[MUD-Dev] SOC DGN - Spawn locations

[J C Lawrence]

On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 15:11:54 -0600 
Megan Fox <shalinor at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

True, but then I'm also not a fan of the canned game experience model.

> 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. 

Functionally there's a simpler point than simulated environment type:
Well defined spawning behaviours are a way of delivering a well defined
and predictable gaming experience to the punters.  As gaming attention
pans grow shorter or the desirable demographic boundaries shift toward
more casual gamers (pick whichever) this level of predictable assured
delivery of a gaming experience -- even down to the level of guilds
camping out on spawn points and establishing a 3rd party market for
access -- is all well and good.

> 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.

Actually, that just delivers an even more predictable and assured play
experience, except that this time it:

  a) is not one that the devs are directly targeted for

  b) increases player involvement, investment and participation in the
  game world (stickiness)

  c) builds a significant 3rd party community marketing effort (all the
  effort they put into selling the spawn point is also selling your
  game)

etc.

> (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)

The ugly point really happens when the game gets too predictable.  Its
that tolerance thing again.  Players want some uncertainty, but only
within fairly narrow acceptable levels.  Too much uncertainty is
confusing, scary, and thus Bad.  Too little is boring.

Narrative arc can cover a lot here.

> 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)

Such has little appeal for me as a player.

An interesting concept I've run into on this line is making the NPC
target population a function of the player population.  As the online
player population grows, so does the target NPC population, as the
online player population climbs the XP/HP ladder, so proportionally does
the target NPC population, producing a resulting set of target NPCs
whose number and whose "level" distribution is a direct function of the
currently online player demographics.  Add a little hysteresis, some
non-linear skews at the upper end and a little misdirection and it could
get really interesting.

-- 
J C Lawrence
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
claw at kanga.nu               He lived as a devil, eh?
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.

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