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Messages - RonHiler

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1
General Discussion /
« on: October 18, 2004, 10:34:22 pm »
Basically, I agree completely with Seytra.

I think there is a confusion in terms here (which I find is not uncommon when talking about MMORPG systems, the terms so often are really very undefined, heh).

When I say \"harvesting\", what I\'m referring to is the practice of collecting resources to sell for RL money (generally through an auction service like E-bay).  I DON\'T mean collecting resources for sale in game (for in game currency) or for normal in game use.

You may say \"there\'s no difference between the two\", but I think there is.

To sell game resources in the outside world, you have to collect much more than any other player can reasonably get (otherwise you don\'t have a market, the players could get their own resources by themselves).  Further, to make a living doing this, you have to collect said resources quickly and efficiently so that you have enough turn around to pay the rent (I just looked it up, 1 million adena (the Lineage II currency) sells for about $20 on ebay, and LinII has about the slowest money collecting system I\'ve ever seen on an MMORPG, so you can do the math on how much a harvester needs to turn over to make a living harvesting in LinII, and the corresponding level of damage they are doing to the community).

This will very often involve using exploits/cheats, and certainly will involve exclusive access to as high drop/low risk area as can be found.  And THATS why the practice is damaging.  Anything that affects a harvesters ability to gather resources as fast as possible must be eliminated, and that especially includes interference/competition from other players.  A harvester will make any player who interfers with their income life miserable until that player stops interfering with them.  And that will mean greifing them in any way possible (including exploits) until they go away.

Now, contrast this with someone collecting resources for in game use.  In this case, there\'s generally no particular hurry to get resources, and certainly not at the level a harvester needs.  I myself am very often a resource collector (as I tend to favor the crafter professions in MMORPGs, which usually involves a good number of resources).  I don\'t need anywhere near the level of resources a harvester would need (by orders of magnitude!).  I can collect, using perfectly legal and ethical means, and if another player is in the area, it\'s no big deal, even if they are interfering with my collection process, I can move on and look somewhere else.

And that\'s the difference.  The game is *designed* for the latter, it is certainly not designed for the former.  One is normal game practice, the other is destructive and disruptive.

Ron

2
General Discussion /
« on: October 14, 2004, 04:17:10 pm »
Quote
Originally posted by Adeli
Wherever there are people, there will be jerks.

Indeed.  That\'s why there are ignore lists.

However, your assessment of the damage a harvester does is naive.

Yes, they skew the economy.  Okay, perhaps a game can live with some people buying 10x the resources they really ought to have.  It\'s annoying and unfair, but not game breaking (probably, although I bet ya I could make an argument that it might be).

Worse, however, is their effect on the area around them.  Harvesters are territorial (they want NO competition for the resources in the area, it would slow down their harvesting).  Now suppose you have to do quest A, which involves killing Mob B, and Mob B happens to be in an area infested with harvesters.

Just ignore them and go kill Mob B, right?  No.  If Mob B drops any significant resources, you\'ll never get at it, the harvesters will be taking it down before you get within 100 meters (and even if Mob B does not drop resources or is instanced to you, it doesn\'t matter, you\'re still in their territory).  And even when you do get close, you\'ll be \"warned\" away from the area (the \"warning\" depends on the PvP system of the game in question).  Should you attempt to ignore or fight back (should the PvP system allow fighting back), you\'ll get ganged by the harvesters and repeatedly killed or harrassed until you leave.  So now your quest is broken.  You cannot complete it, and you never will.

Oh, and don\'t think you can reason with them.  They don\'t care about your quest.  They care only about collecting the resources Mob B drops so to sell them.  Depending on how the macro system works, they may not even be at the keyboard to hear your pleas.

Do you think I\'m making this up?  Not at all.  The scenario I just described is *common* in Lineage II, it personally happened to me a number of times, and judging by the player boards at the time, I wasn\'t the only one (could be fixed by now, I dunno, I stopped playing that game a long time ago, heh.  Maybe the devs finally acknowledged the problem and did some tweaking by now).

And that is only ONE example of how harvesters can directly affect your quality of play, I can come up with more if you like.

I think you underestimate the effect they have.  Most likely because you\'ve never actually had to deal with them having a direct effect on your quality of play.

Every game has harvesters (I think).  The trick is to mitigate their effect on the world.  In Lineage II they were awful because of how the macro system, quest system, and PvP system were set up.  In AC I hardly noticed them because they had little direct effect on my play (other than to skew the economy toward the high end, forcing the devs to concentrate thier updates on the high game, leaving casual players like me with the same old content month to month).  In SWG harvesting is practically ENCOURAGED, hehe (they have in-game machines for it and an in-game ebay system), I guess on the presumption that if everyone is doing it and it\'s part of the built in game mechanics then it\'s not an issue (an interesting approach, I\'m still unsure how it really panned out).

One way to completely qaush harvesters is to have no resources at all, which is the approach taken by City of Heroes (they sorta do have resources, but you\'re limited to a max of 8 or 12 of them total per character, not something a harvester can make money from).  I think there are NO harvesters in CoH :)  But that system wouldn\'t work for a fanstasy based MMORPG like PS.

Ron

3
General Discussion /
« on: October 14, 2004, 06:42:42 am »
Quote
Originally posted by AgentZ
Their objections have alot to do with MPKers (Monster-Player killers, or indirect PKing) not harvesters. I have suffered quite a few deaths in other MMORPGs because of this and I\'m 100% against it and GMs taking action against it. I believe MPKing is a /real/ threat against the community and takes the enjoyment from the game. However people farming for items/money or to sell on ebay isn\'t nearly as serious a problem. I guess I can\'t sum up my opinion anymore and that\'s all I have to say. Focus on the crimes that hurt the community.


Hey AgentZ.  I\'m not sure I really am getting your objection.  Do you mean that other players lead high level trains to your bystanding character, thus putting him in danger?

That is a grief issue, you are right (presuming it\'s done intentionally).  I wouldn\'t say it\'s a bigger issue than harvesters, but that\'s a matter of opinion, hehe.

However, that\'s a relatively easily solved problem.  Trains are caused by an AI that doesn\'t know when to give up, and transfer of aggro is caused by poorly thought out  AI routines.  In Asheron\'s Call (for instance), a MOB will chase the player, but ONLY the player they first aggroed (unless attacked by someone else, at which point they might transfer aggro to the attacker, or they may not).  After some amount of time (if they don\'t catch their prey), they give up and begin to run back to their spawn point.  During this run back period, they won\'t aggro another player (unless attacked).  Once back at thier spawn point, they return to a normal idle state where they aggro based on distance (or being attacked, of course).

This has the effect of you never being engaged in combat unless you want to be (or you wander too close to an idling MOB).

I have seen trains that transfer aggro to bystanders (Lineage II and EQ just to name two).  This is just poor design, IMO.  The AC system always seemed to me to work the best, and it\'s the system I have always intended to use in my game.  Not sure what the plan is for PS, maybe one of the devs will illuminate us :)

So I think your problem is easily solvable, it\'s all a matter of how you program your AI.

Ron

4
General Discussion /
« on: October 13, 2004, 09:04:47 am »
Seytra is absolutly right.  Harvesters are a very real and dangerous threat, and should be dealt with in every way possible.  They CAN and DO destroy games.  If you don\'t believe this, you have never played a game with this problem.  It is a fatal mistake to dismiss the issue as harmless.

The very biggest problem game I know of with regards to harvesters is Lineage II (for reasons due to certain aspects of the mechanics of the game which I wont bother to go into, and the developers absolute refusal to acknowledge and deal with the problem).  This game is essentially dead now, due in large part to harvesters (though certainly the game has other core problem issues).

Don\'t kid yourselves.  For harvesters, collecting resources and selling them on ebay (or where ever) is their JOB, not something they do for extra cash or as some kind of minor hobby. This is how they make their living, they work at it all day long, and they take it very seriously.  They care nothing for the community, roleplaying, the economy, your enjoyment, or any other aspect of the game except how it affects their ability to collect as much resource as possible as quickly as possible and turn it over for real world money.

The developers, IMO, should do everything possible in their power to discourage harvesting/ebaying.  And yes, this will require them taking time out from coding other aspects of the game to deal with the issue.  It\'s too bad, but that\'s the way of it just the same.  It hardly makes any difference if the coders add in an awesome feature if no one ever sees it because they\'ve all been driven away by harvesters.

To some extent, it might be possible to handle harvesters through GMs, but I wouldn\'t rely on it solely (especially in a game that\'s free, and in which the harvester players can create a new account the minute they first feel threatened). It should also be possible to catch them through database data mining.  Harvesters *should* stand out in the database via the amount of resources they collect (presuming the database keeps a running total of these values, which I dunno if it does or not), which would be an order of magnitude higher than most other player\'s values, I would think.

Ron

5
The Hydlaa Plaza /
« on: August 31, 2004, 01:40:11 am »
Well, it\'s true that use of the site is free, but I don\'t think that\'s a good reason to not give us some kind of warning.

CVS writes are down, despite what the blurb says about it only being a web site issue.  At least, I think so.  I get this from the big red notice \"SourceForge.net is currently in read-only mode. Logins, editing of project information, and forum posting are currently disabled. Project browsing and file downloads should continue to function normally. Any attempt to add or modify information will not update the SourceForge.net database and may result in an error. \" message at the top of each page :)

So I wouldn\'t try to commit anything tonight.
Unless you read that differently than I do :)

Ron

6
The Hydlaa Plaza / SourceForge Down
« on: August 31, 2004, 12:53:49 am »
\"( 2004-08-30 11:41:49 - SourceForge.net Web Site )   At 15:00 Pacific on 2004-08-30 there will be a read-only downtime of the website to last an expected 6 hours followed by a full downtime of the SourceForge.net website to last an expected 1 hour. This downtime is to permit database maintenance. \"

Awful nice of them to give us some warning :) I don\'t mind extended downtime if they give us at least a day or two of warning so I can plan other work.  I also don\'t mind downtime for \"reasons beyond our control\" because **** happens :)

But this was obviously a planned outage (database maintenance is not a **** happens scenario) which they sprang with no warning whatsoever.  That does irritate me.  So much for me getting any work done on my project today (not to mention the 86,663 other projects, including PS, that are reliant on SF).

What do y\'all think (especially the devs)?  Am I being unreasonable.  Do you think it\'s okay for the SF admins to pull this sort of thing?

Sorry, I\'m just a bit irritated right now, and needed to vent.  I WAS going to do some coding work, hehe.

Ron

7
General Discussion /
« on: August 26, 2004, 10:57:53 pm »
Quote
Originally posted by Dalhamir
3ds Max? that\'s like $1000+. any ideas on something cheaper but useful? I\'d like to get some practice and maybe even contribute to the game content once i get some skills, but my disposable income isn\'t quite that high.

There is GameSpace.  It\'s a $300 package and holds up pretty well against 3DSMax, Maya, and all those other outrageously priced packages.  As a modeller, it\'s really very good.  There is also a free version called GameSpace Light, which is the same thing except it has a 650 poly limit.

GS does have a few quirks.  It\'s UVE is awful (most users of GS use a third party program like UU3D ($25)for UV mapping), and there are some issues with bones.  Caligari is addressing these issues (and a few other minor things) and will have them \"fixed\" in GS 2 (which is coming out \"when it\'s ready\").

http://www.caligari.com/gamespace

HTH,
Ron

8
General Discussion /
« on: August 25, 2004, 11:53:29 pm »
Quote
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.]

9
General Discussion /
« on: July 08, 2004, 05:09:01 pm »
Quote
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.

Quote

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).
Quote

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.

Quote

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

10
General Discussion /
« on: July 08, 2004, 04:47:40 am »
Quote
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.

11
General Discussion /
« on: July 07, 2004, 02:12:28 am »
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

12
General Discussion /
« on: July 06, 2004, 03:03:38 am »
Quote

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.

13
General Discussion /
« on: July 05, 2004, 07:25:18 pm »
Quote
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.

14
General Discussion /
« on: July 05, 2004, 04:06:36 pm »
Quote
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

15
General Discussion /
« on: July 04, 2004, 07:20:50 am »
Quote
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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