[MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)

[msew]

At 11:46 02/25/2001 +0000, Chris Lloyd wrote:

>> You don't really need to know that information is the problem.  It
>> is just some content maker's generated minutia.  It is utterly and
>> completely pointless in the game environment.  Knowing that little
>> timmy once had a long lost grandfather who was in fact a great
>> magician who first created the item blah blah blah blah, doesn't
>> matter one bit.

> No, no, no, no. This was the entire point that people have attempted
> to make. Some people DO want to know this. It goes hand in hand with
> the background story, the map of your world, and the rest. Some
> people really would like to know why Jane is standing in that
> dungeon, why Boffo wants his magic axe back and how he lost
> it. These are the roleplayers who care about the game world.

There is a significant difference between: why someone is in a
specific place in the game world vs a large portion of the life
history of everyone that affected that person to get them there.

ie: A mean troll stole my axe.  vs A mean troll stole my axe.  The axe
that my great grandfather once found whilst gathering blueberries in
the haunted forest of elderath.  He took that axe to the great wizard
zanzabar, wherein blah blah blah.  (ie little timmy SHOULD know about
everything he mentioned with a decent amount of detail)

Unless that background story has some impact on the game, then it is
just time wasted.  Unless Boffo has some over reaching significance in
the game, then knowing about some peasant's grandfather just really
should not matter in the game.  And if you are using NPC's as world
background information transmittance, ALL of it will be posted to some
website within 5 minutes of ANY player talking to the mob with that
data. And this means that talking to mob to get that info -> pointless
as there is a more efficient method out there.

There are a lot of people in EQ that listen to the quests and can
recite verbatim the quest and the stories behind it.  But you know
what: it does NOT affect the game at all.  It does not help you in
playing the game at all.

The ONLY thing in EQ's background story that was of ANY use was the
story about Miragul the arch lich and how he went North beneath the
ice.  We spent many hours looking for him during beta, then during the
first month of retail.  Not there (not implemented).  Then along comes
a patch and boom there he is, but once he was in the game his
background story didn't matter one bit.  Just another quest mob to be
smacked down, mob location noted, mob items noted, weaknesses noted,
strategy to kill him noted.  His background story and who he is
doesn't matter one bit in the game.  Only the items he has.

Now certainly, this is symptomatic of EQ's style of play, but over
time people just forget about the "why a mob is there" and just know
where it is and what it has.  Unless the game has "unique" mobs with a
unique generated story behind each of them and either that specific
mob is being killed off or there is a unique story _per_ character,
then I just don't see creating complex, interesting, interwoven
background stories as a valuable thing to do. (if you can generate
them by some code then they escape the economic cost of doing them but
I think you will lost consistency)

And now the economic question: What is the % of those players that
want to know all about each character they are talking to? How much
cash do these people bring in?  How much time does it take to make a
consistent background story?  How much times does it take to make
EVERY SINGLE quest consistent with the background story and also with
other quests that exist in the world?

ie: little timmy could really not be telling you a story about his
grandfather and the great wizard zanzabar being in the great sea and
at time T little suzzy snowflake telling you about her grandfather and
the great wizard zanzabar being in the emerald forest at time T.
Consistency will get harder and harder to maintain as people try to
reuse the NPCs and items and if the content generators are not
reusing, then you are not really making an interwoven world, just
random NPCs doing random things with random items and that is
pointless.

> At some later time, a group of players might want to set up a
> scenario where they really need a magic sword. One of them comes up
> with the idea "Hey, I know that Timmy used to have a grandfather who
> was a wizard, maybe he might know something...." and the
> quest/roleplay exercise begins. Good fun is had by all with much
> drunken celebrations later on, etc.

unless the players can affect what Timmy is going to say or are just
adding another layer of "fluff" to some newbie doing the sword quest.

  player uses some in game minutia to point newbie to the sword quest.

vs

  player uses some SELF generated minutia to point newbie to the sword
  quest.

What WOULD be interesting is if the players themselves were given the
ability to make their own quests.  To make a quest object that lists
quest mobs, lists passwords/keywords, lists rewards (that the high lvl
player supplies to the quest object maker).

> For example, there are two quests in your game world:
>
>   Quest A
>
>     Speak to Boffo, discover that Buffy is trapped in the tower,
>     travel to the tower, get in by slaying the guards/sneaking in
>     the back way, get to her chamber, talk to her, get her out of
>     the tower and back to the town, then receive the magic gizmo of
>     Thingie as a reward.
>
>   Quest B
>
>     Speak to Boffo, discover that Buffy is trapped in the tower,
>     travel to the tower, get in by slaying the guards/sneaking in
>     the back way, get to her chamber, kill her and take the magic
>     gizmo of Thingie.
>
> Let us assume that both of these quests take exactly the same amount
> of time, and have the same risk associated with them. You also get
> the same experience from sneaking in as you do from killing the
> guards, and the same for killing Buffy or getting her back to the
> town.
>
> I can do either of these two quests equally easily, and it takes the
> same amount of time and effort. If I want to be a 'bad guy', I'll do
> quest B. If I want to be a 'good guy', I'll do quest A. As far as
> the loot is concerned, it doesn't matter, but it matters to _me_.


Those quests are most definitely NOT the same.  Game state of Princess
Buffy was altered; she was killed!!!  That should be a HUGE deal.  If
choosing between killing a specific named mob is not a big deal, then
being the "good guy or "bad guy" is 100% based on how _you_ view
things.

killing Buffy could be a "good" thing to your persona or it could be a
"bad" thing.

The generated minutia is NOT determining how you feel; _you_ are.  And
more over there are no consequences to this quest at all, all of the
actions you take don't affect your character in the game world at all.
And because of that, the minutia is irrelevant.  All the quest was:
character gets magic thingie did some stuff that didn't matter in the
game world.

Flip a coin!  heads or tails?  heads I kill her tails I don't.
Doesn't affect me at all in the game world.  Next quest please!
*flips coin*

If you do not affect people in the game world then you get the
epidemic that exists in online games: the paladin grouping with
CLEARLY not paladin ideal-esque people and the age old excuse: "I am
converting them to be good."  or "I need to be with them so I can make
certain they don't do something REALLY evil."

>> Even hardcore RPers and people that "really want to get into the
>> game story" are, in time just, going to say: "this is the
>> thousandth quest I have gone on and I have never ever ever used any
>> of the story behind the quest for anything else in the game."
>> Quests == reward and that is it.

> Explain to me how anyone can become part of a game world, play for
> more than a few months, and not know, say, who the ruler of the
> country is, or how the wizard's tower came to be there. Even in some
> of the more hardcore PK worlds I've been to, most of the players
> seem to know the background story to a degree, and know the origins
> of their clan/their enemy clan.

LOL!  Go look at EQ :-) Lots of the players there are utterly clueless
on the EQ background and heck even in game "rulers", important mobs in
a zone, zones themselves, which zones are connected to each other, the
world map, etc etc etc.  Look at a lot of the muds out there too, it
is the same thing.

The more important question is: does it really matter?  Does that
information affect you in the game?

Certainly, it might help some people "get into the game", but one can
argue those people just lack imagination and need someone else to tell
them how to RP (which never works and they just end up speaking 18th
century english and think they are RPing).

If it does not help you in the game, then why bother with it?  Make up
your own religion, get your own followers, spread your own likeliness
across the world!  Leave a mark on the world BY YOUR CHARACTER and
your character's ideals, philosophies.  And your character and his
followers can ACTIVELY affect the game world, unlike little Timmy or
little Timmy's grandfather.

Question: which is more valuable for the game's livelihood?
Consistent created quest backgrounds that are all interwoven OR
Allowing your player base to create their own quests, own stories, and
generate content in the game?  (which is going to scale?)

msew



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