Tim Cain GDC Panel Overview

After sitting in on a panel discussion hosted by long-time RPG designer and Carbine Studios design director Tim Cain during last week’s Game Developers Conference, GameSpot has kicked up an overview of “how he’s trying to make a classic single-player RPG storyline work in a massively multiplayer context.”  My guess is that they’ll be announcing their game soon, so we’ll probably be hearing a lot more from Tim in the coming months: 

Having all the players at the same power level allows the designers to cut around a lot of design pitfalls. They didn’t need to have a hackneyed “chosen one” storyline, and they didn’t have the odd discord of a level-two scrub being dubbed the dragon slayer or world savior.

Cain gave an example of the world-spanning story with a boss in a keep on a mountaintop. The keep wouldn’t be instanced, but it would be very difficult to get to, and if a low-level player somehow obtained a flying mount to get there, he would be welcomed by very high-level enemies that serve as a deterrent.

In another example, the high-level content would be instanced, but NPCs would help players through a locked door to the content only if they had proven themselves worthy. To help foster aspirational players, Cain said when players complete major world story tasks, they will be featured in an in-game newspaper that all the other players of the game can read. Additionally, NPCs will have specialized reactions based on player performance and the choices they make in the finale.