Persistent Characters, Player-Scripting, and AI

etwynn

 

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Alindale

So players would spend most of their time writing a script for their character, then letting it afk run while thry wrote scripts for their other toons, then while those were afk grinding they would write scripts for npc;s and then if they owned a kingdom they would have to write quest scripts for other players that wanted to do quests for their kingdom.  The run-on sentence was an example of what I was trying to emphasize.

Illius

You might as well just become a progarmer and make games at that point.  I mean, that is what you're basically doing.

KillerEwok

This game sounds pretty good, especially the part where I google "scripts for x" and just copy+paste, then go eat a sandwich and come back at the highest level.

 

also I think if they made these, the economy would collapse since gold farmers would be out of jobs

etwynn

 

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Alindale

Originally posted by etwynn


Well a nation builder would spend a lot of time writing/observing/adjusting scripts for trade, farming, armies, etc.  But an adventurer would spend more time just playing the game.  An adventurer would be able to make his single character more powerful than the scripted characters of the nation-builder (through player skill, item/power accumulation, and a good choice of abilities) so there would be incentive to actually play the game in the more "traditional" sense.  A scripted character could not clear a dungeon.  A single player with his scripted alts/mercenaries might be able to. But this wouldn't be much different from multiboxing and a good multiboxer wouldn't rely on static scripts but rather opt to exert more realtime control over his alts' abilities by selecting short scripts for other characters as the battle plays out (rather than just telling your healer to spam "greater heal" the entire fight).  The choice would be up to you--the scripting system would just provide the opportunity for players to accomplish things otherwise impossible in the traditional MMO format.
The script system would have to be well designed so it's not tedious (I'm thinking highly hotkeyable, ie. dropdown menus with hotkeys rather typing the scripts).

 

Your idea has strong possiblities, the major drawback would be how giving players this much control, in a persistant world, would affect server resources.  Today's servers can only handle so much, even the behmoth clusters that WoW uses.

etwynn

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paulscott

A lot of text games are made assuming players will be using scripts to some extent or another.   Though the players are required to be there and the one whose playing and making the choices with scripts being aids(basically along the lines of alerting the player when something happens, recoloring text, changing commands so they're shorter, and in some cases helping with healing).   Granted it's a whole different culture on text games and a very different interface.

 

WoW has come pretty close in most cases to duplicating those same tools with their add on system.