Guild Wars 2

This is a chapter of my Living Story compilation

“Living Story” – why the world is how it is.

In the previously chapter ‘Natural World’ I wrote about the topic of more lively areas with advanced behavior of creatures and combining single zones to overall region by adding events and crossovers. Whit this our world gets some structure, which itself can be explore – not only for awesome landscape but also for the rules behind it’s life. Anyway we changed nothing about the game-play so our world would still be completely fine with a side-wise orientation aligned by the level-range. I want to make sure that I love the down-grading-system of Guildwars2 and it’s obviously the best mechanism in the whole game. But it’s still lacking some adjustment to work probably. Like the game works in the meantime the most parts of the player-base is wandering off into areas of higher level or camping in front of dungeons. The reason is easy be found … farming, looting, grinding. Actually every MMORPG even Guildwars2 has to deal with a static non changing world where the only thing you can do is go around and finish the Story-line or grind some gear to look awesome. Its only natural that the most players go there where they find the most profit, what is also a part of the game (like it is in real life). Sure you could come now and add a better reward-system to the down-grading but this wouldn’t assure that every area would be populate, but just the one where it will be faster to gather rewards. If you try again to adjust some areas you get stuck in the equality-mill, which grinds your world till the boring-state where everything is the same.

So it has to be something different from the “natural world” and the game-play, where we come to the point to talk about the lore. Even without the prequel Guildwars2 has an enormous potential to run a “living story”. We have different mayor and minor races each with a great number of subfactions. We have military factions, trading companies, a scholarly order, pirates, separatist, fire-loving-fanatics, undead, Kingdoms, Empires, Dragons and of course Quaggans and Grawls. Also the world of Guildwars2 is a the stack of being completely corrupted by almost almighty beings, which hunger for destruction. So from this on there is enough stuff what could be happening right now. The current main plot is still to finish your little “personal” story and afterward go out and work for the order you chosen and then lose you’re leadman. While in the absence of a nice buddy you swap over to Trahearne so you have at least one “important” person to talk to. So you help him to gain fame and power while he fond the Pact to center him even more in the middle of the story-line. Ah yeah and then charge at Orr and beat some Dragons. If I forgot nothing this should be the fix main-plot for every current player and anyone who enter the game later. Every other example of “Living Story” we got until yet, is just the attempt to keep people busy, who already finish the personal story and can’t grind much more gears or need help with it, without changing the original World so far that newcomers are missing much of the past. The problem with this is quite simple: We are expecting the next Story coming up and mostly we get it right after the last one barely finished. Like with a “Living World” a “Living Story” has to grow as well and not just get thrown at you. There have to be well known events and objects in the world, which can more or less suddenly evolve to something more bigger and interesting.

… continue part 2

This is a chapter of my Living Story compilation

… previous part of ‘Natural World’

Until now all the suggestions aimed to add specialized interactions for creatures and finish this up by creating some areas for friction between different kind of NPCs. This alone only places creatures towards other characters like Players or other NPCs. It lacks some connection to the world around you like wind, heat and cold, or the players bane gravity. Of course there are no influences like this in the game or at least there are not there “naturally”. Guildwars2 offers a great set of conditions you can inflict on other creatures and characters but also have to burden. It doesn’t make much sense why you burn a moa with your spells and skills, but it still sticks with it’s plan to pick out you eyes, like nothing happens around it. Why is everything so uncaring? When they burn shouldn’t they try to put the fire out? Or run inordinate? When you inflict bleeding it should fire them up and rise their anger because they feel how you threat their life. If you chill them it should creeps in their mind and degenerate their moral.

On the first blink it sound like some other point to create interaction between players and creatures, but because we imagine our characters to be part of a world similar to our own real world we think they holding abilities and skills fitting for this place, we can use this as a replacement for real natural influences. Sure this can’t compare real effects like burning fields or chilling winds but by adding more response to conditions let the world looks more lively where you need it … in front of the player. Well and point with the winds and fires – it can’t hurt to spread some “common” AOEs around the world which buff or debuff the player and creatures.

If we combine all this at once we still stand in front of the problem that all the different zones are still closed up. Sure it looks weird to leave a desert only to enter a snowy mountain but there is nothing but common sense that hold the game back to do so. What is necessary are events to link nearby areas. This could be of course the movement of your wandering creatures like the pack of wolves going from the scarce mountains down into the valley to hunt something tasty. For this you could add some more hidden portals to travel between the zones, which of course would be used by creatures as well. Every kind of monster or animal should have some range of environments they are used to, so they don’t run around aimlessly. Another possibility would be natural events like avalanches, floods or forest fires and so on. The meaning of this is that you can start one of this in a zone but it don’t want to stay in this area. As an example: There is a dam build by some Dredges as their base. With all the possible quests in or around this structure there are some that lead to a interruption in the operating schedule or destroy the dam completely. In the end a decent amount of water runs down the stream only to flood flowing zones as well. I’m sure that this would mean a big change and I only want to show how far this can go if you are really up to it. But of course even without the last point there is enough to replace so the World feels more alive.

By building up links between the areas our world get some need for necessary regions how this could looks like you can see at the end. But still something is missing to obtain and sustain the world of GuildWars2 we have now, what lacks is the story and lore.

Next chapter Living Story

This is a chapter of my Living Story compilation

… previous part of ‘Natural World’

There are already some examples in the game which shows that some creatures try to flee your grip if you hurt them enough. But in this cases it’s depend to much on the damage done to the creature and the actually effort to run from you while only one more hit is missing to fall down is also quite futile. Why does the a Moa fight me only the turn tail on me right after my hammer tickled it a bit? It isn’t even running just make one or two useless steps away from me before i strike it down. So even if we have some values to determine the condition of creatures we need to make sure that the shown reaction makes also sense. I don’t mind if the Moa thinks it can take me on but it should really fast understand that I’m some numbers above him. Because just turn around and start running is to simple and dumb. The creature need to make sure to get away from me what implies that it has to save up some skills to block, blind or cripple me for a short Moment so it has a chance to slip away.

There a more kinds of enemies than feisty animals but also some minor and mayor races which should hold some higher level of intelligent than a Wurm. When I talk about intelligent it’s means not only some level of smart reaction toward my actions, also I want to imply some character. Grawls e.g living in tribes leaded by single characters to cope the hardships of live together. So why are do they come alone when they spot you? They should call other members of there family to help when facing some threat. When talking about intelligent behavior I also mean to show of relationships between creatures. So if a Grawl wander off only be surprised by some players while alone he would not dare to charge you but rather turn around to warn his kind about the new danger. Not only should they search for the group but also must gain some strength from being together with his allies. There for a moral would much more practical so it can rise it with the number of members the mob has. This also means each loss would mean a lower of stability of the remaining enemies until the group breaks apart. It would be cool if you can decide a battle not only by killing everything off, but also by push them really hard so they flew. You could still chase them but this is in your favor. There a many things you could vary here like adding different effects to the loss of allies like a rise in anger so with every dead member your enemies group has to deal with they get more furious. Or you add some leader characters, which would show different behavior to match their rank and get skills to buff their allies, but also instantly drop the moral of the mob when killed.

A next step would be some decent behavior for kinsmen of the mayor races. Stepping into a pirate-base should not mean that they start to rush me down. Why should they? First of all how do they expect to have to face some outsider in there base? Why aren’t they shocked as I when accidentally drop from a beam I tried to sneak over? They should show emotions in this like astonishment or be shocked about my appearing, but also they should be able to deal with the situation. E.g when i come straight at them from some distance they should spot me really fast. But before they actually fight me of they would start to mock and taunt me. They should be intelligent enough to know the value of being part of group and how great it is to be respected in their ranks. As long as they have the time they should use it to enjoy them selfs and joke with their comrades until it comes to a fight. Also some of them could try to sneak up on me while I listen how warmly I’m welcome here. Well in the generally following fight it wouldn’t hurt when they would show some team-play or better it should hurt me when they team up and try to time their attacks. This would also mean that everyone saves some skills until they get the chance while I’m maybe invulnerable or blind so their next combo would beat me up quite badly. If you work on this you would be able to show of all the characteristics described by the great lore. The greatest example of this dynamic would be Skritts. Facing a single Skritt wouldn’t be more than fighting against a scared deer or goat. But if he fled and gather up with a handful other Skritt they would behave like a pack of wolves, not fleeing but also not rushing in alone. If by any chance they would still rise in numbers their behavior would transform in to a Grawl-like one to face you as a united pack. Ultimately by further increasing their numbers they would act like mayor-races.

… continue part 4

This is a chapter of my Living Story compilation

… previous part of ‘Natural World’

So first of all what need to be changed is the way how creature are actually spawned into the world. Most times It’s not only disturbing when some creature just pops up right behind you just to drive his teeth into you, but it also don’t make any sense at all. To be accurate I don’t know any MMO which pays attention to this point. Of course it is much more easier to achieve some faster optical result but make sure your world feels alive it need to be adjust. This means that you don’t need to get rid of this situation completely. There can be some creatures, which have the ability to appear right under your feet like Devourers or Wurms buried in the ground or Spiders gliding from the ceiling or some trees. This examples show that it’s already possible to spontaneously spawn some threat without fooling around with the player, but it shouldn’t be a general situation. Some creatures should spawn at reasonable place and than start to wander of around the map. Like wolves which could start at a cave and then move in a little group aside the roads. Likewise you do this for Bears but they would travel alone due to their nature to be a loner.

This also brings us to the point that the difference of creatures should not be some fancy texture and a name shown at the top of the screen. The event with the watchknights made it clear how insignificant it is to change your enemies. They may just swap right in front of you but the actually combat keeps running like before – you hit, they bite and everyone is bashing out their dance-moves like crazy. Every living thing should show some specific but significant level of intelligence so that a weak goat doesn’t tries to fight you back, when you wield your greatsword at it but starts to run like hell in the moment it sees you. There should be some graduation about how fearsome creatures can be like some domestic cow, which does not care about what you do in front of it and just keeps grazing. Similar to this behavior it should also vary how quick creatures respond to your presence with hostile actions. Most animals doesn’t want to fight out any reason so they show you first to get lost before they really chose to attack. If you enter the range of a pack of wolves they don’t rush at you but rather observe how you act and if you are a threat to them. If you come to near they give you a warning by growl at you and when you keep ignoring this while closing distance they chose to fight you. This boiling point should be up to what kind of creature your facing, like a troll could be much more short tempered.

It’s important not to split between creatures which fight and some that only chose to run. Everything fights if it has to and most living run away if they are in a situation they can’t handle anymore. I suppose that you could create two factors that affect what kind of behavior will be shown: anger and fear. Anger is fast clarified as a value that rise with the number of threatening actions you show towards a creature. E.g when you catch up with a fleeing deer, and or you start to show how good you staff feels like, it does not roll on it’s back and let you finish it, but turns back at you and fight.
Fear is a bit more tricky to describe than you may think. This is because you can see it from two sides, a rising factor called fear that steadily fills you up until you can’t take it anymore or the second way is to see it as a falling value named moral that drops with the time while you have to face terror and danger. If you take both as rising values it’s easier to arrange depend on which one is higher at the moment. On the other hand it makes it harder to declare how strong-minded every type of creature is. By using moral you get the chance to set up a fixed value every action take-off from the creatures, while you only need to adjust the maximal number of moral-points to create some differences.

… continue part 3

This is a chapter of my Living Story compilation

“Natural World” – laying of the cornerstone

This chapter should focus on the topic to create a natural world. With this i mean some common background used by the game regarding landscapes, creatures and a overall environment. What i don’t bring to talk right now would be NPCs, Factions and other story elements they’ll come in late.

In the previously chapter Basics of a ‘Living World’ I told you, that complexity makes a world interesting and let looks more lively. But what does this actually mean for the Game? Well i think it’s easier to say that Guildwars2, as it is right now, has some decent lack of entanglement.

One of the bigger problems with the current World is that you don’t have ONE World, but mostly every zone is a closed up world for itself. When i said before that a World is generally made out of many smaller worlds than the problem here is the point in “closed up”. The current structure of game-play, story telling and economic nullify the setup of the world. It could be also one long chain with maybe 2 or 3 branches at the beginning, which would merge later on again. Also it is not necessary to have 4 cities like we have now, because the only think what keep them in right now is the lore and nothing else, the game would also perfectly fine with only Lions Arch. Just as an example here.

Right now it is almost irrelevant where you go and what you are fighting. You wander around as Sylvari in the middle of a snowy mountain while a Son of Svanir comes by an charge at you. Or you take a walk with your Norn right through the crystal desert (when it is available), passing by a Devourer which then charge at you. Or going in to the jungle where a Raptor charge at you. Or standing firm with your Asura while a Dolyak charge. Or a Skritt charge at you, or a Moa, or a Quaggan. It doesn’t matter it will do what it can do anyway … so charge. And that’s it’s, not much more to be expect. Its true that all types of creatures have there own abilities and skills but their behavior is mostly the same. Everything run straight at you, trows every single skill it owns out and fight you completely untouched by the fact that you hack off it’s life.

There are two mayor Problems in this case. The first one is, that you as player are placed outside of the laws of nature. Whit the exception of hostile creatures you have nothing to be scared apart from dropping of a cliff and feel the power of something you would call gravity (which itself only works on Players, while NPC can’t fall down). The second Problem is the lack of differences in the characteristics every creature should have. Right now they can vary from being vermin, hostile, neutral or friendly which of course only tells you if they can charge at you and if they do this on sight.

Of course it would be nice to see your character acting different depend on it’s race and your current location. But much more important would be to create varied forms of behavior other creatures can show you, like adding shy grassing Animals which will run if they spot you or a pack of wolves, which only observe as long you keep some distance but give you a warning rather than attacking you if you close in too much. Also it’s already said that complexity is really sexy so it would be cool as well if you can find more interaction around you, where you aren’t the center of, like a fox hunting some rabbits for dinner.

… continue part 2.

This is a chapter of my Living Story compilation

… previous part of Basics of a ‘Living World’

Another topic is the level of shortage of different things. To own, keep or use something is much more valuable if its has a specific limit of how many people have access at the same time. This does not apply only for items you can own and carry around, but also mean to have limitations by interaction with other characters or facilities. The attempt to own or use something, which isn’t always at hand is a strong motivation you shouldn’t forget or ignore.

One last thing I want to capture, before I make some more suggestions, is the topic “rewards”. Today when you take look at most MMORPG looting items, scraps and garbage to fill your inventory is an enormous part of the whole game-play. It is of course a important feature of any RPG to loot something but every online game overdoes it by throwing massive amounts of items at you and in the same time demand a fairly high number of it to craft or trade for the desired Gear. The question is not why this is common, because the answer is clear: It sells. Fair enough but this is also the important question itself: Why does it sells so good? Most current cultures, which contribute the most to the internet, have a really common education. I don’t mean actually content but more or less the produced outcome of characteristic a person has after or while growing up in this environment. We learn many things like: working hard, earn money, buy what you like, be what you buy, be your own boss, have a nice life and so on I think you know what I’m up to. But we also learn something more deep, we learn the feeling of being poorly independent, we understand how we depend on other and how fast we can lose our social position if we don’t life up to the expectations of other. There is a strong current which push us in the desire for property and physical wealth. And there come modern MMORPGs which of course are eager to give us the illusion of earning something with value. But because being a illusion and the fact that property alone is no guarantee to be happy, we can’t completely fill the hole in our self to become satisfy. A game can’t and shouldn’t try to do this, it shouldn’t try to fulfill all the needs of the players but rather than entertain him. It should stay with the task to fire up their imagination and let them dream a bit about something different. I don’t want to say there is some evil mastermind behind all this. Game always fill some gapes in a society and this is only natural. But you need to make sure that this is not everything your game is up to. There is so much more we like to experience like a good story, manipulate and interact with a system or to experiment with it’s fundamental laws and concepts or just enjoy a beautiful landscape.

Next Chapter: Natural World

Hello again. As promised a want to add my first chapter of my Living Story compilation

Basics of a “Living World” – and things to think about

In my case think its important to point out the meaning of the two words “Living” and “World”, because this is what this topic is up too right?.

You can find many definitions about what is alive and what not, but most of all there are some basic abilities a living thing should have like: growing, breathing, eating, increase in numbers and right after what kind of life-form you’re up it should be more or less smart and show reaction when effected by environmental influences and impacts.

A World of course could be a landmass or a planet but it’s also something cultural. So the “real” World is made out of many worlds bonded by relationships between inhabitants and or principle. This is also the reason why the real world is constantly changing. With every generation we understand more of it’s complexity, share this knowledge and start to see things different than before.

(add 16.Nov.13) Besides this it also need to be understandable so you have the chance to realize why something is how it is. Everything that obviously doesn’t make sense do upsets us and threats us like a fool. There are many examples in games like some invisible wall or spawning monsters right before or behind us.

If you take this as the first step this means to create a “Living World” you have to create a “growing, breathing complex place to make it hard to understand it in a blink of an eye”. You could see this as an Asura who deeply beliefs in the “Eternal Alchemy” as a big clockwork, where thousands of cogs with different shapes are interlocked, building up gears and machines which are also just a part of a bigger entity. It cool to have something hard to understand, a thing to work on and learn more about it by running crazy experiments. This means when you start to go easy on you plan and getting rid of the depth you’re world should have, it makes it lose the feeling of being alive – makes it boring.

Also important to keep in mind is, that “life” alone is worthless because you’re missing the counterpart to value it. This means where life is there has to be death as well. Like with light and dark, if you had only one of them it would be “normal” and in this case also static because you can’t make it darker than it is by adding more darkness. Only if you have at least two opposite poles to merge you can create “differences”.

… continue part 2 here

Greetings to you all.

I’m following this thread quite some time and made my own thoughts about this topic. But being still in the process to make my ideas round, i start to get worried that this forum would be closed before i get the chance to write down what i have in my mind.

To make a short statement first: i don’t believe that one person can come up with a whole “Living World” but rather with a concept to build on. So my contribution will be pretty vague at the beginning and start with setting up some principles i think such a world should hold and later on i want to get more clear and make some suggestions how i would realize them.

Actually i’m not sure my self how long this all will be and i’m not used to write in this forum (e.g it seems that there is some character limitation) so i will have to experiment a bit with the layout. Mostly i’ll edit some post rather than write a new one about the same point. Also i want to focus on write down what i hold in my mind so if i miss to respond to your thoughts please bear with so for the time.

At last some table of contents so you have a better view what i’m up to. Also i’ll add some links so you find it better while the thread grows further.

Content:

• Basics of a ‘Living World’ (2. update 16.Nov.13)
• Natural World (3. update 21.Nov.13)
• Living Story (21.Nov.13)
• “Living Culture”
• “Personal Story”
• WvW

I hope i get this round up really fast and the first post will follow right after i get it in a nice shape.

In the meantime i thank you for your patience and also hope you don’t want to close this thread really soon.