Is Gaming Itself Able to Pull This Off?

bellanca6561n · July 2014

ESO works very hard to combine the push medium of stand alone games with the pull medium of player driven narrative online games. And it works if you enjoy being the silent protagonist whose actions serve to turn the page of an already written story.

Where it breaks down for me is that no game has context logic sophisticated enough yet to make the scripted version convincing.

Having played a Breton Templar....very proper fellow to VR7 I became rather captivated by Dunmer Dark Elf women. Their unattainable nature, fierce, humorless...well....you know. Perfect for a Nightblade. So I made one. I liked the way she looked and it fit with the combat style of the Nightblade.

But then the logic began to fall apart. A community was beset by Dunmer raiders yet everyone treated her instantly like an ally....a Dunmer dressed in a mix of Primal and Barbaric armor.

And the skill point quest, first rescue of King Emeric that sends you off to Rivenspire. The throne room scene plays wrong and looks wrong, again because the game logic is dumb to context.

But these are small points. Then came the clincher. Castle Verandis. What I call the Polonius scene....you remember Hamlet, when he says Polonius is at dinner, not where he eats but where he is eaten. The meal is a Dunmer man, a member of her own race. He seems a willing servant yet Verandis is unaware that the scene presents an issue for this Dunmer woman beyond what it might for a member of another race.

This is why I've never enjoyed stand alone games the way I have open ended online multiplayer games. Too many logic holes. They're just not convincing.

In an online game there can be no logic holes. The story is created by players reacting solely to the behavior of other players. This is why it is so, so difficult to mix the push medium of stand alone games with the pull medium of player driven narrative.

But as I've said.....probably to the point that I've exhausted people with it, ESO is a game you play online. It is not an online game. It is in Cyrodiil but whereas story land is rigidly structured, Cyrodiil is entirely too chaotic.

Meanwhile I'm reduced to enjoying it mostly because I like the way Bella's butt wiggles when she runs. And I admire the sheer ambition of this game. Finally, I don't think any game has yet developed a quest engine with true, sophisticated context awareness. I salute the attempt.

Tobiz · July 2014

no?
yes?
uhm what?

traigusb14_ESO2 · July 2014

I agree to a certain extent. As a EP Orc, I felt everyone was a bit too chummy, especially in the first few zones. After that though I had a reputation as "that hero guy." and it was ok for me.

Some of the stories work better than the others.

In the AD you get "working for the Queen" credentials pretty early, so your legitimacy is pretty quick. The queen is also trying way to hard to get along and generally sitting on the more jerky parts of Elfland (like the Thalmor). The Cats are pretty happy to wander around and sell stuff (some of it even theirs) coming off as pretty neutral like the Nords below.

DC is kinda in the middle. They have issues, but they are working them out.There have been border wars etc. but nobody owned anyone else's grandmothers.

EP feels the most iffy in my opinion, especially if you are an Argonian (which isn't even an outsider race!). Al the Argonian haters/ enslavers happily give you quests (and a few Argonians that hate Dunmer will give you anti-elf stuff). It seems to be the one with the most internal issues (with the Nords coming off as generally good natured drunks, with a few border living exceptions).

isengrimb16_ESO · July 2014

Well, I did come across one quest where I was recognized as an Argonian - "Who did this? Look in the mirror, scaleskin; it was some of your kind" or something along those lines. This is EP.

I guess it might be too much to change dialogue for every quest based on what race you are.

I noticed in Skyrim, only Khajit characters get racially insulted by NPCs - "You'll make a nice rug, cat!"; "My sister had a cat - I killed that, too!" I rolled an Argonian there, too, to see if I would get, say, "You'll make nice luggage, lizard!" or something like that. Nope.

I just sort of put it down to video game limitations and roll with the incosistencies and such.

Whisper292 · July 2014

I've noticed the same thing, in ESO and in Skyrim, and I always just put it down to political correctness or a way to keep people with the maturity of a 6-year-old from throwing temper tantrums because people didn't like them. I've tempered those--for lack of a better word--errors in my own gaming experience with RPing and fanfiction, but you're right in that the way everybody seems to like your characters no matter what their race is can break immersion.

Dekkameron · July 2014

What bugs me is if you're playing the same race as the npcs and they're all like "You wouldn't understand our ways outsider!"

Pfft!

Dekkameron · July 2014

Although some npcs recognise your race (i was a bosmer in DC)

kijima · July 2014

I am a bosmer in AD, and I gotta say there were some instances where things were not right.

It got worse when I did things out of sequence as to the whole story line, you kill a traitor of the queen, then you go back to the queen later on a quest that you should have done earlier and the traitor is there standing by the queen. I was tired at the time, so I didn't understand what had happened, I was yelling at the screen, "Kate, that murderous *** standing next to you wants your thrown!"

Of course that is my own fault for not doing things in sequence, I don't start reading a book, become engaged then read three chapters ahead, and then go back to where I was and continue reading, yet that's what I did, so some fualt lies with me. Thing is, I didn't know at the time I was doing that, it wasn't intentional, so on that basis, I don't think you should be able to do quests that are integral to the story out of order.

That's two issues. Quests not making much sense as far as story line goes, and being able to do them out of sequence, which to me, it's just stupid.

pinstripesc · July 2014

Pah, try playing as an Imperial. Nothing makes sense. I was so shocked when one quest let me say "You realize I'm an Imperial too, right?" It was the most random, inconsequential quest and I didn't understand why that was the only one they did it in.

esothomas · July 2014

this isn't a roleplaying game, it's a fantasy action mmo with a lot of voice acting.

take from this what you will (i'd suggest adjusting your expectations).

PrinceBoru · July 2014

I want to backhand the NPCs who tell me I don't look like a champion.

SBR_QuorTek · July 2014

Hehe I like this thread... me myself though am khajiit all the way and bosmer for some odd reason...

Guess I have a furr fetish... here is some fun facts though being a khajiit in AD... and an alchemist as well... I still need a horde of feral bosmers chasing me down for eating their flowers lol.... yet have to see that as it could be fun, especially if you guys have played any of the AD zones dominated by forest.

hk11 · July 2014

I think they look cool in a creepy way, but am unable to play with female characters. So pretty much just orcs for me.

esothomas · July 2014

hk11 wrote: »

I think they look cool in a creepy way, but am unable to play with female characters. So pretty much just orcs for me.

haha so you can only play with underbites?

all my chars are women, most of them as tall and strong as they can be (others just small and strong). it's so funny playing a woman towering a male

Flexar · July 2014

I've only encountered one similar problem like this so far, and that was in the quest you do in Morrowind for the Dunmer woman who owned Khajiit slaves. For someone who clearly hates the Khajiit so much she seemed very happy to let one solve her problems for her.

Oberon · July 2014

bellanca6561n wrote: »

ESO works very hard to combine the push medium of stand alone games with the pull medium of player driven narrative online games. And it works if you enjoy being the silent protagonist whose actions serve to turn the page of an already written story.

Where it breaks down for me is that no game has context logic sophisticated enough yet to make the scripted version convincing.

The Everquest Next team is attempting to solve exactly what you are talking about by way of Storybricks. It's an emergent artificial intelligence system that is designed to deal with precisely this very topic. They are teaming with Sony to bring forth a much more dynamic system both from the viewpoint of story telling and mob AI.

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out from the standpoint of game development, particularly with reference to MMO design. EQN is a sandbox design and is perfectly suited for emergent AI, but any MMO could benefit from it.

Stéphane Bura of Storybricks discussed this topic in some depth at the 2014 Game/AI Conference in Vienna during the July 7-10 gathering. The discussion there was not specifically aimed at EQN, but it will be much more in depth at SOE Live 2014 in Las Vegas over the August 14-17 weekend which is fast approaching.

If you're particularly interested in this topic you can sign up for the Storybricks newsletter on their web site and of course follow the MMO side of development by watching what comes out of SOE Live beginning August 14.

smeeprocketnub19_ESO · July 2014

Considering SOE has pretty much bailed on EQ and EQ2, they will just do the same thing with EQN. I just don't have patience for that from them anymore.

Oberon · July 2014

I don't see how the publication of 20 expansions for Everquest along with 3 adventure packs and 10 expansions for Everquest 2 (the most recent being released late last year) qualifies as SOE having "bailed" on the games, both of which are still running, but that is not really the point of this thread.

I've been designing games professionally for 35 years, and the topic of advanced artificial intelligence being integrated into the MMO genre is a very interesting one to me. I thought it might be of use to the OP as well, so I posted details of Storybricks in case anyone else might be interested in the subject--take it or leave as you will, of course.

Lava_Croft · July 2014

I lost count of the times where some bigoted NPC would be dissing Argonians while speaking to a heavily geared out Argonian (me). I just settled on "this guy must think he is Charles Bronson".

And regarding Everquest Next, Sony sure knows how to create a lot of hype, while in reality there is not much actual game just yet. Let's hope they live up to their hype.

Haewk · July 2014

Lava_Croft wrote: »

I lost count of the times where some bigoted NPC would be dissing Argonians while speaking to a heavily geared out Argonian (me). I just settled on "this guy must think he is Charles Bronson".

And regarding Everquest Next, Sony sure knows how to create a lot of hype, while in reality there is not much actual game just yet. Let's hope they live up to their hype.

Regular Argonians are trash. The Chuck Norris of Argonians is treated with respect and addressed as "sir" and would surely share the opinion that other Argonians are trash and should be treated as such.

Haewk · July 2014

Ever since I started playing MMOs I have been wondering about similar problems. Not sure if this is the modern take on "everyone wants to write a book" but now it is everyone wants to design an MMO.

Subjects I have pondered over the years:

Logging in and out
How do you justify people just suddenly disappearing from the game world? So so many game play limitations due to a player just being able to pull the plug / disconnect at any time. Also cannot punish this as it may be out of the control of the player.
Death is just an inconvenience
Players just don't die. Some games do have permanent death modes and I find the idea intriguing. How do you effectively implement an MMO where death is permanent and there are no option to play as unkillable? Perhaps bring some kind of family structure to the game. Everytime you start a new character you can choose from a list of offspring in the family tree maybe.
Persistence
This is the biggest issue for me. I know that current MMOs are a race between development teams producing content and players consuming the content. I don't think developers can ever win this race. The model needs to change.

There is currently a lot of static content. Every character gets to play through the same content, gets to do the same quests, gets to fight the same encounters, etc.

While encounters can be tuned in difficulty to provide a challenge for a size limited team in predictable conditions this quickly gets boring and repetitive once your strategies are established.

So how do we change this? Well. Lets look at an example. A zombie MMO (you heard it here first, why hasn't this be done already anyway?).

Players start in a safe zone. Zombies are at the gates and walls and keep beating away at it. Walls and gates need to be repaired. For repairs to take place the following needs to happen:
- Resources must be gathered
- Resources need to be crafted into parts
- A combat team needs to go out and establish a safe zone around the damaged area and keep it safe
- A repair team needs to head into the safe zone and complete the repairs with the parts
- The repair team needs to be extracted to safety
- The combat team needs to be extracted to safety
So players can participate in any part of this, they can gather resources or be part of the combat team. This will also be happening all the time. Zombies can spread out or focus on a specific part and players will have to adapt.

This kind of scenario will be aimed at new players. For more experienced players you spawn rare resources outside the safe zones. Adventurous players can go out and harvest these resources. Or you have some super zombies (world bosses) that players can go out and hunt.

You can have mass scale events like trying to extend the safe zone. When enough resources are available you can try to push back the zombie horde long enough for your engineers to build new barricades.

Guilds can establish their own outposts by taking over strongholds and repairing them.

The bottom line is, the world is persistent and there are no meaningless quests. Everything you do affects the world. There are no gimmicky phasing and quest stages where the world is out of sync between players.

Sorry, just rambling.