Randomization based MMORPBA

News & General Discussion
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Hey guys, Appliances here. I want to create an in-depth discussion about a randomized game that brings aspects from many other styles of gaming/games to create a world that is completely unique to those that play it. The ability for Players to develop their Champions in such a unique way, that hopefully no one on their server, or maybe even the world, has a champion quite like theirs. I will be discussing games such as LoL, Fable, Minecraft, and even aspects from “Roguelike” games.

I want you to think of three questions while reading this article: is scripting a game that I am about to discuss, possible? Is a game like this, viable? And if the latter are true, then how long would it take? In this discussion we are going to break away from set storyboarding, graphics, and focus mainly on scripting capability and creativity. I myself not being a crazy scripter by any means, but knowing enough to make the discussion practical. To reduce graphic tension, the game setting will be that of a birds eye view, and similar to League of Legends. This way we can enhance skillshots, tactical gaming mentality, the impact of microclicking, and other great aspects that come with a Diablo/LoL scenario. The way the map comes to be will mimic the randomness of a Roguelike or minecraft. Characters will develop like Fable, or elder Scrolls. And without further adue, lets have some fun.

I want to start by discussing the map setup, and how the map will come to be. The view will be birds eye with graphics similar to League or Diablo, maybe simpler for size purposes. But HOW the map is configured and spawned will be very similsr to a “Roguelike” or minecraft game. The first person to ever log into a server (hopefully there will be many servers as the game grows) will cause the initial portion of the map to spawn. Just like how if you made a new minecraft server. However, there won’t be thousands of little destroyable blocks, but rather chunks of information, such as “this area is generally foresty, with evil traits, and the objects that spawn are normally a darker/erie shade of color. The spells and trainign one would aquire from this area, would be necromancer, life steal, curses, fears, and bloodrawn weaponry. However, assets with the exact opposite traits would also spawn on a more rare basis (such as your paladin trying to cleanse the area)” this type of information would be needed for each chunk of land that was force spawned after the server was created. The first chunk of land being a hometown that everyone starts in, with some characters that would help someone new to a game this advanced. The map would be in a hexagon shape, that way any new chunks could connect to eachother easily. When the first character ever, reaches the edge of the first hexagon, be causes a new one to spawn, with similar, the same, or totally different traits than the first. The map MUST be fluid, meaning a n evil zone, could eventually be turned into a heavenly zone, because of the players influence on it. This however is an advanced fluidity, so I’ll give an example of simple fluidity: trees might be destroyed through battle, or, if a player finds a flute, it may cause a cave to be created under a hill which can be unlocked by playing the flute on that hill, but only with a tune that the character learned from the townsfolk, or finding a book on a dead skeleton. Both the cave, and the tune, would not have existed if the character did open a chest, and find the flute. This might Tie into how quests would be carried out.

Character development. All characters would start as children, like in Fable. They would be a clean slate. No stats, they aren’t a “mage” or “warrior” but they all have the possibility of everything. They travel the world to seek out items and quests that might benefit their current spell combo or kit. Or the champion they seek to create. It would almost be like, making your own League champion, from scratch. They would use items that helped raise stats that would make the spells they choose to play with, stronger, or more diverse. Such as the character that found the flute, would be promoted to keep that flute forever, for it might help train a heal spell, or stun spell. The flute after a long time, might even provide a unique spell of its own. Which the character may or may not use towards their battle kit. Skillshots would obviously exist. But they would develop them on their own. A character might learn “ice” and start out by only being able to just shoot a simple ball forward. But over time, they would be able to completely customize their ice. Making a circle AOE ice storm, or a cone damage type, or a more powerful straight shot. Also, all basic attacks, if the chamlion even used them, would be skillshots too. And I have a new idea on how spells would be cast. There would be a basic attack hotbar. Meaning you would hold, say Q down, and depending on when you released it, would have different effects. Say, someone with a sword could press Q, and do a stab. But holding it might be a power sweep, but holding it for a decent amount of time, might be a special basic attack. Players would be able to use this hotbar in concession with their spell kit. Such as, pressing W, causes an ice shot that goes straight, but holding it might have other effects, or holding Q, then pressing W, might be a basic attack, with the effect of ice, all being customizable by the player. And the player would attain the ability to do these things, over time, in a completely randomized world. All monsters that spawn, would also have these same potentials. They would spawn as a cleans slate. And they would also be able to continuously level up, having their own spells, like a normal character would. Making bosses, producable over time, and not specifically created. Say a monster spawns and is week, but kills another monster, so it gets stronger, and keeps getting stronger and stronger, it might become a boss for that zone. Characters might not even be able to travel that zone because the monster might be so hostile, fast, and strong, that a full team is required to clear it, or a sneaky, rogue character, would be the only ones to travel this zone.

Quests. They would be farely random, and almost never set in stone. I’m so done with “kill ten of these, and you get this” like no, the characters should be able to find their own quests, and seek things out, because they want to, not have to. The character to get the flute, would use the flute, and eventually discover a tune that opens a cave. But he would have to seek it out himself and find it through time and on his own.

That’s about it! Let me know what you guys think!

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First question: What is the player doing? What’s the primary mechanic?

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I don’t think that works well in a game with fully randomized content. Think of Dark Souls which is also very open and doesn’t funnel you through a fixed progression, but if you are lost you can just check the wiki on what you could or should do. You can’t have that outside source of information if everything is random. Imho the goals should be more clear cut, even if you are free in how to achieve them. E.g. in 7 Days to die your goal is to survive past day 7 and it’s up to you how you do it. But due to the mechanics you’ll be doing very specific things because you need to. You need food, water, shelter, weapons, tools, furnaces etc…

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The primary mechanics would be character development. One would be in charge of developing the “strongest” character and becoming “the best” it would take a lot of aspects from games like League and Diablo but would essentially be a free world. You’d be able to fight other players all the time when coming into contact with them. And to better your ability to fight, you would have to develop your character in more profound ways. It would be like, a giant league happening with an actual quest system. It would be like building your own LoL champion.

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Ya but darksouls isn’t randomized really at all. It’s really just a simple play through RPG with extremely MEDIOCRE and basic storyboarding. It’s like playing candyland. You literally just go forward through some set paths that can’t be changed. Accept if you want to win, you just look up on Google how to do so. I don’t really see why the necessity to look things up on a third party program would make a game better to play. Also, many games don’t have one select play through, Oblivion has countless offbranches in the story, hell, even Runescape never had one full story yet there was a time when 300k players were active at any given moment on it. You really have to be more open to exploring and finding new aspects of the game that literally didn’t exist beforehand, on a day to day basis. People actually want this type of gaming as well, looking into PokémonGO as an example of a game with randomized content

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That all is closer to an answer. Let’s narrow it down: what are the mechanics of character development in this work? What is the player doing?

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I don’t think his idea covers any mechanics.
It’s just a typical idea of a very diverse game where you can do anything, which I believe many people thought of at some point…

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Ok there’s a viable question, I wanted to promote the idea, and have everyone discuss the mechanics. Mechanics would include, customizable skillshots. But the ability to unlock more customizability in different skill sets according to the characters will to find them. The mechanic that I went over with combination spells, such as the basic attack hotbar, and the fact that clicking a button would cause a different effect. The player woukd seek out objects that would effect them in attaining a route to these spells and skillshots that they could use. They would literally start with nothing, no basic attack, or skillshots. Imagine In Diablo, instead of just blatantly sweeping through levels killing everything, you could either kill them, or interact with them, the interactions is what would grant spells and customizability, killing them would great lower to spells and exp, which also will allow for more customizability. The “randomness” in the game wouldnt be blantant randomness either, a chest would more likely grant an item that is related to the character that opened it, but the possibilities would still be very vast. And that weapon you got from the chest, might just have a piece to a weapon that is better. Building items would be a lot like league, where a fruit that you farmed from a tree that you protected against other players for a while, might have the possibility go be turned into a juice that can eventually be turned into a glue that allows you to have a certain leather on your hilt, making the quality of your sword more “sturdy” or maybe your knife have “less weight” making your basic attack faster. And yes, this is possible, because Runescape has already done it. There are some soups that you can only make by having the right level in like five different skills, and the items you need to make it are found across the whole game, maybe even needing to beat a whole questlines just to get one piece to finish the soup… In the game I’m describing, I want to avoid the idea of finding thousands of old game items that no one needs so they just delete it, I want a character to be able to carry these items for long periods of time, maybe eventually effecting their spells because of having that item for so long. Everything would be stat based so the item itself wouldn’t matter. Two players might be trying to make a potion, so they need a seed, one player might grow a plant that has more stats than the other, therefore the seed they yield from it, would be better, making their item, slightly better. Maybe two players have similar swords, but one slows 19% and one slows 20% just because a big combination of ideas, such as one player being more rounded in ice, as well as having a better made sword. That he made and sought out himself. Other mechanics would be the parent system, a character walks to the edge of a zone, causing a new zone to spawn. That whole zone would be the parent. With certain stats. Meaning the objects, monsters, and abilities related to those stats, would also spawn, of course having room for random and opposite stat spawns. Also the idea of deletion, a wolf might spawn. But if it dies, its not just going to spawn again in the same spot in two minutes, it might be something way different, with different stats. It is up to the player to kill it, or interact with it. Interacting with it would open a lot of other possibilities as well.

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Also, another mechanic would be, not just fighting all the time. You would have non fighting activities like, professions and stuff. And character that came in contact with eachither, wouldn’t just have to fight, they could obviously talk to eachother and choose to go about something together. The game would only show them as hostile, if you actually were hostile, or your stats were just very opposite of there’s. All of the damage/healing you have done to other players around you, would totally be visible on certain stat screens available to the player. This way they could calculate just how strong their opponent is, and if the opponent is just putting out too much damage, they might choose to not fight them, or the game simply wouldn’t let the higher stat player attack the lower stat player. Simple as that. Players that has similar stats would be promoted to either join together, or fight for territory and farm for long periods of time, maybe even having week long rivalrys until one player proved their dominance, to where the other player would give up, and forfeit the zone, or the game would refuse to let them fight anymore. Battles would be much longer, in league you can die in less than .5 seconds. That’s not fun in an RPG. Movement would be much faster, more spells would be available, skillshots would go much farther. Combos would be more epic. For instance, imagine Lee Sin, a league champ, who can roundhouse kick someone using his ultimate ability, knocking them back, and knocking any other enemy in the way, back as well. Imagine if this “ultimate” didn’t have a cooldown, but rather could only be casted after a concession of spells were successfully landed, almost like a dbz game combo, then after landing the spell combo, he could roundhosue kick them, but instead of it being a short distance like in league, its a faaarrr distance, and would possibly destroy scenery. But the scenery would be interactive, for instance, low stat rocks might be broken with simple spells and professions, but high stat rocks, might be virtually impossible to destroy. Yet a fight might occur near, it, a really heated battle, between to players, that has lasted for days, they are just racking up the damage, logging in and out, seeing each other, and immediately fighting, then one finally lands his best combo that he has, and knocks the other through that rock that no one seems to be able to break, and the rock now breaks. If everything was scripted based off stats. These ideas could easily happen

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No, I have a lot of specific ideas based off mechanics that I discussed. You cant even go into first person like elder Scrolls, how would that mean I’m trying to make a game where you can “do everything” no not even close lol. It’s basically an open world league of Legends, that has the ability to spawn random chunks of map, like Minecraft, or a “Roguelike” game. That’s pretty limited if youbask me, also I made my initial post broad, so we could discuss it as a community. But if you have no viable questions or responses I don’t see how it is worth your time to even be on this chat

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Cool list of features.

It doesn’t answer the question, “What is the player doing?” The game is doing a lot. I can’t see this being fun.

Tell you what, let’s try something different. I want you to take a day’s break from this topic.

When you come back, I want you to ask the question, “What is the player doing?” Going one step further: Pretend that the two big answers came from me. Everything you said in response to the question? I said it.

If you can find the answer within the text - if you can find the fun of your concept in that text - put it here. If you can’t, it’s OK. Either way, a better discussion can be had.

The reason I say this? I can’t find the fun. It could be there, but it’s lost in the hay. There’s a lot of hay - and bear in mind, I live in Texas, I know a thing or two about hay. Hay Fever, not so much. But, we’re not talking allergies - we’re talking fun.

Where is it? What is the player doing?

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Hhmm, the players are farming for gold and experience, building weapons and items from scratch, fighting other players with customizable skillshot, leveling up, attempting to find (aka force spawn) some of the best secrets in the game, traveling the game world in which they essential create off a random basis. Becoming the strongest custom made champion. Making groups and factions to take down big monsters. Questing. Thats a lot of doing to me lol, and I already mentioned all those things, a couple of times. The reason I didn’t write it so simply is because, those are pretty obvious things in an RPG. I mean, every RPG has those things. My goal here isn’t to tell you what your doing. This discussion is about CREATING a different way of doing these things. I’m getting us to think deeper. Not mediocre. Stop bringing it to a shallow standpoint. Do you have any advise on, scripting methods that might help a randomized game? Maybe the ability for a pre-existing character to gain random qualities, that it didn’t have before, because of the actions of a distant game object/character? Is that possible? Or are you still trying to figure out what the character is doing.

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Also, where is what? Every server is supposed to be a different where. That’s the point haha. It’s not supposed be another “and you, a super duper magical hero, born in enter cliche fantasy town name” also. There isn’t really an ultimate “end” its not like “you won” or “you saved everyone” its like, WoW, or Runescape, constant playability.

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Much better. So…of all of those things: what’s the most important? There’s a lot of competing things going on there. What is the centerpiece around which all of this revolves? Which mechanic is the one that’s driving the player forward?

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Character development, and battling monsters/other players. The randomization aspect, will also push players forward in a “lets see what’s out there” kind of way. Say a player forces the creation of a character that is similar in stats and qualities to what the player is looking for. The player, in coalition with this character, would retrieve quests, and exp in relation to what the player would want. So the player has a skillshot. And the skillshot is just a straight shot of ice that slows people. And the player has been trying to achieve a passive for his skillshot, that stacks, and after a certain amount of stacks, the skillshot causes the enemy to root in ice to the ground. The player is reeeaallly close to getting this passive. Now say there is another player. This other player is in the same scenario. But this player has spells related to fire, and is in coalition to a game character that is also fire. The game “mechanic” would be that, it recognize that there are opposing characters nearby, their granting both players a quest, that requires the killing of, the other player, and/or the character that the other player is in coalition with. The players seek eachother out, fight, whoever wins, essentially gets the passive they want, and the other doesn’t. Now the winning player can progress further into the game quicker, be because he was very better, noting that the losing player, still has many chances, in other ways, to gain the passive he wants. He might even get special buffs that help him kill the winning player later on. This battle mechanic would keep players on their toes, and would cause them to try their hardest.

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You’ve been using words “custom”, which means that there are several possibilities that the player can chose, and “random” which means the server randomly chooses from several possibilities.
But never have you mentioned any of those possibilities. There are no practical examples of those concepts you are talking about.

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Yes, the concept is explained more broadly until we hone in on the specifics. However. I definitely did give examples, like with the ice mage and fire mage. However, I can answer that for you. I just haven’t talked about it because the convo hasn’t really gotten there yet. I’ll start with the biggest items, to smallest. It will in a sense be a matrix of randomization. Taking Minecraft and “Roguelikes” into context. First the player spawns on a hexagon shaped map, very similar to the LoL arena minus the specific lanes and stuff. This first hexagon (I’ll just call it a hex), will be pretty similar in each server. The first player to EVER venture to the edge of this Hex, will cause another hex to spawn. This Hex will have random traits based off preset ideas, specific examples include, how it looks, what kind of monsters will spawn there, where the walkable game space looks. It will essentially spawn a random LoL jungle, but instead of their being set monsters in set jungle camps, it will be more free. And the areas will be much bigger, and the distance between walkable space will be much bigger. Each hex might have like, 10 pieces to it that allow for random interaction, for instance, areas where buildings might spawn, or be created, areas where game objects could fit, like plants, or monsters, etc. Everything would be decided from a stat. A rock might spawn, blocking a pathway so players can’t reach a part of the hex, that rock might have a hardness of 10, ok, no big deal, a player would just break the rock. But that same exact rock could spawn again in another part of the hex, but have a hardness of 10,000,000, so now the players can’t just break the rock, they either have to wait until their strength is really high, there weapon is really heavy, they obtain a game object that is meant to specifically smash rock, or they learn spells that allow them to teleport over it. Now say the player teleports over the rock, and is the first player on his server to do so, there might be a house, a cave, a portal, etc (also randomly placed, note the game would know that the area behind the rock is viable to have a certain amount of things spawn in it, depending on its size, its qualities, etc.). Say there is a house behind the rock. What’s in the house? No one knows yet, maybe the game hasn’t even decided. Create a mechanism where the random process would start, for instance, the player tries to open the door, but its locked, and because he tried to open the door, the game now knows to start adding random traits to the inside of the house. The character walks around the house, finds a key, unlocks the door, goes inside, and finds whatever the game decided would be in there. And the stuff in the house would be similar to the traits of the player who was first inside. There’s a chest, he opens the chest, and again, finds something random. But everything wouldn’t be completely random. It would just appear that way to the player. The player might have a flute in his inventory, so what he finds in the chest might be a book, that has a tune, that can be played on the flute. So essentially, the player, on his own, caused a whole hexagon game chunk to spawn, a rock with random attributes go block his own path, and a house, and a chest, and something inside the chest, all on a random basis. Two servers might have the same interactive plants, say the same exact tree, game model and everything, but yield different fruit.

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Customizability would be, spells: the character can choose what spells he has on his kit, but he can also customize how the spells work. For instance his Q would be an ice blast, but over time he would learn more about ice and stuff so he’d be able to choose how that ice blast was cast, it might be a straight line skillshot, a cone of damage, or whatever he wants. He might even be able to add a totally custom passive to it, such as, a slow, or, a root. Or whatever. Customizable items, gear, etc.

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So it’s a game about exploration with a focus on character development.

Question: If there’s multiplayer and the world generates from the login/spawn point and moves outwards what happens when 10 people have explored from the spawn and move outwards? Any new people joining would then have to walk further each time before reaching “new” random content. How would the difficulty scale in terms of what they find? Does each area regenerate or have randomly occurring events so that there’s always something new, even in explored zones?

I’ve had my own thoughts on a game similar to this, except without so much random interaction. Would be interesting to see your answers.

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Of course! These are the questions I was waiting to have asked. Yes, I’ve definitely thought of this myself. The game shouldn’t be dependent on the characters that were simply the first ones on the server, correct. I assume that would cause misbalance, and players would have to take set paths created by other players. Doesn’t seem fair. I’ve came up with an idea that would require “adding random attributes to pre-existing game characters” which is an idea that would scripting creativity into the game. An earlier player might come across a set of ten randomly created monsters (humans, wolves, etc) and chooses to kill nine of them and befriend one. That befriended one would become stronger and offer things to the player. Remember the befriended monster could have many stats. The stats would be similar to, or unsimilar to the player that spawned it. Players would naturally get better at knowing which monsters to kill or befriend. However, does mean all players after that come through are limited to those stats? No, because the monster that Player 1 spawned, would be susceptible to a lot of other stats that Player 2 might want to access. For instance, player 1 force spawns many characters but chooses to keep the mage around. He learns from the mage. But he learns fast amounts of offensive sorcery. The second player might have already worked on potions a lot and has developed a kit that might be heavy on CC, team aid, and aoe and/or Dot casting potions towards his kit. The mage that Player 1 spawned, might also know some knowledge about potions, or is susceptible to learning about potions because of the second player. Both players would be able to interact with the same AI but on different playing fields. This would help powerboost the AI and that AI would become a known AI to many many players who have or want to increase stats or game styles that relate anything to sorcerry. Same would go for anyone who held a sword, or swords of all types, all professions would go towards a kit that players would use to combat with. A scout might be good with a bow, and a short sword, and have the ability to do many other scout things. These many things would be paths to a player who might want to be good with a short sword, but not necessarily a bow. Higher level players might also have to go backwards in the map to find a zone they have forcespawned. For instance. There might be a chunk of the map that spawns in the second ring of hexagons that is registering the possibility for a high level idea to spawn there. However it just appears normal or is sort of stagnant until a player becomes strong enough to cause that zone to produce something of high level. The player might be as far as the fifth ring of hexagons fighting way heavier monsters. But the flute that he became so good at over time, summons a high level horse that is in the second layer of hexagons where weeker creatures are. He might still have to visit those week zones, to find high level secrets. Even if he spawns a cave. That cave might become permanent which now low level champions that are still in hexagon 2 can explore and grow from, but that champions from hexagon 5 also have the ability to go back and do the same. All being effected by it differently, and all effecting it differently. To a point where the cave might become a meeting ground for all types of champions, but might eventually be destroyed by a large group of champions that became to be in a way so opposite of the people that used the cave to where they might fight for it, and defend/destroy it.