Just remember, a vote for Kobold Cleaver and his kobold horde is a vote for your own destruction.
Actually, playing a kobold would probably be a good time.
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If you were able to set up trading routes between settlement docks, how would an enemy company or settlement be able to counter that? Would rivers and lakes just end up being a chaotic scene of pirates and traders?
I agree with the peanut gallery on this. Even seemingly un-gibberish names can be difficult to remember. Are there any plans to have character names in the chat and combat logs be hyperlinks(or right-clickable)? So even if the jerk runs off you can easily right-click their name in the log and select the 'report' option. Maybe take the human element out of having to remember and correctly type names. If my culture is once again oppressed by James Jacobs and his racist conspirators, I will be forced to burn the Paizo Golem in gnomeffigy. Who left the kobold cage open again? Gotta keep that cage door locked!
I mentioned TT only in that I enjoyed playing an evil character. PfO and TT defintitely will not be the same. I suppose you could be a 'supervillain' as a form of performance art, but where would you get the resources to fund the dark empires which inevitably fall down around you? You'd get your resources from theft, slavery, and general villany. ...and why do the dark empires always need to fall? Evil needs to prevail once in awhile. I don't think your anecdotes will be what the game's alignment system is based on. agreed.
I think alot of people tend to mistakenly think of Chaotic Evil being wanton death and destruction. There is far more subtlety to it. One of my favorite table top adventures was when both my friend and I played Chaotic Evil characters. We spent so much time trying to get away with framing each other for theft and murder, we drove the DM crazy with our lack of progress in the actual adventure. I love the ideas for evil settlements but from all that I have read from GW posts, they are rightly concerned that Chaotic Evil will be a jerk magnet for players thinking they can get away with anything(hence the low rep restriction). If you are a wonderful bastard, you should be able to have high rep for being the best at being the worst.
There is a brief mention of docks in the Player-Created Buildings and Structures blog post. Under the 'Other Kind of Structures' section: We also envision the ability of characters to build and improve roads that increase the speed of characters using fast travel, to erect docks which will permit watercraft access to rivers and lakes, and to build bridges to allow roads to span those rivers. Coming to PfO in 2023: Naval Combat!! (or at least small fishing dinghies)
This seems to be the common thinking of most MMOs players, but I believe it is dangerous to the overall health of the game being played. The notion of 'If I can do it, it's OK' is rooted in the desire for self gain and this is almost always to the detriment to the overall community. I would not consider human manipulation(bad loans, espionage, etc...) to be an exploit. Players can modify their behavior and defend themselves, unforeseen game conditions that are being abused cannot.
My definition of a 'bad player' would be a troll, griefer, exploiter or gold farmer. All players have different game skills, usually rooted in how they define enjoyment. My idea of a mentor system would allow new players to have the opportunity to learn the culture of PfO from game vets. It is my understanding that most MMO gamers do not use the game forums.
In a perfect world, PfO player characters would cover both the entire Lawful Good to Chaotic Evil alignment spectrum. I would love to see a positive online community that could be both respectful of the gamesmanship of Good vs. Evil while still not taking the adverse results of such a conflict personally. Sadly, I highly doubt that such an MMO understanding could be reached.
Soon we will all be working under Kobold Cleaver...or dead by his hand. In all seriousness, keep posting to the forums. Your posts are great :)
I've also become convinced that the @<handle> system is bad. The system has its appropriate applications for certain games, but it is totally wrong for PfO. I'm cool with the naming format that Lee proposed. I hope that GW implements a character naming system that allows for varied naming formats while also maximizing revenue.
Welcome Tolath! Ideal situation would be when the 2017+ timeframe comes around and GW starts to think about F2P. We have enough "paying" players that GW doesn't think the server would be able to handle the influx of F2P players. Yeah, this thread is about 3 years too early, if not more. I really hope they avoid Turbine's hybrid model. It discourages people from subscribing in favor of simply buying adventure packs.
I can't stand MMO elitism. I outright despise a small percentage of players 'Lording' over the rest. I believe that in order for an online community to thrive, it must first a) be a community and b) be challenged enough to grow. Within this challenge there will be winners and losers but I hope that PfO is able to find a healthy balance. Per my original post, I refer to the first Goblin Works blog A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step From the 'Big Things Come in Small Packages' section:
At launch, and for the first seven months following, we will cap new paying players at 4,500 per month. Four thousand five hundred new paying players monthly. We expect to keep only about 25% of those players on a long-term basis, so after we factor in attrition of each month's signups, we end up with 16,500 paying players at the end of that seven-month period. This game is starting small, which is one of the things that really appealed to me. I didn't propose a Free-to-Play/Mentor gateway to limit new players. Once Free-to-Play is implemenmted, they were already going to be limited. The reason I posted what I did is because I have played so many MMOs where I started the game and there is no sense of community. I end up wandering around, figuring things out on my own. This isn't to say I'm looking for someone to lead me by the nose, quite the contrary, I would describe myself as a 'Lone Wolf'. But it's the human interaction that makes a game worth playing for a long period of time. Otherwise, you are left with zerging through content and then yawning until the developers present something new.
I have never been a fan of the Free-to-Play model simply because I believe that something that is free has no value. However, I have come to realize that the Free-to-Play model can be an excellent way to attract large amounts of both positive and negative players alike. The question is how to attract and keep the positive players of a Free-to-Play system while minimizing and rejecting the negative players. I believe a community-based model is the solution. Every MMO that I have played recently has been a 'single player game within an MMO environment'. This sacrifices the sense of community for ease of play. So how do we rectify the situation? I propose the following:
My initial PRO/CON list: PROS:
CONS:
I have no doubt that this is a flawed system, but I believe the general concept is workable.
I simply ask for the means to know who to hate, while possibly hating those whom I do not know. Otherwise I will be left wondering if those that I hate are unrelated to those that I know, while hating those unknown who I wish I didn't hate.
This could easily turn into a Goblin Store cash cow, simply add all possible adjectives to your list.
There are a certain class of players who do not want, ever, their characters to be identified with a Real Human Being. I should have clarified myself better. By 'Human Player' I didn't mean, for example, Ryan Dancey. I was referring to all characters on an account linking to a handle such as '@randomuser654'. Real life anonymity would still be maintained, as it should be. I did not consider the in-game espionage aspects of this, but if GW implements Free-to-Play accounts, players can still operate in an clandestine manner without using their main account. I have never played Eve (I apologize for using it as a base of comparison since PfO is a different game), so alot of the PvP gamesmanship is foreign to me.
Imagine the poor parent who has less than 30 minutes to play before leaving for her daughter's soccer game. Imagine further her character needing to go from the north end of the map to the south for some purpose; I can believe she might not be able to "accomplish" anything with that day's play, perhaps even including reaching her final destination. This is something I was alluding to in my 'Difficulty vs. Accessibility' post. I respect that all players are different and I don't want to see PfO be a 'quit your job, your spouse leaves you, your children no longer recognize you' type of game, but I have a serious peeve with the tendency of MMOs these days to cater to the 'lowest common denominator'. I don't like the idea of players being able to teleport all over the map on a whim. This diminishes casters and magical items. From what I've read on the blog and forum, even Fast Travel isn't designed to be 100% safe. I would hope that PfO would be more like a typical Table Top session: It's dangerous to leave town, it's dangerous to enter that dungeon, and it's even more dangerous to get back to town with all of that shiny treasure. To use your example, the player in question can try to cover as much ground as they can in 30 minutes. If they can make it safely, they can log out and continue their journey the next time they log in.
/beatdeadhorse While I understand the desire for some players to be able to get the character names that they want accomplishing in-game deeds, I believe that character names is an excellent opportunity for GoblinWorks to generate extra income, free of any accusations of 'Pay-to-Win'. I hope that they are able to allow any name in any format, for a price, as long as it is within the regulations of taste. I'm a fan of the @handle method that links a character to a player account because it makes befriending/ignoring characters based on the human player rather than the character played. I understand that this is extreme, but sometimes 'hops meet yeast' and other times 'oil meets water'. I'm sure there are many arguments for and against the database structure that Lee proposed. I'm for it for the selfish reason in that I like the idea of Nihimon being the server 'Highlander', going around murdering all of the poor souls who made the tragic mistake of naming their character 'Nihimon'.
From the RESPECT: Find Out What It Means to Me! blog entry(look for the 'I Don't Give A Damn 'Bout My Bad Reputation' section):
I would much rather see PfO try to promote positive player interaction instead of removing all barriers and watching a 'Race to the Bottom' in player behavior. Dealing with players with no reputation(eg:Alts) at least lets everyone know they are on their own as far as possible negative outcomes are concerned. Auction House pricing scams are unavoidable, but personally I believe a player should be punished for an inattention to detail anyway. I've never liked player run 'lotteries', and I certainly wouldn't mind them implementing in-game lotteries to curb that type of player behavior. I've often wondered if it was within legal limits to run in-game casinos. I'm sure they would be popular.
That aside, I really hope we can breed exotic mounts as part of the game. Breeding is another possibility, but should you be able to breed a Unicorn or Nightmare? It would be simple to just make them rare breeding recipes, but it also seems like things that couldn't/shouldn't be bred.
@Hark Would everyone be able to get a rare mount? How 'rare' should rare be? Your ideas in the rare monsters thread were spot on. Perhaps a similar concept: Very rare creatures that spawn within a Hex that can be captured and tamed. I'm not sure how capturing could be worked out via game play. Fight it and beat it to near death to get it to submit? Should capturing it require a team?
I think they all tried to be the next WoW, and in doing so set themselves on a path of failure. Plus, all MMOs seem to move like a school of fish. Swimming from the latest 'hot' trend to the next, while they desperately try to appease everyone to boost revenue. Now it almost seems like they are more concerned with extracting as much money from the player base as possible in the shortest amount of time. Short term profits over long term stability. I can understand the concept of an in-game store and a la carte, but the focus should be on trying to develop a stable subscribed game that will actually last for awhile. More no lumbering dinosaurs, just a lot of small, fleet footed critters.
I hope I've conveyed that this experience will likely not resemble your typical dungeon from a themepark. Hopefully one of these blogs goes into more detail about their plans for PvE soon. :) I think you've broken it down quite well.
Does GW2 scale people up if they're too low of a level? I knew it scaled people down, but didn't realize it did the reverse too. It's only down. I should've been more specific. Also, given how quickly it will be to level initially in PfO, my level gap example with level 1s and 2s isn't the best, but you get the idea. I really think PfO will get far more things right than wrong, but I hope they can find a balance between challenging dungeons (with shiny loots) and creating easy content for all to ensure that 'Everybody wins'. @AvenaOats
Has there been any mention to the different in-game languages? Maybe it's just me, but I like the idea of being able to set my chat language and if anyone near me or in my group doesn't understand, say dwarven, all they see in chat is gibberish.
I need to unlearn all that I have learned about MMOs. @Gedichtewicht
Regarding the vague blog post concerning PvE dungeons, if they are instanced how would difficulty be determined? For example, a group of 4 fighters levels 8,5,2,1 find and enter a dungeon. What level would the mobs be? 8? 1? 3? I'm sure they want people to be able to group together regardless of level (similar to Guild Wars 2), but the 4 players above would have very different experiences in that dungeon based on how difficult the mobs were. At what point do we see the old 'Sorry you're too low to run this' occur?
What you are advocating is the 'tried and true' monopoly. Elite players farming certains dungeons or mobs for rare resources, and then maximizing their profits based on their rarity. The craftsmen have no recourse but to pass those costs onto the consumer. I have never and will never exchange real money for an MMO currrency, but I am a firm believer in the 'Time vs. Money' paradigm. With most MMOs I have played, casual players with the money to spare will buy gold to compensate for their lack of playtime in order to buy from a market with inflated prices. I, in turn, will play the game and sell my farmed/crafted loot to exchange my 'time' for their purchased in-game 'money'. When I played FFXI the gold farmers/gold buyers were a plague to the game and to its economy. This is by far a less than ideal scenario. I can't imagine that a GW developer would be happy to spend weeks if not months designing a PvE dungeon only to have a small subset of the player base running it and monopolizing the loot.
I was hoping to start a discussion on a topic that I've been thinking about for some time. I've played a few MMOs over the years (Everquest, Final Fantasy XI, LOTRO, DDO, NWO) and I've noticed a movement from difficulty-based games where there ends up being a class of player with better gear than most mainly due to skill/more time invested, to ones of accessibility where everyone can run all of the content and the rewards are basically uniform. With regards to PfO, and this would mainly apply to PvE/Dungeon content, my questions to the community are this: 1) Is it possible to make content challenging for all players while not excluding anyone in the player base from completing said content? 2) If your above answer consists of a scaling or difficulty mechanism, how do you balance rewards so as not to exclude anyone from eventually obtaining the same loot while still rewarding those who complete the higher difficulty? 3) Do you believe, over time, that all players should eventually end up with the items that they want regardless of difficulty?
If they treat horse breeding just like another craft I don't see why it wouldn't be universally used. Aside from different breeds and asthetics, being able to create mounts with +10% HP or +50% Endurance, etc... would appeal to everyone. This thread has me thinking I should eventually create a Rogue horse thief who operates the local BBQ/Glue Factory PoI.
Hello everyone,
Leaning towards the Paladin class. Currently unaffiliated.
We discussed a while back why persistent horses would cause too much overhead iirc. The idea will be to keep them functional as much as possible I guess. Likewise ranches etc is a long-long term projection (and seemingly a very good one). Damage to mounts is a whole extra discussion: Possibly a reason to use your mount carefully if it can be damaged and therefore temporarily not usable with a sort of degradation over time quality as you'd find for items. Possibly. When I wrote that I wasn't thinking along the lines of a disconnect from logged in/logged off characters to their horses, but simply the idea that while you were playing your horse would be with you whether you were riding it or not. Basically that your horse would end up being another perishable item that you would need to protect. I've read a few posts that advocated persistent in-game characters. It's an interesting concept. I can think of arguments for and against requiring players to log out in safe areas.
Great ideas for a horse economy and ranch PoI. Hopefully they make mounts persistent in the game world, rather than a utility that magically appears and disappears. I like the idea of mounts being able to be killed or stolen.
Hello all. Been lurking for a few weeks now, but this discussion prompted me to chime in. There are excellent ideas presented here, but as Hark mentioned, alot what was brought up is probably out of scope for what they were planning. At the very least, I hope that they require characters to have to seek out Player Characters who lead in a faith to join a particular religion rather than simply choosing a deity upon creation. This would promote basic religious interaction and roleplaying to start. Perhaps the PC faith leaders will be allowed to keep track of their congregation (or cult) following, creating a religious subset to a settlement. It would allow for more roleplaying initially and could eventually evolve into conflict vehicles. The idea of having accepted deities chosen by the settlement managers, faith leaders for those deities, and NPC conversion as mentioned above could make for interesting times. I hope the devs get a chance to read this thread and are willing to start small, with an eye towards expanding faiths, conversion and ultimately more conflict. After all, it's the deity/religious aspect of TT that's always given it its 'Cult' appeal. :) |