PlaneShift
Gameplay => General Discussion => Topic started by: Watcher on June 19, 2004, 05:36:57 pm
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This isnt a suggestion so I dont think it should go in the wish list so I put it here, this thread is about you saying what mistakes you have seen in other games that you realy dont want to happen in planeshift. Mine is going to be quite simple
Never have unique drops (i mean on planeshift holdays) Runescap did this and it totaly ruined the econemy.
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Are you on drugs? Dropping those party hats boosted the economy and continued to for sometime! They should have stopped with the santa hats and party hats but they didn\'t ruin anything! The only thing that began to ruin the economy was duping of the party hats!
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DepthBlade no takling about the game thta must not be named thats naughty :P, oh and for your information party hat prices have dropped alot because of gold and trimmed amours and are now only 3 million to 2 million each.
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Um, \'click and wait\' style combat..... although there\'s not much that can be done about that ;)
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Have a point. Many games (Runescape and Morrowind to name a few) you run around aimlessly trying to gain levels as the main focus. This is fun for a few months, but interest soon goes down. There should be a main goal in this game that may take years and years to complete.
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Games with bad economies (ex: ones that make it damn hard for newbs to do anything and damn easy for veterans to buy anything) are bad games. I am not a fan of economies period. Hell if it were up to me there would be no currency. Just the good ol\' trade market.
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Just the good ol\' trade market.
lol, yeah that would be cool.
SWG has the best economy around in a MMORPG. 100% player driven, no NPC shops. :D
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[Edit: By the way, this is a wish list thread. You wish for none of these mistakes to be repeated.] :)
There should be a main goal in this game that may take years and years to complete.
No.
If you want goals to complete, play singleplayer. There is no \"main\" plot in an online game. There never was and there never will be. Diablo is another example of this... boring... gameplay style. Quest, quest, quest, done. New difficulty. Quest, quest, quest, done. This is not what is intended for PlaneShift. There will be multiple major quest plots, full of dead ends and even more trick questions and sub quests, that even if you hunted every day for 10 years, would never be able to complete, with more quests added all the time.
To make it simple, just for you:
Bad styles:
Diablo (complete the game, gain levels and items).
Good styles:
Still non-existant.
SWG has the best economy around in a MMORPG. 100% player driven, no NPC shops.
Have you ever played Project Entropia? Excellent economy system, not because people are able to extract their ingame money to real life money, more because people actually want and value the money they have, rather than throwing it away on something useless. And people actually think before they buy something, which is diffrent to many other MMORPGs where money is worth nothing to people. :)
Anyway, to get back on topic. A mistake I\'d like to see corrected in PlaneShift is the use of numbers. Numbers in games are bad, as they make people think they can \"win\" the game by getting their number higher than everyone else\'s. As long as there is a number they can compare, they can say \"hah I have 1 more than you so I win\", and that\'s bad. Very bad. No matter what it is. So the fewer numbers there are, the better.
Another mistake I\'d like NOT to see in PlaneShift is the occurance of magic items. You are not to go on a quest, kill monsters and find so many magic items that you have to actually discard some of them. That\'s bad. Very bad. Magic items are rare and their owners should praise them and protect them with their lives, not dump them on the ground for some other Obah Dood Axe of Doom +3.
Mistake number 3. No sane person would put a sword into his/her backpack. Nor an axe, or any other weapon for that matter. Talk about a back pain... A backpack is used to carry supplies, not weapons. Weapons are kept in the person\'s belt or in the person\'s hands, or in a sheathe designed for that kind of weapon. If a person cannot carry the weapon, he/she must drop it and cry about it, or put it somewhere safe and come back later for it.
Mistake number 4. Anything a monster or humanoid NPC drops when killed should be sellable and worth picking up, and dropped items should remain in the game forever, until picked up. Food and other things that rot, should rot after a given time period, such as an ingame week or two ingame weeks, depending on how fast such things would actually rot.
Mistake number 5. In most, if not all, other online games it is not possible to put away your weapon, whenever you wish. People should be able to sheathe their sword or axe, and city guards should enforce this. If you draw your sword on a crowded market place, you\'re asking for trouble.
That\'s about it... For now.
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Grono, I agree with all your points, except I\'m not so sure about #4. Presumably there are other scavengers who are not adventurers, although I agree that in general objects shouldn\'t be arbitrarily \"disappeared\". Also, not everything should be \"worth picking up\" - the shattered shield, the notched sword? I do think that this kinda junk should be left around for a while though.
I think that backpacks should be shed for effective combat, not that this would necessarily have a huge impact on gameplay, but it should be a little difficult to find some random potion in your backpack while fully engaged with the enemy.
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Heh, if it weren\'t for server space, I\'d like to see damage to the environment(no, I\'m not talking about pollution) remain. I.e., if you hit a rock with a hammer, the scar should remain.
As for the broken sword: it still has material value. Why would it not be possible to recycle it? If you actually sell iron ore, why would you not be able to sell iron from a damaged sword? And if it\'s just somewhat bent, it might still be useful if you upgrade from a stick to a bent sword.
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One thing I\'d really like to see is the full looting of killed enemies. If you kill somebody, then you should be able to take away ALL of his items, not just one or two.
A mistake I\'d like to see corrected in PlaneShift is the use of numbers. Numbers in games are bad, as they make people think they can \"win\" the game by getting their number higher than everyone else\'s. As long as there is a number they can compare, they can say \"hah I have 1 more than you so I win\", and that\'s bad. Very bad. No matter what it is. So the fewer numbers there are, the better.
Yes, I think that combat style should come into play heavily here. Even a newbie should be able to kill a super strong player with a well placed cut. For example; Strong player stands there swinging his sword about with no style, newbie rolls underneath the strong player, and thrusts his sword into the stong player. Newbie wins. I don\'t think that just because the stong player has better stats that he should be unbeatable by everyone. Some styles should bring instant kill if done correctly, and stats come into play to see whether the other person can block it quick enough/or deciding if the force of the blow can pierce the armour etc. (As an example)
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a mistake all fantasy games make IMO is when the artists tries to make characters less symetrical but they always overdo it, I\'m so tired of the gigantic shoulder pad warrior have on there right shoulder (BG:DA, NWN etc.).
Nothing big I just irretate myself on it. maybe you have no idea what I\'m talking about but now that I\'ve said it you will find it on every game
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Can you repeat that... i think you misstiped...
What i think you mean is a warrior has a giant spike on his right shulder and nothing on his left?
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I agree with Xordan that very strong players shoudn\'t be unbeatable.
In some games damage from hit is based only on stats, what means every hit does similar amount of damage. It\'s bad, each hit is different, you can hit various body parts, hit well armored/badly armored place, hit weaker/stronger, predict or not your enemy\'s moves, or just be lucky/unlucky. Of course the stats should still play a great role, but having 7 strenght and your opponent 3 armor shouldn\'t mean you\'ll always do 4-7 damage (just a simplified example).
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So far the best economy i have ever seen is Final Fantasy 11 online they have that system down pat! RS has a good economy to and 2-3 for those isn\'t bad depending on color :P
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SWG has a whacked out economy. really, a newbie has NO chance in that game if they wanna do things themselves. it\'s a good game, I love it, but the economy needs a lot of work. when I first logged on, I looked at the marketplace and saw that there was nothing there that wasn\'t at least 1000 creds. I\'m an artisan and I personally put my things up at 100- 300 creds, but that\'s really rare to see. I\'ll be puttin my vehicles up at 1000, but that\'s about the most expensive thing I\'m gonna sell.
the worst part is, when you do try to sell at a lower rate, other artisans buy it just to get it off the market.
and player looting. the ability to loot all of someones items really gives too much to the griefers. And it\'s ALWAYS a mistake to empower griefers.
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Originally posted by RussianVodka
Can you repeat that... i think you misstiped...
What i think you mean is a warrior has a giant spike on his right shulder and nothing on his left?
somewhat like this: http://home.cogeco.ca/~eligio/graphics/nwn.jpg
Tygerwilde: you are so wrong, a newbie can get filthfy rich easy in that game, the 2nd day I played the trial I reached the trial credit limit of 50.000 and with that I can buy alot of things.
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I agree with the numbers mistake not getting repeated... about the economy, a fully player driven economy is (IMO) way better than a npc driven one. Gives the artisans/crafters better chances of selling their items. I remember playing iRO a long time ago... they were hacked so often that the market was the most unstable one I had ever seen (one day something is worth millions, the next day people are dropping it =P). Deformable terrain is a nice thing to have too. A huge mistake that should not be done is the game world never evolving. By that I mean new areas, events, etc...
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Originally posted by Niber
Tygerwilde: you are so wrong, a newbie can get filthfy rich easy in that game, the 2nd day I played the trial I reached the trial credit limit of 50.000 and with that I can buy alot of things.
Well what do you expect if you play 7-10 hrs straight :P
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Xordan
/me agrees. in \"rl\" an experianced swordsman would hate to come across a newbie; the reason being the swordsman has no idea what the newbs going to do
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/me agrees. in \"rl\" an experianced swordsman would hate to come across a newbie; the reason being the swordsman has no idea what the newbs going to do
From what you write in your post, it\'s pretty obvious you\'re not a skilled swordsman in real life, and have no clue how such a person would think.
First of all, to be a skilled swordsman, you have to pass years of training with the sword, during which you also learn how to block, dodge and read other people\'s styles. If you can not do this, you\'d be dead long ago.
Now, a rookie swordsman would have rough movements, no abilities to dodge blows and would wear out after a short time, due to the fact that he\'s not used to fighting with swords. His style would be easy for the experienced swordsman to read, and it would be more than easy to take him out.
However what Xordan is referring to is that a rookie swordsman can still cut someone\'s arm off if he/she is not paying attention, or is busy fighting someone else. All it requires is a hard blow by a sharp sword on an unarmored place. But in a one on one fight, a rookie would be easily downed by an experienced player due to the fact that he knows how to handle the sword, and the rookie doesn\'t.
You must also remember swords are heavy. They can\'t be thrown around like in a stickfight. If your attack gets blocked, you have to be wicked strong and skilled to keep your sword in your hands, and actually hit with it again before your opponent hits you. The only way to make lucky hits would be if you had some kind of diversion or something to attract the other\'s attention, or if the other one is wounded and incapable of protecting himself. Swordfighting isn\'t as easy as it seems. :)
By the way, why do you think assassins always attack from the back or when people are sleeping? That\'s when they have the biggest chance of not getting hurt themselves. They\'re cowards. :)
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Yes, an assassin is a good example of what I mean. If a rookie assassin cuts a strong players throat when he\'s asleep, he should just die, not take 2 damage, stand up, say \"haha, I\'m not dead coz I\'ve got a toughness of 32423452 points!!!\" and splat the rookie. I very much doubt that anyones skin could get tougher than steel.
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Yeah, I\'d like to see slightly less superhuman abilities - no matter how \"thick\" your skin is, most axes will slice through your bare neck, rendering you quite dead. (Unless maybe you\'re a Kran..)
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Degradation of items.
Yeah, yeah, I know it\'s not real and stuff, but degrading items would suck.
Throwing a newbly-bought sword away after killing 10 monsters is annoying and stupid.
And even if items will degrade, don\'t overdo it!
A two-handed sword fresh from the smithy shouldn\'t get rusty after ten gametime days, and break after twenty.
Actually, if the realism is so important, item degradation will be so slow, that implementing a system that degrades the items will be absolutely useless.
It doesn\'t take one week for steel to rust. It doesn\'t take a year either. It takes no less than five, and even more if you didn\'t put it in an extremely humid place.
And swords breaking? Yeah, right. What kind of sword breaks after you used it to cut someone\'s head off? Even a plastic sword won\'t break from that!
Maybe if you strike with the sword on a rock repeatedly it\'ll break, but I really doubt that striking rocks will be implemented.
As for food, yes, degradation should be implemented. A banana isn\'t eatable after a month. Also, food is something you consume, you don\'t use it for months of gametime. You buy bread, and eat it in less than a week. The only times you\'ll keep food for more than a few days is when you go on a quest far from civilization, in wich case you\'ll be able to keep food like dried meat, wich takes longer to rot.
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Swords should break if badly made or struck by a much stronger sword (It happened in James Bond: Die Another Day...Man they\'ve shown that movie on TV like seven times now, and each time I happened to be in the room, so I watched it). A sword should not break after much use, but become notched, and slightly less effective.
But I agree that item deterioration needs to be controlled.
P.S. Have you ever tried cutting someone\'s head off with a plastic sword? :P
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Originally posted by karakth
A sword should not break after much use, but become notched, and slightly less effective.
I don\'t think it should become notched, maybe blunt. And if it becomes blunt, you can sharpen it on a grindstone. Of course, a smith is skilled with grindstone so he\'ll make a better job at sharpening it...
And no, I never tried cutting someone\'s head with a plastic sword, but I doubt it\'ll break from the impact (it probebly won\'t be able to cut through it either).
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People, item deterioration is in MMORPGs for a very good reason. Its not there just to annoy you.
Your idea that items should hang around indefinitely or for months on the ground is unworkable. Conisder a popular hunting area, where lots of critters are killed by players on a regular basis. Each of these critter deaths result in items dropped.
A lot of times, critters will drop junk that no one wants, so it lies on the ground. If the game lets this junk sit there for months, imagine the buildup of junk lying around. Eventually you would have hundreds of newby swords (for instance) sitting on the ground.
And whenever a player walks into the landblock, data for each and every one of those items lying on the ground has to be transmitted to their client from the server. I can think of no better way to induce massive lag than that. Not just for the player entering the overfull landblock, but for everyone in game, since the server will be spending an overabundance of time transmitting item data rather than handling everyone else\'s packets for movement, combat, crafting, whatever.
(As an example of this from another game, in AC torches were given special treatment. Because they provide light, they didn\'t decay so fast when put on the ground (which is to say they stuck around for about an hour rather than decay within ten minutes as was usual for most items). Because of this, some players collected torches and spelled out words with them (for their guild or whatever message they thought was clever). After a bit, Turbine made this practice against the ToS, because it was causing undo server lag. And that\'s an item that sat around for an hour rather than months, and just a dozen of them rather than hundreds. What you are talking about is orders of magnitude worse! In the *very* popular hunting spots in AC, even with the 10 minute decay, junk buildup was still pretty significant. Turbine tried to solve this by insta-decaying critter bodies immediately after they were looted, which I think helped).
Not to mention the amount of drive space taken up the data entries in the database from all those useless items lying around. With your method, eventually you would have thousands or millions of such entries in the database taking up space for no good reason.
You should always consider the effect on the server when you ask for new or different features. There are limits the team has to work with, and bandwidth is one of them (a big one, in fact).
HTH,
Ron
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A lot of times, critters will drop junk that no one wants, so it lies on the ground.
That sentence is the only thing in your post that proves anything. And do you want to know what it proves? It proves you know absolutely nothing about how PS will work. :)
First of all, \"critters\" will not drop useless items. If they drop useless items, the dev team is in close contact with the players, and will be informed about these useless items. They will be removed from the game if the game has no need for this useless item.
Second of all, \"critters\" wont drop anything they do not have. Therefor \"items\" will not stay on the ground, they will disappear with the corpse. If you decide not to skin a corpse, you will not get it\'s skin, and it will disappear. :)
As for doing useless art images, that idea has already been banned from the PlaneShift servers as it caused lag and caused people to get disconnected, so don\'t you worry about that in the future.
Oh, and as far as what I know, there won\'t be any \"hunting areas\" such as in AC or RS or whatever games you\'ve played before. PlaneShift\'s world is -BIG- thus giving the developers LOTS of space to put monsters on. I\'m not talking about walking days and weeks to find anything at all, but it most likely wont be crowded unless you pay a visit to a monster nest. Which would be stupid, by the way.
The kind of thing I was talking about is if you put some of your items somewhere, like in a cave you only know about, they wouldn\'t disappear at all. Of course you would ask why anyone would do such a stupid thing, then I\'d simply say \"because of that big dragon blocking the entrance\". That means noone besides you will be able to get those items (or even bother trying) and they will be safe.
Now you think \"damn stupid person not just put bank stuffz\" then I\'d say \"stop drooling over the game mechanics and start playing the game as an RPG instead of a PPG\". Thank you, and have a nice day.
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if your weapon will degrade you should be able to at least try and fix it if you created a nice weapon as a blacksmith and you use it for some time and it breaks and you can never use it anymore... i think you\'ll be a little disapointed :) like make it repearable and if that fails you lose it it could depend on the skill you have on weapon making.
it would be handy cause you will have to go other players to repair your weapons if you don\'t have enough skills and that would improve roleplaying a bit to :)
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How can a weapon break if you try to sharp(i hope it\'s spelled this way, I mean \'make sharper\') you weapon? Ok it is possible you can\'t make it sharper but breaking?...
The mistakes I don\'t want to see repeated are:
- The use of only integer numbers (going from (skil)level 1 to 2 an sometimes make an enourmous diffrence).
- Magic effects that give you a bonus for a while and then suddenly dissapear (It\'s very unnatural).
- The third thing I wouLdn\'t like to see are static numers: i.e. all ennemies of the same type have exactly the same hp, strength, ...; static npc shop prizes; fall damage only calculated on height (jump down twice from the same height, and you\'ll understand); ....
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Originally posted by Gronomist
It proves you know absolutely nothing about how PS will work. :)
Indeed, you are certainly correct, I have no doubt you know much more about the specifics of PS than I do :) On the other hand, know a bit more about how MMORPGs are put together in general than you do (because I\'ve gone a fair way into building one). There are a couple of flaws in your argument.
First of all, \"critters\" will not drop useless items. If they drop useless items, the dev team is in close contact with the players, and will be informed about these useless items. They will be removed from the game if the game has no need for this useless item.
The problem here is the definition of \"useless\". Each player will have their own definition specific to them. Suppose there is a \"chef\" class in the game (I have no idea if there is or not, but we\'ll use it as an example). The chef will need raw materials, so by necessity certian critters must drop things useful to the chef (cheese, grapes, flour, whatever). However, to a non-chef, these items would be useless and therefore left where they lie (I\'m presuming such items would not be worth much to sell, but I think that\'s a valid assumption for at least SOME items in the game, otherwise your economy is fubarred :) ).
[qoute]
Second of all, \"critters\" wont drop anything they do not have. Therefor \"items\" will not stay on the ground, they will disappear with the corpse. If you decide not to skin a corpse, you will not get it\'s skin, and it will disappear. :)[/quote]
That\'s just another form of item decay. Same idea. Some games use it (SWG come to mind). I personally prefer the method where critters keep their items until they decay at which point the items drop to the ground, where they start their own decay timer (ala AC). But that\'s just me :) [I like this method because it gives the player with corpse looting rights exclusive access to the loot until the corpse decays, at which point the items drop to the ground and are free for anyone to pick up, which seems like a perfectly fair method to me].
Oh, and as far as what I know, there won\'t be any \"hunting areas\" such as in AC or RS or whatever games you\'ve played before. PlaneShift\'s world is -BIG- thus giving the developers LOTS of space to put monsters on. I\'m not talking about walking days and weeks to find anything at all, but it most likely wont be crowded unless you pay a visit to a monster nest. Which would be stupid, by the way.
You\'re kidding yourself. The AC world is also *huge*. There are vast areas where you never see other players. And there are TONS of hunting grounds where players congregate. Just because there is wide open space doesn\'t mean players will use it. In fact, quite the opposite, players tend to congregate for any number of reasons. It WILL happen in PS too, I can pretty much guarantee it, because it happens in ALL games of this type.
The kind of thing I was talking about is if you put some of your items somewhere, like in a cave you only know about, they wouldn\'t disappear at all.
You still have the same problem. Items using this method can build up to problematic levels and cause excessive lag any time someone enters the landblock.
Now, I admit that if critters don\'t drop thier items on the ground (ala AC) as you say, then this process will likely take longer, but the potential is still very much there. Consider that this issue is such a big deal that many games don\'t even allow ground items at all (SWG, LinII, et al).
One perfectly acceptable workaround to such a problem is to use a method where all that item data DONT get transmitted every time a player enters the block. For this to work, the items need be blocked from view in some manner. Such as inside a chest. That way the data for the items need be transmitted only when someone actually looks inside the chest (and also you could limit the number of items inside the chest to further help reduce the data streaming). This sort of method is commonly used in any number of current MMORPGs. PS may provide such chests at the start of your dragon cave, for instance, for just that purpose.
There is simply no way a server can maintain responsiveness with your method. Items lose on the ground *must* decay in a reasonable timeframe or your server will grind to a halt (presuming a decent level of player population, which I assume PS is going to have).
Ron
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Originally posted by Taldor
How can a weapon break if you try to sharp(i hope it\'s spelled this way, I mean \'make sharper\') you weapon? Ok it is possible you can\'t make it sharper but breaking?...
breaking sharpening not sharpend i mean whats the diffrence :p
i just meant you couldn\'t use it anymore :)
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I know were not supposed to mention runescape but one thing i hate that i wouldnt want to see repeated would be dominant races. In pvp there was no balance or power to any \"race\" besides warrior. This would ruin it for anyone who wanted to level any skill but strength.
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Well, I\'m _really_ glad that PS will not have monsters drop unrelated stuff. I absolutely _hate_ it that wolves drop gold or swords. I mean, free gold is nice, but OTOH it just ruins the immersion when you start thinking about the game. So the usual \"monster\" would not drop much.
When it comes to non-animal opponents, they\'ll of course drop their swords, armor and personal belongings. However, I still think they will (or better: should) not be useless or not worth to pick up.
This is because swords aren\'t for free. You need to buy them. A newbie will not even be able to afford a sword for some time so it\'s definitely not useless. Why should this apply only to players? The gnoll economy can\'t be so good that it can spill out a sword for every peasant gnoll, can it? So most low-level monsters would not have much, either, but they shouldn\'t be drawn as having a sword, either. :) Give them clubs, theye will be essentially sticks, so they\'ll not stick out when dropped, making them effectively vanish instantly.
What makes other items useless is the \"kill for XP\" approach to the game, which does have nothing to do with RPG. THAT is the _real_ problem. Of course, on a battlefield, there will be swords left when the dust settles. However, in medieval times, even the stones castles were made from were worth collecting to build your own house! A sword would earn a farmer\'s monthly income, if not the yearly income!
So we have a massive problem with item-overambundance due to excessive slaying.
Now what happens if a newbie goes to the killing fields to collect the debries? They\'ll not just have swords in zero time, but also armor and everything else. W00t for recycling (or second-hand)! :)
As for the \"exclusive access\": why should there be anything like this? OK, to avoid griefers. But I propose a maximum distance (like 10m). If you leave this radius, the loot will be accessible to everyone, reflecting that you\'d not be in reach to prevent someone else from looting. Once you left, your initial right is voided forever, so if you come back, the loot will still be open to all.
I dislike the chest idea (why should there be chests all over the place? Chests cost money, after all.), however, The corpse way would seem OK (i.e., you leave the stuff \"in\" the corpse until someone loots it, then everything \"in\" it will be shown to them (maybe depending on \"loot\" skill) so they can pick what they want). Once the corpse decays, the stuff would be on the ground.
The quick decaying could be justifed by NSCs running around collecting the stuff. Why not?
In areas where many people kill other people, ther will be more \"scavengers\", thus the stuff vanishes more quickly. In other areas, there would be nearly no scavengers so the stuff would stay there for much longer, but there will be less stuff anyway. So the problem is \"what should happen to stuff that is obscured (by bushes, for example)? Clearly, small items will simply vanish after a short time (like coins), while larger items (like swords) would stay visible for longer, depending on the ground.
What happens if the player deliberately drops something into a storage cave? It\'d not vanish since the ground would not allow that. Maybe we could even make something _like_ the crates, just not crates in caves. We could have places in the corners, like depressions into which stuff can be dumped, thereby taking deliberate action by the player to mark it as \"storage\". And it would not need to be transferred to each client as it\'s sort of \"hidden\". If someone else finds it, it\'s gone, however, this should, however, only happen if another _player_ finds it.
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Originally posted by RonHiler
The problem here is the definition of \"useless\". Each player will have their own definition specific to them. Suppose there is a \"chef\" class in the game (I have no idea if there is or not, but we\'ll use it as an example). The chef will need raw materials, so by necessity certian critters must drop things useful to the chef (cheese, grapes, flour, whatever). However, to a non-chef, these items would be useless and therefore left where they lie.
You\'re missing something here.
If there\'s an item, it\'s useful. Maybe not to you, but to someone else. So if you find such an item, you can sell it to someone that can use it.
If the item doesn\'t cost much, it\'s probebly also light and small enough to be carried in large quantities.
That means you\'ll gain more if you collect many of the cheap items and sell them than collecting one extremely heavy and expensive one.
And, like Seytra said, in a place with monster-bashing, there will be scavangers. The scavangers will pick up everything (maybe one scavanger is picky, but the other one will be more than happy to take that item that was left there...).
You\'re kidding yourself. The AC world is also *huge*. There are vast areas where you never see other players. And there are TONS of hunting grounds where players congregate. Just because there is wide open space doesn\'t mean players will use it. In fact, quite the opposite, players tend to congregate for any number of reasons. It WILL happen in PS too, I can pretty much guarantee it, because it happens in ALL games of this type.
This doesn\'t mean that PS will have hunting areas. Why? Because PS isn\'t like that.
PS isn\'t about monster-bashing and powerleveling. And a game that don\'t want such things, won\'t make big open areas that got many monster spawnpoints, wich is the exact thing that causes hunting areas.
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Originally posted by SaintNuclear
You\'re missing something here.
If there\'s an item, it\'s useful. Maybe not to you, but to someone else. So if you find such an item, you can sell it to someone that can use it.
Are you sure it\'s me that\'s missing something? I don\'t ask to be argumentative, I concede the possiblity that you\'re right, because I don\'t know the specifics of PS that well.
However, consider that there\'s nothing in the last paragraph you wrote that is specific to PS, right? In *every* game that I know of, every item is of some use to *somebody*in game. And yet (for those games that allow ground items) there is always stuff lying on the ground (at least until it decays). Why? As you say, in theory people should be picking that stuff up and selling it to those who need it. But (in a lot of cases) they don\'t, for whatever reason (probably for the same reason in single player RPGs, they don\'t pick up every single drop item and sell it to the local merchant, because it\'s inconvienent, and because after a while you don\'t need the 1 copper peice from grapes anymore when you can sell off the 30 extra vorpal blades you\'ve picked up for 30K apeice).
So I guess what I\'m asking is what makes PS so different from every other MMORPG out there such that every item will be picked up off the ground by somebody within a reasonable time frame so that you can have your non-decaying item abilty without excessive lag, when no other game of this type has ever accomplished this?
And, like Seytra said, in a place with monster-bashing, there will be scavangers. The scavangers will pick up everything (maybe one scavanger is picky, but the other one will be more than happy to take that item that was left there...).
And now your economy is completly screwed. No one will ever buy anything. Why should they? The newbies will simply trail behind the higher ups and scavenge what they leave behind. And then who are you going to sell all that stuff to?
This is another very good reason for decay. Scavaging will happen, sure, but if you limit corpse looting rights for a brief time, and then only keep items on the ground for a little while, you make toons more self reliant in terms of having to get their own stuff (in terms of buying it or killing the critters that own it). If nothing decays, all I have to do as a newby is walk over to the local killing field, wait for the higher-ups to kill off the beasties, walk in and grab all the stuff I need to fully outfit myself before the critters respawn. Why in the world would I ever BUY anything ever?
This doesn\'t mean that PS will have hunting areas. Why? Because PS isn\'t like that.
PS isn\'t about monster-bashing and powerleveling. And a game that don\'t want such things, won\'t make big open areas that got many monster spawnpoints, wich is the exact thing that causes hunting areas.
Hmmm, no, I have to disagree (are you surprised? :) ). I think what causes hunting areas are good spawn points. Where the creatures congregate that give good xp and/or loot, that\'s where you will find the congregating players hunting them.
I understand you want PS to be a roleplaying game, not a monster-bash. And I applaud that, it\'s a good thought.
However, I don\'t see how you can avoid it to some extent. There is some segment of the population who play these games that will do everything in their power to advance in them. That\'s the nature of these kind of games. You CANT enforce roleplaying.
And if killing critters is part of the game and if it gives some benefit to the player (in the form of loot or xp or whatever) then you ARE going to have players who are doing just that for hours on end. And those are *exactly* the same players who will leave the items lying about that they don\'t find useful. Which brings us right back around to the item decay issue.
You have a really good community here, and probably to a person everyone will post saying how they will not monster-bash and that they will RP, which is great. But to a large extent the community you have is living in a bubble. There is no combat or xp gain in PS, and therefore the powerlevers and monster-bashers aren\'t here (they\'re too busy powerleveling and monster-bashing in DoAC or LinII or SWG or AC to bother coming here). But you can pretty much COUNT on the fact that as soon as these things exist in PS, that population WILL show up.
The point of the last paragraph was not to be insulting to the PS community (please don\'t take it that way), it was meant to say that you can\'t prevent the over-hunting from happening, and therefore the excessive item build up as well. Which is exaclty why you NEED item decay.
Anyway, I\'m going to shut up. I\'m going to get myself into trouble (if I haven\'t already, hehe).
Ron
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Your whole post is wrong because of this one mistake you keep repeating: You think that PS will be like it\'s \'type\' of games, but there isn\'t really a type of games that PS is like.
It seems to me, that when classify PS as a \'type\' of games, you classify it as a MMORPG. The problem is that MMORPGs aren\'t really MMORPGs. They\'re MMOGs that call themselves MMORPGs because it\'s a longer acronym with \'funny\' words in it and it just sounds so neat.
But there aren\'t really any other games that you can say that they\'re from the same type as PS.
after a while you don\'t need the 1 copper peice from grapes anymore when you can sell off the 30 extra vorpal blades you\'ve picked up for 30K apeice
A few posts ago you said (and I agree) that an economy without common stuff that don\'t worth much will be fubar\'ed. But now you say that you can get (it seems that very easily) thirty items that each of them worth 30k.
The latter seems alot more fubar\'ing to me.
Also, you probebly won\'t be able to carry more than two \'vorpal blades\'. Why? It sounds to me like a very heavy and rare item.
If it costs 30k, you won\'t just find it anywhere. You\'ll have to work hard to find it. And once you do, it\'ll be only one, not two, and certainly not thirty.
And if you did managed to get a hold of more than one, you just won\'t be able to carry more than one - too heavy. You will, if you\'ll have a Pterosaur, but since buying one will probebly cost (atleast) hundreds of thousands of trias, most chances are that you won\'t have one.
And now your economy is completly screwed. No one will ever buy anything. Why should they? The newbies will simply trail behind the higher ups and scavenge what they leave behind. And then who are you going to sell all that stuff to?
Monsters won\'t drop Uber Swords of the Ap0calypse. You\'ll be able to loot natural things from monsters, like raw meat, hide, teeth, and claws.
If newbies will think they can get rich by stalking higher-ups and scavanging the loot, let them.
This things will be sellable, true, but they won\'t make you rich so fast.
Anyone that kills a monster will probebly take most of the things he can from it. What a scavanger newbie will get in one hour will probebly be 10% than what he could get if he\'d fight the easy monsters close to the newb spawn point.
I think what causes hunting areas are good spawn points. Where the creatures congregate that give good xp and/or loot, that\'s where you will find the congregating players hunting them.
That\'s not enough to make an area a \'hunting zone\'. A hunting zone isn\'t just a place with high-level monsters that drop Super Chainmail of Gods. It\'s a place with many hunters, and many monsters.
There can\'t be many hunters in a place that spawns a monster every once in a while. Well, there can be, but they\'ll be utterly bored.
A hunting zone will spawn enough monsters so it\'ll be full with hunters that fight almost non-stop. One monster dies - there\'s already another one. Sometimes with more than one monster against each hunter.
A place like this is designed like this. The devs don\'t just happen to decide to make some huge valley with 10 monster spawn points for the heck of it. It\'s obvious that such a place will draw monster-bashers, and if the game don\'t like this kind of activity, places will be able to make it very hard to just monster-bash aimlessly.
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Originally posted by SaintNuclear
The problem is that MMORPGs aren\'t really MMORPGs. They\'re MMOGs that call themselves MMORPGs because it\'s a longer acronym with \'funny\' words in it and it just sounds so neat.
That\'s not entirely fair. Traditionally in computer games, an RPG is defined as a game where character advancement and development is the primary feature of the game (this is probably a holdover from single player RPGs, since you cant actually RP by yourself, computer games in the early days needed a genre definition for games that played like a pen-paper RPGs, and that\'s the one they came up with). By that definition, games like EQ, AC, DoAC, and so on are perfectly correct when they call themselves MMORPGs. It\'s a matter of semantics, I know, it all depends on your definition of RPG, but that\'s where they are getting that acronym from, not because it sounds cool.
Your whole post is wrong because of this one mistake you keep repeating: You think that PS will be like it\'s \'type\' of games, but there isn\'t really a type of games that PS is like. It seems to me, that when classify PS as a \'type\' of games, you classify it as a MMORPG. [...]But there aren\'t really any other games that you can say that they\'re from the same type as PS.
Okay, fair enough. You\'re correct in that I classify PS as an MMORPG. I\'ve played it (albiet briefly) just to have a look around, and what I saw was an MMORPG in development, no different from any other MMORPG I\'ve played in the past (and that\'s not a shot at the design or the designers, it just means that in its current unfinished state, there is nothing currently there that would make the game any different from any other game in the genre).
But you keep refering to this mystical difference that will make PS unlike any other MMORPG out there, which makes my arguments invalid. So explain to me what this difference is. I\'m not being facetious, I\'m actually asking, I\'d like to know.
One argument I\'m not going to accept is \"the community will enforce...\". That\'s horse manure. It NEVER works, it\'s been tried any number of times (reference early UO and PKing, for instance) and has failed every time. It is currently failing in LinII, where harvest bots are pretty much destroying the game. What I\'m after is Server (or even Client, but Server would be better) enforced rules that define this game as different such that I\'m completely off base.
A few posts ago you said (and I agree) that an economy without common stuff that don\'t worth much will be fubar\'ed. But now you say that you can get (it seems that very easily) thirty items that each of them worth 30k.
The latter seems alot more fubar\'ing to me.
You\'re taking me too literally :) My point was that a higher up character can take on higher up critters, and get higher up style rewards. If I (as a higher up) take down a critter that drops 500 gold, a god-sword, and grapes, I\'ll take the first two and leave the latter. It isn\'t worth taking and will take up space/weight in my pack that could better be used for stuff looted from the next critter I take out. And now you have item build-up, or it get scavenged by a newby char. Either way leads to problems that we already discussed. (I understand your argument about critters not dropping unnatural items, but the idea is the same, and I\'m not going to rack my brain trying to come up with natural items that are worth more or less, I trust you understand what I mean, hehe).
If it costs 30k, you won\'t just find it anywhere. You\'ll have to work hard to find it. And once you do, it\'ll be only one, not two, and certainly not thirty.
Have you ever PLAYED another MMORPG? This argument is fallaceous in the extreme. There will be quests in PS just like in other games (or that\'s my understanding anyway). There will be some reward for these quests. There WILL be players who do these quests over and over and over to get that reward. And therefore, yes, there will be players with 30 \'vorpal blades\' (or whatever) running around in game.
And if you did managed to get a hold of more than one, you just won\'t be able to carry more than one - too heavy.
Then your game is unbalanced. Granted, carrying 30 blades would be a lot. But if I\'m carrying NOTHING else, and I can\'t carry 30 blades, then I could also not carry one blade and armor. Or one blade, a shield, armor, health potions, and all the other equipment that a normal adventurer would lug around. If the game is that stingy about weight restrictions, then it becomes unplayable. Weight management will become your primary focus, and thats a bad idea now matter how you look at it.
Monsters won\'t drop Uber Swords of the Ap0calypse. You\'ll be able to loot natural things from monsters, like raw meat, hide, teeth, and claws.
If newbies will think they can get rich by stalking higher-ups and scavanging the loot, let them.
This things will be sellable, true, but they won\'t make you rich so fast.
That\'s just it, I think they can and will (presuming no item decay, which is where we started this discussion). You just got finished saying weight restricitons will be harsh. As a higher up, this will cause me to leave all the lesser stuff alone and only take the better stuff. And the higher I get, the more I\'m going to consider lesser stuff worthless. A newby, on the other hand, will pick up that stuff and use it (or go sell it if anyone in the game ever buys anything, which given the way your economy works (as you\'ve described it), I increasingly doubt).
That\'s not enough to make an area a \'hunting zone\'. A hunting zone isn\'t just a place with high-level monsters that drop Super Chainmail of Gods. It\'s a place with many hunters, and many monsters.
One leads to the other.
There can\'t be many hunters in a place that spawns a monster every once in a while. Well, there can be, but they\'ll be utterly bored.
Ever played EQ? This is EXACTLY what happens. Players line up waiting for the boss critter to spawn so they can take it out and collect the reward. Boring? Yes. But profitable. And this is the most populous MMORPG in the US (don\'t ask me why, there are more basic play problems in EQ than in any other game I\'ve ever seen in the genre, hehe). I think you grossly underestimate the levels to which a certain segment of the population that plays this genre will go to advance in the game (either monitarily or by character buildup).
A hunting zone will spawn enough monsters so it\'ll be full with hunters that fight almost non-stop. One monster dies - there\'s already another one. Sometimes with more than one monster against each hunter.
A place like this is designed like this. The devs don\'t just happen to decide to make some huge valley with 10 monster spawn points for the heck of it. It\'s obvious that such a place will draw monster-bashers, and if the game don\'t like this kind of activity, places will be able to make it very hard to just monster-bash aimlessly.
Hmmm. Not sure I agree with your logic. PS will have quests. I presume (and you can correct me if I\'m wrong), the quests reward is guarded by critters (or at least some of them will be). You now have a hunting zone. An area where higher up critters congregate in some numbers in order to protect the quest reward.
I don\'t think you can avoid hunting zones. They will happen. Or else you will have a very boring game :)
I\'m enjoying this debate. I hope you don\'t think I\'m being overly argumentative. That\'s not my intent :)
Ron
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Originally posted by Seytra
What makes other items useless is the \"kill for XP\" approach to the game, which does have nothing to do with RPG. THAT is the _real_ problem.
Indeed. In planeshift there will be no random exp for just killing things- it doesn\'t make any sense. You raise skills by doing them. An hour long duel where no one dies is going to teach you much more than slaughtering a village. Hopefully, it will be rare to kill monsters, making questions about drop loot moot.
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OK, here is a nice rule I just came up with:
Assuming there will be quests that involve monster bashing. Each player is _given_ the quest by someone (NPC) or something (items).
Usually, each quest is unique to the player (well, a princess could in theory be rescued several times if she gets herself caught again and again, but ... :) )Now we have the treasure and the monsters. They will only be there once for each player. Therefore, we must enforce the _one-time-property_ of both quests and monsters and loot. The monsters that are truly numerous will be low level, like wolves or at best goblins. These will, however, after a very short time stop giving any useful amount of XP (if you\'re level 10 and kill a wolf, well, you\'ll gain 1 XP). Also, the stuff they\'ll drop will be not worth the time to hunt for once you are higher level. Therefore, there will be no real hunting areas.
How can we enforce the rule of uniqueness?
We\'ll assign each quest an ID, and this ID is also coupled to the monsters and items involved. After you finished a quest, your account will be added it\'s ID (stored at server-side), so you will not be given it again. If you then go back to the place the king was, it\'ll simply not spawn. If it already _is_ there, because someone else takes this quest, you _could_ kill it, but it wouldn\'t give you any XP or loot, because you already have the ID. Also, it could simply be immune to your weapons and ignore you, so griefers wouldn\'t have fun as well. Maybe these monsters will not even be visible to you and you not for them, also no bumping into or otherwise affecting each other. As you\'ll not be inside a PVP area, you\'ll also not be able to hurt the other player. You also wouldn\'t see the loot.
True, seeing another player in the great sourcerer\'s throne-room that has already finished this quest while you\'re fighting the sourcerer, is somewhat unrealistic, but it is much more unrealistic to kill that same sourcerer over and over again. Furthermore, since nothing can be gained, these occasions will be very rare, even more rare if you generate a seperate quest area for each player. They can enter it anytime, but it\'ll be their own, nobody else would be able to enter it, _unless_ both players have explicitely teamed up for this quest (or permanently). This can be as easy as ticking a box at the other players name. Once all have ticked each other, they\'d all be in the same quest... let\'s call it \"quest space\".
I think this pretty much makes level-gringing impossible while placing no restrictions on RPG. Furthermore, as everybody would have their own \"quest space\", the issue of ground items will be much less severe as there will be only a fixed (and previously known) number of items in the quest spaces, and they\'ll only be visible to the players they belong to, so no lag.
The only thing that must be considered it the reduction of server space for the quest spaces, so we might need questspace-decay, but OTOH, maybe it can be compressed and it also needs to be stored only if there is anything left inside, since otherwise it can be generated if the player ever wishes to re-enter it. That must be tried, but quest-design can probably greatly reduce the chance of stuff being left in a questspace.
The general areas would probably not even need much attention because there will not be monsters worth hunting if you\'re above a certain level, so there will only be hunters who _are_ hunters, like ppl. who need leather for making clothes or somesuch.
Also, it would be cool if you could pick up every single carrot in a field, or stuff other things into the hole, like potatoes. Farmer-griefing? :)
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Clarification: the entrance to a questspace would not be in some vast area, because it would be unrealistic if somebody nearby just disappears. :)
Also, it\'d much cooler because you\'d have the feeling of lonelieness and helplessness in the \"great forest nobody ever enters\". Without questspaces, it would be a very crowded place and the feeling would be ruined.
Also, I totally agree to the statement that MMORPGs have their name from RPGs, which were much like MUDs. However, the PnP RPGs have already evolved beyond the point of hack\'n slay, so the MMORPGs could follow this trend, which I believe PS can do and the ideas I presented could help do that.
Also, PnP RPGs have stopped giving XP for kills that aren\'t extraordinary. Instead, you gain XP for completing a quest, and that is judged by the way you did it. This can easily be implemented in any MMORPG. Skills will advance by using them, but the advance would need to be dependant on the difference in difficulty and skill. I.e., if you want to advance your \"dodge\" skill, traditionally you go into the forest where low-level monsters are and just stand there for hours on end, letting them chew at you, as you\'ll regenerate faster than they can do damage, if any. Now, if your dodge skill simply doesn\'t advance by this, because it\'s so easy to dodge these monsters or you don\'t need it since they will not even get through your armor, then the whole idea becomes pointless and will not be pursued.
The same thing applies to the typical smith making daggers all the time because making daggers is easy and fast. But if they\'d not get a single XP from it, and also not advance their skill anymore (exactly _because_ it\'s so easy for them to make daggers after a while), they\'d not make daggers they don\'t need. Therefore, the market will not be flooded by daggers as a bonus.
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Hey Seytra,
You\'re talking about three different ideas here, and in fact I think they\'re pretty good ones in some respects. They may even solve the issues we\'ve been discussing about item decay :)
I like to put things in terms of other games which have already tried them (those who don\'t understand history are doomed to repeat it, and all that). I know you guys keep telling me PS is fundamentally different from any other MMORPG out there, but that difference hasn\'t really been defined to my satisfaction, so I\'m going to keep doing the comparisons until somebody tells me why I can\'t :)
Your first idea that quests be unique to a given player needs some minor modification (or at least a slightly different definition). I don\'t think the designers are going to design quests on a *per player* basis, heh. I\'m sure that\'s not what you meant either. But just so we\'re clear, what we are talking about (if I read you correctly) is a per-quest flag that prevents any given toon from doing any given quest more than once. I think that\'s probably what you were getting at anyway.
That\'s been tried in a couple of games I can think of (Lineage II, for instance, has this sort of system on a good number of its quests, though not all of them. AC does this too, for a few quests). I think it does actually work. The only problem I\'d point out is that you want to give your players things to do that will last *years*, and if every quest is \"one time only\", you\'d have to have a LOT of quests, heh. Hard on the designers :) I think that\'s why no game has ever done this exclusively with their quests.
Still, given a very dedicated design team (which PS has), you could pull this off I think. Generally I approve of the concept myself. I intend to put it into my game, in fact, though like LinII, I wasn\'t planning on doing it exclusively.
Your second idea of \"instancing\" dungeon areas for individuals has also been tried (AO comes to mind). This is also a system that works, though it does have drawbacks (like you mention, it takes a bit of \"hoop jumping\" if you want to bring in a group). But in general, I also like this idea. And, as you mentioned, this gives an extra added bonus that if new instances of the area are created on a per-toon basis, it matters not at all how much stuff gets dropped on the ground (since only the one player will ever see it, and they are presumably the reason the stuff is there anyway). So no need for item decay in such areas (presumably once the player leaves the instance, it is deleted, along with any stuff left inside, so it solves the database size issue as well). It brings up other problems (like what to do if the player logs out while inside, or gets dropped), but they could be worked out. I DON\'T think you should ever keep a dungeon instance around in *any* case, whether there is stuff inside or not, too much server space usage. Can you imagine the space it would take up to keep an entire level around *per character*? You could end up with a 1000 instances of 300 different levels. 300,000 level, yipes! Of course, you\'d only have to keep 1 instance of the static information and only keep the dynamic information per toon per level, but even so, that\'s an awful lot of data space. I think once you leave, that\'s it, the level is deleted. If you go back in, a brand new instance is created for you. That way, you only have to keep as many as are currently occupied.
The only other modification to your plan I would suggest (which you probably won\'t agree with, heh) is to make \"instanced\" areas no decay but non-instanced areas (the general world area) remain decay territory. The reason I say that is because in those latter areas you still have all the same issues with item buildup and scavaging that we\'ve been arguing over.
Your third idea that kiling critters should result in less XP as you gain level over them is in my mind a great one, and I think this is the general direction MMORPGs are going in (LinII does this, as does DAoC (IIRC), for instance, and I think EQII will as well (I could swear I read that somewhere, but don\'t quote me on it)). This is such a no-brainer I don\'t understand why all MMORPGs aren\'t doing it :) I am not, however, sure I agree that no critter should give XP ever. That leaves you with only the quests to get XP by, and (unless PS is doing away with the XP system altogether) you won\'t have enough quests to handle the \"XP demand\", *especially* if you make them all one time only quests.
One last point, the concept that you ought to get XP only for the task you are performing has been tried (SWG). While it sounds great on paper, I don\'t think it works well in practice. What you end up with is a \"game\" where you spend hours on end dancing in a canteena or sitting in the med lounge healing other players or digging at the ground looking for minerals to get enough XP to advance. BORING!!! I\'m pretty sure you *don\'t* want to do that to your game, heh.
Ron
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Um about the XP idea well I have had a brain wave what if instead of on all the other online games where you get a set XP in a set skill if you use X weapon, I will use a rat as a example if fighter B attacks rat A with his hammer and squashes him while ranger A takes his time lineing up the shot and firing fighter B will get no XP (I mean how hard is it to bring a mallet down) but Ranger A will get quite alot of XP in his range (its a dam fast moving rat :p)
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Originally posted by RonHiler
Hey Seytra,
You\'re talking about three different ideas here, and in fact I think they\'re pretty good ones in some respects. They may even solve the issues we\'ve been discussing about item decay :)
That\'s (part of) the plan. :)
Originally posted by RonHiler
I think that\'s why no game has ever done this exclusively with their quests.
Still, given a very dedicated design team (which PS has), you could pull this off I think. Generally I approve of the concept myself. I intend to put it into my game, in fact, though like LinII, I wasn\'t planning on doing it exclusively.
AFAICS, this concept will need to be part of what the difference of PS will be. PS is intended to be hack\'n slay - free (AFAIK). To do this, this exclusiveness would be imperative, because it\'ll completely prevent level-grind, harvesting and hunting zones. Also, somewhere it is stated that there are intended to be so many quests, that it would take years to even do them once. This was in the forum, though.
Originally posted by RonHiler
Your second idea of \"instancing\" dungeon areas for individuals has also been tried (AO comes to mind). This is also a system that works, though it does have drawbacks (like you mention, it takes a bit of \"hoop jumping\" if you want to bring in a group). But in general, I also like this idea.
Can you imagine the space it would take up to keep an entire level around *per character*? You could end up with a 1000 instances of 300 different levels. 300,000 level, yipes! Of course, you\'d only have to keep 1 instance of the static information and only keep the dynamic information per toon per level, but even so, that\'s an awful lot of data space. I think once you leave, that\'s it, the level is deleted. If you go back in, a brand new instance is created for you. That way, you only have to keep as many as are currently occupied.
I thought about keeping them around for at least a while, to give the player the chance to re-visit the scene or show someone else what they have done.
I agree that keeping all of them on the server would become quite tricky in terms of space usage, but what if it were kept on the client? Of course, it needs to be guarded heavily. I therefore propose a checksumming system. The checksum size can be dynamic depending on the checksummed data. One checksum per quest. There\'d be no need for encryption, though, because decryption would just be broken anyway, and the checksum is what keeps the integrity. Compression would be OK, however. The checksums would be generated by the server on exit of the instance, when the instance is stripped, compressed, checksummed and then sent to the client. The server appends the checksum it generated to the account of the player.
If the player re-enters the area, the client\'s data is sent to the server, where it will be checksummed again and compared to the stored sum If they match, everything is fine. If not, well, \"cheat alert\".
Also, items of great value, if left in such an area, can be stored separately to give additional security against replication attacks (because if such an item appears out of nowhere, it wouldn\'t be on the record, revealing the fraud). This can also be coupled to the number of the items, i.e. if there are 2 items of 100000 tria value they\'d be recorded, but also of there are 100 items of 100 tria value, but not 1 item of 100 tria value.
The area recently visited could remain in a cache for, say, 30 minutes, to speed up quick reentering.
Originally posted by RonHiler
The only other modification to your plan I would suggest (which you probably won\'t agree with, heh) is to make \"instanced\" areas no decay but non-instanced areas (the general world area) remain decay territory. The reason I say that is because in those latter areas you still have all the same issues with item buildup and scavaging that we\'ve been arguing over.
As you expected, I disagree ;)
Seriously, if there would be no quests in general areas, and therefore there were no hunting areas, but only naturally appearing creatures (like wolves) that would only be hunted for the resources they produce (which will also be the only ones they drop, if at all), there would be no item-buildup due to dropped loot or killing for XP, and therefore there\'d not need to be item decay as well. However, one can even for these things define a clear real-world limit of useful life, i.e. these things (like fur or meat) will simply rot after a short time. So these will definitely decay, maybe decrease in value for some time, but ultimately, they\'d vanish.
Originally posted by RonHiler
Your third idea that kiling critters should result in less XP as you gain level over them is in my mind a great one, and I think this is the general direction MMORPGs are going in (LinII does this, as does DAoC (IIRC), for instance, and I think EQII will as well (I could swear I read that somewhere, but don\'t quote me on it)). This is such a no-brainer I don\'t understand why all MMORPGs aren\'t doing it :) I am not, however, sure I agree that no critter should give XP ever. That leaves you with only the quests to get XP by, and (unless PS is doing away with the XP system altogether) you won\'t have enough quests to handle the \"XP demand\", *especially* if you make them all one time only quests.
Well, _some_ form of XP system will be necessary, even if it is disguised as skill system (in which you gain XP per skill, on a usage basis) (which I believe is what PS will do). Still, even in the skill system, as already suggested by me and instanciated by Watcher, the relation of the ease or difficulty to the current skill level needs to heavily influence the amount of \"skill XP\" gained.
Originally posted by RonHiler One last point, the concept that you ought to get XP only for the task you are performing has been tried (SWG). While it sounds great on paper, I don\'t think it works well in practice. What you end up with is a \"game\" where you spend hours on end dancing in a canteena or sitting in the med lounge healing other players or digging at the ground looking for minerals to get enough XP to advance. BORING!!! I\'m pretty sure you *don\'t* want to do that to your game, heh.
Ron
Well, in PnP games, this of course is mitigated by the greater variation in time. Also, I was referring to the quest as a whole, or even sub-quests. These things would give XP, not the killing of a monster. You could even give fewer XP if the quest was solved in an nunnecessarily brutal way.
Still, PS will be going to facilitate areas such as farming and mining, smithing and cooking, so therefore if the conventional questing char would gain XP through killing, the relation would clearly be disturbed, since the skill advance would then be unbalanced in the adventurers favor, as the cook can\'t just kill for XP, as can\'t the spy. They all can, however, get extra XP for completing a quest successfully, like killing the evil (or good) wizard, preparing the feast for the king, or scouting the enemy city (reflecting general gain in knowledge and special opportunities to learn). In the course of their actions, they also would gain skill XP for doing their jobs (fighting, cooking, spying). Therefore, you\'d not gain general XP from dancing, therefore a dancer will not be able to improve their fighting skill unless they fight or complete a quest. However, they would be rewarded for engaging in their profession, whatever it is. Also, this system would integrate perfectly with non-lethal duelling and training fights and show fighting, while in the XP for kill system these things would need to be force-fed into the system by additional rules.
Also, nothing stops one from adventuring and gaining fighting skill even if they have a different profession.
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Originally posted by Seytra
Also, somewhere it is stated that there are intended to be so many quests, that it would take years to even do them once. This was in the forum, though.
It\'s an admirable goal. Easier said than done, though :)
I agree that keeping all of them on the server would become quite tricky in terms of space usage, but what if it were kept on the client? Of course, it needs to be guarded heavily. I therefore propose a checksumming system.
Interesting idea.
A straight checksum won\'t work. Checksums are quite trivial to fool. You could maybe use an MD5 fingerprint perhaps. Even so, whats to prevent the client from intercepting the sent fingerprint, writing it down, changing the level to their liking, then modify the client to return the original fingerprint (independent of the level contents)? This is an open source game, after all, and you just gave a huge amount of trust to the client. From a security standpoint, I don\'t think your idea would work.
Second problem with it is that what if I play the same toon from two different computers (e.g. home and work)? The levels would be stored on one and not the other. Kind of a problem.
As you expected, I disagree ;)
Hehe, yeah, okay. I suspect we just have to agree to disagree here, we\'ve about hashed this one out, I think :)
Well, _some_ form of XP system will be necessary, even if it is disguised as skill system (in which you gain XP per skill, on a usage basis) (which I believe is what PS will do). Still, even in the skill system, as already suggested by me and instanciated by Watcher, the relation of the ease or difficulty to the current skill level needs to heavily influence the amount of \"skill XP\" gained.
Sure, I\'d agree with that.
Well, in PnP games, this of course is mitigated by the greater variation in time. Also, I was referring to the quest as a whole, or even sub-quests. These things would give XP, not the killing of a monster. You could even give fewer XP if the quest was solved in an nunnecessarily brutal way.
Still, PS will be going to facilitate areas such as farming and mining[...]
I dunno, Seytra. You just described, almost perfectly, the EXACT system in use in SWG. Right down to the \"greater variation in time\" idea. If I sit in the med center healing toons, at first I have very little capability (I use MedPack A\'s). After doing this for quite a while, I gain more ability, eventually being able to create better medpacks and heal all sorts of different afflictions (bleeding, battle fatigue, etc.). But what it comes down to is spending hour upon hour sitting in the med center. Yeah, I could go do other things (like work on my dancing or mininig or artisan or even combat skills), but if you want to be good at your chosen profession, you have to use it for many hours/days/weeks.
Now, whether that works or not is a bit of a personal judgement, I suppose (after all they DO use it to this day, and people ARE playing), but the general consensus with SWG in the press was that it was a boring game, for exactly that reason.
Don\'t get me wrong, the *idea* is okay, but the implementation (at least in SWG) is flawed. And if PS is using the exact same system, it will have the exact same flaw.
Just out of curiosity, where will your equipment come from? You say critters will only drop critter type items. From where will come the swords and armor and wands and things usual to fantasy based MMORPGs? Merchants? Do the items just appear at the merchants (ala AC et al) or must they be made by players to be sold (ala SWG)? If the latter, where do the raw materials for crafting come from? Merchants again? Do you have to go mine/farm/harvest them (you do mention the farming/mining areas, so am I to take it that the game\'s economy is entirely player determined?)
Ron
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Originally posted by RonHiler
A straight checksum won\'t work. Checksums are quite trivial to fool. You could maybe use an MD5 fingerprint perhaps. Even so, whats to prevent the client from intercepting the sent fingerprint, writing it down, changing the level to their liking, then modify the client to return the original fingerprint (independent of the level contents)? This is an open source game, after all, and you just gave a huge amount of trust to the client. From a security standpoint, I don\'t think your idea would work.
I applied the term \"checksum\" very broadly, indeed. I was, however, thinking along the lines of MD5 or RSA fingerprints.
However, my description seems to have been misleading. I meant to say that the system should work like this:
1) Player exits the area (by crash / logout / moving into other area / whatever), server does:
- compress the item info
- checksum it
- store the checksum in the player\'s account (SERVERSIDE)
- send the compressed data to the client (without the checksum)
2) player reenters the area, server does:
- retrieve compressed data from client
- checksums it
- compares the resulting checksum to the one stored in the player\'s account (SERVERSIDE)
- accept or reject the data
Therefore, the client does not even need to know the checksum that was generated, and it does not matter one bit (literally *g*) whether or not it does, as the server checksums whatever junk it gets off the client.
Originally posted by RonHiler
Second problem with it is that what if I play the same toon from two different computers (e.g. home and work)? The levels would be stored on one and not the other. Kind of a problem.
Indeed this is a problem. However, I doubt that many players are going to use different computers, and if they do, they are likely to have networked them anyway. Therefore, the client needs only to support shared and freely relocatable data storage areas (i.e. folders), independant on the installed game\'s location, for the player data and most would be set by simply sharing the folder accross the network. Like mount a samba share to drive P:\\ in Windoze, and /mnt/p/ in Linux. The clients would be set to the appropriate paths once and the account is fine. Also, the path should be easily changeable in case the mountpoint has moved or another folder is to be accessed (like on a removable media for playing at your friends computer).
Therefore, the inconvenience would be mitigated, and if this method OTOH eliminates griefing, harvesting, level-grind and hunting zones, it may well be a good tradeoff.
Originally posted by RonHiler
I dunno, Seytra. You just described, almost perfectly, the EXACT system in use in SWG. Right down to the \"greater variation in time\" idea. If I sit in the med center healing toons, at first I have very little capability (I use MedPack A\'s). After doing this for quite a while, I gain more ability, eventually being able to create better medpacks and heal all sorts of different afflictions (bleeding, battle fatigue, etc.). But what it comes down to is spending hour upon hour sitting in the med center. Yeah, I could go do other things (like work on my dancing or mininig or artisan or even combat skills), but if you want to be good at your chosen profession, you have to use it for many hours/days/weeks.
Now, whether that works or not is a bit of a personal judgement, I suppose (after all they DO use it to this day, and people ARE playing), but the general consensus with SWG in the press was that it was a boring game, for exactly that reason.
Don\'t get me wrong, the *idea* is okay, but the implementation (at least in SWG) is flawed. And if PS is using the exact same system, it will have the exact same flaw.
Well, this is only because one fundamental idea hasn\'t made it into MMORPGs yet: teachers. If there are teachers or even schools, you could invest money and gain (nearly) instant skill advance. This way will enable the players to choose whether they wish to quickly gain new skills / improve existing ones or do it the \"learning by doing\" way, possibly earning money as they go, spending their money on other things. Also, you yourself could teach others if your own skill is considerably higher than theirs and you got the \"teaching\" skill high enough. After all, where would we be without teaching?
Originally posted by RonHiler
Just out of curiosity, where will your equipment come from? You say critters will only drop critter type items. From where will come the swords and armor and wands and things usual to fantasy based MMORPGs? Merchants? Do the items just appear at the merchants (ala AC et al) or must they be made by players to be sold (ala SWG)? If the latter, where do the raw materials for crafting come from? Merchants again? Do you have to go mine/farm/harvest them (you do mention the farming/mining areas, so am I to take it that the game\'s economy is entirely player determined?)
Ron
AFAIK, it hasn\'t been decided yet. What I believe to be the current state of ideas, there will be NSCs to
- get things started and to
- help out in player-unpopulated economic nieches.
- stabilise prices
However, if there are no NSCs, the demand will eventually rise so high that players _will_ consider doing thetask, as the reward is big money. I expect that many ppl. will not mind, because in other MMORPGs there are all these level-grinders and hunters anyway, who in essence do the same thing over and over again to gain XP or money, so there really isn\'t much difference. Still, I do not know if this is such a good idea because it might well make it impossible for newbs to get basic stuff (because the prices are too high).
But I do not know of any definite statements yet.
Regards,
Seytra
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Originally posted by Seytra
Therefore, the client does not even need to know the checksum that was generated, and it does not matter one bit (literally *g*) whether or not it does, as the server checksums whatever junk it gets off the client.
Ah, good point. Okay, you\'re right, that\'s much better. Dunno why I was thinking the \"checksum\" would be client end :)
Indeed this is a problem. However, I doubt that many players are going to use different computers, and if they do, they are likely to have networked them anyway.
Ug. No, I disagree with this STRONGLY. I consider that a completely invalid assumption. When coding, you must code for solutions for every reasonable case, or it\'s not a solution. It is not unreasonable to assume some players will use multiple non-networked computers to run PS (it may not be a large segment of the population, but it will exist). I might play from home and from work, for instance. That\'s certanly not an unreasonable scenario. Or perhaps I\'ve upgraded to a new computer.
And therefore your \"save to client\" approach has a problem. Perhaps you could require transfer of a particular directory via floppy whenever a player moves computers, but that\'s not a solution I would use myself, too many potential issues (like what happens if they forget one day? Now you have synch issues).
Another issue I might bring up with your scenario is the unexpected disconnect. What happens if the player is dropped from the server due to no response? In such a case, the server *couldn\'t* send the compressed data to the client (if it could, it wouldn\'t be dropping the client in the first place). The only thing you could do to ward against this is send periodic compressed level data to the player as they are playing. But then you are running into bandwidth issues again.
Well, this is only because one fundamental idea hasn\'t made it into MMORPGs yet: teachers. If there are teachers or even schools, you could invest money and gain (nearly) instant skill advance. This way will enable the players to choose whether they wish to quickly gain new skills / improve existing ones or do it the \"learning by doing\" way, possibly earning money as they go, spending their money on other things. Also, you yourself could teach others if your own skill is considerably higher than theirs and you got the \"teaching\" skill high enough. After all, where would we be without teaching?
Perhaps, although I\'m skeptical. Sounds like you\'d be giving a HUGE advantage to guild members (who could essentially insta-level from newbie to uber by learing from thier guildmates) and leave soloers out in the cold. I guess there are ways of getting around this, but it seems pretty problem prone in terms of game balance to me.
BTW, SWG also has teaching (although you must earn the \"xp\" by doing the task until you have enough to \"level\" the skill, then you can be taught (by another player) to get the actual advance). So it\'s not a COMPLETLEY new concept :)
AFAIK, it hasn\'t been decided yet. What I believe to be the current state of ideas, there will be NSCs to
- get things started and to
- help out in player-unpopulated economic nieches.
- stabilise prices
Ah, okay. I was just curious, thanks for the answer. It\'s an area I\'m struggling with for my own game as well, and I wanted to see how PS was handling it. It\'s a very tricky area. On the one hand, you want equipment to be reasonably easy for toons to get, at least for the common stuff (if they have the cash) and prices to stay reasonably stable, but on the other, if you go overboard with the merchants selling pre-genned euipment, you put your tradeskill professions out of business.
It\'s a fairly tough thing to balance. I\'m not sure I\'ve seen a game YET that has gotten it entirely right, and I\'ve seen quite a few of them, heh.
Ron
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ok, a mistake that I will never ever want to see in PlaneShift is an impossibly dificult, completely unbalanced leveling system. I used to play FFXI, and let me tell you, I loved the game at first, absolutely loved it!
But then it came time to level up...
All the fun jobs had to have a quest completed for them, and all the quests were impossible until about lvl 30. At first I figured \"Hey, it\'s only level 30, how long could that take?\", let me tell you, I was not impressed. There is nothing more annoying than sitting on a spawn point, waiting for the same damned monster to appear. That, is the most annoying. Then you spend hours, and hours, and hours, only to find out you only went up 2 levels. Now this would be ok if you were like lvl 25. I played that game for 2 months, and only got to lvl 11. Now that, is ridiculous.
And primly, there were next to no quests suitable for the lower levels. That just makes me angry.
So, pretty much I am saying is, DO NOT FALL INTO THE MMORPG DEATH TRAP!!! That is pretty much do not make the game inhospitibol to beginners, make it interesting, make many other things to do other than chatting and leveling. Make it interesting, make it fun. Make it unique ;)
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I was playing knight online wh/ile waiting for this game. On websites it said it was free. They trick u into playing for a month, then a little notice comes up that says that the game really isnt free andif u want to keep playing u have to pay.
i think its terrible that they pretended it was free then waited till u were hooked and charged u. i hope planeshift doenst try to trick us into paying.
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Originally posted by Murais
ok, a mistake that I will never ever want to see in PlaneShift is an impossibly dificult, completely unbalanced leveling system. I used to play FFXI, and let me tell you, I loved the game at first, absolutely loved it!
But then it came time to level up...[...]
Well, keep in mind, game like that are meant to be played for months/years at a time. They\'ve scaled the leveling system to account for that.
On the other hand, you are absolutely right. If they are going to force you to level so slowly, you have to have content appropriate to every level beyond mindless hacking. Sounds like they need to add in some lower level quests.
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exactly what I was thinking, all I am saying is I would hate to see that mistake here...
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Originally posted by RonHiler
Originally posted by Seytra
Indeed this is a problem. However, I doubt that many players are going to use different computers, and if they do, they are likely to have networked them anyway.
Ug. No, I disagree with this STRONGLY. I consider that a completely invalid assumption. When coding, you must code for solutions for every reasonable case, or it\'s not a solution. It is not unreasonable to assume some players will use multiple non-networked computers to run PS (it may not be a large segment of the population, but it will exist). I might play from home and from work, for instance. That\'s certanly not an unreasonable scenario. Or perhaps I\'ve upgraded to a new computer.
And therefore your \"save to client\" approach has a problem. Perhaps you could require transfer of a particular directory via floppy whenever a player moves computers, but that\'s not a solution I would use myself, too many potential issues (like what happens if they forget one day? Now you have synch issues).
OK, the \"play at home and at work\" scenario is a problem that I didn\'t think about, true. I\'d also hate the floppy method for various reasons. We\'d need to auto-synch here. One option would be to store the _current quests_ data serverside so that this issue will most likely never come up. However, this can involve too much disk usage as well. OTOH, maybe we could make the players provide some sort of webspace for themselves? They could then have the server or client upload the data to a web / ftp server automatically and then retrieve it. Of course, this implies that everybody has access to webspace of sufficient size.
We _could_, of course, add the option to not store anything for these unlucky people, but I\'d really like to see a way to get around this.
Under no circumstances must the server use old data, because you could deliberately desynchronise to duplicate items (like take item from ground, quit, reload old level with item still on ground, pick item up again, etc...). The server must only accept the most recent checksum for each level. If the level data is lost, then the server would revert to an empty level, after asking the player for confirmation.
However, except for the _current_ quest, there is no real need to go back to the previously completed ones, it\'s just nice (and you\'d have safe item storage there), so if the current quest would be kept on the server, there would not be much inconvenience for the multiclient player.
Maybe if the current quest would be stored on the server, nice things like holes in walls, blackened walls, whatever, would not be stored, so I\'d pick client-side storage if I can help it.
Maybe we could make this an option rather than the norm? Modem users might benefit from this, as well.
Originally posted by RonHiler
Another issue I might bring up with your scenario is the unexpected disconnect. What happens if the player is dropped from the server due to no response? In such a case, the server *couldn\'t* send the compressed data to the client (if it could, it wouldn\'t be dropping the client in the first place). The only thing you could do to ward against this is send periodic compressed level data to the player as they are playing. But then you are running into bandwidth issues again.
Well, I wouldn\'t count that as a problem, because the data that must be kept will in this case be exactly one area, nothing more. This could IMO be tolerated to compress and store serverside until the client reconnects. Also, while the world data is loaded down to the client when it enters a new area (not a new quest), the old data could be downloaded along with it, reducing this problem even further. Of course, if you create numerous chars, go to a level, drop millions of items there and then crash the clients, the server would be out of memory, but this is tedious so it\'ll not happen since plain old DDOS is easier to achieve (and less traceable).
Originally posted by RonHiler
Perhaps, although I\'m skeptical. Sounds like you\'d be giving a HUGE advantage to guild members (who could essentially insta-level from newbie to uber by learing from thier guildmates) and leave soloers out in the cold. I guess there are ways of getting around this, but it seems pretty problem prone in terms of game balance to me.
BTW, SWG also has teaching (although you must earn the \"xp\" by doing the task until you have enough to \"level\" the skill, then you can be taught (by another player) to get the actual advance). So it\'s not a COMPLETLEY new concept :)
OK, if the guilds would provide internal teaching for free, this would be unbalanced. We\'d maybe need a teachers guild, or the requirement that the teacher is paid regardless of the standing of the pupils. OTOH, it might suffice to allow free teaching only for guild matters, and also to put a cap on the amount that can be learnt in one session. This way, even guild members would need to actualy _use_ the skills they just learnt for some time until any teacher will re-admit them for the same area of teaching. Not entirely realistic, but better than to make teaching take days or weeks real-time, during which you\'d not be able to use the char. You could, however, allow teaching only once per week, artificially slowing down the process.
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If I read what you posted correctly, then I have one thing to say.
Do NOT, under any circumstances, make players responsible for their character data. This can only be bad.
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Something I think should is completely stupid is if random monsters carry gold and weapons and stuff. Seriously why would a wolf or something have an axe and three hundred and four gold? Did it eat it or something? I mean sure its alright if the enemy is a thief or something. I think monsters should carry materials like fur or something then you can make it into stuff. That would be better... Harder, but better...
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Originally posted by Monketh
If I read what you posted correctly, then I have one thing to say.
Do NOT, under any circumstances, make players responsible for their character data. This can only be bad.
Heh, \"the user is an idiot\", eh? Well, that is true, and if only by accident.
I was, however, not talking about the character data (which would still be stored serverside), but only about so-called \"quest spaces\" (instances of quests on a per-player basis), and how to act on them once the quest is solved.
This is meaningful if the player at one time decides to revisit one of the places _after_ having solved the quest. The effect would be that the area is exactly like when it left, while commonly it\'s just re-generated by the server, if it\'s not shared among all users.
Therefore, the loss of this data would only hurt the immersion a little, the character itself is untouched (if the player stored valuable items there, however, these will then be lost forever).
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ok, a mistake I\'d really love to see eliminated is dev apathy...
this is a problem in most MMOs I\'ve played
somewhere along the developement process, devs seem to lose interest in the experience the players are having in their game. they don\'t care that there are a hundred people out there looking for an actual role play experience that can\'t stand people talking like 7]-[15. all they begin to care about is processing the content.
they need to monitor the game, make sure that if nothing else, people aren\'t acting like total n00bs in game. they need to make sure people are obeying naming conventions.
they also need to have some kind of connection to the gamers in general
care about the game, not just the programming
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This isn\'t the devs job, it\'s the GMs job (unless the two are the same ppl.). However, the devs obviously still need to know about the game as it\'s being played to actually bring in new content that is desirable. The problem is that most MMORPGs are profit-driven. Therefore, every player that is lost is money lost. Therefore, if the GMs go around removing accounts of ppl. who destroy the game\'s RPG aspect actually loose the game makers money. Therefore, they are told to stop doing this somewhere along the lines, when the _management_ stops seeing the game as a place to have a good RP experience and start seeing it as money-generating-machine, with TCO, capital investment, risks, investor incentive, value-added services, product, ammortisation, value return and all these other marketroid and finance department bullsh$t that _really_ messes up _everything in our world_.
Of course they need to finance the freaking game servers and bandwidth, but once they start to \"maximise revenues (or profit)\", the players are starting to become screwed with no end in sight. Most marketroids probably don\'t even know what RPG is (they probably think it\'s these training programmes for customer relations and team management that companies increasingly have employees take (I\'m not saying these are a bad thing)).
That is a fate that I wish not to see PS facing. Actually PS has better chances to prevent this because it started free and open, therefore there is no marketing/financial department that decides what to do.
Oh, of course, GMs can be overwhelmed by the sheer number of players who act n00bish, so it might be apathy following resignation. But PS has better chances of dealing with this, too, because it\'s open: as more ppl. join, so will aspiring GMs. They don\'t need to be hired (and then kicked out to \"maximise profit\").
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Originally posted by tygerwilde
ok, a mistake I\'d really love to see eliminated is dev apathy...
Don\'t confuse dev apathy with publisher apathy. They\'re two different things. Devs put theiir blood, sweat, and tears into a game for several years of their lives. They are intimately connected to the game and they believe in it (or it would never get finished). You won\'t ever convince me that a dev doesn\'t care about his/her game (unless they got sick of it and released it early, and such releases are VERY obvoius and infamous (BC3KAD, Outpost, et al)).
The *publishers* are the ones you most likely have a problems with. They push games out the door before they\'re ready, they handle customer support (or lack thereof), and very often, they make the play-affecting decisions, usually bad ones.
For instance, one of my very favorite games of this genre, AC, was developed by Turbine and published by Microsoft. AC had (for a very long time) a severe playbalance issues with one of their systems (monarchies and xp chains). While the players abusing the system weren\'t technically breaking any rules, they were also not using it in the spirit it was intended. Turbine wanted to fix the problem, but was forbidden to do so by MS (probably due to fear that such a change would cost subscribers, as you say Seytra). What MS failed to understand was that the problem unbalanced the xp portion of the game, and thus you had toons levelling at an insane rate. As a result, content was increasingly created only for the higher ups, leaving the people who played as intended out in the cold (and as a result, they lost subscribers anyway). At one point that sticks out in my mind, it got so bad that a formerly decent level toon (which is to say levels 30-40) couldn\'t even leave the towns without getting immediately mobbed and dropped by critters.
Turbine recently bought out MS, and I don\'t know if they did or intend to in the future finally fix the issues, but it\'s probably way too late now, the damage has been done.
Anyway, the point being don\'t blame the developers, it\'s almost certainly not their fault if bad design decisions are make due to a \"bottom line\".
Fortunately, PS won\'t have this problem. Neither will my game :)
Ron
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I\'m new to this, so I may not understand much, I\'ve been reading the boards and haven\'t posted much, in fact I think this is my first post, so I might as well make it worth while eh?
Anyway, onto my point. I\'m not entirely sure that having *quest space* is desirable in a persistent world. Though I do think that making quests unique is desirable. I think that one of the most common mistakes devs make is game *balancing* before I get flamed, let me explain what I mean. By balancing I mean introducing unnecessary complexity into the rules in order to handle all special cases. I think that in most cases this unbalances the game. As an example take some small portion of an economy, in which all items are generated by players. If you only have on weapon smith, and he has made only one sword. Then we have a problem, there is no set of rules that will fix this situation. Now if we make it even more extreme, for example that weaponsmith has only made one sword and refused to make any other weapons. Again we have an economy that\'s completely messed. So what can we do? Force the weaponsmith to produce X amount of swords before being able to sell any? I don\'t think that\'s a viable solution. But things of this nature exist, not the particular example I pulled out of my behind, but in general things like this occur in all RPGs (I mean both MMO, Single, and Pen and Paper) and in most cases it\'s dumb. Those rules get thrown out and player find other ways to do things. So how would one balance the game? I think common sense is a good guide combined with past experience. I think every description of an MMO, or any RPG for that matter assures the player that it isn\'t a hack and slash game, it has no leveling, etc. And in most cases it\'s a blatant lie. Don\'t get me wrong I\'m not flaming PS in any way. I\'m just saying that everyone thinks that they aren\'t going to fall into the same trap. Anyway I think I lost track of what I was talking about. So back to game balancing. Common sense and past experience. For example, teaching, in real life it just means that the average skill level of people is increased overall, but that can\'t happen in an MMO (or can it? should it?). Anyway, you have to come up with some minimal set of rules and let the players balance it out.
Though really I am speaking out of my behind as I have only been a concept artist on an MMORPG.
Anyway, I just wanted to make some comments. I may be entirely off base. But I would really love it if the game did not devolve into doing some small activity for hours on end in order to do anything else. Oh and please, oh please don\'t let the devs implement anything in the same way FF XI did. Having nothing in common with that game is a good thing!
Back to the *quest space,* it may not be possible to implement quest space, since it may require a significant redesign of how world data is stored. Also, there might be quests which occur in the general game world (i.e. wilderness) where it is impossible to generate a single instance of a location. I think in general having persistent locations is a good thing, and the biggest problem with current MMO\'s as far as I understand is the DROP/XP lineup. And simply restricting the quest to one person won\'t solve that problem, I don\'t think so anyway, or it wouldn\'t solve it any better than allowing the player to complete the quest only once and therefore get the item only once.
Damn, my brain just liquefied.
Oh and as for the lack of numbers. I think that\'s the most brilliant idea I have ever heard. Picture this: In your character sheet all that\'s listed are your skills, and how much you\'ve improved since last time you gained experience using them. So for example instead of showing how good you are overall, you simply know how much you improved since last time you used that skill. So every time you use that skill a new number, or perhaps icon of some sort is generated. In addition, you would never know how much HP you have, only a bar of health. Again the same thing can be done for MP. In addition the concept of a level should be eliminated. In which case players would have to come up with some new way of gauging skill. I mean underneath it all, there are still percentages and numbers involved, but they are never reported.
Though, with an open source game, it guess it would be *trivial* to change the UI in such a way that it would report numbers. Anyway, that\'s something that I don\'t have to worry my little brain with, but it would be pretty cool to see it implemented properly. I think that I\'ve ranted far too much, so I\'ll stop here.
Cheers
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Hmmm, welcome to the discussion!
I\'m going to comment on the quest spaces specifically since it seems that I failed to get them accross right.
They are not meant to get rid of the problem of XP lineup, but they are meant to get rid of the problem od dropped loot while still maintaining coherence. A good example is diablo, in which you, once you re-start the game, have to kill all the monsters again, open all the doors again, etc.. In a singleplayer game this can be overcome easily by saving the \"solve state\" of a quest and even savin the monsters that are left, but in a multiplayer game it can\'t that easily.
In an MMORPG, the quest needs to be there for each player. To allow it t be done only once is sufficient to inhibit XP lineup and harvesting. It doesn\'t solve dropped loot and immersion, hoever. The problem is that it simply is totally unrealistic that you just killed the evil / good wizard, and while still looking at the corpse (and looting it), another player enters the room and waits for it to respawn. It simpy can\'t be there after you killed it, so it hurts immersion _if_ it is there. If you can\'t kill it more than once, you can\'t level-grind, but still it\'s not good for immersion. So this is what quest spaces can achieve: you kill it, and it stays dead forever (unless there is a followup later), and nobody else who shouldn\'t be there can be there. Furthermore, when you reenter the place, it is exacrly like you left it, not reset to the default. This makes it more realistic. The questspaces would take up storage, therefore it\'s not feasible / desirable to store them serverside.
If the quest takes place in a general area, however, it cannot contain special monsters. It might contain special items, but you shouldn\'t be able to see them if you got them once, and also they should be still there if you haven\'t. But this does then mean that the quest isn\'t fir tof a general area. The only quests fit for general areas are IMO time-restricted ones, like a hunt for something / someone, who is there exactly once, and there is exactly one winner (like a tournament).
Any other quest is, by definition or common conception, meant to be solved by exactly one hero (or one group thereof), not all over again by all sorts of groups.
Also, it would encourage RP, because except for your groupmates and NSCs there just isn\'t anybody around to talk to. Even if you talk 1337 on end, it wouldn\'t bother anyone since you\'re in your own space. One is much more likely to stay IC if they don\'t encounter things that can\'t really _be_ IC (like the wizard example). After all, the quest experience is meant to be unique to the player (like in the sagas). Without questspaces, Odysseus would maybe have stopped at an island, just to see Odysseus sail by, or blind the giant again, while other Odysseus\'s would get in line to blind it. _That_ is what questspaces are intended to correct in the first place.
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I agree with you that it is nice to have that sort of immersion. Though I\'m unsure of how well that will scale, for example if you have 300 people who want to play, you would need to generate 300 quests, that once completed would be thrown out. Unless... and here\'s the kicker. The quest is randomly generated with a set of certain constraints.
Oooh, I just had an epiphany, I think your questspace idea, doesn\'t have to be a space. For example the world does not have to stay static, and opened closed doors don\'t ever have to stay in the same state. But if you go out and receive a quest, then that NPC triggers an event in which all necessary key baddies, item, etc are generated. These would exist with the world as a whole, but would be mostly useless as a whole to everyone else, plus they would have to spawn in remote locations, and for each char this could be some far away location which *is* devoid of hunting, etc.
So by simply randomizing the major locations of the quests you would have much greater immersion, with a much smaller probability of having mutlitple people in the same place looking for the same baddie.
I don\'t know if this makes sense... but I can see potential, I think I will expand on it a bit later once I think it through more.
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Originally posted by rifft
But if you go out and receive a quest, then that NPC triggers an event in which all necessary key baddies, item, etc are generated. These would exist with the world as a whole, but would be mostly useless as a whole to everyone else, plus they would have to spawn in remote locations, and for each char this could be some far away location which *is* devoid of hunting, etc.
Can you say SWG? :) You just described their *exact* quest system.
It works, sorta. The only problem with it is that all \"quests\" are essentially the same. The baddy might be a little different, but they all boil down to \"Go to location X and kill Baddy Y and bring me back Item Z as proof\" or some variant thereof.
As long as the devs were able to add more variety than that (whcih there is no reason they shouldn\'t be able to), it would be a fine quest system (although you\'ve just shot your one time per quest per toon idea).
Also, with such a system, you have to think about other player interference. Sure, the baddies might not be of any use to them, but suppose a griefer comes along and just happens to run into the group you were sent to take out before you get there. Said griefer kills off the group for fun and enjoyment and heads off. Now what? Did you fail the quest? Did you succeed? If there was a quest item involved, what happened to it? All things you have to think about.
BTW, I disagree (naturally :) ) with the idea of hiding numbers from the players. In my mind, part of computer RPGs is the ability to tweak and advance your toon, and to me that involves examining your skills/stats/profession/whatever values and improving the ones you want to improve as suits your playstyle. And that involves knowing what the numbers are. I think the more numbers, the better.
Ron
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Heh, number phun! ;) Yeah, I know what you mean, I think I would prefer numbers too, but I do think it would have been nice to be forced to forget leveling. I mean to tweak out ones character upon creation is just fine. But after you created your char, you don\'t necessarily *need* or *want* to tweak a character out. I mean you may wanna improve sword fighting, well, go and improve it, as long as there is feed back that it is indeed improving then we\'re all good. The overall improvement would have to be guaged by what you can do as opposed to being gauged by a number. You know its so different from most RPG (even Paper and Pen ones) that the concept is a little unatractive. Though level should really be removed, if anything.
I mean I would love it if you could not say something like, I\'m level 30 and therefore can kill anything below my level. I would like to see something like, so I went and killed 3 wolves, I know I can do it, because I\'ve just killed them. I saw a group of mean looking orcs, didn\'t engange, because I wasn\'t sure if I could take them. I don\'t like being so freaking sure all the time.
As for the quest system. Yeah there definately needs to be variety. And when I said randomly generate all key points ivolved. I didn\'t jsut mean go to X kill Y bring Z. I mean yeah that\'s the most basic version of it, but I was talking about a more robust system. Where a dev or GM will define the key points. It could be go to X bring Y then go to Z and bring Y2 then kill Z2 before he talks to X1, etc. I mean you could create some variety with a skeleton.
Interference could also be interpreted on a per quest basis. For example you\'re trying to protect Z from dying for X amount of time, before you get to Z, someone kills em. You fail! You get no reward, you get no XP, you do not pass go and you do NOT collect 200 tria.
I think that\'s about all. Anyway off to class.
Cheers.
Rifft
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Originally posted by rifft
I mean you may wanna improve sword fighting, well, go and improve it, as long as there is feed back that it is indeed improving then we\'re all good. The overall improvement would have to be guaged by what you can do as opposed to being gauged by a number.
I couldn\'t agree with you more. I think certain games take this to an extreme (such as EQ, DAoC, and LinII among others) where you \'con\' a creature and it tells you by color code if you can beat it or not (based entirely on level, I\'m sure). I HATE that. I mean really, what\'s the point of even playing? The \'con\' function should be banned from all MMORPGs on penalty of deletion :)
But I think it\'s entirely possible to have numbers AND the thrill of uncertainty. What it requires is a bit more development of the critters.
I\'ll use AC as an example, because as far as I\'ve found, it\'s the only one that has gotten this aspect right (and one of the big reasons I think this is the best MMORPG that has ever been done).
AC does use levels, but it is also very skills based. Your toon has a certain level of proficiency with swords, clubs, schools of magic and so forth (there are about 50 or 75 skills in the game), as well as the usual attributes (strength, endurance, and so on). As you play the game and get experience, you can spend it on your skills/attributes to improve them. So your level gives you a rough idea of where you are at, but its really more of a question of how well you distributed your XP points into your skills (in fact, \"leveling\" in AC gives you no direct benefit. Other than the label itself, it has no meaning (I\'m simplifying a little bit, there is one advantage to leveling, but it has no direct consequence on combat)).
Now (and here\'s the clever bit), critters have the EXACT same system (well, I think their skills are a subset of the player skills, but other than that). So what that means is that a critter\'s level will give you a rough idea of how tough they are, but not an exact idea. They may have a very high magic defense but a low melee defense. They may be very skilled with a sword or not. You just don\'t know until you\'ve taken a few on. So the level of uncertainty is still there.
So what you end up with is a system where you can get a rough idea (the creature is 30 levels above me, RUN) by the level, which allows you to stay sort of in your kill range but also leaves open the possibility that you might run into something tougher (or weaker) than you think. And yet you still get the numbers for your toon that allows you to make educated decisions on how to advance them.
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originally quoted by someone
Interference could also be interpreted on a per quest basis. For example you\'re trying to protect Z from dying for X amount of time, before you get to Z, someone kills em. You fail! You get no reward, you get no XP, you do not pass go and you do NOT collect 200 tria.
This will give birth to a brand new generation of griefers, namely those who just keep running around to find quest items or NSCs that belong to quests of others just to kill them before the quest can be solved.
I say there must be absolutely NO way to interfere with the quests of anybody else _unless_ you were invited. This brings us to a formal party system that\'s be necessary. It could be as simple as right-clicking the member wannabe and selecting \"add to party\" (same for remove from party). Afterwards, they will share their quests with you and vice versa (questspaces will need a bit some thinking to get around synch problems, though, it might not be feasible to do seamlessly).
Oh, and why is everybody referring to the personae as \"toons\"? I absolutely _hate_ cartoon-style games and I associate \"toon\" with \"cartoon\", therefore it always gives me the creeps when PC personae are being referred to as \"toons\". :)
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Originally posted by Seytra
originally quoted by someone
Interference could also be interpreted on a per quest basis. For example you\'re trying to protect Z from dying for X amount of time, before you get to Z, someone kills em. You fail! You get no reward, you get no XP, you do not pass go and you do NOT collect 200 tria.
This will give birth to a brand new generation of griefers, namely those who just keep running around to find quest items or NSCs that belong to quests of others just to kill them before the quest can be solved.
I say there must be absolutely NO way to interfere with the quests of anybody else _unless_ you were invited. This brings us to a formal party system that\'s be necessary. It could be as simple as right-clicking the member wannabe and selecting \"add to party\" (same for remove from party). Afterwards, they will share their quests with you and vice versa (questspaces will need a bit some thinking to get around synch problems, though, it might not be feasible to do seamlessly).
Oh, and why is everybody referring to the personae as \"toons\"? I absolutely _hate_ cartoon-style games and I associate \"toon\" with \"cartoon\", therefore it always gives me the creeps when PC personae are being referred to as \"toons\". :)
I agree, and bringing a new kind of griefer into the world is not something we want to do.
Hey, maybe parties should stay together for just one quest. Helps solve some continuity problems.
OT: Calling characters \"toons\"... *shudders*
I don\'t see any talking rabbits around here, do you?
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OT: Calling characters \"toons\"... *shudders*
I don\'t see any talking rabbits around here, do you?
It\'s common terminology in MMORPG discussion cirlces. If ya don\'t like it, don\'t use it :) You could also say Avatar, character, PC, or whatever the hell yawant. I will most likely continue to use the term though, as its the one I\'m most used to.
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about the griefers. They will always exist in many colours shapes and forms, the problem as you see it is this.
The new griefer knows all possible spawn locations with the world of one particular quest.
No, that\'s impossible to do. First when I say protect X I really mean protect X, it could be a bunny outside town. Which may get killed but it would probably not be a significant quest. However, if you have to travel to some remote location, which may not be easy to find in the first place, and that location is generated randomly, and only you and your chosen party members have access to the NPC direction for that particular quest, it essentially allows for _questspace_ without the need to seperate it. We can simply use the size of the world as one of the safeguards against this griefer.
Now as I was thinking about this further, another thing popped into my mind. What if you extened this questing system further? Instead of basic events you now have branches; let me explain. One of the random selection will fall into one category out of some finite set of categories, each set of those categories could have some completely differnt objectives. The amount of combination you now have is ridiculus, but in addition to that, the amount of patterns this certain section of quests can have is also immense.
Anyway, I\'m sure there are many subtleties that I\'m failing to see right now, but as a rough idea, I think it\'s a more elegant and more feasible solution to quest spaces. And you know sometimes shit happens, that last flower you were looking for, well somone picked it, and now you can\'t finish the quest. But you should be able to abandon a quest, once you get bored or unable to finish it.
Anyway, I\'ll leave that for you guys to chew on..
Oh and as to the numbers deal. You are absolutely right, if we are clever about implementing our baddies and our general combat system, they won\'t ruin everything or anything really. But I think it might be something radical to try without? No? I mean it\'s not what we\'re used to. I wouldn\'t be entirely comfortable not knowing, but that\'s how life is. Educated guess have to be made upon past experience, and so, you must try to fight a wolf. Last week you killed a wolf, this week this wolf is tougher, shit... you barely get out of it alive. No need for number, still plenty of uncertainty.
Anyway in some respects you\'re right, because usually the history of MMOs is not rich enough to allow a character to learn which creatures are supposedly tough and which are not as we do in RL, but I mean can\'t I dream? :P
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I\'ve got a few ideas to kick around.
I want to see aging of characters and death :P No character should be able to live forever!
I also like the idea of not being able to tell the exact abilities of a creature. Perhaps after you have killed it and have a vetinary skill you can find out?
I don\'t like picking costume, I think costume should be picked up as you progress or created.
A tricky problem I\'ve seen, is balancing of the game for hardcore and casual gamers. I suppose for this game it may not be as much as a problem as many more would be RPing. So the people who don\'t care about \'level\'s and \'grinding\' just don\'t and those that do, do. I don\'t know..
An idea for quests which I\'ve already voiced and Venge has thrown in my face is one for in game quests writers. They team up with a programmer and write. Much like radio ad makers who storm up 30 in an hour and such. Anyway.. they sit in the game and write them out and people come to them for them. The programmer has some dev tools to help him achieve functionality quickly, CASE tools and such... Sure, the quests are alot less frequent .. but eh.. it SOUNDS like an alright idea to me, even though totally impractical.
Billy
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Well you know Billy, there aren\'t that many people who want to have their character die, though they might not mind age as much. You see, when you put real time from your life and much effort to create and move this character, you don\'t want to see it dissappear. And probably, most people will rejoin their former guild, and go for the exact same path as they followed the last time.
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Anyone having played NWN?
There is at least one quest that can be made unfinishable by acting IC, and by using the officially provided answers _only_.
The one I\'m referring to is the \"head hunter\" quest, where you hunt down (and kill) five escaped prisoners.
SPOILER ahead!
Well the problem is that you can talk to them and decide for yourself if you think they need to be killed. Well, if you let even one of them go, the last one, the head of the group, will never be able to get caught, because he would, after you have delivered proof of killing the four others, abduct the daughter of the guy who gave you the quest, and you\'d get the key to his hideout from the guy.
Now, you can easily go to this hideout but as you can\'t get the key, you can\'t take him out, so you can\'t finish the quest (well, not take out the last guy, as finishing isn\'t possible once you let one go) in this case.
I mean, wouldn\'t the guy be happy to give you the key if you daid you knew the baddie is there? Sure he would, but the linearity doesn\'t permit it...
Even worse, if others can interfere with your quests and effectively can make it unfinishable, this would suck big time IMO. At the _very_ least you would need to be given an _immediate_ notice of this so you will not waste weeks trying to solve the darn quest, just because some idiot decided it would be funny to burn down the hut the map is hidden in.
I\'d want the name of the person(s) as well, so I can then hunt them down and punish them for ruining my quest.
Also, as I indicated in another thread, I\'d hate age to be forced upon me. I\'d like to be able to customise these things (as part of the look of my avatar), but no automatic ageing or death. If we have automatic death, then why should we bother with the death world if you get killed? Same thing - death without your consent.
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Everyone seems to think that just because it\'s a quest, everyone will know where and what to do.
But what I\'m saying is that it\'s NOT the case. If you have 10 different possibilities and you can choose them in 5 different ways you get a large number of choices, something like
10!/5!
Where the \'!\' stands for factorial and is defined as
n! = n(n-1)(n-2)...1
So we have major variation. And for each instance of the quest all key baddies will be spawned in random locations. If the list of locations is great enough (and I don\'t see why it can\'t be). And only the PC that initiated the quest can find out where these baddies are. Well, there won\'t be that much of a problem. And if someone does interrupt your quest through some way, there would be some defined action. For example: all quests of this particular type when they are interrupted it means that you simply have to go talk to an NPC to get a set of new directions, or something like that. Anyway. I should stop pushing my ideas on people.
Though I do think this kind of system could be interesting.
Anyway, about age... It\'s an interesting concept, though I\'m not sure how feasible it is. Since players never really want to lose their character. Though, if you perhaps allow those who\'s characters died of ripe old age to be essentially some bonus, or some abilities that would not be available otherwise. So allow them to create a character of greater potential. Oh and make sure that there are no aging spells because I can see bad, bad things happen.
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Originally posted by RonHiler
Originally posted by Murais
ok, a mistake that I will never ever want to see in PlaneShift is an impossibly dificult, completely unbalanced leveling system. I used to play FFXI, and let me tell you, I loved the game at first, absolutely loved it!
But then it came time to level up...[...]
Well, keep in mind, game like that are meant to be played for months/years at a time. They\'ve scaled the leveling system to account for that.
On the other hand, you are absolutely right. If they are going to force you to level so slowly, you have to have content appropriate to every level beyond mindless hacking. Sounds like they need to add in some lower level quests.
Actually.. I have to step in and say that entire statement from Murais is completely untrue. I\'ve been playing FFXI since November of last year when it came out on PC In the US. I *still* have not done all the quests there are to do - and that\'s just in my own starting city, Windurst.
1. Each of the 3 starting cities has something like 40+ quests you can do throughout, many are repeatable. It benefits you to do them because of a Fame system FFXI utilizes, which unlocks better quests for better rewards, as well as some key items as your fame increases in your home city. You can go to the other two cities, other than your own, and also do all the quests for them. That\'s 120+ right there.
2. There is a 4th \"central\" city, Jeuno, which has a bevy of Quests all its own. People from all cities can do these. Two of the best known of which are the Chocobo License at level 20 and the Race Specific Equipment quests from levels 27-33.
3. There are several smaller towns throughout the game, each of which also have their own set of quests.
4. There are Missions which move the story along. Each starting city has its own \"personal\" story which is unfurled as you complete the missions. Then there\'s the overarching storyline which unfolds for everyone, no matter what the city you start from. As far as I\'ve seen, there are at least 10 Ranks to gain.. each Rank has 3 missions - that\'s an additional 30 Missions (very involved, hours-long quests basically).
5. Later on around level 50 or so, you can go for what\'s known as Artifact Armor - this is basically armor that is custom and useable only by a specific Job/Class, and each has its own. Each piece, again, must be quested for.
6. At level 18, you can quest for the ability to have a SubJob.. or, basically a job that you can train and use (with restrictions) to enhance your main job.. there\'s a whole philosphy/science to that alone.
7. Having to quest to get each Advanced Job at 30 is consistent with many things in FFXI - they make you work for all the \"good stuff\" that builds your character. It\'s not just handed to you. Each Advanced Job has a quest that is geared to it and can be quite involved to complete.
So.. someone who believes that there is a lack of quests to do in FFXI is simply not looking around to find them. There are *tons* of them, up through all levels. Of all the MMORPGs I\'ve played (including LineageII - awful!), FFXI offers the *most* variety and things to do for players of all levels.
Earlier in this thread, I believe, it was mentioned that no current MMORPG is story-centric, to paraphrase. Again, that is not true in FFXI.. it\'s *very* story-driven.
Now to make this PS-relevant :-) - I honestly think that if a variety of quests and very story-driven content is something key to PS, the developers/writers would do well to check out FFXI for exactly that.
Anyway.. there ya go...
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Originally posted by rifft
Everyone seems to think that just because it\'s a quest, everyone will know where and what to do.
But what I\'m saying is that it\'s NOT the case. If you have 10 different possibilities and you can choose them in 5 different ways you get a large number of choices, something like
10!/5!
Where the \'!\' stands for factorial and is defined as
n! = n(n-1)(n-2)...1
So we have major variation. And for each instance of the quest all key baddies will be spawned in random locations. If the list of locations is great enough (and I don\'t see why it can\'t be). And only the PC that initiated the quest can find out where these baddies are. Well, there won\'t be that much of a problem.
I don\'t necessarily talk intentional interruption, which can probably be excluded by the immense randomness you\'re proposing. But what about icidental interruption? I mean, everybody is running around and taking stuff, exploringareas and opening doors / pushing buttons. So despite all variation, there is a chance for quest items to be taken away or NSCs being killed, and if somebody thinks it\'s funny to kill NSCs that _potentially_ belong to a quest, and if that population becomes high enough, it can be a problem.
Originally posted by rifft
And if someone does interrupt your quest through some way, there would be some defined action. For example: all quests of this particular type when they are interrupted it means that you simply have to go talk to an NPC to get a set of new directions, or something like that.
Going back to an NSC might be extremely tedious and frustrating, if the orcish keep you were to clean is hours of RL time away and you just fought yourself through armies of monsters just to discover that some guy has stolen the item you need.
Originally posted by rifft
Anyway. I should stop pushing my ideas on people.
Aren\'t we all doing this, at least to some extent?
Originally posted by rifft
Though I do think this kind of system could be interesting.
Randomising the quests _does_ have potential, especially if you consider that ppl. can\'t post walkthroughs for quests in this case. I\'m just not comfortable with relying solely on randomness for the safety of my quest (and therefore the value of hours spent trying to solve them).
Originally posted by rifft
Anyway, about age... It\'s an interesting concept, though I\'m not sure how feasible it is. Since players never really want to lose their character. Though, if you perhaps allow those who\'s characters died of ripe old age to be essentially some bonus, or some abilities that would not be available otherwise. So allow them to create a character of greater potential. Oh and make sure that there are no aging spells because I can see bad, bad things happen.
This would be an approach like prestige classes in D&D, just with intermediate death. However, why not just allow ppl. to either
- choose for themselves or
- gain the bonuses without creating a new character?
I mean, why would the death of someone make a difference to the abilities of a child? Well, magic, maybe, but I\'d really wish to have the choice.
Also, I don\'t like the idea of \"disposable characters\". In this setting, a char would effectively be created to die, to advance to the next macro level. It wouldn\'t make much of a difference for the level-obsessed players, but it probably will for the ppl. who create \"the one and true\" char... as has already been said, most likely the new char will be very much like the previous one anyway, and if not, I believe that the player would have created the other char anyway.
But I might be mistaken.
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About the quest system, I\'ll speak again a little later, but first to talk about age.
I\'m not a fan of aging, and I agree with you that it should be completely optional. In addition there is no way to accelerate age. So those who would like the adder _realism_ could be rewarded. I\'m not even suggesting major bonuses upon creation, maybe a higher overall potentail, little perks if you will. Anyway I don\'t think it\'s a big issue, and I\'m pretty sure most people perfer not having any age at all, but it might be a nice option to include if all other problems are overcome. :P
Now back to the questing thing. I do agree with you that randomness alone won\'t protect quest, and there indeed needs to be a better way to find out that someone has broken your quest. However, randomness does provide much greater protection and it _does_ avoid spawn lineups. What id does not protect from is random morons with sooo much time on their hands that have located through all possible spawns a NSC and killed him/her, or found that object. I think the probability of it happening by accident is small. The reason I say this is from my experience with Ashron\'s Call, the world was so huge, it was impossible to find what you wanted, let alone randomly happen along some NSC. I\'m unsure how other games deal with it, from what I understand they don\'t and thus the stupid lineups. So providing some degree of protection is good.
As for broken quests. I simply couldn\'t think of a way that you would get informed about the fact that the quest is broken without seriously breaking the RP experience. Maybe provide some small quest item that indicated the status of your quest, something like, \"the crystal glows red, if you have failed the glow will fade and you will know that all is lost. \" Anyway, I do agree with you, you should be informed if a quest is broken. It does make sense that you wouldn\'t know, but since this is a game, and we want fun and not frustration, it would be good if you didn\'t waste a whole bunch of time just traveling somewhere and finding out that the journey was a waste of time.
As for providing other sorts of protection for quests, I\'m at a loss. I don\'t really like the idea of _questspace_ since it removes you from the MM part of the game. I like to run through a dungeon and happen upon another dumbass lost in the dungeon with me. :) Though we could be lost there for different reasons. So, what to do? I don\'t really know.
Cheers
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Well, it _would_ remove the MM aspect from quests (mostly), agreed. It\'s be more realistic, though, but I don\'t know how many ppl. see this as a backdraw.
The MM aspect would still be available for parties (invitation-only) and general areas (questless, though), like towns or the areas between questspaces (like wide grasslands or forests, rivers, etc.). These reasonably are the places ppl. meet anyway.
Whether questspaces are implemented or not, I prefer a well-implemented randomness to fixed quest locations due to the protection and uniqueness they yield.
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I think the randomness thing has potential too. However, I worry that it will devolve into \"FedEx\" quests or kill the \"big bad\" quests. The problem (as I see it) is that with a random quest, you can\'t have a special location (like a scary dungeon) and thus you are somewhat limited in the sorts of quests you can design around this concept. They have to be quests that are workable no matter where they occur, and that pretty much exludes special landmark type stuff.
How about a combination? Some quests random, some quests predetermined (so they can be in specific locations), some quests with questspaces, others open to the public. Some doable once (or with timers in the range of several months), others repeatable. If we give people a choice on how they want to quest, it would hopefully make for a better game.
I\'m kinda with rifft about the questspace issue. If ALL your quests were limited, you\'d lose much of the MM aspect, which is, after all, what these games are all about. I would be wary of making every quest involve questspace, althogh I like the idea in general for some things (I intend to implement questspace for particular special quests in my game that involve profession advancement).
And, BTW, rifft, don\'t ever feel bad about expressing your ideas and opinions. You may be right, you may be wrong, or you may be somewhere in between, but it doesn\'t matter, because it\'s the discussion that counts. Dialog like this is exactly how good games are designed (or at least it\'s part of the process, heh). Something you say here might end up impacting PS or Sov or some game not even started yet :)
Ron
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Hehe, well I was just re-reading my post and I relized I sounded like I\'m pushing only random quests, etc. That\'s why the comment.
I do agree with you Ron, that some quests would require special landmarks and would be limited by how random they could be.
But I think the key is in design. For example if you think about quests in terms of sets of goals as opposed to in terms of one. There could for example be a long running quest where eventually 10 kings would have to be dethrowned, these kings are all NPCs. Each king has some set of advisors and and assistance, lovers, wives, children etc. You a lowly adventurer happen to meet a dark stranger in an ally, where you are instructed to go and kill some low kitchen worker place poison in on of the advisors foods deliver the food, and leave. Then meet that NPC again at another city. When you meet that NPC again he tells you that the advisor has(or has not) died in which case the quest, if you choose to accept it, continues. There could also be consequences for breaking a quest. I simply propose a framework within which you could develope a quest in such a way as to allow not only static story driven quests, but also dynamic story driven quests. Not only would they be non-linear, they would also be random. For the above quest I described obviously there are many static parts, however you could still allow for random direction. Event A occurs, Event B is Rand(Events E1 - E25), once Event B is resolved some Event C is Rand(Class A of Events D1 - D24) You know, more complex hierarchy that involves random assigment with some set of constraints. FedEx missions are the simplest and should exist, obviously, but they don\'t have to be the only kind of quest that exists. There could also be truly unique quests that are only available after a certain amount of other quests have been completed. I mean here we have so many possibilites, we just have to make use of them. I think I might develope a small web interface that may provide an example of what I mean, of what kinds of quest could be generated. Though it may be sometime before it\'s complete since I\'m taking a full time summer semester and exams are coming up, so I\'m swamped with work.
Anyway, there is no reason _questspace_ can\'t exist, though I think it might have to be slightly alterted, to allow only certain part to exist in this extradimensional pockets. For example some part of the dungeon is available only to you, after you go through a certain door, it is now available only to you (You know the secret door thing). You could even allow certain rouges or theives with sufficiently high skill to see these hidden passages and rooms and enter them at their own peril.
Another way to allow for more unique quest experience is to generate items that are specific for that kind of quest. You need some sulphur to hunt some little beastie that would otherwise be invinsible, cute things like that, and of course make such things dynamic.
Anyway, I think that\'s about all for now.
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Well, I have a simply idea and I don\'t know what is wrong in it. If the problems are people who could go to kill quest monsters, why not do that once you have completed a quest you can\'t kill the quest monster again? And, if the quests are personal quest (I don\'t think this be good, because, like many people said, I think it will need too space in server) you can do that just the player who must do the quest and his party (if he got) can kill the monster.
But I think personal quests won\'t be good, the PS team would got too work in the quests and too space in servers.
It\'s better to have a lot of quests able to be done for everybody, but that everybody can do only one time, and maybe a little of quests that can be done all times you want (but I don\'t like this).
Which is the problem in this quest sistem?
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The problem is the wait queues at the quest NSCs. In this system, the i.e. head boss would need to be killed by every player doing the quest. However, it is only there _once_, therefore the other players will have to wait until it has respawned after you killed it, and so on. Therefore, the quest experience is higly unrealistic in that it clearly displays the game mechanics, completely destroying the immersion once you think about it (and I inevitably do that, that\'s why I didn\'t even finish NWN :( ).
I wish to make clear, however, that by \"unique\" or \"personal questspace\", I do _not_ mean \"a quest that is designed for any single player. I mean that the questspace, i.e. a copy of the quest, should be private to the player doing the quest. The quest in question (*g*) may well be assigned to every single player in the game at the same time. Each player would, however, be absolutely alone in their particular questspace (unless they team up for a formal party).
Therefore, yes, the MM aspect would be worked around for the quests, for immersion\'s / realism\'s sake. In non-quest areas (towns, etc.) it would still be there, however.
Maybe we can, once again, give the choiche to the only person it matters to: the player. They could, on a per-quest basis, decide whether or not they wish to enter a questspace, and if they choose not to, they\'d share the quest with everybody else who choose to share.
I know, if you have a quest beginning in a house and you\'re following a player into that house, the questspace will prevent you from following the player as you or the other player or both would get an own questspace. Still, this is going to happen way less often than kill queues...
Unkillable opponents and invisible items would prevent harvesting and level-grinding (anything that prevents this is good!), but neither killing queues nor loss of immersion.
I\'d like personalised quests, but I don\'t think it\'s feasible since the devs would indeed waste great amounts of time on them, only benefiting one single player, which is IMO a bad thing. Maybe as a _very very special_ reward (or punishment, hehe), but not as a general thing.
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Well, I understood better your quest sistem now. I like it. But I see 2 important problems:
Problem 1: If there is an area where only one player can enter, the quest area, this mean that he can hide easily objects (and sometimes himself from other people who attack him) in this area, and nobody will can enter. This could be a problem.
Problem 2: Got special areas, quest areas, for each player, give the same problem. A big big amount of space dedicated to quests, and making lag in the server.
Have you any idea about this?
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Hmm, well the whole bit, where for each quest a set of appropriate NSC\'s will be generated. For randomly generated quests, solves the lineup. I mean we are talking about a massive scale.
Anyway, questspaces as you propose them I don\'t think are feasible. But the pseudorandom quest generation is, well more so anyway. :P
Though I think a combination of the two would be optimal.
Oh, and giving the player the choice I think also ruins the immersion.
And yet another thing, when I mentioned secret doors, what I meant is this:
You still have a questspace, though it begins after the secret door that only _your_ PC or party knows about. Therefore allowing an explination for a questspace. It\'s simply a way to integerate it into the game without breaking immersion.
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Originally posted by Dargerok
Well, I understood better your quest sistem now. I like it. But I see 2 important problems:
Problem 1: If there is an area where only one player can enter, the quest area, this mean that he can hide easily objects (and sometimes himself from other people who attack him) in this area, and nobody will can enter. This could be a problem.
Well, the self-hiding aspect can of course be a problem. However, I\'m not sure to what extent, because you can probably run off and hide somewhere anyway. OK, questspaces should not be easily reachable, then, reducing the possibilities of in-city quests.
For item storage the questspaces would probably not add too much difference, because IIRC there will be some sort of such storage anyway. OK, the questspace would be completely untouchable whereas a house might not be.
I don\'t know how bad this would be, though. Especially if the MMORPG-typical parasites (griefers, harvesters and grinders) would be eliminated by this, it might be worth the backdraws, but maybe not, as it may well breed new parasites that I can\'t think of ATM.
Originally posted by Dargerok
Problem 2: Got special areas, quest areas, for each player, give the same problem. A big big amount of space dedicated to quests, and making lag in the server.
Have you any idea about this?
The space problem can partly be solved by downloading the questspaces to the client, but it has other issues (mostly synch). For a questpace in use I don\'t see any way to free memory usage, though, maybe by always only keeping a small chunk in memory and offloading the rest to the hdd, but this might be too laggy for constant reloads. This depends on the actual memory footprint of the quests, i.e., if they can be made very small (by working off a general copy and only storing per-player what really is different) it could be reduced, but worst case is that each player does a different quest.
Giving the choice might hurt immersion, but maybe not if the selection would be done before the connect, and / or if it were selectable from the \"file\" or \"options\" menu (which will most likely always be there anyway).
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Originally posted by Seytra
Giving the choice might hurt immersion, but maybe not if the selection would be done before the connect, and / or if it were selectable from the \"file\" or \"options\" menu (which will most likely always be there anyway).
Well, I wasn\'t thinking about a menu selection. My thought was that some quests are designed in each of the different manners we\'ve been talking about. One quest would use questspace (I like that term, did you make that up Seytra?) and would be on a three month timer, another quest would be repeatable at a random location, another quest would be one time only at a constant location, and so on.
I think this would allow players to gravitate toward the types of quests they prefer.
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Ok, if we forgot the self-hiding problem, and we can do that don\'t being lag in the game, there is yet another problem.
If we need special quest areas for all the players in the game, and imagine they are 10000, this mean 10000 special areas. Or the world is really really big, or we won\'t can walk, because everything will be full of quest-areas. And the quest areas won\'t be in important sites, obviously. This mean we will have to walk hours for go to a non-visited area, where we can do our quest. This isn\'t fun. No city quests (I know you said this), no quests in important sites... not, not good. I preffer to wait a little for kill someone.
Oh, and Ron:
Your sistem of choosable quests is good, I see one problem and I got one question.
Question: Could the players do all the quests of all sistems, or only the quests of one sistem, or only a limited number of quests?
Problem: If the number of quests is limited, all players will do the quests with better rewards, not the quests of the sistem that they preffer.
If the players can do all the quests, they will do all, and they will do quests of all the sistems, liking or disliking them.
With \"sistem\" I mean the class of quest, quest with player area, quests that can be done all times player want, etc.
EDIT: Huh, sorry for my bad english. English isn\'t my language, I learned it from forums and chats.
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Originally posted by Dargerok
Ok, if we forgot the self-hiding problem, and we can do that don\'t being lag in the game, there is yet another problem.
If we need special quest areas for all the players in the game, and imagine they are 10000, this mean 10000 special areas. Or the world is really really big, or we won\'t can walk, because everything will be full of quest-areas. And the quest areas won\'t be in important sites, obviously. This mean we will have to walk hours for go to a non-visited area, where we can do our quest. This isn\'t fun. No city quests (I know you said this), no quests in important sites... not, not good. I preffer to wait a little for kill someone.
AO solved this issue by making everyone use the same doorway, but then giving them their own questspace once they went through the door. So there is only one door that leads to 10000 private areas (well, not ONE door, but you get the idea). This way, there won\'t be excessive quest entry areas all over the place. Doesn\'t really work with the \"random location\" thing though.
Oh, and Ron:
Your sistem of choosable quests is good, I see one problem and I got one question.
Question: Could the players do all the quests of all sistems, or only the quests of one sistem, or only a limited number of quests?
Well, in my own head, I wasn\'t intending on limiting it in any way, you can do any quest you want as long as you have fullfilled the pre-requisites (talked to the right NSCs, gotten all the proper items, or whatever).
Problem: If the number of quests is limited, all players will do the quests with better rewards, not the quests of the sistem that they preffer.
This will happen no matter what system you use. If quests give varying rewards, players will learn where the best rewards are and tend to congregate there. Quests timers and one-time only quests will mitigate this somewhat, but not entirely eliminate it.
If the players can do all the quests, they will do all, and they will do quests of all the sistems, liking or disliking them.
Well, we come back to the ideas of A) having MANY quests such that any given player cannot do ALL of them for a long time, B) random quests, and C) quest prerequesites (must be a certain class or level, must have fullfilled other quests, talked to specific NSCs etc).
I don\'t see anything wrong with allowing the players to do whatever class of quest they feel like doing that day, I can\'t see any reason to limit them to just one type based on a menu selection :)
Ron
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Oke, I like your AO sistem. (it have the little problem of self-hiding, but well, is the best sistem anyway).
I\'m agree also with not menu-choosing for quests.
You talked about 3 quest ideas (a, b, c).
Which do you think is the best? I like idea \"A\", it could be so fun, but it won\'t be too hard to make? A lot of work for PS team...
And, about B and C, they got problems.
B: If there are random quests, this mean also random rewards. Then, a lucky player got better rewards or easier quests than other. And, if the rewards change in each player, it lose some of fun, because you can think, for example, \"Wow, I am going to win a shadow sword when I complete this quest ^^\". And, also, rare quests rewards will got a high price, and usual quest rewards low price. All it bad for stable economy...
And C, do that each player can do only a very limited number of quests, and add another fact to choosing job. This mean, the job with best rewarded quests, many people will choose it.
If A option couldn\'t be for work problems, what about a B option, but quests giving ever the same reward?
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Originally posted by RonHiler
Well, I wasn\'t thinking about a menu selection. My thought was that some quests are designed in each of the different manners we\'ve been talking about. One quest would use questspace (I like that term, did you make that up Seytra?) and would be on a three month timer, another quest would be repeatable at a random location, another quest would be one time only at a constant location, and so on.
I think this would allow players to gravitate toward the types of quests they prefer.
Yes, I made it up, glad you like it!
As for the selection of the quest system to use: How would you implement it if not as menu selection (without hurting immersion)? How would the player know before accepting the quest?
OK, I didn`t think of giving the option of entirely differet systems (questspace, random, general-access, on-time, etc.), but only to choose whether or not the player wishes to have the quests in a questspace, essentially not changing the quest itself, only whether others will share it or not. The exact same quest, either in traditional MMORPG style or in questspace style.
Of course, if we add several different systems this choice would not suffice.
@ AO system: I also meant to have special entryways (mostly doors, perhabps scrolls, paintings, etc.), not entire areas but obviously I failed to get it accross. :(
I agree that it\'d most likely not work well with the randomisation idea, so randomised quests would not be inside questspaces, but as they are designed to be analternative to questspaces, they don\'t need to.
I think we all agree that option A): immense amount of different quests, is preferrable but also very hard to accomplish ;)
Well, different quest rewards _are_ a problem. I strongly believe that there should be _almost zero_ special items to be gotten through quests (or any other way). The quests that _do_ have these items should be given to players only if they solved a number of prerequisite quests (that would be a tiny subset of the available ones, i.e. you need to solve 5 quest types (assassination, fed-ex, rescue, espionage, tournament), but of each type there are 1000 different ones available. Either you could randomly select wich ones will be prerequisites for any particular player, or all will equally do.
Not a perfect solution, though.
I mean, I _love_ special items, but that is also why I wish them to be _really_ scarce, no \"sword +1\" at all, only the \"enchanted sword of the shadows\", the \"singing sword of the dance\", etc. (and only exactly _one_ of each _in the entire game_).
Also, the quest, but maybe not the special reward should depend on what the player does (i.e., if it is an assassin who likes bows and also heals, whatever).
However, this would require much work, unless the special items are based on a general system that is flexible enough to give, say, 1000 unique items.
You know, I really _hated_ to find \"the sword of the ursurper\" (or whatever it was called) in a dungeon, only to be able to buy _a second one_ in the next shop I visited. Takes all joy out of getting seemingly unique items. :(
This would allow most quests to be rewarded fairly equally, making only the special ones a choice, which wouldn\'t hurt that much as they\'re going to be \"once in a RL year\" opportunities, making the reward valuable all by it\'s rarity alone (well, it should still be usable), abd the rarity of them makes balancing less hard as well. It would overcome the item inflation present on all computer RPGs that I know of.
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1) Weapons should only take \"Durability Damage\", that\'s degrade in shinyness and battleworthyness, when they strike critical hits. I mean, come on...
\"Jeez, my Scimitar of The Dark Dragon\'s Gizzard really took a beating from that Crazy Forest Hedgehog!\"
2) Npc\'s should only sell the most basic, most newbie-ish stuff... like bread...or the ingredients to make bread, or..maybe flint or scissors....whatever
3) Do not...I repeat in a nicer way, please do not make the point of the whole game to obtain a peice of armor, or a certain pair of golden-trimmed underpants. ( I\'m looking at you runecrap)
4) The game would truly suck major eggs if it were littered with the remanents of someone\'s campfire, or someone\'s failed attempt at cooking....keep our virtual world clean! (again, looking at you runecrap)
5) Do not make me run 30+ miles back to the nearest town just to buy potions of \"oddly filling juice\". I would imagine most of us would be able to find a way to eat other than buying funny-smelling fruits from some greasy food vendor picking his nose with his +1 finger.
6) Hmm...oh yes, a map would be nice, a good map. Please. Because while I was running around Zone B4 I was suddenly killed by a giant field tapeworm, oh dear, what is one of those doing in Zone B4..., oh wait, this is zone 4B! The spawning ground of the Giant Field Tapeworms,...silly me.
7) This has been said before, many times I think...but a bad battle system that has me hitting at air in a poor attempt to make the purist RPG aspect of MMORPG seem all-too exciting. This includes swinging your sword like you were a Nutcracker with an eye-patch. Y-and uck.
8) Mommy, why can\'t that man bend his legs?? I\'d like to see a nice screenie of my friends and I enjoying a nice round of Ale at the tavern, hmm, yes and possibly sitting down. I\'d like to be able to sit on a chair proper.
I doubt many of us sit on our barstools crosslegged. So injun\' style won\'t cut it.
9) Ease of chat...no annoying button combo\'s to get into chat.
10) Ehem..../shout = /s.....*cough*
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Yeah, it would be nice if could create aliases.
You know I\'ve been reading all about the problems these questing systems have, and how they are all seperate. But in my mind\'s eye, I see no reason for them to be seperate. Also about _questspace_ if you say get the quest with some party (random, not buddies) then you log off without finishing the quest. Then you log on, but the entire party doesn\'t have to log off at the same time. What would you do batman, what would you do? And to complicate matters even worse, what if you select another group of people to be in your party (not all of whom have the required pre-requisits). I mean we were riding along just fine on our shiny new bycicle, but someone just stuck a stick through our spokes.
Anyway, one way to resolve the issue woule be to split the quest at the moment you log off, so that when you log on next time, the quest remaines unchanged by the rest of the party which you had with you. If you invite other people to your quest, I don\'t think there is a problem, after you delt with the initial problem of loging on and loging off while questing with a party. Alternatively questspace quests could only exist for solo quests, so you would not be able to do those quests with your friends. Both have drawback, not entirely sure which would be better at this point, well I guess I\'ll leave you guys with this.
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Forgot to add some stuff, could just kick myself...
11) Bunnies. No bunnies. I swear to God, if I have to beat the love of our Lord and Savior into one more \'Hare\' or \'Lesser Cockroach of Infinite Weakness\' with my \'Sabre of Woeful Inadequecy\' I will probably try to slit my polygonal wrists with the oh-so-blunt kitchen knife that passes as my weapon.
Oh yes, just because I haven\'t slaughtered over 700 bunnies I must take a horrendous amount of damage from such a cute furry little b*stard. My neighbor had bunnies, they were no match for my broadsword that I ordered online. Albiet they did have several large coins inside their carcass, as well for several pairs of leather boots.
12) \"Drops\" um...I killed it, what\'s inside its flaming, rotting carcass is mine...all mine.
13) Attack of the clones!!! Character customization...I know, I know, I wouldn\'t want anyone to screw with my cal3d models that took so much hard work....I\'m assuming :D , but seeing so many copies of myself would just piss me the heck off after a while. Plus this would give the player a sense of individuality.
That\'s all for now... ;)
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Harwen techicly it wouldnt be a rotting carcass cause rotting involves nature and unless you are master of time it would just be a flaming carcass.
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14) Nigh-impossible \"experience\" curve. Since this is based on a stats and not levels, I\'m not too sure how this would work out, because I haven\'t played many games with this kind of system.
The few games I have played just base wether you get skill points or not by how difficult the battle was for you, depending on the strength of the monster and duration of the battle.
15) \"Oh, I just crafted 500 iron bars, and all I could make was an iron toothpick. Hmm... I think that brought up my crafting skill by.... .000001 points!! Wow!\"
Was that enough sarcasm? Good :D
16) \"Hey Sir Bob Nibbleback! May I see your \'Wrath of the Fire Monkey\' spell? Wow, that looks just like my \"Gas Cloud of \'I Couldnt Hold My Enchiladas\' \", and you know what, it also looks like the oh, 6 other spells that are possible to learn. Bet you thought you were special Bob.\"
( And Watcher, I was sorta hoping there would be Necroancy in the game, so I could make the corpse rot. ;) )
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@Harwen: How does necromancy affect rotting? I don\'t think you\'re in the right aspect. Rotting performy well without necromancy, it\'s either _time manipulation_ in which case you\'d not affect the rotting itself, only the time the object experiences, or earth magic, which does not have anything to do with necromancy IMO.
@ Questspaces/party/logging off:
Why would that be a problem? I mean, if you\'re in a questspace with a party and you or someone else logs off, there should be no difference for the remaining ppl. They\'d be in the same questspace and you simply vanish (here we have the inevitable problem of immersion loss due to RL constraints). If you reconnect, you get to respawn at the same point as you left, or at the point most of the members are or were last (assuming they logged off as well). No splitting. As long as the quest is _active_ it could be held on the server until they finish it, since the same would be done without questspaces: hosting the quest state per player, wouldn\'t it?
If it\'s not the current quest, we might have to resort to store it per player to avoid inconsistencies (or rather, make them the rule).
Same if you afterwards change your party and add new members: the ony who _invites_ the others sets the master questspace, overriding all other\'s.
Suppose three ppl. have started the quest, one hasn\'t and two have already finished it.
The guy who hasn\'t yet started the quest invites all these into his party and they enter the quest: -> it\'s entirely untouched.
It wouldn\'t be usable for item duplication, because there will only be the same amount of stuff in the questspace, regardless of the number of players, so they\'ll effectively be worse off compared to doing the quest alone.
So they enter the questspace and this replaces the questspaces they might have had, deleting the old ones.
After finishing and leaving, the space would be split, assuming they will most likely not go back anyway.
Not perfect, but the best I can think of currently.
Of course, it would be impossible to \"meet at the place of the old wizard we murdered last year\". :(
Maybe I (or somebody else) can think of a better way later.
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@Harwen: How does necromancy affect rotting? I don\'t think you\'re in the right aspect. Rotting performy well without necromancy, it\'s either _time manipulation_ in which case you\'d not affect the rotting itself, only the time the object experiences, or earth magic, which does not have anything to do with necromancy IMO.
I think that was a very dumb joke between me and Watcher ;)
17) Bad magic system, i.e. Runecrap\'s Rune system, made magic use impractical and clunky. I\'m just not sure how the Glyphs will work in PS. Then again, I trust the Devs will make something nifty :)
18 ) \"Wow, this dungeon looks familiar, oh, lookit that rock, it reminds me of the rock in the past 100 dungeons I have been to! Wow, what a sense of deja-vu.\" (I hardly think this\'ll be a major problem, I just wouldn\'t want this to be repeated)
19) Idiot NPC\'s....
Me: Hello there!
Zak Jr.: I\'m sorry I don\'t know anything about that.
Me: Um, Hi...
Zak Jr.: I\'m sorry I don\'t know anything about that.
Me: (After beating my keyboard) G\'day Mate!
Zak Jr.: I\'m sorry I don\'t understand your accent.
Me: Do you have a job I can do for you?
Zak Jr.: I\'m sorry I\'m an idiot, but perhaps you would have better luck shouting single random words from my speech at me.
Me: Idiot
Zak Jr.: I\'m sorry I don\'t know anything about that.
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Mistake number 5. In most, if not all, other online games it is not possible to put away your weapon, whenever you wish. People should be able to sheathe their sword or axe, and city guards should enforce this. If you draw your sword on a crowded market place, you\'re asking for trouble.
i like that :D
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Originally posted by Brinksia
Mistake number 5. In most, if not all, other online games it is not possible to put away your weapon, whenever you wish. People should be able to sheathe their sword or axe, and city guards should enforce this. If you draw your sword on a crowded market place, you\'re asking for trouble.
i like that :D
Yeah, that would be nice if it was automatic with \"peace mode\" because I\'d hate to accidentally get killed by the guards flying through the walls cause I accidentaly hit my \'S\' button...
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There\'s nothing like coming into a conversation halfway and not bothering to read a thing but anyway...
Originally posted by Dargerok
Problem 1: If there is an area where only one player can enter, the quest area, this mean that he can hide easily objects (and sometimes himself from other people who attack him) in this area, and nobody will can enter. This could be a problem.
I assume you are talking about instanced indoor missions. If thats the case, once the player or party leaves the cave/building/dungeon/whatever, the place will be cleared and noone will be able to enter that place again, not even you. Now the next person to go through that door will get his own randomly generated area.
Problem 2: Got special areas, quest areas, for each player, give the same problem. A big big amount of space dedicated to quests, and making lag in the server.
Have you any idea about this?
If quests are balanced, so that not every quest is in an instanced area and so that not everyone is in one of these areas at the same time, there shouldn\'t be a problem. They will be decent sized areas but probobly won\'t be areas that are a huge dungeon crawl that takes several hours to get through. And if they disappear the moment the player leaves there shouldn\'t be too much of a problem. Other games have done this and it works quite well.
Then again you could be talking about something completely different.
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a mistake all fantasy games make IMO is when the artists tries to make characters less symetrical but they always overdo it, I\'m so tired of the gigantic shoulder pad warrior have on there right shoulder (BGA, NWN etc.).
Nothing big I just irretate myself on it. maybe you have no idea what I\'m talking about but now that I\'ve said it you will find it on every game
Whats wrong with a large shoulder pad on one of the shoulders?
Historicaly speaking it was actualy rather common for suits of armor to have a more protected side of the upper body. Particulary armor used during jousts, Some of the pauldrons and colars where very far out in there design. From a practical stand point it would be usefull sicne more often than not you would be faceing one side of your body (the weapon hand) towards the enemy. youd want to protect that side the most, if not and you got wounded badly you wouldnt be able to defend your self.
The problem is the wait queues at the quest NSCs. In this system, the i.e. head boss would need to be killed by every player doing the quest. However, it is only there _once_, therefore the other players will have to wait until it has respawned after you killed it, and so on. Therefore, the quest experience is higly unrealistic in that it clearly displays the game mechanics, completely destroying the immersion once you think about it (and I inevitably do that, that\'s why I didn\'t even finish NWN ).
Why would that stop you from finnishing the NWN single player campaign?
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i will surely be flamed or laughed at for this post but in the interest of a lag free game and to stop quest repeters from obtaining many of the same quest items... you could always take the RS aproche. After you complete a quest the npc just says \"good job you did of saving my crops\" or \"wow you slayed that dragon good, so do ya wanna trade\".
Im infavour of player invisability in the \"boss\" area of the quest to keep quests realistic but instead couldent you have the place un accesable untill one played has been sloughterd by the boss or killed it of course this means making final fights shorter but fighting a awsomely strong boss wouldent take long because you would be a strong warrior and it would be a strong beast so youd both deal alot of damage and have realistc health as not survive more than 5 min of being bashed by an king oger as he would not survive 50 glanses of your Deadly Axe of Ultimate Pain and Unstopable Itching or being repetedly set on fire by a high lvl mage spell.
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Originally posted by Bigfoot
The problem is the wait queues at the quest NSCs. In this system, the i.e. head boss would need to be killed by every player doing the quest. However, it is only there _once_, therefore the other players will have to wait until it has respawned after you killed it, and so on. Therefore, the quest experience is higly unrealistic in that it clearly displays the game mechanics, completely destroying the immersion once you think about it (and I inevitably do that, that\'s why I didn\'t even finish NWN ).
Why would that stop you from finnishing the NWN single player campaign?
Wait queues of course don\'t (as they don\'t exist in the single player campaign, of course), but there have been many instances where I could clearly see game mechanics. Like the alchemy tables / chests. Or the unopenable doors. Or the exp cap. Or the headhunter quest. Or the supposedly unique items that aren\'t unique. For the exp. cap, I needed to dig deeply into the game, and even before this, the other things made the limitations so clear that it eventually hurt the immersion too badly to still enjoy the game so there was no reason to finish the game. :( I inevitably pick these things up and think about them, see the system behind them and when they reach sort of a critical mass, the game world falls apart and becomes the collection of graphics, sounds and scripts that it really is.
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Originally posted by Melbourne
I assume you are talking about instanced indoor missions. If thats the case, once the player or party leaves the cave/building/dungeon/whatever, the place will be cleared and noone will be able to enter that place again, not even you. Now the next person to go through that door will get his own randomly generated area.
Well, I was advocating questspaces as _stored personalised zones_, i.e. they would reamin forever in the state you left them in, including holes in walls and dropped stuff. Nobody else would be able to enter your particular questspace, instead they\'d get their own one freshly made the first time they enter. This would indeed be a perfect hiding spot for items and players. Offloading to the client can remedy most of the server space problems but adds synch issues with parties.
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Again, I stress, cause I can\'t stress this enough.
NO Rabbits....bunnies, little weak pathetic unreasonably small creatures that in reality you could step on and watch them squirm in agony, but for some reason in this universe you have trouble felling them with a SHARPENED blade....please. And again, please.
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i\'m not sure if it has been mentioned before.
what happened with parsec (http://openparsec.sourceforge.net/) happening here. an insanely long wait for the next version, news, anything and the collapse of the project.
while it may not happen here given the size(?) of the dev team. and i know they are working hard on cb. it would suck if it happened here too.
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This was going well but it suddenly dropped this could be a good thread again. (Hey I need a excuse for a BUMP!)
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Originally posted by steuben
while it may not happen here given the size(?) of the dev team. and i know they are working hard on cb. it would suck if it happened here too.
It would indeed. However, I don\'t yet see any sign of it happening. The CVS history log is being updated daily, which means the devs are still committing changes to the code. When you see the update frequency start to drop off, then it will be time to worry :) [either that, or they are done with the code changes and simply working on the databases/artwork/scripts etc.]
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I dont want to see the developers learning to juggle knifes (for obuous reasons.) I dont want to be able to go on google and type Planeshift to find tons of sites saying PLANESHIFT H4X0RS FOR DL!!!!