Where are RPGs going, and how do you feel about it?

You know, I spent ages looking for that dog scene, as I'd thought it sounded great when I first read about it!! I guess I'm still looking, since I never found it, or anything even remotely resembling it!! Why could U7 do something similar, and G1&2, yet Oblivion failed to deliver? Oh for Mud, or Noober to have been in the big O

Well, NPCs are kind of like dogs. In G1&2 and in the Ultimas each dog was meticulously trained to obey a set of specific commands. In Oblivion, Bethesda decided to give them all a general set of goals and behavioural guidelines and then turn them loose. The plan went awry, however, as the dogs became confused and ran amok, so Beth was forced to put them all on leashes. The leashes are a little longer than the ones from Morrowind, allowing the dogs to now go to bed at night and bark greetings to each other on the street, but their repertoire of tricks is pretty limited.

Geist said:

It would be impossible to write dialog for all the major and minor changes the AI could make to the environment. NPCs would be running around buying and selling items, stealing from each other, fighting each other etc, but they wouldn't be able to communicate an awareness of what they are doing, or react realistically to the changes in their surroundings. Such a simulation might be interesting to watch, but due to the primitive state of current technology, I would rather play a well scripted, hand crafted game with coherent characters and storylines rather than suffer through the whims of an as yet primeval AI technology.

Click to expand...

I agree that it's hard to overstate the gulf between what a game developer today can easily simulate and what he has to can fake. AI agents observing and recording the events around them, then then arranging their memories into narratives to impart to each other, will be THE cutting-edge application of AI research... someday. No-one's even trying.

Not only is it impossible to implement an AI driven "living breathing world" sandbox with current technology it's also completely redundant for RPGs. I believe that even if Radiant AI had delivered on the marketing hype its effect still would have been inconsequential on the Oblivion RPG experience (or lack thereof). RPGs are about how our choices evolve narrative. In contrast sandboxes are entirely non-narrative experiences.

What does it matter if an NPC X decides to steal food from NPC Y based on the result of some AI algorithms? Or if bot 1 decides to hunt for herbs rather than buying them from bot 2? There's no player involvement in these scenarios and therefore no choice-consequence payoff for the player. It's not a game element and thus contributes nothing to the game; at very best it's window dressing - fluff, which could have been much better implemented by old-fashioned scripting. CRPG designers need to take a closer look at how at 4x genre functions with reference to evolving narrative as triggered by player choices.

Welcome to the boards, and an excellent post! While part of it is my own gaming constraints, I've never completely bought into the "deeper immersion" hype.

There's no player involvement in these scenarios and therefore no choice-consequence payoff for the player. It's not a game element and thus contributes nothing to the game

Click to expand...

I don't quite share the opinion that game elements which don't entail involvement on the part of the player are entirely worthless. One of my chief complaints about single player RPGs is the static nature of their game worlds; it always seems like everyone just stands around and waits for you. I would like to see far more interactions take place between NPCs, both on an individual and on a group level, irrespective of the actions of the player. Preferably, these should be scripted so that they can be supported by narrative. Ideally, the player should also have the option to influence such events whenever possible, but, even without player involvement, I've always found that cut-scenes when well executed (a rarity I'll admit) can add a lot to the enjoyment of a game. Sometimes 'watching' can be just as exciting as 'doing'.

That said, AI still has its uses in the realm of world simulation. For instance, one of my more memorable experiences early on in Gothic 3 was seeing a pack of wolves run into a pack of scavengers who were feeding on a carcass and then witnessing the wolves attack and eventually kill all the scavengers. It's far more efficient to let the AI handle such animal encounters rather than scripting them by hand, and since they don't require any dialog or story support, not much is lost in eschewing the scripted approach.

I think the main problem when it comes to artificial intelligence and scripted events is that there is just a lot more possible than a few years ago. As Geist said, it is well possible to create large worlds nowadays. But they do not only become bigger they also become more complex. If you come up with a RPG nowadays then everyone expects that its gfx can compete with that of of shooters that usually contain way less content than the average RPG. Everyone expects that models have their own custom animations - if possible extremly realistic ones. And voice acting seems to be a must. Now, look back at the old Ultima. Textures, animations, gfx in general, all that was certainly more simplistic. What I want to say is, I think that the technical aspect of a game just soaks up a lot more development time nowadays than it did a few years ago. Add to that, that most games were entirely build in a programming language, so basically everything was hardcoded. Nowadays a lot of games (or at least certain parts of a game... levels, zones, call it as you like) are build with editors that were written for these games. You have people who are doing nothing else than building levels - unfortunately these people are usually limited by what the editor allows them to do.

What I was always wondering about was why games like Oblivion are selling so well. I came to the conclusion that there is a real shift from storytelling to character building. There seems to be a large crowd of players that are only superficially interested in plot and story, but much more in leveling their character, accumulating wealth and power, etc.
That would also explain the huge success of games like the sims (which basically have no story at all) and the decline of adventure games in which you very seldom have the possibility to level your character, but instead consist almost entirely of story.

MudsAnimalFriend said:

What does it matter if an NPC X decides to steal food from NPC Y based on the result of some AI algorithms? Or if bot 1 decides to hunt for herbs rather than buying them from bot 2? There's no player involvement in these scenarios and therefore no choice-consequence payoff for the player. It's not a game element and thus contributes nothing to the game; at very best it's window dressing - fluff, which could have been much better implemented by old-fashioned scripting.

Click to expand...

Simulation is certainly window dressing if the player can't interact with the world on the same terms as the AI. A game which allows the player to sign on with the Watch or own stores would want to model those behaviours, but Oblivion's sword-swinging vagabond has nothing to contribute to either scenario.

Ionstormsucks said:

There seems to be a large crowd of players that are only superficially interested in plot and story, but much more in leveling their character, accumulating wealth and power, etc.
That would also explain the huge success of games like the sims (which basically have no story at all) and the decline of adventure games in which you very seldom have the possibility to level your character, but instead consist almost entirely of story.

Click to expand...

I believe this is also the reason why games like Sacred sell so well.

Blizzard made it so that *everything* is utterly reduced (Dungeon Siege as well), and it focuses *entirely* on the character levelling up. And the items for equipment, of course.

Hm ... If I follow this trail of thought could it be that this leads to a rather "narcistic" kind of gameplay ?


And my fear is that this applies mostly to a younger generation. (I would *really* like to see some statistics on who is buying which games nowadays !)


And by the way : My dream is kind of an MMORPG as a Singleplayer application ! I want a game that breathes "world", instead of static hack & slash.

the only mmorpg i'd ever play for any extent is if it was based on back to the future or sliders...imagine the possibilities

Alrik Fassbauer said:

And by the way : My dream is kind of an MMORPG as a Singleplayer application ! I want a game that breathes "world", instead of static hack & slash.

Click to expand...

This vision has appeared in my dreams as well (though usually only after chewing generous quantities of peyote ) Imagine an MMORPG designed in the style of a single player game, but with the NPCs controlled by humans who all agree to actually roleplay their characters. Why settle for artificial intelligence if there are plenty of sentient beings who could provide the genuine article.

maybe Age of Conan will be this, a MMORPG where the storie matters