Goblinworks Executive Founder
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well i wont play then it is just stupid that there will be no loot
Why is the acquisition of salvage items which are not equippable significantly different from the acquisition of items which can be equipped, but have no good reason to be?
There is 'kill things and take their stuff'; why so important that 'and use that stuff directly right away' is also part of the model?
Goblin Squad Member
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well i wont play then it is just stupid that there will be no loot
Attempting to extort your preferred outcome is not particularly bright, and surely you are bright if you already divine whether or not an unreleased game system is 'stupid', so I must assume you are simply notifying us that you will not be playing the game. As that must be the case thank you for bothering to post this notice of your intent. I am sure you will be very much missed.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm afraid I don't quite grasp what might be relevant in other online rpg game designs? If those design mechanics were good enough wouldn't we still be playing them? Or is it true that there was something unsatisfactory about those systems? Might it not be a better, more adventurous idea to let these bright game designers run with the ball?
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Goblin Squad Member
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They won't drop clubs.I'm actually a big fan of the sole source of gear being crafters but I actually really would like to see when I kill an ogre him drop tattered ogre armor and a busted ogre mauler which is essentially useless except for salvaging. Perhaps at a later date some of this gear could be repaired or refitted for players to use by a crafter of the appropriate type.
Just like it doesn't make sense for a bear to drop coins it doesn't make sense for me to fight a hellknight NPC clad in full plate and dual wielding a bastard sword and cat-o'-nine-tails and have nothing of them to be left after he dies. It makes perfect sense that in the process of killing him they'll get torn up though.
I mean, it's not a huge deal, but with a salvage system already confirmed would it take that much to implement?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but isn't this exactly what the salvage system is planned to be?
We've simplified the salvage items concept since our earlier post on this topic. We may still eventually add a system to salvage crafted items, but that has some hard-to-predict effects on the economy, in addition to requiring a fairly complex system to figure out what you should get out of an item (since they're made out of a lot of variable-quality refined items). So, that's going to come a little later.
In the meantime, salvage items are very similar to a raw material: You can give them to someone with the appropriate refining skill and they can use them just like a unit of raw goods. A refiner might throw a goblin's armor scraps in with a bunch of ore to get enough to make an ingot. Unlike raw materials, salvage items are more likely to count as two different components (for example, those armor scraps might count as ore for the smelter but leather for the tanner).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Eg:
In EVE Online the lowest and most common resource in the game is Tritanium. It never becomes obsolete, you just need more of it as the game progresses. Your Tritanium never loses value, and thus even ten years later your equity in that game is preserved. The expansion process is the primary source of equity loss in that game, but this is generally the most welcome sort of equity loss. This proper game design is the reason why EVE is the only game in the world that can boast that it has just gotten bigger over the last ten years.
Seems to suggest that all these items are made up of constituent materials that has value because it can be fed back into crafters to form items with a cost that then has a currency value.
So it seems grinding mobs for items could under-cut that particularly if automated by bots who don't care about time it takes to play probability frequency tables? At least that is my basic understanding from these sources.
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Goblin Squad Member
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NPC opponents & monsters will often drop harvestable resources. They're walking nodes with arms and armor.
That is probably one of the only things about the game that I never liked. Sure you can have salvageable stuff drop and etc...
I guess I just always liked the Baulders Gate approach. If they used it to attack you then it should drop.
Throw in coin for extra loot and you have it.
The gold must flow for the crafters to be able to sell things.
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Goblin Squad Member
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NPC opponents & monsters will often drop harvestable resources. They're walking nodes with arms and armor.That is probably one of the only things about the game that I never liked. Sure you can have salvageable stuff drop and etc...
I guess I just always liked the Baulders Gate approach. If they used it to attack you then it should drop.
Throw in coin for extra loot and you have it.
The gold must flow for the crafters to be able to sell things.
I feel the same way Xeen yet looking at the link I provided "loot pinatas" from Raph Koster's WYSIWYG blog, you can see the problems with that design leading to junk. I mean even single-player games such as Skyrim can be be exploited if I remember reading a fun article on how to "break" games by doing repeated actions the devs did not intend and then flooding junk onto the market. I can't imagine how much worse that could be in MMOs.
I think if we're collecting resources (materials for the crafters to buy) and earning some gc for later when the crafters have made some gear, it sorta works out? Combine the traders will hopefully be paying out contracts to get stuff or guard stuff etc and times should be profitable and less profitable the more "offense and defence" is put on the above. Pays to let others fight each other while you are too busy making money (eg China)!
oh, but there is. Just maybe not from NPCs...
Awesome.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Almost everything of use to your character is going to be crafted or gathered by another player. Your armor and weapons were bought on the local market. Your healing potions were given to you by your company's alchemist, who gives them out to everyone in the company. Your pickaxe that you gather with took a miner, woodcutter, blacksmith, woodworker, and tool-crafter (no idea what to call that last one) to be created. Basically, instead of interacting primarily with NPC's to buy items or sell loot, you interact with players.
Loot will be different in this game; likely many types of mobs will give items that can be used in the process of crafting, instead of used right away (There will probably be a few exceptions, and almost everything should be able to drop gold as well). You can still sell these crafting materials to people who need them, or grab enough of the different components and take them to a crafter to make your armor/weapons for you. This adds in extra layers of interacting with people between "I killed goblins" and "I got gear", and this MMO is going to be all about interacting with other players.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd prefer mobs to be much harder than they usually are. Once you get complacent with a mob it loses it's magic imho. A dangerous creature should always be dangerous.
So this thought is considering how to optimize mobs so that they flesh out the atmosphere of the River Kingdoms. I think hard, variable are all good things as perfect preparation leads to predictability which leads to challenge and engagement becoming boring.
Nightdrifter worked some magic with the numbers on screen for the Ogres:
Regardless, it seems like it must be 135+ (against Ryan's armor), which means that a new character with 400 hp would be 3-shotted by one of these ogres even in Ryan's armor. Cloth armor makes that closer to a 2-shot.
A brand new character likely wouldn't survive the pictured encounter long enough to even take a screenshot.
So this sounds promising these mobs are well crafted and deserve to be interesting to deal with as well as visualize.
I just read this minor interview with CCP's World of Darkness:
With that out of the way, I immediately began asking about what type of game we can expect World of Darkness to be.
At this, David quickly lit up (and not just because of the aforementioned spotlight) and explained that “it is absolutely [leaning towards] the sandbox side.” At the same time, a lot of the PvE in the game is going to be much different than what players of standard MMO games are used to.
He goes on to explain, “World of Darkness is a scary place.” “There are things out there you just shouldn’t be messing with no matter how bad ass you think you are.” This leads him to talk about how some of the PvE content in World of Darkness may revolve around avoidance, rather than straight combat. You may need to get an item from a scary mob that you quickly realize isn’t going to be taken down by you, “no matter how many of your friends you bring along”.
You’re going to need to explore different avenues of attacking the situation rather than strictly combat. Expect to see a number of things done differently in World of Darkness when compared to other MMOs.
I really like this take-home! Different assessments of the situation call for different responses and reactions eg Concealment and avoid being detected by a marching army of mobs for eg if outnumbered/overpowered. Or specialization of skills required for vast array of different mobs types.
I can't think of many other options but I think that variability as well as variable power is good way to mix it up and make the River Kingdoms' monsters and mobs a really rewarding part of players' making their plans . Alignment and fight/flee/attempt to bribe etc are all alternative reactions perhaps possible?
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Goblin Squad Member
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NPC opponents & monsters will often drop harvestable resources. They're walking nodes with arms and armor.That is probably one of the only things about the game that I never liked. Sure you can have salvageable stuff drop and etc...
I guess I just always liked the Baulders Gate approach. If they used it to attack you then it should drop.
Throw in coin for extra loot and you have it.
The gold must flow for the crafters to be able to sell things.
I feel the same way Xeen yet looking at the link I provided "loot pinatas" from Raph Koster's WYSIWYG blog, you can see the problems with that design leading to junk. I mean even single-player games such as Skyrim can be be exploited if I remember reading a fun article on how to "break" games by doing repeated actions the devs did not intend and then flooding junk onto the market. I can't imagine how much worse that could be in MMOs.
I think if we're collecting resources (materials for the crafters to buy) and earning some gc for later when the crafters have made some gear, it sorta works out? Combine the traders will hopefully be paying out contracts to get stuff or guard stuff etc and times should be profitable and less profitable the more "offense and defence" is put on the above. Pays to let others fight each other while you are too busy making money (eg China)!
oh, but there is. Just maybe not from NPCs...Awesome.
I cannot disagree. It would (does) throw things off in games. Eve nerfed NPC loot into the ground to make mining and basic item crafting more profitable. The thing is, no one really uses the basic items anyway...
What PFO could do in OE though, have NPC's drop "named" items. (think someone discussed similar)
Goblin drops a suit of "Goblin" Chain mail. It has the same protection as normal chain mail, weighs less, but is smaller in size.
Ogre drops an "Ogre" Battle Axe. It does more damage then a standard battle axe but weighs more and requires two hands.
Players cannot craft these items, they will have no real value (since there will be so many) other then as something to use (if you dont have better) but they are salvageable for resources.
That would do the same thing Ryan is wanting, but also give us junk to use in the beginning as we build up.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah, I really am trying to get into the head of Goblinworks on why and what they want players to be experiencing when attacking mobs. The "specific loot" of different mobs only found in the PvE environment could have an appeal to some players a certain "flavour" is added so "Goblin Slicer of Midnight" and "Gauntlets of Ogre Power" would be nice things to purloin/corpse-rob perhaps?
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Goblin Squad Member
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What PFO could do in OE though, have NPC's drop "named" items. (think someone discussed similar)
Goblin drops a suit of "Goblin" Chain mail. It has the same protection as normal chain mail, weighs less, but is smaller in size.
Ogre drops an "Ogre" Battle Axe. It does more damage then a standard battle axe but weighs more and requires two hands.
Players cannot craft these items, they will have no real value (since there will be so many) other then as something to use (if you dont have better) but they are salvageable for resources.
That would do the same thing Ryan is wanting, but also give us junk to use in the beginning as we build up.
This seems to be pretty much in line with what Ryan has discussed previously about making some low-level gear available for purchase on NPC Merchants. I don't see any harm in it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah, I really am trying to get into the head of Goblinworks on why and what they want players to be experiencing when attacking mobs. The "specific loot" of different mobs only found in the PvE environment could have an appeal to some players a certain "flavour" is added so "Goblin Slicer of Midnight" and "Gauntlets of Ogre Power" would be nice things to purloin/corpse-rob perhaps?
Expectations that are legacies of Everquest haunt the darkened halls of GameDesign.
Hunting mobs is a necessary chore, not an objective.
If we wish to harvest resources we will have threats popping up on us, otherwise if we wish our settlements to prosper we must interdict escalations. It has little to do with grinding loot and nothing to do with grinding experience. It is a job somebody should pay us to do.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah, I really am trying to get into the head of Goblinworks on why and what they want players to be experiencing when attacking mobs. The "specific loot" of different mobs only found in the PvE environment could have an appeal to some players a certain "flavour" is added so "Goblin Slicer of Midnight" and "Gauntlets of Ogre Power" would be nice things to purloin/corpse-rob perhaps?Expectations that are legacies of Everquest haunt the darkened halls of GameDesign.
Hunting mobs is a necessary chore, not an objective.
If we wish to harvest resources we will have threats popping up on us, otherwise if we wish our settlements to prosper we must interdict escalations. It has little to do with grinding loot and nothing to do with grinding experience. It is a job somebody should pay us to do.
That's what I think. And being: "no feeding the fish"... cap'n's orders! ;)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah, I really am trying to get into the head of Goblinworks on why and what they want players to be experiencing when attacking mobs. The "specific loot" of different mobs only found in the PvE environment could have an appeal to some players a certain "flavour" is added so "Goblin Slicer of Midnight" and "Gauntlets of Ogre Power" would be nice things to purloin/corpse-rob perhaps?
Yeah, there should be certain rare items that drop from NPC's and only NPC's.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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You don't kill monsters to get Gear. You kill monsters because they are harassing you or some point of interest you care about. If you kill them you get some valuable resource because otherwise monsters will just be net drains - you'll expend resources killing them so eventually the economy would drain to zero unless you recover something valuable from their bodies.
The resources you get for killing monsters are worth what the market says they are worth. If some group goes into rat apocalypse mode and kills every rat they see the price anyone will pay for rat bits will collapse - thus making killing rats economically unproductive.
We might put interesting things in dungeons. Then the reason you'll kill monsters is that they bar the way between you and the treasure. The net value you extract FROM THE DUNGEON might be positive, even if killing the monsters isn't.
We need to inject coin into the economy. So we need some way to do that. Monsters can drop coin, that's an easy way to inject it. We can also set up artificial buy orders on markets (effectively NPCs buying stuff) so there can be some coin produced by filling effectively bottomless pits of NPC consumption. The things they buy are the things new characters tend to accumulate by killing monsters.
Coin creation should also be associated with things that new characters do. New characters doing new character things create new coin, which is then spent in the markets and begins to accumulate in the wallets of older more sophisticated characters. Ideally, very advanced characters shouldn't be doing much that injects coin. A newbie who gets 10 coin, and increases their wallet by 1% is going to care a lot more about doing that thing than a vet with 1,000,000 coins in their wallet will.
In our role as Central Bankers we have to be watching to make sure that coin is being generated fast enough to keep newbies interested and engaged, and not accumulating in vet wallets to the point where they ceasing caring about money - their expenses should scale in parallel with their income.
The reason for this is that if monsters drop all the lootz, crafters are no longer necessary, and thus the resources required for crafting is no longer necessary, which is a bad thing when you consider the entire game is essentially built on top of this need and competition over resources.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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It has other rationale as well. If killing monsters generates usable stuff then killing monsters provides a pathway for people to avoid interacting with other players. It also potentially makes killing monsters a second, parallel system for equipping characters to kill monsters which devalues the market for monster-killing gear.
It's just a paradigm shift for people who are used to seeing the gear faucet in the MMO as "monster loot".
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Goblin Squad Member
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Quick followup on what I posted earlier about the ogres:
So clearly a new fighter won't have a chance against an ogre. It would take a small swarm of them zerging the ogre to have any hope of killing it (with massive casualties on their side).
A 'level 4' fighter (something similar to what Ryan played) is likely unable to win solo. Bear in mind we know nothing about ogre defenses. Likely they have only light armor, good fort save, mediocre reflex save and terrible will saves, but that's just a guess. I'd guess that a group of characters of his level might have a chance if they work together.
Now, what about the extreme case? For those that have played games like WoW/EQ etc just because a lowbie has no hope against certain creatures doesn't mean that high level characters don't routinely beat those creatures into a pulp while barely paying attention to what they're doing.
So what about high levels in PFO?
We know from a post that the best physical resistance armor in game has 63 physical resistance. I assume this is without keywords. Heavy armor gets 3 extra resistance per keyword and 12 per major keyword. So presumably that top end (and expensive!) armor can gain close to ~80 physical resistance.
Additionally, we can probably assume that that armor is tier 3. Assuming the ogres attack as tier 1, that has the effect of reducing the size of the hits on the PC. So previously, we had to multiply what was shown in the plot by 0.85 (equal skill to ogre), now it's closer to 0.5 or possibly 0.4 if the PC is highly skilled (see my debuff plots - the same factors apply from there).
Updated ogre plot (0 on horizontal is equal resistance to Ryan's, likely in the range of 36)
So depending upon what the ogre's (unknown) damage factor is, it would probably full hit that PC for something in the ballpark of 80 damage. Due to the skill difference the average hit would be maybe 0.5 that, so 40 (80*0.5=40). A top end buffed character has a little under 2000 hp (from the blog), so it takes the ogre about 50 hits to kill that character.
Realistically, not every high level will use such armor (requiring most of their threads just for it) and won't always be highly buffed, so it's probably closer to 40 hits from the ogre to kill a typical top end fighter. So my guess is that several ogres at once might be more than anyone can solo.
Caveat: some of the numbers we've seen are almost certainly not final and may change these results.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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Heavy armor has 27 base physical resistance available to anyone that can equip it (i.e., heavy armor proficiency), even someone that doesn't have an applicable armor passive feat equipped, and adds 3 per keyword (12 per major keyword) shared between the armor and the wearer's armor passive feat (max of 36 from 4 minor and 2 major keywords). Consumables are likely to not increase that further, rather providing additional damage reduction via another method (to keep the highest base resistance within the realm of something that a newer player and weaker monsters can reasonably affect to a small degree).
So 63 is likely to be the max possible base resistance.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thanks Stephen! That helps clarify how many keywords are potentially available on items.
63 = 27 + 4*3 + 2*12
So then your previous example 'level 4' fighter had 3 minor keywords (as his resistance was 36 in an older post of yours). (Just thinking aloud here).
In that case, increase the damage the top end fighter takes on a full hit to ~100. High reflex saves can reduce that by ~50% or more depending upon tier of the ogre attack and then it'll take at most 40 hits to kill the top end fighter PC. Less if he doesn't have that many keywords and isn't buffed to 2000 hp.
As Decius said, there may be defensive abilities I'm not taking into account, though we don't see the 2nd hotbar in the shot so it's hard to know what's slotted. (Recall that F6-F10 have defensive, reactive and aura slots). Admittedly I only calculate for simple attacks (ie. no Precise attacks or the like), so there will be some deviation in the above.
However, Stephen hints in the above that some of that 63 comes from the wearer's slotted defensive feat (F6-F7 slots).
Anyways, this gives us a rough idea of the power curve of the game:
*New fighter has no hope soloing an ogre
*'level 4' fighter can't either, but maybe in a group
*top end fighter might be able to solo 2-3 ogres
There's still a distinct difference in power, but it's not like WoW where a top level PC is a walking demi-god capable of fighting near infinite numbers of low level PCs at once.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm also holding out for activated abilities which reduce damage at some active cost or opprutinity cost.
The PnP equivalent is the total defense action, or fighting defensively.
I think it would be definitely easy and awesome to implement such skills with stamina cost and lasting for a round(6sec) at a time for some strategic combat. I wonder if guys wearing shields will have any shield skills that can be activated.
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Goblin Squad Member
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At the Tabletop, if one of the players is not at the table then it's reasonable for the GM or another player to make some decisions for that player's character. In an MMO, that's not possible.
I'm not suggesting a character be in Total Defense if they're surprised. But if they're not surprised (that is, if their character is not surprised), then it seems reasonable to me to set them to Total Defense until the player begins to override that with other commands.
There will (I hope) be a lot of folks playing PFO who don't have the kind of reflexes that the wolves who come over from other Open World PvP games will have. I'd prefer the game didn't treat their characters as flat-footed and doing nothing just because the player got startled while taking a sip of coffee.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I can see setting your character to total defense as an action when the player is AFK. That does not mean the character is safe from attack. An AoE spell should not be affected by total defense as total defense is directed at melee attack. I suspect that ranged attacks will also bypas total defense.