Player generated content, would be the only way this could possibly be done in my view

one team simply couldn't make enough content and ways of using the content

thought feel free to read thru my post history (i dont post alot)
Ive looked into the idea too

I think if you were doing something like this, you would need a reproductive system. Meaning that, maybe the rats have somewhere where they can go and hide, and people can't get in. Then maybe there will be a chance that 2 go in, but 4 might come out later.

Also, as for the goal thing, you could still easily have abilities and gear and items to buy. Another thing is that you could add in the "Share quest" type of thing, like in WoW. That way your friends could do the same quest as you. And you could also limit the quests the NPCs give out, like, if you're level 20, and they have a quest designed for a level 40, they'll tell you they don't have a quest.

Well if you have $10,000 floating around you can buy a license from Id for the Quake 2 engine and then get some programmers together (this would be alot cheaper then going from scratch).

All your ideas are bad though and would make for a terrible MMORPG. You'd have to keep on top of quests constantly and NPCs.

Quote:Original post by sunandshadow
Have you considered the psychological problem that the player would always feel totally lost? If I don't have some goal 5 levels away that I'm working toward, how do I know how to develop my character or what gear to buy? If my friend is also playing, how can we play together if I get a random quest to kill 5 thingamajiggies but he gets a random quest to mine 100 iron? Totally aside from the problem that random quests are stupid and IMO quests are only tolerable in the context of a story which makes them meaningful. What little virtual-world feel mmos currently manage to accomplish is a result of players as a community dealing with the same problems, communicating strategies to each other, and competing over the same opportunities.

These are fair points, but there's any easy work around. An ability to share quests between users - one person has the "master" quest, and everyone else has a "replicated" version. When the master finishes the quest, then all of the people with replicated versions get a divvy of the experience and of the loot. Now people really are working together as a group for a single goal.

As for the stupidity of random quests, that might become an issue. That's why I suggested a quest type (bounty quest) that wasn't totally random, and made sense. "A killer monster has arisen; we need someone to take it down." Things like mine 100 iron for a random NPC really would be dumb, especially if Nicole, the nine year old NPC, wants 2,000 iron for... what exactly?

Still, I hate the idea of all of my characters doing the same quests. Suspension of belief is nullified when two different people go through the exact same experience.

Quote:Original post by sunandshadow
Zouflain - You can make mine for me then lol.

I have made scalable MOGS before, the only reason they weren't MMOGs was because I was limited by the language I was using, and by the fact that I cannot afford a server. I said making MMOGs was easy, I never said maintaining a major 20,000+ user game was (200 average users is certainly feasible, in fact whenever I say a MMOG I want to make, this is what I mean).

Quote:The world will generate plots, people, places, and events whenever developers did not.

This is the key problem in your whole system. Procedurally generated random content is never as interesting as human-crafted content. The day that computer AI is able to create equal or better game content than a human designer is the day that all of us are out of a job ;)

Existing MMO's like Ultima Online and EvE Online have procedurally generated quests, so each one is "unique", but really they are all variations on a template, like "Go to <random location> and kill <random number> <random monsters>. In return I'll give you <random number> gold and this <random item>." I've yet to meet anyone who stood up and cheered and declared that he was thrilled that this quest was unique to him and only him. The most you'll usually get is a "meh, whatever" from your usual MMORPG gamer. Uniqueness is only interesting if the thing that is yours and yours alone is actually worth talking about.

I think it's neat. You could have quests be procedurally generated in such a way that rats don't respawn, they repopulate. The rat population goes up 1 for every 5 rats every hour, on an equation that would not limit, but slow it or speed it up if the rat population were outside certain boundries. So if there are 20 rats, you get 4 new rats an hour, but if there are 60, you still only get 8 AND a quest comes up that rats are becoming overwhelming, and killing them grants bonus rewards. Every player now automatically has this quest, and once the rats are down to an acceptable number, each player's # of rats killed is tallied, and exp is given out accordingly, and maybe the person who killed the most gets a neat reward. Even more dynamic, is these *rat population is too low* and *rat pop. is too high* numbers could scale based on how many people play the game, how many are on at that given time, and how many are in the level range for rats. In this way, all monsters scale their numbers based on the # of users, thus making it less work on your part (not having to update the equations all the time) and making it overall more precise to the player base (You don't need thousands of rats if everyone is very high level). Could be difficult mathematically, but the programming would probably be simple, and the results could be amazing. This is only one part of what you're trying to do, but it's what I have. I do not, however, see randomly generated *actual* quests being done very feasibly, as the stories would be empty and lacking, and would likely seem artificial. The monster population being this dynamic, though, I think would be a lot of fun. It would create virtual "hotzones" (places players are more likely to congregate) based on whether a certain monster has been over/under populated, and would just be cool.

Repopulation wouldn't work if the animals were killed off...
and as far as unique quests, you would need a team of programmers constantly making new quests... I mean like 20 quests made a day; which doesn't seem possible.

One way that continuous content might work is if npcs were actually more like players. Early Ultima Online tried it, for instance killing npcs would incur the same penalties/rewards as killing other players.

This didn't work too well, however, in part because the npcs were so socially inept. For instance, you would be talking to another player at the bank, and an npcs would repeatedly interrupt the conversation with "I do not understand thee."

Part of the reason quests seem so lame and non-world changing, is the fact we don't really identify with the npcs. Who would want to sit in the same spot all day, hand out the same quest to newbies, give them the same reward, and then tell the next newbie the same thing? Unlike real people, outside of doing this job, the npcs frequently have no life. They just stand there 24/7. They don't eat, they don't sleep, they don't go to the tavern and get drunk on off hours. They don't occasionally go on adventures in-between helping out newbies.

To avoid inconveniencing the no life 24/7 gamers, Shops could be run in shifts, just like real life stores. For instance, the npc Tsena could run the blacksmith shop the first eight hours of the day, then Caldren the next, and then Miko could take care of customers on the third shift.

One game that had a very similar system was Ultima 7. The way the npcs had routines made it seem very alive. We could even improve upon that. Npcs, just like players could occasionally deviate from their normal schedules too.

I don't think perma-death necessarily needs to be part of this however, as long as the players aren't all playing perma-death characters, the fact that the same npcs keep coming back won't really make them seem less important.