An Essay on Motivation II: Technology & Quests

[Jur Schagen]

Gracious, Jur. With all due respect that doesn't pass my boredom test. It sounds just like adding yet more tools whenever you make something. I understand the interest in stacking these scolls of yours into trees, but it just means that everyone everwhere would automatically come up with the same old culture provided they worked hard enough. Sounds like the good old "Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism" of Max Weber and company.

You're not easily pleased, are you? Going along with you 90% of the way ain't good enough?

Well, first, the tree should be designed so different areas don't have to follow the same path. In Civ terms, more like a Civ-2 tree than a Civ-3 tree (2). It should definately be possible to pursue different types of science development.

Second, the scrolls should indeed include rare materials, encouraging exploration and trade. Personally, I don't see why the cycling scroll shouldn't include 50g of lead and 1000g of papaya's, though the "realism" school would probably oppose that.

And about Weber, that's the basics of Cantr anyway... all resources, tools, buildings, and all else, boil down to labour, in the end, even including the walking hours to get that limestone from somewhere remote.

In a nutshell, objects are dynamically instantiated, rather than being absolute clones of the same old fixed table. The blueprint itself then generates the "project object" and so on. Can it be done? I don't know enough about MySQL to be able to say.

True. Just get us that team of five full-time programmers and we'll have it up and running in no time. Bottom line is, current Cantr code don't work that way. And Saz's point is very valid too... trying to predict all those combinations would be hell.

I would guess this is why Jur proposed what he did... not because it's the most interesting way to do it; but because it's the most interesting you could do it, practically speaking.

Exactly. It can be done with current coding.

Let me empasize this point. The proposed system should be such that the only thing towns can do to promote inventiveness is to collect together as many strange resources as possible and also encourage as many famous engineers, clothiers metalsmiths and whatnot to stick around and pursue their specialized professions.

You are probably aware that those "famous engineers" (and I'm assuming you mean those with exceptional skill levels) etc might be the key sleepers of the town, having to be poked every single time a machine needs to be constructed? Char activity and skill level are unrelated. We'd probably see more suicide chars, not less, because everyone wants this "uniqueness" level for their chars to get the "Eureka" chance at all.

1. At first thought it would now seem it would take between 5-10 cantr years more just to get anything up and running like smelters. That is a bad thing imo.

Smelters are already in-game, so see my point above (balancing old and new). Maybe we should do this for new stuff only?

Just please lets not RUSH into it.

Certainly not. We're just discussing, aren't we?

Jur.


(2) In Civ-2 the tree was much more varied, giving the players more free choice to pick their tech path. In Civ-3, certain key techs should get developed before being allowed into the next era, limiting player choice.

[Doug R.]

So what happens when you reach the end of the tech tree? Wouldn't that put us right back to where we are now?

[wichita]

So what happens when you reach the end of the tech tree? Wouldn't that put us right back to where we are now?

Yes. Yes it will. My short answer to all of this, though I do appreciate all of the thought behind it and it's Utopian development value, is that roleplaying is the best way to get this to happen. No matter how you code it, no matter how much effort you put into programming this element of invention to cure all the ills of the game...about 27.5% of the player base will geek out and map out the precise pathway to all debelopments. And then, onece they have a strategy worked out with one of their characters, the other 14 will magically obtain the strategic pathway to unlocking everything, building the right blueprint, yada yada yada, whatever.

So it adds a bunch of work to RD to recreate pretty much the exact same situation we have right now. A lot of people will be shaking their heads wondering why.

Phosphorous in bronze....well, bronze is not going to be an intermediate to iron. There is now way, even if we remove the phosphorous. Iron is well established and abundant and everyone automatically knows that "we need to make iron and steel". I witnessed it in the new virgin territority of the Chinese region. Exciement over finding limestone! Now we make iron! The formula proceeds.

Alright, so we add this blueprint requirement, or tech-tree or whatever to add a layer of complication that will slow everybody down on the way to the same homogenous spread of technology...whee! Nobody complains about adding complication to the game for the sake of realism.

Hmm....I said this would be short....

Recruiting honest roleplayers and getting rid of the Wiki is the best way to bring back the inventive spirit to the game. In lieu of hostorical tech level development, I am inclined to lean towards regionally tailored implementations. I have talked about this with diets during the food change, but I think it could be expanded to things like clothing, weapons, and vehicles.

There are resources that are only found on certain islands. With enough planning, a set of implementations could be set up so that the resources were only obtainable in specific regions. For example, Seatow Garden had spinage, tomatoes, and carrots and is therefore an ideal place for making tossed salad. On the other hand, Brunoi has tomatoes and wheat in abundance and is prime pizza territory. Both can be thought of as comparable quality as food sources go, but now we have some regional flavor that makes the game different for the two cities.

K-island has no oil, so many of the roads don't get paved. But the roads are fairly short, so bicycles travel is actually feasible, and if you really need to get to a town quickly you take the raker. Contrast to Cantr island where the roads are wicked long and everything is spread out. This is the domain of land vehicles and road improvement. Goods can be moved just as fast there by car as they can be on K by boat. What we have achieved by this however is cultural diversity. A minor achievement from a technical standpoint (we can't have roads and fancy cars like my characters on the other islands have, therefore the game is out of balance), but a great achievement from the society simulator point of view. What really adds the element of fun back into this cultural diversity and sense of innovation and uniqueness and fun? Roleplaying.



But that is just my opinion. I am probably wrong.

[Talapus]

we can't have... fancy cars like my characters on the other islands have

There are plenty of dirt motorcycles zooming about, and I have a character on K isle with access to all of the resources needed to build a car. Had to import clay, soda, and magnesium, but it will be the achievement of a lifetime.

[Mykey]

Now all is clear, thanks for the help in this question.

[formerly known as hf]

I agree with soc about the need for motivation - and that invention would supply that - and as a discussion, it's great, but an implementation of this kind, which would actually improve the gameplay, is far beyond the capacities of the staff.

For invention to be worth it - the characters need to have a direct input into the final product.

Jur's scrolls idea still just limits characters to building/manufacturing whatever the RD implement - it just makes building and manufacturing the same as it is now - but more difficult.

For characters to have direct input into a design - it would require far too much work. Which has been why invention has been rejected before.

Even if there was some form of auto-invention - the product linked to some choices made, with a possible random element - the implementation of that would take ages, and the results would be finite and within set limits.
In such a scenario, there will be people who will work out every single possible iteration.

If invention is implemented with more freedom - than every new addition would have to go through the RD, someone within staff would have to add that item, or at least check it before it is added.

Unfortunately, Cantr doesn't have anywhere near the staff power needed for this.


The wiki has been a good change - previously there was far too much benifit for being an older player.


We are in a situation where new additions do come, but are always going to be added at a slow pace. What Cantr needs is motivation for characters to build the things available to them, more than once.

For me, the thing that would most improve motivation in-game is fatser transport and inter-location connection and communication. Once the scope of business is no longer limited to a location or two, there will be motivation to grow, and build - to build what an organisation has already built, over and over again, in order to grow.

At the moment, there are far too many limits to growth and spread over locations.

[The Sociologist]

Firstly, thanks for all the replies, and a huge apology from my side. I put the above essay out and then ran out of time to follow it properly, poor orphan! My only earlier reply was also a bit irritable due to those circumstances. Sorry.

What is this thread about? It is not about a tech tree, nor about characters having to spend time (yet more time!) on "research". What it is all about is encouraging information flows at the level of the character rather than the player. It is about encouraging regional diversity. It is about introducing into the game something akin to the quests of traditional MUDs, except that these will arise spontaneously from the game.

Next, an apology to saztronic.

It should be difficult to get -- requiring resources from different lands, or specialized tools that could only be made with said resources.

Like bronze made from phosphorous? Nope, sorry, isn't working. Transcontinental trade is and always will be too erratic. Heck, trade from three towns away is too erratic. Furthermore this is very different from the issue of information flows, and it's that which I was trying to model.[...]
Let me empasize this point. The proposed system should be such that the only thing towns can do to promote inventiveness is to collect together as many strange resources as possible and also encourage as many famous engineers, clothiers metalsmiths and whatnot to stick around and pursue their specialized professions.

I don't see how the latter works without the former. How many "strange" resources are located on any one particular island? Most resources are familiar to those who've lived on it any length of time. It's only when traders or explorers from other islands show up that you see new stuff.

Yes, you were right and I was wrong. There is and indeed must be scope for exploration as well. That's indeed the whole point of the idea of quests. However, what I'd really meant to say is that resources alone aren't enough; one needs also the information flows. I wrote in too much of a rush. Sorry.

But your concept is built on quests. Archetypal quests involve journeys -- a search for something, through difficulties, something generally hidden, not easy to find, and of great value. It doesn't involve puttering around in your studio with a bunch of strange stuff and waiting for lightning to strike.

That's a first rate comment. In fact that's what I was trying to emphasize before I munged up my reply to you.

Sociologist, if we're expected to understand this, then I think you need to give us examples for all the major professions you described...

Yes indeed, sorry about that. Well just as a dress can be made of hemp, cotton, silk, and so on, so could a bow be made of ordinary wood or maybe "yew wood". This better material would enhance its potential. The story goes something like this. An expert forester happens to be working in a forest where there is some unidentified resource. Means nothing to him at first since nobody can collect it, then suddenly one day, while chopping ordinary wood, Eureka! He discovers that it is yew wood. He receives a message and a blueprint arrives in his inventory describing it and allowing him to collect it. Later he trades a sample of yew wood to someone who is expert in carving bow parts (though in this case forrester/carver/fletcher may be the same profession). Or alternatively (and alas more likely) he drops dead, leaving the blueprint and sample on the ground. The fletcher doesn't at first know what to make of yew wood until suddenly one day, while carving parts from ordinary wood, Eureka! He invents a bow part made from this new yew wood. Yet later, another Eureka and he invents a complete bow assembled from these new parts.

In exactly the same way, a glassblower/potter one day gets to invent clay tiles, a forester/carver gets to invent roof beams, and eventually an engineer/architect who is carrying samples of roof beams and clay tiles gets to invent a new kind of stone-clad house with clay roof, and so on. Now none of these "Eurekas" involve hiding away doing "research" (the tedious nonsense of the standard strategy games). What they do require is persistently pursuing your chosen profession, then they arise spontaneously by some combination of that and random chance. They will also be quite rare. That is where quests come in. Your architect has to find someone who knows how to make roof beams and someone who knows how to make clay tiles, and also has to acquire the samples, before he gets to have any chance at all of inventing the new kind of house. Again, the variables work in the way of "an X1 walled house with a roof of X2 and with X3 X4 and X4 X5." (The latter could be things like basalt portico, glass windows, etc)

Note that the architect character will have some foreknowledge that clay tiles, etc, are potential architectural materials. That is because his player has read the Wiki and knows that. It is entirely valid for the character to seek such materials. However, his ability to proceed is restricted by the spontaneous arrival in the game of the various blueprints, and this is controlled by the process of "inventon".

First let me say I really like the line of thought and resoning for this, but I have to completely disagree with anything like this ever happening, reasons being:

1. At first thought it would now seem it would take between 5-10 cantr years more just to get anything up and running like smelters. That is a bad thing imo.

It would indeed be an utterly dreadful thing. But it wasn't part of my idea at all. Sorry about the confusion.

In a nutshell, objects are dynamically instantiated, rather than being absolute clones of the same old fixed table. The blueprint itself then generates the "project object" and so on. Can it be done? I don't know enough about MySQL to be able to say.

True. Just get us that team of five full-time programmers and we'll have it up and running in no time. Bottom line is, current Cantr code don't work that way. And Saz's point is very valid too... trying to predict all those combinations would be hell.

Well, each weapon object in the game currently has an attribute which says what its state of decay is. And if that state is "unusable", then you can't use it. As I understand things, it won't appear on the combat menu. So why should such an object not have an attribute which says that it is, for example, made from yew wood instead of ordinary wood and thereby assigning a few points extra to the combat value?

Let me empasize this point. The proposed system should be such that the only thing towns can do to promote inventiveness is to collect together as many strange resources as possible and also encourage as many famous engineers, clothiers metalsmiths and whatnot to stick around and pursue their specialized professions.

You are probably aware that those "famous engineers" (and I'm assuming you mean those with exceptional skill levels) etc might be the key sleepers of the town, having to be poked every single time a machine needs to be constructed? Char activity and skill level are unrelated. We'd probably see more suicide chars, not less, because everyone wants this "uniqueness" level for their chars to get the "Eureka" chance at all.

We appear to be seeing suicidalism because of the perceived unfairness of the skills system, especially as relates to combat, and because of the perceived inability to raise needed skills by any worthwhile degree in any realistic time frame. I've said before that it's the worst system I've ever seen in an online MUD. Sorry, but there it is. Critical to my essays I and II is a plea to rescue the skills system. Skills need to be in groupings that are relevant to professions, so that people can roleplay those professions. That's the whole point! Combat skills should flow from attibutes of you profession, not from people whacking away with wasters all day long. Levelling crap!

My short answer to all of this, though I do appreciate all of the thought behind it and it's Utopian development value, is that roleplaying is the best way to get this to happen. No matter how you code it, no matter how much effort you put into programming this element of invention to cure all the ills of the game...about 27.5% of the player base will geek out and map out the precise pathway to all developments. And then, once they have a strategy worked out with one of their characters, the other 14 will magically obtain the strategic pathway to unlocking everything, building the right blueprint, yada yada yada, whatever.

There will be no way to "build the right blueprint". The characters would have to quest after blueprint components. Yes, the player might know what components need to be assembled (see the above more detailed description), but it would be very unlikely that any one character could ever put it all together without major interaction with other characters and much travel. I'm sorry if I created the wrong impression, but my ideas somehow got mixed up with Jur's in the course of events.

Recruiting honest roleplayers and getting rid of the Wiki is the best way to bring back the inventive spirit to the game. In lieu of hostorical tech level development, I am inclined to lean towards regionally tailored implementations. I have talked about this with diets during the food change, but I think it could be expanded to things like clothing, weapons, and vehicles.

The Wiki was only introduced after a very long controversy and the need for it became obvious during that controversy. Also the above does not preclude regional implementations. Yew wood could be regional, for example. But what we need, over and above that, is reintroducing information flows at the character level. Removing the Wiki, which operates at the player level, is no solution.

Even if there was some form of auto-invention - the product linked to some choices made, with a possible random element - the implementation of that would take ages, and the results would be finite and within set limits. In such a scenario, there will be people who will work out every single possible iteration.

If you read my improved description, that would prove to be very unlikely in one character lifetime. Essentially, you would be combining multiplied object attributes (and objects already have attributes) with a slow process of spontaneous "invention" in-game. This would allow for the simulation of information flows. I agree this would take a lot of programming, but then so apparently did the individualization of animals.

Anyhow, much of this depends the light in which one views information flows. Very important to a society simulation? Not important? Somewhere inbetween? My feeling is: rather important, but not as important as the issues addressed in Essay I. That one was more about fixing what is currently not working properly.

[Marian]

Just read th efirst post, skimmed through the replies...and I've got to say this one didn't quite blow me away the way 'Essay 1' did, but assuming repairs, etc. were fixed first (they're bothering me more and more lately...it's getting to the point where good repairing skill is going ot trump good fighting skills in my criteria for a'lucky' character) I think I'd like to see something like this added, if it were possible to program. Which it might not be, but of course I'll leave that part to people who actually know how to program...

The only deal breaker for me would be if building normal things in the game suddenly required this. Everything should be left as it is now, with just an extra, optional level for people that want the challenge. As for me, I don't want to have to be chasing down clay tiles and roofing timers or whatever when all I need is a giant stone box to store my stuff in. (But I admit designing new clothes or coming up with new recipes sounds fun...cooking and tailoring are now mostly RP-only professions already, so it would be a natual addition.)

And buying a blueprint for an awesome super-bow without all the annoying little pieces a crossbow needs would of course be fun, even if there's no way I'm going to dedicate my chars life to chasing down special wood and string and somebody who can make it when a battleaxe does the job just fine.

[saztronic]

Now that you've explained it better, I have to say that from a programming standpoint it really is a nightmare. Your example isn't a very good one. Sure, you might add an attribute to a bow to say it was made of a certain kind of wood, and thus increase its attack potential. But you're talking about creating dozens of new resources, resulting in hundreds of new attributes for existing (and new) tools and machines. As Jur says, it would take 5 full-time programmers, at least. Both on the RD side and on the ProgD side, and even then it would be so painful you'd have trouble recruiting enough qualified ProgD people willing to work on it. I wouldn't.

I'd like to hear if Jur would agree, but I suspect he will. I don't know where that leaves this suggestion. I think the Civ-tree would work, but there seems to be a consensus that that's not what people want and/or it would just get overmastered within weeks. What Soc is describing wouldn't work -- and there seems to be lukewarm support for it in any case. Perhaps we should focus on fixing the skills system, as you argued for in Essay I, and let this innovation/tech/quest idea simmer for a bit and see if something more desirable and feasible comes to the collective mind.

[Nalaris]

It woudn't take five full time programmers. Our current staff could do it. It would just take a while.

[Nixit]

It woudn't take five full time programmers. Our current staff could do it. It would just take a while.

Like real time years.

[formerly known as hf]

Anyhow, much of this depends the light in which one views information flows. Very important to a society simulation? Not important? Somewhere inbetween? My feeling is: rather important, but not as important as the issues addressed in Essay I. That one was more about fixing what is currently not working properly.

This is the sentiment I agree with - but I disagree that we need to introduce 'quests' of some form, whether they result in inventions or not.

I would prefer that motivation come from the players - from their characters, thus quests should be arranged by the characters, rather than hard-coded in any form.

Information flows are vital to this, but I would consider it more important to make inter-location communication, either inperson or through other means, more easier - easier travel and communication will lead to wider prospects and a motivation for growth.

This would appeal more to me than trying to make the use of the currently difficult and inefficient communication and travel more appealing by providing rewards.

[wichita]

Once the blueprints are multiplied and distributed like notes, the world becomes sufficiently homogenized, effectively undoing all of this very detailed and tedius staff work and leaving us exactly where we are right now.

All of the blueprints will make their way into the Wiki, so everyone will know exactly which blueprints to ask for immediately upon spawning. "I am new to this world, having just spawned. Does anyone have 200 grams of iron the blueprints to make a doohickey?"

If we spread them far enough apart across the game world, they will never be combined and then people will be complaining it is impossible to find them all to make them useful, just like the herb system now.



I will maintain again that quality roleplaying is the best way to bring invention back to the game. Most of us have lost the spark of invention simply because the game is old hat to us now. Instead of rediculing the newbies for asking questions, maybe we need to step back and rediscover that childlike excitement we had when we first came to the game, and forget about whatever soapbox we might have stepped up on.

[saztronic]

Once the blueprints are multiplied and distributed like notes, the world becomes sufficiently homogenized, effectively undoing all of this very detailed and tedius staff work and leaving us exactly where we are right now.

All of the blueprints will make their way into the Wiki, so everyone will know exactly which blueprints to ask for immediately upon spawning. "I am new to this world, having just spawned. Does anyone have 200 grams of iron the blueprints to make a doohickey?"

If we spread them far enough apart across the game world, they will never be combined and then people will be complaining it is impossible to find them all to make them useful, just like the herb system now.



I will maintain again that quality roleplaying is the best way to bring invention back to the game. Most of us have lost the spark of invention simply because the game is old hat to us now. Instead of rediculing the newbies for asking questions, maybe we need to step back and rediscover that childlike excitement we had when we first came to the game, and forget about whatever soapbox we might have stepped up on.

I totally agree with your point about roleplaying. But I think you're missing something about this whole innovation idea. I still think it can't really be implemented practically anyway, but we should at least agree what we're talking about.

I don't think homogenization would be as much as an issue as you describe, because of Soc's emphasis on the Eureka moment. There's random chance involved there -- you don't know who's going to figure it out, or where they'll be at the time, and that will complicate how quickly the knowledge can spread in game.

Also, I think the idea would be to have such Eureka moment potential implemented on a rolling basis by the RD. So even if you had figured out yew wood, or whatever, that doesn't mean you could automatically do something with it. It would take RD to implement the "use", and then another random Eureka moment. X player must have yew wood and be doing Y activity, and then will have a 1 in 20 chance per day of discovering Z. The timing of when X, Y, and Z become possible can be controlled by RD and ProgD.

[wichita]

Yes, I understood the eureka moment. That has merit, but is just a coded extension of the current Eureka moment, which is RD adding new stuff to the game. The propagation of the blueprint object (which works just like a note if the original recipient of the eureka moment can chose who recieves it, and it ends up on the ground after death) will lead to homogenization. I present the Hobbes Encyclopedia and Treefeather map as exhibits A and B.


If you limit the Eureka moment to a frequency at which it rarely occurs, and then spread the resources out so that you have to travel to obtain them (intercontinental trade) then they will not be combined together to add anything to the game as proposed. That is just a rehashing of the strategy that RD (New Lands Department) has been rediculed about repeatedly in the past. Just because it has a prettier wrapper does not mean that it will solve the problem, because at the end of the day it is the exact same thing.