Imagine a dragons lair. The mighty dragon Xanopus is residing there, watching over his treasure. One night, an organized force of heroes comes to his home, slaughters him and gets the treasure.
1 day later, the dragon is somehow resurrected with all his treasure and the next band of adventurers comes slaying him. This is how EQ and most other MMOs have been working for most of the time. I am proposing an alternative: After the dragon Xanopos got slayed there was a vacancy... an unused dragon lair! Shortly after that, another dragon finds his way to this most comfortable space... Or maybe the next one occupying this spot is not a dragon at all, but a powerfull lich!
Emperor Crush of the crushbone orcs got murdered! Well... that obviously means that the orcs need a new leader, welcome empress Crulga!
With that method, new mobs can be easily introduced to spice up existing zones. Loot can be more varied (or it can be very similar).
I would love to have a system like that.
Interesting idea but there are two problems with that
1) mobs die way too frequently and creating new boss mobs will take too much AI/Dev effort to keep up. We foster kittens for two local shelters. We have to give them names for their records (which is silly because new owners change the names as soon as they adopt them). Yesterday we spent half an hour trying to come up with new names - we ran out of new names, Thinking of that kind of thing takes time and no one could keep up with new mobs, new names, new storyline.
2) this means essentially only one group ever kills Xanopus, then he is gone forever. That causes tons of problems with the dynamics of the game. EQN tried aiming for this with permanent change but it never was well thought out. This creates loot problems, economy problems, race-to-the-top problems, etc.
A better way might be to compromise and have different mobs take turns in a spot. I think the best example was the Hollowshade War which was the most unknown and brilliant piece of AI in EQ.
Your "better way" scenario is one specific implementation of what i was hinting at, and to be perfectly honest, the one i would expect the developers to do initially. But i didn't want to limit the idea a priori. One easy implementation would be to just have a race sensitive name generator to generate a new orc boss name after the old one died, and everything else would still be the same. Perception wise it would still make a big difference. And whenever the devs would change a loot table or mob difficulty, it would appear much more logical to the player base. It's another mob every time. Don't expect it to behave exactly like the prior one.
Does it need to have a different name?
Can it have the same name but potentially different behavior?
If players have some sort of perception skill, and we want to encourage the use of perception, then we should be able to mix it up a bit from encounter to encounter, and have the possibility of players recognizing that the behavior will be different without needing to change the name. But, some players may prefer predictability on certain boss mobs, so it is possible that it might not be as 'fun' as it sounds. These are the kinds of things that we will look at and perhaps play around with.
There's also the possibility of having several named mobs that can spawn randomly at that spot, which is something that many games do to some degree.
For the longer view of having an empty lair, and creatures infilitrating it, that's certainly in my thoughts as an MMORPG mechanic but it may not be the right fit for this game (at least right now).
It was mentioned that Aradune wants elements that are dynamic to the world, but not so much that it overburdens the player. Having dynamic events is a blast, night/day cycle or other triggers is great too, you don't tend to see a lot of this in MMO's, worlds are very static.
I think for 'trash' mobs it would be good to have a variety in the names, not boss mobs however, just have a naming system that pulls together a series of words, a_aggressive_tiger (a -- aggressive -- tiger), then in these 3 groups you can add different naming conventions, a_fierce_tigress, etc. Also if pantheon takes on procedurally generated items (http://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/4170/looting-rules/view/post_id/67193) which can add in more depth here by pulling in the NPC name/player name upon item generation (among other factors) to apply to the NPC's loot.
If you have a scripting system you could also take into account the custom name or some other hash value to decide; say this NPC has these additional properties/modified properties versus the standard template.
Not one to bring up immersion factor too often but wouldnt this make the lore less significant as well as the items dropped from that named? Going to defeat random dragon number 2939 doesnt sound nearly as cool as going to defeat Tiamat. Same as randomized name harness doesnt sound nearly as cool as Tiamats Harness. Just saying.
Amsai said:Not one to bring up immersion factor too often but wouldnt this make the lore less significant as well as the items dropped from that named? Going to defeat random dragon number 2939 doesnt sound nearly as cool as going to defeat Tiamat. Same as randomized name harness doesnt sound nearly as cool as Tiamats Harness. Just saying.
I understand your argument and it IS valid. But for me having THE harness of Tiamat is only cool as long as i am the only one, else it becomes immersion breaking. How can it be that i have THE harness of Tiamat and all my friends have it too? Would be much nicer if i have the harness of Xandofen which has slightly different props than whatever my friends harness has. That's my view at least.
A key thing to remember is that since there are no instances that rare mob with a variable loot table will not be spitting out 50 Tiamat Harnesses.
7 day spawn cycle
50% drop rate (that would be his COMMON drop)
that would mean that there would only be 26 Tiamat harnesses on the server after a YEAR of farming.
That is a significant change from the way current loot is distributed in most games. That is why you didnt see cookie cutter characters in EQ1. It took too long to farm the same gear.
Landbert said: I like the idea to have a number of named boss NPCs that can spawn in a zone. Once on of them is killed randomly a new one will spawn. So we don't always have the same boss NPC for a zone. Maybe this boss NPCs will influence the kind of low level mobs in this zone as well. Every boss has its own mobs to spawn. And maybe the bosses are not bound to one zone but can spawn in a few different zones. This will bring even more change to the game. If the behavior of the boss NPCs and the lower mobs could change from spawn to spawn, this would be another piece to keep a zone exciting.
Given the cleverness of gamers...I am positive that "randomness" will be tracked and figured out for spawn camping. :) Hope the large guilds don't get to monopolize content for months on end for such things as epic quests (where you need a raid to get the desired piece or pieces to drop for that epic weapon) happened on Xegony server in the "good old days" and pretty much blocked that content for smaller guilds to challenge.
Cana
This seems like a good idea if it is implemented in moderation. I definitely think that climbing to the top of a lair to find "Snogglebug the Orc, who took over after Muglug died, but is functionally identical" would make the veil of immersion even more thin than finding that "Crusher the Big Bad Main Boss" has returned. In a living world type game with lots of dynamic creature interactions and npc population shifting, this would work great, but I doubt pantheon will have enough of this to make it work. That said, I think that swapping between 2-3 mobs at a given location seems like a great compromise. This type of mechanic would work great in enabling the development of multi-factioned dungeons/zones. Having to make a choice between factions was something that I first encountered with EQ and I think it could work here as well.
I would like to take a little tangent and discuss the possibility of merging the idea presented in this thread with the worries presented in the "My Only Raid Concern" thread.
Example 1)
Perhaps we could find a dungeon with 3 slumbering dragons in the unreachable depths (fire, water, grass) and each dragon has a cult of followers. Their followers each have holed up in their own sections of the dungeon. As soon as the fire dragon is slain, the grass dragon emerges to accept sacrifices from his followers (fire dragon scales) in exchange for rewards. After a set/random period of time he is emboldened and appears in the ritual chamber to terrorize the opposing cults. This is bad news for the water dragon, who is deathly scared of his grass counterpart, and calls his followers to topple grass counterpart. Once the grass dragon is defeated, the water dragon will rise and the cycle will continue. All fights could occur in the same chamber, since the water (scared of grass) and fire (recently defeated) dragons will be hiding in the depths.
Example 2)
Or on the other hand you could have a powerful black dragon trying to reincarnate in a distant realm. A dark sorceror and worshipper of the dragons reaches from afar with magic tendrils to drain the spirit of ancient dragon eggs stored in the temple of harmony, but this leaves him vulnerable to counterattack. The mystics of the 3 cults residing in the temple of harmony are capable of providing travel back along the magic pathways, but in order to take on the dark sorceror you must ingratiate yourself to one of the 3 cults. As a grass dragon follower (or fire/water) you can call on the mystics to transport you to the dark sorceror in order to thwart his plot, but only when he is targetting the grass dragon eggs. After a short rest to recover from his inevitable defeat, the relentless dark sorceror tries a new egg at random. Maybe you could even require work on the part of fire/water people to open the grass portal. This idea lacks the multiple uses of the same location for different fights, but still leads to faction choice battles.
The real goal of these suggestions is to provide an incentive for multiple guilds to rely on each other to clear content, instead of everyone racing against everyone else. I believe this would cut down on the level of cutthroat competition and foster some alliances between guilds. Unfortunately, you would still have to compete with players of the same cult (1/3rd), but at least that would leave the rest of the community (2/3rds) to work alongside one another.
If the devs want to encourage/force us to group in order to foster a sense of community, why not encourage/force guilds to group in order to foster a sense of community? This would only need to be done for 1 encounter per expansion in order to develop bonds and friendship between guilds.
zippyzee said:Does it need to have a different name?
Can it have the same name but potentially different behavior?
If players have some sort of perception skill, and we want to encourage the use of perception, then we should be able to mix it up a bit from encounter to encounter, and have the possibility of players recognizing that the behavior will be different without needing to change the name. But, some players may prefer predictability on certain boss mobs, so it is possible that it might not be as 'fun' as it sounds. These are the kinds of things that we will look at and perhaps play around with.
There's also the possibility of having several named mobs that can spawn randomly at that spot, which is something that many games do to some degree.
For the longer view of having an empty lair, and creatures infilitrating it, that's certainly in my thoughts as an MMORPG mechanic but it may not be the right fit for this game (at least right now).
I actually love this idea! like lets say there a Undead Knight and one time he can have a Single Target Mez effect with a Single Target DD to go with it and another time he can have a AoE DoT. Makes it to where you always have to stay on your toes and not be like oh yeah he just a cleric and at low health he likes to heal for a lot so make sure you keep him stunned to prevent it. I have to say this should be a grand idea and hope at least on most of the higher end named fights in random dungeons and maybe even some of the "Royal Guards" that you can fight at the end of all the dungeons just so you can have fun while camping some of the harder content.
Maximis said:A key thing to remember is that since there are no instances that rare mob with a variable loot table will not be spitting out 50 Tiamat Harnesses.
7 day spawn cycle
50% drop rate (that would be his COMMON drop)
that would mean that there would only be 26 Tiamat harnesses on the server after a YEAR of farming.
Your math is SO wrong. A 50% drop rate does not mean that after 52 spawns you'lll get 26 harnesses. Each spawn in completely independent, giving you a 50% chance to drop the harness each spawn. You could beat those odds 72 times in a row. You could also lose 72 times in a row. It's a coin toss.
Vandraad said:Maximis said:A key thing to remember is that since there are no instances that rare mob with a variable loot table will not be spitting out 50 Tiamat Harnesses.
7 day spawn cycle
50% drop rate (that would be his COMMON drop)
that would mean that there would only be 26 Tiamat harnesses on the server after a YEAR of farming.
Your math is SO wrong. A 50% drop rate does not mean that after 52 spawns you'lll get 26 harnesses. Each spawn in completely independent, giving you a 50% chance to drop the harness each spawn. You could beat those odds 72 times in a row. You could also lose 72 times in a row. It's a coin toss.
I wouldn't say his math is so wrong. Your best odds in this case is to get 26 taimats, it's around an 11% chance to do so, the odds of getting 52 or 0 tiamats is almost nil. I would wager that you are almost guaranteed to get between 18 and 34 tiamats, I didn't do the math for that one but I'm sure it's probably pretty good.
Vandraad said:Maximis said:A key thing to remember is that since there are no instances that rare mob with a variable loot table will not be spitting out 50 Tiamat Harnesses.
7 day spawn cycle
50% drop rate (that would be his COMMON drop)
that would mean that there would only be 26 Tiamat harnesses on the server after a YEAR of farming.
Your math is SO wrong. A 50% drop rate does not mean that after 52 spawns you'lll get 26 harnesses. Each spawn in completely independent, giving you a 50% chance to drop the harness each spawn. You could beat those odds 72 times in a row. You could also lose 72 times in a row. It's a coin toss.
My point was more that everyone and their brother wouldnt be running around with a Harness in 3 months like we see in todays games.
For me it's not very important if there will be 20 or 20000 people running around with THE harness. As long as its more than one it can only be ONE harness (logically speaking). But that whole tangent is not that important anyways and easily avoided, it could just be a "dragon harness" instead, problem solved... as is the case in games like EQ normally.
Much more important for me is the immersion part (i am a role player, that's why). And i think this can be easily addressed as well, even with such a small thing as a name generator. Ideally, mobs should change more than just the name each encounter, but i would understand if that would be too hard to implement/balance.
Humperding said:For me it's not very important if there will be 20 or 20000 people running around with THE harness. As long as its more than one it can only be ONE harness (logically speaking). But that whole tangent is not that important anyways and easily avoided, it could just be a "dragon harness" instead, problem solved... as is the case in games like EQ normally.
Much more important for me is the immersion part (i am a role player, that's why). And i think this can be easily addressed as well, even with such a small thing as a name generator. Ideally, mobs should change more than just the name each encounter, but i would understand if that would be too hard to implement/balance.
As a roleplayer it seems to me that you would be interested in the LORE behind the named mob. How would you create lore and attach it to a mob with a randomly generated name?
zippyzee said:Does it need to have a different name?
Can it have the same name but potentially different behavior?
If players have some sort of perception skill, and we want to encourage the use of perception, then we should be able to mix it up a bit from encounter to encounter, and have the possibility of players recognizing that the behavior will be different without needing to change the name. But, some players may prefer predictability on certain boss mobs, so it is possible that it might not be as 'fun' as it sounds. These are the kinds of things that we will look at and perhaps play around with.
There's also the possibility of having several named mobs that can spawn randomly at that spot, which is something that many games do to some degree.
For the longer view of having an empty lair, and creatures infilitrating it, that's certainly in my thoughts as an MMORPG mechanic but it may not be the right fit for this game (at least right now).
Hey!~ Zippyzee has a green name!- or has the VR avatar anyways -
*instantly changes demeanor. Fluffs the cushion, brings small drink and nibblings, while speaking soothingly in an unknown foreign tongue and pantomining towards the seat and food*
Yes, if the Monster changes its fighting style after each death, that would be good and unique. *sips drink*
Perhaps the name does not have to change, if it interferes with the implementation of this unique dynamic *nibbles at nibblings* and the perception system- I never thought of that- I would welcome its introduction as that would be a complex part of gameplay that I am not familair with and may be the- ONE- of the things for the "Pantheon difference", no? *bats eyes* (*winces at eyes being batted*)
I like the idea of randomly named mobs spawning in that spot, that would add suprise factor to a camp sort of play style and may encourage people to show up in the dungeon area again and again and I also understand the sense of accomplishment- confidence building if you will- that comes with wanting to have success with a target for a anticipated end. With all the deaths that are surely to occur, to have an item of success would be something to balance in.
Oh, how intersting is that thought of random monsters infiltrating the empry lair *refills drink and brings new, more attractive, nibblings* sort of like the war in shadeweavers thicket? owlbears, sonic wolves and grimlings sort of thing.
Maximis said:Humperding said:For me it's not very important if there will be 20 or 20000 people running around with THE harness. As long as its more than one it can only be ONE harness (logically speaking). But that whole tangent is not that important anyways and easily avoided, it could just be a "dragon harness" instead, problem solved... as is the case in games like EQ normally.
Much more important for me is the immersion part (i am a role player, that's why). And i think this can be easily addressed as well, even with such a small thing as a name generator. Ideally, mobs should change more than just the name each encounter, but i would understand if that would be too hard to implement/balance.
As a roleplayer it seems to me that you would be interested in the LORE behind the named mob. How would you create lore and attach it to a mob with a randomly generated name?
Yes, a piece of gear with a randomly generated mob name on it would be FAR LESS impressive than looking at something and knowing "that guy/gal had to kill X to get that, and we know what that fight is like".
Perhaps I can offer another perspective....
1. Boss mob is a 'position'
Here, the Raid boss in question would be a mob filling a position. Examples might include:
- Kragnos, King of the Orcs
- Xillian, Avatar of Death
- Killian, Prince of the Lower Keep
In these cases, the holders of the post may have slightly different mannerisms, slightly different fight styles ... but ultimately be equal in 'difficulty'. The drop then could be labelled 'Orc Crown', but have added info saying which Orc King etc. The bonuses could even be slightly different, perhaps reflecting the (slight?) difference in combat style of the Boss. Thus the statement..
'Man, it was hard getting the Orc Crown. Mine is from Wrennix, 16th King. Who is yours from? No way dude!! Kragnos, 1st King! That's like, totally awesome!!'
2. Boss mob has to re-incorporate
With creatures that re-incorporate over time ... Powerful Undead, Semi-Divine creatures etc, the name doesn't have to change. This is a creature that cannot be 'slain', merely pushed out of the living realm for a while. It's loot however, may be subject to change in some areas:
(a) Loot it has acquired :
this is likely to be on a long rotation. Perhaps 6-10+ Loot tables for 'special items'. This would represent the various gear the mobs manages to obtain over time. It should have a 'preference' for item types, with the loot slowly being replaced, say 1 item per 3-6 days, with items that better 'fit' his preference. Say the boss has a preference for caster gear. Initially on spawning he has a fairly random selection of 8 items. Every 6 days 2 new pieces are added and the 'least caster-like' is dropped from the list. Thus as the weeks go by, the loot table will become more and more full of caster-type drops in this part of the table.
(b) Loot it 'makes' :
These are more likely to be avaiable after a certain time. Kill the 'Reanimating Shadow of Frostfell' the day he spawns and he will NOT drop the 'Shadow Amulet'.
(i) METHOD #1 - There is, say, a 1% per day that he finishes recreating the amulet. This means he will definitely drop it within 100 days, but on average will have it after about 14-21 days.
(ii) METHID #2 - It could just be that he has 'major' items that he tries to recreate. He chooses the order of recreation based on how he was killed last. Each day he generates, say, his level in 'recreation points' to be spent on the various items. He spends these towards items as he accumulates them.
3. Boss is singular
In these cases, it is likely that you would need to have a set of creatures that can inhabit the lair. If one is killed, another will take its place after a certain amount of time. Perhaps in some cases, it may be possible for the players to influence which one is next indirectly. Imagine the following :
Boss A is dead and the Ice goblin shamen have built a shrine to Boss B. Meanwhile, the Fire Goblin Shamen have built a shrine to Boss C. These two factions may skirmish each other, but player interactions may skew which shrine bets enough power to perform the summons for their boss first. Damage to the shrin, killing enough of one type of Gobbie over the other etc may iunfluence which one does or doesn;t get to have their Boss arrive next. Thus if ther players want boss B, they need to kill Fire Goblins, particularly the shamen, and damage the Fire shrine. Of course, other players may not want this - or not realise - and kill the Ice Goblin shamen instead!
Loot (in my opinion) should be predominantly derived from the creature: Blood, Bones, Scales, Teeth from dragons etc. This can feed into crafting and quests to minimise contention. If the quest/recipe calls for 'Red Dragon Scales' it doesn't matter *which* red dragon. Thus the mobs don't need to drop the 'uberest' items, merely the mats needed to make them!
There must be ways to be innovative and keep 'rarity' for top content without feeding the 'content denial' trolls, surely?