Dynamic (random) mission generator

robert4818 · 2005-07-11T09:54:57

One of the holy grails of MMO’s are random quest (mission) generators that do not seem repetitive. Part of the problem with this, is that there really are only a few types of quests. Its just the dressing that changes. Quest types Go someplace and then: Interact with someone/something Find something/someone and return Kill/destroy something/someone Protect something/someone Deliver something/someone Survive Video games have a few variations, such as go kill x creatures, but there really is not many more generic quest types. And if you come up with one I bet it would most likely fall into one of the above quests. So how do you take these 5 generic quests and make them into an interesting system that generates random quests? I’ll talk about this in a few steps. Step 1, Mix up the types. This creates a series of quests that have two or more objectives from the above list. Go from one main goal, to two, or even three main goals. Example: Protect someone, while you Kill something, so that they can interact with someone/something afterwards. Step 1a. Create some quests that are multi-tiered. Don’t make every quest go here and do these 1-3 things. Make some quests be Go here do 1, then go here do 2, and finally go here and do 3. At any time you may use steps 2 and 3. This will give you many types of quests. Step 2, Toss in the random surprise. Basically have a random chance that the mission will change while in the middle of the mission. Don’t do this too randomly basically a 5-10% chance (once every 10-20 missions.) Basically take the given mission and then switch it to one of the other sets of conditions. Example, You are going to kill someone/something in a dungeon, and then someone hits self destruct, you now have to survive the situation. Step 3, Link Quests together. This is accomplished by tossing in a tag on certain missions to generate a “bad guy” in the background. This guys name is randomly generated, but is tagged and then logged into the player’s logs (account.) The next time this player should end up with another “bad guy” quest, the game instead tosses in this guy’s name, and then logs the tally of the number of quests completed against this bad guy. After a predetermined (either programmed or randomly generated when the badguy is first tagged) number of missions where this guy is tagged, the player will be offered a mission that includes as one of its objectives (kill someone) where the someone is the generated bad guy. Give this quest a higher than normal (say 10-20%) chance of having the random twist. If the twist does occur, do not kill the bad guy but the quest count against him is reset, and then starts over. This will give the player the appearance of an arch villain. Step 4. Random, instanced, dungeons. In my opinion this is a must. And it must be worked well. The system that is used in COH isn’t bad, nor is the one from Anarchy online. I think they could be better, but for now I’ll stick with this. Step 5. Sometimes ignore step 4. This makes it feel as though the mission system is part of the game world, and not just a random add on. Step 6. This is the hardest part, but probably one of the most important. Get some good writers, and have them creates some decent story pieces that can be randomly tossed together to form a basic story. They don’t need to be nobel prizes in literature, but they do need to be more than the same 5-6 stories with a name change. Step 6a. Take the story and place it in the mission. Do not just give the mission in an over-view at the very beginning. Put NPC’s in that help push the story along. If you put these six steps together I think you will have a large system with a huge amount of quests. What do you all think? I do understand that the above would be a great undertaking. But one thing I’ve noticed is with games that have random mission generators is that the missions can become one of the biggest parts of the games. Any system will eventually be repetitive, but one put together like this will take a lot longer to show its cracks than ones that are currently in games. I personally think that games that decide to undertake a system that does this need to put in the work to actually make the system shine.