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Which games have real living worlds?
Arya_Yeshe
Member
What is a living world game anyway?
Why so many devs lie about having a living world game?
Is it just for marketing or because it looks cute saying that the game has a living world?
There's 64 reasons why game worlds can't be called living worlds.
Many areas in MMOs remain desolate because game developers create static worlds. Once players beat a particular area, there's no incentive to revisit it. This is a consequence of developers' dishonesty.
#peace
Why so many devs lie about having a living world game?
Is it just for marketing or because it looks cute saying that the game has a living world?
- npcs are always in the same spot
- quests are always available
- zones always have the same level range
- mini-bosses are always in the same area
- city buildings are always there in the same state
- no factions grow or diminish
- no factions disapear
- no new factions arise
- npc buildings always have the same owners/tenents/residents
- players have no influence in the world lore
- shops always have the same items in the same quantity and same price
- there's no real war among factions (player or npc), it's always a sham with no results
- npcs never die, disapear, make babies
- area levels never change
- mob levels never change or adapt
- cities never become ghost cities
- rivers and lakes never go dry
- fauna and flora are always the same
- no fauna or flora become extinct
- gathereables are always there, always available in the same rate
- npcs have no life, they never go visit their family elsewhere, they have nothing to do except stand there and wait for you
- you can never befriend npcs
- your guilds can never invite npcs to join your guild
- npcs never build new towns or cities
- bridges are always there in the same state, they never get destroyed or damage in any way
- you can deposit in the bank many tons of materials, like many tons of coal (at least in AoC you can't deposit materials in the bank)
- your clothes never get worn out
- your character never gets sore of running for hours, in the next day the character can run for hours again
- npcs never improve in combat over time, they never learn anything at all
- all npcs treat every player in the same way, npcs never have preferences based on looks, profession, races, biography, etc
- npcs never go on vacation, they are always there eager to buy all the trash you collect
- npcs buy unlimited amounts trash
- npcs can never have any emotions or opinions about people, they can't be influenced in any way, you can't wear a mini skirt and get discounts
- no npc gets replaced anywhere or anytime
- you can kill 10,000 goblins and they will never start a war with you, npcs are always oblivious and irresponsive
- npc factions or mobs never form or break alliances among them
- no moon cycles
- no season cycles
- no day and night cycles
- no weather cycles
- caves are always open, there's never ice walls, no landslides whatsoever
- npc forts and castles get bashed many times a day and they are never fortified in any way
- no company monitors player vs mob performance in dungeons and areas and adapt the challenge, if you bring a party that can overkill the dungeon, then the mobs will never adapt their strategy in any way
- there's no real tracking of your actions around the world and the world doesn't adapt accordingly
- you can never influence npc groups or factions into growing in a certain direction or changing in a certain way
- there's always the same amount of available quests everyday
- quest rewards are constant and flat, they never change based on player interaction
- a npc will never pay a bigger reward if nobody is running his quest
- a npc will always pay the same amount of gold even if there's people running that quests hundreds oft imes a day
- npcs are in the same mood everyday, no npc ever said "i'm not in the mood for giving quests today, freck off"
- mobs just sit around and watch you pulling each mob and slaughtering it, they never do anything about it
- mobs don't upgrade their gear, never, even if they are dying over and over and getting insta killed
- mobs and npcs will never hire players to kill another player, they never want revenge
- mobs and mob factions will never stalk you, never find where you live and kill you
- all your actions against mobs have no impact on how they see you
- a player guild can never ally a mob faction and declare war against another player guild
- if you have good alignment with a npc faction or mob faction, they never invite you to live with them in their strongholds or cities
- all your characters are pretty much running through the game, leveling and having the same experience
- storylines are always individual, no storyline is shared and influenced by a group of players sharing the same storyline
- when there's companions in the game, they are always there for you like slaves, they never get sick days, never get hurt and have to rest or go run their personal errands
- there's no salaries of any kind. anywhere, in any game, no public service... there's only quest payouts and selling stuff
- there's no contracts of any kind, no contracts for killing people, for producing items, for hauling, for supplies, for repairing structures, etc, theres no job goals... there's only quests... you can't be hired by mobs to protect their dungeon entrance against other players
- there's no real hollidays, nothing changes through the entire year other than cosmetics
- there's no wandering armies of any kind, nobody will see themselves facing an entire army out of the blue
- etc
There's 64 reasons why game worlds can't be called living worlds.
Many areas in MMOs remain desolate because game developers create static worlds. Once players beat a particular area, there's no incentive to revisit it. This is a consequence of developers' dishonesty.
#peace
PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
1
Comments
It's all lies and slander, in general MMOs are very static, even when MMOs are advertised as living worlds.
But,there's single player games with living worlds, some examples are Dwarf Fortress, Crusader Kings and Kenshi. In These games factions rise and fall, the characters have their own personal agendas too.
Npcs acting out of revenge would be lovely.
Yes, can you imagine if a certain mob faction had beef with you?
This would give some Middle-Earth: Shadow of War vibes
However I agree as a whole. I think 99% of MMORPGs after World of Warcraft Vanilla were made just to make cash, not to innovate and expand the genre.
Yeap, most games, including MMOs, are still stuck in the concept of running quest, this concept is from the 70s, in fact it comes from 1974.. we are literally stuck in this concenpt for 50 years!
Dungeons & Dragons was first created in 1974, it has almost 50 years now, even tough the technology has advanced, the adventuring is stuck for 50 years.
AoC has the potential of becomming a game we can call a living world!
But games aren't like that because nearly everything on that list falls into three categories.
1. Annoys players and limits gameplay for those who don't get into the game at specific timings, leading to the game being less popular.
2. Is a manipulable system that certain types of player just destroy or lock into a static state anyway (could be good or bad but it happens)
3. Is in FFXI/some older game and just not bothered with in newer ones.
No one knows that for sure, since it was never done before!
Ashes itself will be quite crazy and we don't know for sure if people will like it.
In games, players can only break the game because devs are slowin taking action and incompetent overall (not technically incompetent tough, just brainwise incompetent). But anyway, why would you be affraid that players could force the world to stay in a certain way? This is no problem at all, because nowadays all games are already stuck in a certain way and being farmed because of that.
I'm not suggesting that those ideas are better, I am just pointing out that devs in general create nothing new that justify calling their games as living worlds.
In most cases, MMOs are just static, bland, scripted and questy.
I'm saying the opposite. This has been done before, and part of the reason devs stopped was related to those same three points:
1. People complained about it way more than they seemed to like it (even if some people really appreciated it, for example, NPC vendors having hours where they just... go home)
2. People broke it and locked it into a state where the dynamism stopped mattering other than a maintenance cost that someone has to put their effort into (World Buffs anyone?)
3. Has been done before.
Idk, I just couldn't think of a different way to interact with the post, but I wanted to. I'd basically turn it into a forum game of 'MMO History' or something. Have everyone come in and give examples of a game that did something and how it turned out, maybe.
Seems like a waste to make such a detailed post and then get a response less than that, so y'know, I figured I did actually have something I could say, so I did.
I agree that MMOs are like that, but I just don't find that players interact a lot with those things unless forced and many of them complain all the way. Even BDO started out with all that and then just got ignored and gamed to hell until (I speculate) the RPG devs got jaded and left, it got 'remastered' and everything got 'streamlined' and they still have that tendency to this day. Maybe they're just fools who think too short term or focus entirely on Metrics.
But I'll set up/play your 'MMO History' game if you want.
Ultima was the biggest mmo of its time and definitely pushed the genre forward, but this situation definitely taught many devs that players will never play how you want them to.
It would be a problem if devs have no courage in giving power and decision making to the npcs, that would be a big problem and people could potentially stuck the world states in a certain state.
Well, I am one of the historical gankers who were killing all players over harvesting the woods!
This failure is pretty much Lord British's fault, there was a time I was doing Carpentry in Ultima Online, I could sell infinite furniture.
That's the problem about having a static economy, NPCs buying infininite stuff 24/7, this stimulated people to over harvest and over farm anything they can. That's what happens when NPCs have unlimited gold.
Game on then. Good timing.
Squad incoming. Let's have some fun with it, ya?
13:10 < GM> 1d64
13:10 <&Dice> GM, 1d64: 44
there's no real tracking of your actions around the world and the world doesn't adapt accordingly
(oh boy, this is a hard one to start with, huh, can I just cite Elite and FFXI and not actually explain either the BGS or the world map territory stuff - Conquest, Campaign, Besieged, etc?)
I am interested in knowing interesting systems from historical games, just for the sake of gaming lore!
No prob then! I'm sure my friends will enjoy this 'game'.
The problem is that obviously, Living World systems, even rudimentary ones, take really really long to explain, so for now you might get some shorter answers.
In nearly no game has a standing system between players. EVE Online has standings for players, at individual level, corporation and alliance levels. You can also link information on each character's notes... you can have notes on every player in the game. People use notes on others the entire time, you can even have HTML notes. In the game there's also apps like Notepad, Calculator, etc. You can write notes about anything and have links, you can write a note about a solar system and add links from players biographies, corporations, wars, etc.
In Kenshi, if you are travelling in the desert and find someone injuried, you can heal that guy, save him, or even enslave him.This will affect the standings with the faction. In Kenshi, bad standins can lead to war and wars can lead to the demise of an entire faction, the faction will cease to exist.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is great at tracking what you do, in the future npcs will treat you well or treat you poorly accordingly.
In Rimworld, there's a lot on this too, it also affects trading, questing, alliances and wars.
In general, there's no PvP history in any game at all... you can't remember who you killed, when, who was running the party.... EVE Online has that...I don't remember any other game having this.
There's no tracking on who we played with in the past, who we ran quests, etc.
Okay
This happens in FFXI. Not for normal mobs that wouldn't have access to 'gear' in the first place, but the ones that would actually have access to proper supplies and armorers do.
In FFXI's Campaign, the enemy armies do continuously upgrade their gear and supplies, and players have to do special missions to affect both their own army's resources (supplies, defenses, etc), and those of the opposing NPC armies. This even extends to things like training and military intelligence. If nobody bothers to do anything about it, the enemies will be stronger, and more coordinated, and you're going to lose ground.
In FFXI's Besieged, the enemies assaulting the city spend time training and gearing up. At "level 1", they're absolute pushovers. But then they go home, train more, gear up more, and come back with better numbers and stronger soldiers. This happens a lot of times before they finally hit full power.
So... yeah. Devs do this.
<&Dice> GM, 1d64: 21
"npcs have no life, they never go visit their family elsewhere, they have nothing to do except stand there and wait for you"
The problem with this one is that players often find needing to track down an NPC who's wandered off somewhere to be frustrating and tedious. Imagine not being able to complete a quest because the NPC you need to talk to is in another city, or needing to wait an hour to buy an item you need because a merchant is asleep.
Having said that, FFXI did do something like this. There are NPC freelancers you can hire to fight in campaign battles, who you have to find under various different conditions.
"mobs and npcs will never hire players to kill another player, they never want revenge"
Missions in Elite will randomly spawn assassins/pirates from an enemy of the faction you are doing the mission for. Additionally if you drop below a certain reputation level with a faction (npc factions and player factions both have npc actors) by either killing civilians, killing their own pirates, or doing other covert actions that negatively effect their security or economy all of their npc faction pirates and security guards will attack you on sight/scan
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
This will make the crowd that makes (or references!) wikis for the game very upset, especially if the variable that changes the quest rewards is obscured or non-obvious. The level of envy between two players who seemed to put in the same amount of work but got completely different rewards creates a big mess that distracts players from enjoying the game; instead, they'll be trying to dissect a mechanic for an NPC.
13:36 <&Dice> GM, 1d64: 35
Discounting all the other hardcoded stuff like the Elite Factions and FFXI Campaign dynamics, I'm anecdotally completely certain that there is/was a hidden stat on the Campaign Generals in FFXI that makes them attack players who made them fail skirmishes in previous battles.
So I have an 'arch-enemy' in that game on the battlefield who, if any of her soldiers sees me within a certain range of the objective, will ignore all other objectives and run straight to attack ME.
This is actually really useful because I'm usually using a movespeed kiting build and she's not great at dealing with that, but it's also devastating when I'm on healer or think she's already fallen and out of position and she just comes and whomps me.
Good fun.
The more often I 'lead' our side to defeat her, the more easily this happens. Probably a hidden stat on people's characters.
As noted, Elite is basically the same, just with less 'static or consistent' enemy pirates/NPCs. But you can be contracted to be killed while on a quest and followed halfway across civilized space or further (normally if I have Contract Killers on me I have to travel about 500 Light Years away from home before they stop pursuing, and they will hang around that sector until I get back. The game also seems to sorta-simulate if they should be able to catch up to you if you do certain things, but that's an answer for another dice roll.
Okay
Not so! In FFXI, in the icy north, there are certain areas that you can only pass when there's no Blizzard Weather active. You have to time your travel appropriately if you want to visit certain areas.
In FFXI's tropical volcano, there are lava flows that shift over time. If you want to pass, you have to wait around, or bring along some concentrated essence of elemental ice to spend to open the passage for a few seconds.
In addition, while it's not a general navigation hazard in the overworld, we also sometimes take on a mission that specifically involves clearing a passageway through a blocked cave. There are large boulders that obstruct it, until we manage to break them down so the army can complete its mission in that area.
Now that I think about it, there are actually a lot of these dynamic obstacles in the open world in FFXI. There's one that opens a passage through a zone only at the full moon (both for easier travel, and some exclusive areas and mobs). There's an area that has walls open and close based on the day. If you come in in the evening, it can change on you while you're in there, which can be... interesting, if you don't know the area well. No "making a mental map as you go along" here.
I'd have to say that there's actually outright a TON of this. I can't even remember all the ones I know there are.
<&Dice> GM, 1d64: 40
"no weather cycles"
FFXI has weather, which affects, in no particular order, mob spawns, item drops, the damage of elemental spells and weaponskills, and sometimes what routes are available through an area (e.g. an entrance into a cave being frozen over during a blizzard). There are NPC weather forecasters, who will give you an idea of the weather over the next few in-game days, so you can plan what you're doing.
There are also seasons, which affect the likelihood of different types of weather in different areas.
LOL
Can you imagine?
If a quest is not run not even once a week, the NPC could multiply the gold reward by 5x.
If the quest is run multiple times a day, then the gold reward could be multiplied by 0.5.
Then if you go farm quests in an area or from a certain faction and nobody is running those quests, it means the area has also very low player population!
So, people could migrate over there and farm everything for 10x more gold compared to a densely populated area, until the reward goes back to paying regular rates.
Gold farmers, wiki runners, RMT schemes, would all crumble.
13:49 <&Dice> GM, 1d64: 24
npcs never build new towns or cities
Elite Dangerous:
The Marlinist Colonies are an association of eight independent colonies on the fringe of the Core Systems. The colonies were constructed by Sirius Corporation and completed on January 14, 3307. Establishing the Marlinist Colonies was proposed by Sirius Corporation CEO Li Yong-Rui on December 10, 3306, as a permanent solution to the ongoing Marlinist refugee crisis brought on by NMLA terrorism, a situation that had raised tensions between the Empire and the Federation to the boiling point. The former Imperial citizens who relocated to the colonies created a representative democracy in accordance with the republican ideals of Marlinism, and established an elected Marlinist Parliament led by a First Minister on January 21, 3307. The Marlinist Colonies' de facto capital is the Coriolis starport Stillman Hub in Concordia, the most populous of the eight systems.
(game builds new starports constantly based on things happening. It's controlled by the devs so it's curated and not directly part of the Background Simulation, but there's other similar things that happen when stations change hands and territories shift, and they will build them in response to player behaviour sometimes)
If this happened in a different game and they were destructible, players would just instantly wreck them, so...
In fact, if you consider structures/strongholds/mini-camps, we do get a bit of that in multiple games, but it's usually not worth the effort precisely because players will instantly go 'CONTENT!' and steamroll them flat.
Yeap!
Can you imagine, you spend a week killing goblins, then when you are doing something else somewhere else, a hunting party with elite goblins hot drop on you. BwahAHwhAWH!
Some games have a heat meter, I think Scarface had it, when the heat was too high then the other gangs would assault your buildings and steal your yayo.
If there was heat meters/gauges in fantasy MMOs, even if the meter itself was hidden, you could actually spawn extra mini-bosses anywhere around the world, even inside dungeons.
13:45:41 <&Dice> GM, 1d64: 58
This already doesn't happen in FFXI. First of all, if you choose a different starting nation, your entire sense of what low- to mid-level progression is, is completely different even before you factor in differences due to your class benefiting from certain quests or even having class-specific quests like the Belt line for Monks. From a pure geographical perspective, a San d'Orian player tends to have a completely different experience from a Windurstian player because the areas of the early game are different for each distinct national start. Until you can go past Jeuno, you'll have a completely different set of formative memories than your friend from another nation, and even afterward there's usually enough variation in areas of each level band (e.g. 30-40, 40-45, 45-50 and so on) that you can go to of your own choosing. Sure, people did post certain "optimal" leveling routes, but I can tell you for sure I never went on a Gusgen Mines farming session, for example.
Overall, there was always somewhere else you could go (usually in sets of 3) for your current level, and it was your choice of which you wanted to go for. After long enough, the combinatorics means that you will often have a different set of baseline experiences from your friends, which makes the world feel more alive and more expansive than a linear route through a set of predetermined/expected areas for certain level ranges.
"zones always have the same level range"
FFXI Abyssea zones do this. The more mobs you farm in the area for an extended period of time the larger their respawns ramp up in difficulty. I'm trying to think of if it was in Arrapago Reef as well but I can't remember...
Personally I like this mechanic a lot, but it should be reserved for certain end level and capstone level areas.
I also know of a lot more mmos that have mixed level zoning. FFXI again does this but I'm pretty certain other mmos do this as well.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
Yes, it could be troublesome when you need npc vendors
But other games brought this with vendor caravans, wandering merchants, etc.
If a game had a bit less vendors and a few wandering merchants and caravans, it would be way more appealing.
<&Dice> GM, 1d64: 41
"no moon cycles"
Final Fantasy XI - which was released in 2002 - has moon cycles. Every day of the ingame week, the moon changes colors in a set cycle, corresponding with one of the elemental types in the game (Firesday, Earthsday, Windsday, Iceday, etc). Each corresponding moon cycle makes magic effects of their element slightly more effective, and makes the opposing element slightly less effective.
Here's a simple chart showing all of the game's elemental interactions, and the current moon cycle also plays into it, resulting in, for example, Water element spells being extremely effective against Fire-based enemies when used on Watersday:
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/ffxi/images/1/1e/Compass.JPG/revision/latest?cb=20050629142300
This is one of several features that add to the dynamics of combat. "It's Earthsday, so this Slow spell is more likely to land super effectively on this enemy, but my Stun spell might be resisted" is one example, and it cuts both ways - all players and mobs alike play by the same rules, since we're all living under the same moon, you know?
But it's not JUST a combat feature.
Each element also has a Crystal type associated with it. Crystals, in short, are common-ish drops that are used for various types of Synthesis, the game's main crafting system. For example, if you kill a Fire-based enemy, you might get a Fire Crystal, which can be used to magically heat up meat and cook it. Wind Crystals can be used to carve wood and bone, Earth Crystals fuse things together, Lightning Crystals split things apart (known as "desynthesis"), and so on.
The day of the week - that is, the current moon cycle - also has several effects on Synthesis, depending on which Crystal types you're using on which day, and this means crafters have a lot of dynamics to consider too! Synthing things isn't just a repetitive routine every time you do it - you need to evaluate the day of the week and make a decision accordingly, changing what crafting types you focus on, and the potential results.
Do you have few Crystals and want to make sure your Synthesis attempts succeed more often? Then you need to pay attention to the current moon cycle. Do you have MANY Crystals and want to increase your Cooking or Cloftcraft skill faster, while having a higher failure rate as a tradeoff? You can do that too.
Here's a chart that shows the various interactions, with the outer circle representing "current day of week".
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/ffxi/images/1/1f/SynthingCompass.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20050526162318
This is all putting aside that moon PHASES - not just the weekly element cycle, but also whether the moon is Full, Half, New, etc, also have various interactions both within the crafting system AND within combat (there's a cool Wolf summon that has different abilities based on the moon phase, for example), but I won't get into all of that here.
The point is, I could talk about how the moon cycles alone add to the depth and complexity of FFXI all day long.
This sounds great, I did not play FFXVI at all!
In Kenshi, you can built multiple cities, you can build a city where most npcs are levels 1-10... then you get big, strong and out of nowhere a full army of heavily armed warriors ranging levels 35-45 will travel from their region just to pay you a visit.
They will arrive at your gates, start yelling they want a fight and if you don't open your gates, they will bash your gates, put unconscious or kill all characters in the city, loot as much as they want and enslave people.
So... that's what happens in Kenshi when you are powerful and just sits somewhere, this will attract mobs from other regios to visit specifically you.
<&Dice> GM, 1d64: 43
"no company monitors player vs mob performance in dungeons and areas and adapt the challenge, if you bring a party that can overkill the dungeon, then the mobs will never adapt their strategy in any way"
In Abyssea (a series of endgame zones with strong bosses in FFXI) if you repeatedly kill enemies in an area, when they respawn, they'll be at a higher level. This can ramp up the danger they represent to a group significantly.
Similarly in Aht Urhgan (an area from an earlier expansion), there's a mechanic where a structure called an Archaic Mirror can spawn in areas controlled by beastmen, which will power up nearby enemies, and increase the rate at which those beastmen prepare for attacks on the area's main city. Players can defeat the bosses guarding the mirrors and break them in order to disrupt the beastmen's ability to prepare attacks.