Mob Spawning and Immersion

February 28, 2006 on 10:32 am | In MMO (Live), Playstyles

Life and EQ2 have conspired of late to ensure my blogging is sporadic.

But in discussing my critique of EQ2 instancing, Baldrake raised a good point.

It's the "respawn constantly so that the other players have something to kill as well" that breaks immersion.

I completely agree. If it's immersion you seek, then mobs popping into thin air (or in the case of EQ1, popping in mid- air, will break it. Heck, even if you aren't seeking immersion, nothing reminds you that these are just games more than what amounts to a technically expedient solution.

I was reminded of this in a number of recent games, from WoW to DDO to EQ2.

In WoW and EQ2, mobs show up pretty much as they do in earlier MMOGs: out of nothing. They're there, you kill, you wait, they show up again. Instantly. No ceremony. No flash of light. No high-pitched whiny with a Scottish accent yelling for more power. Nothing.

There are some exceptions of course. There are closed rooms, trees, valleys and other features that can hide this spawning technique. This helps, particularly if you keep running around. Run along a shoreline killing everything in sight, and then run back. Those crabs you just killed may have walked out of the water. Right?

DDO does this too, but they also tried a few other things. For example, you can crack a crate, and out flows some ooze. The ooze puddles on the floor and then morphs, Terminator 2 T-1000 style, into a mob. That's pretty cool. Another example is breaking crypts in a dungeon. Break one, the door crashes to the floor, and out of the rubble climbs a Skeleton, or whatever. There were many other instances like this.

Of course, DDO doesn't really have respawning in a dungeon being occupied. You've got to fail the quest for the place to respawn, and it all happens before you enter it anyway.

But it's a nice touch. EQ2 does this, err, all of once I think. One of the earliest quests on Refuge (now Queen's Colony, and I'm not sure if this quest is in Realm of the Overlord) has you looking for a fallen soldier. When you find him, a Skeleton climbs out of the ground. Like in DDO, this was a nice touch. Unlike DDO, this was one of the only occasions in the game, as far as I've seen.

I'd like to see more of that.

For example, if you enter a room and there's a chest being guarded by a pirate, instead of trigger-spawning in more pirates, have them run into the room from other doorways you didn't see, or by moving furniture to expose other doorways.

Or how about if you kill a griffon, a new one flies down from a perch you can't possibly climb too.

What if Lava Elementals actually climbed out of lava?

And snakes came out of snake holes?

All of these are arguably throw-away efforts. I mean, after all, how far should one go to ensure such an abstract as "immersion" is fulfilled?

To me though, these would merely be scripted events, sequence that can happen anyway. Consider one of the buff spells from Dark Age of Camelot. I think it was called "Earthen Buff" or "Stone shield" or some such. This big stone hand opens up on the ground, "grabs" the character, lights shine, and the buff is applied. A nice bit of scripted animation that told a story. Could take place anywhere. That the person could move while this animation was playing sorta broke the impression, but at least Mythic tried.

Ultimately, I think this element of mob spawning is an important part of immersion. After all, it's not just what mobs are there.

It's how they're introduced into the scene.