Oh gosh. I could go on for days. You and I share very similar visions here.
I had a thread on dynamic content generation a couple weeks ago.... here's the link: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/10166/could-dynamic-content-generation-be-used-in-pantheon
I agree, though I can think of ways in which an overly dynamic world can be a real annoyance.
What are a few dynamic features I would like? In no order, just stream of consciousness, and hoping these are things that fall under what Pyye means by the word dynamic.
1. Harvesting nodes that may be one of several different things - and you can't tell which until you actually harvest them. Thus, that ordinary looking copper ore could turn out to be a rare.
2. We all understand the concept of how a boss might randomly spawn - whether based on time, or killing a placeholder, or determined in some other way. But maybe mob camps can move around and even the common mobs that inhabit the camps may change. Not a true persistant universe but suppose you clear a camp of goblins. Well maybe the goblin camp won't respawn there (yes that makes it harder to spend your life camping in one place but that may not be a *bad* thing at all). The goblins may develop a distaste for being slaughtered, and move. Maybe the next time mobs spawn at one of the 10 locations for a goblin camp they will be ...hobgoblins. A bit nastier, a bit tougher and with slightly better rewards. Not bosses - but even changing trash mobs around can give uncertainty and variety.
3. Tether distances and mob personalities. Maybe one time the mob will let itself be trained to the zone border. Maybe the next time it will say "sod this I'm being paid to guard this spot and I am not going to go all that far away even if that monk *does* smell yummy."
4. Semi-random effectiveness, perhaps influenced by time of day and weather, of certain abilities such as invisibility and feign death. One day the bear ambles away. Another day perhaps because of ambient conditions but you may never know, the bear thinks "only one way to make sure that bugger never bothers me again - and leaving her lying in the grass is *not* that way".
Here is one I don't want - NPCs with significant things to say or do on a day/night cycle. Sure it is realistic but it is also enormously frustrating to miss something very important and find out 6 months later that had your character entered town at 4PM instead of 10AM you would have gotten it. One thing I truly dislike is even where I have perfect knowledge if a certain quest or merchant is only available at night and I get into town at 8:01 in the morning I have a *really* long time to wait perhaps with not a single other thing I have to do for miles in any direction.
Some 'Dynamic' Ideas, from the past few years
-encounter difficulty is adjusted per fight. Group leader can set it, and emergent tactics are used once the encounter starts to make it more challenging, and the rewards are greater.
-encounter difficulty means more than just hit point change, but that is part of the difficulty equation.
-players can dynamically adjust the power of their abilities, within hard caps, either inherently, or via gear swaps to adjust to varying encounters either per encounter or per zone.
-perception can be used, in or out of combat, to determine monster stats, including resistances.
Players using Perception to be able to discern monster hit point changes, immunities, buffs, auras, stats, resistances, and so on, in combat, is probably required for a dynamic mechanic like this. Otherwise it would change and they couldn't react appropriately, which would just be frustrating, not fun. Unfortunately, to date, their stance is: Perception will not have a combat aspect, which is a missed opportunity, in my opinion.
Another slightl similar, and larger mechanic was outlined for Shroud, and the devs there responded positively about the outlined implementation.
This is.. well, long, but you'll get the general concept:
Player-Triggered Asynchronous Zone Feature Adjustment
The idea is that any zone feature that is created, maintained, and adjusted by the Pantheon server can be adjusted by players as well.
For example, in a given zone, there would be:
Geography
-water (ocean, river, lake, cavern, estuary)
-soil (loam, peat, sand, clay, rock)
-elevation (submerged, lowland, hills, highlands, mountains)
__combinations of geographical features produces biomes like swamp, farmland, grassland, desert, mountain
Climate
-weather (rain, snow, sun, fog, wind)
-temperature (freezing, cold, warm, hot, scorching)
-latitude (polar, temperate, tropical, equatorial)
__Storms such as: tornado, lightning, earthquakes, forest fire, blizzard, sandstorm, floods, wind/hurricane)
Flora
-plants (flowers, grass, moss, lichen, algae, ferns)
-crops (grains, vegetables, fruits, fungus)
-forest (coniferous, deciduous, softwood, hardwood, old, young, shrubs, trees)
Fauna
-animals (domestic, wild, prey, predators, mammals, reptiles, insects, vermin)
-monsters (tameable, untamable, predators, prey, hostile, aggressive)
-humanoids (humans, non humans, tiny, giant, verbal, non-verbal)
Points to keep in mind regarding these systems:
- Can be added at any time, in various ways, either in whole or in part, to an existing game
- Fits within the existing framework of player controls, UI, and existing server/network/engine technology
- Can be used to encourage or discourage a wide range of player behavior, and provides several sinks
- As described, presumes resource gathering would be constantly dynamic, as a design goal
Overaching Caveats:
No XP, Equippable Loot, Currency, or sellable resources are required to be generated for any of the following. All of what’s described below can be a sink, or consume-only system.
The zones mentioned can either be adjacent (subterranean or aerial) or could be part of normal overland zones or dungeons. They can be, for lack of a better term, “wild zones” to start, and be adjusted by players entirely, within reasonable limits, or no limits.
This system can be implemented without affecting any City, Quest, Combat or Adventure zones, at all, in any way.
They adjustment areas or wild zones also do not have to contain, at all, in any way, any mobs at all, to begin with.
The tech for this is done. It’s a solved problem. It already exists. There is no facet or feature desscribed below, outside of geographical adjustments, that can’t be done in real time, concurrently, with all players in the zone, and stored in and driven by a database, as most modern systems are.
The entire system below works perfectly without geographical adjustments. They’re just the most dramatic option, and the option most prone to potential abuse. (Hello, Valley of The Genitals!)
So, if that’s the concern, skip/ignore all the parts about geographical adjustment. :)
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Implementation details.
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Presumptions: Reasonably large outdoor zones at launch. At least 1 hectare (1km x 1km) for a typical wild zone size. A minimum of 10m x 10m resource size, within a zone. Resulting in 10,000 adjustment locations per hectare.
-It may be desirable to only have certain zone features adjustable, in certain regions or in the proper context. As an example, if the theme of a region is mountainous on the overland map, allowing the players to turn that entire zone into a desert may not fit your internal design goals. However, certain aspects of a map should have a range of variability inherently, and at the very least, those particular aspects should be adjustable. More on completely adjustable zones, below.
-As an example, climate, flora and fauna should vary by seasons and astronomical time progresses. A particular zone, even with static geography would have different animals and plants fade in and out. Reindeer during winter and deer during summer. Animals that hibernate would not appear when they are hibernating. Monsters that have certain biome requirements would only appear when those matched. Plants would normally bloom in their season. However, whether a zone has daffodils (contains the alkaloid poison lycorine) or the common daisy (not poisonous) could be random. Both can be grown on fallow farmland, grassland, and in cold/warm/hot temperatures, in all weather except snow. Players, however, could determine which would appear, dynamically. In practice, this would simply change the appearance of the flowers in the world, and alter the values returned when harvested.
-Those familiar with RIFTs projected textures feature for RIFT incursions will understand the visual overlay technique used there. A variation of this could be used, at the minimum, for all non geographic ground adjustments such as flora, snow, fog, and even floods. Fauna are simply dynamic spawn generators. Think of SWG nests, but player triggered, and sustained/respawned over time. Currently, in RIFT, collision objects, sky changes, fog, lighting, and weather effects are all dynamic and part of player spawned triggers, in some cases. This is merely an extension of that same technology that is now 5 years+ old. That same existing graphical engine technology is all that's required for everything except the geography described at the outset. This is all possible in Unity, today.
-The client can dynamically receive updates for a given zone for all parameters, and reflect those changes immediately. Certain changes would require adjustment of inherited features. Geographic changes, for example, could cause significant alteration of all dependent features. Changing from submerged to mountainous, would change the weather, temperature, water, and soil, plus flora and fauna. Not a trivial matter, but definitely possible in the proper context.
-Ideally, players would never be required to leave a zone during feature adjustments. That is, if the landscape can freely form, rise, fall, and adjust around them while they're in the world, that would be best. If the current technology doesn't permit this, there are two possible options worth considering. Mark the zone as stale to encourage the player to re-log, or force them to re-log as part of the update. Also, it might be possible to designate a "home location" or equivalent safe location for each zone, where a player would be teleported to during an update. This would NOT be required for non-geographic adjustments.
-In practice, a player performs an action, or co-ordinates the performance of many similar actions, in order to have a feature adjusted. There are several tiers of adjustment, requiring varying amounts of time or resources. The amount of time and the amount of resources are balance issues to be tested and adjusted. It seems reasonable, though, that small changes could occur more frequently, while larger changes be more costly and occur far less frequently. It is also acceptable that all feature changes EXCEPT geographical changes could be done in-place with no notification or consequence other than visual.
-It also adds more flavor if the players have the choice of impact versus duration. Using the flower field as an example, a player could obtain their widget that makes daffodils (they need the poison), but they have some choices. They can have a version that lasts a full in-game day, or a full in-game week. They can choose to have a single field be affected, or the primary plus 3 or 6 adjacent fields. Each of these has additional cost in time/resources. A quick example might be if someone had a community plot in a village, and was able to harvest daffodil seeds, then put those seeds through whatever process to have them imbued and transformed into the server side feature adjustment trigger. Perhaps the process involves other players, or other collected resources, or money, faction, NPC's, the right phase of the moon, etc. In any case, they have their magic seeds, they move out to a particular region, and they use them. They're offered a target interface of some kind, click, and voila, they now have a field of daffodils to harvest. Potentially, so does everyone else. It isn't necessary to replicate these changes to everyone, but it would provide a whole range of incentives if it did.
-Getting back to impact versus duration, in the above example, say the default duration was 1 and the size was 1. A player might be able to harvest 10 seeds, and have them all imbued, and be able to increase the size to 2, while the duration is still at 1. This would have a larger harvest area (allowing them to harvest more materials) but they would have still only a single in-game day to do the harvesting. Adding other resources to the widget creation might increase the duration to one in-game week (perhaps 1 RL day). These features are optional, but add considerably more depth and variety to the system. Each type of harvestable, regardless of the type (ore, gems, wood, flora, fauna, water, stone) would have a process to imbue and an ability to change the feature in the zone.
-Transient features such as weather and fauna would be performed in a similar fashion, basically triggering a server side event for a localized lightning storm, or spawning ibexes instead of gazelles for a period of time in a particular area. The mechanic that makes all these adjustments desirable is the requirement for certain resources to be harvested only during certain events. As an example, if fireflies only appear for 1 in-game day after a lightning storm, and firefly wings are used as a consumable for the Call Lightning spell, players have a very good reason for causing lightning storms. It may also be a mechanic that only rare items can be harvested during adjustment alignments, while common resources can be harvested at all times, but only in the proper locations.
-Now, if a player or guild doesn't want to bother with the time sink of gathering the resources and processing them for a zone-adjustment widget, it seems reasonable to allow them to purchase these items outright from an NPC vendor for 20-50 times the cost, or have these items require another form of currency if purchased from an NPC. However, the cheapest, fastest, and best way to obtain the items should always be from other players or to involve other players, if social interaction and community building are design goals. Another option to the NPC purchasing mechanic may be that default duration & size items may be purchased from NPCs, but customized versions of the zone-adjustment widgets may only be craftable.
-Certain zone-adjust duration an size parameters could be larger than others. For example, farming crops in the wild could automatically be a size 2 (one small plot, plus 6 adjacent, if there are areas-within-zones) and a duration of 2. It's also possible that the use of a particular widget of the same type in the same spot could extend the duration, if adjusted by another player. Finally, you may or may not wish to restrict the use of an adjusted zone resource. It may be reasonable to permit public use of certain effects, or all effects. Or you may wish to permit guilds or alliances sole use of particular resources they have created or modified, on particular zones designated for this purpose. This would also give an excellent reason for PvE defense of certain zones if zones where guild/alliance citadels could be placed were also places that permitted guild/alliance zone adjustments of all kinds. However, to be clear, it would be a convenience, not a requirement. All players should be able to create the adjustments they need, but guilds and alliances could create larger effects and/or effects of larger duration, and/or effects of ALL types, including geographical, in certain zones. Single players would have to travel to different zones than those designated for guild/alliance adjustment, but single players could create every adjustment as well, with at least default sizes and durations.
-with respect to mining, it could simply be a resource that falls into the 'flora' category, that is, you can buy a mine resource widget and place it. However, given the importance of mining, it may be desirable that mines only appear when the appropriate adjacent adjustments have been made. In fact, this may be a mechanic that produces rare resources of all kinds, in addition to the more dynamic harvest methods. For example, if a single player puts in the time and effort to "groom" the landscape in a particular pattern, it may spawn a mine of mithril for a day in the center. Or they can wait for the stars/planets/moons to align and buy a sandstorm widget which allows normal bauxite ore to be harvested as mithril if done during a sandstorm. Multiple paths to obtain the same rare resources would be very popular. It could also be that only large sized adjustments satisfy the pattern for spawning rare resources, again, depending on design goals.
-optional feature: fauna creatures that produce resources of flora types (mobile plants drop flowers, rock monsters drop ore, water elementals drop water). So, if you can't find an adjustable zone nearby, you can place a creature generator/nest location that does the same, at the same location, while "on top" of the previously adjusted landscape, offering another layer of choice for the players. This does require, however, a full bestiary of creatures that provide all types of resources.
-optional feature: larger or longer adjustments may require group-only activities or the concurrent consumption of many of the same or different consumables by multiple players to create the desired effect.
-optional feature: Overwriting other players zone-adjustments is possible, but creates chaos (random Environments). In fact, each time an adjustment is made that is out of theme with the zone, chaos is created. If sufficient chaos is generated, it can manifest itself in chaotic incursions, spawns of chaos creatures, ancillary storms, and the like. However, it may be desirable to have these as a sort of "end-game" for zone adjustments, with resource gathering. Things like, you can only obtain these resources in the shadow of a chaos storm, or when a chaos storm is active during two full moons, that sort of thing. It may be a good mechanic to only permit overwriting a zone adjustment with a larger one, to encourage a time/resource sink. It may also be a good mechanic that a single/guild/alliance zone adjustments can only be overwritten by like widgets. Or not, or both, depending on your design goals and behavior encouragement. Many of these decisions will be governed by the number of adjustment locations within a zone. If there are hundreds or thousands, many of these restrictions won't be an issue. If there are only a few, it could create serious competition.
-optional feature: adjustment breeds more adjustment. Once a zone has been adjusted in a particular location, say, a wheat farm was placed, then the adjacent areas are now open for adjustment. This could permit adjacent fields of more wheat, other grains, vegetables, or vineyards and orchards. Think of it as adjustment zone expansion by use. This "adjustment zone" or envelope could expand with use and shrink over time if not used. Also, it could be a static setting on some zones, for guild/alliance activities, and dynamic in public zones closer to civilization. It may also be necessary for players to adjust certain features in certain patterns. An example would be that for every 3 agricultural adjustments adjacent, the next adjustment must be a water feature to show a stream, pond, or similar feature to support the crops. This could also be required for sluice mining, or panning, or creation of a water course exiting a cavern to create a gem resource. Players could also compete to prevent the placement of these adjustments, so they can have their desired resource available. Those closer to civilization (if travel is important) could become serious hotbeds of contention for layout of certain crops, plants and forests. If a particular merchant really wants mahogany, they either have to find a free tile in the right biome on the right zone (scouting now has value) or they can buy the proper adjustment widgets so a mahogany forest can be planted nearby.
-optional feature: zone adjustments that are in-theme last longer than those that break the theme. Placing a desert adjustment adjacent to a swamp, or glacier would last less than an in-game day, but grassland adjacent to a desert could last longer than an in-game day, with a 'default' duration for both. All adjustments could still create chaos, but potentially you could use players healing the landscape as a means to reduce chaos, that is, players using an adjustment widget to remove that offending desert might prevent a chaos storm. Other players, however, may want the chaos storm and continue to radically adjust the adjacent regions.
-optional feature: adjustments out of theme may incur a faction penalty, either global or regional, temporary or permanent. The animals, humanoids, and rulers of a given zone may not take kindly to you creating blizzards in their deserts, or flooding their cropland, even for a day. Sandstorms in a desert, though, you may be able to get away with without penalty.
-optional feature: If desired, on certain zones, the use of adjustment widgets spawns extremely challenging guardian creatures in vast numbers that must be overcome prior to completion. Again there may be inherent bonuses both to rarity, size and duration of effects. While this challenge is being overcome, the immediate region is locked for a period of time to prevent undue reward without risk. This may be a guild/alliance only feature. This feature may require the existence of a guild/alliance stronghold nearby.
-optional feature: Certain zones may require the grooming of the landscape with a certain number of adjacent adjustments of ALL features ( geography, climate, flora, fauna ) to create a location where a guild/alliance stronghold may be placed. Over time, this stronghold must be defended by continual large and long term adjustments, and incur the resulting chaotic consequences to be maintained. This has the potential to be a much more internally consistent "cost" than a simple gold sink for rent. Depending on the behavior you want to encourage, you could permit players to affect the nature of an entire zone with this and other mechanics combined. This would also require guilds and alliances to actively defend their stronghold and territory, rather than being sequestered in their own guild hall not interacting with the world at large.
-optional feature: allowing the spawning of hostile creatures by competing organizations near guild/alliance strongholds. A simple example would be crafting all the gear and equipment necessary to outfit an army, gather the humanoids necessary to BE the army, and then spawning them via zone-adjustment to siege your enemy while you ALSO attacked their PvE efenses at the same time. Extraordinary strategic potential. Especially if you could spawn very powerful creatures who alone would wear down your enemies gates & walls, and you timed the attacks such that a constant defense was required, and then brought your player forces to bear to break them at the end. Rare resources could be used in this way as consumables to spawning hostile creatures, so yet another potential sink. How about NPC creatures that dig under, or fly over the walls to create chaos in the courtyard to split the defenders attention? Also, underground and aerial defenses to be crafted and maintained, by the defenders. Lots of fun to be had with that.
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points to ponder
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-With respect to available land, adding an entirely additional subterranean land-zone (and subsequent subterranean "under-land" map) as well as sky-zones, with floating islands or similar, could double the available land without affecting existing zones.
Where the light blue is the sky tier, green is the existing land tier, and the dark blue is the subterranean / underworld.
-many games talk sandbox. This IS the sandbox, without focusing entirely on combat. This allows players to compete indirectly, but far more frequently and without any ego involved. No direct player combat is required in the above systems, although it would certainly add to some situations.
-if such a system were implemented, the ability for players to literally alter the climate, flora, and fauna (and potentially geography) of any zone is an incredible attraction. It would gather a wide range of players and be, as far as I know, unique in the genre of persistent multiplayer games.
-such a system could be fine tuned down to the point where a single player could spawn NPCs of any kind almost anywhere, provided the frequency, limits, cost and consequences were appropriate. Want a party? Spawn a roaming band of musicians, jugglers, or acrobats. Bored? Spawn a hive of giant wasps out in the wild. Have too much money? well, now you can spend it. It would be appropriate that spawning creatures just to fight, or spawning creatures outside their proper location either reduces or eliminates their resources and/or loot. However, if the cost was sufficiently high to cover the cost of the loot generated, then they could be normal creatures. Keep in mind that if more than one person may derive loot from a creature, this would need to be considered in such a feature to prevent ‘something from nothing’ abuse.
-insect colonies. A single player could obtain a widget to spawn an insect colony for termites, bees, ants, and similar of varying sizes from tiny to gigantic, to provide a range of resources, potencies, and quantities. This simple idea may be easier for some readers to grasp, but it scales from something simple like this to more complex ideas presented above. These insect colonies may require particular biomes or adjacent resource to spawn, and may attract large predators (bears for honey, giant anteaters for ants) that you must deal with to defend the colony.
-Finally, the ability to obtain whatever resources you want or need places the choice and path entirely in the hands of players, guilds and alliances. If they want to, for example, outfit NPC organizations, and they need a particular crop, plant, ore, gem, or tree, they can spend the money and get it or spend the time and effort and get it. The depth of knowledge of the in-game world required could be considerable. This type of system would go a long way in providing an online entertainment experience where knowledge and patience can have value in addition to reaction time. Given the possibly dynamic nature of zones, having accurate and up to date information could potentially save you immense amounts of time and money, in-game. Leadership would be meaningful, as would long term strategy and planning.
to make a real dynamic environment in a computer game is very hard,
so i think pseudo dynamic environment is "good enough"
what i mean is introduce cycles:
day/night ( couple of hours for this cycle)
spring/summer/fall/winter ( lets say one month of real time for each season? )
and these cycles will be different not only in how they look, but what mobs are in every place and what NPCs are in cities. seasonal mobs, nocturnal mobs, etc...
and if there are autonomous events in the game ( GW2 style open world events) they will be different depend on which part of the cycle we are.
day spring, night spring, day summer, night summer, day fall, night fall, day winter, night winter.
this matrix has 8 different "worlds" with their own mobs, NPCs, dynamic events etc....
It's not hard, it's a solved problem. Every feature you mention has already been done in other games. Even EQ1 has timed events that only happen at night or during the day. Every other things is simply an extension of a similar framework.
Every feature I outlined is possible in Unity, is database driven, and is simply a matter of implementation time & effort.
Pyye said: Definition: Constant change, activity, or progress. I use this term a LOT when discussing my ideal game. My ideal concepts include: rare spawns, AI unpredictability, horizontal leveling, complex crafting, in-game ownership,... etc... What do you think is a Dynamic feature you would like to see and why?
First and foremost, I want NPCs to actually behave according to their class.
Melee fight in melee range, casters would do all they can to avoid melee range. Every NPC should have at its dispose the complete set of spells/abilities players have at that level...and actually use them.
Other than being assigned as a guard, NPCs in an area should always be moving around. Some guards should be on patrol and as they move around guards come in/off of guard duty. Thus Guard Dave gets replaced by Guard Mike after his shift is done. When you get into cities, there should be an even greater feeling of movement of NPCs.
Day/Night cycles should be dramatically different. Cities should nearly shut down completely at night, save for the Inns and other social gathering points, but Blacksmith? He's in bed asleep. Come back in the morning. The same goes for every intelligent NPC out there. The bandits who control some old fort? The gates should be locked at night and guard patrols increased. Better find a different way in.
NPCs need a better ability to judge the progress of a fight to figure out much earlier if they will win or not and react accordingly. Fighting a single mob? Yeah, he's not going to get away. But fighting three? One of them should quickly make a run to allies and call for help, even at the outset of the fight. 3 on 6 should be a dead giveaway.
dorotea said:Here is one I don't want - NPCs with significant things to say or do on a day/night cycle. Sure it is realistic but it is also enormously frustrating to miss something very important and find out 6 months later that had your character entered town at 4PM instead of 10AM you would have gotten it. One thing I truly dislike is even where I have perfect knowledge if a certain quest or merchant is only available at night and I get into town at 8:01 in the morning I have a *really* long time to wait perhaps with not a single other thing I have to do for miles in any direction.
I rather like the idea of NPCs having their own "lives" and going about them on a cycle. The idea that an NPC might go visit his aunt for a few days instead of attending his stall in the market sounds awesome to me. Even better if his son is of an age that he can take over running the stall in his father's absence. There should never be an exact time of day the NPC suddenly pops in and out of existence. They walk or ride their cart to the market and back home again. Or maybe they sleep in their stall but only because their cart broke down or they got in a big argument with family. Some nights the vendor goes to the tavern instead and gots sodding drunk before passing out in a nearby alley.
Of course I also like the thought of truly random quests/tasks. For example, in a nearby hamlet the inhabitants are being terrorized by goblins, goblins who just migrated to the area and find human-raised pigs rather tasty. You wander into the hamlet and are offered gold (a pittance, really, but they can't afford much) to take care of the problem. You venture forth, slaughter a bunch of goblins and bring back proof of the deed. The villagers reward you and throw a minor feast that evening in your honor. Some weeks later the goblins are back at it. Someone else comes along and accepts the task, slaughters all the goblins and is rewarded less than you were (they couldn't save much in just a few weeks). This time the few surviving goblins have had enough and move elsewhere, perhaps starting a new camp somewhere, perhaps joining another clan.
OR... When the goblins return the first time no hero comes along and within a few weeks the hamlet is abandoned. The villagers had had enough and left with whatever they could carry. The hamlet slowly decays, maybe it's taken over by those selfsame goblins who now have the benefit of minor fortification, much better than their previous open-air camp.
All of this is possible with current tech, it just hasn't been done yet. I think a living, breathing world would be far more interesting than one where I know I can always pass through town, vendor all my trash loot to the same guy (who stands motionless 24/7), hit the trainer to upgrade a skill or two (who also stands motionless 24/7) then zip off to my next adventure outlined on a sheet of paper I printed out from a site with walk-throughs for absolutely everything.
Earlier tonight I had one of those moments where a bunch of things just clicked in my head all at once. I think it was the PvP discussion on twitter that started it, if I'm being honest, because it got me thinking about controlling and building up territory. Then I took a long nap (sorely needed) and when I woke up I had an evolution of some previous ideas in my head.
Posted here: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/10260/quot-needs-quot-dynamic-crafting-and-gathering-content/view/post_id/197056
The closest thing to it would be Vanguard's diplomacy sphere. But it ties into the whole idea of making the world more dynamic and less static, so I wanted to link it in this threa as well.
I would like to see dynamic tether distances. If a cave of trolls has been left alone for a while, maybe they chase you until the end of the zone line. If the cave has been slaughtered for 3 hours straight, maybe they stop at the cave entrance to protect their home.
Mobs do not have to chase you to the zone line everytime.