GM ran missions

[Sylviana]

I was just wondering what people think about GM run events.

About every 2-3 months we get a seasonal event but between those times I think it would be interesting to have added events.

Massive monsters just suddenly appear and must be cleared out, they pop in waves getting stronger and stronger but each time a fewer number.

Wave 1 can be soloed, 2 needs a 3 person party, 3 needs a full party, 4 needs maybe a party and a few people, 5 needs 2 parties, and 6 needs full alliances, i would say for this make the zoned level capped.

So that it doesnt interfere with normal leveling making them instanced zones that an event moogle has to warp you too.

Each tier of monster drops a rare/ex item that can be traded to the moogle for a reward. Doesnt have to be really fancy, furniture, "show off" armour, or even make it a decent piece of equip that is specific to your class at the time you trade the reward item. Of course to avoid people stocking up on these make it so you could only trade the item for a reward once.

This is just something weird that I thought about, any feedback is welcome.

[Kuro]

Re: GM ran missions

this is what Ragnarok online has over FFXI

Interactive GM's

they run events, they talk to the server over a special shout type thing at the top of the screen. GM01 even has a wanted poster for GM02 in the capital city!

[Manatra]

Re: GM ran missions

Caydiem of World of Warcraft outlined quite well why interactive GM events aren't a good idea for games the size of FFXI and WoW (it works for RO since they have like 3 servers, and actually, the town evasions are scripted so they just have to hit a single button and everything spawns).

* Developer Time vs. Player Time; the Repeatable Content Factor. Any sort of event like this takes time to create and execute. No company has infinite resources, and it's important that the talented staff work on projects that will make best use of their time. When working on a persistent world such as World of Warcraft, where no one actually finishes the game, repeatable content is a must. Players, by nature, devour content far faster than it can be implemented. Therefore, repeatable content is key. Dungeons are an example of this. Battlegrounds are another. They're features that are used by players over and over again.

Now, world-changing events tend to be one-time happenings that may take a month to create but only two days to occur for players. The question comes into play... which is better? A one-time event with all the bells and whistles, or a new dungeon? Which would best utilize the developers' time? The answer, more often than not, turns out to be the one that pertains to repeatable content.

* Dynamic vs. Scripted; the Manpower Factor. The question then comes into play... all right, if you'd rather have the developers work on repeatable content, why not hire people specifically for world events? As someone who has done precisely that job for two other games in this genre, again, I'm fairly knowledgeable regarding the pros and cons.

Let me define a term before I delve deeper: "dynamic event", in this case, is a term for a world event run and executed by actors in the world playing the NPCs or controlling the monsters in some fashion.

Now, developers implementing world events are more akin to actual, coded game interactions -- true NPCs and scripted occurrences patched in. Since that takes more time to create and test than players take to exhaust it, naturally the next progression is to consider a troupe of dedicated actors and strategists to do these events on the fly, without need for developer support. There are many problems inherent with this setup as well, however. First, you need to make certain you have the right people. The individuals need to be fast and efficient typists with a near-encyclopedic knowledge of game lore. They also must be trustworthy enough to be given tools that could cause any number of cancellations if abused to the fullest. Once you start hiring these folks, keep going -- you'll need enough to effectively man over 100 realms. And that's only in the North American offices -- the international teams would naturally need their own dedicated crew.

The number of realms is a clear detriment to this style of event. Now let's say you want to run a dynamic event. Ideally, you want the event to occur at the same time. Internationally. Staggering times is an alternative, but unfortunately brings with it spoilers and potential technical problems that will affect everyone on the realm regardless of whether or not they're participating (I'll get into this later). So it's a simultaneous event. You therefore need at least one person per realm if it's a simple event -- that's 100 employees dedicated to this alone. If it's an extremely simple event you may be able to pull it off by two-boxing, but 50 is still not an insignificant number.

The problem is that the overall effect on the game is very small in the long run; most people probably won't even know the event occurred, regardless of what sort of in-game or out-of-game messaging used prior (to a point -- again, I'll cover this later). The cost, ergo, to maintain such a force of actors is not worth it. GMs couldn't do it -- they need to be focused on supporting players in-game. There is never a slow time for them.

Ahhh, but volunteers could do it, you think. This comes with its own serious issues as well. Volunteers are long-distance and extremely hard to manage -- coordinating one hundred of them to execute an event is nigh-impossible. Inevitably something comes up. Also, maintaining the quality of the event is much more difficult when you cannot manage them as intricately. (I wish I could share the stories. ) Lastly, giving that kind of power to someone with very little accountability in the long run is a truly dangerous risk. And overall, again, this sort of thing does not have much impact unless you have a large amount of actors working the realms often; and that sort of system simply isn't financially feasible.

On a side note, I know many people have brought up the "you are swimming in money, finances are no excuse" line, but you're not considering what I'm saying on the whole, specifically in terms of business. In any business, it's important to get a decent return from the money you invest in something. The sheer amount of funds requires to do true dynamic events would not return the investment well in the slightest. The overall impact on the game would still be relatively small, and then the company is out cash they could have been using to pay some more content developers. (If I spend money on a musical ice-maker, it might make the act of making ice more pleasant, but considering the overall impact it has on my experience as a whole, it really isn't worth the monetary investment.)

* Latency and Crowds; the Technical Factor. Another serious consideration, not to be overlooked, is the technical limitation of the server infrastructure. Huge crowds in a small area can cause problems. Huge crowds actively doing something in a small area is liable to cause something that leads to a realm restart. (Anyone who has participated in an Ironforge raid will be well aware of this.) Therefore, when considering world events, it is important that no event cause people to gather in such a way that would compromise playability from a technical standpoint. While not really a consideration anyone wants to make, it's nonetheless necessary that players not be drawn to one particular point.

This is also why simultaneous events are important. If they're staggered, word-of-mouth travels quickly. More and more people end up waiting for the event in that area when it happens, thus leading to the technical issues.

[DakAttack]

Re: GM ran missions

Somebody tell me what's wrong with that first paragraph in the quote of Caydiem.

[Manatra]

Re: GM ran missions

It was posted for World of Warcraft, yes, but 90% of what she said can be applied to FFXI as well

[DakAttack]

Re: GM ran missions

Where he says, "When working on a persistent world such as World of Warcraft, where no one actually finishes the game, repeatable content is a must." You can tell he doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.

World Of Warcraft has hardly been persistant, everybody has finished the game at least once, and repeatable content is exactly what's destroying their game.

When I played RYL the GMs held a large and grand event. The game is split up between the three nations, and they took three GMs in the roles of important characters to those three nations and waged war against each other. It wasn't just normal PvP, there were no hard feelings involved, and everybody including the losers had fun. The GMs would run their way into an enemy fortress and they'd try to force us out. We'd suddenly come across each other between the forces and the fight was on again. The GMs had great ideas working with such a neglected game.

[Blood Red Poet]

Re: GM ran missions

GMs don't work directly for SE.

[Kuro]

Re: GM ran missions

Actuly irwas refering to the GM events, events such as "FIND THE GM" The Gm hides in a random map, tells the server a hint every 30 min as well as what the prize will be, usualy a raganrok headgear

A friend of mine has won one of them, lots of fun to try but yeah, on FFXI scale, a server would become a map and the prize would suck

[Pyro Elf]

Re: GM ran missions

Live events > Repeatable events.

Live events give players things to look forward to, and gives players stories of thier days when they played- repetables do not.

And that was a huge wad of BS... Get a dedicated staff to run live events that works with developers, and you get a larger group of players something to look forward to.

That was the thing that held people back in AC when I played it- the fact we constantly had an ongoing storyline full of live events- not repeatable quests which gets redundant over time...

[Thoronas]

Re: GM ran missions

I remember way back when I played the original Lineage and they did a special live event where they took all the crazy hard monsters (the equivalent to HNM's) and actually had them fight each other. That was probably the most memorable event I ever saw in any MMORPG and it was a lot of fun. There was also examples I could use from the original lineage where they would have new boss monsters show up that would actually relate to the overall game world story. The only problem with these bosses is that the highest level players on the server would always be the ones who killed them so the lower level players did not get to participate as much. But the point is they still tried to make the game world seem like a real fantasy where new events and new villians would appear now and then.

What Caydiem posted is a perfect example of what the hell is wrong with game developers in MMORPG's right now. They think it's all about giving the players something to do, they treat us like consumers instead of people who want to enter these worlds for a sense of fantasy. Give us some goddamn stories to talk about, we don't all come here to talk about stats and server drama but we do because there is nothing else to talk about.

[Pyro Elf]

Re: GM ran missions

hehe... Boss vs Boss is always fun to watch...
But Boss vs players are always best!

I remember back in AC... macroers was our equivillent of gilsellers.
And MS controlled the admins...
Devs hated the problem thriving so solution?

The very next Dev controlled boss, martine, teleported to a popular Macro spot, and started casting ring spells (AOEs) like crazy killing the macroers XD

edit: All while staying in character too :O it was classic!