Mistakes You dont want to see Repeated

[rifft]

I agree with you that it is nice to have that sort of immersion. Though I\'m unsure of how well that will scale, for example if you have 300 people who want to play, you would need to generate 300 quests, that once completed would be thrown out. Unless... and here\'s the kicker. The quest is randomly generated with a set of certain constraints.

Oooh, I just had an epiphany, I think your questspace idea, doesn\'t have to be a space. For example the world does not have to stay static, and opened closed doors don\'t ever have to stay in the same state. But if you go out and receive a quest, then that NPC triggers an event in which all necessary key baddies, item, etc are generated. These would exist with the world as a whole, but would be mostly useless as a whole to everyone else, plus they would have to spawn in remote locations, and for each char this could be some far away location which *is* devoid of hunting, etc.

So by simply randomizing the major locations of the quests you would have much greater immersion, with a much smaller probability of having mutlitple people in the same place looking for the same baddie.

I don\'t know if this makes sense... but I can see potential, I think I will expand on it a bit later once I think it through more.

[RonHiler]

Originally posted by rifft
But if you go out and receive a quest, then that NPC triggers an event in which all necessary key baddies, item, etc are generated. These would exist with the world as a whole, but would be mostly useless as a whole to everyone else, plus they would have to spawn in remote locations, and for each char this could be some far away location which *is* devoid of hunting, etc.

Can you say SWG?    You just described their *exact* quest system.

It works, sorta.  The only problem with it is that all \"quests\" are essentially the same.  The baddy might be a little different, but they all boil down to \"Go to location X and kill Baddy Y and bring me back Item Z as proof\" or some variant thereof.

As long as the devs were able to add more variety than that (whcih there is no reason they shouldn\'t be able to), it would be a fine quest system (although you\'ve just shot your one time per quest per toon idea).

Also, with such a system, you have to think about other player interference.  Sure, the baddies might not be of any use to them, but suppose a griefer comes along and just happens to run into the group you were sent to take out before you get there.  Said griefer kills off the group for fun and enjoyment and heads off.  Now what?  Did you fail the quest?  Did you succeed?  If there was a quest item involved, what happened to it?  All things you have to think about.

BTW, I disagree (naturally ) with the idea of hiding numbers from the players.  In my mind, part of computer RPGs is the ability to tweak and advance your toon, and to me that involves examining your skills/stats/profession/whatever values and improving the ones you want to improve as suits your playstyle.  And that involves knowing what the numbers are.  I think the more numbers, the better.

Ron

[rifft]

Heh, number phun! Yeah, I know what you mean, I think I would prefer numbers too, but I do think it would have been nice to be forced to forget leveling. I mean to tweak out ones character upon creation is just fine. But after you created your char, you don\'t necessarily *need* or *want* to tweak a character out. I mean you may wanna improve sword fighting, well, go and improve it, as long as there is feed back that it is indeed improving then we\'re all good. The overall improvement would have to be guaged by what you can do as opposed to being gauged by a number. You know its so different from most RPG (even Paper and Pen ones) that the concept is a little unatractive. Though level should really be removed, if anything.

I mean I would love it if you could not say something like, I\'m level 30 and therefore can kill anything below my level. I would like to see something like, so I went and killed 3 wolves, I know I can do it, because I\'ve just killed them. I saw a group of mean looking orcs, didn\'t engange, because I wasn\'t sure if I could take them. I don\'t like being so freaking sure all the time.

As for the quest system. Yeah there definately needs to be variety. And when I said randomly generate all key points ivolved. I didn\'t jsut mean go to X kill Y bring Z. I mean yeah that\'s the most basic version of it, but I was talking about a more robust system.  Where a dev or GM will define the key points. It could be go to X bring Y then go to Z and bring Y2 then kill Z2 before he talks to X1, etc. I mean you could create some variety with a skeleton.

Interference could also be interpreted on a per quest basis. For example you\'re trying to protect Z from dying for X amount of time, before you get to Z, someone kills em. You fail! You get no reward, you get no XP, you do not pass go and you do NOT collect 200 tria.

I think that\'s about all. Anyway off to class.

Cheers.
Rifft

[RonHiler]

Originally posted by rifft
I mean you may wanna improve sword fighting, well, go and improve it, as long as there is feed back that it is indeed improving then we\'re all good. The overall improvement would have to be guaged by what you can do as opposed to being gauged by a number.

I couldn\'t agree with you more.  I think certain games take this to an extreme (such as EQ, DAoC, and LinII among others) where you \'con\' a creature and it tells you by color code if you can beat it or not (based entirely on level, I\'m sure).  I HATE that.  I mean really, what\'s the point of even playing?  The \'con\' function should be banned from all MMORPGs on penalty of deletion

But I think it\'s entirely possible to have numbers AND the thrill of uncertainty.  What it requires is a bit more development of the critters.

I\'ll use AC as an example, because as far as I\'ve found, it\'s the only one that has gotten this aspect right (and one of the big reasons I think this is the best MMORPG that has ever been done).

AC does use levels, but it is also very skills based.  Your toon has a certain level of proficiency with swords, clubs, schools of magic and so forth (there are about 50 or 75 skills in the game), as well as the usual attributes (strength, endurance, and so on).  As you play the game and get experience, you can spend it on your skills/attributes to improve them.  So your level gives you a rough idea of where you are at, but its really more of a question of how well you distributed your XP points into your skills (in fact, \"leveling\" in AC gives you no direct benefit. Other than the label itself, it has no meaning (I\'m simplifying a little bit, there is one advantage to leveling, but it has no direct consequence on combat)).

Now (and here\'s the clever bit), critters have the EXACT same system (well, I think their skills are a subset of the player skills, but other than that).  So what that means is that a critter\'s level will give you a rough idea of how tough they are, but not an exact idea.  They may have a very high magic defense but a low melee defense.  They may be very skilled with a sword or not.  You just don\'t know until you\'ve taken a few on.  So the level of uncertainty is still there.

So what you end up with is a system where you can get a rough idea (the creature is 30 levels above me, RUN) by the level, which allows you to stay sort of in your kill range but also leaves open the possibility that you might run into something tougher (or weaker) than you think.  And yet you still get the numbers for your toon that allows you to make educated decisions on how to advance them.

[Seytra]

originally quoted by someone
Interference could also be interpreted on a per quest basis. For example you\'re trying to protect Z from dying for X amount of time, before you get to Z, someone kills em. You fail! You get no reward, you get no XP, you do not pass go and you do NOT collect 200 tria.

This will give birth to a brand new generation of griefers, namely those who just keep running around to find quest items or NSCs that belong to quests of others just to kill them before the quest can be solved.

I say there must be absolutely NO way to interfere with the quests of anybody else _unless_ you were invited. This brings us to a formal party system that\'s be necessary. It could be as simple as right-clicking the member wannabe and selecting \"add to party\" (same for remove from party). Afterwards, they will share their quests with you and vice versa (questspaces will need a bit some thinking to get around synch problems, though, it might not be feasible to do seamlessly).

Oh, and why is everybody referring to the personae as \"toons\"? I absolutely _hate_ cartoon-style games and I associate \"toon\" with \"cartoon\", therefore it always gives me the creeps when PC personae are being referred to as \"toons\".

[Monketh]

Originally posted by Seytra

originally quoted by someone
Interference could also be interpreted on a per quest basis. For example you\'re trying to protect Z from dying for X amount of time, before you get to Z, someone kills em. You fail! You get no reward, you get no XP, you do not pass go and you do NOT collect 200 tria.

This will give birth to a brand new generation of griefers, namely those who just keep running around to find quest items or NSCs that belong to quests of others just to kill them before the quest can be solved.

I say there must be absolutely NO way to interfere with the quests of anybody else _unless_ you were invited. This brings us to a formal party system that\'s be necessary. It could be as simple as right-clicking the member wannabe and selecting \"add to party\" (same for remove from party). Afterwards, they will share their quests with you and vice versa (questspaces will need a bit some thinking to get around synch problems, though, it might not be feasible to do seamlessly).

Oh, and why is everybody referring to the personae as \"toons\"? I absolutely _hate_ cartoon-style games and I associate \"toon\" with \"cartoon\", therefore it always gives me the creeps when PC personae are being referred to as \"toons\".

I agree, and bringing a new kind of griefer into the world is not something we want to do.
Hey, maybe parties should stay together for just one quest.  Helps solve some continuity problems.

OT: Calling characters \"toons\"...  *shudders*
I don\'t see any talking rabbits around here, do you?

[RonHiler]

OT: Calling characters \"toons\"...  *shudders*
I don\'t see any talking rabbits around here, do you?

It\'s common terminology in MMORPG discussion cirlces.  If ya don\'t like it, don\'t use it  You could also say Avatar, character, PC, or whatever the hell yawant.  I will most likely continue to use the term though, as its the one I\'m most used to.

[rifft]

about the griefers. They will always exist in many colours shapes and forms, the problem as you see it is this.

The new griefer knows all possible spawn locations with the world of one particular quest.

No, that\'s impossible to do. First when I say protect X I really mean protect X, it could be a bunny outside town. Which may get killed but it would probably not be a significant quest. However, if you have to travel to some remote location, which may not be easy to find in the first place, and that location is generated randomly, and only you and your chosen party members have access to the NPC direction for that particular quest, it essentially allows for _questspace_ without the need to seperate it. We can simply use the size of the world as one of the safeguards against this griefer.

Now as I was thinking about this further, another thing popped into my mind. What if you extened this questing system further? Instead of basic events you now have branches; let me explain. One of the random selection will fall into one category out of some finite set of categories,  each set of those categories could have some completely differnt objectives. The amount of combination you now have is ridiculus, but in addition to that, the amount of patterns this certain section of quests can have is also immense.

Anyway, I\'m sure there are many subtleties that I\'m failing to see right now, but as a rough idea, I think it\'s a more elegant and more feasible solution to quest spaces. And you know sometimes shit happens, that last flower you were looking for, well somone picked it, and now you can\'t finish the quest. But you should be able to abandon a quest, once you get bored or unable to finish it.

Anyway, I\'ll leave that for you guys to chew on..

Oh and as to the numbers deal. You are absolutely right, if we are clever about implementing our baddies and our general combat system, they won\'t ruin everything or anything really. But I think it might be something radical to try without? No? I mean it\'s not what we\'re used to. I wouldn\'t be entirely comfortable not knowing, but that\'s how life is. Educated guess have to be made upon past experience, and so, you must try to fight a wolf. Last week you killed a wolf, this week this wolf is tougher, shit... you barely get out of it alive. No need for number, still plenty of uncertainty.

Anyway in some respects you\'re right, because usually the history of MMOs is not rich enough to allow a character to learn which creatures are supposedly tough and which are not as we do in RL, but I mean can\'t I dream?

[BillyAnachronism]

I\'ve got a few ideas to kick around.

I want to see aging of characters and death No character should be able to live forever!

I also like the idea of not being able to tell the exact abilities of a creature. Perhaps after you have killed it and have a vetinary skill you can find out?

I don\'t like picking costume, I think costume should be picked up as you progress or created.

A tricky problem I\'ve seen, is balancing of the game for hardcore and casual gamers. I suppose for this game it may not be as much as a problem as many more would be RPing. So the people who don\'t care about \'level\'s and \'grinding\' just don\'t and those that do, do. I don\'t know..

An idea for quests which I\'ve already voiced and Venge has thrown in my face is one for in game quests writers. They team up with a programmer and write. Much like radio ad makers who storm up 30 in an hour and such. Anyway.. they sit in the game and write them out and people come to them for them. The programmer has some dev tools to help him achieve functionality quickly, CASE tools and such... Sure, the quests are alot less frequent .. but eh.. it SOUNDS like an alright idea to me, even though totally impractical.

Billy

[Monketh]

Well you know Billy, there aren\'t that many people who want to have their character die, though they might not mind age as much.  You see, when you put real time from your life and much effort to create and move this character, you don\'t want to see it dissappear.  And probably, most people will rejoin their former guild, and go for the exact same path as they followed the last time.

[Seytra]

Anyone having played NWN?

There is at least one quest that can be made unfinishable by acting IC, and by using the officially provided answers _only_.

The one I\'m referring to is the \"head hunter\" quest, where you hunt down (and kill) five escaped prisoners.

SPOILER ahead!


Well the problem is that you can talk to them and decide for yourself if you think they need to be killed. Well, if you let even one of them go, the last one, the head of the group, will never be able to get caught, because he would, after you have delivered proof of killing the four others, abduct the daughter of the guy who gave you the quest, and you\'d get the key to his hideout from the guy.

Now, you can easily go to this hideout but as you can\'t get the key, you can\'t take him out, so you can\'t finish the quest (well, not take out the last guy, as finishing isn\'t possible once you let one go) in this case.

I mean, wouldn\'t the guy be happy to give you the key if you daid you knew the baddie is there? Sure he would, but the linearity doesn\'t permit it...

Even worse, if others can interfere with your quests and effectively can make it unfinishable, this would suck big time IMO. At the _very_ least you would need to be given an _immediate_ notice of this so you will not waste weeks trying to solve the darn quest, just because some idiot decided it would be funny to burn down the hut the map is hidden in.

I\'d want the name of the person(s) as well, so I can then hunt them down and punish them for ruining my quest.

Also, as I indicated in another thread, I\'d hate age to be forced upon me. I\'d like to be able to customise these things (as part of the look of my avatar), but no automatic ageing or death. If we have automatic death, then why should we bother with the death world if you get killed? Same thing - death without your consent.

[rifft]

Everyone seems to think that just because it\'s a quest, everyone will know where and what to do.

But what I\'m saying is that it\'s NOT the case. If you have 10 different possibilities and you can choose them in 5 different ways you get a large number of choices, something like

10!/5!

Where the \'!\' stands for factorial and is defined as

n! = n(n-1)(n-2)...1

So we have major variation. And for each instance of the quest all key baddies will be spawned in random locations. If the list of locations is great enough (and I don\'t see why it can\'t be). And only the PC that initiated the quest can find out where these baddies are. Well, there won\'t be that much of a problem. And if someone does interrupt your quest through some way, there would be some defined action. For example: all quests of this particular type when they are interrupted it means that you simply have to go talk to an NPC to get a set of new directions, or something like that. Anyway. I should stop pushing my ideas on people.

Though I do think this kind of system could be interesting.

Anyway, about age... It\'s an interesting concept, though I\'m not sure how feasible it is. Since players never really want to lose their character. Though, if you perhaps allow those who\'s characters died of ripe old age to be essentially some bonus, or some abilities that would not be available otherwise. So allow them to create a character of greater potential. Oh and make sure that there are no aging spells because I can see bad, bad things happen.

[WSIMike]

Originally posted by RonHiler

Originally posted by Murais
ok, a mistake that I will never ever want to see in PlaneShift is an impossibly dificult, completely unbalanced leveling system. I used to play FFXI, and let me tell you, I loved the game at first, absolutely loved it!
But then it came time to level up...[...]

Well, keep in mind, game like that are meant to be played for months/years at a time.  They\'ve scaled the leveling system to account for that.

On the other hand, you are absolutely right.  If they are going to force you to level so slowly, you have to have content appropriate to every level beyond mindless hacking.  Sounds like they need to add in some lower level quests.

Actually.. I have to step in and say that entire statement from Murais is completely untrue. I\'ve been playing FFXI since November of last year when it came out on PC In the US. I *still* have not done all the quests there are to do - and that\'s just in my own starting city, Windurst.

1. Each of the 3 starting cities has something like 40+ quests you can do throughout, many are repeatable. It benefits you to do them because of a Fame system FFXI utilizes, which unlocks better quests for better rewards, as well as some key items as your fame increases in your home city. You can go to the other two cities, other than your own, and also do all the quests for them. That\'s 120+ right there.

2. There is a 4th \"central\" city, Jeuno, which has a bevy of Quests all its own. People from all cities can do these. Two of the best known of which are the Chocobo License at level 20 and the Race Specific Equipment quests from levels 27-33.

3. There are several smaller towns throughout the game, each of which also have their own set of quests.

4. There are Missions which move the story along. Each starting city has its own \"personal\" story which is unfurled as you complete the missions. Then there\'s the overarching storyline which unfolds for everyone, no matter what the city you start from. As far as I\'ve seen, there are at least 10 Ranks to gain.. each Rank has 3 missions - that\'s an additional 30 Missions (very involved, hours-long quests basically).

5. Later on around level 50 or so, you can go for what\'s known as Artifact Armor - this is basically armor that is custom and useable only by a specific Job/Class, and each has its own. Each piece, again, must be quested for.

6. At level 18, you can quest for the ability to have a SubJob.. or, basically a job that you can train and use (with restrictions) to enhance your main job.. there\'s a whole philosphy/science to that alone.

7. Having to quest to get each Advanced Job at 30 is consistent with many things in FFXI - they make you work for all the \"good stuff\" that builds your character. It\'s not just handed to you. Each Advanced Job has a quest that is geared to it and can be quite involved to complete.

So.. someone who believes that there is a lack of quests to do in FFXI is simply not looking around to find them. There are *tons* of them, up through all levels. Of all the MMORPGs I\'ve played (including LineageII - awful!), FFXI offers the *most* variety and things to do for players of all levels.

Earlier in this thread, I believe, it was mentioned that no current MMORPG is story-centric, to paraphrase. Again, that is not true in FFXI.. it\'s *very* story-driven.

Now to make this PS-relevant :-) - I honestly think that if a variety of quests and very story-driven content is something key to PS, the developers/writers would do well to check out FFXI for exactly that.

Anyway..  there ya go...

[Seytra]

Originally posted by rifft
Everyone seems to think that just because it\'s a quest, everyone will know where and what to do.

But what I\'m saying is that it\'s NOT the case. If you have 10 different possibilities and you can choose them in 5 different ways you get a large number of choices, something like

10!/5!

Where the \'!\' stands for factorial and is defined as

n! = n(n-1)(n-2)...1

So we have major variation. And for each instance of the quest all key baddies will be spawned in random locations. If the list of locations is great enough (and I don\'t see why it can\'t be). And only the PC that initiated the quest can find out where these baddies are. Well, there won\'t be that much of a problem.

I don\'t necessarily talk intentional interruption, which can probably be excluded by the immense randomness you\'re proposing. But what about icidental interruption? I mean, everybody is running around and taking stuff, exploringareas and opening doors / pushing buttons. So despite all variation, there is a chance for quest items to be taken away or NSCs being killed, and if somebody thinks it\'s funny to kill NSCs that _potentially_ belong to a quest, and if that population becomes high enough, it can be a problem.

Originally posted by rifft
And if someone does interrupt your quest through some way, there would be some defined action. For example: all quests of this particular type when they are interrupted it means that you simply have to go talk to an NPC to get a set of new directions, or something like that.

Going back to an NSC might be extremely tedious and frustrating, if the orcish keep you were to clean is hours of RL time away and you just fought yourself through armies of monsters just to discover that some guy has stolen the item you need.

Originally posted by rifft
Anyway. I should stop pushing my ideas on people.

Aren\'t we all doing this, at least to some extent?

Originally posted by rifft
Though I do think this kind of system could be interesting.

Randomising the quests _does_ have potential, especially if you consider that ppl. can\'t post walkthroughs for quests in this case. I\'m just not comfortable with relying solely on randomness for the safety of my quest (and therefore the value of hours spent trying to solve them).

Originally posted by rifft
Anyway, about age... It\'s an interesting concept, though I\'m not sure how feasible it is. Since players never really want to lose their character. Though, if you perhaps allow those who\'s characters died of ripe old age to be essentially some bonus, or some abilities that would not be available otherwise. So allow them to create a character of greater potential. Oh and make sure that there are no aging spells because I can see bad, bad things happen.

This would be an approach like prestige classes in D&D, just with intermediate death. However, why not just allow ppl. to either

- choose for themselves or
- gain the bonuses without creating a new character?

I mean, why would the death of someone make a difference to the abilities of a child? Well, magic, maybe, but I\'d really wish to have the choice.
Also, I don\'t like the idea of \"disposable characters\". In this setting, a char would effectively be created to die, to advance to the next macro level. It wouldn\'t make much of a difference for the level-obsessed players, but it probably will for the ppl. who create \"the one and true\" char... as has already been said, most likely the new char will be very much like the previous one anyway, and if not, I believe that the player would have created the other char anyway.

But I might be mistaken.

[rifft]

About the quest system, I\'ll speak again a little later, but first to talk about age.

I\'m not a fan of aging, and I agree with you that it should be completely optional. In addition there is no way to accelerate age. So those who would like the adder _realism_ could be rewarded. I\'m not even suggesting major bonuses upon creation, maybe a higher overall potentail, little perks if you will. Anyway I don\'t think it\'s a big issue, and I\'m pretty sure most people perfer not having any age at all, but it might be a nice option to include if all other problems are overcome.

Now back to the questing thing. I do agree with you that randomness alone won\'t protect quest, and there indeed needs to be a better way to find out that someone has broken your quest. However, randomness does provide much greater protection and it _does_ avoid spawn lineups. What id does not protect from is random morons with sooo much time on their hands that have located through all possible spawns a NSC and killed him/her, or found that object. I think the probability of it happening by accident is small. The reason I say this is from my experience with Ashron\'s Call, the world was so huge, it was impossible to find what you wanted, let alone randomly happen along some NSC. I\'m unsure how other games deal with it, from what I understand they don\'t and thus the stupid lineups. So providing some degree of protection is good.

As for broken quests. I simply couldn\'t think of a way that you would get informed about the fact that the quest is broken without seriously breaking the RP experience. Maybe provide some small quest item that indicated the status of your quest, something like, \"the crystal glows red, if you have failed the glow will fade and you will know that all is lost. \" Anyway, I do agree with you, you should be informed if a quest is broken. It does make sense that you wouldn\'t know, but since this is a game, and we want fun and not frustration, it would be good if you didn\'t waste a whole bunch of time just traveling somewhere and finding out that the journey was a waste of time.

As for providing other sorts of protection for quests, I\'m at a loss. I don\'t really like the idea of _questspace_ since it removes you from the MM part of the game. I like to run through a dungeon and happen upon another dumbass lost in the dungeon with me. Though we could be lost there for different reasons. So, what to do? I don\'t really know.

Cheers