A huge topic that will require a lot of thought and discussion. Let me know what you think about reading this.

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Microsoft XNA MVP

Neophyte assignments could be small and self explanatory/menial things like meeting some agent in a secret location and handing them an envelope, planting a bug, or stalking someone and taking photos.

Later assignments could be things like breaking into a building to retrieve something. Impersonation. Infiltrating an organisation with the aim of gathering inside information. Or sabotaging it from the inside. Also assassinations.

Top level assignments could involve long strings of actions, which require more initiative but gives greater freedom. There may be an unclear objective, "An organisation appears to know exactly where our nuclear submarines are. We need you to investigate." and the objectives are formed as answers come.

As for quests being dynamically generated, they would have to follow some templates. The game would have to create new characters to replace defeated ones. Each AI character could be given a random mission to create some scenario in the game... and as those scenarios happen, the player can undertake missions to counter them.

One example could be a smuggler, or a drug baron.

Could it also be possible for several AI agents to form a group who all cooperate in some greater endeavor. The group could draw new AI members, and when it forms a certain size, it's leader could become a new "evil genius".

It could be interesting generating an AI script like that. Forming jobs for each member, and having an enterprise expand. What would have to drive enterprise is a supply and demand paradigm, and a capitalist process that creates a need for new recruits. Plus an optimization process that breaks down the enterprise into jobs/tasks/quests.

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I ain't pushing no moon buttons.

Great stuff.

I envision some missions on both human and AI side possibly requiring tweaking on the fly my GMs as well as dynamic creation of them as the world changes due to player actions. This is a huge thing that's missing in MMOs today, possibly due to cost and the potential to mess things up. If the game world is to seem real though, these things have to occur. Most MMOs have events that happen periodically, but not on the scale I'd like to see.

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Bored? Head on over to my blog and see what I'm up to.

Microsoft XNA MVP

The back bone of that kind of AI would be a stable economy.

The problem with most MMO economies is that respawning creeps creates an unnatural surplus of loot, that allows players to essentially make money from nothing, which can cause inflation.

Once you have a stable economy, it's easy to identify imbalances between supply and demand, from which you can create AI units, and have them address that through the black market.

eg,
(1) Illegal thing costs less in X than it does in Y. Create enterprise moving it from X to Y.
(2) Sabotage production in location X to increase demand for that produced in location Y.
(3) The Goldfinger strategy, Endeavor to destroy something of great economic value, to make you're own private stock more valuable.
(4) The Blofeld strategy. Endeavor to ignite war between two nations, so that a third nation (your ally) can become dominant.
(5) The Orlov strategy. Endeavor to create a (nuclear weapon) accident, so that a nation gives up it's (nuclear weapon) defenses, so making it easy for a second nation to invade.

etc

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I ain't pushing no moon buttons.

Then respawning needs to be removed.

The main goal of almost every MMO is killing mobs. What if that wasn't the main goal though? That's what I'm thinking. Most missions wouldn't be of the "Kill <x> mobs" type. Courier, theft, eavesdropping, etc. don't require killing anyone. The trick would be to keep those missions interesting.

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Microsoft XNA MVP

Recover the object mission such as a downed satellite? Almost branching into Spec Ops territory, but racing to get there ahead of other teams/agents makes it challenging. Extra points for getting out undetected.

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

Yeah, missions like that. That would be a group mission obviously.


It doesn't matter whether or not you're detected as long as your cover isn't compromised (which is another thing that needs to be addressed, alternate identities).

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Bored? Head on over to my blog and see what I'm up to.

Microsoft XNA MVP

I see the potential for secrets as being the new "loot." Perhaps you could sell someone's cover (see the Identity thread), or sell files that detail missions from another organization... maybe even compromising photos of a government official.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Yup, exactly, but call it "intel".

I think there's a huge potential here for coming up with something new/different, but still be interesting.

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Bored? Head on over to my blog and see what I'm up to.

Microsoft XNA MVP