Caladyn's page

Caladyn wrote:

I like some flashiness myself.

I think it'd be disappointing to spend 2.5 years working toward Level 20 as a magic-user, only to find that your spells look more or less the same as they did at Level 1. MMOs are graphical for a reason - if we don't take advantage of that, we might as well be playing a MUD of PnP game instead.

That's the point of the thread--if 1st level spell animations are similar to 9th level animations, it takes away from your sense of character development.

Yup! You have my full support!

I guess my point was to emphasize that while it's important to keep animations reasonable in scope (i.e. no world-destroying limit breaks), that it's also important to give a sense of development as you describe.

Or in other words, in terms of spell animations, more is more, until you have too much.

In Anarchy Online, the devs would occasionally chronicle the server's history by incorporating player events into the game's lore.

For instance, I was a part of a heavy RP Omni-tek Corporation that sold advanced robotic technologies. The guild was fairly well known within the RP community, so eventually, the developers created an item in-game that would occasionally drop from certain robotic NPCs. If you read the item description, you would see that it supposedly came from our guild, and explained what we did briefly.

This is a pretty small thing for the developers to do, but I remember feeling pretty awesome about it. We had become a part of the lore.

Chronicling bigger events poses some challenges. First, there's a lot going on in the game world. Which events are worthy of recognition? Having a small, single server will be beneficial in this respect. Second, how do you maintain player expectations/jealousy? If shaping the lore/world is a core part of the game, how do you prevent folks from feeling like they're being ignored if their contributions aren't incorporated - because realistically, the developers can't chronicle everything that every character does.

For me, I think as long as the RP community maintains a (loose) continuity of server lore, I'm going to be satisfied. I don't necessarily need the developers to recognize everything that occurs in game changing ways, as long as they give us the tools to do it ourselves (i.e. town building, guild wars, resource management, etc.) and don't overwrite the community lore. If that were the case, I'd be totally satisfied with 'fluff' recognition from time to time, like the example I gave above.

So I guess to summarize, my vision of co-creation is to allow the players to create a community lore with the tools given to us by GW, with occasional recognition of that lore by the devs in manageable ways.

I'd just like to point out one complaint of RPers - that an MMO discourages RP creatively and imaginatively by giving you mechanics to base it on as opposed to a table-top game where it's all about using your imagination.

As such, I don't see the need for half of what has been said in this thread. It'd be nice, but I don't want development time that would be more efficiently spent elsewhere put into it, at least not for the initial release.

I understand your point, but we might as well RP in an ICQ chatroom if they aren't going to support any RP-friendly features. I agree completely that an RPer must abandon the structure of the RP medium at time (in this case, the MMO) to have a more effective RP experience, but that shouldn't excuse a lack of development support for features that are purely for RP purposes. I want to use my imagination to complement the game world and its features...not completely overwrite it.

Do I want pretty clothes and hundreds of furniture options before they have a solid combat system? No. But I won't play a game that refuses to support my RP playstyle, and that begins with stuff like this.

I'm not exactly sure what the developers here think of RPers, but just /once/ I'd like to see a game that's exclusively developed for the RP community. At the very least, I hope that we're always kept in mind during the development process. I don't mean to summon the tiny violin, but I think there are plenty of games on the market that more or less ignore the RP folks - might as well try making us a part of that 'niche' the devs are hoping to secure.

I'll concede that if the developers were to try and implement every whim from the RP community, very little gameplay content would ever get added - but PO sounds like an MMO that's attempting to set forth in a new direction. We are the content, and we need to be given the tools to make that content enjoyable.

I think with your business model, this is absolutely the route you need to take. You're planning to cater to the niche. Many sandboxes I've read about seem to shoot for large crowds, and try to enforce these 'old school'/strict rules. Most folks probably don't want to play this way, but I bet you'll be able to find 4,500 who will.

Personally, I'm terrified! But I'm willing to try it out!

I don't remember much of the content in Everquest. I was nine when I played it. But I remember the fear. It was exciting, and few games have recreated that. It was also frustrated at times, but I think retaining your equipped armor/weapons is a major compromise, and will go a long way in keeping the frustration from becoming overwhelming.