Systems for the future

Discussion in 'General Entropia Universe Discussion' started by RAZER, Aug 30, 2011.

  1. RAZER

    RAZER Custom title ... uh ...

    This was mentioned by David on the Arkadia forum, but it has an impact for the entire universe. The one thing I really like about this is the Triggers, I can see so many cool things happening with this once it is implemented.

     
  2. Tass

    Tass Administrator

  3. Nor Alien

    Nor Alien Wisker Fish

    I agree!! :) I hoping that Pyxel Arts (Spaniard Blend) will include their knowlege in Triggers as well! ;)

    They talk abit about it here.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygUTiLfip70 ;)
     
  4. RAZER

    RAZER Custom title ... uh ...

    Well thats why he said MA is working on it I guess, they just need to adapt it for use in EU (guessing here)
     
  5. khaos

    khaos DnB'addict

    It doesn't surprise me now that the new planets come with so little real content; they don't get to code their own stuff.
     
  6. RAZER

    RAZER Custom title ... uh ...

    Well it has been the idea from the start that Ma creates the 'engine' and the PP's make the content. As you can see in Davids post he has made a few suggestions and requests to MA, but he can start creating content for it after MA has made the engine.
     
  7. khaos

    khaos DnB'addict

    But the 'engine' is still different from NPC-, quest-, etc. programming.

    The engine are the systems needed to be able to implement 'content'. CE is the engine, what MA calls the 'engine' is mostly content.
     
  8. RAZER

    RAZER Custom title ... uh ...

    The 'engine' in this case is the systems needed to run the game (hunting system, mob system, quest system, etc.), where the PP's can make content for. MA is not building content (well if you forget about Calypso for a while) but does make the systems (on top of the CryEngine 'engine').

    Well so far there is no system available to let an NPC walk from one place to the other or the Trigger thing David talked about. What David said in his interview, some stuff with the missions needs to be worked out and a 'template' made for all the Arkadia missions, once that is done they can roll out the easier missions pretty easy (like kill 500 Oweko).
     
  9. khaos

    khaos DnB'addict

    IMO it doesn't take much to code some of this stuff. But because MA has to do it, other systems get priority (It's good that MA gives priority to other systems).

    MA could even, let's say, hire someone from one of the PP's to code a system like that. But the thing is, if they want trigger missions; every mission has to be coded on it's own. Because MA has to code them, it can take quite a while for new content to arrive.
     
  10. RAZER

    RAZER Custom title ... uh ...

    I believe the missions are coded by the PP's with the tools they get from MA. So once the Trigger thing is in place the PP are free to do with it what they like. So the Trigger thing and the tools to use them for missions or anything else is the system and the PP's use that to build content.
     
  11. NotAdmin

    NotAdmin Administrator

    I would think that MindArk wraps the triggering functionality that the CryEngine offers within MindArk code (i.e. dumb down the full Triggering stuff to avoid certain things from happening, while perhaps also adding some additional functionality of their own), which will then allow the PP to employ this MA Trigger system.

    Thinkof it as MA offering classes similar to how the .NET framework offers them, with the difference that PPs cannot use OO (and create more powerful classes that way that would perhaps introduce additional risks that would circumvent standard MA security measures), but instead use scripting.
     
  12. Hi,

    not sure if we really want to have NPC's walking around - don't see much of a benefit for a game like EU. This isn't the usual MMORPG, it's a sandbox with real cash ...

    What could happen, I imagine:
    1. NPC jumping out of the bush as I'm passing by, "Howdy Xandra, haven't you been a little lazy with your Iron Challenge lately?" Me: "wtf?"
      Swoooosh - MISS
      Swoooosh - You inflicted 176.4 points of damage.
      The NPC didn't carry any loot.
      Or:
    2. NPC jumping out of the bush as I'm passing by, "Howdy Xandra, haven't you been a little lazy with your Iron Challenge lately?" Me: "Hell yeah, thx 4 reminder"
      NPC: "Would you help me a bit? I have these most important papers here, and I need them delivered to the commander of the fire base there in the South. But I'm not sure if I'd survive these monsters ahead! Could you please escort me? You would be payed for this!"
      Me: "Seems I cannot avoid, you're walking on already ..."
      [A gang of evil monsters spawns & starts whacking the NPC. I start whacking them monsters, and FAPping him. After a while the monsters are dead, and the NPC is already walking on while I'm still looting. Me desperately running behind.]
      Repeat this 3 - 5 times before we arrive.
      NPC: "Thank you so much, Xandra! I wouldn't have survived without you! Here, take these 200 Nova fragments ..."
      Swoooosh - You inflicted 176.4 points of damage.
      The NPC didn't carry any loot.
      You have been killed by the angry turret.
    You get my point? I have a hard time imagining something like this to be not just another money grabbing.

    NPC's walking around? Whatever I imagine to do with them, it would quickly become boring, and it would take a load of work to develop this. To not make these encounters deadly repetitive, many, many people would need to work on it, constantly changing the encounters, day in, day out.

    Would this be worth it? We'll have to pay for it, be sure. It's an idea that's all nice and shiny at the first view, but is loaded with hidden problems.
    The benefit for the gaming experience is ways too tiny to justify the effort needed to code this in a satisfying way, IMHO.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm all for an improved mob AI, and for instances like the old beacon system - as long as it's well done, coded in a way that doesn't suck even more money from the participants, and adds fun and entertainment to the gaming experience. I'd even love to see different mobs in the night, others that are present at day - this would at least add a little meaning to the day/ night cycle, other then forcing me to adjust my gamma every few hours.

    But I'm not sure if it is necessary to have even more NPC's in the game - I vastly prefer the terminals on Arkadia to the ever same looking auctioneers on Calypso already. IMHO it wouldn't hurt to have no NPC's at all anymore - isn't this a SciFi game? And wouldn't it be great, if you'd see an human, you'd know this is a player that is able to communicate more but a few scripted sentences?

    I'd be all for advanced mission terminals, that would every now and then offer an advanced mission, triggered by the possession of a "beacon", or by a certain time since you accomplished your last. An example:

    Mission terminal has a red light for me - no mission.
    Mission terminal has a green light for me - hooray, a mission!
    Operating it, it says:
    "Howdy, HQ has got evidence that a mutated SnableSnot is roaming the area between Fort Argus and Aloode. It must not breed, this could pose a real danger! If you are up to this task, find 3 friends that are ready to team with you, find and terminate it! You have 2 hours to accomplish this task."
    I'd go out then and ask every nOOb in the area to help, until I'd have a team of 4. This would trigger the next phase: "Your party is ready as we see, and we got report of the location of the mutated SnableSnot. It has been added as a waypoint to your team."
    The system now would calculate the skills of the team, would set loot distribution to "Share", and would be ready to spawn a mini-boss with threat and HP adjusted to the team, as soon as it approaches the way point. This mini-boss would be immune to any other players, and non-aggro to them.
    This encounter would have better loot as usually, with a 80% chance to cover the expenses, and a 20% chance for a limited win. Only sharable stackables would loot, preferably those that the balancing team wants to be more available.

    This way, a mission that enforces interaction & working together among the participants - the first one to get the mission would determine what mob would be chosen (clearly below his possibilities to make sure the area would fit), his first quest would be to find 3 others to participate, and the mini-boss would be perfectly adjusted to the team. Hard, but possible.

    With a "beacon" you'd get access to an instanced mission. But I'll not explain this here anymore, this post has become long enough. Use your imagination!

    You see, there's a lot that could be done using triggers and advanced scripting possibilities. Far more than just having a dull NPC roaming the landscape, asking for boring and enervating escort missions. For escort missions, that are widely regarded as the pest of quests at all.

    May the developers decide wisely!

    Have a good time!
     
    • Like Like x 1
  13. khaos

    khaos DnB'addict

    @ admin: So you suggest MA might have some sort of scripting language that allows the PP's to create derived classes from the 'mission'-class. So they stay within the boundaries?

    But then again, if they get to script on their own, they can make whatever they want as long as it's Turing complete. This would render the 'mission'-class quite useless. And all code has to be reviewed by MA anyway.

    @Xandra: The type of NPC's they want to make are just for the overall atmosphere. How many towns are deserted apart from the auctioneer and technician? This while there are massive buildings indicating people live there.
    If they add enough randomness and perhaps special actions to 'regular' NPC's, like hiring NPC's to heal you (or even heal you for free while you try to rescue them when they're stranded) or offering you special items for sale (travelling merchant), then the 'regular' NPC's are interesting to have.

    It's quite hard to be original when making quests. Any action they want to code has to be Turing-complete.
    For me, there are only 4 or 5 main types of quests
    - Kill x mobs
    - Find x items (or one special item)
    - Escort/protect
    - Crafting/mining/...
    - (Dungeons/instances)
    If they vary them enough and add a story to it, so you have a reason to kill the mobs or find a specific item, they can get away with simple quests. More advanced quests are quite a bit harder to make for an MMO, where you have hundreds of quests.
     
  14. Xandra has cracked me up for 95 health
    I fail to drop any loot.
    Somewhere, I forget where and about who, I heard an online inteview streaming audio that one of the people at MA had been involved in Anarchy Online. Talk about mission terminals...there were even 3rd party apps developed that would roll missions until your chosen random reward came up. Imagine needing Pixie Harness and facing down a mission terminal. There's an app for that! But yeah, the landscape and scattered animals reminds me entirely of AO but with the graphics engine they never managed to implement yet. And you never lacked for things to do, because you could always generate random hunting/dungeon missions, either random reward or not so random, and there were all the standard armor pieces but 3 different implants to upgrade and it was almost...too much to do. It kind of became a continual gear upgrade game. Random kill missions with at least some minimal PED rewards sometimes, would give a needed boost to non-depositing players or people who can't afford to put $40+ a month into their decay. Maybe PED rewards would defeat the business model but even just random reward like crude oil or mind essence or something. Which is sort of PED in the sense they are commodities.

    I played one of the Morrowind games and the player-developed plugins, one of my favorite added non-mission non-storyline villagers who would go about and do things villagers would do in villages. It was really immersive. Maybe not in Next Island Crystal Center because the storyline revolves around there being no one there besides Arthur, Io and a couple of cyborgs. But Ancient Greece...Crion is the leader of exactly one guard, one head of the guard, one jailer, and 4 marketplace npcs for trade and repair. Clearly, he must have few duties besides handing out busted swords. (But then, AG is like a movie set you can walk around behind the walls and see the unpainted side. Literally.) Thebes needs citizens.

    Mobs assisting...while that certainly would make sense, you might end up with hunting areas that are in effect so dense as to be party-only, and while I am a habitual soloer and don't stand around waiting for parties to make things fun for me, I wouldn't want to have to run (or walk trolling for ground spawn) super far looking for isolated single creatures because otherwise I'd be ganged.

    Triggered actions by NPCs could be fun, I mean, when I trotted over to Thebes, the guard challenged me without much double click prompting for an interaction? I may be misremembering the encounter. But she seemed kind of triggered by my approach.

    And yeah, escort missions are always annoying, super stupid npcs tossing themselves at monsters.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  15. Hi,

    I agree so far. Such could be nice. But how much work to make this working, and how long would this work before becoming a boring nuisance?

    You've ever played Gothic I? There was an NPC in the outer ring that would go to a corner, and - well, get rid of excess fluids. Pure awesomeness the few first times, but if you had seen it some times it had been become "old". Predictable. Boring.

    Anything NPC's could ever do would be repetitive things, things that would become known and "old" quite fast. Is this worth the work needed to get them working?

    Couldn't this work be used in a more beneficial way, for instance to recreate the things that are still missing, or to improve the game engine further? I just smell a thing that may make some people happy for a minute, but will not have any meaning in the long run.

    I may be wrong, for sure.

    Hehe, this my idea is actually inspired from AO. I loved these mission terminals, back then in the good old days. You're bored? Check the terminal, until you get a suitable mission :)

    Problems to realize: This is an RCE. Impossible to hand out shiny things for the accomplished mission, or they'd be farmed into oblivion. They couldn't give any real "reward", even with a slightly better drop chance they'd need to be heavily restricted, or the RCE would explode in a huge crash.

    Our game is different.

    Yeah, they don't miss a chance to aggro all and anything in the area, creating huge decay costs to the poor participant that has accepted it. Only when the resulting "price" would cover these costs, it would make sense. And this would be exploited, creating perfectly geared partys, sucking PEDs from the system, and thus being a "No No".

    At least this is what I fear. I understand that there's a lot of funny things that could be made. I always appreciate funny things!
    But I ask to think about. Such funny things might become old & boring quite fast, and the time to develop, test, and deploy them would be lost then.

    Couldn't this time be used to do more beneficial things? For instance, to finally finish the old, missing systems? For instance, to finally add a mob AI that deserved this name? For instance, to finally tune the game machine to a level where we don't feel anymore like snails-in-concrete?

    There's a lot of things to do in the Entropian Universe, IMHO. Instead of creating NPC's to populate deserted outposts I'd look for what could be done to get more participants to populate them. For instance.

    Have a good time!

    PS: Seems that I've grown old. I feel like a quite old Xandra now, angry, mistrustful, doubting. This situation might spoil my point of view. I'm aware of this. But it's still my goal to contribute to make this game better, and more successful.
     
  16. "Seems that I've grown old."

    Feeling a little jaded, Xandra? I'm on my...I don't know, 15th online game or so and it's hard not to immediately compare one to another and say hmm, this game mechanic is good and reminds me of Game X, but Game Y really did it better, and this aspect of the environment really blows compared to Game Z, which did this and that differently...

    I find myself as much a game critic and cynic as a game player and enjoyer anymore. I'm becoming a picky player. If the low end of the age demo for a lot of games is 18, I've been playing these games for about 16 ;) I don't shake my cane and tell the younguns to get off my lawn (or land area,) but give me a decade or two.

    In some ways I'm on a search for some game experience that matches that first time back in EQ, at the bottom of newb lift at the wood elf town of Kelethlin in Greater Faydark, holding a rusty dagger, looking at an orc pawn and wondering if I could make it to the guard before I got eaten. The (now crude by comparison) forest floor and the elevated town and the sounds of the orcs yelling back and forth up at Crushbone in the distance...I was floored by this new experience, this thing called an MMORPG. Those other characters running around are other people. I can talk to them. We can laugh about our mistakes and combine to fight back the dark. Whoa, there goes somebody with a non-rusty Long Sword, they must be mighty!

    And then 6 years later with several expansions and a ton of faction-raising work on my Iksar (evil race) monk, I would go back to Kelethlin (evil races generally kill-on-sight) and walk into town and hug the guards, and the new players would freak right out how come they aren't killing you? And what sort of creature are you, you aren't a wood elf! Oh, how fun was that...

    I am on the search for something to match that first time. Some stops on that search last longer than others. The more I am challenged, the more a game asks of me (not money, but emotional investment) the longer I'm likely to stick around. I hope to be around EU for a while. Even if it means taking a break sometime and coming back and couple updates later for systems to be implemented. Or for Next Island to be finished. I want to see where this project is going. And it's encouraging to see this game discussed on boards full of serious, interested people who all want to see how good this can get.

    The lack of squalling children is nice.

    (I would put on the website of each EU planet "Almost no children!")
     
    • Like Like x 1
  17. khaos

    khaos DnB'addict

    Like I pointed out in an earlier post. This is all content. MA does the engine, not the content. Why not let PP's do content themselves? Even if it involves programming. MA can always review it. That takes less time then actually coding it.

    Maybe MA can even implement some of the new experimental stuff. NPC's and the AI will learn what happens and change their behaviour accordingly.
     
  18. RAZER

    RAZER Custom title ... uh ...

    As Dave said, MA should first rebuild the old systems, but I do think MA needs to keep evolving the game and stuff like this will help PP's do that.

    Not sure about the NPC's moving around and protect them, but I could see a NPC moving from TP to TP (using the TP) and a mission you need to find him, just hopping from TP to TP yourself.

    and the Triggers, well and example:

    - Talk to some NPC at some town
    - He tells you to find an NPC named X
    - Find NPC named X and get item Y to enter building Z
    - The NPC is moving around the TP on the planet, if you find him talk to him
    - The NPC gives you item Y and a waypoint on your map
    - Go to that waypoint and open the door of building Z with item Y (you can only enter it you have item Y)
    - Walk trough the building killing mobs and make your way to the basement
    - In the basement you find a vault with a code lock
    - The code turns out to be give to you by the NPC during the conversation
    - Open the vault and get an item
    - Make you way back out the building
    - Go back to the first NPC with the item and get your reward

    I can imagine that every code, item and location is different for every avatar (well a few options, which makes for a lot of combinations). Fail a quest and you can not do it again, or maybe you can.

    I can also see missions where you can make a choice about the outcome of the mission, which could be the wrong one in the end, with no way to go back and fix it.
     
  19. It's not an MMO, but in Fallout 3, there was a travelling peddler. The idea RAZER mentioned about moving from TP to TP could be used for something like that, if stuff you might want might not always be in the same static place.
     
  20. RAZER

    RAZER Custom title ... uh ...

    Indeed, that is kinda the idea. Traveling trader might be fun, selling other stuff then the TT (like the Feffoid (I think) trader we had a long time ago on Calypso). Or a mission broker that shows up once in a while for special missions.

    Or a mission to find some NPC that will be located on xxxx.xxxx.xxx from 13:00 until 15:00 MA time. Might be a problem for some people to get there on that time, but spread them out so people from all timezones can do one.

    Or get some code from some add screen at some location at a specific time to open a door.

    Post the start to some mission on an add screen, giving the location and time and make that challenge a one time offer for some nice reward, if you are not there you will not be able to do that mission ever again.

    The getting out of the prison mission on RT was something in the right direction (the idea behind it anyway, not sure if the execution was OK). The rules need to be clear when you enter and there needs to be an escape by abandoning the mission, but the missions need way more challenge other then to kill 10.000 mobs.
     
    • Like Like x 1
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