[MUD-Dev] SOC DGN - Spawn locations

[Megan Fox]

J C Lawrence wrote:

> I simply dislike the ideas of mobs spawning in predictable
> fashions.  Yeah, I know that in the end it simply maps to an
> object instantiation plus frippery, but in the subjective sense it
> reeks of overly tasteless efficiency.  There's not only no story
> in it, there's a brutal disregard for any attempt to have either
> story or pseudo-reality.  At least in the old reset-based MUDs
> when the world reset, yeah, it was crude and mechanical, but it
> was also episodic and thus referenced well known prior repetitive
> nouns.  Even Mirrorworld had a little man in a white coat who ran
> about closing all the doors, resetting all the locks, etc.
> Pitiful in any grand engineering sense, but quirky, charming and
> even fun in its own right.

It think it depends on the sort of game you're running.

If you're running a game with wide-open expanses more like Asheron's
Call, it makes FAR more sense for an enemy to spawn fairly randomly
- Mega Faerie always spawns somewhere around her home region, but
she doesn't just stand in one spot of a gigantic outdoor field
24/7. Apart from a massive guild organizing a stand-in over the
entire spawn region of a particular entity, this would seem to be a
fine system. (and so long as the system is built to force an "ugly"
spawn if there's no clear region, then the most broken it would get
is in doing exactly what is standard for most games out there now
anyways)

For said game's doubtless expansive indoor/planned/dungeon-style
regions, I really favor instanced dungeons anyways - it guarantees
no griefing from an outside source, and that your players are
working through the dungeon with exactly the size and compesition
you designed the dungeon for.  More friendly to casual players to
boot.  (and in an instanced dungeon, no respawning makes sense
anyways)

I can see where a game like EQ will still have problems, but if your
game setting allows for these two types of encounters, this seems
like a fairly workable solution?

-Megan
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