Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Random Zone Events

    • 115 posts
    February 23, 2018 10:35 AM PST

    Was thinking it would be cool to have random Zone-wide Events.

    * The time between Zone Events would be completely random. Could be anywhere from multiple times a day to once a month (depending on the event, and the zone).
    * When a Zone Event happens, the event would be chosen from a pool of pre-made events. (See below for a few examples of what could be in a pool)
    * The events never happen in the zone in the same place back-to-back (so you will never know exactly where it will be before it happens). In other words, there could be a bunch of Zone Event "spawn points".

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    Example Newbie Zone XXX (Pool number 3 - Up to 10 times a day, never less than an hour apart)

    * Chat Window Text: "You hear an Orc Horn to the South-East" (depending on which way you are currently facing would determine the direction.. could be North, or South-West, etc) Players within the general vicinity would get that message, and actually hear a loud horn. Players not near would see a different message (and the sound of the horn would be very faint) "You hear an Orc Horn in the distance. Possibly to the South-East".

     

    * Event: A band of Orcs are invading the city/settlement nearby.

    * Event Logistics: The Orcs will be temporarily hindered by spawned guards. If left unchecked by player characters, the guards will fight them to the death. The Orcs have a 70/30 chance of winning against the guards. Any remaining Orcs will proceed to the city/settlement and be dispatched by (stronger) guards at the city gate.

    * Event Reward: Double faction points awarded for every killed Orc you helped (or assisted) on.

     

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    Example Newbie Zone XXX (Pool number 6 - Up to 10 times a day, never less than an hour apart)

    * Chat Window Text: "You hear faint crying" . A small NPC child spawns crouched behind a rock, tree, etc., and will only spawn outside of (all) PC's line of sight. If there are no characters present in the area with sufficient perception, the event will be skipped. (This event has three possibilities)

     

    * Event Possibility 1: A young girl lost her way, and needs help getting home.

    * Event Logistics 1: Speak with the girl and help her get to where she needs to go (she will follow you with the right text).

    * Event Reward 1: Upon reaching the destination (her house, etc), a parent or guardian issues a reasonable reward (money, faction, or an appropriate item, etc).

     

    * Event Possibility 2: A young girl lost her way, and needs help getting home (twist).

    * Event Logistics 2: Speak with the girl and help her get to where she needs to go (she will follow you with the right text). In this version of the event, she is actually a thief and takes off in a random direction with 1/2 of your, or a group-mates carried money after a short time. She is fast and slightly outruns PC's. If you follow her, and lose line of sight, she will run behind a tree, rock, etc., and after 5 seconds, she will disappear. If you manage to keep up with her, you will find her, and her stash.

    * Event Reward 2: The stash. Not only do you get your money back, you get a level appropriate amount of coin in addition.

     

    * Event Possibility 3: Looks can be deceiving.

    * Event Logistics 3: Speaking with her, you discover the young girl.... is actually not girl at all. Once the initial dialogue completes, she turns into a formidable monster, and attacks. 

    * Event Reward 3: Mob drops level appropriate reward. A successful perception check will yield a better, or multiple rewards.


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    In the above examples, this Newbie Zone XXX's pool could have 15 different possible events that could happen (only two examples listed). One event would be randomly chosen at a time, and there would be no more than 10 per day with a minimum gap of 1 hour between them. Further, the perception system could be factored in on many events (as shown above).

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    Doing something along this would break up the monotony of day-to-day grinding, add some diversity, and make the world feel alive.

     

    • 173 posts
    February 23, 2018 10:51 AM PST

    I have always like this type of content.  I have seen it in a few games, but I liked it best the way Rift implemented it.  My wife and I managed to lvl alts all the way up just chasing the rifts.  Good times.

    • 115 posts
    February 23, 2018 10:54 AM PST

    Aarpoch said:

    I have always like this type of content.  I have seen it in a few games, but I liked it best the way Rift implemented it.  My wife and I managed to lvl alts all the way up just chasing the rifts.  Good times.

    I like Rift too, but the one thing that bugged me the most about it is the Rifts are always in the exact same spots. Should have been a zone-wide random location (even in cities, etc).

    • 56 posts
    February 23, 2018 11:00 AM PST

    I'm entirely on board with anything that makes my play session unpredictable. I know there's an element of satisfaction in mastering and beating content, but I'm sure this could be incorprated without removing that.

     

    I've only ever programmed (entirely entry level beginner totally noob basics) as a means to make art for little gaming apps or homegrown games that barely functioned, but one thing that I tried that I would have always loved to see a real programmer tackle were these little roaming invisible encounters. I used invisible NPCs pathing around that worked as a trigger if your character bumped in to them. I could only make them trigger text with options and basic resolutions - traps/rockslides/falling tree, a broken down wagon,a  mysterious fountain, brigands, puzzles etc, but I have always wondered how something like that with actual non-text events would play out in an MMO environment when implemented by a pro. You may not even know you've triggered something as it may 'spawn' in a different part of the zone in some cases. Obviously it would have to be tuned to the appropriate rate of events, but I really like the idea of 'random encounters' in an MMO.

    It seems to me like the potential for some version of that would be incredible.

    • 173 posts
    February 23, 2018 11:15 AM PST

    Bonechip said:

    Aarpoch said:

    I have always like this type of content.  I have seen it in a few games, but I liked it best the way Rift implemented it.  My wife and I managed to lvl alts all the way up just chasing the rifts.  Good times.

    I like Rift too, but the one thing that bugged me the most about it is the Rifts are always in the exact same spots. Should have been a zone-wide random location (even in cities, etc).

    That would have been awesome.  To see  rift drop down right in the middle of a city lol.  Just as funny as the occasional player from a rival faction see how far they can make it into the city before getting killed haha.

    • 3237 posts
    February 23, 2018 11:17 AM PST

    Aradune mentioned that we will in fact have an "event system"  --  he shares some details (Example: Hill Giant vs Storm Giant War) here: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3564/quick-switch-for-gear/view/page/9


    This post was edited by oneADseven at February 23, 2018 11:19 AM PST
    • 1714 posts
    February 23, 2018 11:20 AM PST

     

     

    In GuildWars 2 these events became a joke in the first couple of days. They're the same thing over and over and over. If an "random event" pulls from a bucket of a few events and happens 10 times a day, you're going to see the exact same event repeated many times. That's not fun, imo. 

    Longer cooldown random events could be cool but I think this is an idea that's easy to fall in love with while in reality its impelmentation can leave a lot to be desired. 


    This post was edited by Keno Monster at February 23, 2018 11:23 AM PST
    • 769 posts
    February 23, 2018 11:25 AM PST

    Krixus said:

     

     

    In GuildWars 2 these events became a joke in the first couple of days. They're the same thing over and over and over. If an "random event" pulls from a bucket of a few events and happens 10 times a day, you're going to see the exact same event repeated many times. That's not fun, imo. 

    Longer cooldown random events could be cool but I think this is an idea that's easy to fall in love with while in reality its impelmentation can leave a lot to be desired. 

    Agreed. Not sure how RIFT did it, but FF14 had much the same issue. The events happened way too often to be special. 

    If this is something they're adding, that'd be great, but I'd prefer they be uncommon, rather than common. 

    • 1315 posts
    February 23, 2018 11:35 AM PST

    187 beat me too it but yah Brad has mentioned the intent to put events in the zones.  They will most likely be fairly time consuming to test and create but are the perfect type of thing to add over time after launch before the first expansion.  Assuming that the art assets were already created at launch its just about designing and testing dynamic AI and spawns.  I honestly have no idea just how complicated of AI trees that Unity can accommodate, that might be a question for one of you programmers.


    This post was edited by Trasak at February 23, 2018 11:36 AM PST
    • 3237 posts
    February 23, 2018 11:39 AM PST

    The events in FFXIV were pretty lame and definitely left a lot to be desired.  They took the Behemoth encounter which was one of my favorites from FFXI and turned it into a massive event with minimal risk vs reward consideration.  They butchered an iconic NPC when they did that.  The rarer the events, the better, IMO.  I don't want to see events for the sake of having events.  They should all be meaningful.  Every single event should feel significant and players should feel fortunate to take part in them.  I really like the way Brad described his plan for this system ... every detail resonated with me, big time.


    This post was edited by oneADseven at February 23, 2018 11:40 AM PST
    • 363 posts
    February 23, 2018 2:15 PM PST

    The events in Rift were, if anything, way too frequent. I know it was part of the story and all, but it got to be a royal PITA at times. Random zone-wide events would be cool, just not have them happen all the time.

    • 120 posts
    February 23, 2018 3:23 PM PST

    I super support this kind of idea. Zone wide events in EQ (quest events) were some of the most memorable gaming experiences of my life. I also hear the concerns about copout systems that just spawn the same event on a timer. Linear, predictable, repetitive events will not do. This one is all about the level of creativity VR puts into the planning and implementation of the events. There have been some neat threads full of ideas, everything from weather events to wandering dragons to, like was mentioned, the war between the giants. And of course we need lots of awesome Perception related events.

    Oh and one more thing; if you want events to be memorable they need to have multiple outcomes. It doesn't feel special participating in an event if the outcome is always the same. I like the idea of an event ending in success or failure based on player contribution rather than the fire giants beating the ice giants once per day ad infinitum regardless of how many players participate.


    This post was edited by Xbachs at February 23, 2018 3:30 PM PST
    • 120 posts
    February 23, 2018 3:29 PM PST

    double post...


    This post was edited by Xbachs at February 23, 2018 3:29 PM PST
    • 132 posts
    February 24, 2018 3:59 AM PST

    I support the idea i do hope events are somewhat rare or a chain of events  starts that triggers random enemys or bosses  to keep them fresh. 

    Other mmos i agree had them too often Rift Gw2.

     Perception system and weather are good things to trigger events. 

     I liked Eso version  random enemys and bosses can appear and  were up only once in awhile. 

    I didn't like the fact that they spawned in the same places over and over and ended too quickly. 


    This post was edited by Kiera at February 24, 2018 4:02 AM PST
    • 411 posts
    February 24, 2018 8:04 AM PST

    I would like these scripted events if they were large scale, irregular, and well done. In Rift they were regular enough that you could just go from rift to rift, which I think was by design, but as a result they certainly weren't special. I still remember being very surprised to see the EQ velious event, but I'm not sure how much of that was based on my lack of game knowledge. In Warhammer Online they likely spent a lot of developer effort to create a vast number of scripted events, which were objectively well done in my opinion. However, they lacked impact because they just repeated ad-nauseam. I would love to hear from those devs and listen to what lessons they learned if I were a game dev trying to design scripted events.

    I think they could get a lot of bang for their buck with smaller unscripted "events" of sorts. Noctural creatures could be are more alarmist/flighty/weak during the day while diurnal creatures more bold/strong/faster. Even just random unexplained power swings with whole populations of enemies could add some variety. One day the kobolds of "Kubal's Cave" could be in the 12-17 level range and the next day it's all 16-17, but it would just be some simple scaling of numbers. Nothing that really needs to have a huge impact, just enough to get players to say "hey, _____ is occuring so let's be aware of that going forward". I'm excited to see what Zippyzee has been working on and if anything like this is in the game or planned already via AI.