiration from Eve Online and League of Legends. Like, as much as GW has on here. That doesn't really give us any answers, but I doubt any game that claims that much influence from Eve and LoL can't have a ton of pvp options.... certainly they'll have open PvP servers, though I don't doubt there will be PvE servers, too.
There's too much we don't know about this game right now. All I do know is that I'll almost certainly be throwing money at BOTH PFO and EQNext....
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I figure its about 70% likely that the entire possibility matrix is decoded and available online before all of the possible permutations are actually exemplified. As you add dimensions to the matrix, the number of permutations available increases geometrically, while the amount of information required to determine all of the permutations increases linearly.
I, for one, will not miss camping the froglok messenger spawn until I can get the 10 unique pages required to complete a quest that provides a reward which is subpar to that which is given away in the next expansion.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I played EQ1 from launch, for over 6 years. I loved that game.
I loved it, too :) I met my wife on EverQuest.
There were many questions asked about PvP and the EQ Next Devs always answered with, 'We aren't allowed to talk about that right now' or a variation thereof.
The one thing I heard in that video about PvP mentioned "Scenarios", which leads me to believe it's not going to be an Open PvP game. It would be extremely foolish of them to spring "Open PvP" on their fans later down the road.
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Goblin Squad Member
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They've talked in the past about different pvp rules being a goal, iirc. One representation of that is the open pvp areas in servers where what you build will be in need of defending (as opposed to flagged land that is safe). I guess fighting over something in these regions that allows building without paying could enter the equation, is a guess. And of course going with a server system, probably a open world pvp server I'd guess too. As the classes kinda remind of lol (somewhat) probably space to create arenas via building eg Minecraft has various subgames that emulate pvp arenas eg LoL/dota servers iirc ie castles and lanes. Interested to hear what their death penalty is also.
But I think I'm only a curious spectator for EQ:N. It does not whisk me away to another world, that I get an inkling of with PFO. Horses for courses.
I played EQ1 from launch, for over 6 years. I loved that game.I loved it, too :) I met my wife on EverQuest.
There were many questions asked about PvP and the EQ Next Devs always answered with, 'We aren't allowed to talk about that right now' or a variation thereof.The one thing I heard in that video about PvP mentioned "Scenarios", which leads me to believe it's not going to be an Open PvP game. It would be extremely foolish of them to spring "Open PvP" on their fans later down the road.
One of my old friends in New Orleans met his wife playing EQ, also. That's awesome man! :)
While I doubt the world will be open PvP by default, I'd be very surprised if there weren't open PvP servers. EQ released them, and variations of them on demand from the player base. The alignment based servers were the only ones I spent any time on, but I enjoyed them a lot. My Dark Elf Necromancer fear kiting players in East Commons, though it usually ended poorly for me, is still a cherished memory of EQ.
The only problem with this kind of approach is that since the players are all supposed to be part of the Combine Empire, fleeing Kunark to establish Qeynos as their first outpost on the continent since the Ring of Scale forced them to flee 500 years earlier, it's going to be a much more difficult sell as to why the races or factions are fighting on another. The reason for the open PvP will have to be significantly different than in past EQ's.
That being said, the team at EQNext has had a bunch of surprising announcements. They promised they had just as many bombshells still to come, suggesting that they were rationing them out to keep the 'hype-o-meter' raging. At this point, nothing would really surprise me.
I figure its about 70% likely that the entire possibility matrix is decoded and available online before all of the possible permutations are actually exemplified. As you add dimensions to the matrix, the number of permutations available increases geometrically, while the amount of information required to determine all of the permutations increases linearly.
I, for one, will not miss camping the froglok messenger spawn until I can get the 10 unique pages required to complete a quest that provides a reward which is subpar to that which is given away in the next expansion.
Again, the Devs refused to discuss crafting but insisted this was going to be a sandbox game which pretty much means that the best gear will come from crafting.
I remember camping in Lower Guk trying to get an FBSS for my human monk. The constant shouts of, 'train to zone!' Those were the days. :)
Since it looks like a good deal of a character's progression will come from collecting 'classes' so that you can mix and match abilities and collecting the gear that will enhance those abilities(more like LoL's item progression, but even more specific to individual abilities), AND that they've said that they'll be consistently releasing new classes and new gear(which won't necessarily be stronger, just have different stat combinations) the game's 'meta' should be constantly shifting.
Sorry, I probably shouldn't having a nerdgasm about EQN on a PFO forum. I am just as excited about PFO, but for now EQN has more recent shinies for me to geek out about.
;P
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Goblin Squad Member
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One of my old friends in New Orleans met his wife playing EQ, also. That's awesome man! :)
It really is :)
Sorry, I probably shouldn't having a nerdgasm about EQN on a PFO forum. I am just as excited about PFO, but for now EQN has more recent shinies for me to geek out about.
;P
Totally understandable :)
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CEO, Goblinworks
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The idea of "turn the monsters loose and let the AI sort it out" has been a part of the MMO world since Ultima Online. And it's been tried several times, and every time it fails. It fails for a couple of reasons.
First, the back-end network, processor, and database bandwidth to make "smart" AIs has not been available. The systems break when they hit server-side limits.
Second, the players have been able to exploit these systems more quickly than the developers can address the exploits. The exploits include creating "farms" of high-value mobs, or asymmetrically unbalancing the world in such a way as to generate unexpected and unwanted behavior (the canonical example from the early days of Ultima Online before they abandoned this concept was that dragons hunted sheep, and the players realized that if they managed the wild sheep population by killing sheep on sight, the dragons would be drawn to pre-selected live sheep zones where the dragons could be slaughtered by overprepared gangs of player characters, turning a dragon encounter from a rare, wilderness event into a scheduled loot drop. I think this abuse showed up in beta and may never have made it into the live game...)
I hope SOE has solved both of these problems because this concept has been a dream of the designers of videogames from the first days of videogames. I'll remain a skeptic until I see it work at scale, under real world conditions.
You can read some of Raph Koster's original design ideas for "AI mobs" here:
Raph Koster talks about Ultima Online's Resource System Part I
Raph Koster talks more about Ultima Online's Resource system including how AI worked in Part II
The idea of "turn the monsters loose and let the AI sort it out" has been a part of the MMO world since Ultima Online. And it's been tried several times, and every time it fails. It fails for a couple of reasons.
First, the back-end network, processor, and database bandwidth to make "smart" AIs has not been available. The systems break when they hit server-side limits.
Second, the players have been able to exploit these systems more quickly than the developers can address the exploits. The exploits include creating "farms" of high-value mobs, or asymmetrically unbalancing the world in such a way as to generate unexpected and unwanted behavior (the canonical example from the early days of Ultima Online before they abandoned this concept was that dragons hunted sheep, and the players realized that if they managed the wild sheep population by killing sheep on sight, the dragons would be drawn to pre-selected live sheep zones where the dragons could be slaughtered by overprepared gangs of player characters, turning a dragon encounter from a rare, wilderness event into a scheduled loot drop. I think this abuse showed up in beta and may never have made it into the live game...)
I hope SOE has solved both of these problems because this concept has been a dream of the designers of videogames from the first days of videogames. I'll remain a skeptic until I see it work at scale, under real world conditions.
You can read some of Raph Koster's original design ideas for "AI mobs" here:
Raph Koster talks about Ultima Online's Resource System Part I
Raph Koster talks more about Ultima Online's Resource system including how AI worked in Part II
It's kind of awesome that he talks about using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs for his in-game A.I. I've had discussions about this with some of my fellow Comp Sci students after I learned about it in a Psych class. It makes a ton of sense. I have to say that I'm kind of sad that this wasn't tried in UO. According to the article, in never made it much past their early alpha because the programmer in charge of the game's A.I. code thought it was a waste of time... but he claims that it worked quite well originally.
On the other hand, Developers now have many less hardware limitations imposed on them. Heck, most people's cell phones are more powerful than a tower PC in 1996... by many orders of magnitude.
Does that make it possible? Maybe.
Is it an exciting idea? Most assuredly.
Can they pull it off? That's the question, as you say. Still, it's really exciting stuff! :)
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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I'm really interested to see if they can pull it off, because, as Ryan notes, persistent world-wandering NPCs are something every MMO designer wants to be available in his or her heart of hearts :) .
The problem, however, is that "stuff AI has to do to interact with the world" has been scaling up at the same time server power has. For example, the more beautiful the terrain gets, the more complicated it is for the AI to figure out how to path across it in a way that looks correct. If anything, I suspect this will be even worse for EQNext: the AI has to account for destroyed terrain or it'll keep getting stuck in pits that weren't there when it decided to start walking, and that's a lot of processing games with permanent walkable terrain don't have to worry about.
You might be able to do it if you have an AI specialist and optimize your game at a base level to run AI in this fashion, which hopefully EQNext is doing. But if there's any waste in the calculations per creature, the server cycles start to add up really quickly when you're talking about thousands of AI entities. Most games wind up vastly simplifying AI behaviors when NPCs are "off screen" and not being observed by any players, only giving them full AI processing when they're engaged by players.
Ultimately, the limitation is that "if an NPC marches through a forest and there's nobody there to see it..." You can usually accomplish the majority of your goals by just having simplified but smart processes decide where to spawn creatures, and the majority of your players wouldn't be able to tell the difference between that system and a fully emergent behavioral one. You lose some of the interesting emergent properties, but the load created by the simple system is drastically less.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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When guessing what the emergent behavior is going to be, take into consideration the smart, goal-directed actions of the players.
Then realize that if your goals are different from theirs, there must be a smarter goal-directed agent working for you. That mostly defeats the intention of creating an emergent system in the first place.
I'm really interested to see if they can pull it off, because, as Ryan notes, persistent world-wandering NPCs are something every MMO designer wants to be available in his or her heart of hearts :) .
The problem, however, is that "stuff AI has to do to interact with the world" has been scaling up at the same time server power has. For example, the more beautiful the terrain gets, the more complicated it is for the AI to figure out how to path across it in a way that looks correct. If anything, I suspect this will be even worse for EQNext: the AI has to account for destroyed terrain or it'll keep getting stuck in pits that weren't there when it decided to start walking, and that's a lot of processing games with permanent walkable terrain don't have to worry about.
You might be able to do it if you have an AI specialist and optimize your game at a base level to run AI in this fashion, which hopefully EQNext is doing. But if there's any waste in the calculations per creature, the server cycles start to add up really quickly when you're talking about thousands of AI entities. Most games wind up vastly simplifying AI behaviors when NPCs are "off screen" and not being observed by any players, only giving them full AI processing when they're engaged by players.
Ultimately, the limitation is that "if an NPC marches through a forest and there's nobody there to see it..." You can usually accomplish the majority of your goals by just having simplified but smart processes decide where to spawn creatures, and the majority of your players wouldn't be able to tell the difference between that system and a fully emergent behavioral one. You lose some of the interesting emergent properties, but the load created by the simple system is drastically less.
The EQ Next Devs have done everything but come right out and say that they're trying to take the title belt back from WoW. They're attempting to take a lot of ideas from different genres and put them together - pretty much WoW's recipe for success - in a way that hasn't been done before. They want to push the boundaries of what's possible with the tech available. Individually, nothing they're doing is really new. It's the synthesis of these things, and the Massively Multiplayer environment that is the big deal. It's fascinating and exciting, both as a fan of the genre AND as someone with an interest in and learning about programming.
It's interesting that people in the field are just as interested and excited about this as I am. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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The game-changer is the voxel engine. Storybricks is interesting as better PvE and possibly for players to also create quests to go with their buildings eg a whole city of both; a sort of create your own skyrim city for pve fans/wow fans? But the voxel thing is the big deal it seems to me. The classes are actiony and look simple to jump into, again a sea-change of more visceral and dynamic combat, again with the pvp options should go down well with the possibility to have pve players feed into pvp as well even. Imagine 'Minecraft created' EQ:N LoL maps (with z-axis) with each class a different champion! Maybe not but it seems a possibility.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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My first thought when I watched the reveal was that the EQ Next team had taken "sandbox" too literally. They're literally making a sandbox where you play with actual sand. They're not making a game where you have a meaningful and persistent effect on a self-consistent game world shared by others in anything other than piling up, or knocking down, sandcastles.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If players can create stuff and put it on land and basically own a piece of the game then it may solve the problem with F2P games: People play but don't want to pay (90%)?!
Also for creating sub-games it seems good. If people come from wow it might feel a lot fresher?
Agree it's not a virtual world/simulation for "higher experiences" but it might be very malleable entertainment all the same.
I'm just done with investing time in virtual worlds that does not develop. Also like improving skills in rl & games. But a virtual world the draw is: Having a story in the back of my head makes me a lot happier day to day doing anything I notice. So that's the draw for me. Similar to thinking about a hobby in the background, feel more energised whatever it may be!
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Goblin Squad Member
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My take on the reveal was that I didn't really like it in toto. There are some interesting ideas and concepts, most of which I find difficult to believe will work as advertised.
The world/terrain looks great and the lighting pretty darn good. Not sure if I am dedicated enough to get down, as a player, to create good enough stuff with their build tools, but they are neat for those that like that kind of thing.
The characters... well I may be alone in this or just weird, but to me, they looked like a cross between mild anime and Disney. They clearly have not grown past the supra elaborate, bulky armor and weapon looks, either.
All in all, I am sure that they will have the "spike" startup audience that they want/fear...
Not only did they look like Disney characters, did you notice that the example were Beauty and the Beast?
While I certainly won't advocate such a look for video games, there are a few rather salient points. Such 'cartoonish' looks don't age as badly as more realistic looks(MoP WoW models look nearly the same as vanilla WoW models, at least for the races that were in the game then). Who didn't watch Disney films growing up? We are already exposed to, and thus the suspension of disbelief hurdle has already been passed over for, these kinds of cartoony graphics in every Disney movie ever.
I'm not sure of the Beauty and the Beast example was a conscious one on their part, but I sure can't deny how spot on it is... if Beauty can teleport and blow up bridges. ;P
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Goblin Squad Member
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I was fine with the female character. The lion really was Saturday Morning Cartoons however. Is it plausible that te character customisation will allow diversity from cartoon to gritty? Eg Zanathos your Avatar is the spitting image of concept artwork for EQ:N, incidentally?
So as with LoL a broad range of avatars from cute to goofy to sinister to cool to gritty will be on te table to appeal to a broad audience? Though the fact it is minecraft inspired and cartoon style make me thing the audience EQ:N most wants is a younger one who'll create their community as with wow for a good number of years in that 1 mmo??
I definitely woke up the next morning seeing a few more grey hairs in the mirror!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Though the fact it is minecraft inspired [...] make[s] me thing the audience EQ:N most wants is a younger one
I don't think Minecraft favours a younger audience; maybe that's just me though :)
I mean it's been wildly popular with a younger audience (as well as an older one). It's an amazing game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...it's been wildly popular with a younger audience...
There's nothing like watching a six-year-old saying "Look! I'm playing Minecraft!", realising her play-experience is *completely* different from yours, and noticing she might actually be having more fun than you.
I was fine with the female character. The lion really was Saturday Morning Cartoons however. Is it plausible that te character customisation will allow diversity from cartoon to gritty? Eg Zanathos your Avatar is the spitting image of concept artwork for EQ:N, incidentally?
So as with LoL a broad range of avatars from cute to goofy to sinister to cool to gritty will be on te table to appeal to a broad audience? Though the fact it is minecraft inspired and cartoon style make me thing the audience EQ:N most wants is a younger one who'll create their community as with wow for a good number of years in that 1 mmo??
I definitely woke up the next morning seeing a few more grey hairs in the mirror!
Amusingly enough, this avatar is directly from the Paizo forum list of avatar images. I chose it because it's the samurai and because the character has a shaved head - like me. :)
I'm a big fan of anime and manga, and the characters evoke that feel. Among the younger generations, that style of art is pretty stylish. I'm hoping that the different races will have a variety of 'themes' similar to what you brought up. The dark elves will almost assuredly be much darker themed from their concept art. The iksar(lizard men), trolls and ogres will probably also fill those categories.
I'm not terribly happy with their choice for the kerran remake. After Luclin(the xpac that introduced the kerrans as a playable race) I almsot exclusively played them. They used to have a variety of different looks which corresponded to several of the great hunting cats including tigers, panthers, and cheetahs. I'm hoping there will be options for several other types of kerrans and this one version is not the only one available. I'd be surprised if they have less character customization than in EQ2... the amount of customization possible in that game is pretty wide ranging. Not City of Heroes or Champions Online big, but still decent.
I'm fairly sure they're trying to make a game that can repeat their success with the original EQ. A company doesn't take the kinds of risks SOE is with this game by integrating so much new tech and going against accepted tropes in the genre without expecting big success. Certainly they want to appeal to a younger audience, but let's face it, I'm no spring chicken anymore and I've been a fan of anime for over 25 years now. This anime-esque art style doesn't just appeal to kids and teens...