I've talked about this at least twice this week now, so I might as well go ahead and just unload the Big Idea here for everyone to discuss. My only ask is for folks to please take the time to read the whole thing before you reply with your thoughts. I did my best to not make it super-long.
We've talked on these forums before about the concept of "dailies", and how we hate them. We've also talked about how we don't want to see a sea of quest markers everywhere we look. Many of us are looking to the Perception system to provide a better way of finding interesting stories to follow in the game, and for Pantheon to simply be less quest-driven overall. And for those of us who really thrive on a choose-your-own-adventure environment, that should be fine most of the time. We'll go out and get ourselves in all kinds of trouble one way or another.
However, let's be real about it. There's a lot of players who really *need* a little direction to get them started. You know the type. They're the ones who will log in and spend an hour looking for a group, not because they really wanted anything specific, but because they just don't know what else to do. And it's not that they're bad people or bad players. They're just not inclined to be self-starters. There are lots of those people. There were lots of them in 1999, in EQ, and there have been lots of them in every game since. And let's also be honest with ourselves - we all have days when we really hope someone else will have something else going on when we log in, so that we don't have to try to figure out what to do on our own, and we can just sort of go along for the ride.
With that said, I feel like it would be a good thing if Pantheon had some way to give people a starting point for an adventure when they needed one. Something to get them moving and get them out in the world, instead of sitting around shouting "LFG" for hours on end. Other games do this with meaningless fetch or kill quests, or worse, "dailies", but I think Pantheon can be smarter about it.
A little bit of MMO history. Dynamic content generation has been in MMOs since at least 2001. Anarchy Online launched with a mission system that would dynamically generate a small instanced dungeon. Star Wars Galaxies had mission terminals that would send players out to random locations in the wilderness to defeat a random set of enemies - in some cases, a lot of them. EVE Online early on had (and still has) something called "expeditions", where you'd randomly loot an item that would lead you to a dynamically spawned encounter at a random place nearby, or sometimes a chain of encounters. All three of these examples had their flaws to be sure (after all, it was the early 2000s), but the point was they provided players with something dynamically built and relatively interesting to go do, that could be completed within a short period of time, and which players could bring people along for - they weren't entirely solo experiences. And, they generally had enough variety that you didn't start to notice the templating unless you just did them over and over - but more on preventing that below.
So, why can't we do something similar in Pantheon, to help fill those gaps for players, to get them moving and get them out in the world and interacting with others instead of sitting in a place hoping for a group invite?
Imagine this scenario:
You log in late one night and notice that it's kind of a slow night. No one seems to be grouping up for the dungeon you wanted to do, and you only have about an hour and a half before you have to call it, so trying to put together your own group probably won't work, at least not given what you're seeing in the LFG window. Lacking anything else to do, you head over to the local NPC innkeeper and hail him. As you go through the conversation, he tells you about how there's been a wolf prowling outside own lately that needs to be dealt with.
.... or a girl that's recently gone missing from the village, and her family's offering a reward.
.... or a mysterious package that someone left that needs to be delivered to the next town over.
.... or how the local garrison has put a bounty out for the death or capture of Rondo the Fierce, a bandit who's been making a nuisance of himself.
.... or (insert generated scenario here)
Now you have a mission that you can choose to undertake! You'll probably need some backup, but pulling together a small group might be easier than getting into a dungeon. Plus, who knows where it will lead. Sometimes a wolf is just a wolf, you kill it, bring back its teeth, get a reward, and all is well.
Sometimes though, you might find a bloody satchel in the wolf's lair, with a letter inside that speaks of a sinister plot and a treasured artifact. Or perhaps the wolf isn't a wolf at all, but something else entirely.
So, that's dynamic content generation. Every time someone talks to that innkeep, they get a different adventure - or at least they would until the pattern used in procedurally generating the adventure started to repeat itself, but there's a way around that.
Here's the nuts and bolts of the idea:
- In NPC towns and villages (not just big cities), have an NPC who will offer players a dynamically-generated quest.
- The quest is generated for the player specifically, and remains until done or some period of time passes, so players can't roulette the quest giver to get a specific quest.
- The quest can consist of anywhere from one to five steps that chain together, all dynamically generated. That means even if last week's quest was also about delivering a package, it could end up somewhere very different this week.
- The quest can involve anything that makes sense. It can send you into a dungeon or to neighboring zones. It can involve finding specific perception triggers to advance. It can even ask you to talk to other (dynamically spawned) NPCs.
- The potential number of quests that can be generated is limited only by the number of templates that creative quest writers can feed into it.
- The templates used can be set by region, so quest givers in different zones use only the templates that are appropriate for their local area (there's no wolves in the desert).
- Once a player does the quest, that's it. There's no more for you from that NPC for a few days, at least. Want something else to do? Maybe try the next town over. Or maybe there's a different NPC, one for a specific faction, who might also have a task for you.
Why Neph thinks this is a good idea for Pantheon.
1) It gives players who need a little push something to get them out and following a short storyline.
2) It insures that players will have different experiences. Your quest might be to hunt down a wolf. Mine might be to rescue the villager girl.
3) It gives the game a way to include some small-group content without without forcing entire zones or portions of zones to be designed for that.
4) The restrictions prevent these quests from becoming a crutch for players to avoid doing full-group content, but give people flexibility for shorter play sessions or just a change of pace.
5) They can help prevent people from bottom-feeding to farm cash from lower level mobs, assuming that the rewards are balanced appropriately.
6) Over time, templates can be added to, retired, or updated, which will help the world feel like more of a living, breathing place, instead of a very pretty backdrop that never really changes.
Anyway, that is the idea I wanted to put out for consideration. You might love it, or you might hate it, or probably something in between. I'm not saying it would have to be done exactly like this - this is just my attempt at outlining it. But I think it's worth the community talking about.
So, could dynamic content generation be used in Pantheon?
Actually a lot of what you say here is similar to ideas I've rolled around in my head. I think as a world designer when dealing with the lore you have to have a main plot. It's almost like you are writing a novel. You need people to be aware of the plot but not force it down their throats. I liked the wolf example. I think in the not too distant future it will be a very good idea of the game engine itself to have a AI layer built specifically to handle zone or regional dynamic events or dynamic quest generation based upon key world criteria. I would like to do a lot of playing around with this in my game. However, I feel you definiltey want to have main paths for payers to fall into and fall out of then be nudged back that way. Outside of these "golden paths" you will have all kinds of possibilites. It would be really fantastic to have an AI Layer that was smart enough to take into account the tendencies of a player to generate relevant content for them when needed. I'll have to really think about this.
Good Post.
I could see this kind of system being utilized in Pantheon. I'd like the quests to have a sharable option, once grouped, in case I'd like to work on the same bounty as the others. Would be nice, too, if you know that these quests are often designed to be completed in a couple of hours. However, occasionally getting a quest that becomes something much larger (like epic-quality) is a rare possibility.
Maybe open up the "fishbowl" quests to the community to contribute to - if they have a neat, lore-friendly, encounter idea. Farther down the line, of course. (Fishbowl is a LARP term for random, fun, throw-away encounters to use. Usually placed in a glass bowl and pulled at random. *plays the More You Know theme music*)
I'm also hoping that eventually we'll see some kind of dynamic NPC population algorithm - like what they really wanted to do in the now dead EverQuest Next. Where maybe the goblins are tired of being attacked so they move away and later gnolls occupy the now abandoned space. Or they somehow get the help of the local orcs to help them for a time (which temporarily raises the encounter levels of the area.)
First, love the idea of being able to basically pick up a pick your own adventure book and play through it. Many tropy game animes usually have a help wanted board in the adventurers guild that serves as the primary plot hook and I see no reason something similar couldn’t be used.
Technologically I could see basic formats of Find, rescue, bounty or create. Each area will have its own “rare things” to go find, wayward farmers daughters to rescue, bandits to hunt down and bring back dead or alive, and some form of trade good that the area is either known for or needs. Each adventure can have its own Exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and denouement. As a programmer you could write a set of 10 generic examples of these for each of the four classes of adventures. When the adventure is taken up it randomly picks the combination out of a total of 50 different options then takes the local template and fills in the details. It will take some work to get each of them to flow into the next but it can be done in my opinion.
One of the biggest obstacles to this though is game world space. Spawning dynamic content just straight up takes in game map real-estate. Now imagine 100 players in the same zone trying to be a part of their own adventure. This could be mitigated by having them be group adventures where you need at least 6 people in your group to start it and so decrease the number of concurrent dynamic content needs. In SWG this was handled by the fact that the maps were bloody huge and realistically empty. Hopefully the Pantheon maps will be truly massive (Think every zone being 4 times the size of the Barrens in wow) to allow for both dynamic content and many many many points of interest to help with providing enough content in an open world.
Either way it’s a good concept and thankfully one that can be easily added after launch to help continue to flesh out the world even if it cannot be added at launch.
Pocket and adjacent dimensions are a staple of the fantasy genre. Environments (in the Pantheon sense) provide the perfect backdrop to having dimensional adjacency for various Environments that some classes can interact with natively, and all classes can access with consumables.
As far as simply having dynamic weaknesses and resistances, that's an expected feature. Being able to determine those ahead of time via Perception seems like a natural fit, but apparently is not a current design goal. A wasted opportunity, imo, but Joppa has confirmed they don't want Perception to be a combat skill. One path to innovation, poof, gone.
A certain amount of variation in stats, resistances, and things like size, appearance, location, and faction can offer some nice perks to replayability, especially in an MMO setting. That way it's not 100% identical every time you go to that dungeon.
My personal view on procedural quests is that they work great in Dwarf Fortress, and could work exactly the same in any persistent online world. Each and every aspect of any quest could be personalized, making it less of a walkthrough and more of a personal story. Doesn't mean there can't be milestone quests along the way that are common, but the path to get there can be unique per player. It doesn't take much, just a unique location here, a unique NPC dynamically generated there, selective visibility of interactive items.
Perception Pings can be race and/or class specific, as well as being stat triggered. A perception ping for a particularly high CHA halfling warrior might offer a quest that leads to a piece of gear that adjusts a skill that a warrior has that utilizes that Stat. And the door to that could be visible to only the character that matches the perception ping, but they pull their whole group into a temporary pocket dimension when they touch it. It's the stuff of novels. :)
Excellent post - I would say that even if I disagreed with it - very well written.
But I do *not* disagree I would love to see things like this. Content that is more than "go solo 10 wolves" but less than "take three hours to clear out a dungeon with a full group".
Adding to what you said - EQ2 had (and may still have) instant adventures. Rift had (and may still have) level-agnostic dungeons. Ways for someone that just logs on for an hour and wants to accomplish something to do so. Both had flaws. Both had *horrible* flaws and should not be emulated at all - but the basic idea was sound. Your suggestion is both less ambitious and far better thought out than either. As someone that may not *need* handholding (I have been doing these games for a long time) but who enjoys having some structure and the feeling that I am doing something for a reason other than pure selfish accumulation of money and levels I like it.
One tremendously minor caveat.
((Every time someone talks to that innkeep, they get a different adventure))
This will make it hard to find a group. Perhaps each day the adventure should be the same so if four of us happen to be in town we can band together to do it. Unless it is so short and so close to town that we can knock off all four fairly quickly but that runs the risk of wasting our hour on-line debating whose should come first and whose should be last.
Nephele said:So, could dynamic content generation be used in Pantheon?
I see plenty of merit in what you have proposed here. I have some reservations when it comes to certain details but I also understand that I'm not the typical gamer and that this kind of system could appeal to a wide range of players. We spoke about this last night but I'm going to try and get my thoughts down on paper in an effort to push the discussion forward.
I am a huge fan of dynamic content. Adding the word generation to the mix is where things get a little complicated, for me. When I think of dynamic content I think of the disposition system, atmosphere/climate system, and event system. The world is persistent, but it isn't static. Groundhog Day Syndrome is a very real threat to what a living and breathing world should feel like. The world should change from time to time ... sometimes on it's own, and sometimes based on the actions of the players that interact with it. At the same time ... it should be consistent. It wouldn't really make sense if your friend needs you to help him find the same girl that you just found last night. I understand that these kind of quests are going to exist in one capacity or another but I would rather see them used sparingly rather than featured.
The day/night cycle is a good example of how the world will consistently change. Weather is something that can fluctuate depending on the temperament of the zone or region. If you're in the desert it's probably going to be scorching during the daytime and frigid during the night. Depending on the effects of these conditions it would probably make sense to interact with this part of the world in different ways depending on the day/night cycle alone. This type of change is going to occur very consistently day in and day out and should affect both the players and the NPC's that inhabit the land. The next layer involves the weather itself. Sandstorms would probably be a semi-consistent phenomena that players would have to deal with regardless of what time it is. After that we would see the much rarer type of change which is rainfall. This could create a temporary oasis that would be attractive to both players and NPC's or a flashflood that has players frantically searching for safety.
I remain convinced that if Pantheon is truly group-centric and player-interdependent, we won't necessarily need to incentivize players to go out looking for things to do. If someone isn't a natural self-starter there is a decent chance that they will emerge as one out of necessity, and even if they are unwilling to do that, there will likely be plenty of others who are. Rather than interacting with NPC's at an inne to find their way, players would be reliant on eachother. If someone logs in and isn't sure of what they want to do, there should be a high probability that there is another player out there that would be eager to solicit their services. Players would be reliant on eachother for general adventure but even moreso when it comes to exploring the exotic and hard-to-reach locations sprinkled throughout the world.
Rather than helping an NPC find the same girl who keeps getting lost, I'd like to see more emphasis on players helping players. The world should be so challenging that leveling in and of itself is considered a major component of our overall journey. It should be more than a timesink or something that happens on it's own while players do "stuff." Players should be tested day in and day out -- the world itself is dynamic and players would be forced to learn how to adapt to it's ever-changing environment and landscape. Dungeon navigation wouldn't be as simple as knowing the path that is always safe to invis through. If players want to get to a specific destination, it might make sense to consider multiple routes depending on what time it is, what the weather looks like, who you're with, the kind of tools that are available, what kind of NPC's are in the way, and what kind of events have been triggered.
I see an endless amount of possibilities for player-driven quests as long as the game is truly player interdependent. I think the word "quest" has been butchered over the years. Questing implies that you are searching for something. When I think of a quest ... I think of a real sense of adventure and exploration. A journey that sees people venturing into the unknown ... to fulfill a void that is more perpetual than temporary. Tasks run counter to the type of adventures that I'm hoping to have in an open-world MMO. I don't want to be a courier for an NPC. I don't want to be the hero for every small village that needs some form of high-level pest control or easter egg hunting. I want the world to focus on challenging players more than rewarding them. I want adventure to be something more organic than planned. I really do see tremendous upside to having meaningful quests in the game. At the same time, I feel that questing in general would lose it's appeal if there is a never-ending supply of "generated" tasks.
Again ... I want to be clear in saying that I like your idea and acknowledge that many players would enjoy what it brings to the table. The underlying value is something that cannot be denied. The thing that I would want to see changed, though, is the idea that content would need to be generated. The content should always be there. Rather than players going to an inne and satisfying whatever tasks that are available, I'd rather see innes used as an organic hub of sorts where players converge. That convergence would be more out of necessity of needing to make a pitstop in a highly volatile and dangerous world rather than looking for something to do. If the game delivers on being truly group-centric and player-interdependent then there should never be a short supply of things to do. Players would need eachother for most things and I would rather see them trying to figure all of that out together than worrying about helping an NPC with something. Maybe that sounds a bit selfish but I consider NPC's that offer dynamic tasks as the enemy of the state. If they are capable of generating content that will occupy the time and effort of the fellow adventurers that I personally may want to group with for a real quest, that makes me resent them.
I hope this doesn't come off as too critical because that isn't my intention. I think we want the same things, in many ways. In this case, I think it would be better to focus on creating a really challenging world where players form their own quests. Just traveling from one zone to the next could be a challenge ... and it should be, but how long has it been since we have seen something like that in an MMO? I don't think players need an extra push from NPC's to guide them in a direction to go and find something. I do think that the game needs to be constructed in a way where players absolutely need to be pushed to group up with others. Anything that detracts from that is something I will view with caution and concern. I don't mind the idea of players being able to go out and do stuff on their own but that is something I would rather see players grow into, and be a result of them accomplishing things in-game that were 100% reliant on teamwork, coordination, and skill.
I want to go on a quest to help a rogue get their hands on a grappling hook. Once they get that, they will be able to get to a hard-to-reach area where they can then use their rope ability to help me join them. Then I want to continue that quest and find all of the other places in the world where that tool can be leveraged. I want to go on a quest that sees me struggling to find ways to get to a new area. Once I get there, I want to be confronted with challenges and obstacles that require me to spend more time in an area I visited awhile back that offered something of value that I didn't yet appreciate. I want to log in and immediately scan my friends list and see where people are and ask them what they might be up to. If opportunities to interact don't present themselves then I want to feel compelled to expand my network and find other players that can help me explore and adventure. I want to be given a chance to help others with something that doesn't feel exclusive to them based on an RNG variable attached to a template, or a stage on an extended timeline. I want the world to be spiteful with how dangerous it is and I want the community of players to be the dynamic template that I need to interact with. I want the every day struggle of growth and prosperity to be so challenging that doing the things that were often considered monotonous in the past (travel, grinding, hunting for a specific treasure) to feel fun, interactive, and meaningful.
I want my geese to lay golden eggs. I want a feast of cream buns and doughnuts and fruitcake with no nuts. I want pink macaroons and a million balloons with performing baboons ... I want it all, just like Veruca Salt did, and I want it 10 years ago when these things were rendered obsolete or tedious by the masses. I know this was a bit of a novel but I would like to shoot a question or two right back at you Neph. Is a dynamic/challenging world full of dynamic/challenging content and events interesting enough to serve as a template that could generate endless player driven quests? Do we really need an NPC to pick up the slack or can we see a return to the good old days where players take on the roles of mentor and merchant, adventurer and explorer, and where direction can be facilitated through player interdependence?
wildenightwolf said:I could see this kind of system being utilized in Pantheon. I'd like the quests to have a sharable option, once grouped, in case I'd like to work on the same bounty as the others. Would be nice, too, if you know that these quests are often designed to be completed in a couple of hours. However, occasionally getting a quest that becomes something much larger (like epic-quality) is a rare possibility.
Maybe open up the "fishbowl" quests to the community to contribute to - if they have a neat, lore-friendly, encounter idea. Farther down the line, of course. (Fishbowl is a LARP term for random, fun, throw-away encounters to use. Usually placed in a glass bowl and pulled at random. *plays the More You Know theme music*)
I'm also hoping that eventually we'll see some kind of dynamic NPC population algorithm - like what they really wanted to do in the now dead EverQuest Next. Where maybe the goblins are tired of being attacked so they move away and later gnolls occupy the now abandoned space. Or they somehow get the help of the local orcs to help them for a time (which temporarily raises the encounter levels of the area.)
Great idea about making these shareable - I confess, I hadn't thought about that, but it would go a long way towards allowing people to pull in others, and everyone getting the benefit.
I also like the idea of allowing the community to contribute ideas over time. There's a lot of creative players out there who could potentially come up with some very interesting scenarios.
Likewise, +1 on the idea of dynamic NPC population. I was really excited abbout that for EQNext, too.
Trasak said:
One of the biggest obstacles to this though is game world space. Spawning dynamic content just straight up takes in game map real-estate. Now imagine 100 players in the same zone trying to be a part of their own adventure. This could be mitigated by having them be group adventures where you need at least 6 people in your group to start it and so decrease the number of concurrent dynamic content needs. In SWG this was handled by the fact that the maps were bloody huge and realistically empty. Hopefully the Pantheon maps will be truly massive (Think every zone being 4 times the size of the Barrens in wow) to allow for both dynamic content and many many many points of interest to help with providing enough content in an open world.
Great point about world space Trasak. I think the way to handle this is to have a number of preset locations within the zone where things can happen (or where they can't happen). For example, if you have to talk to an NPC, they could be just about anywhere - but probably not in the middle of the ratkin camp. On the other hand, if you have to fight the wolf, there's probably only a smaller number of places in the zone where that would make sense to happen. I can think of a couple of ways to accomodate this sort of allow/forbid concept from a developer tools perspective, so I don't think it's impossible to do. The trick would be just to insure that the system has enough space to work with so that the various content locations don't become predictable over time.
Of course, none of that really speaks to the problem of concurrency - or what do you do when multiple people are all independently working on a quest that wants to generate the same encounter or content. So that's definitely something that would need to be figured out. But I don't think it's insurmountable.
dorotea said:One tremendously minor caveat.
((Every time someone talks to that innkeep, they get a different adventure))
This will make it hard to find a group. Perhaps each day the adventure should be the same so if four of us happen to be in town we can band together to do it. Unless it is so short and so close to town that we can knock off all four fairly quickly but that runs the risk of wasting our hour on-line debating whose should come first and whose should be last.
Great point dorotea. I think the shareability option that wildenightwolf recommended would actually go a long way towards addressing this. I'm leery of making it a "today's adventure" thing because that would mean that the first person to complete it could go out and post it on reddit, and suddenly people everywhere are flocking to do it.
oneADseven said:Is a dynamic/challenging world full of dynamic/challenging content and events interesting enough to serve as a template that could generate endless player driven quests? Do we really need an NPC to pick up the slack or can we see a return to the good old days where players take on the roles of mentor and merchant, adventurer and explorer, and where direction can be facilitated through player interdependence?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts sir. I really appreciate you taking the time to write all those out!
I recently took a personality test as part of a work thing (we do those sorts of things often in an effort to try and learn how to communicate with each other better), and my results came out to say that i am an idealistically-motivated realist. Which is to say, that I often have big, optimistic ideas, and then I end up tempering those ideas based on observations of people and systems. I say that so that you'll understand where I'm coming from in my response to your questions.
I absolutely support the idea of allowing players to serve as content generators for each other - or, as you put it, for direction to be facilitated through player interdependence. I believe in this goal and want to see it be true as much as possible. However, my own experience, even in the "good old days" tells me that this isn't enough. There's always an imbalance that prevents it from working for everyone - whether it's just that there's not enough tanks online, or that populations are spread thinly during off-peak hours, or whatever. There's always someone who ends up sitting on the sidelines through no fault of their own. I don't believe that players should have to do something as drastic as changing the class they're playing just to have a chance of finding something to do. Likewise, I also feel that there should be things that people can do with 2 or 3 others, and that don't require a full group to complete. I see dynamic content generation as helping to fulfill that need. I don't see it as replacing or supplanting player interdependency at all (in fact, in my head, you'd need some other players in order to complete the dynamic quests), but it would offer an alternative for people to pursue when it wasn't possible for them to get into a full group for some other, bigger goal.
There's a balancing act in my statement and I fully recognize that - so again, I totally respect where you're coming from and even agree with you that the primary activity in the game should be around shared objectives between players. I just think that the reality is that there will be times when things don't line up for people, especially those with more limited play sessions, and I think the game should provide something interesting and compelling for those people at those times, instead of leaving them hanging.
I hope that doesn't come across as overly philosophical! :)
I don't see why something similar to what you have suggested wouldn't be an excellent addition.
I've never been *against* the "Kill 10 wolves and bring the pelts to the armourer" quests as long as that isn't *all* there is and as long as it doesn't reward you as if you've killed a dragon for the queen!
Done right it would make the world of Pantheon a much more 'real' place. Just about every vendor probably *would* pay for adventurers to bring them new stock (though the reward would go down as his stock piles up). Just about every town *would* pay for adventurers to kill the nearby orc raiders (though the reward would go down as your attacks approach the chance of inciting an attack on the town!).
As long as this is in addition to the more carefully designed quests and more organic systems VR are making, then, yes, absolutely.
I've also never been against randomly generated (and even instanced! Shock! Horror!) dungeons, as long as, again, it isn't all there is and it isn't rewarded as well as the more challenging alternatives.
My personal feeling on the matter...I like and dislike the idea. As a mechanic described by the OP to me it just sounds like a repeatable quest which is what I want to avoid.
Don't get me wrong, I love dynamic quest/events but they are tricky to implement, a lot of the time to me they are over utilized have 3-4 events per zone. I mean it's an alternative to grouping and there are those who would prefer it to grouping but in my experience the only thing it did was discourage grouping in favor of those events. In ffxi they added a simular system with a method where you could trigger a special quest of sorts and was rewarded with exp after the required task was meant. Combine that with a level sync feature(a mechanic that allowed people to temporarily level down to another party members level in order to gain exp from lower level mobs) pretty much killed grouping at higher levels with people going the easy route. In ffxiv they had FATE's which were considered dynamic events and they largely went ignored except for a few key hotspots.
Personally I think less is more. In early FFXI, there was a dynamic event called besieged, if your intrigued in the intricaties of the event look it up, there is quite a bit to it. But essentially it was a dynamic event where hordes of monsters attacked a major city and the players success or failure to defend the city could have drastic effects on the region including certain special monsters appearing, npc's being captured, buffs that you recieved in that region and more. I stilled remember the day when I first experienced it, I was in the region and got a system message that hordes of monsters were making their way to the city, and litterally seeing a army of mobs marching to the city! Hundreds of players would gather at the city to prepare defenses, cobbling together parties on the spot to intercept the invading horde. Players used shouts to convey critical named monster locations, occasionally recieving system messages informing you of enemies attacking fortifications, complete organized chaos! But enough reminiscing...
The event and the severity of the attack was triggered based on a variety of conditions, too many for me to go into. Those are the kind of dynamic events I would look forward too, events that truly were dynamic and success or failure greatly influenced the game!
I think this is a pretty decent idea, but I'd like it to be more tailored towards small groups rather than solo undertakings. I'd say 3 players is the sweet spot.
So when you go talk to the innkeeper when you have nothing to do and receive your errand, that's your cue to look for a couple of people to help you with it and share the quest with them. You might just run into some like-minded individuals who went to the inn with the same idea as you. And even if you don't immediately find someone, getting 3 people together without needing specific class roles should not take a lot of time.
Should only allow players to have one of these quests active at a time regardless of whether you got the task yourself or if it was shared (complete or cancel it before you can get another task). This is for 2 reasons. First off it means less world space needs to be reserved, secondly it will result in the players returning back to the inn relatively quickly. So if someone is looking for a group there, they can team up.
I could see the perception system possibly spawning into a dynamic system someday.
I think the entire point of TPS is not knowing when something is going to come up. Eventually everyone will have the in-game TPS targets mapped out and will explain how to obtain them. If they could ever create a dynamic perception system it would be like a random quest generator that you don't know where it's going to even start -which is the whole point IMO.
I've talked about something similiar to this, but not in the sense of quests, but more like the world. I've stated a few times that one of the main failures in MMO's is constantly having expansions that expand the world. This either spreads the population to thin, or congregates most of the population to the newer areas leaving the old areas desolated, which in turn makes new players leave. So while I think expansion of the world is necessary, I don't think it needs to happen everytime, which is when I brought in the idea of a changing world rather than an ever expanding one. So it kind of relates to this.
In a sense, there will be triggered events where a criteria is met, whether that is in the same zone or different zones, and the event, or world altering event, happens. Kind of like how WoW did the AQ raid with having to open it, or The Hole with EQ. So you can have a ton of different events happening that you may not know about. This would be interesting when making an alt because there is a good possibility of something different happen that you haven't seen yet.
I am not a big fan of it. In my experiences, it always tends to make the game generic and lifeless to an extent (It was the main thing, aside from the horrible buggy unplayable release, that made me stop playing AO and why DDO became pointless to me), almost like the developers were trying to save time, so they threw everything into an algorithm to rubber stamp out content.
I see the potential it has, but I honestly don't see any company putting the enormous amount of effort into it to create truly dynamic content instead of a randomization pool of parts that lack attachment to the world. That is, I view it the same way I do "invisible wall" mechanics, as a blantant artificial experience.
I think I'd rather see the dynamic content be part of the world as a whole, rather than having a small group quest giver. Putting time and resources into a world where NPC camps move, traps and routes through dungeons or even regions change (heavy rains collapse a tunnel or cause a landslide in a mountain pass, for example), NPC's fighting rivals and increasing or losing their territory - all of these, imo, would be of more value. I understand the desire to offer alternatives, as I've also been LFG for the entirety of my allocated playtime on more than one evening. It's my sincere hope that the horizontal progression that we've been hearing about will help to alleviate the tension associated with those times. In truth, you could advertise for folks to go explore a region or area you've been curious about. You could also harvest, craft, fish, maybe work on a boat (when/if we get those), any number of things.
I like this concept as another option for players to get involved with... Again, this is to minimize not being able to find a group for a particular event / activity, which indicates the game might be limited in its design... Let’s hope this is not the case and we have a TON of activities we could do as other options if we can’t find the right group.
I am excited about what was said 30:00 minutes into the April Developer's Roundtable when Chris was speaking about events, dynamic content and adventuring and discovery. Sometimes you have to be in the right place at the right time. and the element of luck(31:00). I am supporting this and saying YES YES YES to this type of gameplay
I am the kind of player who likes to chase butterflies. To move away from the structured grind and at the same time promote adventuring, discovery and exploring is what is going to make me play every day. Don't have have time for a full dungeon crawl? How about logging and exploring for a couple day/night cycles and exploring.
Logging into the game and stumbling across a small event in the world that results in me being rewarded with a cool item, or a skill would be awesome. Random everyday luck is the big upside. I love an open dynamic world, no instances, meaningful exploration and travel. On a given day, when a person only has an hour or so to game, they can still do something meaningful and then logoff.
Exploration is meaningful to me, even if I don't get lucky, because the potential to be lucky exists, and that is addictive.
I agree with you, Caine. (Edit) You said exploration and chance to find these quests. That is good. Nothing static in towns that could become a daily quest.
Tigersin said:I agree with you, Caine. (Edit) You said exploration and chance to find these quests. That is good. Nothing static in towns that could become a daily quest.
Yes apparently there is something in the works. The Devs can barely contain themselves from talking about it. They really really want to talk about it. It like an itch they just can't scratch. Hopefully it is something that can work really well and promote the tenets of the game world.