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Players can CHANGE the environment.... Uhhh
Zaxx99
Member Posts: 1,761
So Smedley says that players can actually change the environment in dynamic ways. What does THIS mean exactly??!?
When I try to imagine this at it's core and I think of small details, I imaging a world of lush vegetation, and fields of swaying grass to explore at launch. And there are no pre-defined trails or paths in the game world at all.
I can imagine that it would be easy enough to program terrain that slowly forges paths the more it is stepped on by players. So I see paths slowly being formed by the players the more it it stepped on which would be really cool. And let's say that after a path is formed by players popular tracks through a specific area... let's say that players find a new shortcut over a hill rather then around it. With time as more players take the new shortcut, the path completely changes as new vegetation forms on what was once a trail going around that hill, and now the heavily tracked path goes up and over instead.
That is obviously a small way players could change the environment of a dynamic game world. And I'm surprised it hasn't ever been done to my knowledge as it seems like it would be easy enough to implement and program. (ie would be as simple as every small section of the world having its own variable based on foot traffic over it and the degree of vegetation of bare trail formation shown based on that variable)
But players being able to change the dynamic world environment, I also imagine a player terraforming high mountain peaks that can be seen for MILES within the world. This would have to have balance of course. Maybe players could only have such power in an area of land they own and only after they have acquired a certain status in the game to give them such power.
I dunno. Two extremes of players being able to change the environment. What I hope that it doesn't mean is that if a player blasts a fireball at a wooden fence, it catches fire and burns down but somehow magically re-spawns moments or seconds later. That's NOT a dynamic change but rather a momentary 'effect'. I've seen games promise players being able to change/alter the environment before only to see it nothing more then momentary effect changes like that.
So what does this mean to you guys/gals? Thoughts?
- Zaxx
Comments
It sounds to me like you will be able to kill things and a town will magically form, then 5 mins later the event respawns and nothing has changed. Its always what they mean when they say that. They are trying to give you an illusion of choice and power, a mirage, to do one thing: Keep you giving them your money.
Also, what you describe is quite complex as your idea would require live map updates in a (seamless?) world.
Boycotting EA. Why? They suck, even moreso since 2008.
i dont know
it doesnt sound like change will only be momentary
ZAM interview
http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=30916
You’ll be able to destroy, massive, massive parts of this world, almost all of it. You can light the forest on fire; we have ambition with this thing. We want it to be something where the world you log into, might not be the world you log into in five days.
What you saw in WoW’s Cataclysm could take place because someone cast a spell that is powerful enough to do something major. We want it to be meaningful. And that’s what we’re building. It’s actually what we’ve built, because we’ve got this now. It just isn’t quite at the level where we’re OK [to reveal it to the public]. We have a story that we want to tell for the announcement of it, we want it that you’re seeing every aspect of the gameplay, we’re one aspect short of that until we’re ready to show, so we’re close now.”
http://www.polygon.com/2012/12/18/3777814/planetside-2-is-just-the-start-of-sony-online-entertainments-free
"Our opinion is that today's MMOs, and I'd include ours in that mix, are stagnant and stuck in this model that we frankly helped create with EverQuest, where we put new content in the game, and they go through it at an incredibly fast rate because of sites like Thottbot and that kind of stuff," Smedley said.
"We need to change the way we do this," Smedley said. "We're building a sandbox and giving players the tools to help shape the world that they're in. That's the direction we're going we're going in with EverQuest Next; trying to make a world that players create while being a living, breathing world around them.
It's not just a prop for them to walk around in, which is really what all of today's MMOs are. Their worlds are nothing more than a movie set."
regardless, the EQN reveal is in 46 days
EQ2 fan sites
Lol, that sounds retarded.
We can only hope that their idea of changes aren't meaningless and trivial.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
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I imagine clicking on the big EQN button in game to open up the store where you can purchase rocks and trees for real money and place them wherever you want....
OMG. See this is what is almost giving me chill bumps.
Not Bills words here.
But the fact that I have been a member of these forums for like TEN YEARS now and don't EVER RECALL the managing editor of this website posting comments mere moments after a thread starts about a specific game about it. - Not to mention that fact he is obviously almost clawing at his face because he just cannot tell us even a hint as to what he knows!!
THAT is what excites me about this game. I barely knew of this game until this morning and I guess was just expecting a new prettier Everquest 3. But no. No way is this just a prettier EQ2. That would certainly not have the managing editor of these forums acting this way!!
Now I am pumped more then I ever remember being for ANY game about this game. - And I know basically nothing, lol.
Oh my, my. This is CRAZY!
- Zaxx
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
My Review Manifesto
Follow me on Twitter if you dare.
What do I think of? Worldwide Forest Fires and dirty pictures drawn into the landscape like crop circles.
That's always been the bugaboo about a true sandbox - there are plenty of players who will do horrible things to the sand because they can. If the SOE folks have figured out a way to cure the abuse while allowing real changes, then they indeed have something special.
Avatars are people too
Thanks for reminding everyone of these quotes. They are very important and tell us a LOT about what SOE is trying to deliver.
As I read this again I'm getting an idea of stuff that could be really cool about this. Imagine an epic event where one faction of players tries to destroy their enemy's city by getting 100 high level mages to cast a group spell. If they succeed, the land the enemy city is built on will turn into a crater. As they gear up for the attack, the sky in the area turns red and there's a beacon revealing their location. Now the enemy city knows where they are and can mount a counter-attack or turn on some kind of magical defense of their own.
I see your point. With that much freedom to alter the environment or create stuff, there will ALWAYS be people using that freedom in negative ways.. and yes I would agree with naughty pictures and would add curse words and/or vulgar/explicit words.
I would think with a game this big however that there will be live moderators watching over and also players being able to report anything that is offensive and that those reports would quickly be investigated and promptly dealt with. Maybe players would think twice about drawing those naughty pictures in the sand when it would be easily tracked to their IP address and they know their account would be immediately banned if the material they draw/write is offensive enough.
But yes, you are correct, the more freedom a game allows, the more it will be mis-used in negative ways.
Sad, but true.
- Zaxx
I truly hope there is NO NPC's, no Towns, no nothing at the start and we can run off n a direction and start building our own house and defending it from Mobs. Those starter houses will eventually grow into cities (or can).
As long as good mix of combat and crafting/building is there with plenty of exploration then it could be a good game for me.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
I would think more along the lines of possible cash shop support.Here is an idea i think will happen.I have never seen SOE go complicated so they will implement simple stuff,ok here goes.
I see them making resource nodes not re-spawn for a very long time.This changes the environment and at the same time allows them to sell resource packs in the cash shop.
I do not see any Ai that changes walked paths because they would have to make an extra 2/3/4 textures for every piece of ground and actually now i think about it,NO WAY this is going to happen.
As for ground manipulation like in Minecraft,it only works because you have VERY few resources to work with.If you have a large game that is a LOT of assets to make.If you look inside of present SOE games such as EQ2 for example,they rehash the same icons for several objects.so they are really lazy and more into cutting corners than putting out extra effort.
I guess it is possible to have some form of clipping system for rocks and mountains but it would take a lot of work.Example when you break off a piece of rock you would have to create several animated changes otherwise it always looks the same.
I would think more along with what Brad started in VG,being able to chop down trees just that you might not expect to see them spawn for long periods.The other thing i can see is being able to implement pre build model pieces.like some other games are doing.Example they will give you the ability like they already have in EQ2 to place a wall or a step or a tree or a garden,again just liek what other games are doing only just liek Arena Net SOE is trying to make it sound innovative and new.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Hopefully it won't have any of the player punishing ridiculously un-fun mechanics of EQ 1 either.
Thats a gigantic relief..
in the world of Everquest,EQ2 is a joke.
I hope it does..
Games today are way too forgiving.If you want a game that pampers you then choose from the numerous MMO's out today.
That's an interesting idea but why even put that onto a Everquest World backdrop. The history and world would be pointless. That fact that its Norath versus anything else would have no meaning.
This game isn't being hyped because of punishing mechanics, its being hyped because of "Sandbox Features". Your point of there not being a whole lot of "punishingly hard" MMOs out there is not lost on me. But I think there is a very good reason for that. SOE clearly wants this to be a Blockbuster. And I honestly think the old style mechanics of EQ 1 are absolutely mutually exclusive from blockbuster.
I'm pretty sure this adventure might take place at the dawn of a new era, but not the dawn of time.
I will say I like the idea though. Sort of like Salem where we just arrived in a new world and we're settlers making a new life for ourselves.
Going easy mode hasnt produced many blockbusters either,save for one.,which was a fluke.
If a game like Eve can hold 500k or so subs,so can this.500k is perfectly good numbers.
People tend to get unrealistic when hearing the hype from companies, even after seeing the difference between what has been said and what is presented time and time again.
Let's look at this a couple of ways:
First let's look at an MMO world where any player by themselves can transform any area of the world. Now let's use the example that is presented, being able to burn down an area. In total freedom you'd get a bunch of pyromaniacs who would burn the whole world to the ground and completely ruin the server for all play to the point that it would need a reset.
So that amount of freedom is clearly not going to be allowed.
Now they could solve this in a couple of ways. One: is make it so that enough people have to agree on an action to make it happen. This has 2 effects. First is that people no longer feel like they have the freedom of choice because they need a whole clan to get things to change in the world. Second is that huge clans would essentially own the server and be able to ruin things vindictively.
So that is likely not an option.
Lastly they can restrain this freedom to specific areas. This means you can't really change the world, but instead you can change predefined states in predefined areas which could likely be swapped back by other people or reset over certain spans of time so someone else could go do the same thing.
In the end you aren't going to end up with this MMO being a place where players can individually and fundamentally change the entire game world.
I just think it is important for potential player to look at things critically. Every game uses some exciting words and big claims to make their game sound amazing. Sometimes they even intend to launch with those things. But in the those big game changers tend to either be PR spin or determined to be not feasible in an MMO due to resources/complexity/both. How many MMOs said that players could change the world or that a game is truly innovative to have those not be so?
Maybe they did come up with a system that has a good deal of freedom and a changing environment driven by the players. Or maybe they have a very minimal impact system that doesn't do all that much in reality and just looks flashy at first. I would wait and see before getting too excited over something that may not be.
John Smedley says that Sony’s upcoming MMO Everquest Next will be more Minecraft than Warcraft.
It is “emergent gameplay” — allowing players true freedom and encouraging them to build their own experiences — that will define the next generation of successful MMO games, he said.
“We need to add emergent gameplay to our games if they’re going to last,” he told the company’s biggest fans at the October festival. “So we are. SOE has committed itself to a focus on emergent and sandbox-style play.”
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/11/future-of-mmo-games/
That's assuming people can only destroy things. If you counter-balance that with the ability to create stuff, people will keep creating new content to replace what gets erased.
A great Smedley quote:
"This is a very interesting question. I think it's at the core of why what we're doing is sustainable. I'll go right to the heart of the matter. You get to the point where we make an expansion, and when I say we, I mean the entire MMO community. You make your expansion, the real hardcore players consume it in a month, and they're doing the raids over and over and over until the next round of live content that we put in. Typically, three or four times a year, we as MMO companies put new endgame in there to keep the raiders happy.
We absolutely need to build that style of content into every game we make because players want that. We're not talking about the end of raids, the end of this incredibly high-level content. We're talking about changing the nature of the world around it so that there's a lot more to do "in between" expansions. A good example, but a very narrow example, is battlegrounds in WoW or EQII, where players get bored doing it over and over again. But imagine the entire world as part of the interaction. Imagine seasons changing. Imagine if you're a Druid and you need to literally seek out reagents for your spells or worship your deity in a glade somewhere off in the wilderness, but you don't know where. Or image forests growing back after they're burned to the ground by invading forces. What we want is a dynamic world that gives all those other possibilities and doesn't just say OK, go to raid X with group composition of X, Y, Z, and kill the dragon for the 52nd time to get the tier 800 gear. It's this rinse-and-repeat gameplay that's got to change, and so we're changing it."
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/10/20/soe-live-2012-john-smedley-on-eq-next-and-soes-future/
A game doesn't actually have consequences. Regardless of the penalties a player could cause massive havoc and then just quit, meaning no retaliation to them. Or they could do a ton of bad things on a second account and play normally on their main so as to avoid having to deal with any consequences. That is the big difference between a game and real life. Even if they don't try to sidestep the penalties how much would the penalties matter to them? If they could be hunted and killed for massively griefing tons of players they probably would feel was worth it because death in a video game doesn't matter much.
They started UO where players could do whatever they wanted to other players outside of towns. There were players who tried to play the cops or bounty hunters, but in the end they had to change their systems. Too many people simply didn't care if others came after them, they just liked to steal and kill everyone they saw and many people couldn't handle that happening. Put those same people in a situation where they could negatively impact the entire gaming world and destroy the game for other people? They will go to town.