[MUD-Dev2] [Design] Non-cliche content creation

[cruise]

Thus spake Damion Schubert...
> This depends on whether or not you figure out how to make your randomly
> created
> content both engaging and interesting.  Is it possible?  Maybe.  It's worth
> noting,
> though, that the randomly created content in both Diablo (map) and
> Daggerfall
> (maps and quests) were pretty miserably bad.

Naturally - how good the system is depends on...how good the system is 
:P I have high hopes, that, even if it isn't an immediate solution, 
it'll help identify what is the solution, however.

> Let's twist it and look at it from another angle.  Remove other people from
> the
> equation.  Remove interactivity altogether.  Do you think you can write an
> algorithm that produces an excellent fantasy novel that matches Tolkien
> (or hell, for that matter, that even matches Robert Jordan and Piers
> Anthony?)
> Of course not - great art requires more than following a formula, it
> requires
> emotional resonance, artful foreshadowing, solid chemistry between
> interesting
> characters... stuff that humans still are vastly superior than computers at.

Novel? No. I do think it would be capable of producing at least passable 
  plots, however, with, yes, chemistry between interesting characters 
and emotional resonance. Big claims? Maybe, but I won't know if I don't 
try :D

> Now, one may argue that the quests that you currently see in WoW are
> by no means Tolkienesque.  I would argue that they are still vastly
> superior to the madlib style randomly generated quests I most often see
> when people talk about procedural story content for MMOs.

Absolutely. That's why we need a new and better system for generating 
them than what we have currently.

> If I understand what you're designing, then it seems to me that another
> large concern is ensuring that the world makes sense to the players.
> Players can only see one part of the elephant - that which they have
> direct contact with, and it makes it harder for them to get a real sense
> of what's going on.

True. Though informative communication between players could do a lot to 
ease the issue...might mean players have to work together for reasons 
other than forced class dynamics :P

> As an example, there was a lot of talk a while ago about creating 'dynamic
> ecologies' - the dragon eats sheep, and if you kill all the sheep, the
> dragon
> attacks the village.  The problem is that this cause and effect isn't
> necessarily
> visible - all a newbie knows is that yesterday, the village was safe, but
> today,
> he got wtfpwned as soon as he logged in by something he clearly can't
> handle.  Static, predictable worlds have a huge, hidden advantage that
> most people ignore - the fact that they are static and predictable.  Players
> can actually make sense of what's going on around them, and if they
> log off for a week, things will still make sense when they log back on.

I'm hoping that the extreme behaviour will be rare enough to not cause a 
constantly shifting world - something I can obviously tune by adjusting 
the parameters of the personalities.

> Having large-scale world change works best when there is relatively few
> large decision points that are visibly accessible to the player.  A good
> example is territorial control games, which are shown on an easily
> accessible political map (Mythic does stuff like this).

It's going to be the balance that's (as always) the challenge - making 
sure there is enough low-level variation to make NPCs interesting, but 
the system is stable enough to not blow-up with constant civil wars or 
revolutions.