Handling sleep in a MMORPG

Mephs · 2002-05-13T10:04:23

The following post is based on two articles, one from Gamasutra and on from Gamedev, Quote from the Gamasutra article "More importantly, these users need to be empowered to create and develop their own experiences. One of the most important discoveries in the RPG hobby was that players wanted to be given the right tools to create their own games and their own adventures. They wanted to indulge their imaginations and their creative drives. This is a proven assumption in the face of the rise in popularity of "customizable, creation-oriented" game systems over the more traditional "class-and-level" games." The Gamedev article may be found here: http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/frpg/site/ What follows is my reply to part of the Gamedev documentation, then after that follows my further idea based on the Gamasutra quote. Hiyas, Firstly just wanted to say I came across your article and absolutely had to stop to read every last bit. (downloading a 105meg Counterstrike update also being good reason to find something to keep me entertained!!) I liked it, some very interesting ideas that have inspired me further to actually get off my butt and start thinking/working on my own ideas in this area. I got to one of your sections and immediately thought of an alternative method of dealing with the situation.... and currently have another browser window open at that section ready for me to finish reading what remains. The section I''m reffering to is the one with ideas of dealing with the subject of sleeping and energy restoration. Now my ideas for this are certainly only half-baked at best, but perhaps something worthwhile for consideration and discussion. Okay the problem at present... sleeping in most games is not a necessity so long as you''re topped up with energy from food and drink. The reason for this problem being that sleeping is not easy to implement in games. n.b. Im most interested in how sleeping would be dealt with in a constantly existant world that doesnt sleep when you do, ie a MMORPG * Sleep takes time, if you are forced by the game to sleep and do nothing for a period of time, this may conflict with the times the player wants to actually be playing the game and not be sitting looking at a blank screen or whatever. * If you made it so that sleep somehow is something you perform for a couple of seconds and is represented by a cut sequence or something along those lines, when your player awakes, the world has had no more than a few minutes to change (specifically meaning in MMORPGs where it is impossible to skip ahead in time)... unrealistic My idea in dealing with this is to aim to keep realistic, but never be boring. The player should be forced into sleeping at some point, after all in real life if we stay awake constantly, at some point we are going to fall asleep whether we like it or not. Again in R.L. if we push at the limits of sleep deprivation we cannot guarantee when we are going to finally succumb to sleep. Many a time Ive been sat up watching a film and fighting to stay awake as I''ve been up so long, and fallen asleep part way through. In game I think I would choose to represent this by having some kind of indicator to show tiredness, perhaps this indicator would mark a danger zone where we may start to randomly succumb to sleep, the further towards 0 this indicator is, the more likly inevitable slumber becomes. This way the character is unlikely to head off into a dungeon and accidentally fall asleep mid battle as he has prior warning. What needs work here is how sleep would be dealt with in certain circumstances, ie the previous idea of being in the middle of a battle, no matter how tired you are it is unlikely you would fall asleep mid battle!! Perhaps when you are in danger areas your sleep indicator could be temporarily raised to allow you to stay awake, but be put into debt once in safety, meaning once the battle is over and you reach saftey, you immediately collapse to the floor and fall to sleep. Secondly sleep itself, nobody wants to be forced into stopping playing the game because their in-game character is too tired when they are still raring to go!! The way I would consider dealing with this would be something like as follows. Once the player falls to sleep, they enter an alternative world, their subconscious dream world. This alternative environment for the player would focus on personal mental development, perhaps the player may encounter horrific scenarios which enable him to become more resistant to fear effects in the real world, or he/she may encounter beautiful dreamscapes to explore and interact with, improving his/her meditational abilities. Many combinations could be used to allow a whole other side to character development. Environments could be a lot more flexible given that they would use a different set of rules to game world rules (or perhaps almost no rules at all). Another point to consider, would this part of the game world allow interaction with other players? Perhaps when you fall asleep you could be randomly linked with a random number of people also sleeping (or maybe there is some way of determining who is linked into your dreams) Perhaps it would even be possible to have people you have known who are not asleep included in your dreams as NPC''s somehow (difficult I imagine). This kind of system would allow the player to be forced to sleep (and for a realistic period of time), while not forcing them into hours of boredom. Something else to consider - when characters fall asleep and enter this dream realm they will have no interaction in the real game world with other characters, this could create some frustration if the player fancied just talking to someone or in some way interacting with others. The problem as I see it is this, take for example Everquest, in this game if you go LFG (Looking for group) it can take a loooong time to find one, if you were then forced to sleep and lose your group, the player is gonna be peed off as it may have taken him/her a long while to build up a steady going long lasting group. IMO this needs to be dealt with in one of two ways... either fix the whole problem of it taking so long to find a stable group or allow some other way of mantaining the group despite the necessity to sleep (or both I guess... in fact ideally both!) Anyway if you find these ideas difficult to follow at all, it''s because I''ve been writing it as I''m thinking it up, so appologies if it comes through poorly! It''s just the starts of my thoughts into the subject and others feedback would be much welcomed. If the ideas are deemed good enough I dont mind at all if they''re included in the article (or not if u think they''re plain crap ) Hope they inspire someone to take it further and if not its something I may at least work into my own ideas, thanks again for an inspiring article Steve aka Mephs ==Mephs_uk@yahoo.com== *-- idea based on Gamasutra quote --* I agree, the problem with many CRPG''s of today is the lack of any ability to take on the role of the GM. Once a player is bored of playing as a player, the ability to become some kind of a GM may be what it takes to offer a whole new angle and replenish interest in the game. So how could this be implemented in a game? First off, you want anyone to be able to pick it up easily to avoid putting all but the hardcore base of players off, so an easy to use system is a must, using as little techno-babble as possible. Secondly, in a MMORPG where maintaining a balance in power is essential how do you stop people designing easy encounters offering maximum rewards to specifically power-level their characters? My idea is this, drawing on my previous ideas for handling sleep in such a game, players could perhaps be allowed to design levels to represent these dream scenarios in much the same way as you''d create maps for halflife (albeit simplified so that its easy for all to use). This way the main game is not affected by these dream levels, the player has freedom to create any kind of atmosphere they like, and yet they are not able to interfere with the main feel of the game as they are only dealing with dream sequences and not the main bulk of the game. This now brings us back to the problem of the player using this to his advantage to power-level himself or friends. Perhaps this could be dealt with by clever code, a program that would analyze the created maps to determine if the risk was equal to the reward, ensure the map is fairly easily traversed and so on. The main game server could run the same check as was performed client-side any time a new dreamscape was uploaded to deny cheaters hacking the client-side files. Further issues... how would these dreamscapes be implemented in game? Would the player get to experience his own dreamscape or would this give him an unfair advantage? IMO when a level designer designs a level he is not doing so for himself, he may test it and may even play in the level, but generally the purpose of him designing the level is to have others experience it. I would thus deal with it as follows. Players are randomly allocated a dreamscape when they sleep, this could be any one of the predefined or player-uploaded dreamscapes. Player-uploaded dreamscapes would remain on server for a specified length of time before being erased to make room for new dreamscapes (or kept on file if uploads are scarce) The idea as it stands so far would allow the player a degree of freedom to implement his own creative ideas into the game without drastically affecting the main content, thus giving the game some added longevity. Power-levelling is dealt with by the mapchecking utility and the fact that you never know quite who will be in your dreamscape (but may hear tales of it from players who have experienced it!) Variety could be added by filling spaces in the dreamscape list with randomly generated maps, for a unique experience. Anyways hope you enjoyed my thoughts and feel free to comment, suggest other improvements or generally rip apart my ideas Steve AKA Mephs

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by Mephs May 12, 2002 07:43 PM

10 comments, last by Mephs 22 years, 8 months ago

Mephs

Author

354

May 13, 2002 10:00 AM

LOL,
no fair edit ur comment while I was writing my own!!

Anyways in my system, supposing I dont go with the logging = sleep method (which I may) Then the timescale I would use for needing to sleep would run in real time... ie players would generally need sleep once per 24 hours of play, able to stay awake for longer at the cost of in game character effectiveness. Thus you''d have plenty of time within this 24 hour period to find groups and other people dont have to know how tired you are (and who might not care anyway if ur good enough), what would stop you joining a group pretty tired from many fights. The penalty wouldnt have to be huge, just enough to make you consider sleep to increase your effectiveness.

The time you spend logged off is counted as rejuvanation time, again the longer you spend away the more refreshed your character is when relogging in. This way the player is never forced to remove himself from the game or sit (sleep?!) there bored as hell.

IMO so long as sleep in this form is not completely forced on the player but is hinted at being advisable, it would be realistic while allowing for people who just wanna play hardcore to stay.

Steve AKA Mephs

Cheers,SteveLiquidigital Online

Waverider

169

May 13, 2002 10:04 AM

Maybe in the dream world the player has the option to interact more with creatures or situations they have faced. Maybe it could be an opportunity to further increase skills through practicing. And maybe sleeping doesn''t have to last eight hours - the player can look at his stats and decide the right time to wake up?

It's not what you're taught, it's what you learn.

Handling sleep in a MMORPG

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Handling sleep in a MMORPG

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