Thursday, November 01, 2007

Where Does It Come From?

The enemy? Where does it come from? Ho, it just appeared there, you say? Because the last time it died was exactly 30 minutes ago? Well, that's inconvenient, our soldier died 18 minutes ago; we'll have to wait another 12 minutes before we're saved. Let's hope there's a level-appropriate adventurer nearby who will accept the quest, otherwise we're all going to take a 30-minutes trip to limbo. T'would be a shame, really.

Yeah, OK, not quite subtle, but I got the point across. Mostly. I think.

Where do these enemies come from?
And, while we're at it, those allies? They just spawned there, it seems. That doesn't make sense. Everything should come from somewhere. And I do mean everything. There is no infinitely respawning enemy. There is no infinitely respawning quest reward. And there is no infinitely respawning iron node, herb patch or vendor item. If you want herb, you either get it yourself, or hope someone has harvested some recently. And if you want to kill some goblins, you don't go to goblin camp #121; you go search for them. Get some rumors, while you're at it, it would probably help.

So where do evil goblins come from? The goblin frontier, most likely. What is the goblin frontier, you ask? Ho, you didn't? Should have, it was a good question.

So what is the goblin frontier? It's where goblins come from. More importantly, it's the place that has a very large amount of goblins. Short of a massive invasion force, you cannot as much as hope to push them back a little. If you do amass a massive invasion force, however, then you may stand a chance. Hit them hard enough, and they will be forced to move back and rebuild, leaving their precious land behind, ready to be conquered; lucky for you, you just happen to have (what remains of) a massive army around. So your investment paid off, and now you have some more land to call your own.

Even if the invasion fails, however, it would not have been in vain. Any force standing a chance against the enemy army would most likely deal massive damage to their organization. Such damage is sure to take a long time to repair, meaning that invasion forces, settlers and adventuring parties from that organization will be in shorter supplies for some time, leaving you with an easier defense and the enemy with less spoils from the conquests.

The same would happen in player versus player. If you want the evil player-run city to disappear, you amass an army; the difference being that players aren't always online, so you have to find a mean to organize a raid that gives a fair chance to both parties. Until you do, you can just go scouting for goblins, or maybe ore veins. It beats grinding on foozles, for sure.

2 comments:

Jacob Arthur said...

Thats a bad idea, it would take away the ability to grind quickly and thats about all you mmo's do. Plus u have to remember the game has to be the same for every player. Say you do have a world never regenerated, there for the developer would have to keep up with the fastest levelers too keep them interested and keep them paying, plus new players would have nothing to do. Your ideas are good from a players stand point but you have to think about the developers and the game as a system.

Hexedian said...

You've hit the worst parts of the current crop of MMOs right on the nail. Grind is a bad concept, and should be eliminated entirely if possible. The game being the same for every player means the world can never evolve, and players cannot choose the type of game they want to play. And levels, by themselves, are an horror that probably wouldn't exist today if it wasn't for the past hardware limitations.

If we want the genre to move forward, we have to get rid of the idea that what exists right now is the correct and ultimate form of MMOs. There's more to massiveness than grinding, believe me.