This is a thing in FFXI too, but the system is so complex that I think it'd be easier to hope that you remember it, than to try to explain it.
Sure, it's not 'absolutely permanent' (except that one time) because well, code for this is usually reversible or people desire it to be reset-able, but this one is on the Devs to intervene and do.
Everything else is covered either by one of the prior answers, is common enough that people probably have actually had the experience in some game (like the holiday thing, games definitely have holiday events that actually change the world, sometimes permanently), or end up being moreso a question of how a player chooses to interpret a specific game mechanic (for example, Adventuring Fellow in FFXI you can only call once per day because they're doing their own thing, or a complete change in NPC spawn type in Elite Dangerous because the players associated with a specific faction tend to do a particular type of mission more often, our Faction explicitly spawns extra Cruise ships and Personal Convoys because one of our largest subdivisions is Tourism and many of our players spend lots of time doing Passenger missions, we expect the game tracks this too).
So, thanks for the hour or so of fun, hope all enjoyed, we're done for now though.
Some of these things are tackled thanks to the node system.
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!
Quests aren't the issue, and the notion of a quest is much older than 1974.
The issue as to why no game has a real living world based on the list in the OP is because no computer in the world is powerful enough to run it.
Adding to the pile (but not in a as cool way as the people above). I'll focus on MMORPGs cause most of these things are standard in the CRPG market...
Sharing a story-line.
Both GW2 and SWToR has this. SWTOR has Dungeons that got multiple RP options that the group can tackle together. GW2 literally had the option to play and progress the story together.
Relationships with NPCs.
SWTor has amazing companions that can fill out the party if you lack players. You do have relationship levels with them, either friendly or romantic. I hope we'll see this in a MMORPGs again someday, but AoC is probably not it.
I know Lost Ark also has NPCs that you can gain affection with, but they only bring some RP flavor and static rewards at certain milestones.
WoW had NPCs that one could find that contributed to you Garrison as crafters or even as your open world bodyguard (WoD expansion). They had a similar system in Legion, but at that point bodyguards were class specific.
NPCs not always being available.
GW2 has *a lot* of vendors that appear/change wares depending on recent events. And vendors that re-locate regularly.
WoW at least used to have rare vendors as well.
Lost Ark has plenty of vendors that sail around.
... Well, that was just my little contribution for now.
This got quite long, and is a little less sandbox that I thought it would be when I started.
TLDR: An open world MMO game played by 10-20 different AI-driven factions in x4 fashion, where players are independant "troops" and can align themselves with those factions to push the game world however they want.
A living world sounds possible. It just needs NPC support of that world. So imagine a large world with ~15-30+ NPC factions (human and other), each with their own multiple territories. Now, *ALL* endgame gear is dropped or crafted or sold or provided from quest by these factions.
Players would align themselves with several of these factions by gaining rep. But the only way get to the higher levels of rep (once you've killed enough boars/bandits for rep) is to engage in activities that end up pissing off other factions by attacking their areas, raiding farms, towns, mines, "dungeons", etc. Now for the "sandboxy" part of this: When a faction is attacked, that thing that was attacked delevels a bit. Sustained attacks on one faction's assets causes them to some territory and delevels that faction enough that they are no longer worth attacking (think node levels being lost one-by-one), because the items you get from attacking them are now grey.
Each faction has a "stronghold" that cannot be taken just by NPCs (dwarves in their mountains, elves a deep forest, etc), and left alone after being beaten down, they will start to expand out again. I don't think genocide would be workable, but maybe the wood elves (with a player push) straight up delete Thror's descendants and a faction of mountain elves spring up in their place. Players could side with the dwarves to stop that from happening though, and usually defense is easier than offense. However, defenders would lose rep with the attacking faction.
With enough player help, a faction can level up higher than it would if the AI was left on it's own, and be able to craft higher level gear and also becomes a more promising target. This is why you need many factions. Players can have several "homes", assuming that they manage their rep intelligently.
This system needs needs something important: Bots. Yep, bots can do all the jobs that people usually don't want to do or forget to do (shopkeeper, farmer, miner, etc), but people can, if they want to. Each faction would have an AI that manages resources and directs the activities of it's bots. Gathering wood, clearing and farming land, building up "nodes", etc.
If players decide to clearcut a forest and sell the wood to the faction, then the price at which that faction buys wood would go down, quests to gather wood disappear, and the AI would start sending it's bots to build buildings. Then the price of stone or food or steel would go up and quests for gathering that would appear.
It would take time for the forest to regrow, so if you want more wood, you might have to go a neutral node, or another faction's node, to gather more.
If the AI decides it needs a larger military force, then it will start buying crafted swords/armor to outfit the bots (crafting quests too), other bots would also start crafting the gear, and once that is done it may decide to clear out a neighboring node to claim it (conquest/kill quests would appear) and bots would march out to capture farms and villages
So it's a very large AI driven x4 game that players can play in and assist/hinder whatever faction they want. To keep player agency alive, you can attack whoever you want, but you have to deal with the rep consequences. So if you're looking to get raid-level loot, you can take a full party to the only faction that has built up to L10 and "raid" the royal advisor's estate. Now, of course, you've lost a lot of rep with the highest level faction, and maybe can't trade there any more. Also, this would be a PvP-contestable raid, so you might get player-wiped
Edited to make it more clear that this would be an MMO world for the players, but the AI-driven factions play against each other in an x4 style. The only way to get end-game stuff would be to work for one faction against another. And there should be players working for that other faction opposing you
a npc will never pay a bigger reward if nobody is running his quest
This my good sir is absolutely brilliant.
Many of your ideas (even though most are great) may be hard to implement or bring complex problems with them. But this one... easy to implement and I can only see positive impact (as long as there is a proper limit). Why in the name of the moon goddess has noone done this before?
IMO, fauna and flora isn't everything that contributes to a living world but also how the player (and even npcs) can interact with said environment and each other. If the game is unable to pull players into it (not all, we're not dealing with absolution as people will play for different reason).
The little details go a long way in game design, especially for what this thread is suggesting based on the original post.
a npc will never pay a bigger reward if nobody is running his quest
This my good sir is absolutely brilliant.
Many games have this.
Ashes will have a version of this with mob dropped certificates.
The more of a given certificate that are turned in to a given node, the lower the price goes for each subsequent one. As people stop turning in that cert type, the price goes back up.
a npc will never pay a bigger reward if nobody is running his quest
This my good sir is absolutely brilliant.
Many games have this.
Ashes will have a version of this with mob dropped certificates.
The more of a given certificate that are turned in to a given node, the lower the price goes for each subsequent one. As people stop turning in that cert type, the price goes back up.
I never seen any MMO games that the mission payouts get increased and decreased based on player interaction. I came up with this idea because I saw many people grinding missions in relative safety because the payouts are flat, sometimes many dozens of people running the same missions from the same NPCS. The are was always full of people.
Then equivalent missions in riskier areas had nobody running those missions, such areas were deserted.
If payouts don't change, then people have no reason to travel elsewhere and grind gold over there
PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
a npc will never pay a bigger reward if nobody is running his quest
This my good sir is absolutely brilliant.
Many games have this.
Ashes will have a version of this with mob dropped certificates.
The more of a given certificate that are turned in to a given node, the lower the price goes for each subsequent one. As people stop turning in that cert type, the price goes back up.
I never seen any MMO games that the mission payouts get increased and decreased based on player interaction.
a npc will never pay a bigger reward if nobody is running his quest
This my good sir is absolutely brilliant.
Many games have this.
Ashes will have a version of this with mob dropped certificates.
The more of a given certificate that are turned in to a given node, the lower the price goes for each subsequent one. As people stop turning in that cert type, the price goes back up.
I never seen any MMO games that the mission payouts get increased and decreased based on player interaction.
Archeage trade routes did this.
It's been a while, but I believe BDO did/does this too when it comes to trading. That's why players can buy a ton of local goods and take it to some other city/town to sell for profit.
a npc will never pay a bigger reward if nobody is running his quest
This my good sir is absolutely brilliant.
Many of your ideas (even though most are great) may be hard to implement or bring complex problems with them. But this one... easy to implement and I can only see positive impact (as long as there is a proper limit). Why in the name of the moon goddess has noone done this before?
shouldn't it be the opposite? people arent taking his mission because its either too dangerous or the pay is too low. so the npc should offer a bigger reward to incentivize people to help him. if everybody was running his quest, he would run out of money so he would need to pay less per adventurer
a npc will never pay a bigger reward if nobody is running his quest
This my good sir is absolutely brilliant.
Many of your ideas (even though most are great) may be hard to implement or bring complex problems with them. But this one... easy to implement and I can only see positive impact (as long as there is a proper limit). Why in the name of the moon goddess has noone done this before?
shouldn't it be the opposite? people arent taking his mission because its either too dangerous or the pay is too low. so the npc should offer a bigger reward to incentivize people to help him. if everybody was running his quest, he would run out of money so he would need to pay less per adventurer
This!
There's many reasons, the main reason is because progressive and regressive payouts could help people to migrate to less populated areas
The payouts would go down in heavily populated areas, payouts would go up in ghost towns
It's pretty straight forward in making the world feel alive overall, players would do half the job and the npcs would do the other half
PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
Comments
This is a thing in FFXI too, but the system is so complex that I think it'd be easier to hope that you remember it, than to try to explain it.
Sure, it's not 'absolutely permanent' (except that one time) because well, code for this is usually reversible or people desire it to be reset-able, but this one is on the Devs to intervene and do.
What do you guys think about this?
Everything else is covered either by one of the prior answers, is common enough that people probably have actually had the experience in some game (like the holiday thing, games definitely have holiday events that actually change the world, sometimes permanently), or end up being moreso a question of how a player chooses to interpret a specific game mechanic (for example, Adventuring Fellow in FFXI you can only call once per day because they're doing their own thing, or a complete change in NPC spawn type in Elite Dangerous because the players associated with a specific faction tend to do a particular type of mission more often, our Faction explicitly spawns extra Cruise ships and Personal Convoys because one of our largest subdivisions is Tourism and many of our players spend lots of time doing Passenger missions, we expect the game tracks this too).
So, thanks for the hour or so of fun, hope all enjoyed, we're done for now though.
Pretty much the only reason we're here.
It's been changing away from that a lot, though, especially since Jeff left, so probably not anymore.
So it goes.
Quests aren't the issue, and the notion of a quest is much older than 1974.
The issue as to why no game has a real living world based on the list in the OP is because no computer in the world is powerful enough to run it.
Sharing a story-line.
Both GW2 and SWToR has this. SWTOR has Dungeons that got multiple RP options that the group can tackle together. GW2 literally had the option to play and progress the story together.
Relationships with NPCs.
SWTor has amazing companions that can fill out the party if you lack players. You do have relationship levels with them, either friendly or romantic. I hope we'll see this in a MMORPGs again someday, but AoC is probably not it.
I know Lost Ark also has NPCs that you can gain affection with, but they only bring some RP flavor and static rewards at certain milestones.
WoW had NPCs that one could find that contributed to you Garrison as crafters or even as your open world bodyguard (WoD expansion). They had a similar system in Legion, but at that point bodyguards were class specific.
NPCs not always being available.
GW2 has *a lot* of vendors that appear/change wares depending on recent events. And vendors that re-locate regularly.
WoW at least used to have rare vendors as well.
Lost Ark has plenty of vendors that sail around.
... Well, that was just my little contribution for now.
I am reading all the FFXI stuff around here, it looks like FFXI is a solid choice for a living world.
Since AoC has the node system and land management system, these will cover pretty much a lot of stuff that give the feeling of a living world
TLDR: An open world MMO game played by 10-20 different AI-driven factions in x4 fashion, where players are independant "troops" and can align themselves with those factions to push the game world however they want.
A living world sounds possible. It just needs NPC support of that world. So imagine a large world with ~15-30+ NPC factions (human and other), each with their own multiple territories. Now, *ALL* endgame gear is dropped or crafted or sold or provided from quest by these factions.
Players would align themselves with several of these factions by gaining rep. But the only way get to the higher levels of rep (once you've killed enough boars/bandits for rep) is to engage in activities that end up pissing off other factions by attacking their areas, raiding farms, towns, mines, "dungeons", etc. Now for the "sandboxy" part of this: When a faction is attacked, that thing that was attacked delevels a bit. Sustained attacks on one faction's assets causes them to some territory and delevels that faction enough that they are no longer worth attacking (think node levels being lost one-by-one), because the items you get from attacking them are now grey.
Each faction has a "stronghold" that cannot be taken just by NPCs (dwarves in their mountains, elves a deep forest, etc), and left alone after being beaten down, they will start to expand out again. I don't think genocide would be workable, but maybe the wood elves (with a player push) straight up delete Thror's descendants and a faction of mountain elves spring up in their place. Players could side with the dwarves to stop that from happening though, and usually defense is easier than offense. However, defenders would lose rep with the attacking faction.
With enough player help, a faction can level up higher than it would if the AI was left on it's own, and be able to craft higher level gear and also becomes a more promising target. This is why you need many factions. Players can have several "homes", assuming that they manage their rep intelligently.
This system needs needs something important: Bots. Yep, bots can do all the jobs that people usually don't want to do or forget to do (shopkeeper, farmer, miner, etc), but people can, if they want to. Each faction would have an AI that manages resources and directs the activities of it's bots. Gathering wood, clearing and farming land, building up "nodes", etc.
If players decide to clearcut a forest and sell the wood to the faction, then the price at which that faction buys wood would go down, quests to gather wood disappear, and the AI would start sending it's bots to build buildings. Then the price of stone or food or steel would go up and quests for gathering that would appear.
It would take time for the forest to regrow, so if you want more wood, you might have to go a neutral node, or another faction's node, to gather more.
If the AI decides it needs a larger military force, then it will start buying crafted swords/armor to outfit the bots (crafting quests too), other bots would also start crafting the gear, and once that is done it may decide to clear out a neighboring node to claim it (conquest/kill quests would appear) and bots would march out to capture farms and villages
So it's a very large AI driven x4 game that players can play in and assist/hinder whatever faction they want. To keep player agency alive, you can attack whoever you want, but you have to deal with the rep consequences. So if you're looking to get raid-level loot, you can take a full party to the only faction that has built up to L10 and "raid" the royal advisor's estate. Now, of course, you've lost a lot of rep with the highest level faction, and maybe can't trade there any more. Also, this would be a PvP-contestable raid, so you might get player-wiped
Many of your ideas (even though most are great) may be hard to implement or bring complex problems with them. But this one... easy to implement and I can only see positive impact (as long as there is a proper limit). Why in the name of the moon goddess has noone done this before?
The little details go a long way in game design, especially for what this thread is suggesting based on the original post.
Many games have this.
Ashes will have a version of this with mob dropped certificates.
The more of a given certificate that are turned in to a given node, the lower the price goes for each subsequent one. As people stop turning in that cert type, the price goes back up.
I never seen any MMO games that the mission payouts get increased and decreased based on player interaction. I came up with this idea because I saw many people grinding missions in relative safety because the payouts are flat, sometimes many dozens of people running the same missions from the same NPCS. The are was always full of people.
Then equivalent missions in riskier areas had nobody running those missions, such areas were deserted.
If payouts don't change, then people have no reason to travel elsewhere and grind gold over there
Archeage trade routes did this.
It's been a while, but I believe BDO did/does this too when it comes to trading. That's why players can buy a ton of local goods and take it to some other city/town to sell for profit.
I hope not =x
shouldn't it be the opposite? people arent taking his mission because its either too dangerous or the pay is too low. so the npc should offer a bigger reward to incentivize people to help him. if everybody was running his quest, he would run out of money so he would need to pay less per adventurer
This!
There's many reasons, the main reason is because progressive and regressive payouts could help people to migrate to less populated areas
The payouts would go down in heavily populated areas, payouts would go up in ghost towns
It's pretty straight forward in making the world feel alive overall, players would do half the job and the npcs would do the other half