Dynamic Monster Spawning System

This is an idea I have been kicking in my head for a very long time. With the hex/ world map system I feel this would be an amazing system if done properly adding immersion, giving the world a dynamic feel and a sense of adventure.
Problems that need addressing.
Many games have a system where monsters will always spawn in one spot for the entirety of the game, orcs spawned here this year they will spawn here next year and forever, leaving a static, boring world. People then become wise and start ?inactively farming? whatever monster because they know its going to be there. DMSS tries something new and different and something I haven?t seen done in many games well or interestingly enough.

How it could work in SoTa
Since the world map is a hex based map world large swathes of land could be designated as DMSS spawning areas for certain types of monsters. These could be based on terrain, proximity to certain things like cities, mines, mountain, whatever. For my example I will use orcs which in my mind tend to hang out in forests/swamps. So a chunk of hexes are designated to DMSS Orcs. Now this is where the magic of the system kicks in. The game on the server side then randomly spawns a number of Orc Raiding Parties, these raiding parties are pretty small and maybe one or two players or a single player with some NPC companion?s can handle them by themselves. The orc raiding parties are pretty unsophisticated crude and their weapons, magic, armor and tactics are poor.
It probably would be good to not announce it to everyone via game mechanic like minimap or ping either because of HEY GUYS ORC RAIDING PARTY HERE GO KILL IT and it would be an adventure to go and find and not just have it handed to you on silver platter. This would be for people to search for. This leads me to the more interesting part of the DMSS.

So the orc raiding parties travel around hex to hex maybe stealing some resource, burning a field, I don?t know whatever. Then after a set time of not being dealt with by a player the orc raiding party becomes an orc tribe. This means it sets up structures and becomes stronger, So now as a stationary location placed somewhere an orc tribe will grow and become bigger. The tribe will probably produced more sophisticated units and the tribe itself will be a little tougher to take down. This could be scaled down for Single Player, requiring them to bring NPCs and not just solo to destroy it.

At the village level an unnamed orc chief is spawned as well as a chief hut, and some other secondary buildings, in order to wipe the tribe off the map the player would have to kill the orc chief and kill its hut, and maybe a few other buildings, wiping it off the map until another orc seed party is generated.
But still the orc menace remains undetected and the village levels up again and becomes a war camp and if ignored again becomes an orc strong hold. This tiered system would bring more and more progressive improvements to the orcs and challenges to the players. As well as some better opportunities, maybe instead of destroying the village a thief just wants to raid the camp for some plundered weapons, maybe there is an assassin contract to kill the orc witch doctor and just that one unit. You get the idea.

At the orc stronghold level though some things could get more interesting, villages and towns could have a bulletin board, and a posting to deal with the orc stronghold could be generated. I also think that if the orc towns and names were procedurally generated that could be nice too but I think procedural names could be a nice addition, an Orc Stronghold named Bloodmaw led by Orc Warlord Krolloc has been wreaking havoc in the area of blah blah blah, gives the player an identifiable enemy and location instead of Orc 10000.
So now there is an orc strong hold level it would need significant planning and resources to destroy, killing the warlord who has his own guards, and such would be quite a feat and could be scaled to SP and MP maps. After of course the stronghold was destroyed there could be rewards and tokens of the accomplishment like head of Orc Chief Krolloc and you could put it in your house to display that time you took down an orc warlord, and since the name was randomly generated hopefully their wouldn?t be a million other head of orc chief Krolloc in the area you could have the only one.

And maybe to make the world even more immersive, instead of just raiding villages, if enough time passes 2 orc stronghold could pop up and being territorial in nature could wage war on each other. Placing the character in the middle of an orc war they have nothing to do with but is just happening.

Of course each different types of locations could have quests associated with and also more monster infested areas could have an effect on the world. And the fact that the monsters are all procedural and randomly spawned means that where there was an orc strong hold today after it is destroyed might just mean it is an open piece of swamp in the future, leading to more searching.

What DMSS brings to SoTa
I think a system like this might add greatly to the game, creating a world that has more life too it than just the towns. Mobs having a society and structure that can be explored and seen is also great because they could not just be giant loot bags, but part of an organic experience. Different types of mobs could have different and unique hide out and bases, like bandits, necromancers, orcs, whatever each with something that gives it a unique feeling.

It also might stop the world from being stale after a while since you will always know where something is after you kill it, now you might stumble upon an enemy camp where just 2 days ago there was nothing before. Leading to a dynamic rich environment that would enhance Solo and MP aspects of the game greatly. This is the basic foundation of my idea and I am pretty sure I could expand on it more and would like to hear any feedback or questions you have. Thank you for your time.

 

Bump, until dev forum is opened.

 

That's actually a pretty brilliant system for procedural raiding and monster gen. You could push it further and have the NPCs actually have daily routines or needs they must accomplish; such as going out hunting, mining, cutting wood, etc, some kind of task they undergo. The more tasks they complete, the more prepared and threatening the fortress could become. Extend this to animals and the like, which will go where their food sources are, and you have a procedural ecosystem where animals move to an area, stabilize the food chain, then fortresses and towns will be slowly established around said ecosystem.

 

In the old MUDing days, mob referred to mobile creatures - differentiating them from standstill monsters. Most mobs are confined to certain locations, but others such as the raiding parties Q was talking about would have a different range. So, yes a forest would generally see wolves and deer, there might be one or two giant spiders roaming the forest. And perhaps there's an evil undead necromancer roaming the world wreaking havoc, interacting with the environment (raising an army of undead forest critters?). The thing is, nobody would know until they ran across him, and he might not be there when the posse comes looking. I think this sort of thing really works with the no-guided-tour questing style. And it doesn't all have to be ultra dangerous, for instance there could be a white stag wandering that grants a wish when you capture/kill it.

There was an excellent adventure way back in the day, maybe on ArcticMUD .. I can't remember what I ate for dinner last night .. where a party made it to the end of a zone to find 'the evil undead necromancer' in the final room. It attacked. They got destroyed, but were able to recall to town. So they're hanging out catching their breath, all 'what was that!?" and a few minutes later a portal opens up and the necromancer walks through. That thing tore through town and messed things up good for some time before we were able to rally and destroy him.

Anyway, great post.

 

This is similar to the proposed monster escalation cycle planned for Pathfinder Online.

I would recommend beginning more humbly. In an escalation hex spawn a couple of virtual rabbits. Over time if they survive they begin to reproduce... fairly rapidly. When they reach a cap population they trigger the spawn of wolves. If the wolves catch the rabbits they reduce the rabbit population and reproduce. If at any time they run out of rabbits they migrate to predate other areas.

Then where there are many wolves spawn Orcs. The Orcs hunt the wolves (unless there are player characters around, in which case the PCs are the preferred prey). If ever the Orcs run out of prey they migrate. The process continues up the food chain into Giant and Dragon territory.

What I think might be the end result is something like an ecology.

 

@Tibs It's great in theory, but remember UO had a similar system that turned out to mean jack squat. I'd rather the dev time and effort be spent on making fun individual encounters.

 

That's just it, Tekk. The system could be coded once, and transposed to key off any number of areas all over, generating heaps of ambient content to keep us active 'thinning the herd' during times between quests. It could lead to actual invasions if left uncontrolled. If players ignore the rising threats those threats come knock-knock-knocking at your back door.

Now granted it would take time to measure the spawn rate and escalation timing, but with computers that time can be sped up at will.

Crafting hundreds or thousands of individual encounters = megabucks. Offset the lower budget (this isn't SWtOR, after all, with $300 million to throw at questing) by automating a fractal ecology.

 

I'm thinking about how the implementation you mentioned would actually work, and that's where my "this is wasteful" attitude is coming from. I'm not saying its a bad idea, in fact I really like the idea proposed in the OP.

Here's what will happen - a hex has rabbits. Player perspective: Who cares? Is a player going to waste time killing a bunch of rabbits just to prevent the chain reaction? No.
A hex has wolves. Player perspective: Meh. You could kill 'em or leave 'em, they might be good for low level experience, but if you ask me, I'd rather be out doing quests than hunting wolves to stop orcs from spawning.
A hex has orcs. Player perspective: Kill 'em if you see 'em.

...And that's where it stops. The rabbits and wolves are all but useless, and the orcs get killed. I think it'll work out about the same as the UO ecology. In this model, you'd also have to include a balancing mechanism to protect lower level players. Theoretically, if left unchecked, you'd have a low level player with a map full of dragons, and then he's screwed ^^

 

That would happen near settlements, yes.

Farther afield perhaps no. Farther yet where the wild things are the escalations might continue until from those wildwoods emerge a serious and interesting threat. If it finds you, then you will notice.

If I am building a new settlement and I know that too many rabbits breed wolves, and wolves Orcs, and orcs hobgoblins, I will be eating quite a bit of rabbit stew I assure you.

 

The way I could see this work if they actually pester the inhabitants of a nearby settlement - say for example if there are animals that eat wood - if they go unchecked, you can't chop wood near your settlement because the creatures are depleting the resources - not so much spawning enemies.

I like your idea - but I would rather see - a mob of creatures marching for a town - they are visible on the macro map - and its obvious where they are headed - if folks don't kill these creatures before the get to town they lay a siege - and if no one battled them - they will be at full strength and it will be harder to get rid of them

and these critters would attack anything - even other NPC's - and would battle incoming enemies - so there would be a tradeoff - they pester - but in a indirect way, help with defences

 

@Tibs. What's your nick on the PFO boards? cause what your saying is exactly like what we were thinking the escalation system might evolve into. Only difference is here I think there is a more receptive audience (Dev wise) to player ideas that go beyond what the Devs intend.

Perhaps I'm wrong and they intend to include some of our ideas like this one, but there's so little communication other then Stephen'Chaney's occasional posts that its hard to know what they like and what they don't.

 

I like the OP's idea though. I think if we could mix some of what Tibs said, it could evolve into a really cool system. One thing I really liked that came out of discussion of this idea on another forum is that not only could players defeat/kill the Orcs, but say a CE player might not attack the Orcs, perhaps he could befriend them, doing favors for them (quests), and grow to gain faction with that tribe. It's a twist that I think adds options and content to the game.

 

Truly dynamic spawn points is hard. You don't want mobs spawning IN items. Collision and pathfinding need to be taken into account. And you don't want mobs killing random NPCs.

What you can do is create specified spawn points, but have multiple possible spawn points and rotate between them. You can also have increased/decreased spawns based upon criteria (faction influence, cycle of the moon, etc).

 

Speaking of the similarities between this idea and UO's initial (failed) ecology system, I would like to chime in and say that I really loved the idea behind the ecology system, and disagree with them that it was a waste of time. I feel that it only failed because the number of players in UO was way higher than they had planned, so of course they killed everything and stopped the cycle from even being able to start. But with SotA it can be different. With the help of instancing, they can plan to include the correct number of players in the cycle, and tweak spawn rates to ensure the cycle functions. Also, lets say the players don't bother killing the monsters as intended thereby threatening the cycle; NPCs could step in and either offer quests to kill the appropriate creatures, or go on raiding parties themselves to thin down the creatures. Player's actions shouldn't be controlled, only guided, and so it's the job of the system to equalize it's numbers based on the player actions that do occur. The bottom line is that the game would be more enjoyable when creatures seem to live and evolve dynamically in the environment, and don't just repeatedly appear to spawn in and attack players at first sight from designated positions.

 

I really like this idea it sounds fun and interesting would probably be pretty hard to do but would be awesome if they did it.