Your Next: The Dark Night Returns
Can SOE recapture the magic and mystery of the unknown?
One small point of contention (such a short honeymoon period) was that the nights in EverQuest Next will not be as dark as they could be, the designers want players to be able to play comfortably at any time, though it has been said that light sources will be important. While this disappointment is understandable there are myriad ways to create a feeling of danger at night, so many techniques to inject actual danger and a sense of menace; and just because EverQuest did it one way does not mean it's the only way, and it certainly doesn't mean it's the best way to go about it. Having enemies directly affected by our light sources worked well in Metro: Last Light, and just because we can see the landscape at night doesn't mean our enemies can't still use the night to create an ambush. So we will be able to see what's in front of us, but that doesn't remove uncertainty, danger or the need for light sources; which seems to be a fair compromise as play sessions for MMOs shorten and players are less willing to endure enforced downtime.
Introducing danger is easy, creating uncertainty is hard. It's the uncertainty that makes the experience compelling as our own minds populate the dark with dangers.
How can SOE create uncertainty in today's gaming landscape? As online gamers become more savvy and are equipped with increasingly sophisticated tools to help them understand and navigate their world of choice, how can a developer hope to craft a sense of mystery?
Luckily for SOE, the answer to this question seems to be hard wired in their game design. The world will change around you, your AI controlled enemies will adopt different strategies to counter yours and we will never be certain of the outcome of any action. It's this possibility space that makes EverQuest Next such a fascinating prospect, the construction of a world that, though it has internally consistent rules, has enough 'random' elements that interesting things can happen within it.
This possibility space is vital to a sandbox game, if the world is not dynamic and if there is nothing in conflict with the will of the player, why are we even there to begin with? Eve Online is built around players working at cross purposes, and Minecraft (in survival mode) uses darkness to spawn creatures hell bent on ruining your day.
I believe that's why players are so quick to jump on the idea of the night having meaning, they want the world to change and for that change to have meaning. For this to work there has to be something trying to affect change in a different direction and luckily for us, that's how EverQuest Next is being built.
Dave Georgeson loves telling people about how different groups and factions in EverQuest Next will push and pull each other around the world as their respective wants and needs are met or denied. Players will have a direct influence on this process, and in the game-changing Rallying Calls events will be put in motion that can change the world forever. How this change comes about is still down to players, and they can never be certain of what effects their decisions will have in the long run, even server to server.
This is the real crux of the issue, players are tired of static worlds and by-the-numbers encounters, and the fine folks at SOE seem to be on the same page. Isn't that nice?
LockSixTime
