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

[John Buehler]

Vincent Archer writes:
> According to John Buehler:

>> big'.  Dark Age of Camelot's downfall with regard to keeps is
>> that it didn't really doesn't matter to me if the derned things
>> fell.  So

> Well it used to be. These days, it doesn't.

> The introduction of Darkness Falls, which objectively measures
> your progress, and produce an achievement reward for a killer
> activity has revitalized the whole business of keep assault.

> Yesterday, there was much maneuvering on the server I was playing
> on between Hibernia, who was trying to get back into the running
> and a roving force from Midgard who was attempting to secure their
> advantage... and keeping access to Darkness Falls.

The opening of The Falls has added value to keep taking, but it's a
completely manufactured mechanism.  There is zero fiction tying the
taking of stone-walled keeps and forts with the opening of a portal
that lets players go kill special mobs.  And I don't mean that there
is no backstory.  I mean that it's a silly reason.  It's completely
manufactured, in an attempt to get players to care about taking
keeps.

I restate my indifference to keep taking.  Of course, I've let my
subscription to Dark Age of Camelot lapse due to my advanced
indifference to the 'kill to level, level to kill' model as a whole.

>> The grand scheme here must be one that grabs the imagination of
>> the players and they log in each week to find out how they can
>> help, how they are affected, what happened, etc.  It's a big soap
>> opera with thousands of moving parts and it stays interesting and
>> entertaining because the publisher makes sure that it stays on
>> track.  There are no abrupt changes where some sneaky player
>> character slinks into the Emperor's chambers and whacks him,
>> ending the entire story.

> That sounds like Asheron's Call. It has problems too, namely that
> it doesn't fit well an achiever model.

I would present Asheron's Call as a game that had the same general
idea, but didn't begin to scratch the surface of the essentials of
the idea.  And to say that it doesn't fit well with an achiever's
model is good news indeed.  Having reduced the achiever-centric
entertainment means that other entertainment must be introduced.
But taking a month to create changes in content for only the highest
level characters is a clear statement that the explorers and
socializers aren't going to have much to work from.  Asheron's Call
doesn't have the dynamicism to support what I'm talking about.

As many have said here, most recently John Robert Arras, simulation
is going to be an important tool in providing the content that the
explorers and socializers want.  Many things have to be happening
simultaneously, and lots of content has to be considered throw-away:
content that no player is ever even going to witness or know about.
NPCs are going to be tilling their fields and making their wares,
sitting around, eating their meals or resting to heal a twisted
ankle.  None of which might be witnessed by a player character - or
only in passing - but all simulated, serving as backstory, history
and entertainment for those who want to find out about it (or just
let it be the ambient setting).

Given such simulation, the gamemasters can nudge a mayor to decide
to admit storm troopers to protect his town's shipments, causing a
complete rebalancing of activity in town because of the appearance
of storm troopers.  Of those who hate the empire, some will take
steps against the storm troopers.  Some people will move away.
Smuggling in the town may go deeper underground.  The society of the
town automatically rebalances, based only on one top-level decision
by the gamemasters.  Courtesy of simulation, the gamemasters may be
able to run the simulation at advanced speed to see what will
actually happen, based solely on NPC behavior models.  If they don't
like what happens, they tweak some NPCs and get things to work the
way they need it to.  If that tweaking becomes excessive, then
they've mis-designed their NPCs in the first place.

Advanced stuff?  Hugely so.  I'm working on my own ideas in
artificial intelligence in order to address this very model and it's
quite difficult.  It will require a ton of processing power and
it'll also require some serious tools to 'design' people.  But I
believe that it will permit a much greater pile of entertainment to
be available to players who are more interested in socialization and
exploration than simply achievement by killing.

JB

_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev