is this the game ive dreamed of?

[madrebel]

hi im new, stumbled upon this from a crystal space article in the recent linux magazine. im an avid gamer for some time well, since atari. im also an avid linux and general open source fan. software should be free (as in open not necisarilly free of charge) and not suck.  as a RPG gamer im very pro Baldurs gate style, not so much DnD (although their rules set is great) but more the quality story lines etc.

So when i read about this game last night i of course got excited. Forgive my lack of grasp for the overall scope of this project as the main site itself leaves much to be desired in terms of information. but from what little ive read on the forums so far it seems this game aims to be somewhat put the MMO into the morrowind concept, am i somewhat accurate here?

My MMORPG ecperience consosts soely of DAoC. I have also played WW2online quite a bit. What a great idea that was, to bad the execution was so horrid.

Anyways i just thought i would post my thoughts.

Level tread mills suck. wtf do i need to power level for 20 levels before the games gets interesting? Just start me out at level 20 for christ\'s sake .

Some stats and skills just arent useful. I love theif type characters. Ive yet to see a MMORPG institute this class correctly IMO. Why cant i pick pocket EVERYONE in the game? Why cant i rob merchants? As for skills, low charisma really has little to no effect on your interaction with others ive found. To me, if you have a charisma of 1, im not going to deal with you at all. To me, a charisma of 1 means i\'d rather be forced to sign a contract with don king than deal with you.

I like star war\'s galaxies idea of gaining experience without having to fight. thats pretty cool.

I love hack n slash. But let me do it while on a cool quest. I can only kill rats for so long, even when its ROUS they are still just rats.

I like what someone mentioned about developer created guilds.  i think thats pretty cool. guilds in general are pretty whack IMO. They range from the monty python quote guilds to the stfu im hard core get out of my way n00b guilds. All are pretty pointless.

You shouldnt be forced to party up. Soloing should be an option, albeit a very difficult one.

If PvP becomes a major focus IMO it should require a 2 tiered aproach. There should be jedi knight 2 style sword combat system with the standard roll to hit system underneath to determine a hit and damage. currently all you do is hit a key to \'attack\' and then just sit back and watch your characters \"roll\" more or less. Add some skill into the mix? Allow players to \'master\' the sword play? I dont know exactly how you would implement this its mainly a just a vision of mine for great PvP gameplay. I just despise the click the button for attack and watch the same 4 animations loop throughout the fight.

Also, a pocketPC/palm5 interface would be cool. obviously you couldnt have the 3d world on your ppc/palm but you could have a politic interface, or an interface to run your store or something. maybe an interface to create quests (hey that a-hole madrebel stole from me. go kill him for X amount of gold). just an idea, some of us wouldnt mind \'being connected\' while in meetings at work .

so....anyways. this project really excites me. how can i sign on to help out? i\'d be happy to be a lowly squire for the developers

[Grey]

I don\'t agree with a lot of what you say, as you seem to be more into the mechanics of gaming and not the spirit.  But I will say one thing.  There is a troll in here named Link, and he will tear your heart out and eat it if you type like this.

Originally posted by madrebel

My MMORPG ecperience consosts soely of DAoC.

Just a warning...

[madrebel]

yes well, i should proof read before i hit submit.....but oh well. Thanks for the troll warning but im a member at some of the more ruthless gaming forums on the web. nothing he could do or say would be new . Put it this way, i no longer receive experience points from killing trolls .

Im very much about the spirit of role playing. But if the mechanics arent there then the world isnt as  immersive as it could be.

Every stat needs a boon and a bane.

For instance in the case of my charisma example, it would force you to team up with someone you trust to do your buying etc.. from npc merchants. If your charisma is 1 noone would willingly do business with you. Thus you would need a trustworthy friend to be your broker of sorts. Hell that would open up a whole new profession. You too could be the \"shady middle man\" for all the ogres and trolls of planeshift. Your high charisma would allow you to get better prices which you could in turn resell to the ogres for a profit.

Every class needs the ability to leverage all their skills. thieves steal, from anything and everything.

above all the game should be fun, but IMO you really need to flesh out the mechanics before any kind of beta release.

[Fanomatic2000]

Yes, Baldurs gate is really a game above the rest   (exept for the Final Fantasy series with its incredible stories of course).

Originally posted by madrebel  

I like star war\'s galaxies idea of gaining experience without having to fight. thats pretty cool.

Gaining experience without having to fight? What do you mean? ?(  Please explain.

I agree with you about the solo-thing, it should be an option (however I don\'t see the point in playing MMORPG if you don\'t wanna play with other players )
Hmmm, I think I mentioned the Jedi knight battle-system in a thread somewhere...
anyway It\'s a good idea. I hate the old \"click on an enemy and your char starts to hit the air until the foe is slain\" system. It\'s really boring X(
I would suggest a bill-board for PC created quests (however I don\'t see the point since open PvP is forbidden :]  )
I\'m not sure about the thief-system...We\'ll just have to let the DEVs decide.
Oh yeah, and welcome to the forums BTW.  

[madrebel]

thanks for the welcome.

I just read through the official FAQ. Im somewhat disappointed that there is little PvP. I like what neocron did with PvP. Basically you can PK anyone but your \'light force\' would dim and go black the more people you PKd for no reason. The only way to redeem yourself would be to commit good acts or die.

The world would feel more real and more dangerous if you could openly PK people. in cities NPC gaurds should be able to rush you and \'disable\' you. maybe arrest/fine/imprison you. thieves should be able to be caught/fined/imprisoned.  Maybe have an option to opt out of the whole PK thing. Some kind of parameter that wouldnt allow PCs to target and attack you. i dont like the not being able to PK thing. It makes the game less \'wild\'. Thats another reason to be in a guild btw, protection from PKers.

As for the star wars galaxies thing. from what i understand you can gain experience in many ways. for instance. lets say im a weapons maker in galaxies. i create 20 super duper X-10 blaster rifles. I sell all 20 and log off. I come back 2 weeks later, log in, and receive a certain amount of experience for how well my rifles performed in combat. To put that in the plane shift setting. a bow smith makes a new rare increased chance of critical hit bow. he would receive experience for how well that bow performs in the field.

[Grey]

I\'m sure PKing would be fun and good if everyone was like most of our forum group and have a reason for what they do.  The problem is that 90% of people when relieved of the rigors of reality become insane and just kill because they can, and still get pissed off when someone kills them.  It\'s a matter of trust, especially for a game that is going to be free.

[madrebel]

yeah there is that whole \'internet badass\' factor to worry about. but good moderators, a strong in game penalty system, and \"safer zones\" could make the PK experience very rich IMO.

how can you truely have a thief class without PKing? What about friendly damage? Can you just send in the tanks and throw fireballs at them willy nilly and not worry about damaging them? Where is the strategy in that?

[Kiern]

uh...there are no classes so that really is not much of a problem

[madrebel]

right.....but there are still skills correct (still learning about this game)? all those skills need to be useful.

[Kiva]

i kinda like the idea about \"all out pk\", and the thieves part. although, in my oppinion, a newbie thief shouldnt be able to just pop into the game, and start stealing. the stealing skills come slowly as you take small things like a few coins or something. Or, to make it quick, noone becomes a master thief in one day. that kinda explains everything.

[madrebel]

Originally posted by Gronomist
i kinda like the idea about \"all out pk\", and the thieves part. although, in my oppinion, a newbie thief shouldnt be able to just pop into the game, and start stealing. the stealing skills come slowly as you take small things like a few coins or something. Or, to make it quick, noone becomes a master thief in one day. that kinda explains everything.

absolutely. as a \"level one thief\" (someone with low thief skill etc.) you shouldnt expect to be able to jack someone more experienced than you. stealing from another \"thief\" with equal or greater skill should be impossible.

so there should be 2 \"checks\" to determine difficulty. one for  player \"level\" relative to your level and one for player \"thief skill\" relative to your level.

That way, if you make your character \"a noble paladin\" with no theiving abilities, in the end you\'ll be easier to steal from than someone of equivelent level with good thief skills.

[Golbez]

There should be a way, if this kind of thieving activities is put into the game, to have some sort of defensive skill. Maybe one that reflects the level of awareness the victim has, which if is high it would allow the character to prevent the thief from stealing his objects. This way, the victims of robbery would not always be the same. Heck, with this system, a thief could even rob from another rogue. Of course, eveyrbody would start with a certain degree of experience in this skill, or maybe your pickpocket skills need to be much higher than the defensive skill in question. With a good formula, I think this could be easily programmed. The way to train this skill and how easily you progress can be discussed.

Also, the thief\'s chances of success would be reduced by elements such as good illumination, number of people that may or may not witness the robbery (ie: in busy areas, it is more likely to be seen robbing an item), the size of the object, what kind of pouch/bag/backpack/box it is in, etc.

The question, though, remains the same. With no open PvP, what do you do with thieves? If the character does happen to realise he/she has been robbed, would he be able to openly attack the thief?

Firstly, the combat system must be thoroughly designed, THEN the possibility of introducing pickpocketing skills should be considered.

[madrebel]

see golbez is like reading my mind n some junk. thats more or less exactly how i envision it.

but again, without the ability to PvP its basically impossible to have true thieving and we are basically back to thieves being \"lock bitches\". \"Hey ive found this box, but its locked, hey you there thief bitch, come open this box so that i may plunder the riches inside\".

[Crimson]

I have a few things to say about the things in this board (forgive me if i sound dumb or i\'m totally off the mark). From my point of view this is what the Dev team is having concerning stealing and PvP.

Well for PvP there is going to be a dueling \'anywhere\' system which of course both players have to agree to which is of course no good to deal with thieves cause they just wont agree.
There will also be guild wars which im guessing means if you belong to a guild and ur at agreeded war with another guild you can openly attack them. There is also going to be an arena (or more then one im not to sure how many) where people can go into and fight. Many people think that this arena will not compare to PvP anywhere, I disagree. Being an arena doesnt just mean a circlur object which players can fight in, it may be a large walled off forest or a huge mountain trail. People could not just stumble into the arena and get pked they would have to make a councious decision to go in through the arena \'gates\' to fight. This system would mean that the people who want to Pk can do so with each other where as the people who dont want to dont have to.

 I personally like the way RS has dealt with Pking, they have made the \'wilderness\' which is where you can Pk but all other areas are non pking zones. I\'m not a huge fan of open pking because this game has so many more skills from what i\'ve heard. For instance if im a miner/smither and ive just taken an hour to get myself a whole pack of steel bars and some noobie dude whos played for a day comes over and Pks me and loots me im gonna be a bit ****** off. I\'m sure many people agree with this because not everyone takes fighting as their main skill.

This brings us onto the skill of Thievery. I do not think that open player thievery will be in operation because of a number of reasons:

1. Once someone has stolen from you there is absoloutley nothing you can do about it, no way you can get ur item back. Even if the \'gods\' decide to give you money to cover the cost of the item (which i doubt would happen) I\'d still want my armour or wep that he stole off me rather then some cash.

2. Unlike PvP which some people can contain themselves with because they can fight monsters instead of people, stealing is one of those things thieves will want to do on actual people all the time. With the amount of people playing this game (there will be alot) thieves would have an easier time stealing from people then finding an npc and stealing off it. Another thing that would inspire this would be that thieves could get better items off people then off npcs.

So there you go my long and very drawn out opinion...(waits for flame):D:D

[Vengeance]

This summary is basically correct.

However, by having arenas we are building in the ability to define *any* area on a map to be a PvP area.  Personally, I would really like to see this ability used in other ways such as having opposite quests assigned to two players.  For example Player 1 would get the quest like \"The princess has been kidnapped and is trapped in the North Tower of Castle Greyskull!  You must rescue her!\"  Then Player 2 would get the quest as \"We think kidnappers are coming to take the King\'s maiden bride from his castle tonight!  Your job is to guard the castle and make sure the Princess is kept safe!\"

Much drama ensues.

I don\'t know if this will be in the game or not, but I hope something like it will.  To me, this is a form of PvP that adds real value to the plot and to the intrigue of the quests, rather than just being a contest of who is the 1337est.

- Venge