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Social Interaction between players in a MMORPG

Started by October 11, 2002 05:09 AM
25 comments, last by iNfuSeD 22 years, 3 months ago
quote: Original post by SpittingTrashcan This thread has diverged in such interesting ways... I may need to create a new one. Here''s the real, fundamental poser: It''s comparatively easy to create and simulate a character who is different physically than the player who controls him. How do you realistically simulate a character who is different socially than its player? It''s possible to limit the character so that he is less clever with words than the player: just reduce the speed at which the player can enter text for his character to say. (I''m assuming MMORPG here.) But how do you make him better than his player?
quote: Original post by iNfuSeD how do you make a character act better socially then the person? why not have 2 forms of interactions between players in this MMORPG. 1) players type they''re messages, talk, chat and do that general squabble thing 2) players can chose to try and convince the other player to do something using their skills. this would be done using some sort of menu or a simple kind of script. the player that is on the being convinced end will get a message saying "this player is trying to convince u to go hug that tree", and based on their skills or intelligence or whatever, they will be presented with a choice of how they will want to respond. either "yes i''ll do that" or "disagree with the idea". the 2nd option could also be broken into a few different choices of approaches depending on the context, and then the characters in the game will duke it out in conversation (automated) and the computer spits out a result of whether he/she was convinced to do that action or not. now i know what you''re going to say.. people won''t like the fact that they are doing something they don''t want to. "its not realistic at all". BAH! it totally happens all the time in reality. people are allways convinced to do things they don''t want to. a few months ago i can remember a time when a buddy of mine an I were walking down the street at night. he was drunk. i wasn''t. I said to him "hey i got an idea, you should go run up to that car and lay a big ol boot into the side of it as hard as you can!" just cause thats what i''m like, i spit out dumb ideas that are totally random all the time. well it turns out that he thought it was a good idea to. so he did it. he''s still not happy with me about that night though not untill after he did it did he realize it was dumb. but hey, thats life for yea right?
so there u have it. a basic fundemental on how to fix the social interaction problem in mmorpg''s. discuss "The human mind is limited only by the bounds which we impose upon ourselves." -iNfuSeD
"The human mind is limited only by the bounds which we impose upon ourselves." -iNfuSeD
iNfuSeD,

While that''s definitely a useable approach, it does lead to a number of difficulties.

* How does the computer interpret the commands one player gives another? How are these commands entered? How does the computer know when the conditions of the commands have been met? What limits are there on the commands?

One way I see that you could enter a command for another player is to enter a "suggestion builder" mode, where you briefly control (say 10 seconds) a "ghost version" of the other character. You then give the controlled ghost a series of commands. At the end of this series, the computer evaluates the "reasonableness" of the suggestion: the suggestion "turn around and face the wall for ten seconds" is more reasonable than "stab yourself in the face", for instance. The computer compares the persuader''s persuasion ability with the target''s "common sense" rating and the suggestion''s "reasonableness", and thus determines whether the suggestion is carried out. If the persuader then does something to stop the persuaded (or harms him), the suggestion ends immediately, otherwise the persuaded acts as suggested for the next ten seconds.

Another way would be to set your own quests. Your persuasion level is the amount of XP you can assign as a reward for a particular task. You don''t even have to automate the quest-building engine - just let the awarder decide whether to give the award depending on the awardee''s actions. This lends an element of free will and economics into the system - you don''t have to do what the awarder asks, but the more XP he can award the more tempting it sounds. For enough XP you might very well stab yourself in the face...

The approach I currently like most introduces the idea of character emotional state. This is a point which moves along (let''s say) three axes:

Depressed <-----> Happy
Bored <-----> Interested
Frightened <-----> Confident

and your overall emotional state is indicated by the largest single displacement on any one of these three axes. Thus even if you are a bit Depressed and somewhat Interested, it doesn''t matter if you are also tremendously Frightened: your overall state is just Frightened.

Your emotional state affects your ability to learn skills and gain experience - thus, if you are Depressed, Bored, or Frightened you are accruing an XP penalty over time, whereas if you are Happy, Interested, or Confident you accrue an XP bonus. Now here''s the trick: characters who are persuasive can influence emotional state. If you anger them they will cuss you out and you become Depressed, while if you do as they say they will praise your efforts and you will become Happy.

I like this idea because it takes the XP reward system and integrates it into a larger emotional-state system which also can influence roleplay in a number of other interesting ways. For instance, you can have a set of "moderational" stats which reflect your ability to avoid being swayed in a particular emotional direction. Characters such as bards might become pretty useful in that they could keep other characters in a positive emotional state even under tough situations. Monsters could have a high "fear factor" which make them more trouble than their other abilities might suggest. On the other hand they could have a "peaceful aura" which keeps a character''s emotional levels up even as he fights them, leading him to try not to harm them!

By the by, none of these systems address a more fundamental difficulty, but that''s a good thing. Let me explain that. The problem is that no matter how you implement a "persuasion" system, the character himself is limited by the charm and wit of the player entering his dialogue. The character may have a high influence stat, but that doesn''t prevent him from being a boring cad if that''s what the player is. But that''s OK. Here''s why.

I think we can agree that the main draw of MMORPG as opposed to single player is the ability to play with others. The whole game is essentially built around this concept of social interaction. Thus the skill being developed directly should be proper social interaction.

Let me draw an analogy to FPSes. The whole point of a multiplayer FPS is that people get ranked according to their ability to play the game: to think tactically, to dodge effectively, to aim accurately. Introducing auto-aim into a FPS would be dumb, because it defeats the spirit of the game. Your success should correlate directly to your game skills.

Now, what''s the point of an MMORPG? I say it''s that people should succeed in relation to their ability to form friendships and play an interesting character. Now, in most current games it''s more like your ability to survive boredom, as you slay weak monster after weak monster. But if you remove (as I intend to do) the large reward associated with slaughter, and instead provide a sizable penalty in the form of risk to character and character boredom leading to reduced XP gain, then the focus should shift back to its proper place: social interaction. Putting a system in where character interaction is automated would be like putting autoaim in an FPS. The way you "play the game" is by interacting with others, and your success is based on your real world ability to play this game.

Dig it?

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-SpittingTrashcan

You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".
----------------------------------------------------SpittingTrashcanYou can't have "civilization" without "civil".
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Didn''t read everything but couldn''t you do it AD&D style. Skill to persuade against skill to resist perhaps? Don''t know if that would satisfy it.
I do not understand how this will be used to make the game more fun? Could someone explain?

I mean, this leaves some vulnrability to abuse. Someone might invest all his time into higher charisma, and then going around and convince people to jump off high places. I could see how this might help things like bartering. However, for this amount of complexity of the system required to simulate it, I think it would be better to leave that to be determined by the players (ie. a convincing player, makes a convincing avatar, and a easily convinced player makes an easily convinced avatar).
PHRICTION:

Good points.

I have the same problem with abuse of a direct-control persuasion system. If that kind of mental domination is present at all, it should be reserved for individuals who have spent long hours gaining persuasion skill, possibly also having to learn persuasive magic, and who have given up every other form of advancement to learn this power. That is, they may end up able to dominate the minds of others... but they will also be comparatively weak and unskilled at combat, so their persuasion powers form their only defense against attack.

The emotion-reward or XP-reward systems work better in that they don''t force the persuadee to do something he doesn''t want to, but do add an extra factor into the economics of an exchange: the emotional or XP reward. Thus merchants will give a "nice" person a discount, which is actually covered by the value of the boost they receive in turn. Conversely, a mercenary may demand greater monetary payment out of a "mean" employer who isn''t able to give him XP or emotional rewards.

And I do partially agree with you that persuasion should be largely handled by the players themselves. However, in the interests of game balance I want people to actually gain tangible power by taking the "social" route and thus having to forgo the "physical" route, and conversely have players taking the "physical" route limited in their "social" abilities.

Here''s how I''d personally work it.
1. Zero-sum system. Basically, the better you get at one thing the worse you get at other things. The more you do something the better you get at it, and the less you do something the worse you get. Thus in particular you can''t emphasize both of "physical" and "social": if one increases the other degenerates.
2. Social bonuses. Having a high social level means being able to sway emotions up or down. Up emotions are a significant reward in terms of potential for XP gain, and down emotions significantly degrade XP gain.
3. Antisocial penalties. If you spend very little time in social interaction, you will lose the ability to speak effectively. In game terms, this may mean that you can only use the "talk" command at certain intervals, and are limited in the amount of text you can enter in each "talk" command. Thus the hermit on the mountain who hasn''t talked to anyone in ten years won''t say more than the occasional word or two until he gets back in practice. Big strong silent types may need chattier friends to act as their "agents" or "mouthpieces".

I think that about covers my standpoint. Suggestions?

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-SpittingTrashcan

You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".
----------------------------------------------------SpittingTrashcanYou can't have "civilization" without "civil".
How about this:

a "virtual city"...bare with me, as this is a pretty "radical" departure in terms of MMORPG design.

the game would have two modes..."in-character" and "out-of-character".

When players enter the game they are in the OOC mode...this can work as some sort of graphical chat room...players can''t interact with the game world, only observe it...basicly the players would be "ghosts"....able to go anyware, but do nothing once they get there...

Players then take possesion of NPCs in the game city to become IC...here they cannot type messages to others or do anything outside of the characters abilities...the NPCs communicate with each other useing a special language...IC players cannot see OOC players, nor are they able to interact with them...IC players will also not be able to tell the difference between other IC players and the NPCs (AI controlled, who have no "ghosts" in them)....NPCs also have "families" and relationships with others.

This is very different because players won''t always be the same NPC when they enter IC mode...this takes the game focus off of "I''m the hero" and puts the focus more on the side of "we are the heros". This way players can act as "guardians" to NPC families...they could decide to work as a team, inorder to help the NPCs better themselves...or the players could even work together to make the NPCs into a mafia type family.

The OOC mode allows players to form stratigies, and act as guardians preventing other OOCs from takeing possession of "thier NPCs". the IC mode allows players to not only take control of a NPC...but also influence their behaviour when the AI controls them.

Players would be able to create thier own OOC character from a list of presets (which only change the way they look in ghost form)...and players only have one stat (I''ll call it "alignment" for now)...at the start of the game this is 0...when players in IC mode obay NPC laws (the virtual laws governing the city,etc) this value increases...when they break these same laws the value decreases...this would effect two things...1) in OOC mode thier ghost will change to reflect how "good" or "evil" they are basied on what this value is...and 2) this value would limit just which NPCs players can take control of....as the NPCs do "good/evil" things thier own alignement values will change...a player cannot take control of the NPC if thier values arn''t within a specific range (i.e. they need to be "compatable").

The laws of the "virtual city" can change...indeed there can be many such cities with different laws...which would allow for some interesting experimental law/government structures....even allowing the game to become political in nature.

thoughts?
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sounds like an extremely interesting idea MSW, I think it would warrant some extra attention... the only downside I can see so far is that the effort for AI and mechanics would be immense... but since "the sims" worked, why shouldn´t something like that?

one question though: exactly how does character development, or rather "player character" (i.e. the characters ghost) development occur - building something uniquely yours is one of the main factors, and unless you give each player one or a cluster of NPCs only he can control you need some extra levelling opportunities.
Hase - good point! I mainly through this idea together as a way of re-examineing RPG design issues...as such, it''s a bit of a work in progress...My main concern was to find a way for players of all types to enjoy the game...even by "embraceing" Player-Killers as potentialy usefull...afterall they can''t actually harm other ghosts, so thier "threat" is more valuable to the NPC world then player world.

As for player "leveling"...Mmm...well how about this:

As players are IC that can gain some of the skills the NPC has...it would have little effect (other then perhapse appearence) in the OOC world...but these skills can then be "taught" to other NPCs they later control...in effect they can make NPCs learn spell casting, armor repairing, whatever...

Now that I think about it...the players personel growth (er..sense of "leveling") could come from helping these NPCs level...sort of giveing the player a sense of "mothering", I suppose...

Players could form informal guilds that watch over a chosen group of NPCs...or even a certain area of the game world...by keeping this informal (meening no ingame system other then OOC chat features used to support it) such groups could even form ''packs'' or alliences.


I think a basic game mechanic like follows would work very well...only one player can take control of a NPC (provided they are "compatable")...no other ''ghost'' can take control of this NPC until the player controling them "pops" out (which they can do at any time)....If the NPC were to die before the ghost pops out...that player (in a sense) also dies...basicly all that would happen is that thier "alignment" would return to zero and they would lose all the skills they had gained (basicly starting over).

Okay...lets say that the group of ghost who are guarding over the king are secretly plotting against another group of ghosts who usualy watch over some knights...one of the ''kings'' ghosts contacts another group who typicaly watch over some monsters about arangeing a ''smack down'' of sorts....they set-up a little quest (by takeing control of some NPCs, and marching a load of gold, or maybe a prisoner out into monster territory)...then the knights are informed...that say one of the knights kids was taken hostage....so the knights take control of some NPCs and march out to rescue him...now because you cannot effect anything in the game if you are OOC...some of these ghosts might "die" with thier NPCs (same with some of the monster''s ghosts)...they can''t effectively save the kid in ghost form, and the knight NPC won''t be as effective if his kid dies (as NPCs have relationships which effect thier performance...and as ghosts can only control the NPC actions, they can''t control how well they do them as that is a NPC stat determination).

In this way players can actually generate quests without useing some special editer. and they can set-up some long (and short) term goals...with thier measure of "leveling" also basied on if they succeed or not...so playing can be quite rewarding in the long run.

I''m kinda imagineing the NPC world as not being completely reality basied for this to work properly...I''m not talking about combat exactly...but one of the things that could be possable is to get two NPCs to make a baby...instead of running the pregnacy in real time...maybe it takes like ten minutes...and the child becomes a teenager about an hour later...and about a year later the NPC enter old age...or maybe make this server adjustable...just something so that players feel the world is developing at a constant pace...so there is always something to do.


okay so over the past few days i''ve been thinking about this whole social interaction in a MMORPG thing. I''ve taken into consideration that the whole point of a MMORPG is a place for people to go online and meet other friends and go on quests an all that other rpg sorta hokey pokey stuff; and i know that it would require a very odd system, that would be awkward for people to want to use, in order to simulate the character the player is role playing has a better convincing power then that of the actual player.
So if it is next to impossible for the computer to simulate complex social interaction acuratly, then why not just let the player (you know, the one with the human mind) do all the social interaction himself. BUT WAIT A SECOND.. don''t we allready do that? sure.. but does the player get encouraged to respond socially in a way that his character in the game would?
Not at all. Players can act like anything they want and it doesn''t affect them in anyway. Some really good players do get into the game enough so that they are acting the way they would want their type of character in the game to act. What if though the way the game worked encouraged people to want to interact socially as though their type of character would probably do.

quote: Originally posted by SpittingTrashcan
The approach I currently like most introduces the idea of character emotional state. This is a point which moves along (let''s say) three axes:

Depressed <-----> Happy
Bored <-----> Interested
Frightened <-----> Confident

and your overall emotional state is indicated by the largest single displacement on any one of these three axes. Thus even if you are a bit Depressed and somewhat Interested, it doesn''t matter if you are also tremendously Frightened: your overall state is just Frightened.

Your emotional state affects your ability to learn skills and gain experience - thus, if you are Depressed, Bored, or Frightened you are accruing an XP penalty over time, whereas if you are Happy, Interested, or Confident you accrue an XP bonus. Now here''s the trick: characters who are persuasive can influence emotional state. If you anger them they will cuss you out and you become Depressed, while if you do as they say they will praise your efforts and you will become Happy.


This idea here is what got me thinking the most. What if you took this balance system (either sad or happy, brave or scared) and added alot more attributes? Much like in everyone''s favourite social interaction game, The Sims! Friendly or Violent? Clean or Messy? Curious or Ignorant? You could come up with a whole list of things to make meters for. The problem comes up when you try to record all this kind of information to generate scores for these meters. But I think it is totally feezable. Games like Super Smash Bros Melee reward you for things that you never would of thought the computer could keep track of. Many other games out there do this level of data recording and keeping track of things as well, but generally they tend to leave it as nothing but a novelty item.
Why not implement this kind of programming into a meter system that defines the character''s personality in the game world. Anything that the player does is allways recorded and taken into account against the character''s personality scores. At the end of quests, depending on how the player completed them and played through, the character recieves +/- modifications to different attributes of his personality scores. Quests don''t have to be the only way to recieve modifications to your scores though. The game can be programmed to recognize specific words or phrases in typed dialogue by the player, and give different personality point modifications for key words and such. This way the character is affected by the steps he takes to complete quests and how he speaks in dialogue to other players. Usually however, RPG''s have character types and character classes that you can chose to be. So how do you encourage the player to behave socially the way that character class is intended to act?

You award them! Depending on what character class the character is, it would recieve special bonuses or abilities depending on different scores of its personality. For instance, lets say you have a warrior character. The computer could assign +2 adrenaline rush to the character if it was a considerably angry person. A Scientist character would recieve something like +10 observation if he were to have a high curiosity rating. Etc... etc.

By keeping track of enough aspects of interaction between players and the game and each other, you can devise a system that would award the player (or punish) depending on how they act, thus encouraging actual role playing of your character.


"The human mind is limited only by the bounds which we impose upon ourselves." -iNfuSeD
"The human mind is limited only by the bounds which we impose upon ourselves." -iNfuSeD
in reply to infused´s post:

I don´t really like the sims approach to RPGs, mostly because it widens the rift between player and player character - in a worst case scenario the player becomes frustrated with his character because he doesn´t do what he wants. I think for a RPG to work well you have to let the player character be controlled more or less completely by the player (dangerous statement, I know, maybe I´ll revise it later ), anything else creates the need for more diversified interaction which is imo at the moment only possible by providing more characters for the player to interact with in a detailled way (if you decide to seperate player and played character you again have the need for some kind of avatar which is NOT the played character... more on that later).
I would limit these kinds of attributes to rewarding in-character behaviour, nothing more. The example of the player character getting turned away by someone and becoming depressed does not work well, because the player may not feel frustrated, thus creating the situation where the player and his character go on divergent paths.
A more appropriate system would be a detailled character generation system (from my experience most players create characters pretty close to their own personality anyway), maybe even a small psych test to determine how the character/player reacts to certain situations.
Then, if a special situation occurs, you can determine how the players character is most likely to react and match that with the actual behavior. If the player acts consistently in-character he gets rewarded with either enhanced skillchecks or XP, if he acts out of character his characters attributes get modified in order to accommodate the new direction he´s taking. If you have a player who keeps doing unexpected things he´ll eventually get an "unstable" flag.
This would of course primarily apply to various quests, but will work to some extent for player to player interaction too... it won´t be binding, and text recognition for player interaction rating is imo not anywhere near realistic. Since you can´t stop players from talking (both in and OOC) to each other, you simply have to provide enough of the supporting framework (i.e. detailled characters, detailled feedback) to encourage players to act in-character. For now that seems to be the only way.



in reply to MSWs last post:

Those are some interesting concepts, apart from your idea of player death I think they´re useful... I´ll try and put together a more detailled summary of how I think this could work:

Introduction:
The players take on the role of Soullords, powerful magical beings (I´d still make them as human as possible, for identification purposes) who are able to posess and control the NPCs, which I´ll just call Daps (dumb artifical population). In the best-case scenario they´d be full human NPCs, but since I don´t believe the complexity of interaction needed for a convincing simulation is doable at the time I´ll leave it at that.


Control, Skill and Rewards
A player can posess any non-occupied NPC. The player has now complete control of the posessed creature (interesting option: the player is not limited to NPCs, but can inhabit any creature in the gameworld?), with control of all of the creatures skills, which he can use as in any traditional RPG. The amount of control is determined by the compatibility between Soullord and NPC.
Compatibility is determined by a number of factors, such as the amount of experience an avatar has with a certain NPC or type of NPCs, the alignment of avatar and NPC a.s.o.
If the compatibility is high then the player has more direct control of the NPC, if it is low something like B-movie zombie type interaction would be the result (only crude motor control, etc.).
Skills also get modified by the avatars own skills (or rather: the skill to use skills), which increase by using an NPCs skills. These skills also get transported from NPC to NPC, i.e. if the soullord has spent a lot of time in a thieves body picking locks a blacksmith might also be used for picking locks.
Rewards come from two main points: the ability to better use different types of NPCs and the ability to give the controlled NPC some of your own skills. The gain in abilites would best be modified by the amount of time a player has spent in one NPC - to encourage longer, more stable play.

One thing which one would have to work out in more detail is the NPC actions when a player is not present, i.e. how a player can modify an NPCs behavioural patterns (otherwise it wouldn´t make much sense creating such a complex system).


Death
Death is always a problem, I would not reset the avatar upon NPC death, it simply takes away too many possibilites. I´d simply take away all the XP gains gained during that posession, maybe restrict the kind of characters he can posess for a limited amount of time.
Another fun possibility: the soullord always has to inhabit a body, if one host dies the avatar gets bumped down to some lowly creature nearby.

Grief Players / Player Killing
Since allingment determines what kinds of NPCs can be controlled, the situation of a player taking over somebody in the street and running amok is greatly reduced (i.e. a player with an evil alignment could only take over characters with these tendencies as well).
In addition to that there could be restrictions to what a posessed NPC will do - at least when it comes to killing someone. A kind of depletable control energy for the soullord would be thinkable, as long as you let the NPC do things he´d do anyway only little energy has to be expended, the more the actions deviate from the normal course the more energy it costs.

These players could also become proficient in playing the monsters, i.e. build up skills for multiple control of low creatures or focus on a certain type of monster.

GM Players
since the ability to take on every role creates quite a load of features it would be possible to let players manage their own quests (like you mentioned), for that you´d probably need control of more than one NPC at once and the ability to set complex behavioural patterns. These skills could become available to very high level players (because usually with these you can be sure that they are dedicated players) who could then go on to create quests, for which they would be rewarded in some sort (i.e. rewarded for players completing their quest).


I suppose that´s it for now, so far I can see a few grave problem areas that would need to be worked out, but I like the idea in general.

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