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

[Damion Schubert]

On Jan 4, 2008 9:23 AM, cruise <cruise at casual-tempest.net> wrote:
>
>
> If players are to care about the personality of the game-world, rather
> than the mechanics of the game, then the game itself has to care. Quests
> in current MMOGs (and most RPGs, sadly) only affect the game in pre-set
> ways (if at all), and aren't unique to the player. The player isn't
> actually important to the NPC giving the quest, and the quest is
> important to the game. So why should either matter to the player?
>
> Quests have to reflect the game, and it's current state. Quests have to
> matter to the NPC. The world has to matter to the NPC.
>
> My current r&d effort (outside of metaplace) is creating a system to
> produce npcs that can interact and spontaneously produce quests and
> missions - from the simple "I need 10 loaves" to "kill my rival for the
> throne".
>

My contrarian thoughts:

1) The number one problem with interesting quest/NPC generation is the cost
in development and QA of content generation.
2) Algorithmic content is never as compelling as hand-crafted content.
If you're not moved by handcrafted content, it's badly written hand-crafted
content.  But almost no one is moved by randomly generated quests.
3) Shared content gets a bad rap.  Shared experiences are powerful -
BECAUSE they are shared.  People can compare experiences and share
hints, and people don't get jealous that they never had an opportunity to
kill the king.

--d