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

[cruise]

Thus spake Joshua Clausen...
> Does the quality of procedurally-generated missions depend upon them 
> being a natural outcome of the environment in which the 
> mission-producing NPC finds itself?

Yes - as you say, without this, there is little point.

> The approximations I am most thinking of are those assumptions on the 
> motivation for the quest.  If the motivation is not an immediate, actual 
> need of that NPC, then there will be a noticeable disconnect between the 
> mission requirements and reality, such as it is in an MMO.  "I need you 
> to kill 10 swamp rats because they're eating grain stores," make sense 
> only if upon completing said quest there is an actual noticeable 
> improvement in the lot of the NPC issuing the quest.  "I need you to go 
> take out the Orc Bandit outpost that has popped up at the edge of the 
> city limits," only really means anything of true substance if that 
> outpost's presence is actually hindering the NPC town's situation- 
> implying that once gone, the NPC town will actually perform better 
> (grow, pay more for goods, etc).  The implication, then, is that the 
> creation of the procedurally-generated mission must be elicited by 
> environmental changes that have actually influenced the state of the 
> mission-issuing entity.  Completion of that mission must actually allow 
> for the issuing entity to experience a net benefit, and this benefit 
> must be [potentially] observable by the player base, though it does not 
> necessarily have to be immediate.

The NPCs have needs and desires, which in turn lead them to pursue goals 
to satisfy those. Quests are goals the NPC itself cannot (or does not 
want to personally) achieve. This could be as simple as "get me a loaf 
of bread", right up to "assassinate the king".

As you say, giving the feedback to the player is important, and not 
necessarily easy. I have some vague thoughts on the importance and 
effects of feedback that I must get down in concrete form at some point.

> It seems that a virtual ecology of sorts is what is required, with the 
> mission-generating algorithm a natural part of that ecology rather than 
> a "contrived" system placed upon it.  I think the missions in a game 
> world are, simply put, the most advanced forms of entity interaction; 
> like the combat scripts but at the more abstract level of spawn spots 
> and their interaction with other spawn spots.

The fact that they are the most advanced form of interaction is a sad 
indictment on our current state of play, considering the banal nature of 
many of them. Quests certainly should be the point, IMO, they are, 
effectively, the plot.