Goblin Squad Member
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Hmm, to pick up on Inns:
1. If the wilds are dangerous and Inns are refuges, that works as a "island hopping".
2. Sleep/shoe-ing of horses etc as a service to restore constitution might also work to draw ppl towards them out of their way.
3. Music + Food/Drink = Ppl are more sociable (at least in RL), so that's got to have a hook to get it going virtually, perhaps food buffs from properly crafted food bought/sold at these places -> creates a small business for the Owner. Didn't LOTRs have musical instruments?
4. Maybe the option for in-game mini-games such as dice/card games for players to indulge their character's gambling habits?
5. A neutral venue for contracts/business/parties to assemble/meet.
LOTRO has instruments that can be played somehow. I never explored that aspect of the game but I have seen people gathering together just to play some music.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Drejk, the idea of players using musical instruments has been touched on before. One of the huge downsides to it is when the players decide to start playing Call Me, Maybe. The only way to really get away from that is to have "authorized" scores, which is a huge PITA and mostly defeats the purpose.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Cards and Dice would be sweet.
EDIT
@Nihimon, Is the concern that being able to mimic real life songs a question of copyright or immersion? If the former, I don't see how. I'm no lawyer, but I believe anyone can post a vid of them performing or singing a song with no repercussions provided they're not being paid for it. The issue arises from them actually posting the recorded song itself.
I can appreciate that it might kill immersion for some, but if GW thinks its a legitimate problem, why not just add it to the list of flagged interactions, ie- Goldfarming, Spam, Racial Slurs, Poker Face by Lady GaGa.
In either case, you could prevent allot of it if you limited players to a few notes. Or maybe allowed for unlocking more notes and chords with more skills. That way a committed bard could get really creative, but if someone makes a one-time-use-alt, he'll be limited to chopsticks.
Worst case scenario, people could just turn down their volume in a tavern, or even better, only patronize inns that feature original music.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What I think would really provide a lot of bang for the development buck is a system where the player community can develop in-game objects.
WoW had an add-on that would let you create objects and share them - via links - with other players as long as they also had that add-on installed.
As far as PFO is concerned, they're just uniquely identified objects with no additional properties. All of the data for the objects could be stored externally, including images and tool-tip descriptions. PFO wouldn't even have to support the objects existing in the world - just in player inventories and the trade window.
Of course, this would probably require them to use an extensible UI, so that third parties could supply the images and descriptions to use. And there would have to be something that PFO drew on it to make it obvious that it was a third party object - to keep unscrupulous players from using the image and description of a real object.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Andius,
In terms of food item decay, while I think PFO COULD do it if they wanted to, I'm not sure they would really WANT to do it. You start to get into issues of SCALING there. It's pretty easy to store/track alot of information when you are only doing it on 200 characters when you start doing it on 100K characters you start talking about a very significant resource drain.
I wouldn't expect your client to experience any slowdown at all. If they ran those decay timers on the client they'd be subject to hacking, what I would expect is the SERVERS to be demanding more CPU and RAM usage...which starts to hit the hosts pocket book to support. As it is, the servers are likely checking/updating the timers for buff/debuffs on each character...maybe ability cooldowns if they go that route, probably construction projects when PFO impliments them, etc.... I think it starts to get a bit much when they start having to drill down to items that characters have in inventory or storage. YMMV.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
@Nihimon - What is the advantage of this/what does it accomplish/what would those objects be used for?
The short answer is that it allows the players to create items for RP purposes.
At their simplest, User Objects should have a user-defined Name, a Text Description, and a list of Methods that can be activated with optional parameters. The Methods would generate Emotes that make it obvious which User Object is being used.
For example:
I type /createUserObject to create a new User Object with Unique ID "CC4317DBD2804E06E04400306EF46656" (a GUID). I am immediately prompted to provide a Name and a Text Description. I enter "Ivory Dice" as the Name, and "A pair of ivory 6-sided dice" as the Text Description.
"Ivory Dice" now exist in my inventory. I should be able to Trade or Sell them just like I would any other item in my inventory.
I would suggest a Display Method for all User Objects that generates an Emote like "Nihimon displays Ivory Dice for all to see." "Ivory Dice" should be a link that displays the Unique ID, the Name, and the Text Description as a tooltip when any player hovers over it.
I should be able to add a Roll Method and define the resulting Emote so that it looks something like "Nihimon rolls Ivory Dice: 7".
The devs spend a little effort building a generally robust Emote system, with special keywords that can be replaced by standard things like your target's name, race, gender, role, etc. and a few things like a random number generator. The players can then build on this system by creating interesting items that have absolutely no real impact on the world or other players, but that can be used as props.
Another example could be a User Object I create named "Nihimon's Mojo". Perhaps some bread-making assassin manages to steal my mojo from me, and he is then able to display it to all his friends to show how cool he is. I then have a lot of fun trying to steal it back from him.
This makes me think that User Objects should only be allowed to be kept in Inventory - that is, you shouldn't be allowed to place them in secure storage. When another player loots your corpse, in addition to the normal effects on normal gear, they should get their pick of your User Objects.
The whole point is to allow the community to do the tedious work of building lots of cool things like dice and cards without taking up the extremely valuable time of the developers.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Now I don't expect PFO to be fully terraformable, or give every item a ton of stats. I do expect them to be able to handle a little data here and there though. Also you don't have to break the items in player X's inventory down into 30 pieces of bread, 15 of cheese, and 5 of meat. Make bread/meat/cheese weigh more, and allow people to remove pieces from larger objects and make it so eating reduces the weight until it hits 0 rather than consuming the whole object. Simple solution that means now you have 3 objects to deal with. Not so challenging anymore.
That's simpler, but it doesn't meet two of the points of concern mentioned earlier: 500 loaves of bread go moldy as quickly as one loaf, and loaves of break can be inherently different.
Personally, I don't think that tracking the state of hundreds of objects per online player character is too large a burden on the server. That is a question of fact, and I could be wrong on that.
For client-side inventory management, show the player an aggregate amount of each resource, and if they don't care which slices of bread they use to make a sandwich, don't force the player to choose. That might involve significant changes to the inventory system already implemented in the middleware, which could be excessively complicated.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Andius,
In terms of food item decay, while I think PFO COULD do it if they wanted to, I'm not sure they would really WANT to do it. You start to get into issues of SCALING there. It's pretty easy to store/track alot of information when you are only doing it on 200 characters when you start doing it on 100K characters you start talking about a very significant resource drain.
I wouldn't expect your client to experience any slowdown at all. If they ran those decay timers on the client they'd be subject to hacking, what I would expect is the SERVERS to be demanding more CPU and RAM usage...which starts to hit the hosts pocket book to support. As it is, the servers are likely checking/updating the timers for buff/debuffs on each character...maybe ability cooldowns if they go that route, probably construction projects when PFO impliments them, etc.... I think it starts to get a bit much when they start having to drill down to items that characters have in inventory or storage. YMMV.
There isn't a constant decay happening to every item. You're right that would sink the servers. Basically how it happens is every X minutes there is a decay cycle. So every 5, 10, 15, maybe even 30 minutes the game goes through all the items that can decay and runs an equation based on the type of food, the quality of the food, and where it is being stored. For instance fish stored in a barrel of water take less decay than fish in a backpack. And a casserole prepared with some salt takes less decay than a casserole with no salt.
Anyway this calculation cycle causes a minor and brief lag spike which may or may not be noticeable depending on how many other lag factors you have working against you. It's always over within a second or two even at it's worst, and generally is just a blip in the smoothness of the game that lasts a fraction of a second. It is certainly not as drastic as I feel it's being perceived as though.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like the idea of having food, I think with having taverns, inns, etc. having food crafting of various types will be required. I don't like the hunger system, I think food should be purely a boon (or detriment, if it's a bad cook...) and that the food effects should only last a finite duration, determined by the quality of ingredients, the quality of the work station (stove etc), and player skill.
And I really think food should decay, it would make a whole market for magically preserved food, and the 'purify food/water' spell would be incredibly handy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As much as I loathe the food decay (other than hot cooked meals turning into rations), it would be as simple as "evaluate decay when relevant" - if it is held in a character's inventory, you evaluate the decay when the inventory is opened (for the first time in 5 minutes) - if the inventory is held open, evaluate upon looking at the tooltip or every 5 minutes. Do the same thing with food items stored elsewhere. No massive server cpu/memory load, no lag spikes.
Actualy that'a a much better and more workable system then the way I had assumed they would have to impliment...NICE! I guess that explains why I'm a Network Engineer and not a Developer ;)
So essentialy you just have one extra data field on each food item which is the datetime stamp when the item was created and you check that to determine the items "freshness" when the item is interacted with?
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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As much as I loathe the food decay (other than hot cooked meals turning into rations), it would be as simple as "evaluate decay when relevant" - if it is held in a character's inventory, you evaluate the decay when the inventory is opened (for the first time in 5 minutes) - if the inventory is held open, evaluate upon looking at the tooltip or every 5 minutes. Do the same thing with food items stored elsewhere. No massive server cpu/memory load, no lag spikes.Actualy that'a a much better and more workable system then the way I had assumed they would have to impliment...NICE! I guess that explains why I'm a Network Engineer and not a Developer ;)
So essentialy you just have one extra data field on each food item which is the datetime stamp when the item was created and you check that to determine the items "freshness" when the item is interacted with?
Yeah, as opposed to having every food object run a script every heartbeat to decrement a time. Is that what you thought was being suggested at a mechanical level?
(There might even be many better ways to implement the mechanics. I'm not a professional program designer.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not a professional program designer.
I am :)
Waffleyone describes a very efficient design based on "just-in-time" state-checking. It doesn't matter whether or not the food is fresh until you go to use it. Ideally, you'd only want to check the state when the food is actually being used, but users don't like it when icons change as they're being clicked. This can be handled by checking the food's state when the bag is opened or, better yet, when the icon representing the food is displayed to the user.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Would it be more efficient to store the expiration date than (or in addition to) the creation date? It seems to me that would remove an arithmetic step from the loop.
And the user experience could still be identical to the countdown timer- the client knows the current time and expiration time, so the tooltip could easily display a timer counting down. (I assume that this is how most MMOs display such timers &tc).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Would it be more efficient to store the expiration date than (or in addition to) the creation date? It seems to me that would remove an arithmetic step from the loop.
That's a good thought, and if you're not worried about the extra space of storing both (which is probably not worth worrying about) then I would recommend doing so. You definitely want to hang on to the creation date, though, since that means you can also have things like buffs that temporarily slow the rate of decay.
But really, the system described is nowhere near complete, so getting into the weeds just points out all the other weeds that haven't been considered yet. For example, you'd probably be better off storing the total Decay Points the item can survive, the number of Decay Points already suffered, and the base rate of Decay Points per Unit Time. This allows you to modify any of those values without having to do really complex math.
The important piece of Waffleyone's design is how he differentiates it from Andius's recommendation of having a global check every X minutes by suggesting a just-in-time check instead.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Believe Inns can be targets of bandits and other players and can be destroyed. So while it can be considered a haven, it's not a permanent one.Hmm, to pick up on Inns:
1. If the wilds are dangerous and Inns are refuges, that works as a "island hopping".
That's true, but I'm sure an arrangement could be made with the local muscle; unless they insist on increasing 'the rates' too often!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Agreed. They could be advanced by employing npc guards. It's also be nice however if any nearby PC's who frequent it are alerted that it's come under attack. If my favorite dive was being attacked by bandits, I'd definitely come running.
Also, given that randomly killing a person is considered illegal, may attract guards (depending on location) and can warrant a bounty, it's a pretty safe bet I think that inns will allow for much of the same.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Also, given that randomly killing a person is considered illegal, may attract guards (depending on location) and can warrant a bounty, it's a pretty safe bet I think that inns will allow for much of the same.
From To Live and Die in the River Kingdoms:
Killing an opponent as a part of a declared war, or in an area that does not have laws against murder, will not trigger the bounty system.
I don't know if they plan to allow a Settlement to make "laws against murder" that will trigger this, but I would be surprised if they allowed Inns to do so.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If food and drink provide a buff (or lack of same causes a debuff), then they are a requirement.
Maybe not as such, in that if some soloer or small group of friends are all willing to be at a disadvantage against not only whatever AI beasties may be about, but also against other players then they are free to penalize themselves, but who would really want to do this?
And you can pretty well bet that any time a chartered company is involved that the lord high muckety-mucks will insist that it's members eat/drink as needed to keep themselves ready in case their holdings are attacked, and certainly if they are preparing to go out in the wilds looking for other players/holdings to attack.
I am not saying that it is a bad thing, necessarily, but remember that people also need to sleep (or whatever Pathfinder says that elves do), so people that want to take craft: bedding may start trying to lobby for sleep buffs or tired debuffs that force people to use their products.
It can get out of hand.
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If they are going to include food, here are my thoughts:
There would be the inn food and there would be trail food, and each would come in three qualities.
Inn food would only be good inside of the inn where it was purchased. If a player took it outside of that inn, it would immediately become 'spoiled food' vendor trash.
Trail food would never spoil. That is why it is trail food.
Inn food would provide a buff/remove the hunger debuff for twice as long as trail food of the same quality.
Using 6 hours as a maximum for this example, it could look like this for trail/inn food:
Tier 1: 1/2 hours
Tier 2: 2/4 hours
Tier 3: 3/6 hours
The timer would only count down when the character was logged in. If you ate the very best that an inn had to offer then you would have (again, just for example) 6 hours of the food buff or 6 hours without the hunger debuff, however it worked.
The devs could figure out the timers, or maybe add more tiers of food, however they thought that it best worked.
Now how deeply they want to get into food preparation is another thing.
Recipes could exist, but they could be only a 'flavor' thing, to use an expression, or they could expand my ability to make useful rations given different ingredients.
I could kill a deer and get 'deer meat', or I could kill a deer and get 'meat'.
Trail food could include 'jerky' or it could be split up into 'beef jerky', 'venison jerky', etc.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My thought process, Food and Drink should not provide combat buffs.
The moment you do this they become mandatory for the player base. And everyone HAS to get the relevant cooking/brewing/whatever skill to remain competitive.
Food and Drink CAN be used to stop yourself deteriorating however. If its on a reasonably slow timer it doesn't become all consuming as to how you gain the food. Whether bought, hunted, grown, etc. I would suggest that a "meal" be sufficient for half an in game day. Once every 2 hours of playtime is not punishing, but it is enough to make sure people plan for it if they're doing something that will take a while.
So what would really nice food assist with? My suggestion would be that it assists with a range of non-combat actions such as crafting, building, non-combat movement speed, keeping your labour force happy etc.
Minor perks that might increase your speed of a longer term actions completion.
This would make it useful for groups, handy for mining camps, and something that a dedicated company chef might like to focus on, without becoming a constant "We need food for our 80 players before the next fight" grind.
They could also be components themselves for various other crafting professions. Food and Ale for a Company run Inn for example.
Food 'spoiling' is, personally at least, an unnecessary complication. Systems should be challenging but having to track how old your food is would get annoying fast.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There needs to be a balance between being mandatory and being purely optional. If you lean too far to one side, it becomes extremely inconvenient to the player base and sucks the fun out of the experience. Too far to the other side and players are investing in useless professions that no one is interested in purchasing. Once that happens, everyone will switch over to the handful of successful ones and things like cooking will be completely ignored.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't think PC's should need to eat. It can be assumed in a 1sp/day upkeep cost.
But if the PC's found a settlement of a Large City, 10,001 - 25,000 pop...
They'd have to insure food gets to that settlement.
@1sp/day/pop that's 1000 - 2500gp exchanging hands /day.
In the US. There's like 6 major Food Corporations that Control almost all the food supply.
Can you name them? :)
It might be quite profitable for PC's to control that kind of resource.
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Goblin Squad Member
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To add some previous ideas from another game (albeit mmos get complex enough rapidly!), an awesome old game called Dungeon Master (there is a redux modern version called Legend Of Grimlock), in which YOU NEED FOOD AND WATER:
1. If you run low over short periods of time your chars health/constitution slowly decays/depletes until you find something to snack on.
2. When you defeat some monsters they give off chunks of food to eat. However when you're low on food (limit to slots to carry/bags), you'll gobble any monster, and some are poisonous, so you get your constitution back but end up affecting something else like strength so you are weakened when fighting the next critter!
3. Water in potion bottles is needed to create different potions eg health potion etc, so you collect and save those empty potion bottles whenever you see them; think you need a bit of water at times too; it's been an age since I last played that game.Those were all very good. I think DayZ you need food/liquid in that game too. So it can add something to that length of gamaplay. In MMO, it might end up being more hassle than immersive... not sure. But possibly as a subform of crafting it might fit in nicely. :)
This topic is being debated again on MMORPG for a dofferent game regarding how realistic the game should be and what consequences there will be for death. I rezzed this thread because I have not found a recent discussion since several months ago...there could be one but I didn't find it.
I share AvenaOats love for the old game Dungeon Master. My friends and I played it on an Amiga (the Alienware of the late 80s) and it was a superawesome game! Loved it, mapped the entire thing, and finally won it with one of us driving, one mapping (me) and one casting spalls.
The food and drink part of the game was as critical as any other part including combat. You could just as easily die of thirst or starvation as in combat or traps. Food and drink should be necessary, as it would be (I believe) not too difficult to implement (Dungeonmaster used a simple water flask icon and a belly icon). It would also allow many morale type buffs and boosts available from different food and drink and give cooks a viable, even critical crafting need. I'd hate to see cooking missed out on. It's a great skill to have to add realism to inns and taverns, and several layers of harvesting, refining and crafting.
Food and drink (I'm pretty sure) will be in PFO. Whether it gives any bonuses hasn't been verified. There's been a LOT of discussion as to whether you should need to eat/drink, see this Thread for one of the more recent discussions.
I'm sort of on the fence about food/drink being needed, it would provide more RP opportunities, give cooks a market for their wares. But it can be viewed as a PIA by those less inclined to RP, or who only want to RP certain aspects of the game. As you can see in the thread I linked, opinions are rather strong on both sides of the issue <g>.
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Goblin Squad Member
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"Realism" shouldn't be a goal unless it's a simulation. It's a game, the goal should be "fun". "Realism" is a method of achieving fun up until the point where it starts reducing "fun". Where that line is will vary from person to person, but myself and others (including Ryan from his previous comments on the subject) are concerned that requiring food and drink crests that hill and starts down the other side. Nobody wants to log in just to have to run back to town for food and find that their available time is up.
Yea, that's the thing, everyone's definition of fun differs. Me I loved D&D because of its depth of detail, allowing you to get very involved in many aspects of your character. Seems that we have a good amount of people on both sides of this fence, I'm fairly ambivalent on the necessity of food, although I would like to see a wide variety of foods available to be created, but if they give no bonuses or benefit it takes the fun out of having a large amount of foodstuffs.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As I said in the other thread, I am all for having food as a consumable that gives your character a bonus over a period of time. I am not in favor of food as a requirement to stave off a debuff. I know mechanically, they are almost Identical. But if I am at full str without food and the food just give a bonus, then I don't feel constrained to run to the nearest free market to get some if I run out. However, if I am under a debuff penalty, then I need to get that removed ASAP, it's just the way I play. Being forced to do that every X amount of game time isn't fun. Being forced to devote x amount of inventory space to food isn't fun. I plan to be an explorer, and spending days in the wilderness mapping is less feasible if I have to run to a town to get more food every hour.
I know mechanically, they are almost Identical.Mechanically, they are exactly identical. Psychologically, there's a world of difference. It should be a buff, not a debuff.
Lets call it a buff then! :p. maybe this would work for pickpocketing. We could term it an "assisted item relocation" or "cooperative item redistribution"!
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm pretty sure it will be a buff. The devs have stated multiple times that there will be a massive market for consumables that can be created by newbie crafters. This likely will include food as well as potions, tanglefoot bags, alchemist fire, and all other types of one-use items that will give a temporary benefit in or out of combat.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I really hope there aren't a ton of "clickies" that I have to constantly remember to apply. I'd much rather a system where I could declare what I do during downtime, and have that automatically applied as long as I have the appropriate resources.
In essence, I'd like the option to say "use this particular resource as often as necessary until I say otherwise", and have the effect automatically applied and the resource automatically consumed without me having to constantly be searching through my bags and keeping track of timers.
I also support players being able to micromanage this, and only applying the effect when they explicitly activate it.
This is all based on the assumption that we won't be putting these kinds of things on an Action Bar, but applies even if we have multiple Action Bars available just for "clickies".
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sort of an "auto-use this consumable" checkbox, Nihimon?
It would be nice to have that for spells too. If I am playing a sorc or wizard, I don't want to have to remember to recast Mage Armor every time it wears off. If I'm playing a druid, I don't want to have to do the same thing with Shillelagh and Barkskin.
Really looking forward to food/drink crafting. If its handled where there are rare and sought after ingredients and produced items then my character will be plenty busy gathering, cooking up cool stuff and hiding in shadows! ;)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sort of an "auto-use this consumable" checkbox, Nihimon?
Exactly.
And I agree with Imbicatus on automatically using buff spells, too. And if there's nothing to stop the caster from maintaining the spell constantly - such as a short duration buff that only lasts 15 seconds but can't be cast again for 5 minutes - then I'd just as soon see these kinds of buff spells all implemented as constant auras.
I'm also very curious to hear the devs' opinion about "buff bots", and selling buffs. My personal opinion is that I'd rather require the buffer to be grouped with me and close to me in order for me to receive the benefit of their buff, but I realize that may not be a popular opinion at all. There's just something immersion-breaking about and "scaffoldy" about making alts for the sole purpose of providing valuable buffs and logging them in one after the other to buff my group before we go out to adventure.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I support starvation or dehydration = death . It WILL make the game much more interesting and fun.
Its a simple game mechanic that changes players actions. The complex interaction of food + other mechanics in the game is what will make it interesting and fun.
Poisoning food, cannibalism, travel supply logistics, camp fires, inns, racial food preference, feeding mounts, drinking from strange pools, etc.
Done correctly, it will provide a means for player interaction, socialization, and emergent gameplay.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sort of an "auto-use this consumable" checkbox, Nihimon?It would be nice to have that for spells too. If I am playing a sorc or wizard, I don't want to have to remember to recast Mage Armor every time it wears off. If I'm playing a druid, I don't want to have to do the same thing with Shillelagh and Barkskin.
I think that would depend on how spells refresh. If it's a wow-esque mana system where I cast the spell and the mana's back in a few moments, sure. If it's more like DDO where you have to rest to recover spell points (or worse yet, an actual vancian system), then I think that would be a lot less useful.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I support starvation or dehydration = death .
I agree in general, but the devil's in the details.
I don't think players will want to deal with having to have food and drink on them all the time unless it's something that they can "fire and forget". If they only have X days of rations available, that should be something that is prominently displayed at all times and gives them plenty of warning before they start getting "You're starving" messages.
Ultimately, I'd prefer to see this kind of mechanic at the macro level rather than the micro level. In other words, rather than forcing each individual character to micromanage their food and water, have the "poisoned well" affect the Common Folk in a Settlement, and maybe even generate Pestilences that can impact Player Characters that live there or even just visit.