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Continual State of World Progression
Eronakis
Member UncommonPosts: 2,249
A world that is hosted on a single shard server, the world is seamless, no instances. Quests, and Raids and other tasks have a vital purpose to world history and can change story lines depending on what players do. It could introduce dynamic world events that change, political territories, mob factions, could cause an alliegence with another nation or a new enemy, could affect the outcome of how the main plot may end.
Essentailly, at launch the story is initiated and starts. If you start to play 10 months in, you may not witness the same events or see different things occur then playing 2-3 months. Or even years. I ask this, because I have a vision for my world to potentially take up this idea. I would personally like it because it gives an immersive feel for the world and compliments the single shard server. It could also entice players to stick around or even come aboard because world progression is in continual motion. (By continual motion I mean things would be updated every other patch ect.)
I am interested to see if others would like this idea as well and please discuss why or why not you think it's a good idea.
Comments
I am creating a persistant dynamic world for my game, if it ever gets finished. I think this is the next step in MMOs. Static worlds are meh. Pretty much everything you said. Except there is no plot per say. But single shard, affecting the world, dynamic events, and so forth.
Also any monster you kill stays dead.
So long as there is also the real and actualized threat of continual regression, then yes, of course.
But you'd have to have some sort of Dynamic Story Telling Engine to make this possible, otherwise it's just not possible to keep up with the content.
Or you could have players create content, and find a system that allows it to work naturally within the world.
I'll take that over static linear railing any day.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
It all sounds very nice.
But the hard part is, how many people would you need to work on that?
Having players create the dynamics could be a solution (imagining additional terrains and zones), but how about quality control?
Notch is doing a similar idea with fewer players for 0x10^c; whereas you could invert that for mmorpgs: Smaller world for more players which changes. Various other methods could also be suggested - but all agree that a dynamically changeable world -> player actions/world has consequences/players have more lateral progression would be neat to see.
For eg building settlements that persist and create knock on effects would be a start -> player player conflict -> more stories as well as perhaps access to pve stuff/ avoiding a less desirable location eg more hostile mobs etc
If avoiding pvp something like story bricks could work?
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Work on the changing world or the game project as a whole?
When I said dynamic content, I didn't necessarly mean player made content. Based on the world map I have designed, not sure if that would actually help. And what did you mean by quality control? Over what aspect in particularly?
I like the idea of players in the game being able to create their own content on a single shard server, kind of like a more advanced Minecraft. It sounds really nice in theory but pulling it off is a whole different story.
[EQ][DAoC][WoW][WAR][SWToR][GW2][TSW][WS}
Well my game project is top heavy PVE first, I do and would like to implement PVP later but that is not a primary concern within the design. I would really like to see this implemented as well. I would assume that it would take a pretty penny and a lot of time, testing and resources.
So over all, so far it seems as if people would be willing to see continual storyline that progresses the world and if you miss out, you miss out?
As a player and an inspired game designer, I don't like player made content. Not everyone who plays a game comprehends game design elements. Plus it would and probably cause a lot of balance issues as well.
While I would like to see this, you have to face the trade off, That trade off being rendering. The more you have to render, the more graphically detailed, the more randomness associated with it the more random items in a given space...In short everything that distinguishes an MMORPG from a SPRPG, requires more intensive hardware and greater demands on CPU, GPU and memory.
The obvious workaround is instancing.
[EQ][DAoC][WoW][WAR][SWToR][GW2][TSW][WS}
I don't blame you of why you think it would get dull and mundane. That's not your fault, that's because there is dull and mundane pve content out there
. I think the best way to enchance PVE gameplay is to have intelligant AI, AI that could be adaptive. Going down a dungeon crawl and farming a boss, or finding a world boss pop would and could get boring. I envision it being more than just a "boss" fight. More like a strategy. Think like a midieval war. You have a front line, a second line, a flank, an ambush ect. Stuff like that on all different kinds of level of gameplay. I do agree with you that it would be fun to incorperate PVP with this as well. I actually have considered that. The only player made content I actually started to consider were three different teirs of guild housing.
I've been discussing how to implement this for years, glad people are finally into it without me making the thread.
I have most of it down. Have to take a graphics hit though.
I like where your headed, if PvE is difficult and requires more strategy than most of the spam 1 button mmos out there it could be interesting. But i like where your headed with the medieval war idea, i was thinking along the lines of you give the players the option to build castles, houses, farms, swords, shields, bows, and etc which all take various amounts of time. Then players would have to think strategically about placing certain structures where, and taking the time to build their weapons/armor/housing. You could expand this idea infinitely with each update, also i was thinking three continents, and water in between each continitent. Players could build boats and use the water to wage war in the seas, or storm the beach like D-Day. This wouldn't happen every day and the time to build up your castles/towns and communitys would take a while. This could lead to infinite possibilites of player driven ideas and content, such as the ability to craft gear and items, or enchant them with abilities. It would really be interesting to see how a three sided war would play out. I think it would be awesome if you could really die in the game, and only be able to create a new character every week. Then players would who survived the week and thrived would be more powerful than the week before. This would be huge incentive to not mess around and take shit seriously. Now i've babbled too long about my PvP idea game when that's not even what you wanted. You can take it or leave it but you have a good idea on your hands.
[EQ][DAoC][WoW][WAR][SWToR][GW2][TSW][WS}
Absolutely! It would and could take a toll on a lot of potential customers machines. That would be one of the realistic downsides to this. I see both sides of the coin of instancing, but I am about immersion and instancing kills that. There could be zoned off dungeons and cities with a loading screen, that could be a good way to combat that issue.
Funny how you say these things, I have already thought of them. I actually do allow a player driven economy with seperate crafting classes. 80% of the items are player made. I do like the fact of player made items. They can choose from a set of skins, color, texture, shading, designs ect. I favor strategic PVE over PVP.
You'd need a rather massive team to pull it off, but it's probably doable. Far more realistic an idea in a text or 2D MMO than in 3D.
As for quality control, you'd need a plan for dealing with the legacy items, maintaining continuity and ensuring that each new step forward is perceived as better than and different from the content that came before it.
You'd also have to come up with one heck of a marketing plan to combat the very real concern that it would genuinely mean it's an MMO where coming late to the party puts one at a disadvantage.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Your in my head man! But seriously i'm a PvP player so this game wouldn't be my kinda thing but for a PvE player this sounds really cool.
I've been waiting for the genre to move in this direction, i think it will be the future someday.
[EQ][DAoC][WoW][WAR][SWToR][GW2][TSW][WS}
@OP
have you even built one game, no matter how simple, yet?
sounds like you want to make something impossibly complex, that could basically simulate real life.
i don't get any sense that you have any idea of the boundaries of time, programming experience, manpower, and programming complexities.
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(and now after scanning the rest of the thread)
......and all without allowing players to make any of the content. you intend to create all that CONTENT as well (or procedural generation which in itself takes a lot of time to do well, and still never does as good of a job as handmade content).
sounds exponentially MORE unrealistic than my original impression.
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I have wrote out high concept documents regarding different mechanics. I have created some mods, but didn't have anything to do with the ideas I have had for this particular project. I do have some experience. I don't actually have a team, it's just written documents that could be ready to be translated into programing. Right now, it's just a project that I enjoy working on, just getting back into it...it's for fun. The ideas I do have are very complex and would take a lot of investment, time and resources to have a complete model. I would say that the world and the purpose of players interactions would be a major selling point. One thing I think that is doable for my project is to implement a demo of the combat mechanics. Again, I am by my self, I don't have an modeler, a programmer, an animator to skin the rig ect. What keeps me going is that a lot of people like my ideas, it's just a matter of, can it be implemented or not.
i think ALOT of people like the "idea". perhaps MOST people. including big companies with huge teams.
and yet it doesn't exist.
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but by all means. make a combat demo. i think once you get a little ways down THAT long path, you'll start to get the idea that you'll only ever be able to finish a fraction of your other ideas. if you're just the idea man and other people are doing the grunt work, you should also expect them to take off on their own at some point. but hardly anyone listens to idea men, so you'd probably need to learn how to program yourself in order to even get started on making anything into reality.
its worth working towards, but you're gonna need to adjust your dreams. 8)
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Yup you're 100% correct, that's why I don't have that job lol. I actually gave up my dreams and just quit designing it as a whole about 6 months ago for personal reasons. That creative urge wanted to breech out again and flow. This is the only way I know how to fully do that. I was actually considering of making a single player rpg that showcases the combat mechanics and work from there. I don't know, 6 months ago I was very serious and took everything too personal. Now it's just for fun and if people who have talent actually want to try and do this, I will be willing. I could probably bring some level design to the table for practicle work. Again, I don't have an artistic hand, nor do I have the patience to learn different languages at the moment. Programming comes difficult to me. I understand the concept of it, its just the matter of what to put where and when ect.
I would say that is because of time, and lack of money per milestone and resources.
There is a much greater leap from "written documents" to "translated into programming" than you realize, especailly with something as complex as a massively multiplayer persistent 3D world. It doesn't make a difference what looks good on paper, as a great game mechanic is often completely indistinguishable from a horrible one until coded and executed along side and in conjunction with the rest of the game. Now, to really throw a wrench in the works... sprinkle in user behavior.
I'm not going to ask you to take my word on that. I encourage, beg and implore you to talk to a friend or relative that is a professional programmer and let them explain it to you.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre