Topic: What do Characters do when Players go offline?

[Morgul]

More and more, I find myself thinking that I really hate the idea of characters not doing something when the player goes offline. Instead, I'd like to propose a few ideas I had, and get some others for how we can do something different here.

My thought is that while you're playing, your character will have a general routine. Whether it's a trade run, or hanging out in a bar, or something. This might even be able to be decided by the player. While youre offline, and AI controls your character, and performs what you told it to do. I think that you should be able to get as detailed as possible with the AI, and even give it the ability to respond/talk like your character, and make decisions you would make in that given situation.

Now, the problem would be if the character dies while you're offline. While we could say, "program your offline AI better" I think it's a cop out. We could also cop out, and make offline players 'unkillable' or something... I still don't like it. Instead, I think that we should allow for players to decide where/what they're character is going to be doing offline, and if they choose a dangerous thing, then, they better be praying thier character stays alive. Now, that doesn't garud against unhappy players, and things like that. So, if we give them a "Ressurect Token" or whatever, if thier player dies, then they won't be quite as pissed. They might also choose to leave the character dead, and make a new one. It will add a new depth to the RP aspect of this game.

What do you all think? This is a pretty controversial idea, I'd say. Give me feedback! .

[Rosencrantz]

I think that this is a really good idea. It allows the player to perform mundane actions without actually having to do them. One of the major things that turned me off of SWG was that I *had* to get on and deal with the upkeep on my harvesters. And I had to do that before a specific time, lest I lose my investment. Forcing a player to get on and play is not a good thing, but in some cases it may be unavoidable.

Also, this sort of thing has to be balanced so that you can't perform large complex actions while offline, or actions that would lead to significant advancement.

[topher]

I would say that only repatitive tasks while logged out are allowed.  Even then its seems higly exploitable/bottable.  It ruins the fun for the average joe if some rich person (in real life) purchaces 5 accounts and just leaves that logged out at all times, completely without risk.  Not that we would mind because thats five monthly fees.

[whitelynx]

Well, what would be the problem with that? If there's a lot of people who just script their AI's well and leave them doing complex actions, what difference does it make? Ideally, you won't be able to tell the difference between an NPC and a real player, so why should it matter whether the player character is being controlled by the player or by an AI? The characters will still have the same restrictions as any other PC, so they really shouldn't be able to "cheat"...

Dave

[topher]

As long as there is risk vs reward it should be acceptable.  Most games I've played, the community at large hates Bots, scripters, etc...then again, maybe because they feel they are at an unfair disadvantage.  If we had the tools for everyone to do the botting maybe its more mainstream and ok.

[Morgul]

As long as there is risk vs reward it should be acceptable.  Most games I've played, the community at large hates Bots, scripters, etc...then again, maybe because they feel they are at an unfair disadvantage.  If we had the tools for everyone to do the botting maybe its more mainstream and ok.

Well, the risk would be simple. Death is either permanant, or costly. Unless you log in, you can't be sure your character hasn't been killed by pirates, or something of the like. Any *really* lucrative buisness would be risky... scripting it might be possible, but I doubt you'd trust an AI to dogfight six or seven players who are trying to steal your ship. It WOULD loose. (So would most players). So, sure, you can do a simple, safe run, making you $200 a trip, but with maintenece on your ship, and other monthly taxes/fees, plus the cost of living.... You might only be making $25 a trip.  You're not going to get rich that way. Especially if the trip takes a week in game.

Atleast, that's how I see it.

--Chris

[fehknt]

i'm going to assume that people like this idea, because that's the way it seems.  I like it too.  Something that needs to be scheduled as well is something that college students may not have much familiarity  with.  "sleep."  If you try to play a character, and she/he' sleeping... some sort of penalty for not enough sleep?  a sleep deficit build up until a point where the character just conks out whatever they were doing?

If we're going to simulate what a character does all the time, then i feel that sleep should also be simulated.

[Morgul]

Wow. I had completely overlooked that. Then again, seeing how dead you looked this morning, I can see how sleep would be on your mind. .

So, how do we handle the case when a player wants to play the game for 10 hours straight?  Should we simply hame real life and the game 1:1? If we do that, then I could see some fin times where a player and a character haven't had enough sleep... almost compounding the affects.

I dunno, I need to give this 'sleep simulation' more thought. I want it in, though.

[contingencyplan]

As long as there is risk vs reward it should be acceptable. Most games I've played, the community at large hates Bots, scripters, etc...then again, maybe because they feel they are at an unfair disadvantage. If we had the tools for everyone to do the botting maybe its more mainstream and ok.

If there's a lot of people who just script their AI's well and leave them doing complex actions, what difference does it make?

Honestly, I think having Players able to script offline behaviour is going to be a bad idea. The main reason is that we will be hosting the scripts, not the Players' machines. This means that at any time, we could have thousands of such scripts running at any given time. Especially in the early stages of a beta or even a production release, I doubt we will have those kinds of resources. Later on, I doubt we'll want to invest in the resources required to have such capabilities.

Further, to allow Players to script their offline characters opens the door for every programmer wannabe to upload their code. They'll think "I've done stuff like this in <insert programming language>, and it worked fine, so I can post that code and have them run it." I'd bet you 90% of the code written by those people will not be optimized a bit. This leads to a bog-down in the servers running the scripts, making the offline, scripted AI behaviour flaky at best (depending on how many bots are running at one time, and how well they are coded).

What happens with bugs in people's code - crashes or memory leaks or whatnot? We'd have to design a stripped-down language for this purpose - one that doesn't allow for things like that. I'm interested in language design, but I'm not looking to have to write a language from scratch when we have other stuff we want to be / should be working on.

Players could also write bad scripts on purpose - e.g., the script only runs a for loop thousands of times, or deletes memory twice or something - with the malicious goal of bogging down the servers. I don't know why, but some people get off from doing that. To avoid this, we'd have to put a lot of infrastructure in place to handle such things, including code reviews, performance analysis, and the like.

For these reasons, at least in general, I don't like the idea of allowing Players to script their offline behaviour.

I'll post my views on what we SHOULD let the Player do in a future post (probably in a few minutes).

[contingencyplan]

So we're back at the question: What should we allow the Player to do while they are offline? Basically, what has been talked about here - let them build their character's stats and such while they are away. When they come back to their character (esp. after taking a real-life vacation, as topher suggested), the character should be in better shape.

Additionally, I think we should allow them to set a task in motion before they leave - via waypoints or something simple like that. If the Player is afraid that their character will die while they are away, then we could set up "cities of refuge" - places that players can go to where they are free from the threat of death. (While a separate issue all its own, I think we could allow those cities to be used for reasons beyond simply preserving the character's life while the Player is at work.) I think this will provide a much simpler method of preserving characters' lives during downtime. We can talk about implementing the cities of refuge idea later; perhaps one implementation would require that all visitors check weapons and the like at the gates of the city before entering.

As far as routine, I think we could also do something like that. Perhaps the Player has a skill or something they could market while in the city of refuge. Regular players would interact with the Player's character as if they were an NPC (I know we have the goal of the AIs being indistinguishable from the Players, but esp. with the chatbots, there will be a difference), and could buy goods from them or something. We could also have NPC characters randomly happen by to purchase goods or services from the Player's character. The point is that the character is doing the same routine every single day, whatever that routine entails.

We should have several general-case setups / routines for Players to choose from - e.g., "Skill Building," "Sell Goods," "Perform Services," etc. These might require scripts to run, but they 1) are much simpler than the ones Players would likely try to write, and 2) are written by us, so we know when bugs occur and can take steps to fix them.

If we wanted to get really fancy, we could have a day planner for the character. This would prove especially valuable while the Player is offline. The Player sets times and activies that they want their character to undertake - from 9pm - 10pm, the character is at the gym, working on building Strength and Endurance, for example. Further, the day planner is a single day-based object; we don't allow for changing activies mid-week, or automatically scheduling changes two months down the road.  

This is where the sleep idea could come into play - as the character is more and more sleep-deprived, the less benefit they will obtain from their activies. If we are going to do a sleep-based thing, though, then we will need to have a 1:1 correspondence between game time and real-life time (though this then opens the problem with multiple time zones... :-/)

One other thing - we should have an online system that the Players can log into and check on the status of their character. If we go with the day planner idea, then the Player should be able to update and modify the day planner online.

Anyways, that's my thought on the subject for right now. I need sleep myself, so I'll catch y'all later. ;-)

[Morgul]

Ok, there's some really good ideas being generated here. I like parts of them, and I think that in some form, most might find their way in. Here's what I'm currently thinking:

First, I think we're all agreed that characters should stick around, even after their players log off. Now, scripting their behaviour, I think, is a really good idea; however, I don't think that we should letting any player do it. We could stay open to any scripts the users want to write, but we're not going to officially take submissions or let them write their own scripts. Instead, we'll allow some sort of interface (the day planner idea sounds really neat) for them to script their behaviour while they're away. (Note on the day planner: I think that we should allow planning of a week to two weeks. We need to do more than one day, but not 2 months either. I think two weeks would cover most vacations... )

Now, there should be places of refuge, but I don't think they should be *garenteed* places where you won't die. Most likely you're not going to die if you're hanging out in New York... but if you happened to have been there during a riot/bombing... well, you get my idea. So, there's some element of doubt in the players mind as to how their characters are faring. (The longer the person is offline, the higher the chances are something has happened to their character... We could even make it so that their character went out, got drunk, and has been sitting in jail for a week... or something similar if the player is gone too long.

I do like the idea of uploading new 'planners' for the characters. That is definitely something that will be nice. Sure, someone could easily write a bot on their computer that uploads new planners, but that's ok. (Might even be useful if they're taking a month long vacation, and won't be able to play) If they don't want to play, that's fine... they're still paying us per month, even if they don't log on. Plus, they game is going to be so fun that I would hope the number of people abusing this will be rather small.

Now, about sleep. I think that with medical technology, etc, it would be possible for a character to take a certain amount of 'stims' or something like that to keep them going.... However it will do damage, and it will run out. (Plus addiction might come into play) So, we need to make offline time important. The most a person will be playing the game is about ten hours a day. They should be able to do that without risk to their characters. So we need to work the game time around that... Also, I would love to see, "Ok, now everyone get offline. Our characters need sleep before the battle with the other clan tomarrow! Get offline now!"

Ok, that's about all I can think of... my mind is elsewhere.

--Chris

[topher]

That would be quite cool.  Corp is getting ready for a major offensive so they rest up to get every bit of an edge they can.  

One thing we have to balance is game time vs real time.  I think in everquest 1 it was 90 minutes real life was one day Norathian time.  Eve online only had a 1 to 1 for a clock, no concept of days or weeks.

[Dewbacca]

The article Here Addresses several questions brought up in this thread. Such as Cheating... Raph addresses that topic with this observation:

It is only cheating if it violates the assumptions of other players *and* provides an advantage.

It also says that reguardless of it being a feature, it will be percieved as a "Cheat" if it allows others to gain in a percieved unfair manner. Perception of the player is something you will have to anticipate. Do not expect them to be logical. So you will have to limit the AFK functionality, or others will feel cheated. It IS a community designed around an online presense, and AFK gains are percieved as ill gotten.

Now the flip side of this, as long as there is risk proportionate to reward, it should have its place... but implementing it server side would monsterous. The Uo community put together a great number of AFK programs that automated simple tasks. The UO Staff expend a great deal of effort to thwart this community. As long as it doesn't unbalance gameplay... you should encourge it. You should encourge almost ANYWAY people want to play your game.

But I am in agreeance with Brother Topher who correctly points out until we have a game vs real time comparison, we are prodding into the unknown. We cannot hope to decide how players will spend their offline time (or time performing automated tasks) until we know how time progresses.

Will a player be in route between systems for minutes, hours, weeks?

[contingencyplan]

Will a player be in route between systems for minutes, hours, weeks?

I vote minutes. We can still call it real-time, depending on what technology morgul cooks up for us ;-). But having to wait hours or (MUCH worse) weeks to travel will result in bored players. Players who are bored are players who quit (or become in-game social liabilities). We could have training or minigames or something like that if we really wanted, but that will get uber-insane-old after a very short while.

During that time, players may come under attack or something, so they should keep an eye out. But requiring them to keep an eye out for more than 5 minutes is just foolish.

The article Here Addresses several questions brought up in this thread.

Thanks, will read when I have time... Hopefully going to have more of it here in a few weeks.

[Morgul]

Ok, how long it takes to get somewhere is based on the speed you're traveling in subspace. While I have come up with some tech that allows for (near) instantaneous travel, it's uber complicated, and only exists in rumors, and on a  *SMALL* handful of ships. The normal way to go between systems is going to take some time. How much? Well, I did some calculations a while back, and I figure that it will take a week (in game time) to travel from the rim of the galaxy to the core (aka halfway across the game universe). So, how long should that take in real time? I want to say like 40 minutes, to an hour. (I know this is a long time. I *don't* want players zipping across the universe willy nilly for shits and giggles. Sure, they can, but it take time. Unless there's some good reasons for it to not be.) Even an hour feels short to me, so it may be longer. Someone open a new thread on this topic, and we'll continue this discussion. (I would, but I've only got 5 minutes to finish this before I gotta go do some more work.)

--Chris

[Dewbacca]

There is Downtime, but there must be downtime. I'll look around for the article... but to sum up what I read once... Downtime is when characters not only heal, or trade and repair equipment, it is also when they meet other players in a neutral setting, when they can reveiw the past events and create thier own piece of the story from Rapid fire game play.

It is the banking, which in Uo was where players gathered to learn more about the game from fellow players, and it is the Tavern is so many other multiplayer games where friendships and rivalries are forged.

It also is the opportunity to learn more about a complex game system that is constantly evolving. And its better we plan the downtime and make alternatives (multiple characters per account or offline tasking) than to answer angery players who either can't keep up with the pace of the game, or bored players vote with their feet.

[Morgul]

Oh, I agree. To me, there's offline time, and downtime. Downtime would be in game, and it would be like you said. There are going to be bars, pubs, markets, recreation facilities, etc. all over the place. That is where characters will gather, to talk, chat, and do just about everything you said. The offline time will be what we allow them to do while the player is offline. I really think that we need to make having them doing anything that would give gain inherintly dangerous (aka risking death, or capture, or imprisonment, depending). That would make the other players not feel cheated, but will also allow for 'persistan' characters, which is something I really want.

--Chris

[woodspider]

ok i played eve for a while it was ok but wasnt great, one thing i liked about it was the training, you could train your character off line. maybe make some lower skilss be able to be trained while off line? just a thought. i wouldnt make them all that way but some of the lower ones would be cool.

[Morgul]

ok i played eve for a while it was ok but wasnt great, one thing i liked about it was the training, you could train your character off line. maybe make some lower skilss be able to be trained while off line? just a thought. i wouldnt make them all that way but some of the lower ones would be cool.

Well, I think that we will definitely allow the players to train offline, but we should limit how useful this is. I was thinking that in general, 'book' training can only get you so good at something, while 'simulator' training can get you better at it... but 'real life' training is the only way to ensure you're great at something.

Maybe we can limit which ones of those they do, by how dangerour they are... so give them risk for being offline, and letting th AI handle the dangerous training?

[contingencyplan]

Well, I think I posted somewhere else in the forums about having training simulators that allow you to learn how to use particular weapons and such without the threat of dying. However, the simulators' training abilities would be limited, as you always learn more in the real world than in a simulator. I also agree that we should add book learning to that - books > sims > real life.

Perhaps we could combine this with the day planner idea: You can schedule to attend a class (book larnin'), then spend time in the simulator. This way, you wouldn't have to be spending all your time online in those areas to advance your skill areas. Also, you don't particularly have to worry about safety - odds are you won't come back and find that someone bombed the school or something. However, the law of diminishing returns takes effect - you can spend more and more time in the class, but you won't be getting nearly as much out of it (until you're actually getting nothing at all by being there). This way, players have to return to gain the practical, real-life aspect of their training and redo their schedule for new classes and simulators.