No, really. [url=http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-05/29/improbable]Improbable[/url].
Their main aim was to take distributed systems used in high-frequency trading and apply them to games to enable massively multiplayer experiences that have the richness of gameplay of a first-person shooter. "You could have a Call of Duty experience with an entire army. You can have hundreds of thousands of entities in the world with a simulated city with traffic infrastructure," Narula explains.
Yeah, I'll just leave that there.
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I have no idea if this particular company named Improbable will succeed in what they're trying to do today in 2014. But I have little doubt that sometime in the relatively near-future (10-20 years?) the state of computer/software technology will be at the point where it'll be far more "probable" that we'll be playing games like what's been described here.
While it might be interesting to play a FPS with thousands of my closest friends I think what would really be cool would be to have a virtual role-playing experience more like old school pen-n-paper RPGs. Instead of focusing so much about how to get the max number of people together in one instance have a game where people (perhaps just a small number at first) can get together and play in an AI-controlled environment that can completely and fully adapt to what the players might do the same way a human GM can adapt to what people do now in pen-n-paper games. I think that would be the real "sandbox holy grail" of online gaming.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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I figured the main advantage of what they are trying to achieve, as it relates to a game like City of Titans, is that an instance could support considerably more players before another would need to be spawned. They could potentially do away with instances altogether, but while having thousands of players in the same zone would make for great PR shots, it would not be nearly so fun when you want to get things done.
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I consider the generic idea of being able to "jam more players into a single instance" in future games as something that will happen almost by default. Not trying to imply that it still won't take serious work or innovation to achieve. Just saying that in terms of what I'd consider "revolutionary breakthroughs" of gaming technology I'm pretty much assuming instances with higher player counts are going to happen at some point.
On the other hand things like having "AI-based GMs" which could manage a game similar to how human GMs control pen-n-paper games today would be a truly miraculous innovation that would be a "real" breakthrough worthy of note as far as I'm concerned.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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"Their main aim was to take distributed systems used in high-frequency trading and apply them to games" to me is like taking poison gas and somehow using it to make delicious bacon.
I think you're right, Darth, in what they are aiming for, but personally I can't wait for Lothic's vision to come true. I'm much more interested in future capability of games to bring more depth than width, so to speak. I'd say about 30% of the time a game gives me a choice (like the Bioware "Wheel of Ambiguity") I want to say or do something other than the options listed. When games can take ANY response I make and compute a logical reaction, I'll be in game heaven. If I'm still alive when this comes about.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Indeed. Especially if such an AI could run on a system the average development can afford. As I said in another post, I'd love to see a more simplistic approach (only create basic content) loosed on the likes of hazard zones. I say hazard zones specifically because, if the AI freaks out, it should not break anything in the game at large and the whole event can be written off as, "My, the hazard zone is particularly hazardous today."
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Ha - well said!
Spurn all ye kindle.
That would be cool. I can certainly see such possibilities being realized in single player games. MMOs will always need to be more structured, so any such options must necessarily be considerably more constrained.[color=red]*[/color] At a minimum, players will have to be willing to put up with seeing the results of other players' choices, even if it doesn't make sense for their personal 'reality' (e.g. Player A decided to let Agent Theodore die while Player B is standing next to them and buying his Agent Theodore a hot dog, to provide a banal example).
But, yeah, this is getting a little too theoretical for my blood. Frankly, I'll be impressed enough if they can get thousands of players into the same area without the players' computers locking up from trying to render everything.
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[color=red]*[/color] At a minimum, such possibilities will have to be realized through personalized, AI-run missions. However, I believe the limitation will remain that the greater the freedom in the mission, the smaller the likelihood that the mission will have an impact the game world at large.
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That sounds really awesome.
It also got me thinking. Are there any online games where someone can take the role of a pnp GM and direct things from a god-mode perspective?
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."
I believe the classic example is Neverwinter Nights. It's also the only one I can name off the top of my head.
In terms of MMOs, I think the closest a player can get so far is a mission editor.
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I think some of the old-school text-based MUDs allowed human Mods to tinker with the state of those games in realtime but I'm not aware of any "modern" MMOs that would allow a human GM to control/change a game to any serious degree like a pen-n-paper game. At any rate you'd probably need literally hundreds of human GMs to manually oversee and coordinate things like that in a big MMO if you wanted to try to simulate that kind of thing today.
To be fair what I'm suggesting (having AI handle realistic GMing) is probably at least a few decades off. On the other hand I'd estimate Darth Fez's "thousands of players in the same instance" will probably become commonplace in most games in just 5 or 10 years.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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Yeah. I tried to edit my comment to say "non MMO" but kept getting a "There is a problem with your message try again in 462346 seconds" message..
The conversation just started me thinking about the group of friend I used to play D&D with thirty-some-odd years ago. We no longer live close enough to get together like we used to and a couple of them I asked said they were "afraid of MMOs" or some such.
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."
Goldman Sachs hmm
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whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look into the abyss, the abyss also look into you, -Friedrich
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Thousands in a zone at once means you could do more true live events, which are still far and away the most fun thing in games like these.
And I don't mean the pseudo-invasions of CoH which were just temporary spawn points that lasted a week. I mean real live events intruding on player "safe" areas like near Atlas. Things where you can't just "go around" that en route to some static mission.
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The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.