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

[Joshua Clausen]

> On Sat, Feb 16, 2008 at 1:13 AM, Joshua Clausen <clausen at sosproduce.com> 
> wrote:
>
>>  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.
>
>
> Consider it from another light. The town is having a hard time
> (s/town/NPC/ if you want) and then something that could cause that
> hardship is created. That hardship-causing thing might also pop up
> another few problems when it pops into existence - for instance, the
> local economy could be depressed, because something is causing
> messengers to vanish. In a backwards way, you have the effect
> (messengers vanishing) and formulate the cause (orcs ambusing a given
> spot). When was this happening? Why didn't people notice? It happened
> when they weren't around.
>
> What can you get when you start from the effect and extrapolate
> towards the cause, with that cause itself causing other effects?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Richard


When re-reading my paragraph I noticed I was not entirely clear.  Quests an 
missions need to actually be in response to environmental events, such as an 
Orc outpost being created near the edge of the city's limits or swamp rat 
populations within the city actually having reached some critical threshold. 
The Orc outpost quest will continue to be an available quest for as long as 
there is an Orc outpost nearby.  Upon accepting a quest, an Orc outpost 
spawn spot is not created; rather, the player is given the waypoint to that 
outpost spawn spot.  The Orc outpost spawn spot will continue to remain in 
that position until players have attacked it enough to drive it away.

josh