Brotoi mentioned monsters..., (in his blog) Options

[RicoSuave]

Here's a quote from Brotoi's blog:

Today I came up with descriptions for the pallisade and buildings in Three Bridge Outpost, a commercial and military settlement in the midst of the Oak forest. I also added descriptions of musical themes for several key points in the Three Bridge Outpost area. Then I went to the Oak Forest page and added some new creatures to the magical beastiary for the forest. From the moment a person enters the forest until the time they finally leave, I want them to encounter beasts that are both oddly familiar and shocking in their uniqueness. I'd like to have a dozen, but even after adding today's entries, I am still far from that number.

The part I want to discuss is underlined. I have a question and perhaps a discussion topic. First, will we be sticking to normal convention and using monsters with strict min-max toughness? For example, In UO, I know that I won't be able to take on a troll until I've battled for at least 50 played-hours. But once I get to about 80 played-hours, no troll would stand a chance against me. Additionally, at 150 played-hours, I could stand indefinately against millions of trolls. Not just that, but troll from server to server is nearly exactly the same... give or take a stat or skill point. Should our adversaries be the same, where one can just Wiki the expected value of a goblin and know where to find them, what they drop, their exact strengths and weaknesses, et cetera? Or should some goblins be very weak and others exceptionally strong, with adolescent ages?

Whatever we decide on, how will the player learn about the relative strengths and weaknesses of beasties? Trial and error on a random system? That sounds a little harsh. Should town folk have rumors/quests? How about a towncryer? Newspaper? What about completely no reference at all, and needing the players to piece together information about missing PC/NPC parties or trade-routes being overcome?

Personally, I love exploring with a chance of getting my butt handed to me. To me, that is a key element to the excitement of a game. If I know what to expect, if I know how to prepare, I will succeed, but won't have as much fun as if I got beat on a few times in the process learning new tactics. Personally, I like knowing that I outsmarted someone, whether it be the coder or a random number generator... while OBEYING the rules.

I would like to see Brotoi's strange and new monsters and learning about them like a scientist would... by poking and prodding then recording a response. I think it would be cool to see a cute, little fuzzy caterpillar thing (with big puppy-dog eyes) turn nasty in a split second... only because I was wearing a blue shirt instead of red (or something). Discovering these nuances in the game is what thrills me. I guess I'm just weird that way. Most people would just like to know what is the best/fastest/easiest way to get to the top. Yes, I want to have my character develop and be respected, but there is a game to be played as well; not a race to be won.

I look forward to Brotoi's response along with anyone else's. Do we already have something in place?

[ghedipunk]

An individually macro level...

In real life, reputation needs witnesses to spread. If a person is killed in the wilderness, then the area gets a bad reputation... If, however, someone were to witness the death, then he could regroup and mount a hunt against the bears of the area...

In a system such as this, each person would be "known" by each NPC... They would all begin with a neutral or racially weighted reputation stat, then as the players interact with the NPCs, the reputation would change... When an NPC meets up with other NPCs of the same species, their reputations mix, allowing an entire species to eventually love or loath a particular player, although if the player runs through an area, they're likely to outrun any spreading reputation changes.

From a game sim perspective, though, this is incredibly inefficient. The number of reputations to keep track of would be p to the np power... (p = number of players, np = number of NPCs)... 10 to the 10th power is an incredibly huge number, so 10 players with 10 NPCs would create 10,000,000,000 relationships... Now, if we add another player, or another NPC, the number of relationships grows astronomically... double plus ungood.

If, however, we had hidden factions, and split factions to revolve around individual communities (i.e., town/city sized) rather than spread across the entire race, or even had a hybrid faction system, then we could keep the relationships in an (more) easily managed database.

(warning: arbitrary numbers ahead)

For illustration, if we have 10 NPC races, each of which had 10 communities, we have 110 factions to keep track of per player. (100 communities and 10 race-wide factions).

If a player kills 10 members of a community, their reputation with that community goes "bad" by 10 points, and their reputation with the entire race goes bad by 1 point. If I killed 10 people in my town, then the town is going to hate me, but everyone else in the world will simply be repulsed by me. This allows immediate penalties or bonuses for different actions, as well as the "word of mouth" spreading slowly through a civilization.

Certain clothing and items would also affect the immediate reputation... A naturally hostile monster would tend to attack characters wearing light armor, where a defensive monster would be more intimidated by characters wearing heavy armor and sporting large weapons.

In this case... who would you rather fight, Napoleon Dynamite or Conan? Well, it depends on whether you're fighting to defeat someone, or fighting to defend something. If you want to defeat something (i.e., you're a hungry goblin roaming the forests), then Napoleon Dynamite is the prime choice. If you want to defend something (i.e., you're a well-fed goblin and a human just ran into your cave), then you would be more likely to attack someone who looks like a threat.

[Brotoi]

From a game sim perspective, though, this is incredibly inefficient. The number of reputations to keep track of would be p to the np power... (p = number of players, np = number of NPCs)... 10 to the 10th power is an incredibly huge number, so 10 players with 10 NPCs would create 10,000,000,000 relationships... Now, if we add another player, or another NPC, the number of relationships grows astronomically... double plus ungood.

This is exactly why I suggested the use of a hidden attribute assigned to the individual Player-character. When handled in this way the code becomes quite simple. In addition to all the other attributes that are altered, the program simply adds or subtracts an iterative value. Each encounter alters the attribute for the individual Player-character regardless of any past encounter between that player and that faction or that player and that NPC.

PC accepts a hunting quest from a friendly NPC -> Aggression++, Diplomacy--
PC accepts an assignment to guard a caravan -> Aggression--, Diplomacy++
PC kills five NPC from the same faction in a row -> Aggression++, Diplomacy--
PC accepts a trade invitation from an NPC enemy -> Aggression--, Diplomacy++
PC attacks an enemy NPC engaged in combat with a non-team member PC -> Aggression++, Diplomacy--
PC attacks an enemy NPC engaged in combat with a team member -> Aggression--, Diplomacy++
PC heals another PC -> Aggression--, Diplomacy++

So forth and so on. Naturally, the actual increments would depend on guidelines established by Design.