[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Where massive?

[John Buehler]

At present, I'm of the opinion that players are best served by permitting
like-minded groups to come together and enjoy an experience in a virtual
setting.  By assembling like-minded players, conflicting agendas become a
moot point, and the experiences in the virtual setting can be more fragile.
One of my favorite examples is the Deus Ex style infiltration scenario.  In
the traditional MMO, while one group is infiltrating, another group might
come along and violently force their way in.  The two approaches may find
synergy and they may not.  The goal is to ensure up front that the agendas
of those involved are compatible.

This is what instancing is all about.  Set up a fragile experience and let a
group of players encounter it.  There's no problem with higher-level groups
racing to the end of the experience and seeing the secret symbol, or having
infiltrators sneaking past the group to pilfer the one really valuable thing
in the encounter.  The experience is for the group that owns it, and they
get to deal with it as they like.

It seems to me that instancing presents some interesting opportunities to
MMO designers.

What if an instance was not a continuation of the MMO, but a bridge to a
completely new experience?  Remember that instances are focused on groups of
like-minded players.  An instance could be for a single player, for a group
of 10 or a group of 100.  The significance of the numbers involved is the
technology that can be brought to bear.

The technology behind single player games should be able to be applied to
single player instances in an MMO.  The same can be said for non-massive
multiplayer game technologies.

The most resource-demanding technologies can be brought to bear in the
limited scope of instances.  Voice would more naturally have a role for a
small group in an instance.  Physics could be applied in that smaller
setting, knowing that 100 players won't be in a given instance.  More
complex AI could be applied as well.

This distinction between massive and modest would always remain.  No matter
how demanding the technologies used by the massive setting, the modest
settings will probably be able to use more demanding ones.

I started out by talking about like-minded players experiencing things
together.  As applied to available technologies, it may be possible to trust
the client computer.  If the players trust each other, then they can trust
each other's computers to perform tasks specific to the group.  Naturally,
the client remains the enemy for any task or data that is held dear to the
product.

This concept can be applied in a limited fashion to level-based games.  But
it would really shine if a game world were simply a meeting place to let
like-minded players find each other.  From there, they can pursue
experiences in the instances.  Imagine Second Life with buildings and areas
that you can enter with friends that transition you to a modestly
multiplayer setting with more advanced technology that is used to present a
more sophisticated entertainment experience.

A simpleminded application of this results in some rather unpleasant
transitions.  Walking into a building in Second Life and waiting several
hours while Crysis is downloaded to your computer would not be the goal
here.  Smooth transitions into areas would be desirable, involving a scheme
to download new software and media in dribs and drabs as needed.  So the
instance that presents Crysis-style experiences may need new AI and physics
modules, while much of the media can be reused.  Or it may be that it's all
already on your machine and that it only gets run under very specific
circumstances.

The bottom line to all this is the question of how much of an MMO really
needs to be designed to be massive.  The background world wants to be.  In
that background world are the lightweight actions and experiences that the
technology can support for thousands of simultaneous players.  But when a
group of players desires to get together to have some fun, that background
world can fade away and more weight can be brought to bear to entertain that
group.  If we assume that they are like-minded, the game design can also
leverage the trust that those players share.

JB