No Monster Spawning please

[Jamiro]

All the developers do it, so it must be the easiest way.. but darn it\'s never been one of my favorite design decisions.. monster spawning.  You kill it.. another appears in the same place after a while.  I could rant on and on about the problems but instead, since every dev is likely experience with this.. I will suggest an alternative.

Sexual reproduction.  I do not need to see monsters having sex, that is not my goal here.  What I want is for monsters to reproduce rather than just spawn.  If players wipe out a monster population then that colony is gone, it does not just re-appear.   New colonies could be seeded if the amount of available monsters was too low for the player population.. but if monster habitat was large enough I think monsters could grow more naturally.  

The monster a player kills may be encountered miles from where it was born, so another would not just appear in that location, the hunter would have to.. \"hunt\" for more prey.

Is this just too hard to code?  Would it present a huge addition of lag?  I often wonder because it seems to obvious yet no developer seems to try it.. well one did but Glitchless/Dawn doesn\'t seem to be happening.

[Vengeance]

The reason no game has done it is because it is bad game design.  You have to have areas of different difficulty level so that players know what to expect and so there is a progression in geography and difficulty as you go.  Having random mobs everywhere isn\'t design at all.

Having said all this, static spawns suck too.  We will have something in between both these concepts.

- Venge

[Ravette]

I can see why the first idea wouldn\'t work, but I can\'t wait to see what you come up with for the MB monsters.  

[cmhitman]

note:
Mb is already out, and there are no monsters in it.
the next release is CB...


ps
atleast  be correct when brown noseing

[Jessyn]

CB would be standing for Crystal Blue?  Bah, i liked Quantum Blue better.  nyways, i thought there were going to be \"spawn zones\" where a mob would spawn randomly within some large piece of territory.

Jessyn

Ravette - I love the sig

[Jamiro]

Thanks for responding Venge, I appreciate your doing so.

I did skip over reasons for having spawning all right and I like that you don\'t plan to go for static spawns either.  

Thanks to everyone for being reasonable over what could be a hot topic hehe.

[Tiraid]

I followed Dawn for awhile. They were definately biting off more than they could chew with that one. I did like the idea of no spawning, and everything that came with it. But Vengence has a very good point that I never thought of. You never know what you would run into. On the other hand, if players wipe a place out, it becomes worthless. I\'m very interested in seeing your new idea on this.

Besides spawning, Dawn was going to allow players to modify that landscape. If they could think of  a really good way to keep the polycount down, that would be great. That was my biggest concern with that. But the possibilities were really cool.

[Grey]

Perhaps, though, there can be a formula to determine spawn ratios of certain monsters based on the rapidity at which they have been killed recently, and the rapidity (theoretical) of which they reproduce.  This would make it possible to overhunt, but not wipe out certain Mobs.  It would also automatically make the mobs with useful or potentially expensive items rare to find.  A useful side effect of this would be if species could be protected by a group of \'herdsmen\' (players) who would farm (herd them, or keep others away from them) the animals for their usefulness.  Another cool part of this would be that large creatures such as dragons would come into knowledge (spawn) every once in a long while and require beating by a sufficiently brave group of adventurers.  

Going a step further... a large, stretched step forward, the mobs could be \'born\' as young of their species and slowly mature until they become the stronger adults of their type.  I see the biggest issue with this being that if a zone wasn\'t regularly hunted, or during a period of time where very little amount of people hunt them they would become a very strong group of monsters.  A solution then would be a formula for the randomized death of the mob after a long period of time.  It would be so spread out of a time that it wouldn\'t effect the normal hunting of the creatures, but it would occur every once and a while.  As a safety measure for angry people, it would be impossible for it to die when engaged in battle or at other key times of its life.

[Rageburst]

I think your problem is that you see a monster pop up right in front of you. This is disruptive to the gameplay especially if one of the game\'s strong points is an immersive game environment... Of course, loading times is even more disruptive since the player has to wait before going back to the immersive gameplay.

The solution should therefore be to spawn a monster only when players are not near the area. Of course, you might get a few people on a hill looking faraway and see some spawning... but.... meh!

You can also basically use monster spawn points, but have them pop up from a prop like a large hole in the ground.... Insect-like monsters for example can pop up from a \"hole.\" The hole is merely decoration, but at least the insect monster doesn\'t seem *poof* up like magic.... unless it had some invisibility spell... but that\'s beside the point.

Another spawn point prop is perhaps a magical rift between the worlds that acts as a portal for monsters (like in warcraft 2). Of course, programming-wise, it\'s just a prop like a tree... but the gamer, it\'s a \"magical portal.\" OOOOOHHhhh!

[Greatwolf]

Originally posted by Rageburst
I think your problem is that you see a monster pop up right in front of you. This is disruptive to the gameplay especially if one of the game\'s strong points is an immersive game environment... Of course, loading times is even more disruptive since the player has to wait before going back to the immersive gameplay.

The solution should therefore be to spawn a monster only when players are not near the area. Of course, you might get a few people on a hill looking faraway and see some spawning... but.... meh!

You can also basically use monster spawn points, but have them pop up from a prop like a large hole in the ground.... Insect-like monsters for example can pop up from a \"hole.\" The hole is merely decoration, but at least the insect monster doesn\'t seem *poof* up like magic.... unless it had some invisibility spell... but that\'s beside the point.

Another spawn point prop is perhaps a magical rift between the worlds that acts as a portal for monsters (like in warcraft 2). Of course, programming-wise, it\'s just a prop like a tree... but the gamer, it\'s a \"magical portal.\" OOOOOHHhhh!

you took the ideas out of my mind. I was gonna suggest that too  

[Jamiro]

The one that pops behind you silently... I always hated that.. you can only make that immersive by assuming that all mobs can hide in the shadows and jump out at just the right time... yeah right!

The ideas on monster spawning graphics are certainly an improvement.  You rarely see that in modern games so I guess it\'s another thing that is taken out for optomization.

I like what Venge was saying though, about non-static spawns.  If the critters wander from their spawn point and they don\'t spawn with players nearby, then it should be almost impossible to have monsters spawn right on top of you.

[Ravenmaster]

I think the best thing to do (this would solve all previously stated problems but at the same time cause another small problem) would be to take the server down for a couple minutes once or twice each day and just simply re-set all the monsters.  This would make sure that there is always the desired number of monsters and monsters won\'t just appear in front of a player. It may be a slight inconvinience to the players at the time, but perhaps all on-line players could just be kicked to a waiting room where they can chat and then be brought back in when the server is back up.  If the developers wanted to, they could keep track of the number of monsters killed during each period and the ones who die most often could have less and less later, until they go extinct.  This would make anything you get specifically from those creatures (ie hides, teeth, claws) very rare and worth lots of money.

[Jamiro]

I wouldn\'t even be adverse to trying that out.  I think that being kicked into a chat room when the server goes down is a simple yet good idea, possibly even original?

Although, I must admit, the thought of having to boot everyone and respawn all the critters seems a bit extreme.  However, maybe my own idea is extreme too hehe.. basically, I\'d have the monsters not respawn until their spawn spot is clear of PC\'s.  If the PC\'s camped all the monsters spawns then the monsters would stay unspawned.  This would sort of simulate extinct monsters due to over-hunting.  Then adventurers would have to leave the hunting grounds until the monsters returned.. maybe go for an ale at the tavern and spin tales or work on trade-skills etc.  

I guess my own idea would be subject to exploited by griefers who might intently suppress spawns for their own reasons.  I guess this could be circumvented slightly by increasing the world size as the player base goes so that they simply cannot spread out and cover the whole map to supress all spawns.  That might require some sort of fractal map generation if the devs couldn\'t keep up.  Wishful thinking is how my ideas are starting to seem lol

sorry for writing a novel at a low level of literacy.. for a writer hehe (aka. sorry for long post haha)

Jamiro

[Jamiro]

Hey, anyone remember one of the first MMORPG\'s called The Realm?  Well, that has a turn-based combat system, and they implemented dungeons in a way that made it possible to have massive numbers of players and small world-space.  They simply spawned a new instance of each dungeon (small dungeons compared to newer games) for each player or group that entered.  I\'m not sure how that was implemented to be optimal, but I suspect that if they did it, the devs for this game could try something similar.  

This would make it possible to have the spawning setup to be such that if the above ground monster spawns were all suppressed by player proximity, the players would still be able to go into caves that would have monsters in them.  This is also slightly exploitable in that players can exit and re-enter the cave over and over.  I don\'t know if that would be bad though.

[Ravenmaster]

I think having a seperate dungeon for each group would suck.  Then if you died, you couldn\'t go back and get your stuff, assuming you lose something when you die, and you couldn\'t meet someone in the dungeon.  Also, I like meeting people outside of town. And then running from them when they try to PK me...