Unlevel RPG

Continuing the discussion, are levels really necessary? Just how much value do they add to an RPG, or particularly an MMORPG?

In a classic MMO the ideal monsters have a certain, predictable difficulty, while ‘special’ mobs and bosses should be significantly harder. This is usually identified by combat levels. But because the player usually only fights monsters around the same level range as themselves, no matter how strong the player gets the monsters are similarly matched. It’s almost as if you’re only truly fighting 3 kinds of monsters: easy, normal, and boss.

This topic’s been ranted about plenty of times before, but in terms of combat, I’d like to suggest an alternative.

What if an enemy’s combat level was instead determined by their intelligence?

 

Level 0: Zombie (blindly heads towards you and will attack if in range)

Level 1: Animal (wanders around the world, will attack you if you enter it’s range). This is actually the AI for 90% of all MMO monsters.

Level 2: Scout (follows some pre-set path that it walks, attacks if you enter it’s range). The other 5%.

Level 3: Actual Fighter (basic combat skills, like knowing when to run away or stay out of the fight, when to run and get help).

Level 4: Adept Fighter (can try and hide from you, stalk you, hunt you)

Level 5: Commander (can orchestrate battle on a 5-10 NPC scale, setting up ambushes, planning ahead)

 

It seems that ‘difficulty’ in the modern MMO means how many hit points your current ‘sack of potatoes’ (NPC target) has, plus perhaps a frustrating ability or stun. So what do you think? Would the combat level system for NPCs be better off being intelligence?

 

Moderately,

-Machination

Grinding to a Halt

In my woefully small sample of pen-and-paper games, I’ve only managed to play a single style. It was a customized set of rules based far more on story than mechanics. In fact, we rarely rolled any dice, and the focus was on dialogue.

I started to see a disconnect between pen-and-paper games and MMORPGs. MMOs are typically approached in a quest-based manner, where you play errand-runner rather than hero. You kill things, deliver letters, investigate strange happenings, and kill more things. But in campaigns (at least the ones I’ve seen firsthand), you’re actually participating in a story and making choices that matter.

So why are we using quest-driven story, when it’s a poor medium for storytelling? The best stories we can get in MMOs are basically action-based dungeons or particularly interesting quest chains, but those are few and far between. If we’re going to suspend our disbelief anyways by having long quest chains that don’t actually influence or have impact on the world, why can’t we just have full-on high-quality campaigns instead of quests?

I suppose this would dispel the illusion that MMOs are multiplayer, and further enforce the fact that our stories are entirely single-player. We can only truly participate in these MMO stories as “sideline heroes,” who have the “honor” of watching a famous NPC accomplish everything of significance. Not to say that everyone can be, or even should be the chosen one who saves the world. Just that everyone needs to be an important character in their own story. Kind of like real life, don’t you think?

Only One Reward

Can story be the one and only reward? I was reading Syp’s post today, and it inspired a theory.

I show up for either a great story… or great goodies.  I don’t just do things because they’re there.

-Syp

My thought is that perhaps there’s a hard line somewhere of just how much of both you can get. Jack of all trades and master of none. If you try to make the perfect extrinsic system of advancement/rewards, and also inject the perfect story, the result will be good but never spectacular.

Perhaps there is an inherent attitude. If the game is supposed to be about the story (TSW), then they play with that attitude. If the game is supposed to be about the system of advancement (WoW, and just about everything else), then you end up with players that don’t care as much about lore or story, even when you give it to them. You go to a sushi restaurant and they serve burgers — no matter how good the burgers are, you were expecting sushi, and so you aren’t impressed.

Thoughts?

-Musingly,

Machination

The Curse of Amnesia

The Curse of Amnesia is a serious problem in interactive narratives such as pen-and-paper campaigns. If you’re playing an old character who has lived her whole life in a particular city, it doesn’t make sense that you as a player don’t know your way around the city. We want to be able to create any type of character we wish, with any background.

• Amnesia: How do we ensure that the player knows what the character is supposed to know?
• Fourth Wall: How do we prevent the player from knowing what the character isn’t supposed to know, for the purpose of dramatic tension or surprise?
  • The character-player relationship in a game is different from the character-reader relationship in a book. In a book we can reveal who the bad guy is to the reader, because the character will still be in the dark, and the reader can only watch helplessly as the character stumbles into a trap. In Interactive Stories, we don’t have that luxury as storytellers.
• Identity Crisis: How do we reconcile the personality differences between how the character would act, and how the player would (or perhaps can) act? Sometimes our acting ability does not do our characters justice, even if we have good intentions. 

If you have any thoughts, or even solutions, post them here. The ODIN Project will also be having a discussion about this tonight (Wednesday, May 8) at 8:00 US MST, if anyone is interested in chiming in.

Markedly,

-Machination

Massively Multiplayer Holodeck

Anyone who’s interested in the future of Interactive Narrative, I’d strongly recommend check out This Article over at Designer’s Notebook. Though I took a different path, I’ve reached the same conclusions as Ernest W. Adams some time ago, and so reading this was rather eerie, as it echoes my own thoughts (but of course much more clearly worded).

The future of Interactive Narrative is something more like the Holodeck than a choose-your-own-adventure. Can you imagine playing an MMORPG in the Holodeck?

Murkily,

-Machination

Premonitions

 

These are the “Google Trends” search volume stats for “MMO” and “MMORPG” over the last 7 years. While a long-term decline in search volume doesn’t exactly mean that people are losing general interest in MMOs, it shows that the game has certainly changed.

Right now, players flit between 2-5 different free titles at a time, enjoying an MMO for a few months at the most before moving on, or switching back to an old favorite. We’re a very restless generation of online gamers. No one MMO provides the “edge” that we need in all categories.

But like all history, there are rarely such things as “Trends.” Instead, almost all trends are cyclical. I’d never claim that we should extrapolate this data to say that in 10 years time, no one will care about MMOs ever again. But I will throw out a speculative prediction based on nothing but my own opinions.

 

I’m betting that a few more giants will be released and attain a moderate playerbase, and we’ll see one more massive-scale epic failed launch. Blizzard’s Titan will again redefine the MMO genre, but in a smaller way and a different direction than WoW did. This will be followed by an ocean of largely unsuccessful imitators. MMOs will enter into a very quiet period, becoming smaller and less frequently released. Interest wanes, and non-massive games again become the industry’s goal.

And someday in the distant future, 2020, a critical shift in game design will facilitate the resurgence of the MMO, bringing the cycle full-circle again.

 

This prediction is purely speculation, but sometimes it’s fun to think about. Thoughts?

[ODIN]: Tell me a story

Experiencing a new world through avatars

As part of a series of discussion over at the ODIN Project, we’ve had some interesting ideas stir the pool of imagination. So suspend your disbelief for a moment, and let us step into the realm of the impossible…

What should a truly interactive story look like? We’ve imagined scenarios like the Star Treck Holodeck, explored situations like Pen-and-paper campaigns. First, an analogy –

When you dream, your subconscious becomes the author, and you the participant. You can choose to do whatever you want, but you can’t control the consequences, and the dream continues telling the story around you.  Now your subconscious is a terrible author, whose stories are not particularly cohesive or compelling. But imagine if you could replace your subconscious with an experienced author or Dungeon Master? What would this kind of storytelling be like in a game?

To take the concept to the digital realm, let’s assume:

• A personal Artificial Intelligence author that can (for the sake of argument) produce human-quality stories.

What would it look like to play a game that can create stories for you on the fly? Here’s some scenarios we came up with:

1. Choose your own starting point anywhere. Much like the Holodeck, you could request certain stories, particular kinds of stories, or perhaps ask for something completely new. Think of it as a personal DM who could create solo adventure for you whenever you like. Each session might be a new character.
   1. I’d like a science-fiction setting on a cargo ship, western influence, firefly-esque.
   2. I’d like to be a lost merchant travelling through a dark forest.
   3. Just give me something with a lot of adventure.
2. Choose your starting point in a consistent, ongoing world. The AI author simply presents to you a range of options in which you can participate. Each session might be a new character.
   1. There’s a story about to begin as a merchant in the dark forest, would you like to begin?
   2. Nation X is about to attack nation Y? Join the story as a foot soldier? Or as the general?
3. Continuous story (one character only) in a consistent, ongoing world. You may not get to choose whatever stories you want, but you can travel the world, participating in the optional stories that the author creates for you.
   1. You’re presented with choices to join the contextual stories around you (enlist in a war, help someone being robbed, investigate the strange happenings around town…).
   2. Should you be able to “Turn Off” the AI Author and simply explore (like a sandbox)? Or should the possibility of an authored story be ever-present, even when you don’t expect it?

These are some of the fun questions that we’re discussing. Leave your thoughts in the comments, do you envision the interactive stories of the future to be something else entirely?

Markedly,

-Machination