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Messages - irago

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1
General Discussion /
« on: December 02, 2002, 05:05:58 pm »
okay, i admit the guild power downgrape was a bit too much, the system is too well started to be changed, drop that idea. but i wish to elaborate a bit on the second part of that: a stable, developer created system of \"uber-guilds\" should be put in place to avoid confusion for new players as of where to belong. these \"uber-guilds\" (stressing the quotes, i can\'t come up with a better name\" should be either preset trader associations, where for example anyone who would want to blacksmith wouls have to join to learn the craft and peruse the smithies (at least in one city, although some contact could be established between the blacksmiths of each community to make blacklisting possible). anyone on a blacklist would have little to no way of getting any weapons or armor, or repairing those he already has (item deterioration should be a must to drain money from the system, and would suit this well; once again, i doubt the developers are planning to make everything of hyperindentable steel, so i\'m prolly reiterating). that, and of course geographical communities (cities, and nearby villages). these associations should be rather easy to join, the acceptation being more-or-less a formality, although charge should be given to players and they should be encouraged to come up with whatever fancy rituals, oaths, or (simple!) tests to let new people in. of course the downside could be the above-average hand-to-hand combat system (nice touch with the three schools and all, my respect to the developers), but then again, i could very well imagine let\'s say monastic orders of Argan, Esteria, and wosshisnameagain, who would keep their arts a secret form non-members (each teaching melee and their appropriate school). also the whole point of the system would be that the players could take absolutely nothing for granted (skill advancement, shopping or anything); a lot of things would be sort of privileges, although easy to gain, when lost, very tough to regain. i imagine blacklisting/banishing being a more usual, easy to administer (without intervention of the game administrators), and far more annoying punishment than the traditional banning.

the system that was described from everquest might be annoying, but it is (to the matter this can be said about fantasy themed games) realistic. no matter how hard you train or how well-made (i want to point back to the idea of not particularly strong enchantments on most - 95% or more - items) your armor is, a dragon\'s flame breath that could crisp-fry an elephant WILL hurt you without magical assistance. and as for spell casters, they will be a little frailer, and the dragon has several centuries of life experience, tons of muscle weight, and severals tens of kilograms of brain matter, hrak innate magical power to be defeated by spells one humanoid can muster alone. the eventual scaling of monster power should be based on the average level or power rating in the group attacking him, or should rise with each additional member (not the full amount as if a single enemy of the power of the group together of course), so a monster will still be a challenge, even should a LOT of people group to defeat him.

also, i\'ve come up with an ingenious (and prolly revolutionary, i never seen it anywhere before, excuse and correct me if i\'m wrong) idea: let\'s divide skill advancement in two independent parts - theory and practice. theory would be gained by being mentored (the usual skill point payment at a mentor, or (gads!) at level advancement), but would per se be useless, and then the traditional clickalot-to-advance (although of course, only those uses of the skill that would make actual sense - that deal/heal damage, or have any tangible effect would count) would increase the practice component, which would actually make the skill better, give access to new abilities and the usual. the theory component would determine the cap to which the skill can be practiced. of course, the practicing should be sensibly faster than in the system i described before, of course.

Irago, god how i hate people using numbers, weird characters, or only sensible dangerously sounding english words in their in-game names, not to mention multiple capitals in one...

2
General Discussion / this could help
« on: November 30, 2002, 05:40:59 pm »
well, i\'ll try and be less theoretic now... i\'ll just be hypothesysing now, since i haven\'t played any MMORPG as of yet (lack of money). but what might help:

  • reduce the power of guilds. a very negative experience i had from Tibia (a german sorta MMORPG; 2D and free :)) is that the first interaction with another player i had was a lowbie/midbie/highbie (no matter, anyone was better than me at that point) cornering me and putting through the message \'give me all you got or you\'re kill-on-sight\' for my guild. reducing guilds to interest organisations, and/or having them declare a purpose which would be made public; the membership of a guild should be easily determined in-game, and it should be possible to issue complaints against a guild-member who violates it\'s mentality. also, the founding of guild should be limited and allowed only to players who have displayed that they are responsible and possibly good roleplayers (e.g. not-d00ds). it would be a Care Bear (very nice term, hope the one who used it before - i have an abysmal memory - will forgive me this display of plagioatorism) inducing factor, but it would prevent a d00d-or-die society, where people not in a uberman controlled guild would be at a risk of being opressed. maybe not realistic, but relieves quite some tension from the game\'s atmosphere.
  • nclude politics in the game. creating higher-level player structures, to a certain measure moderated by \'authorities\' - approved supervisors or someone of that sort, that stand even above guilds, would allow some control over the player\'s interests. making let\'s say a member of the city council have more real power than the d00d with the vorpal sword would significantly reduce the games attractiveness to them and consequently drive them away. i imagine these organisations as for example city levels with an somewhat independent administration, or the job-groups (permanently sacking an asocial player from the job is quite a logical consequence for unruly actions).
  • a decent law system should be in place (this might be redundant, since it is possible the developers already have something similar in mind; in that case, ignore this point on the list). this might be connected to the previous point. make a city guard that alhough not immortal and one shot slayers, would be ultimately impossible to defeat. this would require scaling the guards to the offenders level, should he be more powerful than they are, but with a minimal power level set quite high to prevent weaker players from trying anything funny; the scaling should be to such a measure that the player would be available to kill one, two or even several of the guards, but it only as many as necessary to flee the city. this would require careful planning of the placing of the guards, but the system could be very functional. this could be connected with a player-run jurisdiction, with characters being judges and so on for those laws, the violation of which that would be too complicated to be adressed by the game system itself. they would have the competences to administer punishment such as fines, temporary banning, or banishment from a city (to this issue: it should be in that case absolutely impossible to penetrate the city gates violently - spawning of guardsmen would be a viable solution). also, a system should be implemented which would prevent the offender from escaping when arrested (handucuffing and the like - no speculations should be allowed as to the possibility of breaking them - noone can do that IRL, and if we admit that the avatars can be superhumanly strong, so can the material used to make the cuffs). so, to summarize things: the system should work in a way as to bang one simple rule through the thickest of skulls - you do something bad, and you WILL face consequences, period.
  • limiting PvP combat is viable, although probably unacceptable for the sake of the desired facsimile realism of a MMORPG. limiting it to arenas or a level span rule would be too much. but berserking should be highly frowned upon, and players should be encouraged to for example create groups to kill a berserking d00d; a kill/loot/city banish punishment is hopefully severe enough to discourage anyone from killing on sight. the functionality of this system would be significantly reinforced by the \'skills, not uber-items\' and \'limited advancement\' policies.
  • civilisation should be in all ways important. all of the more important parts of the game world, e.g. those with an increased player concentration, shuld be controlled by a legal system and equipped with guards. a player who is a persona non grata in any and all cities in the game, after being finally hunted down, should have little else to do than run around naked, without equipment around the wilderness areas, killing monsters which wouldn\'t drop anything of interest to someone who doesn\'t have access to a shop od a place where to process the given material (this time, i am absolutely certain that the developers are implementing this system, but nontheless, i shall post this: most crafts and jobs should be impossible to perform in the wilderness, e.g. outside of the aforementioned cities/villages/etc. the monsters in wilderness areas should in any but the most rare cases drop finished items, or even money, for that purpose, raw processable materials would be quite enough as the material reward - useless, nonetheless of value to a player with the resources of a city at his disposal; i think this adds a very functional piece of realism)
  • to expand on the previous issue: there should be monster with hoards of rare items (although not quite as powerful to be considered uber-artifacts), but they should be impossible to be deferated individually. that would prevent non-social people from getting any excitement from the game after reaching a certain level of power (a very high one, needless to say; penetrating into social structures does take some time, until then, it should be perfectly possible to go more-or-less solo)
  • make magical items very rare, even with the conditions of the skill-focus system. skills should provide the player with at least equal power. it should be possible to kill a twinked-to-oblivion newbie when you know the right way to use the skills they\'ve got. this might be possible to implement because a drastic modification of the combat system would be needed. two \'classes\' of magical items could be included: simple ones, quite common, with a very limited bonus for the player, to the extent of providing the decisive edge in equal battles, or compensating for a minor weakness the player in error commited during advancement. these could be sommonly available or even manufacturable, but the advantages a player equipped fully with such items would get shouldn\'t surpass the ones he would get by gaining a few levels (or maybe even one, depending on how much a \'level\' would mean in powrer terms). widely available should in no way mean widely affordable, and even the manufacture would require going to certain ends to get the necessary components. the higher level items (of artifact class) should give a more significant amount of power, but there should be a different limitation, like possibly the limit of one artifact per player, a few of one in the game altogether, and the impossibility to sell them or give them away
  • ad skills more powerful than items. the gain of skills should be done in a different way that \'kill enough and you get skill points\', or \'click long enough and you\'ll advance\'. these two systems shouldn\'t be eliminated completely, but severely downgraded. skill points are a very functional system, but spending them in some advancement screen isn\'t exactly realistic, or helpful. it should either be limited to a certainsm level in a skill, after which the player would have to join an organisation (i can\'t personally imagine someone who kills puppies and such would be taught crystal magic for example) or find a mentor NPC; or even both, with players mentoring other organisation members (but this might on the other hand turn out to be very frustrating). or as a compromise, being mentored would make skill advancement easier (in terms of skill-point cost) than teaching yourself. performing a skill to advance it shouldn\'t be eliminated, but should be a secondary way of advancing a skill. it also shouldn\'t work like \'use the skill x times and you advance\'. a certain level of randomness should be included: the use of a skill would instead increase the probability of the skill advancing, with a certain maximum probability (10% or even less). the probability would be checked against after each such use of the skill (D&D d% style), adn reset back to zero after gaining a skill point in this fashion. the probability increase would be very small, and inversely proportionate to the current skill level and skill difficulty (normal advancemenmt cost). this would make the skill advancement by using seem like a sort of a christmas present - e.g. it would make a player happy (\'Wee, I got a free level in swords!\'), but it would in no case be a way of gainig significant power per se


also, a few reactions to the previous posts: making the character advance primarily thanks to socializing would limit the game\'s audience, which would be quite undesirable due to the current state of the game (e.g. quite impossible to advertise seriously; no offense, i admire the developers for undergoing such a challenge). everyone enjoys a bit of good\'ole hack\'n\'slash fun once in a while, and i wouldn\'t want to see the project end up limited for a few \'Planeshift geeks\' who find unlimited amusement in chopping lumber, and figuring what to say to an NPC to get a quest clue over and over. the game has the best chance of success if it will provide entertainment for almost anybody (\'cept d00ds, grief players and power-gamers)

Oof, kudos to the one who reads the whole of this, and i hope i didn\'t insult anyone\'s intelligence for advising things which are obvious to someone with at last minimum experience in MMORPGs, which i lack. Most of what i have put in this post comes form experience in MUDs, where to the contrary i have encountered almost none of the problems that have benn described in previous posts in this thread; i merely modified them with consideration of the way i think MMORPGs work

Irago, the eternal newbie

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