28 replies to this topic

[Tamoki]

I've been throwing ideas around and I think I've thought of a pretty neat innovation. Making a MMORPG that has no NPCs. All the quests are requested by players, all the buildings are owned by players and everyone you see (except for monsters) is controlled by a real person. I'm pretty good at shooting down my own ideas as soon as I think of them but this one seemed to stick. There would be constant PvP and the only PvE would be in dungeons or other extended circumstances. This way nobody does the exact same quest. Say a certain player gets offended by another player. The player that was offended can put out a hit on the other player by using the assassin's guild. Another player would accept this quest and kill the offending player. If the assassin had trouble finding the offending player, then he would go to something called a directory. He would do a search for the player on his contract and would come up with the players (in game) house or residence. He would go to the players house or residence. If the player was offline then it would appear he is sleeping. If the player is online then it would say where he is. In the situation where the player is offline the assassin would procede to lock pick/break into his residence and murder the player in his sleep. Upon returning to the assassin's guild he would recieve the reward. If the player was online then the assassin would have to go to the location given upon arriving at the players residence. Upon finding the player the assassin would either have to sneak up on him and kill him, or confront him and kill him, then claim the reward at the assassin's guild.

[SamuraiCrow]

It sounds like it would be a fairly common occurance even though I've never gotten into MMORPGs. If there were not many people logged in it would get boring in a real hurry. NPCs help keep that from happening.

<off topic>
You really need to learn to divide your writing into paragraphs so your ideas don't all run together.
</off topic>

[TheNut]

Has it been done before?
- Yes and no. Yes that it is done by guilds, no in that it has never been forced.

When it comes to MMO games, a large percentage of the players prefer not to PvP. To have a system such as what you described would eliminate a lot of potential your game could have.

Secondly, NPC players are a MUST. Asheron’s Call 2 busted so bad because the world was large and boring (no NPCs, nothing). Secondly, MMO games cannot support a large population. On average a server holds up to 2500 people. When you compare the size of the lands versus the number of players, it’s like 1 person per 50 square miles. NPC players help to fill in that gap.

[eddie]

I think TradeWars 2002 (A MUD, which IMO counts as a MMO) had a system like this, in a ways. You could go to a smuggler's hideout and put bounties on people for instance. The reverse was that the more nefarious people would get bounties assigned on them by NPC police.

[monjardin]

The bounty ideas as been done many times. Especially in old BBS door games and MUDs like eddie pointed out. BTW, I had a registered copy of TW2002 running on a little BBS a million years ago :) It was a great game, and it had plenty of NPCs.

The lack of NPCs in an MMO seems like a step backwards. Unless you can come up with a alternative way of handling the issues SamuraiCrow and TheNut brought up.

Solar Realms Elite was a great multiplayer door game that didn't have NPCs, but it wasn't exactly massive. Barren Realms Elite did get a little MMO since multiple BBS's could launch joint attacks against each other over night. ;)

[Nae'blis]

As pretty much everyone before me has said, bounty hunting has been done in many MMORPGs. You can set yourself up for life as a bounty hunter in EVE Online, for example.

As for a lack of NPCs, again a number of games have done it. If I remember rightly, Neocron had either no NPCs or very few. That worked because in normal situations people were all clustered together in key locations. It was only when you wanted to go travelling the desolate waste that the game seemed empty - but at those times it was completely accepted by the player. I think the key to pulling off having no NPCs is simply to set out a scenario where it is believeable that either areas of your world are unihabited, or you simply can't get beyond confined areas - like you're on a space station/ship, or within a safe environment on a hostile planet, or underwater research station...

Actually, I read something recently about some new game where it's based on a space station with no NPCs, and the players form the crew and must work together for completing tasks and for the good of the station. That way people always logged in and had a task ready for them that they could do, and they were forced to interact with other players - lessening the need for NPCs to hand out quests or provide interaction. Sounded quite promising.

[gillvane]

"If the player is online then it would say where he is. In the situation where the player is offline the assassin would procede to lock pick/break into his residence and murder the player in his sleep. Upon returning to the assassin's guild he would recieve the reward."

That's an interesting idea. One problem I've always had with bounty hunting in general, is that players are often offline, or perhaps play at different times than you do, or they might play an alt for the next 3 months before coming back to the character you're trying to kill. Therefore, it seemed difficult to resolve the bounty hunter situation.

It's seems rather unfair, however, to allow a character to be killed simply because the player is offline. Obviously no one can play the game 24/7, so bounty hunters would just continiously check, waiting for you to go offline before killing you.

However, perhaps we could allow players to hire offline bodyguards, and the level of the body guard would determine the price you'd have to pay for them. Then, when the assassin breaks in, he goes to an instance, where he meets the bodyguards. If he defeats them (or perhaps has a skill to sneak past the bodyguards vs. their skill to detect the assassin), then the assassin gets to kill the character of the player that is not online.

As far as having no NPC's, the problem is that people want to play the game whenever they want to. NPC's often provide services, like giving out quests, guarding an area, running a bank, selling and buying things, that make gameplay convenient for players whenever they are logged on. Without the NPC's, you'd have to wait till someone was logged on to do those sorts of things.

http://www.mmorpgmaker.com

[Tamoki]

"As far as having no NPC's, the problem is that people want to play the game whenever they want to. NPC's often provide services, like giving out quests, guarding an area, running a bank, selling and buying things, that make gameplay convenient for players whenever they are logged on. Without the NPC's, you'd have to wait till someone was logged on to do those sorts of things."

The way quests would work would be you put out a request, and then later someone accepts it. The person requesting a service doesn't need to be online in order for the quest to be complete. Same thing with shops. You would either purchase a building or a stand, you would set prices and upgrade the security to however much you would want then if you were offline the shop would still be running.

[Ooka]

One solution might be player scripted "Bot" NPC's that take the place of their regular characters. The player could pick and choose different types of behavior for their character, with some sort of framework in place that made the AI seem believable.

This would take up loads of CPU time without some pretty nifty optimizations, shortcuts, or tricks that would cause AI on that level to be less of a calculation gobbling nightmare.

You could take prebuilt and playermade "Blocks" and drop them into some sort of interface. Kinda like Spore, where the components and settings you choose determine the way your creature behaves, without any scripting involved. Of course, if you wanted to, you could submit your own AI for approval and not give it out to other players.

Combat could be scripted like this, as well... and one of the bonuses of combat would be learning snippets of other people's combat AI. Massive head trauma could cause you to forget certain parts of your scripts, etc. Dynamic learning without preset skill percentages or levels... The possibilities inherent to this (Spore) type of system are astounding.

[Tamoki]

I think what I might do is have it so that you will be able to upgrade the security on your house. You could get alarms, bodyguards, locks, safes, trained creatures, traps, the possibilities are endless. This also requires thieves to step up their skills before tackling the big treasure.

[Nae'blis]

I agree with you on your system for protecting the player's home/assets with security systems such as lockpicking, etc. That would easily be able to be transferred between whatever theme your game took.

As for shopping and purchasing, simply make the system automated by the game - have the player pick up an item and then either they must choose a buy/drop command or have a popup asking if they want to buy. In either case they can't move until they've said chosen to buy the item: 'yes' means they take the item with them, 'no' the game game puts the item back automatically. For service purchasing you could offer a similar system, such as automated machines that inform you and allow you to purchase, on things like an ATM. You wouldn't need an NPC to watch a shop where theft was likely and for service products there's nothing to steal.

I personally am not too keen on one player having knowledge of whether another is online/offline unless both parties have formed some kind of buddy/friendship/business partnership. As said by others, it's a lot of information for a bounty hunter/assasin to have, but I feel without having to do any work for it is an unfair advantage. Otherwise would it be fair if the player was informed similarly that there is now a contract taken up on them and that the killer is online/offline?

I would also be against any idea of combat being allowed to take place while the player is offline, even with scripted AI on their behalf. Not nice to log on to the game and find your avatar is already dead and you weren't even aware. Perhaps, if you still want to inform players of others' online/offline status, you could set up a system to send an e-mail or text message to a mobile phone or MSN/ICQ/whatever account? Would be interesting... Your character is being chased by an assasin, react now to save him/her!... But I'm not sure if I personally would want that service.

[The Mysterious]

Quests from Players has always been possible in MMORPG.
No one or a very few of players MAY have tried that, not that i've seen this happen.

[Tamoki]

The way I think I'm gonna do the shops is that the shopkeeper has to either purchase land and get a building made, or he can purchase/rent a pre-made building or he can purchase a little market stand.

If he acquires the use of a building then he can upgrade the security, much like with home security. Market stands have little security and very limited upgrades, and can be destroyed by the weather.

The owner of the store will set store hours and will have to hire employees and handle the costs of security as well. The day/night system will be based on time zones set in different areas of the world, much like our real life time zones. You will be able to travel to different time zones until you find one that suits you. Setting store hours will also depend on the time zone you are in. You will be able to set the store hours to anything you like, as long as you are able to pay employees and guards for the allotted time.

Customers will be able to request items too. I could add an option that handles these requests automatically or you could handle them manually. For a shopkeeper, you would have to order items as shipments, or you could request rare items from the various guilds. For a blacksmith, it might be different because you would get requests and you would have to craft the certain items.

I'm thinking about making a system where you can use your character to get jobs. If I do implement a job system I would want the job interface to be painless. You would be working while you are offline and if you are online then your hours would be filled in by an NPC and you wouldn't get payed for those. One job that would require you to be online is crafting. You would have to craft the items on your own time and then put them up for sale in your shop.

One example of a shop that benefits the whole game community is a pawn shop. This would allow other players to sell a few items without having to purchase a building or deal with the other costs of shopkeeping. The manager of the pawn shop would sell these items for a larger price and make a profit.

Private deals can also be made between two characters, although finding characters with the specific items you need is difficult without the use of the guilds, stores, and auctions.

[Nae'blis]

"...You would be working while you are offline and if you are online then your hours would be filled in by an NPC and you wouldn't get payed for those..."

Are online and offline the wrong way around there? Else I'm confused as to when you would actually turn up for work and get paid.

SecondLife has a system of buying and selling user-created content and is apparently one of the big draws to the game - apart from the sex fetish/fantasy communities. So having the player create items and being able to sell them on to others is a great idea in my book.

But the idea of getting a job inside a game for me is abhorent ;-)

[Tamoki]

I used the terms 'online' and 'offline' correctly. I want people to be able to get jobs. I want people to want to get jobs. Say you have a character that has a job from 9:00 to 5:00 am and pm respectively. This is a longer shift than you would ususally see in-game but this is just an example. While the player is offline from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, he is working his job. If he logs in during those times, then he is taking "time off", and an NPC fills in. If you wish to play during these times but still want full pay, you can play on another character without penalties, as long as that character is not employed during these hours.

A wise player would set these hours to when he is sleeping, or at work in real life. More complex job would require you to be online, but not for long periods of time.

I would like to add as many offline options as possible. Perhaps you could be in an offline "foraging"
or "gathering" state. This would allow you to gather simple materials. I plan to make most tedious tasks taken care of in this manner. I want the time when the player is online to be fun, not tedious. Computers don't feel boredom, humans do.

[Nae'blis]

Okay, I'm with you now.

But I do think that such a system could create a situation where the server could at certain times of the day become devoid of real players and only really be populated by NPCs - your main aim to avoid with this game.

Players (quite logically, as you suggest) set their characters to work while they are unable to play the game. This could then, however, result in them not wanting to log on during oppertunities they get to play the game while their character is normally at work, as this will cost them game money. They then wait out their 'shift at work' and only pick up play during their usual times - say 6pm local time onwards. Many players would also set the character to work long hours during the night as well if the situation was available. This would often (but not always, admittedly) lead players who are able to play during the times between, say, 9-5 or during the night, to not bother playing that much, as the game world would be full of NPCs and provide little human interaction for them. When minimal NPCs is a draw to your game then this situation could turn off players who then found it not to be the case.

There are those, of course, who would (as you suggest) have multiple characters and so would play that one while their other was working, but then having multiple profiles would almost become a forced requirement rather than a personal choice. And I know I personally never bothered with multiple profiles in MMORPGS I have played/beta tested as I wanted to create only one character and devote my energies to that one; to develop my vision of 'me' within the game.

You would either need a highly devoted fan base, a very large fan base, or sufficient people from a wide selection of time zomes around the (real) world playing your game in order to not attract a situation where during a large portion of the time the world is dominated by NPCs.

The other situation would be to lower the incentive to get a job - lower wages - in order to not make players feel they were missing out in actually playing the game instead of earning money. But then why get a job if other tasks their automated character provided proved more valuable to their experience or more lucrative?

You could try capping the amount of time a player can work for, either at one time or per day, much lower than would be the norm in real life. Or rather than having jobs where you work for other people, you could have the players work only on creating their own content and selling it for themselves. The player could then have his automated character run their own shop while they were offline and then the player would take control of the shop when they are online. New content could only be created while the player is online, though. That way they wouldn't be tied to an obligation to have their character performaing a task for someone else, they would be free to leave the shop at their own will and understand why this poses a financial loss. They could still even employ NPCs or buy automated systems to run the shop or secure it while they were out, but at least that would leave other players free to do their own thing.

What would happen if all your staff 'rang in sick' because they wanted to go do other things? Would your shop have to shut? With smaller shifts this would be lessened, and with employing only NPCs (if the player can afford it) this situation would be avoided completely.

I can see why having jobs is a worthy idea for many, but it would have to be very carefully balanced during playtesting to ensure it did not dominate the player's game life, like it does to many of us in our real lives.

[Tamoki]

"What would happen if all your staff 'rang in sick' because they wanted to go do other things? Would your shop have to shut? With smaller shifts this would be lessened, and with employing only NPCs (if the player can afford it) this situation would be avoided completely."

I already explained that if a player left in the middle of a shift, an NPC would fill in for him. Employing NPCs will also be something I have considered.

I agree that I would have to limit the overall time that could be dominated by offline work. How about a system where a player needs "rest"?

We also run into the problem where a player has 2 characters and one is working 'round the clock to fund the other. I've already decided on very large storage to eliminate the need for a 'mule' alt. This new kind of mule could be fixed in a variety of ways.

1. We limit offline work time. This includes all offline activities.

2. Higher paying jobs would require different skills to be at higher levels, advocating progress with the character.

3. Implement the rest sytem.

4. Make minor jobs like being a clerk less desirable.


I think that 1, 2, and 4 would work best as the combined solution. I'm focusing so much on the areas outside of combat. I don't want this game to be all about combat.


Another problem I'm tackling is racial equality, but not the kind you're probably thinking of. I'm talking about having each race get equal benefits with each class. I don't want a single race to dominate certain classes. What makes this hard is what if a Giant decides to become a Thief? Odd combinations like this are the problem I'm facing.

Look what happened to War of Warcraft. The Night Elf is really the only race to choose for a Rogue. This lessens diversity by a whole lot. That's why I want to avoid giving certain races advantages when it comes to classes.

One solution I propose is each character starts out with a clean slate. No class is assigned yet, just a race. As they advance they can observe their tendencies and assign themselves a class by visiting the appropriate guild. All the class does then is give them access to skills and abilities. All the stats are allocated by the player however they want. If they want to play a Berserker that relies on speed, then they can find a skillset that lets them do that effectively. Some combinations like a magic user that builds up strength don't make sense, and we're not willing to accomodate players with those tendencies.

[Nae'blis]

"I already explained that if a player left in the middle of a shift, an NPC would fill in for him." You're right. I just got carried away on my train of thought and forgot you'd already answered that point ;-)

Anyway...

I'd definitely agree with limitation #1. The player shouldn't really be able to do too much whilst offline. I liked that EVE Online allowed training to continue while a player was offline, but if I recall correctly even that stopped once it had reached the next level up situation. As I've said before, I don't feel the player's character should be doing too much without their knowledge. The ideal system would be that AI should be able to only control activities a player has set them to do before they logged off, and that players could have an in-game command system to set up things for the NPC to do - like waypoints in an RTS game. However, without some form of time of day checking against forced activities this could interfere with other systems like going to work.

#2 is an obvious must. But I also think there should be some 'time played online' checking before a player can level up, if you're going to allow AI control while the player is offline. EVE got away with this by stopping all activities except study of skills while the player was offline (again, if I recall correctly). Studying required no player intervention except to start a study task off, even when the player was online, and then was just a set block of work that even had a timer attached to it to say when it would be done, so it made it feasible to allow this to appear to continue while the player was offline. There was also surely no server overhead in doing this.

#3. "A period of rest" is a tough one to call. I can understand what you're saying, and it does make sense, but that would actually be an enforced period of time where your client/player can't actually play the game - seems a little strange to have such a limitation to play. You couldn't enforce a local time in which a player's character would be 'locked' while they rested, as that would inconvenience/alienate players who would play during the night, etc. And you couldn't have the player sign out of the game after setting their character to sleep unless the server did frequent checks to see if every offline player's character in this sleeping state had slept for long enough and so needed to be set to be an AI character. This would surely be a large server-side overhead? But then if you're already planning to have the AI take the character off to work at a set time, etc, then this would be a similar setup and would even have to tie together.

#4. Menial jobs should be the base level jobs - it shouldn't be made worthless or less desirable to have one, but all other jobs should scale up from this, in relation with your stats and other values over time. You could even have the starts improve the rewards for a clerk job. If you want players to get jobs then there's no point making the base jobs unattractive; just ensure that the good jobs require time and actual effort on the player’s part to achieve and then maintain.

I agree that a mixture of 1, 2 and 4 would work. But all four would need careful balancing. And an MMORPG that doesn't rely on combat and hack-and-slash for levelling up is more than welcome in my book.

If you're going to do away with defining your character as a set class before you start playing (a good idea), then why not do away with having stereotypical guilds specified by the game too. Have the players start their own factions depending on interests and skill levels, etc. That way quests and player interactions would be more organic anyway. You could also have skill sets defined simply per level, and then the player could truly create the character they wanted from a list of all available skills for their level.

I think that if you're going to have a more open system where stats count more than answers to a character questionnaire then what is the problem with having a 'battle mage' style character - that's the kind of play style I use in RPG games. And why not allow players to have completely custom character types - even those that don't 'make sense' from a traditional point of view. If you don't want combat to take such prevalence in your game then what does it matter, the appearance and fighting skills a player chooses?

[Tamoki]

About your Battlemage comment, I wasn't saying that we wouldn't cater to outside-of-the-norm builds, but builds that don't make sense, like a Wizard that puts ALL of his points into the attribute that governs your melee damage. If you make a balance between melee and magic then that would be acceptable, because there are some spells that compliment that.

If you were starting out and showed a tendency towards a class that would be defined as your stereotypical "Battlemage", then you would choose the class that let you keep up those patterns and tendencies.

If you showed a tendency towards all magic and chose a pure mage class, and then focused intensely on melee, that would make for an almost unplayable build. However if you favored melee in the very beginning then you would probably choose warrior, whose skills would compliment your tendencies. Even later on, as your warrior, you will be able to learn a limited amount of magical skills if you wish.

[Nae'blis]

Yes, I appreciate what you're saying. In a system where you have to choose a set class - even if it's not initially, as you seem to be suggesting for this game - it makes sense to have these limitations on how a player spends their stat increases in order to stop them wasting the points.

What I was saying with my battlemage comment is that if you're not initially choosing class constraints then until you've chosen a class for yourself there shouldn't be limitations on how you choose your stat purchases - you can make your own mistakes. I appreciate though that a battlemage is a much more reasonable class than someone who chooses one extreme and then effectively changes their mind and spends all their points on a completely opposite skill set. Perhaps the GUI for increasing stats could be specific to your class once you've chosen it. Base physical stats gradually increase at a set rate and skills are chosen to be upgraded by the player.

Having said that, I really like the system found within Oblivion (and probably others I can't recall just now) in that all stats are available and level up more or less constant to you using them. There is of course the questionnaire at the start to decide your Major and Minor skills, but once in-game it's all down to your actions rather than spending stat points. if your game found some way to decide once a character reached level X only then would the game give them "You seem to be a XXX class. Is this how you'd like to proceed?" A yes or no answer would then customise the GUI and future stat increases.

And really the idealistic point I was trying to make with the last two paragraphs anyway was that if you're starting down the path of allowing the player to find their own way with stats then why not do away with the whole stereotypical classes system and allow players to completely create the character they like, instead of after a while making them choose class constraints?