Developer run events

Amos.37

Veteran endo
Joined
Aug 22, 2019
Messages
154
#1
Later on, once player factions have been developed and Kingdom and Empire are less integral to the game, should developer factions start creating events and challenges?
An example: a group of dev players could create a large warship and man it, and then offer rewards for the players/companies that destory or capture it. Or simply capturing the ship could be the reward.
Or a station defended by the devs that contains valuable resources. This would likely cause not only an initial fight for whoever tries to take the station, but also subsequent fights over the resources with other players/companies.

Ideally events like this would happen organically between player factions, but depending how things go, it might be better or necessary to have devs create these instances, especially if players are hesitent to invest materials in risky things like capital ships/flagships when so far there doesn't seem to be much of a reason to build capital class ships over small ships.
 
Joined
Jan 27, 2020
Messages
38
#2
你好,我是Helios公会的会长,我尝试着使用谷歌翻译表达我的观点。
从政治哲学的角度来讲,你的问题类似于霍布斯关于”自然状态“的研究,以及复杂科学对于社会运行的研究。我需要提醒的一点是,游戏社会中的确存在着玩家建立的派系,但是在此之前他们是现实中某个国家的公民,他们不可避免地会把现实中的各种观念带到游戏里面,从而导致产生不同政体不同政治制度和不同经济制度的派系,并且存在着不同的价值观和主张。
这些不同点会成为整个社区互相竞争与合作的动力,我不太主张把战争作为主要的推动力。我们应该从社会的角度去思考,一个国家的发展包含了什么,当然,现实中国家发展不仅仅是战争那么简单,它还有政治、外交、军事、科技、经济、文化、医疗、工业、运输业、制造业等很多种。不要把游戏的可能性放在战争上,那就相当于把鸡蛋放在一个篮子上一样。
我们观察一下现实,是什么让我们一直努力工作维持生存?是什么让国家和社会不同运转?首先,是人类的生存本能,其次是人类为了维持生存而做出的努力。世界就是如此简单。我想你不会问一个人工智能为什么要生存。
Hello, I am the president of the Helios Guild, and I try to express my opinion using Google Translate.
From a political and philosophical perspective, your question is similar to Hobbes's study of the "state of nature" and the study of the operation of society by complex science. One thing I need to remind is that there are factions established by players in the game society, but before that they were citizens of a certain country in the real world, and they inevitably brought various realities into the game, so that Factions that lead to different political systems and different economic systems, and have different values and propositions.
These differences will become the driving force for the entire community to compete and cooperate with each other. I don't really advocate war as the main driving force. We should think from a social perspective, what does the development of a country include, of course, in reality, the development of a country is not just as simple as war, it also has politics, diplomacy, military, science and technology, economy, culture, medical treatment, industry, transportation There are many types of industries and manufacturing industries. Don't put the possibility of games on war, it's the same as putting eggs in a basket.
Let's look at the reality. What keeps us working hard to survive? What makes the state and society different? The first is human survival instincts, and the second is human efforts to maintain survival. The world is so simple. I don't think you would ask an artificial intelligence why it should survive.
 
Joined
Jan 27, 2020
Messages
38
#3
人类对于资源的开采和竞争的方式是多种多样的,这些方式产生于人类千万年的进化过程之中,也就是说这个是我们的祖先花费了漫长时间才逐渐学会并掌握,最后形成了知识和理论传授给我们的下一代。人类在原始时期的竞争手段的确主要是通过蛮力战斗。但是请永远不要忽略科技这个东西,它蕴藏着巨大的力量。
There are various ways in which humans can mine and compete for resources. These methods have arisen in the evolutionary process of human beings for thousands of years. That is to say, it took our ancestors a long time to learn and master, and finally formed Knowledge and theory are passed on to our next generation. Indeed, the means of competition of mankind in the primitive period was mainly through brute force fighting. But please don't ignore the technology, it has huge power.
 
Joined
Jan 27, 2020
Messages
38
#5
嗯......我的意思是指社区的活力和可持续性方面,这与您的问题有关。一般涉及到资源的问题总是会牵扯到社会的运行方面的话题
Hmm ... I mean the vitality and sustainability aspects of the community, which is related to your question. Generally speaking, the issue of resources always involves the topic of social operation.
 
Joined
Jan 27, 2020
Messages
38
#6
回归到您的话题,可能我有些偏题了哈哈哈。
您所描述的某种游戏里面的特殊活动,或许可以按照节日或特殊日记来发起,这会给游戏增加很多乐趣。
Back to your topic, maybe I am a bit off topic hahaha.
What you described is similar to the special events in the game, which may be carried out according to festivals or special diaries, which will add a lot of fun to the game.
 

Vexus

Master endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
280
#7
The devs stated they do already plan to manage the warring Empire and Kingdom factions to some degree. This is enough of an event, and really unseen in an MMO to have devs take such a personal role in the core game, so it will be interesting.

As far as individual events, like "kill the big ship", no - this kind of thing is the sign your game is dying, and as such, time should be put in fixing the problem, not setting up dev-run events. You see it often in other games - private servers hosting events and so on. This is unsuccessful, largely in part because there's no control on who wins; was the winner the dev/admin favorite? There's also no standard game experience - people could be part of some amazing event, but they cannot share it with the majority of the playerbase, since it only affected a very select few. Also, it might not be the case, but the most-active, most-playing, most-popular group might always win said event and seem to be the favorite, thus deteriorating player perception on the dev's stance in the world.

At the root of an 'event' is "we have nothing else to do, and nothing better to do, so we've pre-planned this activity for everyone so they don't get bored." This is not a good formula for an MMO. Create content, and present that content, and make that content consumable by the vast majority of the playerbase. That way everyone has a shared story and the community builds.
 
Joined
Feb 11, 2020
Messages
10
#8
What would benefit the game is just having some kind of weekly/bi-weekly/monthly event that could be alerted to all players by default, and then can opt out whenever.
This would give players a direction to test out their new ships that they design as well as some of the more solo players getting to be more involved with social events.
 

Vexus

Master endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
280
#9
I think this kind of weekly event will, or at least should, be naturally included in the dev-run factions as they fight. They should have people planning big weekend attacks on the other factions and so on. In other words, it can be part of the natural game as the two largest and biggest and wealthiest powers fight over territory. It's not so much an 'event' that is broadcast to all players, but rather, "I hear the Kingdom is planning a huge strike this weekend," and information is spread by word of mouth moreso than some in-game bulletin that alerts the enemy of what is going on. Then, if you are part of those factions, you will know where to go and what to be doing during those events.

Individual factions and groups have their own internal 'events' all the time. For context, a dev-run event in my mind is one where a dev sets in place some pre-defined win condition for players to fight over, and alerts them "special event this weekend! fight over asteroid 1298! prizes awarded to the winner!" with no other reason except to bring people together because everyone is spread out and bored due to poor game design. I feel the devs can avoid that kind of 'event' and instead have the natural drive to defeat one's enemy be the main focus that allows bigger more meaningful, natural, events to occur. For example, Empire might plan a weekend torpedo strike on a few Kingdom stations, unleashing a vast onslaught of firepower onto their enemy. People will want to be part of that big attack and see the big explosions. And there's reason behind it - it's the enemy. Defeat the enemy. Kingdom players will then want to fight back, capture enemy ships and secure enemy weapons and will be more incentivized to go after Empire to get revenge and so on. If the two factions have stations which exist close enough to each other, this kind of thing can happen in small amounts every day, building up to huge 'events' where one side gets an operation planned and then executes it to great, or not so great, effect.
 

Leftharted

Learned-to-sprint endo
Joined
Dec 4, 2019
Messages
23
#10
I 100% agree.. and hope that even if there current dev factions get shelved years from now, even after dull release etc.; that the devs organize some curve balls.

For example, many many moons ago, during the first few years of Everquest; the devs would spawn in as Game Masters with various unobtainable spells/items and on rare occasions would orchestrate events and raids etc., with custom creatures/loot/objectives... some seasonal, some spontaneous.. it was awesome..

Obviously everquest and starbase don't share really ANY similarities other than the fact that they are MMORPG's...

I love the suggestion, and I believe it would definitely promote longevity.
 

Azelous

Veteran endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
100
#11
Later on, once player factions have been developed and Kingdom and Empire are less integral to the game, should developer factions start creating events and challenges?
An example: a group of dev players could create a large warship and man it, and then offer rewards for the players/companies that destory or capture it. Or simply capturing the ship could be the reward.
Or a station defended by the devs that contains valuable resources. This would likely cause not only an initial fight for whoever tries to take the station, but also subsequent fights over the resources with other players/companies.

Ideally events like this would happen organically between player factions, but depending how things go, it might be better or necessary to have devs create these instances, especially if players are hesitent to invest materials in risky things like capital ships/flagships when so far there doesn't seem to be much of a reason to build capital class ships over small ships.
This is an unsustainable and biased model. If the devs were to have an event about it, they would be throwing a bone to large nearby factions capable of crowding out any competition. Solo players would not be able to engage with this content. In addition, you're only benefiting a small subset of the player base, seeing how large the world of Starbase is and will be. The devs cannot hope to engage with the entirety of the community through an event that a limited number of players can interact with. Due to this and reasons previously mentioned, this is biased.

I remember hearing about abandoned stations of a sort before, which if rendered into the world at the start would provide an incentive for exploration. However if added later would again just benefit the biggest fish around if it is easy enough to find.

TL;DR: dev placed big goody bags bad, random small goody bags good
 

Recatek

Meat Popsicle
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
286
#12
I don't really see a model where the devs are regularly online conducting events as "dungeon masters" for the game as particularly sustainable. What about players that aren't in the devs' single time zone? What happens when the devs start ramping off to other projects? What if they just lose interest in or burn out on playing the game as a job? How do you avoid (accusations of) faction-specific bias?

I would much rather see game-driven content and systems to create interesting things to do in a given play session. Territory control, meaningful exploration, and NPC opposition (gasp!) are all avenues to explore for giving players something to do with longer-term goals without the devs needing to manually pull strings.
 
Joined
Feb 11, 2020
Messages
10
#13
I don't really see a model where the devs are regularly online conducting events as "dungeon masters" for the game as particularly sustainable. What about players that aren't in the devs' single time zone? What happens when the devs start ramping off to other projects? What if they just lose interest in or burn out on playing the game as a job? How do you avoid (accusations of) faction-specific bias?

I would much rather see game-driven content and systems to create interesting things to do in a given play session. Territory control, meaningful exploration, and NPC opposition (gasp!) are all avenues to explore for giving players something to do with longer-term goals without the devs needing to manually pull strings.
The devs seam incredibly creative enough, in the grand scheme of things i'm sure they have something planned. I mean the fact that they are promoting warring factions enough in the game is probably suppose to be what we're asking for.

Any by the way, I keep forgetting but there's no stopping anybody from absolutely wreaking havoc on the two main factions if they really want to spice things up before more things get introduced.

Especially if enough players could get coordinated and work together, That would be really interesting to see.
 

Vexus

Master endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
280
#14
The only thing I disagree with in that post ;) I do however recognize a lot of people are familiar with that and feel it is more approachable to fight easymode NPC opponents to satisfy the need to pull a trigger instead of fighting other actual players. I do not think it is a necessary component to the game however. Planetside 2 for example has no NPC AI to fight - having enough people in the same area with the right objectives, and you don't need it.

Titanfall had NPC AI to fight inside PvP matches, and I don't recall anyone loving that system. Here's a poignant reddit post I found re: Titanfall which I think describes it clearly:

Hi all. I am fairly new to Titanfall. It was the first game I got when I got my Xbox One in November. I bought the Xbox for Halo MCC - I am a long time Halo fan. Anyway, I really have enjoyed Titanfall so far. Now that I am a little more experienced though, I have to say that I do not enjoy killing minions (spectres and grunts). Take a game of Attrition where I had 60 something points (decent game for me). I have only 9 pilot kills, and a Titan kill or two, and then twenty something minion kills. I dunno, I just feel really empty killing minions. Sometimes you might only get 5 pilot kills! I find killing minions is only fun if you run around with the smart pistol. I do that a lot, and then when I see a pilot and just switch to my B3 Wingman. That's how the game is most enjoyable for me. Running around with a sniper or rifle is fun, but I don't really want to waste my time shooting the minions because it will give away my position on the mini map, and it's not all that rewarding.

In the beginning, I thought minions were a clever way to get new players to feel like they were doing well. And it is. If you start off going 1 pilot kill, 10 deaths, but 15 minion kills, you feel like you did something. But, I don't know - I kind of wish that there was just no minions, and instead it was like 8v8+ of all pilots. The problem with that is Titanfall's maps are pretty large to accommodate Titans and all the spectre and grunt drops.

For what it's worth, I usually play Attrition just because that's the highest population. I tried Pilot Hunter due to what I described above, but I actually enjoyed that less because then the minion kills are literally worthless. Pilot Skirmish was more when I was looking for, but the maps feel kind of empty if it's not 8v8, and there is no Titans which is pretty fun.

What are the community's thoughts on this? How can I enjoy the game a little bit more? I am getting a little bit burned out. I always play by myself for what it's worth - none of my Xbox friends have this game.
I think it is worth noting that most every game has been forced to include NPC AI enemies because they just couldn't handle a large volume of players in the same area. In other words... they needed something to spread people out. Or some way to make the game world feel more active and alive than it really was. Or EVE had such a vast space with no focal point for activity - because again, the lag and performance would suffer hard - where they needed something out there to keep people able to do something in the game.

I think Starbase solves a lot of these issues, and if they can focus player activity enough, due to difficulty in the game systems, the complexity of the economy, and the presence of 'world events', it may not need to fill the void with meaningless NPC AI to fight. Keep in mind, if an NPC AI gave no reward, people would complain. A PvP fight has inherent reward in defeating your opponent, no other thing required, though there is the additional layer of getting their 'loot' that exists, and hopefully safeguarding your own team was also an inherent reward. So entire NPC reward systems would have to be implemented and constantly balanced and worked on.

I'm actually fairly neutral on the topic. I understand it can draw hesitant people into the game - but I feel those same players are done more service by letting them know there's a huge, massive safe zone to live in and they can get a handle on the game without risking their own stuff too much, or join a dev faction and not care if you lose 1 or 100 ships in combat because it's not their personal ship. If that is explained better, then the players who want to experience some combat can, without the emptiness of NPCs to shoot. Perhaps down the line, Starbase will see the need for something like this, but I think with the right attention to the gameplay experience of the players, this crutch can be avoided.

I didn't plan for this to be a long post, mainly that I agreed with everything except the NPC stuff. So be it.
 

Recatek

Meat Popsicle
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
286
#15
I'm not a huge NPC advocate. However, when used right, NPCs are a tool for steering players to encounter one another. Say you're bored roaming around PvP hunting and don't find any targets after an hour. If you're tired of that, you can go NPC hunting instead to at least get some of that "I shot it and it exploded" video game dopamine. With that established, the game can concentrate NPC opposition in certain areas that create focal points of interest -- NPC "hives", say. People want to go to these, already armed and ready to shoot things, and since people want juicy NPC hive resources, you have a higher chance of encountering other people there. You shoot them, they shoot you, the NPCs shoot you, they shoot the NPCs, and so on. You get interesting multi-sided PvEvP conflicts over an actual objective where each player wants to risk their luck and haul back valuable parts with them. And it emerges naturally with no "gamey" draw other than "here's a cluster of NPC baddies to shoot and harvest out in PvP space". This isn't a novel idea -- PvP sandbox games use this mechanic a lot.

Mining does something similar, but it's less concentrated (asteroids are everywhere) and in that situation you have a shooty ship encountering a mining ship. That might be fun for some, but it likely won't be as level a playing field. I like challenging fights between prepared opponents, so if the random encounter is between two ships both going to this point ready to shoot and be shot at, then I think it would be a more even and satisfying fight as a result.
 
Last edited:

PopeUrban

Veteran endo
Joined
Oct 22, 2019
Messages
140
#16
I'm not a huge NPC advocate. However, when used right, NPCs are a tool for steering players to encounter one another. Say you're bored roaming around PvP hunting and don't find any targets after an hour. If you're tired of that, you can go NPC hunting instead to at least get some of that "I shot it and it exploded" video game dopamine. With that established, the game can concentrate NPC opposition in certain areas that create focal points of interest -- NPC "hives", say. People want to go to these, already armed and ready to shoot things, and since people want juicy NPC hive resources, you have a higher chance of encountering other people there. You shoot them, they shoot you, the NPCs shoot you, they shoot the NPCs, and so on. You get interesting multi-sided PvEvP conflicts over an actual objective where each player wants to risk their luck and haul back valuable parts with them. And it emerges naturally with no "gamey" draw other than "here's a cluster of NPC baddies to shoot and harvest out in PvP space". This isn't a novel idea -- PvP sandbox games use this mechanic a lot.

Mining does something similar, but it's less concentrated (asteroids are everywhere) and in that situation you have a shooty ship encountering a mining ship. That might be fun for some, but it likely won't be as level a playing field. I like challenging fights between prepared opponents, so if the random encounter is between two ships both going to this point ready to shoot and be shot at, then I think it would be a more even and satisfying fight as a result.
NPCs as fodder are why people hate NPCs. They're just more annoying asteroids. They don't really add much to the world and in most cases feel tacked on and rather pointless aside from whatever shinies the developer gives them to justify their existence. The don't really do anything to remedy the sandbox problem of "how do we make the sandbox interesting when there are no other players to interact with?"

If you're going to have NPCs in a sandbox they shouldn't simply be a target for exploitation. They should be a dynamic complication that keeps gameplay from getting stale. You shouldn't be hunting NPCs because you got bored of not finding people to shoot at. NPCs should be hunting you because the server knows nothing interesting has happened to you in a few hours. The rewards shouldn't be an endless font of generated wealth. It should have to come from somewhere, and where it comes from should be something players can have agency over.

You should want to shoot NPCs for the same reasons you want to shoot other players, because they're in your way, because they're moving something valuable, because they're part of the world. Otherwise, there's not really a point and you may as well be lasering space rocks.
 

Vexus

Master endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
280
#17
You get interesting multi-sided PvEvP conflicts
It might seem like that happens, but... history shows otherwise. Atlas for example just recently released extremely overpowered rewards for killing the NPC content in the game. As such, you could say "look, interesting multi-sided PvEvP conflicts!" which... happens at first. And then the large groups swarm the areas and camp the area and no longer is it a multi-sided event. It's just a farm spot for the biggest population group to sit on and mindlessly harvest the best loot.

In addition, that kind of gameplay has only worked in relatively small games, in terms of server population. With 100 people on a Rust server, having an event that might focus 15-20, with the event happening multiple times a day 24/7, kind of works. People do go and fight over the loot. However, when it hits larger scales, such as Atlas and so on, the 100 people in the area are all in the same group eventually. No longer is it a multi-way fight. No longer is it a bunch of people fighting over something. Everyone gets pushed out by the most populous group.

Now, I can still see this somewhat working, as long as respawns are not spare-endos as I've covered in other threads (and will continue with a fresh one soon I think). But that might not change the result too much - the larger group will just sit on the spot and take everything. Keep in mind, the reward needs to be great enough to lure people in in the first place in order to be a valid mechanic that gets used. As such, the group that can perma-farm that content is just going to get 'free stuff' from these events much more than anyone else, tipping balance scales even more in their favor.

At the root of the problem is time. Time is the ultimate equalizer. As long as players have to put in the same time, no matter the group size, for the same relative results, then the game is balanced. If some group can perma-farm free NPC loot from the game world, they're saving on time, because in order for that loot to be worth it, it has to be more efficient than any other method of farming that those players could do in that moment. So they're getting efficient farm for free by camping these NPCs, with no extra expenditure of time. Again, if the reward is less than what you'd otherwise get mining, there's no reason to go for it. If the reward is perfectly, 100% balanced with the time cost of mining, then again, it just gets perma-farmed because it's less overall manual work.

Again I'm relatively neutral on the idea, and I do see some inkling of a path to some sort of balance, where the content is just not rewarding enough to send in 100 players to go for it, but instead, is optimal for a group of 3-5 to go after this target. Still, a larger group, bored, will throw out optimization and send 10-20 people for this lower reward, even though inefficient, just to do something and to win and scrap everyone else's dead ships - perhaps making the extra manpower worth it after all with the salvage. That might be good enough, but it is tricky in terms of how it works when people can field such large numbers like what will exist in Starbase (as it does in Atlas).

If the large group of 20 people goes after the NPC events in Rust, they get quick stockpiles of C4 and Rockets and weapons that no smaller group has the ability to compete for really - you better bring your own group of 20. A smaller group cannot even match the amount of value from those events, if they just wanted to "out farm" their enemy. Without being contested, the larger groups snowball into being able to raid everyone around them with these free rewards that normally take a lot of time and effort to harvest from the game world. The area around the large group is quickly cleared of all smaller bases; often times the group becomes so 'wealthy' they just blow into any base just because. If each use of C4 or Rocket was instead representative of work that the group had to expend to create, then there is more choice involved, and less blowing into random bases just because.

The end result for Rust? 1000 servers with 1000 different rule sets. 2x, 4x, 10x harvesting! I know EVE had success with NPCs to fight, so it can work to some degree. I'm just not sure if it works for Starbase though I'll keep pondering it for fun.

NPCs should be hunting you because the server knows nothing interesting has happened to you in a few hours.
This reminds me of Elite: Dangerous where you're just trying to get somewhere and some random NPC AI event triggers and pulls you out of frame shift drive and annoys you for a moment before you continue on your way. It is not really fun overall to have this kind of thing happen; frankly, it is annoying. It is better that if someone wants to be left alone, they can seek that isolation in the void of space.
 

PopeUrban

Veteran endo
Joined
Oct 22, 2019
Messages
140
#18
This reminds me of Elite: Dangerous where you're just trying to get somewhere and some random NPC AI event triggers and pulls you out of frame shift drive and annoys you for a moment before you continue on your way. It is not really fun overall to have this kind of thing happen; frankly, it is annoying. It is better that if someone wants to be left alone, they can seek that isolation in the void of space.
Its about what actually happens when you encounter the AI moreso than the AI intruding. When the AI is basically a little buzzing fly that shows up way too often its irritating. Its not irritating because you got stopped. It's irritating because you got stopped for an unsatisfactory experience that was neither challenging nor rewarding. There's no sense of danger or discovery in those encounters, and that's why they feel like they're interrupting your gameplay in stead of feeling like they're a meaningful part of it.

In most MMOs they're literally designed to die, and have no value to the world unless they're being killed. Is it any wonder that a thing designed to be easily defeated interrupting your travel is annoying? If you wouldn't walk off the path to kill a few level 5 rabbits as a level 100 knight, of course it would be annoying if everywhere you went you were randomly assaulted by level 5 rabbits.

But what if it were a level 100 assassin? What if it only showed up when you weren't in the middle of something? What if it could be tracked to its point of origin? What if it was tracking you? What if it were designed to give you more reasons to play in stead of just getting in the way of the stuff you were already doing?

AI could pose a meaningful obstacle. A thing that perhaps you'd need other players to deal with. That encounter could drive you to find other players, to engage fight or flight decision making, to study why its there, in that area of space, and what it means that AI army is doing. A new base, or mining facility, or a patrol that means such a thing is nearby. A point in space that's under heavy control by an AI army that will consume nearby starbases if left to do so, but also owns particularly valuable resource deposits.

The space MMO is a good platform for dynamically seeing these kinds of things based on player metrics because space, in general, is both limitless and vast. It wouldn't make sense for a whole city, mine, and army to just appear on a continent that most players have travelled shore to shore, but it'd make perfect sense to encounter the unknown and powerful threats in the depths of space. That's one of the core themes of most space games really, that space is a realm of near infinite unknowns.

Make those encounters interesting, make them mean something in the greater scheme of things.

Its not like building good NPC encounters or interesting AI armies is some impossible dark art. We've had games full of NPC encounters long before we had games full of other players. The only reason NPCs suck is we assume they'll suck and we've been conditioned to view them as resources rather than co-habitants because originally MMOs just couldn't spare the CPU cycles to make them anything else and every developer since just sort of decided that was fine.

Since that time we've got decades of sim and strategy games with excellent AI, realtime action combat at massive scales, and even a game here where players custom engineer everything down to the bolts and wires. We've made tons of other innovations in the MMO space but nobody's bothered to take a moment and question the core paradigm of NPCs existing solely to be defeated for loot. I get why. Its hard to do, but honestly so is making an MMO with the level of design freedom starbase is aiming for. If I were going to believe any team had the chops to pull it off it'd be this one.

MMOs on modern machines could function a lot more like dungeon masters than map simulators and the result could be far more compelling multiplayer experiences, but only if we divorce ourselves from the mindset that Ai can only be interesting in a single player or instanced context. There's no reason that has to be the case.

Its a big ask, and its not in scope, but its a question worth asking when you're designing an MMO I think. "Why are players the most powerful things in our universe?"

What if they weren't? What would that MMO look like? Nobody's ever tried to make it.
 
Last edited:

Recatek

Meat Popsicle
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
286
#19
It might seem like that happens, but... history shows otherwise.
In your experience, and those seem like fixable problems (certainly making them infinitely replenishing and at static locations is a no-go). Shadowbane does this very well with desirable character subclass "discipline" runes that spawn on NPCs on semi-random intervals in random zones and roam a broad area, creating an interesting "track, smash, and grab" style PvEvP encounter landscape. EVE Incursions also serve as PvEvP flashpoints in lowsec and with wardecs. Both of those are proper MMOs and their systems do well to create conflicts.

It's unfortunate that some games haven't quite nailed the formula, but giving players a draw to leave their safe home areas and venture out to clash over a contested objective is as old as capture the flag and king of the hill. Without desirable focal flashpoints, NPC or otherwise, PvP players are consigned to just randomly wander a hopelessly vast game space praying to bump into each other. The devs can do some things to make content, but they don't all work nights and weekends. The game itself is the best tool to provide reasons for players to butt heads with one another at distinct locations outside of safe zones.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Feb 11, 2020
Messages
10
#20
In your experience, and those seem like fixable problems (certainly making them infinitely replenishing and at static locations is a no-go). Shadowbane does this very well with desirable character subclass "discipline" runes that spawn on NPCs on semi-random intervals in random zones and roam a broad area, creating an interesting "track, smash, and grab" style PvEvP encounter landscape. EVE Incursions also serve as PvEvP flashpoints in lowsec and with wardecs. Both of those are proper MMOs and their systems do well to create conflicts.

It's unfortunate that some games haven't quite nailed the formula, but giving players a draw to leave their safe home areas and venture out to clash over a contested objective is as old as capture the flag and king of the hill. Without desirable focal flashpoints, NPC or otherwise, PvP players are consigned to just randomly wander a hopelessly vast game space praying to bump into each other. The devs can do some things to make content, but they don't all work nights and weekends. The game itself is the best tool to provide reasons for players to butt heads with one another at distinct locations outside of safe zones.
The one way that could really drive players to have a reason to either venture out into space or join wars i think could mainly be for resources.
They are going to have to probably throw something in the game that has a lot of power but requires a lot of valuable resources that only large factions could try to obtain.

There's gotta be something sort of unjust and unfair that a small minority can take advantage of, That would need to make the players unite and fight against that minority for that resource.

Especially if it could be for some sorta mega weapon or something.
 
Top