21 Nov, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 21st comment:
Votes: 0
You guys underestimate the destructive potential of a bored player. :)

You might think having NPC's rebuild the city over time would be cool. In reality, the city gets burned to the ground, and then bored players camp it, killing the NPC's as they try to rebuild, and burning any buildings that do mange to go back up. Why? Same reason they camp your corpse on the PvP server… because it amuses them to screw up YOUR play time.

That's why I think quest-driven (or perhaps even event-driven) instancing would work for this kind of thing. If you were present for the burning of the village, it's burned down. You get to see it slowly rebuilt over time (or not). Everyone else still sees it fully functional and can help defend it (or help burn it) themselves without waiting for it to be restored.

Which is less "RP"?

Bob sees the village in flames and comments about it to Ted, who walks to a vendor and buys him the sword he can't get.

OR

Bob sees the village burn. Bob and Ted go there later and see NPC's trying to rebuild it. They log off and come back 2 days later, and notice the NPC's are still working but haven't accomplished anything. Then Maxtor rides up and slaughters the villagers, tossing a torch into the partially rebuilt structure and rides off. Weeks later, the village remains ruins.

OR

The village is burned down and players are allowed to rebuild it. Bob and Ted return to find a smurf village hut nestled in between a Starbucks and a Spaceport. A mutant gorilla in a tuxedo welcomes them and gives them each a laser pistol that does 50000000 points of damage per shot.

*smile*
21 Nov, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 22nd comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
You guys underestimate the destructive potential of a bored player. :)

You might think having NPC's rebuild the city over time would be cool. In reality, the city gets burned to the ground, and then bored players camp it, killing the NPC's as they try to rebuild, and burning any buildings that do mange to go back up. Why? Same reason they camp your corpse on the PvP server… because it amuses them to screw up YOUR play time.

You're comparing apples and pears. Players will tire of destroying villages quickly, and bored assholes don't engage in boring repetitive acts. The reason people camp corpses is because it's easy, effortless, and a lot more fun to screw with people directly rather than indirectly.
21 Nov, 2009, Mudder wrote in the 23rd comment:
Votes: 0
I think what you and I are talking about are essentially two very different MUDs. I think your ideas work best in yours, while not so well in mine.

The ability to destroy a village would certainly need to be harder than simply tossing a torch as you ride by. Villagers would need to actively defend, stop fires, children should flee, and soldiers should come to assist (if they are part of a kingdom.)

EDIT: If people really wanted a village destroyed so badly they worked around the clock to make sure it's currently on fire… Then the village shouldn't be rebuilt. Perhaps it would motivate certain players to fight back and help the village flourish.

Also, how awesome would it be if the child that ran away and survived remembered you when he grew up and was determined to hunt down and kill you.
21 Nov, 2009, Lobotomy wrote in the 24th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
You guys underestimate the destructive potential of a bored player. :)

You might think having NPC's rebuild the city over time would be cool. In reality, the city gets burned to the ground, and then bored players camp it, killing the NPC's as they try to rebuild, and burning any buildings that do mange to go back up. Why? Same reason they camp your corpse on the PvP server… because it amuses them to screw up YOUR play time.

I fail to see how the actions of such players are any less valid than those of any other players. So long as a person is playing within the boundaries of the implementation and rules, there is no way for them to be playing the game "wrong".

Edit: Also, I highly dislike your mistaken idea that the destructive actions of players equates to them being bored and/or griefers. Some people prefer to play the villain in a game just as other people prefer to play the hero.
21 Nov, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 25th comment:
Votes: 0
Lobotomy, I didn't say it was necessarily "wrong", however when your actions grant you a moment of amusement and destroy someone else's entire evening, perhaps it's not "right" either.

Point is… it's far easier to destroy than to create. True in life, true in games.

In a real RP environment (read: pen-and-paper, face-to-face gaming), I love playing dark characters. One of my favorite D&D characters displayed himself to the party as a fighter, and concealed the fact that he was a mage AND a thief as well. The mage part was allowed to show through over time, but all thief activity was done alone or without the party's knowledge (via notes to the DM). I didn't exactly work against the party, but I did manipulate things towards my character's goals on many occasions.

Unfortunately, that kind of flexibility isn't really possible in a computer RPG. Most games, and especially the Diku-style ones we've been talking about, break down to "kill N things" or "fetch me a spoon" quests, with levels and gear as player end-goals, rather than mechanisms to help them enjoy the content. In that case, you burning down a village for amusement is cool, but it also might prevent others from advancing through the content.

One way to improve the situtation is to provide alternate quest lines that only occur in the destroyed state. In that case, at least players can continue to progress, however some will prefer to choose one set of quests over another (assuming they even know the two sets run in parallel). I guess you just need to be sure you have plenty of content so there are alternatives.

Another way is to provide instancing, so that only people involved in creating the abnormal state get to see the abnormal state. On the plus side, players don't interfere with each other. On the minus side, you don't get to see someone else's handiwork.

Oh, and Mudder, you may be right there. Instancing isn't a magic bullet that solves all the problems. I think it's a useful tool though, and if you build your game engine to support it (or modify Diku), you gain the ability to use it where appropriate. If you hate instancing, just don't turn it on and you'll have a single public instance, everywhere.
21 Nov, 2009, Mudder wrote in the 26th comment:
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That last part I like. I would completely agree - I see no reason not to support it, even if you don't use it. I'm not a fan of limiting the options. :)
21 Nov, 2009, Lobotomy wrote in the 27th comment:
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quixadhal said:
Lobotomy, I didn't say it was necessarily "wrong", however when your actions grant you a moment of amusement and destroy someone else's entire evening, perhaps it's not "right" either.

What you are saying applies equally to all sides.

quixadhal said:
Point is… it's far easier to destroy than to create. True in life, true in games.

The ease of destruction vs creation in a game is a conscious implementation choice on the part of its developers. If they choose to make destruction easier then that is how it is but not how it has to be.
21 Nov, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 28th comment:
Votes: 0
Lobo, if a "villain" is a "griefer" then playing the villain actually is being a griefer, ne?

Being an asshole and hiding behind "RP" is still being an asshole and making every conscious choice to do so.
21 Nov, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 29th comment:
Votes: 0
Lobotomy said:
quixadhal said:
You guys underestimate the destructive potential of a bored player. :)

You might think having NPC's rebuild the city over time would be cool. In reality, the city gets burned to the ground, and then bored players camp it, killing the NPC's as they try to rebuild, and burning any buildings that do mange to go back up. Why? Same reason they camp your corpse on the PvP server… because it amuses them to screw up YOUR play time.

I fail to see how the actions of such players are any less valid than those of any other players. So long as a person is playing within the boundaries of the implementation and rules, there is no way for them to be playing the game "wrong".

Although I mostly agree with your viewpoint, I think the part I've emphasised is what quixadhal's post seemed to be addressing, and I agree with him as well. Many players really do enjoy destroying things (which IMO is a perfectly valid attitute), and so the boundaries of your implementation and rules should be based on the assumption that the players will be as destructive as possible.

Having the village automatically rebuild doesn't feel quite right to me, either. I would rather see the mud create a new village somewhere else in the world, preferably one that was different to the previous village so that it feels like less of a respawn. This is also the approach I'm currently working on (although I do also have a quest that involves destroying a village in an instance, and another village that rebuilds itself).
21 Nov, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 30th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
Point is… it's far easier to destroy than to create. True in life, true in games.

With automatic rebuilding the opposite would be true for players, that is, it takes effort to destroy, and no effort for things to be rebuild.
25 Oct, 2010, Ludwig wrote in the 31st comment:
Votes: 0
You must be crazy to instance a named area and still try to claim it would "make sense" in the game world. Eventually, players will talk to each other about the current state of that area, and it would be quite confusing to have conflicting reports of the area. If you're going to instance areas, just make each instance unique. After all, that's what instancing is for, right? To make unique copies of something. Instead of instancing The Orc Stronghold of Orchaven, it would make more sense to lead each player to a unique Orc stronghold with a unique name, like An Orc Stronghold named Gristbak and An Orc Stronhold named Lorketch.

So now players can talk to each other about their adventures and quests in their own Orc Stronghold that they stumbled upon without having to introduce these strange alternate realities.
25 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 32nd comment:
Votes: 0
I think if its that easy to destroy an area where its going to be a conversation piece with that particular difficulty associated, you're probably doing it wrong. Something like wiping out an entire zone should feel like an accomplishment that took some sort of epic effort and perhaps a magical MacGuffin artifact stolen from the hoard of Fafnir or something, not just another walk in the park. But to each their own, I suppose.

Maya/Rudha
25 Oct, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 33rd comment:
Votes: 0
Ludwig said:
Instead of instancing The Orc Stronghold of Orchaven, it would make more sense to lead each player to a unique Orc stronghold with a unique name, like An Orc Stronghold named Gristbak and An Orc Stronhold named Lorketch.

So now players can talk to each other about their adventures and quests in their own Orc Stronghold that they stumbled upon without having to introduce these strange alternate realities.

Yes – it makes a lot of sense in the game world for the orc stronghold to the east of the main town to keep changing names, even if people go there at the same time! You said that instancing doesn't make sense because people can't talk about it sensibly. But your solution doesn't let people talk about these areas sensibly either, because different places supposedly occupy the same physical space. The "strange alternate realities" have not been addressed, because there will still be a break between the non-instanced areas and the instanced areas they connect to.

Really, if you're going to use instancing, you should just accept that it will never truly make sense in the game world unless you start invoking multi-dimensional portals or something like that.
25 Oct, 2010, Runter wrote in the 34th comment:
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In this regard a larger problem is games that reuse quest chains for many players. I.e. A quest to kill Sam the orc king of Orchaven. I see where you are coming from but I think I don't condemn a game that chooses that path. I've found they're still fun.
25 Oct, 2010, Bobo the bee wrote in the 35th comment:
Votes: 0
The other reason (and the main one, I think) that games do instanced dungeons is that it's much less expensive to create a local copy of the area that only a few people can access. That way you can just set up the area to run on one computer to serve as the server for a few other people. Typically I've seen MMOs that are free to play or that don't require monthly subscriptions use instanced dungeons. Guild Wars comes to mind in that regard. It works in an MMO setting where RP isn't enforced by any means, and on RP servers players have to force things to make sense because they all run through their own story individually. Like people have said, it doesn't make any sense to have the Orc King be killed time after time after time, or at the same time as other players. But I think the bigger reason for it is definitely cost-effectiveness of hosting servers.

Runter said:
In this regard a larger problem is games that reuse quest chains for many players. I.e. A quest to kill Sam the orc king of Orchaven. I see where you are coming from but I think I don't condemn a game that chooses that path. I've found they're still fun.


To me it's more the importance of those quests, and how you decree they fit within the game world. If you make Farmer Bradley need help driving wolves off his farm, well, that's a pretty simple thing, it makes some small amount of sense for it to happen again, and even if it doesn't it's so insignificant so as to not matter. If you make Kill World Leader a reusable quest, well, then you're going to have more issues. This discussion has come up in other places before, and it all goes back to the question of time making something vs player enjoyability. Making a quest that every player can enjoy at whatever time they want to enjoy it is most usually better than a one-shot quest that you have to be around for a specific time to complete. But having all that type of quest can really be a turn-off for your players: most use a mix of the two, with the reusable ones being less important than potentially world-changing affairs.
25 Oct, 2010, Runter wrote in the 36th comment:
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Most mmos do not run instances as copies of areas to run locally or save resources. The reason they do it is to normalize experiences with content and sandbox rules not normal. Ie 5 player parties or resetting them when you wish or not having to worry about competing for quest targets. In fact, most mmos use instance servers which provide higher performance to facilitate "cross realm" interactions with less latency. Furthermore, more instances equal more resource usage. I'm not sure where you'd get the idea that its the cheap route that f2p take.
25 Oct, 2010, Bobo the bee wrote in the 37th comment:
Votes: 0
Perhaps I was wrong, but … what monthly subscription MMO's do use instanced dungeons?

Edit: Also, to quote wikipedia about Instanced Dungeons (I know, I know, but who am I to question what the Wiki says?):
Wikipedia said:
Having players participate in instances tends to spread out populations of players, instead of concentrating them, which may reduce or level the workload for both the server and client by limiting the number of potential interactions between players and objects. Because the player characters in the instance do not need to be updated on all the information going on outside the instance, and vice versa for the characters outside the instance, there is an overall decrease in demands on the network, with the net result being less lag for the players. This also reduces the demands on each player's computer, as the number of objects to be processed can be more easily limited by the game's developer. The developer can better reason about the worst case performance requirements in an instance because they do not have to consider scenarios such as hundreds of players descending on any location at any time.
25 Oct, 2010, Kline wrote in the 38th comment:
Votes: 0
Bobo the bee said:
Perhaps I was wrong, but … what monthly subscription MMO's do use instanced dungeons?


WoW thrives on this model.
26 Oct, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 39th comment:
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If you're going the realistic route, its not hard (though not trivial either) to just randomly drop some named NPC dude into otherwise generic dongeons and have a questgiver from a guild or something go, 'Yeah we need you to kill the menance that is Bob the Lich in Generic Dungeon #3012."

I mean, these aren't difficult questions; Daggerfall had this figured out more than a decade ago, so I'm entirely certain its well within what is possible and feasible in MUDs these days. It can probably be improved upon to vast degrees, even.

Maya/Rudha
26 Oct, 2010, quixadhal wrote in the 40th comment:
Votes: 0
Actually, a better question today is, what subscriptiong MMO's do NOT use instancing for dungeons? It's the rule, not the exception.

Vanguard attempted to do a kind of half-instancing, where other people could be in the same area, but encounters would be locked to each group, so in theory two groups could compete for trash mobs and end up at the boss together, but they'd each get their own copy of the boss to fight.

WoW also has an alternate form of instancing which they call phasing. Certain areas of the new world appear differently, based on what you've done. Players who have done a set of quests in the Dragonblight zone will see one city area as on fire, with NPC's screaming and dying. Anyone who hasn't done that quest yet sees a normal city with NPC's walking around and offering quests.

At the end of the day, what are you buliding? Are you making a game, or are you making a simulation? If you're making a game, sacrificing things that make sense in order for it to be fun is the right choice, sometimes.
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