Persistent World Rountable: The Role Playing Experience...

#61 Just a quick blip on the new thread, Persistent World Rountable: The RPG Interface....

And on the "player power" issue, there's a few things you can do to prevent a person's kingdom from being wiped out while they aren't around. One idea is to simply not allow it unless they're logged in, but to prevent them from trying to log out to protect a doomed defense, you can also make it so that once a siege is started, it can continue to the end. Another idea is that if the player has NPC servants or guards, to increase their power to reflect the "total power" of the people of the kingdom that are not there.

For example, if you have 10 level 100 players, and 5 level 10 NPC's, you could theoretically boost the NPC's to level 210, and then those 5 NPC's will be as powerful as them plus your 10 players. If a player logs on, then the NPCs' powers are depleted to reflect that only 9 people are offline at that point. Not sure what effect this would have on a particular game balance, but it can be tweaked to work with different rulesets I'm sure.

Still another idea is that of "declared wars". One group or guild can "declare" war against another, giving a bit of lead time to the person being attacked to shore up defenses. Or, how about kingdoms that have land in "protected" areas near cities, but also land in the "wild" areas, and only allowing the land in the wild areas to come under attack? This way people can take land back and forth while allowing those with keeps or castles in the cities to not lose them.

#62 Yeah thats kinda of what I was thinking, but a kingdom would not just be one person, nor 10. The basis of the player power, is that the kingdom would be in the 1000's. Therefore battles between kingdoms, or even rebels would involve 50 - 100 people a side at least. So the battles would be on the planetside scale or bigger.
The declared war is a good idea, it allows the non fighting guys a chance to escape and for each side to work on a time for the fight, everyone wants to fight, so might aswell organize it. U declare a war and then there is a 2 day layby and then the fights begin, so both sides know where to attack and that. It would make the fighting much better.

#63 Hmm well if you were to take over an entire kingdom, it will surely take some time, and you are bound to go online and play at some point and realise the pixie army from the north is taking over or something. Organized war would be good, you could have it so you could only destroy or take over a town when you have declared war, but you could still raid towns for example even if you are not at war.

Also some small things now...

1. How long do you think a game year should be? 1,2,3 weeks? 1,2,3 months? or even 1,2,3 hours?

2. Going back to the learning skills etc, how about if when your making an item or something, it gets given a rating, based on quality of ingredients and construction and your skill of course, and say if you made something really gd for the first time you got more exp, and gradually decreases the more you make that item at that standard, but also the same happend when you make a bad item, so therefore learning from your mistakes?

3. Now i am debating with several people if this will just be a nuisance or add to the experience. When it comes to chat, would it be better to get rid of global chat, so it means instead of just adding someone to the convo by searchin through a list you would have to go hunt them down and look for them?

Though if you really felt the need to talk long distance you could have a channeller in your party, who can talk long distance and can also pass his power to others for short times, or have mobiles for more futuristic type games.

4. Lastly, not to have player names show up above their heads? or should they? might add a sense of mystery about people, and allow them to lie about their name, misleading people.

#64 @Daniel:
1. That is always gotten to me. I think the standard for an online game is 1hr = 1day. So 30hrs = 30days. The problem I have with time in a game is that it means nothing. In order to run a MMO the game company should allot a full time staff of world/content builders. Their job would be to keep the world going through changes.

2. Personally I think crafting anything sucks. It would be different if people didn't try to be everything but people play online games like single player. The key would be that if someone wants to craft then that is all they do. They get the materials from trade or buy from a miner who is a player that mines. As for your learning skills I think the newer the item(first time making it) the more exp you get. As the item becomes standard(your selling lots of them) the exp drops down a bit. For a bad creation I think you should get very little exp but also have the ability to salvage some of it for raw materials.

3. That sounds like a nuisance but only because it wasn't a standard to keep talk local. Everyone now expects global chat. Personally I think that if you localize it then it would mean less load on the client and server sending msgs.

4. This would work if people would look unique. The problem is that there are not enough customizations to keep people unique. So I may see several of the same person and not know who was who. Now I am not saying there should be a roll of a dice and randomize the character but perhaps we should instead of visualizing the features of the build it should be numbers.

Example:
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 145lbs
Eyes: Hazel...

Then the server could generate a build off of it and you can then customize it further with details i.e. scars, glasses, beards, etc....

#65 This is a little obvious, but NPC AI that reacts to things you do, and doesn't stand in the same spot all day makes a huge difference.

The thing that made me quit Morrowind was the fact that the NPCs were incredibly stupid and unrealistic. I could walk into a shop at 3AM and the shopkeeper would be standing behind the counter. The shopkeepers also didn't seem to mind you going upstairs from the shop and looting their bedrooms.

One reason I really had an issue with these things is that I had just finished Gothic and Gothic 2, two games where the NPC behavior really adds a lot to the experience. In Gothic 2, if you walk into someone's shop at 3 am, they'll roll out of bed and tell you to get lost. If they see you creeping around, messing around with their stuff, or going into someone's room, they'll draw their weapon and shout threats at you, and if you don't stop they'll bash your face in. These types of reactions made it tons of fun to rob houses, and in a way, forced you to behave in a civil manner most of the time. Even though dying is not much of a problem, since it just forces you to load a save game, it was enough of a consequence to be a good motivator.

The part that really added to the immersion was the fact that the NPCs' lives didn't revolve around you. If you were returning from a quest or something, and you wanted to talk to a particular NPC, you'd have to check a few places around the town, because each NPC had a daily route that they'd follow. For instance, if it was nightime, and you were looking for the blacksmith's apprentice, you'd probably find him down by the pub, unless he had gone to sleep. In that case, you'd probably go to sleep as well and catch him in the morning working at the blacksmith's shop. NPCs actually appeared to have lives of some sort.

Now, I don't play too many RPGs, I don't know if this stuff is standard stuff nowadays. But by adding these things, they took away a lot of the "silliness factor" that a lot of rpgs, like morrowind, seem to have, and made the game infinitely more playable. I'm not the RP type, but if the guys are standing in the same spot all day for a year, and don't seem at least a little realistic in the way they react to things, that's not going to help with the ol' suspension of disbelief.

#66 AI is deffinetly an issue when it comes to game play, though morrowind was more about story and plot than having the best AI and gameplay of the time.

Hmm for the global chat thing i think i might not add it, i will give players options like being able to use carrier pigeons or a special type of magic like telekeneisis(or however you spell it!) I don't mind crafting in small amounts, it is when you have to sit there for 5 hours a day crafting 10000 bricks just to get to the next level which gets me agitated. Hopefully though I can think of someway too disuade gamers from trying to take on all roles of the game and hopefully add a bit of diversity to it.

On the customization note, can torque use morphs? so for example i could make one model and it have several morphs, ie, height muscles, fat, body proportions etc?

Hmmm, maybe with the server load i cut from all the global chat i could get some better ai working online :).....

#67 For me RPing comes down to giving your character choices that have an effect. In the current state of MMORPGs most choices lead to character creation decisions. The way the choice is made is also significant. Just going to the same trainer is not very RPing friendly.

So add choices and add different things to effect. This is a game run through a computer so using numbers is an obvious way to reflect the choices you make. Now character development is pretty simple IMO. Do nice things get rewards fit for a nice person, do evil things, get rewards fit for an evil person.

I think there has to be goals to achieve beyond character development. (this falls under 'different things to effect') If you are a hero you are probably protecting something, or someone. If you are evil you are probably fighting for something too.

Give the players goals. City Building is an obvious choice and IMO the best one. Keep in mind that not all players may want to build a city. A Druid for example may not build a city. So what do they do? What do the evil warlocks do? What happens if a druid does evil things?

IMO you let people do what they want and make it meaningful.

#68 I just thought I'd jump in here. I love RPGs, but I have a serious issue with the topic of 'evil' in computer RPGs. For the most part you have (around)4 options for a dialog:
a) We should help these pesants
b) Lets help them and then give them all the money
c) Lets help them, but there better be a good reward.
d) Lets kill them and sell their children into slavery.

Obviously we have, Lawful Good, Neutral/Chaotic Good, Whatever Neutral, and Chaotic Evil. There is rarely the choice out there for the subtile evil, and this bothers me. A prime example is in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. (Fantastic game, BTW) At one point, while being trained as a Jedi, you come across a rogue Dark Jedi named Juhani. Your choices are to a) kill her, b) convert her to the light side. It drove me up the wall, there was no thoice to c) beat the crap out of her and then make her your apprentice. I don't want to give away the story here, but it would be VERY appropriate for a person, playing the dark path of the game, to take an apprentice. Now, later in the game, you get an apprentice as a Dark Jedi, however I'd like to see the two of them fight it out. It would have been way better of a story for it, I think.

The problem with evil is, it's very hard to direct. I DM'd a D&D game that was an evil campaign, and it was complicated. The players came up with a lot of crazy stuff to do. But I'd just like to see a evil path that wasn't obcessed with genocide.

#69 @Pat: Agreed but now you introduce a new level of complexity in social structure and AI. Given your example of beating the living crap out of Juhani and making her your apprentice/love slave, now the system has to deal with every subtle instance of your Dark Jedi wanting to break away from the slave owner (you), beat the living crap out of you, ignore orders, and a realm of other possibilities that could shift the balance of power. That's an entire game unto itself that I see where you have a mini-battle between semi-good and evil duking it out, with your carcass being hauled off in front of the Dark Jedi court of punishment for the cruel and unusual treatment of Dark Jedi apprentices.

In any case, cool thread but I do agree it would be nice to see RPGs offer more diversity in choices. I think this just comes at a cost of 1 subtly = 10 additional logic paths in your system.

#70 For the whole evil/good things, each npc could have a mood stat, depending on the situation and likeableness of your character, affects which action they will take, if they are the bestest friend in the world, they will fight to the death for you at no cost, on the other hand they could be your worst enemy and start attackin you aswell.

Depending on what your characters class is, will determine a few sets of actions, for example the slave thing above, they could be happy working for you, or they could try and get away or kill you and all thats in between.

Your characters likeableness could be determined by a few variables/stats, like annoyingness(i know that probably isnt a word), generosity, good/evil. Annoyingness could be effects when your talkin to characters, for example if your character went around talkin to every npc in the city and asking the same question or pestering them whilst they are doing something it will increase, and you get the general idea.

I dunno its an idea, not a very gd one but hey!

#71 Damnit...I typed out my original post, then clicked the "notify me when new replies are posted" button, and it erased my post! I put a lot of time into the original so unforunately this one won't be as well-written =[.

Permanent death, at least in some form, is a very good idea. One of the biggest challenges in maintaining a MMO is the ratio of content consumption and content development. It's a battle that the developers are always losing. The problem is MMOs aren't dangerous enough. Players aren't afraid to explore and do quests ASAP because if they die, oh well it's a small (but annoying) nuisance to get back on track like nothing ever happened. However, with permanent death, players are forced to be more cautious. Planning and group work would be required to successfully complete any exploration or quest. Therefore the rate of content consumption would be dramatically lower. Not to mention it is more realistic and would require players to roleplay if they desire their character to live.

How to implement it though? There has to be protection against unfair deaths (lag or otherwise). Even if a character dies fair-and-square, is it right to completely erase all his hard work and time spent? I don't think so. The player's new character should retain a proportional amount of effort put into the old character. A couple suggestions have been made, but I particularly liked The Cush's family system idea.

My thoughts on a family system:
- Characters are born infants and age until death.
-- Character traits are equivalent to age. Weak and unwise when young, strong and somewhat wise when adult, weak and wise when old.
--- This stabilizes character progression. Characters can only become so powerful before age gets to them.
---- This compresses the range of character power, allowing developers to provide content suitable to a larger % of players.
-- Adds dynamic to social systems. Imagine the chaos if an important leader suddenly passed away in his sleep.
-- Adds dynamic to roleplaying. An aging warrior might give up the sword and become a shopkeeper.

- New characters are born to a NPC family.
-- The parents teach the player the game.
-- They might emphasize a certain aspect of gameplay such as fighting, trading, crafting, or scholarly work. However, the player is still free to do anything he likes. Kind of like wanting to be a game developer when your dad wants you to be a scientist =].
-- After a certain age, the parents no longer support the player.
--- However, the player can run away at any time.

- Once adult the player can marry and have children of his own.
-- Children are NPCs characters.
--- Once grown, they take up NPC jobs in the cities.
--- NPC children can have children of their own.
-- There is a pregnancy timer to limit number of children.
-- There is a cost associated with child rearing to limit the number of children.
-- The player can train his children in any skill he is knowledgable in.
--- Child advancement is proportional to player advancement.

- When a player dies he can choose to play one of his children or any successive generation.
-- Each generation becomes slightly more powerful.
-- If a player has no children at death, he is born to a NPC family and forced to start over completely.

This is a fantastic thread, and I hope my post will contribute well. I had another section about quests, missions, and world persistance but I don't feel like rewriting it so I'll post again another time.

#72 I once made a game in Qbasic that you where a wizard who fought a dragone.(i was 13 at the time so please ignore the lack of origanality) but the whole thing that made it cool was the fact you could write spells, like "attack pyros sphere" was a generic fireball. you would write out the spell in this format:

I had alot of fun because your charcter and the enemy was randomly generated in terms of attributes, makeing it fun and different each time you played. that would be nice and immersive for a mmorpg, i think that the same should be true for the fighter types: you choose a stance,weapon, and target (stance being the style in which you wish to use) and the target being arm, leg, head or torso.

but in a mmorpg setting, it should have an option to bring up the best of your techniques as a quick move, or quick Key.

perma death, i think that the idea of haveing a reincarnation is nice, but if the PC lives out to retirement, the player should be able to continue on as a student of his prior character, meaning that they start from scratch, but may have a small level bonus, or has a few choice skills from his prior character, maybe an item or two. and so forth, this would be alot more fun becuase it only works if your a good player to begin with, that way the players are encouraged to play correctly in the hopes that they restart in a better and more skilled body than when they started from scratch to begin with. and it should prevent lamers from useing it as a loop hole.

#73 There are a lot of good ideas in this thread.

We are just at the conceptual stage of a game but have been looking hard into the PW model and what we don't like about a lot of the games on the market.

In the end we modelled a few ideas in Operation Flashpoint first with the civillian classes by assigning the random likes and dislikes. These few simple values yielded motivations.

At the moment its a pretty small test group, but we are thinking of expanding this motivation behaviour AI to combat units as well. If your interested I can post the results when its all done. What we are hoping to achieve is layer NPCs with more than one dimension. So besides a soldier AI simply trained to shoot and avoid being shot. They may also have a like for chocolate and aversion to water. In a first person shooter this isn't really important but in a persistent world.....

Lets take this one step further consider your character is leader of an infantry platoon. You objective is to patrol through a town. You move through the town, the overriding objective is to not be shot and look for enemy. Say you've checked the town out and enemy are not present, you turn around to issue orders to one your men and find he isn't there. You end up finding him in a candy store stuffing his face and thrusting chocolate bars into his backpack.

Ok so why is this important? I mean it has no real bearing on the game, does it? Well it kind of does, what we've found is the players become attached to the NPCs because they display depth of emotion. In other words they start become immersed in the game world.

Like I said we are still tinkering with the system but it looks promising.

#74 There are a lot of good ideas in this thread.

We are just at the conceptual stage of a game but have been looking hard into the PW model and what we don't like about a lot of the games on the market.

In the end we modelled a few ideas in Operation Flashpoint first with the civillian classes by assigning the random likes and dislikes. These few simple values yielded motivations.

At the moment its a pretty small test group, but we are thinking of expanding this motivation behaviour AI to combat units as well. If your interested I can post the results when its all done. What we are hoping to achieve is layer NPCs with more than one dimension. So besides a soldier AI simply trained to shoot and avoid being shot. They may also have a like for chocolate and aversion to water. In a first person shooter this isn't really important but in a persistent world.....

Lets take this one step further consider your character is leader of an infantry platoon. You objective is to patrol through a town. You move through the town, the overriding objective is to not be shot and look for enemy. Say you've checked the town out and enemy are not present, you turn around to issue orders to one your men and find he isn't there. You end up finding him in a candy store stuffing his face and thrusting chocolate bars into his backpack.

Ok so why is this important? I mean it has no real bearing on the game, does it? Well it kind of does, what we've found is the players become attached to the NPCs because they display depth of emotion. In other words they start become immersed in the game world.

Like I said we are still tinkering with the system but it looks promising.

#75 Since we're getting in to the AI part of the game, I started another roundtable thread to deal with it specifically. It's located here:

www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=21286

As always, participation can only help everyone, so if you want to talk about the AI side of persistent worlds, head on over here!

#76 Well evil is also relative, but it is an easy way to describe what I meant.

I have actually developed a system that uses eight different factions instead on good and evil.

Nature Versus Industry
Law versus Outlaw
Spirit religion versus monotheistic
Magic versus Dark Magic

So in this case you can RP "evil" but morality is somewhat relative.

#77 Well evil is also relative, but it is an easy way to describe what I meant.

I have actually developed a system that uses eight different factions instead on good and evil.

Nature Versus Industry
Law versus Outlaw
Spirit religion versus monotheistic
Magic versus Dark Magic

So in this case you can RP "evil" but morality is somewhat relative.

#78 What happened? No more ideas?
Question: how many of you would like to have job in game? For instance, if your class is smith, you could do little jobs for local smith ... If you are engineer you could have part time job in local plant...

#79 LOL. This was actually the best thread. I still come back to it often to re-read everything. As for jobs as long as it isn't too much work(unless some people like that) then it would be okay. I would say that as starting out you could do jobs for the locals but once your skill increases then you would open your own shop and people would buy from that.

#80 @Eric
With imagination and work everything is possible, but we must not kill gameplay with to many real life issues.

I will propably try to publish intro to world I will create as online novel. Idea is to spread my concept/story to wider community; standard historical and cultural background hidden behind novel and only intro to main quest (you'll have to wait for game!).
Several issues must be done before any publishing:
- translating to English (grammar and spelling!!!)
- does it have any artistic worth, or it is piece of crap
- copyright
Has someone any experience with this?