[MUD-Dev] Mass customization in MM***s

[John Robert Arras]

On Thu, Jul 11 2002, Ron Gabbard <rgabbard at swbell.net> wrote:

> I've been trying to think of real-life examples where societies
> were engaged in a conflict and everyone got the opportunity to be
> a 'hero' in that they were significant in their contribution to
> 'the cause'.

<snip WWII examples>

> Can the infantryperson, platoon-leader, or factory-worker role be
> made such that it is significant, fun, and fulfilling in the grand
> scheme of things?

> I guess it gets back to the original question of whether the
> resulting game is one where the player logs off after each session
> feeling that they were significant or if the experience just
> didn't suck.  In other words, if the Fates were to go to the
> beginning of a character's life and cut the thread such that they
> never existed, would it make any difference whatsoever in the web
> of the world?

I think it can be done, but I wouldn't count on players to be able
to do this themselves. It comes back to the same idea I think MUDs
need to embrace: simulation. Massive simulation.

Simulation to the point that there are thousands of NPCs per
player. Those NPCs have goals and do things independent of whether
or not the players do anything. There have to be nations that direct
the NPCs independent of what the players end up doing.

The thing is that most of the NPCs don't have to think too
hard. They follow orders (go here and fight, make this item, get
this raw material) and they know just enough to move around in the
world and get their little job done. There would be a few
centralized AI's that control the allocation of these people into
different jobs.

How do players feel like they can contribute to the world?  They
might join the army and get assigned to a unit. That unit will have
orders independent of what the player does. If the player does well
in his tasks, then he may advance and get to the point that he can
form a unit of other players or NPCs. They may get to the point that
they have the ability to influence what military objectives are
pursued.

Players may advance in politics to the point that the can influence
the AI used to control their nations, but they wouldn't actually be
in control of the nations. (For reasons I will give below.)

How could they feel a part of the war?

What if the enemies send out a raiding party? The players happen to
be in the area and stop the raiding party or alert their side and
the raiding party gets stopped that way. What if their nation tells
them about the raiding party and asks them to go take care of it.

What if their side needs iron and their supply lines keep getting
cut between the mines and the factories? Then, they might ask the
players to go and find out who's attacking the caravans and stop the
raiders.

And you don't even have to simulate rumors or news dissemination
accurately. You can record events when they happen: Army X attacked
Y, Forces from Z patrolled in W, and so forth, and then feed them
back to the players as rumors. The players will have an idea where
the action is and they can go there and help out. They will feel
like they're doing something because if they find 10 troops and kill
or capture them, those 10 troops are actually removed from the
resources that the other side can use. So, the players do have an
effect.

I am also not a fan of having players controlling the world. Some of
my reasons are:

  1. I don't trust players not to mess up the world. If they get to
  be the rulers of a nation and they have a bad day, they could
  decide to destroy the nation before they quit the game forever.

    How often do players leave the game in a huff pissed off at
    something that happens? It happens a lot. If players get real
    actual control of the world, they can destroy the game.

  2. Either players matter or they don't.

    I don't think players should have to play 24 hours a day. If
    players can log out for 20 hours at a time (let's assume they
    play 4 hours a day), what happens during the interim?

    If whatever they're doing just carries on without them, then
    they don't really have that much power. Granted there might be
    other "clannies" who can take over for them, but then you're
    talking about something less than an individual hero controlling
    something significant.

    If they can't leave without really bad things happening to the
    things they've built up in-game, then they won't want to
    leave. The only people who will be able to hold positions of
    true power are people engaging in what I consider to be an
    unhealthy amount of gaming.

    If they can leave for 20 hours at a time and nothing bad can
    happen, then why can't they leave for 40 or 60 or 100 hours? 
    Heck, why not take the week off? I don't see how to have a
    player-driven world without running into problems from players
    not logging in.

  3. Giving players power over other players is bad. Maybe this is
  my NPC (Nerd Persecution Complex) coming to the fore, but I don't
  like the idea of people being granted in-game power to make my
  life miserable if they want to. It's ok if they just happen to
  come into power because they've played longer and have more
  friends in the game, but I don't want the designers to
  intentionally give them positions of power that are designed into
  the game. What if they give out suicidal quests to newbies who
  have no choice but to participate if they intend to get ahead in
  their alignment? I think it's much better to have an impartial
  (computer/owner) person controlling the game.

  4. I don't want to make a game where only a small fraction of the
  players can ever experience the "best part" of the game. If
  players are able to become the leaders of nations then those that
  start playing later won't ever get to experience that. The leaders
  who make it first will do their darnedest to make sure that they
  can't be overthrown over time, and will certainly gather power
  around themselves to exclude others. This goes back to point 3.

If there's a simulation, then anyone can come along later and make
their mark.

------

So, the question is how do you make the game compelling and yet not
unhealthy and dependent on the players?

The only way that I can think of is using massive simulation.

If you divide the world into a few opposing
teams/kingdoms/alignments, and make players work within those sides,
then you remove the problem of needing to be online all the
time. The player populations will fluctuate during the day/night
cycle, but if there are enough people and inducments (like bonuses
for kingdoms with few people online at the moment) people should
balance it out.

The players should be given quests that arise naturally out of the
simulation in the world. They get resources as needed. They raid
enemy camps as needed. They get "quests" based on whatever state the
simulation has to be in at the moment. That means whatever they do
actually counts for something even if it isn't very much from any
individual quest. This is the way it should be. They should get some
kind of "points" or reward for doing the right thing for their
kingdom. They might be able to use these points (as someone else
suggested) to influence their kingdom's direction, but they
shouldn't be able to control the kingdom.

These points could also be used to build things for the players
(like a house or castle) since they're using the resources of the
nation for their own purposes, so it should be paid for by helping
the nation.

An important consideration is that the simulation should be hard to
alter because it's so big.  However, given concerted, long-term
effort by a large number of players, a nation should be able to
alter the world.

However, this isn't my idea, either. This is implementing a lot of
the ideas from the archives in '97-'99 in the Resets, Repops, the
"orc breeder" and the "kidnapped princess" threads. I don't know if
anyone ever actually wrote code to do all of that stuff, but it has
a lot of potential.

My own game will be like this if I ever get enough areas built. I
intend to have about 100 people online max, but have 100,000+ mobs
that will live inside of hundreds of "societies". The societies are
grouped into a few "alignments" that fight each other. Within an
alignment, societies pay taxes to the alignment in the form of
resources, and those resources get paid out to other societies that
are struggling.  They build cities and set up defenders and raid and
patrol and assist each other, and they search for resources to use
to make themselves stronger.

Players interact with the world by getting "quests" by asking for
recent news. They might get told that X attacked Y recently, or that
some things from Z were spotted in area W. They might hear that a
new population of X has moved to location Y. They might find out
that a raid is planned against X, and that they could use some
help. They might hear that the alignment is in need of resource R,
or that a certain society needs resource or item R so that the
players should go take some of that resource to the society that
needs it. They players might hear that someone was taken prisoner
and they need to go find them and bring them back. Societies can
even switch sides given enough inducement.

The idea is that there are a lot of "big events" going on in the
world, and the players hear about them. What they do about those
events is entirely up to them, but they CAN help out and the things
they do really do matter. For example, if you have a small
population of wimpy worms that's about to get wiped out and you
rescue them and protect them, in 2 months you may find that they
have massively powerful spellcasters that you never would have had
on your side had you not helped them when they were in need.  And
all of this is automated so that these "quests" are a natural
consequence of the simulation.

Maybe it sounds boring, and I admit that it's shallow at this point,
but I think it's moving in the right direction. More importantly,
the players can have an effect, and they can work together to do
great things, but no player is ever critical or needed or given
institutional power over other players within the system.


John

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