[MUD-Dev] Alternatives to PvP for sustainable fiction?

[Derek Licciardi]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sean Kelly
> Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 12:27 PM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: [MUD-Dev] Alternatives to PvP for sustainable fiction?

> Ultimately, a MMORPG world cannot survive on developer-created
> content.  No dev team can hope to keep up with ten thousand rabid
> players with no seeming need to sleep or eat.  Personally, I'm a
> proponent of the "the guy is dead he stays that way" and
> "so-and-so got the magic sword, this cave is now empty" approach.
> Resetting dungeons may provide entertainment for more players but
> they do so at the expense of purpose.  Why play a MM online game
> if all the content is designed for a single small group of
> adventurers?  I'd rather play Baldur's Gate online with my
> friends.  

I have to agree that a MMORPG can not survive with developer created
content alone.  To me the answer lies within the entire design of
the game server.  Questing engines are not even close to what they
need to be to accomplish what you are getting at.  AI needs to
provide not only good combat decision making, but it needs to
provide better peace-time decision making.  In Ultima VII or VIII,
Origin introduced the ability for NPCs to live out their lives using
a script.  The Sims allows NPCs to make a decision based upon needs.
This beginning needs to be expanded upon.  In the Sims, there was
very little feeling that the NPCs were trying to achieve something
other than filling their lowest need.  NPCs need goals and using
these goals they need option to achieve them.  Connect this with the
questing engine and you could achieve a potential content generator
that will out pace even your most starving and tired players.  To
me, the key lies in taking the current foundation and adding many
more layers of complexity and depth to it.  Then you have to turn
around and make that complexity add more complexity and depth and
automate the generation of personalized encounters for your entire
player base.  Easier said than done.

> In a MM world, not everyone can be heroes or adventurers.  There
> will never be enough dungeons and the exceptional people are
> hardly exceptional if every person in the game is just as
> exceptional.  Why save a town from a rampaging dragon if there are
> 200 other people just as brave standing there with you?  There is
> some fact of psychology where the more people who are present when
> something horrible happens, the less likely any of them are to
> help.  "Someone else will handle it."  Heroes are made by being
> the only ones suitable for a task.  Not a face in the crowd.  

Heroes by the standard in today's MMORPG means the guy with the
biggest weapon and best armor defeating some nasty mob.  To a
limited extent in UO it can be playing the most skilled smith or the
best tailor but these are most definately seen as substandard
heroes.  In the future MMORPGs, need to provide many positions to
become the definitive person in your position.  Trade positions,
Knights, Political positions(requires in-game ownership and a slew
of other systems), and Knowledge positions all must be defined
within the game.  Players must be able to measure themselves in many
different ways and measure others accordingly.  Geographic
boundaries should exist and allow there to be multiple people of the
same level of expertise.

Your pyramid of power and notoriety needs to have a broader point at
the top allowing it to serve a wider base of aspiring players.
Sadly in EQ, there really is only one goal, be the best combatant in
the land.  This leaves about 10 positions(one per class) at the top
of this pyramid with 2500 - 3000 people striving to be there.
Guilds have relatively little meaning and own absolutely nothing so
the positions at the head or as an officer have very little meaning.
Any notoriety usually comes to the Uber guilds that have
combatted(word?) the biggest and baddest monsters in the game.
Being the best jeweler in the game is certainly profitable, but it
carries no significance in the social world except as an inexpensive
guild service.  We look at the geniuses in our world in awe and
wonder how they withstood the time and effort required to become
masters of their craft.  In EQ and from what I know of AC this will
never be the case because these professions mean nothing to the top
eschelon of players if they don't relate to combat.  A player with
this profession is looked at as nothing more than a vending machine
with feelings.(i.e. you can't hit it when it won't take your dollar
bill)

> The obvious solution seems to be player-created content.  Anarchy
> Online seems to be taking the most obvious approach to this --
> split the player base into factions and pit them against one
> another.  DAoC and SB seem to be taking similar approaches.
> Ultimately, everything comes down to territory.  You have it, I
> want it.  I hear of a powerful weapon so I recruit someone to go
> and get it because I think it would give me an edge taking what
> you have from you, or defending what I have from someone else.
> But the main sweep of things is generally conflict between
> individuals, the people who support them, and the innocent
> bystanders.  >

One non-complete solution could be to create player driven in-game
content.  Allow guilds to give out quests.  Allow players to have
vendors and create an entire trading simulation in the background.
Connect this to your quest system and let the NPC vendors hand out
quests to players when they run low on a good.  Connect this with
the NPC AI and allow the NPC to make decision based on goals.  Allow
those goals to be focused on a player.(ie impress my boss type stuff
or even undermine his business) If done right, the entire trade
system in your game could be one massive autogenerated content that
the players established and control.  Connect it to your economy
right and it can be a large money sink as well.(the MUD admin in me
rears its ugly head.)

> I personally believe that a MMORPG cannot survive without
> conflict.  Call it PvP if you like but it wouldn't have to be
> actual physical combat, it could be political maneuvering, a
> popular game (Piers Anthony's Adept series), etc.  A game needs
> motivation that will drive its players to think creatively how to
> do something towards or for another group of players.  And the
> designers can give the occasional nudge and supply bits of content
> and unique this and that here and there.

> So I'm curious, first, to see whether I'm completely off the mark
> and second, to hear some discussion of how to create a sustainable
> fiction in a MM world.

I do not think you are off the mark.  Of everything I mentioned
above, I will adjust my statement by saying that the games out there
today have done a good job, given the business aspect of the new
MMORPG genre.  There will come a time where producing the next
MMORPG will be a 100 million dollar affair.  Technology constraints
and communication pipes won't be the dominating constraint on the
technology.  What the games industry hasn't figured out yet, is that
a virtual world that is as immersive as the real world could
generate billions in revenue.  The genre hasn't proven itself yet
and business is still under the impression that this is a niche
market with very little future once the FAD dies.  As a result, the
budgets for these multiplayer games have only been like the budgets
for single player games.  Give me 20 - 50 million and I can make you
a game that will do all of this that I describe above. (well myself
and a very large team could.)  Its amazing what gigabit LAN
backbones, Sun E10000 clusters and the most talented
programmers/content creators could do for this genre.  I am hoping
that soon there will be a MMORPG that has an infrastructure behind
it placing it in the top 25 most powerful datacenters in the world.
(Were talking rivaling what it takes to get UPS online, NASDAQ,
NYSE, or run any of the supercomputing research centers in the
world.)  When the technology aspect of the design process is no
longer the only concern you will see what you have asserted to.

Removing his vision goggles and getting firmly grounded in the grim
present.  Derek

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