Pressure and Stealth

[elscouta]

This has probably already been discussed in Wish List (everything has already been discussed in fact ), but as i can\'t find any topic speaking of that (how can you use search for such a thing?), i\'ll point (again?) this aspect of the game.

Pressure and Stealth. What i mean by this word is what every player of Nethack style-games know: When you know you are in danger and you want to avoid death, find a place where you can rest (etc...). It is the exact opposite of what too many MMORPG feature (i have been watching someone playing World Of Warcraft): kill a monster, kill a monster, rest, kill a monster (ouch, this one was strong), rest, kill a monster, kill a monster, rest...

What should be is: hunt for a treasure, be attacked by a monster, kill the monster, low hp, try to sneak past monsters, freeze the attacking one, run, freeze another one, low mp, kill a weak monster on your road, find a safe place to rest, etc...

We don\'t want this in every place. Some players (duh! ) don\'t like challenge and prefer smooth powerleveling (kill -> kill -> kill -> rest -> kill -> level -> kill -> kill -> rest -> kill -> kill -> kill -> rest -> kill -> level -> logout -> login -> kill -> kill -> kill -> rest -> (etc...)). So places like the colliseum must remain, where you can do this. But please, in things like quests where you must enter a dungeon to find something, try to add a challenge more interesting than kill->move->rest cycle.

Note that warriors should be less affected by this kind of play than players like wizards and of course assassins.

How to achieve this?
- Don\'t make hp/mp recovering too easy. The current rate is just ok as far as i\'m concerned.
- Make monsters attack players at sight. (i don\'t know how this is feasible, and how an engine can support hide-and-seek play). Stealth ability kicks in here.
- Make human/smart monsters call for help (and by voice, not by running away). I\'m serious here. If you attack an human, you should be prepared to face his friends! Of course, balancing would require to lower the rough power of such monsters.
- Make quests end more rewarding than killing simply monsters. A warrior should not get more exp than a stealthy assassin.
- Decrease monster density. You should have time (and place!) to run away and hide.
- Make alternate paths: find a way to open this closed door/climb on this roof, or run through these monsters.
- Make ways to hide yourself: Lock doors....
- And of course, allow monsters to give you temporary disavantages illness that you can cure in crowded places, or that a wizard/priest can cure with some time (decrease hp/mp regen rate by 2, stop hp/mp regen, reduce stamina...). Poison is delayed-kill if you don\'t have an healer, so it fits into a different category of things.

And PLEASE don\'t make quests like half of the WoW\' one: \"kill X and bring me Y drop\".  


Heh, it\'s my _first_ thread i create after the \"Help me!\" required one (party! ). I hope i won\'t get flamed for it

[Kiva]

For the X-teenth-millionth-billionth time. Pre Alpha. What is now, won\'t be and what will be is much more advanced and better than what is now. So just go back to testing and wait for these great things to happen.

[elscouta]

From the forum description
What you would like to see in the final game?

Now, can we hear your opinion about this?

Unless what you mean by this well... not really constructive reply is that my idea is so obvious that everyone would instantly agree on it and only someone that think the game is finished can propose such a thing? Because by seeing commercial games (WoW, that i used as an example), it seems not common sense.

And by \"So just go back to testing and wait\",  do you mean that the only use of a player is to play brainlessly the game, and report bugs? What is this forum for then? ?(

[Kiva]

Originally posted by elscouta
And by \"So just go back to testing and wait\",  do you mean that the only use of a player is to play brainlessly the game, and report bugs? What is this forum for then? ?(

Well so far it\'s been for people suggest ideas that get instantly flamed by other people because the ideas are either bad, old and used, or generally just stupid. Or in your case, it\'s something we all know is going to happen anyway, more or less.

So this forum... Well, I think it all starts with the devs not really caring much about it, and acraig being the only person who checks in from year to year, to see if there\'s anything new and exciting. But as he fails to find something, he shrugs and moves on to the more nonsense-ish parts of the forum, where people talk about stuff like sausages, car crashes, wipe number 6,000,000 in the future, and so on.

To give a short summary of what I just said; This forum is boring, and incredibly dull. It\'s never used for what it\'s supposed to be used for, even though people think they use it for what they thought was initially what it was designed to do.

To summarise the summary; What people initially thought the use of this forum was, was actually not exactly what they thought the devs who made it thought, and thus we can conclude that the arguements I present to you are fully valid, as my understanding of how this forum works is probably just as diffrent as all the other people\'s understandings, resulting in even more confusion as I try to convice you that my thoughts are the right, even though you can\'t think my thoughts as I\'m currently thinking them, unless you by some means find a way to intercept my brainwaves, and steal my thoughts. That is, of course, impossible.

To summarise the summary of the summary; This forum is bad.

... I\'m sorry, I\'ve been reading the Hitchhikers Guide recently.

[elscouta]

Originally posted by Kiva
Well so far it\'s been for people suggest ideas that get instantly flamed by other people because the ideas are either bad, old and used, or generally just stupid. Or in your case, it\'s something we all know is going to happen anyway, more or less.

I will hope.... Because i haven\'t seen any mmorpg that features many quests where the player can feel trapped / hunted.
And i knew devs were thinking about it, i wanted to start some discussion about it (best way to do it, limitations ...)

To summarise the summary of the summary; This forum is bad.

I\'m a fervent advocate of open developement (i don\'t mean open source, i mean open brainstorming). I guess I may have dreamt when i thought the open source part of PS will make it \'open\'. So sad...

I understand you can\'t coordinate a developement with thousand of players, including too many morons. I would almost start a thread entitled \'How to make planeshift developement open and still under control?\' to see what goes out, but as i fear what will, and as it is not to me to do it (it is the dev responsabilty to do it, if they want more difference between Planeshift and commercial projects than just the price), i won\'t. (and the fact that i create only threads when i\'m sure it will be interesting, reason why i have waited one year and an half before to post anything, and reason for why i\'m so astounished by your reply). If i was the only one involved, i\'d create a wiki where the devs put their design document and where players can append their thoughts (devs part is readonly, community work on a thing below). Of course, this would require the devs to hide the link to the wiki somewhere (like in the 245th page of a design document they dare to publish) so only players really interested can work on it.

And i know what you\'ll answer. And to this i reply:
No. Most of the players here don\'t have the time to be part of the rule team.

But if a closed developement way must be taken, i suggest this forum get deleted. Unless  it is only to distract those with as you said \' stupid ideas \' and prevent them from bothering the devs by giving them a place where they can be ignored? Especially as a server tip is \"Register on the forums to get your voice said and your wishes noted\". Then you trapped me perfectly. I have for long thought this forum was the only one readible/writtable (with to a lesser extent, the roleplaying (read-only ) and guild one)

If you want to see my face at the moment i wrote this, if you didn\'t understood it already by reading this, here it is : And it is not only a smiley.

[Xordan]

Actually I read this forum quite alot and a fair bit of what I read influences my decisions/ideas. Just because threads generally aren\'t replied to, doesn\'t mean that they aren\'t noted and taken into consideration. I try to cater to what the players want, while keeping the game as fair as possible. I can\'t do this without a source of input from somewhere, and IRC and ingame aren\'t enough. Posts like the one at the beginning of this thread are the kind that I especially like to see, because they are the most helpful to me in deciding what things I need to do to make the game better. I agree that some threads are useless, but not all of them. And posts saying how useless these threads are aren\'t helpful at all.

[Seytra]

Let me just say that I fully support this idea. The content is being created ATM, and this is the perfect time to shape the direction in which it will move.

Just a thought: in my PnP sessions, we don\'t give any XP for killing. We give XP for exceptionally good RP, the completion of the quest (influenced by RP), and good ideas. Only exceptional enemies warrant XP for their defeat.
Obviously, this isn\'t fully feasible in a MMORPG, since this would require infinite numbers of quests, but it can be a guide for what it should strive to be like.

Don\'t get me wrong: we are testing, but we are also shaping the future, both in terms of how the game will develop, and in terms of what the community will be like. Therefore, there is a difference between \"Why isn\'t there \" and \"I think would be worthwile\".

[Under the moon]

Nothin\' like a good, \"Oh god, oh god...I hope he didn\'t see me,\" moment once in a while. Palms sweating, unblinking eyes staring at the darkened screen. I hope that someday someone makes a mainstream MMORPSHG (mass-multi-online-role-playing-survival-horror-game).

I can see it now...\"Live a new life online...in Fear . Watch the shadows, watch the ground, watch the skies. Death creeps, death crawls, death comes on swift wings. Don\'t blink. It will be your last.\" :evil: I am so there.