Landmark & Keynote: First Response

Some quick notes about the Keynotes. I will be going into more later, but this is just my immediate reactions.

The first half of the landmark keynote was quite excellent, clearing up exactly what I've said before about what Landmark is going to be. 

PvP Combat is coming on the 27th with three basic weapons. Staff, Sword, and Bow.  The combat is very heavily based on what weapon you are using and what armor you are wearing. Your attacks are all on the weapon, and the armor will provide not only protection, but also various mobility or weapon assists. 

The PvP will be Claim based, activated by using various 'game' items like the Game Table, Respawn Points, Control Points, and such. We will also have moving platforms, teleporters, and flingers which are quite easy to place and manipulate to help create the battle field of your dreams. 

New stats coming with PvP are Mana/Energy to use abilities, Armor, and HP. Run out of Armor and you start to lose HP. Run out of HP and you die. Armor restores on its own if you don't take damage for a while.

A variety of mobs will be put into the world as well, but they will be coming after more feedback is in from the PvP testing of the combat. Many of them seem to be explosion based.

Like always, these are all very much important for EQ:N as well, despite EQ:N combat being class based.

What classes?

Wizard: Classic glass cannon, heavy ranged damage, stuns, and teleports. Upheaval really digs a hole under your enemies.

Warrior: Determine where, when, and how the fight will progress with this powerful, mobile, killer. Be careful with Whirlwind, it chews up the terrain.

(Battle) Cleric: Heavy Armor, Armor Restoring abilities, revives, all while fighting at the front lines. It looks like you also restore armor on any allies who are on the other side of the enemy from you.

Elementalist: Close combat caster, high risk, high reward. Flash Freeze will make the ground extremely brittle and easy to break.

Tempest: High mobility 'druid assassin' with a focus on single target damage, but enemies in a straight line are also easy pickings.

Obviously, that's not all, there will be over 40 classes at launch.

They also revealed the Dark Elf models and showed off a fair bit of combat in a Dark Elf city built from some of the contest entrants from the Dark Elf workshop. 

EQ:N (& Landmark) Lore Meets Mechanics

The EverQuest franchise has a long history of very deep and meaningful lore in its games. This is one of the major draws of EverQuest. One of the unique things about it that has helped them keep both games running side by side so long is that they are very similar, but are not the same. Dave Georgeson, Director of the EverQuest franchise, has explained that each game takes places in their own parallel universe, and at some points, they are connected.

I want to focus on EQN here, but I will point out that the very light lore they intend for Landmark apparently includes traveling through these dimensional boundaries which is why you will find Sci-Fi, Steampunk, and Fantasy all side by side in Landmark. And this is actually the first example of what I'm writing about. The story and the mechanics are intended to work together in EQN.

Several eBooks have been released since last year which contain almost all of the lore for EQN that we have been given so far. These books are rather short, but are packed full of wonderful information and despite players clamoring for 'more lore' few of those players have actually read the books. I highly encourage you to do so. Even if you aren't a player who is into the lore there are some interesting details to be found.

After hearing Dave hint a few times that the books are more than just lore I finally got it when one of the authors let slip that many of the mechanics are presented in the books. So I started wondering what mechanics they might be sharing with us. I'm only about half way through the books, and they just put out another one, but I'd like to share a few things I've noticed so far that we should expect to see in the game.

Meaningful Relationships
While they've talked about this before in Storybricks discussions there is a huge emphasis on meaningful relationships in the stories. I know literature is typically quite heavy on interpersonal interactions, but this takes it to a whole new level. Even the most twisted of backstabbers relies upon others and their current relationships with them. No one wantonly kills others for a small slight (even if they might think about it) because it would destroy their relationships, and relationships are an important resource that takes time and work to cultivate. They must be harvested at just the right time. The only time we see such wanton slaughter is from a character who's very purpose in existence is to bring death to the world, expect that to matter.

This goes right in line with what many have taken from the dev's statements. Who you kill will matter. There are consequences for everything you do, who sees it, and who learns of it. These won't just be simple 'faction' ratings either, these work on every level from kingdom, faction, down to groups and individuals.

Mentoring
Every story I've read so far has highly experienced and inexperienced characters working side by side, the experienced characters typically teach and guide the inexperienced ones in how to do their trade or skills more efficiently. Whether it be a thief teaching a mage about lockpicking, a pair of seasoned warriors teaching their young charge, a lore keeper passing his people's history to the next generation, or an arch mage becoming outclassed by his own apprentice, most of the stories start and end with these relationships being a major focal point. In literature this means 'you should pay attention to this element.'

Many games have tried Mentoring systems before, including EQII, but with the artificial number deflation/inflation it just feels wrong. In EQN the 5 Tiers are supposed to represent player skill rather than the levels of character power in most MMOs. Tier 1 content will not be a cakewalk for Tier 5 characters because they are not just 'weaker versions' of what the T5 takes on all the time. The T5 will have a relatively easy time simply because they have the skills and abilities to deal with it more efficiently. While playing with a T1, the T5 can teach the T1 player better skills on how to player the game so they can increase in Tier and gain access to more options for how to play. I expect that T5's will regularly take their T2 & T3 friends into T4 zones to teach them what it takes to earn their T4 rank.

If you see someone who is higher Tier then watch them, see what they are doing, ask them how they do what they do. That's how you learn. If you see someone who is lower Tier, then watch them, see what they are doing, give them advice, that's how you teach. Together, these moments form lasting friendships and bonds that hold a gaming community together.

I also expect that some players will be stuck at one rank or another for along time and some of them will whine and complain about not having a 'normal leveling system' or that 'it's too hard to get T5.' It comes down to learning the skill as a player for how to use your character, and for each class that will be very different. Some people don't want to do that, and for those who don't want to learn and prove they deserve higher, they should still be able to have fun staying at T3 or wherever they want to stop.

Personal Perspective
Reading The Fall of Bastion and Last Stand of the Tier'Dal shows very strikingly that the same events can be viewed very differently depending on which character you are seeing them through. Given the personal nature of the Emergent AI I expect this to be very true for players as well. We might be going through the same encounter or dungeon or whatever, but we will each have our very own experience with it. This could be anything from having to go different places in the same encounter, having different tasks and conversations, to things as small as each player 'sensing' different aspects of the dungeon. In Landmark we already see a little of this with the personalized settings for detecting claim boundaries and seeing other people's tools in use as well as with the Gem Seeker's Broach and personalized loot. We don't all see the world the same way.

Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles had a wonderful mechanic with this on the Game Cube. While each player was playing on one screen if they were using GameBoy Advance's as their controllers then they could look down at their own little screen for a personalized map and each player was set to detect something different so the players would have to work as a team to find everything. I believe EQN will take such concepts to a whole new level.

Magic
I don't just mean 'there is magic in the books, so expect magic in the game'. No, I mean the system of magic is being presented. In 'The Fall of Bastion' we see several details about the magic system the Arch Mage and his apprentice use. Aside from the various categories of magic specifically named (Illusion, Pain, Coercion, and Death) there is also quite a bit of 'drawing on local energy.' The Archmage and his apprentice apparently do not store most of their energy for magic within themselves, rather they pull in what is around, focusing it within their body before releasing it as a spell. Sustained magic is a constant drain on a 'spell flinger' both in terms of magic energy and physical stamina and limits their tactical options.

Unfortunately, something I have not yet seen that would be quite telling is the interplay of different elements of magic working together to do something quite different. This tells me that the developers probably do not see the mixing of elements as an important world mechanic. Whether this means will won't see such at all remains to be seen, but I won't be expecting it to play nearly the role I had hoped.

Races
EverQuest has always have quite a myriad of races available for players to choose from. So far we know that EQN will be starting upon the Combine's return, and according to the books the Combine consists of Elves, Dwarves, Ogres, Humans, Kerrans, and Gnomes. I would expect that all of these races will be available to play from the start. Whether or not any of the traditionally 'evil' races will be playable is not yet indicated in the text, though I believe Dark Elves (Teir'Dal) were officially announced as playable.

Good Vs Evil
In the past, EQ has used a stark contrast between Good and Evil but the have allowed us to play on either side. EQN we are already told does not hold to such a limited view. They said very clearly during the Dark Elf Workshop that there will be no such thing as an 'Evil Race.' This is also evidenced in the books. Elves are seen as All Evil by their Oger and Dwarven slaves but are proven otherwise. The Elvin Arch Mage Corelon is by no means Hard Core Evil like Ithiosor, but he is quite selfish in almost all respects and utilized Coercion magic with extreme skill. The Elvin Prince Keramor is unarguably a Good Guy figure but also holds his own views which many would consider to be more on the 'evil' side. Dragons are diverse in opinion and method even as they rally to destroy the mortal races. Rather than an arbitrary distinction, how our character is perceived in EQN will come down to personal action and inaction.

Cartography & Maps: An EQN Proposal by Thornbrier

Summer blocks at UVU run fast and I've been cramming for finals. While I finish up my research for my next big article I'd like to share with you another of my older documents. This is one I believe is just as valid today as the day I wrote it.

Far too commonly games have their maps automatically available to the player for the entire world at once. If the world you are playing is supposed to be well explored and heavily documented with easy availability of information, that’s not a problem. But EQN is supposed to be a new discovery of this ancient and changing world. If I understand the released lore our peoples have only recently come back after generations of captivity, we have little information about the world around us. Given that information networks are not vastly established I would think our maps should reflect this.

Our map should only initially reveal areas we have already seen with vague indications based on what our character has heard about. But even when the landscape is mapped out, you will still need to find out the places name(s) from the locals or others who have found out before that information will display on the map. They might be able to point out on your map, “Oh, yeah, that's Mulborn Forest, good game hunting there, and that one is Winsor Peak, where Lady Winsor calmed the five year storm.” This motivates exploration of the unknown and asking questions, lore immersion, and opens up the possibility for a crafting profession, Cartographers. Not everyone wants to be an explorer, they want things and locations already mapped out for them. Cartographers could use their crafting skill to make maps of specific areas as they travel them, then sell those maps to other players. When the other player uses the item it fills in their in-game map with any information they didn't already have.

These maps could include not just the base map of the game, but also anything the cartographer has discovered about the area, such as locations of secret items/doors/passages. Current (as of crafting) known locations of mob camps. You could also leave special notes in the map which might be clues or your very own ‘quest’ in the world that you write for people to follow. This system would be similar to the current Player Written books in EQII.

In other proposals I have already said that Quests should change, practically be done away with for everything but social structure initiation style events (such as an NPC guild having you do specific things to prove yourself before they let you join or increase your rank). I would even say there is basically no reason to have a Quest unless it requires the player to pay attention to it and think through how to accomplish it. As such, you should also never have the location just show up on the map for where you need to go unless the NPC is willing to indicate that for you. Some groups that would give you a mission might have a map of where they want you to go, awesome, that’s a way a player might gain an area of map they hadn’t already purchased or visited.

There might even be several locations in which the mission could happen, and when you do it the location is picked randomly for you and your group (so you don’t have to do it in different places when playing together) or can do it at any location any other member of your group has the same quest at too. These locations should scale in difficulty for the number of people going into them as well, either by increasing the number of enemies or their intelligence.

If you want an easier time of doing the Thieve’s Guild quest then you could check online to see if anyone has posted the information for your server’s version of it, or you might check the Auction House for a map some cartographer has created detailing the quest. Such a map where they show all the possible locations, with markers, notes about mobs and what you need to do, maybe even hints about things you should take with you. This would be like having a mentor in the Guild who has passed the test before and is willing to give you advice.

How might Cartography work? You would need to craft or purchase the paper and ink, the larger the map you intend to make the more paper and ink you will need. You travel to where you want to make the map and start recording, remembering to give it the settings you want to use (such as recording known place and Point-of-Interest names, visited NPCs and their observed routs, current mob camp locations). Anywhere you travel from there will be recorded until you run out of paper or ink. You can open the map and add markers and notes at your current location and set these notes to be visible on mouse-over or on character’s arrival in the area (useful for player created quest maps). Eventually you will end the recording or run out of paper or ink and it will end automatically. A cartographer can learn to duplicate any map they have in their possession for distribution to friends, which will take more paper and ink of course, but the map’s original creator earns most of the money when they are sold on the Auction House/Broker.

Some classes might have abilities which can grant them additional options for recording on maps, like recording scent trails they come across, or divining resource locations or weather pattern effects. Other classes might be better equipped to unlock specific types of information, such as places of magical power or which deity is currently infused to a specific house of worship. In many of these cases a friend traveling with the cartographer could supply the information for recording.

With the constantly changing nature of the world explorers will always have new things to find in old places, and cartographers will have reason to update their maps for sale. As such, maps should always show when they were created as well. It is easy to envision a few ambitious cartographers making daily runs in a given area on a given server and becoming well known for supplying them on the market, ensuring that anyone willing to pay for it has accurate and up to date information available to them.

Storybricks AI In Depth

The Storybricks AI system, which is the backbone of EverQuest: Next's Emergent AI.

The following video from GameAIConf shows how Storybricks works through a few simple text based game interactions and is intended for an audience with a background in Game AI. We will be seeing the full scale application of this amazing technology in just a couple weeks at SOE Live when they show it off in the EverQuest: Next voxel world with 3d characters, and this presentation will be intended for players to understand. Go ahead and watch it if you are interested in the details behind the system, then come back for my discussion about what he didn't say here but has elsewhere and some implications of the system. Or just skip the video and I will try to give a summery of how it works.



First off, Storybricks is a Story Telling Engine which is designed to function on any type of game system. They call this being 'Game System Agnostic.' I don't just mean the classic PC vs Console debates either, I mean working for a text based game like shown in the video or a full graphics game, a single player horror or an MMO Shooter, Storybricks doesn't care what system you lay on top of it, it will happily function for any of them.

So what does it mean to be a Story Telling Engine? Basically, it takes the elements the designer has given it and constantly creates the story on the fly with the players choices. The designer need not plot out each new story and create separate content for every choice, they just design the elements and the players actions will cause new stories to unfold around them.

Parts of a Story Brick
In Storybricks these elements are called Universal Story Bricks and are utilized for everything. Every character is their own brick, every dramatic plot element is a brick (in the video he shows Winter from The Game of Thrones as a brick). If it makes sense to do so then organizations (such as the Houses of Capulet and Montague in Romeo & Juliet) can be their own bricks.

        Drives
Each brick can have its own Drives, these are the goals and desires that direct any action it has upon anything else. Those familiar with the EQN unvailing probably remember Dave Georgeson talking about making Orcs and 'releasing them into the world.' He mentioned some of their 'drives.' Orcs like roads that are traveled only a little bit. Orcs like to attack travelers. Orcs don't like Guards. Orcs don't like Cities. Orcs don't like getting beat up

        Changes
The next part of a Brick defines Changes that it can apply to other bricks. This can be anything from altering a mood, a change in faction reputation, granting traits, applying a buff effect, casting a spell, dealing damage. In our Orc example, there is a brick which constantly polls the game database for how often players travel the roads. If the travel is in the right range then the Road brick becomes attractive to the Orcs. A lone traveler's brick will tell the Orcs to attack.

        Parts
Parts seems a little miss named to me, but these define the limits to what the Changes are allowed to apply to. This ensures that each brick works together correctly with all the other bricks in the system.

        Exits
Actions which counter the drives of a brick trigger Exits, alternate paths that go to another brick, in some ways they are quite similar to Changes but is quite important for organizing when assembling a series of bricks to make the story. Exits are how you can foil the Orcs plans. Another brick would keep track of how often the Orcs are getting beat up so that the Orcs will leave the area if that gets too frequent. A nearby guard's brick will tell the Orc bricks to leave.

Interactive Stories
Ok, so that's what makes up the bricks of Storybricks, but how does this make an interactive story? Interactive Stories are about making meaningful choices. With so many bricks having conflicting Drives there should be plenty of room for dramatic tension and for opportunity costs. Each time a brick needs to make a choice several bricks with matching Changes and Parts are resented based on the brick's current Drives. Each time a choice is made it means that other choices are not made (which is the foundation of opportunity cost) and that inaction regarding other bricks can effect the choices they make.

Dynamic Ecosystem
Dave Georgeson, director of the EverQuest franchise, likes to refer to the interaction between bricks as a massive network of sumo wrestlers. They all push on each other and even a little difference in one push will have ripple effects through the whole system. Lets say a player doesn't like having the Orcs on that road but they aren't strong enough to kill the orcs themselves. So they go to a town and bribe a guard to travel the road. The Orcs don't like the guard on the road, so they leave. Now there is a 'power vacuum' in the area with the Orcs gone. Panthers come in to hunt the livestock in the area. The farmers are unable to produce food for the city because of the panthers. Time goes by without any of the players noticing (after all, it's a rarely traveled area) and the city doesn't ge their food. The city's food prices go up because of the shortage. NPCs in town are now desperate for aid from players. If the players don't help them they will be vulnerable to attack from other creatures and th town might be destroyed. This is only one of the many unintentional ramifications of the player bribing the guard to say nothing of what happens to the area were the Orcs ended up going.

Structured Stories
At times a designer will want to tell stories that are more structured. This largely comes down to designing the Drives, Changes, Parts (limits), and Exits of the main actor bricks so that they will eventually tell the right story as well as making sure the choice bricks made available are designed to fit those. It is also possible to select how dramatic the choices should be at any given time. This allows for having lulls for the player to recover from the stories climaxes, after all, you can't have the story running at full throttle the whole time or it will burn out the player and cheapen the climactic moments. Pacing is important for all stories, structured or dynamic.

Simplicity
In the video we saw a little bit of the code behind the bricks, and while I could tell you that it is really simple code we all know that most people would be completely unable to do anything if it requires typing things out in code. I know I hate coding myself. Which is why I am glad that in other videos from Storybricks we have seen that they are making a much easier way to make these things, so easy that you don't need to know anything about programming to make it work. Simply move the bricks around, connect them based on their shapes to make what you want and it will write the code to match. I still haven't seen the system for making those bricks and determining their shapes, but we are told that system will be easy to use as well. At the very least, in late April the stated that they had already programmed all of the possible 'basic wants, needs, desires, and emotions' which any characters in EQN would need. These basic drives should be made available to anyone using Storybricks and since it is Game System Agnostic it doesn't matter if you are making something totally different from EQN, these basic drives should still be fully applicable.

This system should revolutionize AI design, changing the face of the industry and the face of interactive storytelling in general. It will open the doors of crafting meaningful stories to a much larger pool of developers without costing a fortune to craft. I see AAA games and Indy games all taking advantage of this, and EQN is, as Dave said, "their show pony." It shouldn't be too much longer till we can start using this system in Landmark since Landmark is the toolset SOE is using to build EQN and they will need to start programming those NPCs soon.

I can't wait to see the presentation of Storybricks in EQN at SOE Live, only two weeks to go. In the future I will discuss in greater detail some of the implications of this system in EverQuest: Next and how it relates to the Four Holy Grails that Dave presented at SOE Live last year.

Three Short EQN Proposals of old.

Today I'm going to go over a couple of my shorter EQ:N Proposals from back before or just after the launch of the Landmark Alpha. First, Tracking by Smell & Sounds

------------------ Tracking by Smell and Sound - An EQN Proposal by Thornbrier

In one of the early panels for the reveal of EQN the topic of having ‘smell vision’ was brought up. Personally, I think something like this could be very practically applied. Among the many tags that items, characters, and places would have are the odor tags. Odor tags would leave in their wake and in the area around them a decaying tag signifying the odor’s passage or presence. A character capable of tracking by smell would then gain an overlay of the area around them which would show various hovering color trails leading off in different directions. It may be necessary for them to narrow down their search as the flood of information would get too confusing to follow. By narrowing it down they could track the smell they believe belongs to their target. Other than their selected smells showing up as smoky trails around them, their vision should remain as it normally is (or with whatever other vision modifier they are using).

The selection window will display the names of all NPC’s they have spoken with who they have been around since gaining the ability to track by smell, along with any odor tags they are currently able to smell, or have recently smelled, including those on their own person (even if stored in a D-pocket, like pulling out a bit of a subject’s clothes for a bloodhound to track).

NOTE: Any items being carried in ‘dimensional pockets’ or some such should not leave an odor trail.

Sound tracking might be a little different, allowing you to choose specific types of sounds the character would be listening for, color coding each of the selected sounds as they wish. These don’t need to all be audible to the player. But whenever these sounds loud enough to reach them they would be given the direction and an indicator for roughly how far away it is. Viable sounds might be chains, wings, footsteps, scratching. speech, the voice of a known character, the sound of heavy armor, swishing fabric, or combat. While not quite as precise as tracking by smell, tracking by sound definitely has its uses.

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Some of this next one has already been confirmed, but I will provide it in the original form.

-------------- NPC Nameplates & Movement

When you first meet someone you don’t know their name, you don’t know what they do, or anything about them. As such, I think it fitting that you not get an NPC’s name and profession stated for you before you’ve ever even met them. Shops and stalls should obviously be labeled, so if you find an NPC in the Blacksmith’s shop working at an anvil it’s a pretty good bet that’s the Blacksmith, you don’t need a label for that. Once you hail them they typically introduce themselves, at which point they should gain a nameplate with as much information about them as has been revealed.

At a stall that acts as a front for a secret organization their identity as part of that organization will only be labeled once your character has found out their affiliation.

When a story progression ‘quest’ tells you to find a specific character they will tell you where you should likely be able to find them and when. At the given time the NPC would show up, unless they’d been delayed, and you could then ask if they were the specific person.

NPCs with ‘quests’ shouldn't have a huge marker saying so. Their actions and words should be used if they are trying to get your attention. Sometimes an NPC might come up to you and say, “Hey, I need your help.” But other times you will need to initiate the conversation to find out if they have something for you to do. Might even need to be wearing the right stuff, have the right reputation, and ask the right questions.

The NPCs should move about on their own schedule. They will have errands to run of their own, need to go home and sleep, or go to work. A blacksmith won’t craft you stuff while she’s at the provisioner or at home. A clandestine character might be unwilling to talk about the heist they want you to perform while they are at their day job. Some characters might live and work in the same place, so they are more likely to perform their duties even if you catch them eating instead of at their crafting station. Some might use magics to sustain them, allowing them to remain vigilent at all times. An NPC’s schedule shouldn't just be based on Day/Night, but also on which day of the week it is, whether or not it is a holiday, the current weather, mobs in the area, and even the current workload and city population (NPC and PC).

With major events NPC’s might even move to other cities, but aside from specific story instances a single NPC should never be in multiple locations at once on the same server. It always annoyed me a little that in WoW I would see Thrall in one place wearing a newer outfit, watching from a specific rock where he always stood, then I return to Orgrimmar and he’s there in his older outfit on the throne, never having left, return to the rock, and he’s still there. Obviously, this was because of the static system, something which would need to be maintained for some specific story points, but this should never be the case in the open world.

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I'd like to think I've gotten better in my writing of these since then. Here's another odd one, I hope we will see aspects of this, but I find it a little unlikely.

-------------------  Realm of the Dead

Some games have used Corps Runs through a dead version of the world as the penalty for being defeated. Others cause you to drop all your gear where you died. These games almost never have any discussion, let alone explanation, of why you don't stay dead.  Given Norrath's known history of the living dealing with the dead it might make sense to combine these concepts to create something we've never seen in an MMO before.

When you die you show up right were you died, but in a realm of the dead. As long as you stay near your body you are protected from its inhabitants. Some of the various enemies with souls that you and others have killed in the area hang around wanting revenge, others just accept their fate and move on. You can look at the fighting the living are doing near your body, as well as see items on the ground.

The realm you appear in depends on the tier of the class you died playing. Higher tiers have  fewer and tougher ghosts as well as shorter distances than the realm of the living. Each time you are defeated while dead it drops you to the tier below. The lowest tier mobs don't actually damage you, rather, they slow you down using states, trips, slow effects, and generally getting in your way in this realm that is already longer distance than the realm of the living.

You must find your way to a PC or NPC capable of resurrecting you. In some places these could be friendly ghosts, but most of those must be befriended or placated before they will help you. Alternatively you could use a soul shard to revive right at your body (or pay SC to get a soul shard for immediate use).

When you die only soulbound items can be carried into the realms of the dead. Everything else will drop at your corps for others to pick up. Items don't automatically bind, and it is impossible to bind an item to yourself. Someone else with the skill and reagents must do it for you (player or NPC) and will likely charge for the service unless it is part of a contract they wish you to fulfill. The same goes for unbinding items from your soul.

Some places are weak points between the realms allowing the dead to spill into our realm, these can also act as doors for the living to enter the realms of the dead without dyeing.  Some weak points are stationary, others are mobile. Those who gain power by manipulating the dead love to gain control of such locations as they are far easier to control in our realm. Similarly, these locations also attract those who would see the dead left at peace, or at the least, not used as a weapon against themselves. The recently departed can far more easily be restored to life if they can find their way back to the realm of the living as spirits in the realm of the living are visible to all instead of a limited few with the ability to see through the vails.

When summoned at these places, a necromancers minions tend to be empowered until destroyed.

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Anyway, I hope you enjoyed these short glimpses into the writings that started me off to now have this blog.

Size & Weight - An Unlikely EQN Proposal

Sorry I haven't posted recently, I'm currently on a trip to a family reunion and haven't had very good net access on the road or at my previous hotel. Since I have another long day on the road tomorrow I'll start posting a few of my old EQN Proposals and Points to Ponder documents. The following was mostly written right before Landmark Alpha was launched. Given what they have said since I don't think much of this will be in EQ:N, but perhaps some of the ideas will still be usable, or someone might make a game that does use this.

---------- Size & Weight - An EQN Proposal by Thornbrier

I remember in the good old days of playing Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 one of my groups favorite spell sets were the ability to grow and shrink our party members and our enemies. This presented so many possibilities in very few spells, they were an exceptional utility. It also made our racial sizes really matter. I will discuss how a similar system could be implemented in EQN.

Voxel World
Finally having a Voxel World means size should determine how large a hole needs to be for your character to move through it. A massive ogre is going to need to destroy more of the mountain side to progress than a small ratonga. Being a mighty ogre also means that when they dig into the mountain, they take a larger bite than a weak ratonga. And those larger legs on the ogre should also mean they are able to cover more terrain in a flat out run, able to effortlessly vault over low rises that the ratonga must either navigate around or spend time climbing using their excellent climbing claws. The ogre might accidentally run right past their target if they don’t slow down soon enough, but the ratonga would be noticing every detail. Humans, not designed for such a size might need to use a nearby chair to jump up to a table they had just been eating at when their pixie friend plays a joke on them. One method of getting around the ‘slower movement’ might be to acquire speed potions that grant you a set speed regardless of size (note, it is possible to use one that is set slower than your natural speed, so be careful what you drink).

Mass
I’m very glad that the devs have stated that materials will have their own mass and toughness, steel will be harder to break than dirt and will be thrown differently from an explosion, the same should be true of characters. When a force knocks us back light characters should be thrown farther than heavy characters. If my Hurricane Strike throws a human several feet, a pixie should go much farther, while a massive minotaur should barely be moved a foot, and a true giant wouldn't even be phased by the effect. We know these functions exist in the engine, it’s just a matter of attaching the required data to the objects and abilities.

Larger characters should deal more damage with physical attacks and have more hitpoints while they are larger. Spells would not be affected much by their caster’s size. However, some skills are a combination of physical and magic. If a minotaur has a flame stomp the area and damage of the core stomp would shrink or grow with the minotaur’s size, but the fire damage would be unaffected (though, the AoE, starting from the edge of the foot, would end up having a smaller/larger radius).

One thing that all of this means is that those MASSIVE battle bosses don’t need to be programmed to be stronger, they just become stronger by virtue of their size, and their arena being designed to accommodate that size.

Hit Box
A small creature would be harder to hit with non-aoe attacks given their small hitbox. If your ogre is the size of a barn than only the most inept attacker would ever miss. That large hitbox comes in handy for blocking attacks from striking your allies or even just blocking a path. This would generate the ‘active tanking’ rather than ‘taunt tanking’ spoken of for getting rid of the holy trinity.

Detection
Relative sizes should play a vital part in whether or not a creature notices you unless their senses are quite sensitive. No one will miss the giant stomping toward them from far off, but the little froglock hopping through the barbarian camp could easily go unnoticed for quite some time.

Racial Size
Obviously, I’ve been talking about these races as being comparatively different sizes, but how big? In D&D the called it Tiny, Small, Medium, Large, Colossal, Gargantuan, but that won't quite fit a voxel world. I would think that when you are choosing character appearance you would set your height in 1x1x1 cube voxels within the range for that race. Pixies might range from 2 to 4 voxels tall. Perhaps Ratonga can range from 4 to 7, humans from 8 to 12, while an ogre would be more like 18 to 23 voxels tall.

Weight
When increasing or decreasing a character’s size keep in mind that double the height is not double the weight, it’s roughly eight times the weight. So, a 6’ tall 180 pound person doubling in height becomes 12’ tall and 1440 pounds.
While this could be fudged for a game world (since large things like the giant golem seen in the announcement video would not be supported by the earth under it) it should still be impactful, maybe four times instead, our 12’ human only becoming 720 pounds. For simplicity sake, I would not recommend altering the weight of items in backpacks. We already suspend disbelief that we can carry the tons of equipment and mats that we do in those dimensional pockets, lets keep it that way.

Terrain
The devs said they are trying to balance the physics, but it is possible in this engine. This includes the structural integrity of the terrain to withstanding weight and damage as well as rolling structures and water dynamics.

Some parts of terrain should care about the weight being applied on it. Perhaps a sheet of ice, a bridge, or a tree branch, these should all break if too much ‘weight’ is registered there.

Creatures might have ‘tremorsense’ allowing them to ‘see’ based on a weight threshold moving on the ground they are on. Similarly some pressure plates might only trigger (both positive and negative) based on having enough weight applied. The characters size and their gear would determine how much their total weight is (though Fae, Pixies, magic carpets, and other perpetual fliers wouldn't be considered to ‘weigh’ pretty much anything).

Changing Sizes
Some spells would be Preparations (ie, out of combat, not on the hot bar). I see these coming in two forms. One is basically permanent until removed by a debuff ability or turning it off out of combat. The other is a triggered removal or activation.
Example: As an Elemental Defender Ratoga (who has also multiclassed to Ritual Weaver) I might cast a ritual that sets me permanently to 20 voxels tall (yeah, a huge rat), and a triggered ritual that sets me to 3 voxels (only a little smaller than my default of 5). Sneaking in while small, as soon as I attack the trigger goes off, dropping my second spell, so I suddenly go from 3 voxels to 20. During the fight I keep using Elemental Defender Combat Arts that temporarily increase my height by 2 voxels each for 15 seconds, stacking only 5 times until I reach the PC maximum of 30 voxels. My physical attacks appear MASSIVE, as large as a PC can get them outside of scripted events, while my magical effects appear tiny by comparison. The enemies, having a spellcaster of their own, do the smart thing and dispel my ritual. Suddenly I shrink to only 15 voxels tall (5 natural + 10 from the Elemental Defender CAs). Given the 15 second limit on each instance of the buff and my low mana regeneration I keep fluctuating between 13 and 19 voxels for the rest of the fight.

Permanent/Long Term size change should be ‘absolute value’, simply setting a party member’s size, whereas temporary changes should be +/- either an amount or a percentage.

Putting it All Together
A character who wants to be rather tanky might cast a growth spell on himself and summon a Vanishing Chest (a chest that can hold your bags for you and gives them back later) which he tells his companions to put all of their bags into or to activate their flight/hover or shrink abilities before a fight because most of the mobs in this next area are blind but have tremorsense and he doesn’t want the enemies to know where anyone but himself is located. Sure the enemies will still throw attacks out where they feel they are getting attacked from, so keep moving as you fight, but it keeps most of the focus on the HUGE fighter in the center of the room that keeps pounding the ground making lots of tremors for them to ‘see.’

This could also be used on enemies, if the enemy is too heavy to throw into the air for your slam attack, shrink it, or maybe their quick movements through the caves holes are making them hard to hit, grow them so they can’t fit in the holes any more. But remember, you are exchanging the advantages/weaknesses of the sizes, not purely ‘debuffing’ them, and the smarter AI should be able to take advantage of the change. Perhaps the enemy is standing over a thin sheet of rock over lava, you could have your team move in to add their weight to the rock to break it, or you could use a Combat Art spell to grow the enemy larger so their own increased weight breaks it, or use some kind of explosive attack to break the sheet at range, but regardless, keep watching out so your own team doesn’t fall in. Because that swarm of small enemies might skitter over the thin rock just fine as long as they stay spread out, but your large Warrior is going to drop right in as soon as he steps out there. Many ways to accomplish the same goal all depending on how you wish to play.

Alternatives
It should also be made clear that being big should not be the only way one can tank. Magic items and class abilities might be used to modify a character's base HP Percentage which would not stack with the Size modified HP Percentage, just using the better of the two. Same thing goes for modifying physical damage, run speed, detectability, jump height, and every other aspect modified by size, except the point of where your character ‘ends’ for self-centered AoEs like a fire aura, (get things that increase the range of the aura instead) and the hitbox for blocking attacks from hitting allies. One some classes this last point will call for a different strategy of tanking, other classes might have the tank putting up shields and barriers rather that don’t change in size with them rather than relying upon their hitbox. I will be proposing two ranged ‘tanks’ who use similar but different mechanics that would not be changed by their size, but using a classic example: a Paladin might raise a pillar of holy light around themselves which stay for a time that cause massive damage to any enemy creature which moves through it and slowly regenerates allies within them. Through the course of the fight they are caging in the enemy with these pillars, and whenever they raise their shield it grants them a 20 voxel high by 15 voxel wide magic barrier that moves in front of them regardless of their own size (if the barrier’s damage is all used it will take time to recharge, but otherwise it recharges each time it is brought back up, so proper timing of when to drop it is key). In this way, even a 1 voxel character could tank using their magic.

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Well, that's the first EQN Proposal from the past with very little edits since way back when. I'll be putting up a few more of these this next week.

EverQuest: Next - Combining the Best to make the Best

Lets give a little love to Lucky Saint on youtube who put together this quick summery of some of the great features to look forward to in EverQuest: Next.



I will go into more detail in later posts, but for now let me introduce you to the 4 Holy Grail of EQ:N that back up what Lucky Saint has said here. If you want to see it directly, most of what I present below can be seen in the second half of the Debut footage from last years SOE Live, but other interviews and presentations have cleared up several details as well. This might get rather long, but it is a lot shorter than hunting down all those interviews to get every detail (I've spent the last few weeks doing just that).

Grail 1: Changing the Core Game
A vast and robust system of Multi-Classing with over 40 classes at launch to explore and find in the world (starting with one of 8 when you make your character). The more classes you find the more you can customize your character to choose how you want to play. This is quite cool, though... multi-classing has been done before with many different methods. Other aspects explored below really drive home this Grail for me. Though, I would also point out here, a major change is getting rid of Levels.

There will be 5 Tiers that represent a players skill with their class's abilities and mechanics, not just 'how much xp you farmed' on that class. There will be several different measures for determining when you have mastered an aspect of a class and you will then be rewarded with different tools to learn and experiment with, but these tools won't be more powerful. Seeing a Tier 5 warrior fight a Tier 1 warrior won't mean the T1 just dies at a single swing. If the T1 is a better player and knows their opponent well they will win, the T5 just has more options available to them for how they want to build their character. If they planned the fight ahead of time the T5 will have an advantage in already knowing what build the T1 will have (same as any T1 warrior) and can specialize their design to face that using the wider variety of tools available to them.

By having all content be relevant to even max characters the designers don't have to split their focus between 'leveling content' and 'end game content' like they currently do. That will mean more content for everyone.

Grail 2: Destructibility
"We wanted to be able to blow up anything, anytime, anywhere." By building the entire world out of voxels (think of 3d pixels) which means that this world can be easily built and destroyed. The possibilities here are just.... so awesome. The world is not going to be limited to the surface either, several layers of chasms below, earth quacks will change the subterranean landscape, you will be able to dig down into the world to find different content, you can actually tear down the enemies walls or destroy a bridge as they cross it. With the ability to destroy and build and shift the world this also means never ending exploration potential. Complete destructibility opens up so much possible game play we have never seen before.

Grail 3: A Life of Consequence
Everything you do in game the game will remember, and the new Emergent AI will have everything respond to your history. Instead of programming monsters (mobs) to always show up at one place and attack you forever they will be programmed with likes, dislikes, desires, wants, physical needs, "and then release them into the world." The mobs and other Non-Player Characters (NPCs) will all have their own little lives continuing even when you aren't around. "Merchants don't like the dark, so they go home." And shady merchants don't like being seen by guards, so the dark of night is their friend. If you fight the goblins hard enough they might leave the forest, or their king might decide to rally an army to attack your city.

With your actions each NPC and mob will like what you do or dislike what you do and will react accordingly. You can even establish relationships with NPCs. Perhaps you visit Angy the baker every day and smile. Angy likes that you bring her a smile every day and eventually asks if you will help her get things she needs for better baking in exchange for free pastries. This is a deal that not everyone has and not everyone can get. It's not unbalancing, but it is personal, and everyone can establish different relationships with different NPCs. Angy's husband, the blacksmith, might not like 'your flirting' with her and decides to charge you more for his services, and unless you ask about his surly attitude toward you, you probably won't ever know why.

The Emergent AI is being programmed by an awesome company called Storybricks which makes dynamic scripting much easier. No longer will you need to be a programmer to be able to design an NPC or mob, you can just take the various 'bricks' and assemble them for a given NPC or mob and those bricks will automatically reference all relevant code and tags in the world and on the players. Even more awesome is that if the NPC encounters a situation that its current bricks can't handle then the system will compare the current bricks with the bricks available and the situation and will then select a new brick to add to the NPC, forever making that a part of the NPC for future interactions. SELF LEARNING NPCs! This is the part which has some people claiming that 'Storybricks is programming the system that will become Skynet and start sending Terminator robots to kill us all.'

Suffice it to say, this totally changes the face of MMO's forever. Mobs and NPCs will learn and adapt to your strategies. The old Tank & Spank and the Trinity of MMOs just won't work anymore.

Grail 4: Permanent Change
Another application of the Storybricks Emergent AI will be major events called Rallying Calls which will cause large scale permanent change. This could be the building or destruction of a city, a major war, huge natural disasters, all kinds of huge events. How players handle these on each server, or how/when they accidentally trigger a Rallying Call's progression steps will make every server a unique world. Cities on one server might not exist on another. If you were to play for a few years then roll up a new character it will literally be impossible to have the same gaming experience, the entire world would have changed.

Players will have so much personal history and stories to tell of how, "I was here, on the front lines when this city was built. That was before the goblin invasion, and before the red dragon attack, and that was before the civil war. Yeah, this city has grown a lot in the years I've been defending it. A lot of NPCs here I really care about. Though, I wasn't able to save Angy the baker, the dragon.... I couldn't save her." It is these types of personal stories and experiences that really help a game feel vibrant and personal for years to come. EQ:N is being designed to last for decades, not just to grab your money and run.

But That's Not All!
These are the Four Holy Grails of EverQuest: Next. While developing the tools to build this they decided to create Landmark. Landmark is a separate game in which they will give us all of the tools needed to make EQ:N and let us a) build any type of game we want (unless it is 'obscene') and b) help build EQ:N with the devs. Already we have been designing the architecture of the Dark Elves and are currently working on the Kerran architecture. Right now we can only build structures, but eventually we will have Storybricks as well so we can program NPCs and mobs the way we want to. But I'm now getting a lot deeper than I should for this post. More on that stuff another time.