I heard that UO had ecosystems as opposed to spawn points at first?

Maybe the idea should be played with. It obviously didn't work out and I don't know how dangerous combat is going to be but there could be a hybrid system where you have a safeguard keeping non humanoid NPCs from being driven to extinction, but still have the same thing where the populations shrink from over hunting. I like the sound of it at least. Maybe have a situation where the population is self sustaining but if there is none of that mob on the map, the beginning of a certain amount of time, a small group will spawn and start again. That's a way of doing it. But I think the decision of weather or not you use something like this would depend on how dangerous combat is and how much of it you intend to see. I would prefer a game that had less combat but higher stakes combat. I like games you could play the pacifist if you're just that good. But if it's going to be combat heavy, and you're spending more time fighting than avoiding combat, using regular spawns may be better.

 

Not that I seen when UO was out at first. I always thought they were spawn points. Interesting concept.

 

Heh, RG discussed this with Spoony during his interview. The problem wasn't a balancing one; they just were just shocked to see the entire ecosystem wiped out by the players in a matter of moments. According to RG, the game simply had no time to calculate effects, because everything in the world was dead. So, they scrapped it.

It did seem like a cool system, and maybe they'll try it again. The way they're discussing capping the number of people that will be able to interact together in each instance might keep the balance more on the side of the spawn points; I'm just also curious how this will affect some things like roleplaying and just meeting new people. You may not encounter someone again in the world for while, if it works as it sounds.

 

The world is all instanced so this couldn't work like an open game. You'd like to scale spawn with number of players in the area / rate of killing.

 

hmmm damn
oh well. That's how it goes sometime. Maybe portalarium might keep it in mind for future games then.

 

Very true, it would not like an single-map game, I agree.

One could store information on a hex by hex basis though : Say the number of kills of a particular creature performed over all instances of the hex map.

And then any new instances built off that hex could automatically scale up or down the number of creatures based on that past history.

The data could then be shared with neighboring hexes, and affect spawn rates there, and so on.

One could still apply a "player multiple" over this effect as well (if the hex is set to allow such).

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Could certainly be done, but I imagine it would be a darn nuisance to balance and maintain.

 

UO's ecosystem had another problem too. Which was it was tied into limited resources which didn't make any sense. For example there would only be so much rabbit meat in the world. If you killed all the rabbits and didn't use the meat.. then no rabbits would spawn.

The subject has come up at least once before.. I remember arguing in favor of it on the basis that all areas were instanced and so rather than a world eco-system you'd only have to worry about individual areas so you could get a that same mad rush to kill everything in sight on a global scale like you had in UO. Plus this world is going to be much, much bigger so there's more opportunity to see an eco-system in action.

The thought occurs to me now though that people will still kill pretty much everything right off to collect crafting materials. As a hunter I'd kill a deer.. I've got meat for my table.. leather for the armor.. antlers to make a trophy etc.

Perhaps there are is no simple solution for a worth while, functioning eco-system in an online multiplayer game? I'd love to see one myself but if it can't hold its own vs players long enough to be appreciated then it remains an unfortunately wasted effort.

 

It's interesting subject. There is a lot of reason to not try and make such a ecosystem that is somewhat believable...

Having a ecosystem that can be farmed Vs one that cannot be.. It is a similar concept to a virtual currency.. well it basically is, I guess..

Very interesting and full of equations and averages..

 

I wonder if you can make a world that is mechanically un "WOW"able... You can grind, but it's a LOT harder and is better and easier just to do fun stuff. You can't really farm because if you kill too many magic anteaters (or whatever) then you get swarms of doom ants (or whatever) EVERYWHERE. You can't effectively PK in the same way because combat is way too dangerous even for the super skilled and each character you build has one life to live. A game in which it mechanically forces you to be interesting.

 

Online ecosystems can be done, but it would require a lot more unique wilderness hexes and/or wilderness hex types than we're likely to see in EP1.

 

I think @PrimeRib is correct though in that each hex being instanced, and having different behavior in that hex depending on what different players do makes it hard to impact other hexes.

Maybe moving forward with future episodes they can find a good solution for this.

 

The ecosystem was what I was most interested in before UO launched.

 

Oh, it could be done at any time. If death is the only interaction required (and that's a big IF) then every death location can be recorded and used to affect the world, persistently.
The reason I mentioned you need a lot of hexes is because you need buffers of targets that drive the ecology, and be able to adjust those dynamically to create the illusion that player actions are driving the world. But you need a lot of them. If you have hundreds or thousands of players all hunting concurrently, the effects can be dramatic unless you have thousands or tens of thousands of targets for them. which requires thousands of hexes of dynamic population.
They have thousands of hexes, but so far, there's no indication each one will be unique and/or dynamic, for EP1.

 

UO had this during the alpha and maybe beta. The problem is things run rampant. There were times when UO was unplayable when the wolf plague (wolves who ate all the rabbits and came into town looking for food) would come on. It sounds like something that's interesting, but in practice it spirals out of control because eco-systems are complicated and can be upset easily.

I would rather just ensure there is no single place that has a specific creature. Wandering or random spawns need to happen, and there should not be people just going out to fight goblins in the Goblin cave. If the goblins are cleared out then something else should move in. Game that have done this just seem more alive then stepping into a cave knowing what's in there because you have cleared it out 10 times already.

 

One model would be to have some faction / influence mechanic where one group can take over a hex. So <wolves> dominate and take over hex <a> and this pushes their influence to the surrounding hexes. Various states of faction influence change what the hex instance looks like to players. A good example of this is the dynamic events in GuildWars2. If the local village is overrun by centaurs (or bandits) you're fighting them, rather than trading with humans.

This would work the same way for PvP. A zone tipped all the way to one side might be fully hostile to the wrong groups of players. As it gets tipped the other way, it could be fully PvE with no hostility. Somewhere in the middle might give you the option to fight your way through against NPCs.

 

It all depends on what the objective was. If it was to maintain balance at all times with some variability allowed in some systems, then it was horribly done with the respawn rates for any type of animal or monster or creature or resources or whatever was infinitesimally low compared to the "consumption" rate. If the goal was to allow the system to be stressed, then it worked perfectly. Except they needed to add starvation and hunger or whatever to the human population so they'd die off and allow respawn rates to catch up. Or allow humans to cannibalize each other for food or material use.

Plus, the world was way too small to support the population. That is, the population density was likely far too great, again exacerbating the spawn rates of anything and everything.

So I highly doubt they had this wonderful ecosystem that was well balanced even before humans entered the picture. Far too many incorrect assumptions about population size and density and not willing to include humans in that ecosystem.

 

Given the limited number of folks per instanced group, I would love to see the world react to outside changes. That said, as long as it doesn't delay the overall game development.