Tuesday, July 09, 2002
I try to check out the biggest Anarchy Online websites as often as possible, to see what people are talking about and what's happening in the community. I'm primarily interested in story-related discussions, since I'm not particularly involved on the game-play side of things, and balancing AO is like synchronised swimming - I don't get it, and I shouldn't do it. I found the following posting on AO-Basher:
As Vac said. Ragnar Tornquist and Fadinaway need to provide some sort of explanation on what they're doing, or what they're supposed to be doing. All we know is Fadinaway is supposed to be providing quality events, and Tornquist doing the story and related story events (according to Fadinaway, story events aren't his worry).
So unless we actually know what they're supposed to be doing, it's tough to critique their efforts. Afterall, how do we know Tornquist's real job isn't just to keep a chair warm and Fadinaway is supposed to test the limits of giant leet attacks or mocking ARKs who ask for a bit of GM support? Hell, if that's what they're paid to do... give them a raise!
I already got a raise for keeping my chair warm - it's very hard work, you know - so I'll need to either push myself a little further before my next salary evaluation, or get by with a million bucks a year (and God knows that's hard to do, am I right?). I can't speak for Fadinaway, although he's still heading up the events team. I have absolutely nothing to do with events - story or otherwise - and that's A Good Thing, because I'd probably suck at it, like I suck at most things. What, then, (besides warming my chair...which I am pretty good at, mind you) am I doing? Or, more correctly, what are we doing?
As I've mentioned several times before, we're working on a brand new way to interact with NPCs (non-player characters) in AO. The writers have focused their attentions on the NPC designs and the stories they tell. The technical term for these stories is a story group, which refers to the general areas of knowledge of each NPC. A specific trader may (for example) belong to the traders' story group, the notum story group, and the "mutant problem" story group. This means that he's got an opinion, and information, regarding all three subjects. But the amount of information - and the accuracy of that information - depends on an NPC's story group level. Without getting too complicated, each story group has three levels: Level one signifies a very superficial knowledge about the subject, perhaps even inaccurate knowledge; level two is a bit deeper, and more accurate; and level three is about as deep as it gets without divulging things that no one should know (except myself, the game director...and pretty much everyone at Funcom).
Every single NPC in the game will, eventually, receive a complete makeover. This is inevitable, seeing as we're changing the entire system. Some will disappear, new NPCs will be born, and others may be moved around or altered in subtle or not-so-subtle ways (names, locations, and so on), but they'll all have a lot more to say. A lot more. Players will be able to interact with each and every NPC in a similar - and much improved - manner, and there shall be much rejoicing and stuff. It's all good.
So what have I been doing? Up until this week - in addition to a bunch of other, more boring responsibilities that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with AO - I've written a lot of story groups, designed a bunch of NPCs, and - starting this week - I've begun writing the actual dialogue and linking it all together into a coherent whole. Here's a picture of my desktop as we speak:
I realise that it's impossible to see exactly what the hell this is...so let me explain. What you're looking at is our brand new, much improved, billion dollar NPC chat toolkit. Huzzah! What? It's a tool that allows us to write arse-whupping NPC-player conversations (emphasis on 'whupping', not 'arse'). This tool was conceived and designed by the multi-talented Bjørn Arve Lagim, who's also behind 1/3 of the AO music, and 90% of The Longest Journey soundtrack - both critically acclaimed, and worth getting on CD - and who's (obviously) not composing a heck of a lot of new music for AO at the moment (although the expansion pack will have much musical goodness). He's thus branched out into more design, with excellent results. Together with Dag Scheve - our esteemed Australia-schooled web editor and soon-to-be novelist - Mr. Lagim and myself are rewriting the bulk of the NPCs using this self-same tool. It's good. It's (yes) all good.
"But what about the damn story, fool!" I hear you screaming. "I hear you!" I yell back. This is story! It's not events, granted, but Fadinaway is taking care of that part. This is my current contribution. Disregard the novel, the story portal website, the animated series, and the timeline: This is getting story, news, background, setting - all of that - into the game. This will make it possible for a new player to easily engage in conversation with an interesting NPC, get information about Omni-Tek, the clans, the neutrals, notum, the Dust Brigade, the Unicorn Company, the Shadowlands...and have a good time doing it. In time, there will also be quests attached to some of the NPCs. This is story meets game-play. Finally.
I completed my first NPC using this new tool yesterday ("Ardis Weske"), and the second one today ("Evelina Fincel"). It's fun to do. And I can combine it with the chair-warming, so everybody wins. Yay!
More on this as the story breaks. We now return you to our regular programming.
As Vac said. Ragnar Tornquist and Fadinaway need to provide some sort of explanation on what they're doing, or what they're supposed to be doing. All we know is Fadinaway is supposed to be providing quality events, and Tornquist doing the story and related story events (according to Fadinaway, story events aren't his worry).
So unless we actually know what they're supposed to be doing, it's tough to critique their efforts. Afterall, how do we know Tornquist's real job isn't just to keep a chair warm and Fadinaway is supposed to test the limits of giant leet attacks or mocking ARKs who ask for a bit of GM support? Hell, if that's what they're paid to do... give them a raise!
I already got a raise for keeping my chair warm - it's very hard work, you know - so I'll need to either push myself a little further before my next salary evaluation, or get by with a million bucks a year (and God knows that's hard to do, am I right?). I can't speak for Fadinaway, although he's still heading up the events team. I have absolutely nothing to do with events - story or otherwise - and that's A Good Thing, because I'd probably suck at it, like I suck at most things. What, then, (besides warming my chair...which I am pretty good at, mind you) am I doing? Or, more correctly, what are we doing?
As I've mentioned several times before, we're working on a brand new way to interact with NPCs (non-player characters) in AO. The writers have focused their attentions on the NPC designs and the stories they tell. The technical term for these stories is a story group, which refers to the general areas of knowledge of each NPC. A specific trader may (for example) belong to the traders' story group, the notum story group, and the "mutant problem" story group. This means that he's got an opinion, and information, regarding all three subjects. But the amount of information - and the accuracy of that information - depends on an NPC's story group level. Without getting too complicated, each story group has three levels: Level one signifies a very superficial knowledge about the subject, perhaps even inaccurate knowledge; level two is a bit deeper, and more accurate; and level three is about as deep as it gets without divulging things that no one should know (except myself, the game director...and pretty much everyone at Funcom).
Every single NPC in the game will, eventually, receive a complete makeover. This is inevitable, seeing as we're changing the entire system. Some will disappear, new NPCs will be born, and others may be moved around or altered in subtle or not-so-subtle ways (names, locations, and so on), but they'll all have a lot more to say. A lot more. Players will be able to interact with each and every NPC in a similar - and much improved - manner, and there shall be much rejoicing and stuff. It's all good.
So what have I been doing? Up until this week - in addition to a bunch of other, more boring responsibilities that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with AO - I've written a lot of story groups, designed a bunch of NPCs, and - starting this week - I've begun writing the actual dialogue and linking it all together into a coherent whole. Here's a picture of my desktop as we speak:
I realise that it's impossible to see exactly what the hell this is...so let me explain. What you're looking at is our brand new, much improved, billion dollar NPC chat toolkit. Huzzah! What? It's a tool that allows us to write arse-whupping NPC-player conversations (emphasis on 'whupping', not 'arse'). This tool was conceived and designed by the multi-talented Bjørn Arve Lagim, who's also behind 1/3 of the AO music, and 90% of The Longest Journey soundtrack - both critically acclaimed, and worth getting on CD - and who's (obviously) not composing a heck of a lot of new music for AO at the moment (although the expansion pack will have much musical goodness). He's thus branched out into more design, with excellent results. Together with Dag Scheve - our esteemed Australia-schooled web editor and soon-to-be novelist - Mr. Lagim and myself are rewriting the bulk of the NPCs using this self-same tool. It's good. It's (yes) all good.
"But what about the damn story, fool!" I hear you screaming. "I hear you!" I yell back. This is story! It's not events, granted, but Fadinaway is taking care of that part. This is my current contribution. Disregard the novel, the story portal website, the animated series, and the timeline: This is getting story, news, background, setting - all of that - into the game. This will make it possible for a new player to easily engage in conversation with an interesting NPC, get information about Omni-Tek, the clans, the neutrals, notum, the Dust Brigade, the Unicorn Company, the Shadowlands...and have a good time doing it. In time, there will also be quests attached to some of the NPCs. This is story meets game-play. Finally.
I completed my first NPC using this new tool yesterday ("Ardis Weske"), and the second one today ("Evelina Fincel"). It's fun to do. And I can combine it with the chair-warming, so everybody wins. Yay!
More on this as the story breaks. We now return you to our regular programming.
