Gamedev. How do you view the noNPC MMORPG model?

Question

Gaming consoles

What would you say about an MMORPG game where all NPCs are excluded? Merchants, quest sponsors, auctioneers, warehouse keepers, guards, and more. Let's say there is an idea to build a game based on society. That is, for trade - barter between players, the auction is arranged live, the players themselves act as guards, and the most important thing about quests: players are initially placed in a situation in which they more than have enough goals for further development. I'll try to make it clearer. At the beginning of the game, we are used to getting into already rebuilt cities, belonging to a certain race and military side. But why not let the player organize this from scratch? Hypothetically, we take a post-apocalyptic theme a la fallout, where players first leave their shelters. Out into an empty world. And then the task arises to unite in groups to rebuild cities and settlements, or to become a bunch of raiders on lone players. In this case, wide scope opens up for professions, crafting and the like. The player himself, hand in hand, with his own kind creates his own world. And to comprehend new knowledge in the game, all kinds of pre-war libraries and so on are provided. That's right, the idea is in the bud and a little chaotic, but I would like to hear opinions on what has been said.

Answer 1

Bad idea, trust my game development experience.
The problem is not in recruiting the first players, but in a high degree of stagnation of the game and turning into a dull city ...
The fact is that in such a game an elite group of players will quickly form and it will steer. Hence, as a result, a high turnover of new players and the rapid extinction of the game.
It is impossible to isolate or prevent the creation of an elite group, because it is the elite players who contribute the most funding to the game. That is, without the elite, the game will be covered due to lack of money.
NPCs allow you to develop in the game without interacting with the elite group, which stabilizes the turnover and increases the amount of "feed" for the elite group. In short, everyone is happy and satisfied.
And the idea of ​​professions and trading by the players themselves is as old as this world. This is now the default condition for games.

Answer 2

At least the first time, until the server is filled with players, there will be a high need for mobs. And only then it will be possible to introduce “human” analogues of mob specialties. The "npc healer" type makes and sells 50hp healing pots. And a person can theoretically learn to be a “healer”, learn how to craft the same heal-banks, but for 75hp, from special components, for the extraction of which he can issue quests to other players.
In general, first you need to make a good game with mobs, and after some time, start gradually not replacing them, but supplementing them with people. Because the game should not crash if the player refuses to fulfill their "game duties" for whatever reason.

Answer 3

Yes, I've been waiting for this game for years!

Answer 4

Look at www.havenandhearth.com/portal/ there are no NPCs and cities (initially). All hands of the players.

Answer 5

Something similar happened about 10 years ago, when Ultima Online came out, in my opinion the Renaissance version. Our shard was set up in such a way that the mobs played a very minimal role. You could only buy from them at the initial stage of the game, because they didn’t have anything serious for pumped players. Therefore, professions flourished and were highly valued. If you want a normal weapon, find a master who will make it for you. And the master must either get the materials himself, or also find a player who can help him with this.
The pumping itself was not leveled, but “as it went along”. If you want to pump ore mining, mine ore. It could take several months of constant dripping through the caves for 2-3 hours a day to pump this skill to a serious level. But then your character was very valuable. Do you want to upgrade your ax skills? Find a live sparring partner and cut each other, heal (at the same time, the treatment with bandages could be tightened up). Therefore, running from one monster to another takes a lot of time.
Quests were also organized by the administration, often involving ordinary players to help in the organization.
The protection of the city is also the business of the players themselves. The "Reds" constantly hang out near the capital, which is always guarded by the "Blues". Sometimes the "blues" chase the "reds" in their capital when there are fewer of them. Of course, most often these confrontations were decided by the most pumped players, but even a weak player with strong weapons could seriously ruffle the nerves of a stronger one. The downside is that you usually never meet anyone in other cities, but guarding the main city was a very exciting activity.
This model has worked for about two years on a limited number of users (the shard was an internal resource of the network), and it may well be organized now.
And yes - the feature of the shard was - complete loot. Killed - all your things will be instantly raked by everyone who is nearby. It was very motivating, and made me approach each battle very prudently;)

Answer 6

The idea is wonderful, but as always rests on balance. Also, how do you get the guard player to do his job? How do you make sure he's protecting the city and not helping the raiders? All this, of course, is solvable, but it entails such a huge number of difficulties that the game runs the risk of forever getting stuck at the development stage.

Answer 7

mm, from what I know - EVE. Zeros in it practically do not have NPCs in any roles, except for farming. For protection, you need to collect a fleet, for a time advantage there are special mechanisms for reinforcing structures - you can’t immediately kill everything and occupy someone else’s territory - this happens in 2-3 phases with delays, which are somehow controlled by the defenders. Actually, the big politics in the game are alliance wars for territories and resources. Almost any role play is played by separate alliances. There are space-communists, there are mercenaries, there is a large commune of caribass, defending its possessions with a buhurt, there are groups of pvp pros who rent out resources for themselves to other caribass. And a lot of gradation in between.
Traders are full. Carry, resell, baryzhat on the black. Actually the market of zeros is done only by players.
Yes, a sandbox has been made for noobs, where they are guarded (not completely, but there is visibility) and give more or less easy money. True, this sandbox has hypertrophied into a large quarry, which everyone uses as a more or less safe place, there are also torus hubs, solo players and small corporations.

Answer 8

To train players in professions, it is enough to lay out textbooks around the world, in the ruins of schools, universities, etc.

Answer 9

Balance in any game is a very difficult thing. This is probably one of the biggest challenges in development.
If you read forums about game development, you can see that many people have a similar idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe ideal game of one genre or another.
That is, your opinion is secondary, and has been discussed many times (probably even on Habré). If the creation of such a game would be economically profitable and possible, then it would be created.
PS:
Fallout online already exists: fonline.ru
Unfortunately, most people choose the role of a raider on lone players, for this reason only 2238 is playable, and even that is not a fact. The SDK is open and you can implement your ideas if you have the strength.

Answer 10

>>It is the elite players who contribute the most funding to the game
you are talking about donating?
>>quickly formed an elite group of players and it will steer
Any group can be overthrown. The idea is that the highlevel cannot scatter the Noob Rebel army with a wave of the pen, and leveling up leads to gain, of course, but not so much. Pumping rather expands the possibilities, but does not make the character unbearable for lolvl. And it is the appearance of such groups that give rise to wars in the game.
>>NPCs allow you to develop in the game without interacting with an elite group . In
one way or another, the character will need to join one or another group, because. one cannot achieve much by the principles of the game.

Answer 11

That's how it's done in TimeZero.
The idea is good, but it is important to think over the implementation very carefully - NPCs in games serve the stability of the game world, so you will have to invent a different stabilization mechanism instead.
For example, in WoW, to raid the capital of the enemy, you need a group of 35-40 high-level characters, but even such a combat group has every chance of wiping indefinitely - the cities are guarded by NPCs, and the more important the city, the higher the stats of the guards. If we exclude NPCs from this model, then one more or less organized group of players will be able to arrange a madhouse in all enemy cities at once - due to the weak organization of the opposing side.
Your idea that such a situation will contribute to the self-organization of players should be tested in practice - it seems to me that nothing will work out and a player who has been killed several times in the starting location (the capital of his race, etc.) will simply leave the game.
You can, of course, introduce no-pvp zones, but this is cheating.

Answer 12

I read the comments, it became very interesting. I also want to participate.
There are really two things that really annoy me.
1) How to make sure that at any time of the day there is a sufficient number of, for example, security guards in the city?
2) How to attract people to uninteresting roles in terms of activity? Here is the same guard, for example. For any doctors, everything is clear - a cool doctor - a cool clientele - a lot of money. What about the guard? Stupidly standing at the gate and not letting through enemies who may not yet appear? And you won’t leave the city to swing - you need to protect ...

Answer 13

The game will be bad, I played online games in my time, and I know what kind of people play there. I can even predict the outcome of the development of your game:
There will be one group (guild, kingdom, it doesn’t matter) that will control the entire game, and there will be small groups that will be afraid to even stick their nose out, they will hang out somewhere on the outskirts and wet the monsters, and fight each other, and the lower links from this powerful group will periodically “attack” these disparate groups (and look how tough I am, not such a trash like you). Everything will be more difficult, of course, but that's in a nutshell.

Answer 14

It seems you have described Xsyon.

Answer 15

I'm afraid you've set yourself an impossible task.
No sane player would play "guard", "salesman".
Let's take WOW as an example. The capital of the horde is Orgrimmar. The maximum number of people in a raid is 40, so usually attacks on capitals are carried out with one raid of 40 people (sometimes two raids of 80 people).
There are approximately 2-3 guards for each participant in the raid (weaker than the players, but making up certain obstacles).
As a result, the capital can repulse the attack: the NPC guards themselves cannot repel the attack, but they can delay it and make it possible to organize a defense raid from the people who are in the city.
Now we take the hypothetical situation that there are no NPC guards in the game. Then a raid of 40 people can simply come and cut out the whole city (150-200 people), because there will be no obstacles for them, and killing scattered people is not a problem.
You say that they will not be allowed to do this by a group of “guards” players, organized and combat-ready. And now the question is, what will these guards do in the game when there is no attack? Who will guarantee that at least 20 high-level guards are in the city at any given time to delay the attack and organize a defense raid from non-guard players?
Who will play as a “guard” if, after leveling up to high level, he will only wander around the city and wait for an attack? What is the motivation to complete NPC tasks? The whole point of mmorpg is that people there participate in various adventures, kill people / mobs / bosses, fight each other, etc. Almost no one will be interested in being a security guard in the city or crafting some garbage all day long. MMORPG is a world in which people leave the real world to get some new unusual sensations, and not sit still all day.
Perhaps you can solve this problem with a large online. Then, firstly, you will need to somehow ensure that each faction has + - an equal amount, and secondly, will your hardware be able to pull it online?
For example, the population of one WoW server is approximately 10,000 people. When 500 people gather in 1 location at the same time, it already starts to slow down noticeably. In your case, it will be necessary to replace all the NPCs in the city with people.
In general, if you don’t have a thousand or two employees and a million or two to buy servers, then you have two options:
1. there will be an empty world with 1 “guard”, 1 “salesman” and 10 “killers”
2. there will be a lot of people but the server will crash every time 10 "killers" want to come into town and kill someone.

Answer 16

Judging by the large number of comments, as well as their volume, the topic is of interest to many.
But show at least an approximate implementation, how it will all look like, are there any real examples.
Because of all of the above, one part of the theory fits into the mmo browser, the second - into mmorgp ala l2, wow, etc ...

Answer 17

I came up with another idea - when there are only NPCs in the game world, and the players should, as it were, replace them. And the goal of the players is to destroy all the NPCs. But they don't know which of the characters in the game are real and which are NPCs. Well, the goal of the NPCs is just to live, despite the fact that they will be aware that someone can “replace” their friends, and because of this they are paranoid and they can kill others there if they suspect that they are not NPCs. Well, i.e. players can be mm "alien", mind-capturing characters in the game world.
Although there it is necessary that the number of bots initially exceed the maximum number of players on the server, and this is probably a hell of a load for the server, so such a game is unlikely to be made, although this idea amused me, I would play.

Answer 18

I'll show you a couple of games.
1. Minecraft . Successful . Of the mobs - only aggressive. Vponle can play either alone or in a crowd. Players try to create a hierarchy, introduce trade and all that. Had
2. Pentacore . Failure. Strategy. There are no mobs at all (although in the end it was necessary to introduce aggressive mobs). The idea was exactly what you are talking about - association in societies, loners cannot survive. You unite in 5 houses - you create a nome, 5 nomes - dem. 5 demos - a country (I don't remember what it's called). That is, 125 players is the maximum association allowed by the game. In fact, I saw 3 countries under one clan. Everyone could choose one of four professions - a jeweler, a gunsmith, a merchant, a thief. It was fun in the beginning, but then it got boring. The Russian server is generally bent, and on the European one - 500 "active" users, a sluggish life.

Answer 19

The model is promising, but it requires careful study of the game world model and a lot of additional features. But in general - for an amateur. Not everyone will want to stick around in the game for N hours to perform some elementary procedures necessary for the existence. However, this opens up a huge space for client bots ...
In general, it seems that Second Life is quite a no-NPC world? :)

Answer 20

what you described will not work, players will quickly quit such a game. and the reason is that people play at different times and for different amounts of that time, and characters like merchants/auctioners/city guards need to be available 24/7. Well, and another important point - over time, a strong guild will form on the server, which will completely seize control and will not allow the rest to play normally. I mean that in your system it will not work out to adjust the balance so that everyone is on an equal footing.