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The Future of Persistent Worlds In MMOs
Zonk did an interesting interview with Ed Stark and Dave Williams, employees for an MMO developer named Red 5 (and experienced tabletop game designers). They talk about their ideas and plans to bring about the next step in MMO gaming: increased persistence in online worlds, where an objective, once completed, stays completed. Williams said, "Right now for most of these games, when the player saves the princess and he starts walking away from the tower — if he looks back he's going to see the princess at the top of the tower again." Regarding their current work, he continues:
"If you save the village, it stays saved — you saved it! But maybe now that village becomes an objective for another player; maybe something has to be done now because that village wasn't destroyed. And so on, and so on, and so on. Building those mechanisms to make it a world that reacts to a player's actions instead of existing in a static state. That's the world we're talking about."
I'm not a programmer, so I don't really understand, why is it so difficult to have objectives that stay completed after you've completed them? Can someone enlighten me as to why that's a step that's still forthcoming?
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
With all this talk about doing away with instancing, I'm surprised they didn't mention EVE Online. EVE has *ONE* world for all the players. Granted, it can make it mighty laggy for large engagements, but most of the time it's fine. Missions are "instanced" insofar as they are randomly created when you get them, but they can be discovered by other players using scanners, so you could conceivably have complete strangers swoop into your mission and rob your loot. Annoying, yes, but it adds tremendously to the feeling that you're part of a larger world.
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It's hard to make this work in a way that doesn't allow the world to deteriorate. How does all the stuff that players destroy get repaired? Probably by a huge number of NPCs working very hard around the clock. The NPC AI's need persistent state, too. They need to learn from experience, so they will rebuild better defenses. Walls are built stronger. Weak points are plugged. Overlapping fields of fire are set up. Obstacles to slow up assaults go in place. Towers are built to be mutually supporting. Checkpoints where players must disarm are put in place. NPC guards discover flanking tactics.
The day will come when the NPC AIs get smart enough to realize that the players are ruining their world and band together to exterminate the players.
Not that anyone is under the illusion that actual Role Playing was ever strong in MMOs, but the fact that the world is mostly static really has always killed it for me.
Originally, Ralph Koster (whatever happened to him after SWG?) had this idea for Ultima Online in which the world was completely dynamic. Animals and monsters could go extinct because of player interaction and they would interact with each when none one was around. You would walk around in the forest and see a wolf attacking a rabbit or a cat eating a rabbit and so on.
Natural resources were limited and you could mine a mine out ore.
Of course there was a period of time when UO got quite barren because of this but I don't think they thought it through.
Suffice to say Ralph went on to other jobs and the Ultima Online live team kind of turned his vision into something else not as interesting. Despite all that UO still remains fairly non-static in his AI behavior in its NPCs. I always enjoyed having to talk to my vendors instead of using a graphical interact (I like muds like that) and all the other MMOGs seemed quite gamey compared to it.
Shame no one is trying something as bold again instead of making another EQ/WoW clone.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I like the idea of persistence in virtual worlds, and I think the idea should be expanded further to a player's character as well. Why should your character suddenly vanish when you log out and stop playing? I'd love a game where you could write scripts to automate your character's behavior so that when you log out it can continue to do things like buy and sell items, perform mundane upkeep tasks, and even interact with other PCs in some meaningful way, like taking messages for you or automatically delivering messages to your friends when they log on.
Persistent worlds? Who cares! How about being able to play with your friends! The mainstream MMOs have no way for you to play with your friends once they've chosen the wrong server.
What's the *first thing* you ask someone when you learn they play wow?
"What server?"
How often has the answer been disappointing? So far, 100% for me.
How about a game where the player that achieves the great status becomes the next target for the player behind him? Good/evil alignments would fight each other for mobs/quests and higher status players become higher level targets. Roleplaying could become a bigger deal and make more sense. Keep track of everyone that has anything to do with _MOB_X_ and if those players associated all quit, bring _MOB_X_ back into the game, recycled like. heck, have quests where you bring 20 healers with you and resurrect _MOB_X because you are aligned the same as that mob. I think there are numerous ways to handle it,but I suppose it comes down to development time/cost..
I haven't tried America's Army. Do the players on one team appear different to the opposing team than they do to themselves?
I suggest that while my character appear as a normal human character TO ME that to anyone assigned to an opposing quest I appear as a regular orc.
That way, you would never know whether the monster was machine AI or human driven.
You can also extend this to larger groups. The Knights of X appear as human to each other and themselves ... but to the Heroes of Y they appear as various monsters. And the reverse is also true. Even to the various villages and castles that they occupy.
The only problem with this is that a quest to kill 5 orcs can be VERY difficult for new characters. Those "orcs" could be veteran players with years of experience (and items).
The solution is algorithmic in that these games should be able to support a non-entropic reality and introduce things on their own.
I know that's much easier to say than do, but perhaps the bar is set too high to do this now - particularly on a planet wide scale. Maybe it should be tried at a city or small town level first before trying to do it all at once.
If things were dynamic enough, the developers wouldn't have to plan huge expansions of meaningless quests - ideally, these quests should form on their own based on the changing social-political situation in-game. Solutions to the computer-generated quests should also be up to the players at hand. Oh no, there's a Big Magic Dragon! Should we use magic or spears to kill it, how many people will we need, etc.
One of the most disappointing things about MMO's to me is the fact that NOTHING matters. It's an empty experience but for the social interaction with the other players. Most of the quest solutions are online anyway, there doesn't seem to be much of a sense of true adventure. True adventure involves risk of the unknown and there's damned little of that in an MMO game.
I think that games like Spore will prove (at least to some extent) that this is possible now. The first company to apply Spore-like persistence and algorithmic flexibility to MMO's will do incredibly well.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
The biggest problem is, they're underestimating just how fucking fast players will progress through the content. If there are milestones like quests to be met, the players will figure out a way to pass by them at light speed. Even if you have ten thousand canned quests ready for deployment as soon as the first batch is completed, they'll be gone in a month at most.
Someone pointed EVE Online out as a truly persistent world. I'd like to add Ultima Online to that list. Both have only the barest NPC interaction: there are mobs to hunt and kill, and merchants to deal with, both of which can be bypassed by a mature-enough player-base. The only 'quests' are specific GM-run events that are more complex than 'harvest five bear asses' or 'serenade the Princess for Cyrano'. Everything else is a sandbox. Players create their own storylines, fight their own wars, and build their own merchant empires. There's no need for a traditional dungeon master because the server is smart enough to handle simple math like combat, and the only real social interactions occur between players, not players and keyword-driven mobiles.
Then, you'd have an MMORTS with a persistent world. This MMO paradigm would not work-- how many MMO players that also enjoy RTS will play WoW if this style of play were implemented? If players HAD to choose between factions/racial ties in ANY MMORPG, then how much fun would you have if the developers scripted Racial Wars, caught you off guard while you were hunting the dreaded FatBack Beast, and you were surrounded by a horde of Dark Orks? All by your lonesome?
It'd be a trick, but if personal world view said you needed the Galactic Presidential Ring and you set forth to acquire one: campaining the Galaxy for a Galactic Year, and swearing the Galactic Code of Ethics at the Inauguration Ceremony, only to find out once you arrived in the Oval Office, that someone else got there first and acquired the ring for themselves?! I'd be so upset and angry (and other similar expressions), that I'd e-mail the developers and tell them exactly what I thought of their [fill in your favorite colorful expletives here] game, and to refund ALL of my monies that I invested in my character, *AND* to delete that character and my account!
Can these developers truly do this, and keep up with our voracious appetites for online content? I, IMHO, would believe that they would rather botnet their own servers with ads for their own sites, because it would be simpler, than to add this kind of "world memory".
Ideas... Anyone?... Anyone?...
Well, yes, obviously a quest-generating AI will have problems. But the solution here is probably to have the world (more likely the zone or sub-zone) be a finite state machine. In any given state, there is a quest (or two) to be done, and the completion of that quest (or quests) leads to a different state and a new set of quests. Eventually you cycle back to the first state.
You could also transition to different states depending on which way the quest goes.
But there should be unique items, a few of them so rare and so powerful that whoever comes to wield one of them will be like a demigod in that world. Players will form factions, armies, to steal just one of these items from whoever currently has it. (And it will take an army to get it.) Players will betray each other to get control of one of these items.
Also, it should be possible for a character to really die, and stay dead--not just respawn. Once dead, a character should become a ghost, who can roam the world, chat with other players, and contribute in minor ways to a party, perhaps as a spy. Then governments will form. Good players will unite to protect newbies and others from player killers, and a justice system will spontaneously develop.
The problem with the "everyone is a hero" mentality is that it not only makes for a wildly inconsistent and boring world, but it also fails in its objective. Seriously, can anyone out there claim that they felt like the hero after doing a quest that a thousand other people have done? Do you really feel the hero when you ask on chat how to save the princess and someone LOLs about how easy that quest was? The "you are a hero" quests are as mundane as any other quest.
Personally, I think MMORPG should realize that the MMO part is supposed to mean something greater than making a really tedious single player where other people also play. I personally think that many people would be far more interested in a changing and dynamic world than a world of dozens "you are the hero!" quests that everyone and their dog has done.
I think that the biggest problem is that MMORPG makers are afraid to have people lose. They want you to always feel like a winner, and as a result the game becomes very dull for many people. There is absolutely nowhere to go in an MMORPG but up. I am not advocating massive exp loss or anything of that nature. People hate that sort of thing because they hate to grind. What I am advocating is a world that can turn for the worse. While you are at it, maybe it is time to rethink the absurd exponential power curves that forces content segregation.
Consider:
Forget the mechanics for a moment; just imagine an MMORPG built upon the principle that all people should be able to enjoy the content. That means instead of having to make content for each 5 level slice, content is there for all. It might mean that you need to rethink "power" and âoeprogressâ in the game.
Now, you have a game where everyone can participate in content. Now imagine a threat arises that is dynamic and moving. Instead of the "threat" being a new area spawned in that you can go to and spawn camp at, imagine if it was a living and moving thing.
So, letâ(TM)s take the classic zombie horde. The threat is a zombie horde. It starts at one end of the world and moves to the other end. As it kills it grows. It moves slowly, but it clearly moves. As it moves into an area, zombies wander in slowly. When resistance is met, zombies start heading that way. Any prolonged resistance results in a horde concentrating. So, if you defend a town, you can hold it for a while, but after some time you get swamped and either need to flee or get reinforcements. Even if you do not resist, at some point the zombie population gets thick and everyone dies.
Make it so that there are no-win scenarios. You can hold a town for a time, do so damage to the horde, but in the end you WILL lose. The best you can do is do some damage and fall back.
So, the players keep fighting and falling back. Perhaps they make some valiant last stands in various popular cities, but in the end the cities are conquered one by one. If the players fall back effectively, do damage as they retreat, than at some point they might thin the horde enough to actually hold a city. Instead of being swamped in a few days, they might just find themselves in a long term siege that lasts weeks or months. Other players might try and fight supplies in, while others fight from the walls, clean up sewers, and clear out zombies that slip in. Maybe after a time the momentum is reversed, and the players are able to push back the zombies and reclaim land.
Of course, things could go the other way. The players could be pushed back and pushed back until there is nowhere to go. The world could end and the game starts anew with some different challenge facing it.
Some people will hate this type of game play. Some people want to win every time. Other people will love it. I don't know about you, but the idea that you could actually lose is thrilling. A desperate retreat fight back to the center of the empire, losing city after city sounds a shit ton more exciting than farming NPCs or doing save the princess quests. Do I g
Create a bidding system for quests. People or groups which want something done can offer money to have it done.
Put identity in the browser.
It worked amazingly in Asheron's Call for numerous storyline climaxes, or plot changing events. The Shard of the Herald event where players had to choose to either defend or attack the last of six soul crystals which if destroyed would release Bael'Zharon, a monster so epicly badass that he nearly destroyed an entire civilization of mages 100x as advanced as the magics available to player characters. Most storylines had such major pvp events as the culmination of whether the story goes one way or the other. It very nearly happened one time where the devs had to come up last second with a new storyline to go with but at the very very last second things went the way the original storyline writing had it written down as.
Good post!
I've thought about this myself and came to exactly the same conclusion. I'd put the matter only a little differently: The question is: When will we write AI that can do all the work of a competent human game content developer? I expect it will take a while, but not forever.
Surely, there will initially be some cheating. So maybe when you kill an orc, it will indeed stay dead, but another orc will spawn elsewhere in the forest, waiting to be found by another adventurer. I would love it if we tried to simulate an actual ecosystem that simulated (among other things) the conception, birth, feeding, etc. of orcs, but that would have three problems. One: It's just asking too much of the AI. Two: It would reveal how ecologically incoherent most of the classic "dungeons" in rpg's really are (even by standards of fictional ecology, orcs must consume so many calories each day, shit somewhere, etc. They're not going to be having lives in some single room in a dungeon.) Three: Such a system, even if it were relatively stable without PC interference, could easily be corrupted hopelessly by the actions of some powerful player characters. Destroying is much better suited to the activity of a PC in a CRPG than is building. Destroying is faster. Cutting down a tree is much easier than making one grow.
All current and future CRPGs must find a way to set back up the knocked-down bowling pins, or set up different bowling pins instead. If a group is bent on deforestation or depopulation of a country, and the game must replace what is killed in a natural way, there will soon be no more trees nor NPC humans.
Of course, systems could be introduced that prevent such actions. Repairer druids might magically regrow lost forests, but who will generate replacement villagers?
What's attractive about "adventure settings" is that they are in a context of very weak central institutions (so they leave space for adventure) with potentially powerful individuals. There are no "adventurers" in Singapore, because there, even spitting on the CCTV-watched street gets you in trouble. That's one way to prevent chaotic rampagers, but the four classic role-playing world types (middle-age w. spells, western, war & post-apocalyptic) are not chosen by accident. They're settings where individuals are not under the yoke of a central authority. For fans of Firefly: The protagonist adventure-group does their work on the outer planets exactly because central control doesn't extend that far.
My point is that it wouldn't be an adventure game if it were in a setting that prevented individuals from devastating rampaging. This means that such settings are inherently unstable. (Usually, strong governments elbow in and stamp out the "adventure space" - for the most part.)
So even a perfect AI would not be able to impose stability on an inherently unstable, fully simulated situation. Adventure settings are paradigmatically not in equilibrium.
I usually don't post that as a title, but the parent post should be modded up. I'm also a professional MMO developer, not posting as an AC. The whole "players want 'entertainment'" bit is something I'm filing away to explain to other people.
The poster is also exactly right about the whole "hero" thing. Most people have a tremendous capacity for self-delusion. Even if I have to stand in line behind all my friends to release Sharpbeak, the game is still rewarding me for a specific "heroic" action. Or, think of it this way: if you rescued a little girl from a burning building, would everyone say, "Big deal, thousands of people have saved thousands of victims from burning buildings before." The fact that the world goes back to a steady state in an MMO doesn't mean your actions are any less heroic. They're just not unique, and people are fine with that. And, especially with things like instancing, you don't even have to compete with other groups to accomplish your heroic goals.
From the grandparent post:
"MMORPG are afraid to have people lose."
The parent poster is right, this is because people hate to lose. There's a thread about permadeath in another part of this discussion. Know why permadeath is never done? Because it's the *players* that scream loudest when this is brought up. They don't want to contemplate the thought of losing their hard-earned character, even if the game isn't designed like that. Most games are designed to have people invest a lot into a character. If someone tries to go against that particular bit of groupthink, then they're accused of "hating the players" or "caring more about experiments than fun".
The real reason why we see people clone DIKU MUDs/EQ/WoW is because the players are demanding that we make more of the same. There are some interesting alternative games out there, including Meridian 59 which I own, but people pass them by. M59 is a brutal PvP-focused game where you can lose just about everything you've worked for, and then some. And, because of that, it has a lot of trouble attracting and retaining players. The reality is that nobody is going to drop even $10 million (let alone the $50 million WoW cost) to build a game if nobody will play the game that cost a few hundred thousand to build. So, we keep seeing the same games that don't take risks and don't let players lose all they've worked for.
Anyone willing to invest in something different can contact me through my blog at http://www.psychochild.org/. I won't hold my breath. ;)
Some insight from another MMO developer,
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog