[MUD-Dev2] [REPOST] Dynamic Quests & Event Chains

[Johnicholas Hines]

Roger Hicks wrote:
> MMORPG quests today typically don't have any effect on the
> game. When you slay Uber-Villian Bob and his evil ravagers, the city
> doesn't remain safe from them. Instead they respawn after a few
> minutes and continue their assault on the city. MMORPGs have avoided
> quests with lasting change for a good reason. If Uber-Villian Bob
> stayed dead, then the city would remain safe, and it would provide a
> rather boring experience for any future players who come
> along. Allowing permanent change would require that a game designer
> supply entirely new content for each player to play the game (an
> impossible task).

The 'finite-state quest' described in this post is more effort to make and
entertains the players for longer. This is an improvement in quest quality,
which is good.
However, one might also be interested in improving the _ratio_ of developer
effort to playing time.

I think that using the words 'finite state' makes people think of
representing the finite state by a list (requiring space proportional to the
number of states)
However, if the state is described by 4 numbers in the range 1 to 10, then
there are 400 states. (space exponentially less than the number of states)
400 is still finite, but it is probably less effort to write a world
parametrized by four numbers than write 400 different worlds.
On the other hand, this parametrized quest is probably less entertaining
than a list-type quest with the same number of states. So the question
relevant to the ratio is "how much less?".

I'd like to see a mud with a cellular-automaton landscape something like
SimEarth. The number of states-of-the-world would be
(states-of-a-cell)^(number-of-cells) - finite, but large. One could split
off a new island with a sufficiently powerful earthquake spell.

Johnicholas