Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are one of the most
popular genres in video games that combine massively multiplayer online genres with
role-playing gameplay. MMORPGs’ featured social interaction and forms of level pro-
gression through quest completion are the core for gaining players’ attention. Varied
and challenging quests play an essential part in retaining that attention. However,
well-crafted content takes much longer to develop with human efforts than it does to
consume, and the dominant procedural content generation models for quests suffer
from the drawback of being incompatible with dynamic world changes and the feeling
of repetition over time. The proposed solution is to dynamically generate contextu-
ally relevant quests with real-time information collected from the players. This thesis
is to show that it is possible to generate contextually dynamic quests that could fit
into the background story with only the information gathered from the players in
real-time.
To validate the proposed solution, a text-based MMO scenario is generated from
the Panoptyk Engine, an information-driven game engine designed to run massively
multiplayer online games (MMOs) without the distinction between NPCs and human
players. The engine is intended to serve as a platform for simulating human/robot
interaction. In this case, a quest simulation is built where quests are given by the NPC
faction leaders utilizing the information gathered through ongoing events; players or
robots belonging to certain factions will be taking and completing the quests.
ivThe results of the 14-person survey showed some successes and some limitations.
There was strong agreement in players understanding of what the quest was asking
for, quests were related to other agents the player had seen in the world, quests
involved agents that the player had interactions with, quests were related to things
happening in the game world, quests were interesting. There was regular agreement on
players understanding of quests that were designed entirely before the player started
playing, quests were generated using a basic template with details filled in based
on the player’s actions, and quests were dynamically generated. It was inconclusive
with players understanding of quest motivation and previous quests the player had
completed having an impact on the next quests.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CALPOLY/oai:digitalcommons.calpoly.edu:theses-4285 |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
| Creators | Lin, Shangwei |
| Publisher | DigitalCommons@CalPoly |
| Source Sets | California Polytechnic State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Master's Theses |
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