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So, you can't put a bounty on someone for the game-equivalent of hearsay. How would you justify a righteous killing just because someone says they were wronged? Hear-Say, not heresy. The game has a kind of clairvoyance when you do crime near a settlement. Guards are dispatched immediately, etc. So when you're outside of these zones, in game terms, you only have your word that someone killed you. So it's like court where hear-say doesn't have credibility.
It's pretty simple in the mechanics they put fourth in the blog. If someone kills you, you put a bounty on their head and the people who kill the bounty aren't criminals. They're just bounty hunters. An assassination contract works exactly like a bounty, except there's no initial crime against you. Since there's no punishment attached to the killing, it's an assassination and therefore an evil act. There's no need to bring in Bin Ladin, conversations about what is really evil, or whatever.
I think it's important to understand that Need doesn't really have to have anything to do with with BoP or class-restrictions. It can simply express the degree to which the character desires the item. I can easily see that devolving into hitting need on everything because there's always that one guy in the party that tries to get as much as possible. Really, with how the economy would be, you have equal need of everything because it can all be converted into gold. Unless you're running out of bag space/carrying capacity, you'll want to pick up everything.
One thing I've always wanted but rarely seen in a game is the ability to melt down the weapons and armor I come across for raw materials. I can't count how many times I had to kill some mob wearing a full set of armor so I could get to some mining node to make armor. I'd like a system where gathering steel weapons and armor was a viable alternative to mining the iron and coal and smelting it myself. It could have interesting effects on the economy by giving value to lower level items without needing a steady stream of new buyers. Deconstructing gives value to odd, underpowered, or underused weapons that would generally sell for a pittance. Obviously, for game balance, it would be more efficient to set up a mining camp to get the materials. I'm thinking this alternative would be a good way for adventurers to contribute to the crafting economy.
I'm agreeing most with the people that don't want a need element. Having need-over-greed makes sense when there are BOP, class-specific items. In that case items can either be used very effectively or sold for a pitiful amount of gold. In PFO we'll have neither people who will always be one class nor bound items. Basically everything you touch can be sold for gold, so it's not more valuable to you because you can technically use it as well. With a bit of time that awesome crossbow can be sold and used to buy an awesome staff. It would be easier to give the crossbow to the ranger, but being a ranger doesn't mean he gets every crossbow. I can also see people wearing a lower tier of armor so they can win more upgrades they 'need' then sell them later. I never liked round-robin looting or 'you win a roll, you don't get anything more until everyone else wins a roll' systems. Round robin just leads people to wait until it's their turn to loot and make sure they kill the big mob next. The other system doesn't make much sense when, typically, the best loot is at the end. It's not very fun to pass on all the loot at the beginning and hope that something you want drops at the end. You also run into issues where something useful drops, it's a minor upgrade, but everyone passes to save their roll. The item gets destroyed or given away randomly and the people who could get some use out of it are twiddling their thumbs. I do think there should be some computer-enforced loot system. The blog did mention contracts and therefore some legal enforcement for player agreements. You can see a dungeoneering party as having a contract to support each other and split the loot fairly. I can imagine all the drops going into an invisible chest until the dungeon is complete or the group disbands and everything is distributed by some pre-determined system. I'm also okay with a purely random distribution of loot. Like I said, everything it worth gold and can be turned into anything else with a little bit of work. People can go a while without any loot, but they have an equal chance to get all the loot.
I'm curious to see how the politics will play into the first year population seeding. :DI'm really hoping for some heavy cooperation and a focus on building up the world. It'll be sad if there are bandit guilds swarming the main settlements in the first month. That does sound fun. I think I mean more where the bandits so outnumber crafting players that nothing can be built and even the main settlements would get destroyed.
First of all I have to ask why any game designer in their right mind would choose to use a gear loss model with a gear dependent fantasy property. The blog specifically says that you won't lose your equipped items or gold through death. You're only losing what's in your bags; likely potions, crafting materials, and monster trophies.
No thanks. Please don't make dungeons sellable in any way. How many adventures start with a shady character beckoning the party over and offering to sell the the location of some old dwarven ruins for a few gold pieces? Knowing the location of one of these is valuable information you should be able to sell. If you're a powerful character that finds one, why not sell the privilege of letting people accompany you for a share of the loot? If someone's running around trying to find these dungeon entrances, they're not gathering ore or exploring dungeons on their own. They're gathering their own resource of information. That said, one person shouldn't be able to lock down tons of these until they have a monopoly. A 12-hour despawn would be appropriate.
For me I've gotten tired of grinds. I welcomed them in WoW since I had a lot of time to kill and it was way too expensive to buy new console games every week or so. SWTOR is very themepark, but the end-game isn't very demanding. I can play once a week and still be at the cutting edge of gear. To do that in WoW I had to spend 4 hours a day getting reputation and tokens. Now that I have far less free time I'm looking forward to something new with long-stretching goals. It will be nice to slowly develop a settlement and character.
They have, but I sincerely doubt a raiding party will be going on at all times at all places. I expect epic battles here and there, but not so much if I'm futzing around on a Tuesday afternoon.
Heh, I think Final Fantasy is the most over the top example of what you describe. Where the low level limit break parts the clouds, zooms out into space, parts the seas, cracks the ground, and ultimately hits for 150 damage. Reminds me of this Adventurers comic.
@Hudax I understand why you don't like those things, but so far it seems that's what the entire game will be based around. There won't be much in the way of pure PVE content that's not also mixed with PVP, crafting, or the economy. They're specifically moving away from the 'amusement park' model where you move from one predetermined area to another to make a game focused on players building the world.
Question: You mentioned craftsmen needing to bring the product to market. In what sense do you mean "need?" I think the idea is that you could sell your items locally, but chances are you won't get a good price for them since they'll be made from local resources. You'll want to move your goods to the settlement that has the best prices.
The answers to most of your questions come down to this: the more risk you take, the more reward you'll potentially make. You may be able to extract some resources in safe locations where you're protected by, among other things, laws against murder... but they won't be especially valuable resources. If you want at the good stuff, you'll need to venture forth into scary, lawless places. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you.
It all sounds fantastic and I'll have a hard time deciding what part of the process I'll focus on. Could you elaborate some on the security issues that come along with crafting? I understand the need for guards and such, but are these exclusively PC guardians or are there NPC guards you can hire as well? Will every part of your operation be vulnerable to PC attack, or will there be certain safe areas or a cap on losses? I ask since the penalty for death is losing what random bits you were carrying (not including gear.) What's the risk for gathering a bunch of friends and focusing just on raiding people's camps and caravans? Will attacking these camps be equivalent to attacks on your character in terms of bounty and NPC aggression?
Of course, you won't always move at the fastest possible rate. Tracking, searching, and other such activities will slow you down. And while some conveyances will allow you to move a lot of stuff at one time, the draft animals that pull them generally move at less than walking speed. It looks like wagons and the like are in the plans.
Harvesting hazards: These are opponents that are generated randomly as an effect of harvesting certain resources. It seems they're planning the gathering minigame to be fending off generated monsters. The most efficient way to gather will be to get friends to help you fend off the monsters while you mine.
@Frawan. You do raise an interesting question, which I expect will be answered in time: will a zero-skill character (like an alt) be possible or will there be some minimum training time (either subscription or skymetal package)? Would a zero-skill character be able to do anything in the game, even transport or raw labor, or will they need to acquire some minimum skills before they can earn coin in game?I see no reason why a mule couldn't do basic things like carrying etc... In general pure free accounts are intended to be enough to make the player want more, and I would also imagine they want to have enough tools and trading that a free account could earn the ability to buy training time from paid players (after all the philosophy is, as long as someone pays it is all good, whether 1 person pays for 10 subs and sells 9 of them, or 10 people pay their own way, the net gain for GW is the same). The expectation with freemium games is that 10% of the people will spend 90% of the money. I imagine a level-0 character will be able to play for 20-40 hours without running into any big obstacles. The money will be made on the people wanting to buy their own castle.
I'd like more info on what they mean by skill packages. Are these requisite items you need to have to start training in a skill? Do they allow you to get better at a skill (i.e. allow a week of training time?) Maybe they're what you need to get to break certain thresholds in your skill. Like you can get to joirneyman level on your own, then you need one package to get to master level, then another to get to grandmaster level.
Hmm. I'm trying to say that non-magic classes need to have enough utility and flavor to stay interesting. Magic classes are largely based on utility and doing fantastic things with magic, but in an MMO setting this could be very unfair. If a magic user can do a whole lot of things to make his life easier that my fighter character can't do, I would be annoyed and feel like I have to put in a lot more clicks/time/effort to do what I want. Assuming combat is balanced, I'd soon want to ditch my fighter and start a mage. I'd have the same killing ability, but I would have all the utility as well. It's just as bad to balance the fighter to be really really good at killing things and leave the mage behind because he has so much utility. Imagine if a mage can haste, levitate, turn invisible, create food/water, mend, and summon elementals. Some of these are clearly magical and it would be dumb to give a fighter an analogous ability, but it would be unfair to give the fighter none of this utility. By appropriate, I mean translating magical effects in a way that makes sense thematically. Summoning elementals, invisibility, and levitation? Purely magical. But what about haste? How about a short-term adrenaline rush that allows the fighter to close distance and have an extra attack for a short time. Mending is the same kind of thing. Allow the fighter to do the same thing, but have it take a bit more time.
Well, where is there a hole that needs filling by an brand new class? I can't think of a character type that can't be made using the core classes and multi-classes. It would be a great deal of work to make a new class and it would be a shame if it filled the little gap between paladin and cleric, for example.
Actually, that sounds way to much like D&D4E for my taste, with "skills" and "magic" having the same game effect but just slapping a different name on it to appease a class style. Magic should be... magical. It should be wondrous and fantastic, and offer advantages that cannot be attained without it. While a crafter may be able to repair an item as quickly as a "Mending" spell, it should require more time, specialized tools, and so forth. On the other hand, Mending should only fix minor damage... good for maintenance and minor repairs on the road, but not useful for severely damaged items, or fabrication of items (which may be done with more powerful magic, but still require a craft skill to do competently). Magic should be magical, but I, as a fighter, would feel out of place in an MMO environment where a mage could do what I could do an more and more quickly because he has magic. Sure, I could survive a direct hit from a giant, but I'd want more flavor and utility when I'm spending many hours with a character. Mages /should/ have a great deal of utility and I wouldn't mind if they had a selection of spells that would be better than my skills. What I would want is a good number of equivalent skills, when appropriate, so I don't feel like my only role in the game is to click my swing sword button.
Game shops are unlike real-world shops where the price of an item is generally static to start and will go down after some time. Someone could easily sell low-value items at a discount for a time, get some good reviews, then jack up prices. It'll take time for the market to react and the whole system would be pretty useless before long. Oddly I'm reminded of Neopets. People that have their stores at the top of the list always had by far the worst prices. Items that sell for 10 coins would be set to 4500 buy these sellers.
Auctions in general do have a place. If I have a rare, presumably valuable bauble, I'd want to get the best price for it. I can guess a price and either lose time or money my setting it to the wrong price. I can research some large number of shops, but there's no way to know if they have the bauble and if the price they have for the bauble is a price someone will actually pay. By putting it up for auction I can let the market decide what it's worth. I fully understand how a widespread auction house can kill a market for crafters, but what if it was extremely localized? someone can set the price of an item in their shop to '100 gold or best offer' or 'best offer over 100 gold by next tuesday.' This coupled with a way to advertize/aggregate your auction would make a pretty useful system.
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