Jameow's page

I think it's the sort of system you want to have in by release, as it has repercussions for resources, and is a system that isn't totally different to many of the planned features, in many ways it's just about writing the conditions for different creatures properly and not making it too static or too random.

Everquest next is planning a system for spawns (given the dynamic world they are creating) where creatures have likes and dislikes. The example they used is orcs: they like gold, they like attacking roads that are not heavily guarded, but have enough traffic to make banditry profitable.

So orcs like roads with minimal soldier patrols. Change the guard patrols, attack the Orc camps too much, and they'll move elsewhere.

It's a similar concept, you could do it by setting a bunch of likes and dislikes for various creatures to determine their spawning patterns.

Guurzak wrote:

Ryan is pretty skeptical of virtual ecology: see post here.

Quote:

The idea of "turn the monsters loose and let the AI sort it out" has been a part of the MMO world since Ultima Online. And it's been tried several times, and every time it fails.

...
I'll remain a skeptic until I see it work at scale, under real world conditions.

I don't know, the articles Ryan linked to actually are strongly in support of the idea of a virtual ecology. It recognized there were problems, but also identified those problems as created by artificial limitations that they built into the system.

Ryan mentioned that players abused the system to farm Dragons, but the reality was that the situation was created by them limiting the amount of resources that can exist in the game. In this specific case the tendency players to horde resources was the problem. By hording fur, the players were preventing animals from spawning, which would bring more fur into the world beyond the games limit. This created a food shortage for Dragons which caused dragons to look for the nearest village food where players would annihilate the dragons.

The UO system also wasted a ton of resources by tracking each creature spawned as an individual and did so constantly rather than as a population.

I think there Are many ways to do it, and it is essentially about setting the conditions appropriately to the systems you're using, PFO is also ideally set up for duch a system because hexes give you a reasonable unit area to work with. Most games don't have such distinct uniform area breakdowns or the kind of dynamic content to make it meaningful that PFO is based on.

Escalations are supposed to be defeated. They are created from nothing and return to nothing after enough whack-a-mole activity by players.

If the game's ecology is supposed to respond to player actions, it needs to be either very very resilient against player actions (to the point where your actions taken to "preserve balance" or whatever are practically unnoticable) or risk totally collapsing several times over.

My point about escalations was that if the pressure from players is going to be THAT big, then escalations won't get past the initial stage before they're overwhelmed, rendering the entire system pointless. If Monsters can be set up to build up a hex then expand into other hexes and are expected to be able to survive long enough to do that without being kept down all the time, then animal spawns and relationships to eachother can be set up to do a similar thing.

That depends entirely on how you set it up.

Ryan is pretty skeptical of virtual ecology: see post here.

Quote:

The idea of "turn the monsters loose and let the AI sort it out" has been a part of the MMO world since Ultima Online. And it's been tried several times, and every time it fails.

...
I'll remain a skeptic until I see it work at scale, under real world conditions.

Then by the same token, how can escalations work? If everything is wiped out to the point where ecology can't function, then how can escalations have the time to develop?

It's all about setting rules and the right limits in place, enough dynamics to give actions consequences, enough restraints that the entire system doesn't collapse under over exploitation. This isn't the real world after all.

Thanks for the Rez Being ;D

I really want to see human pyrimids xD

I just had an image in my head of a pyramid of gnome brigands declaring stand and deliver on an approaching caravan by blocking the road.

Hi everyone!
It's been a while, but today I logged into the alpha for the first time.

What I'd like to say first and foremost is that I'm actually pretty happy with what I've seen so far. I have absolutely no idea what most of the abilities I've picked up do, but that's fine, the NPCs standing completely still until they attack something is both unnerving and amusing, but that's alphas for you.

But most importantly, I logged in, I started doing things, mostly just to see what I could do, where I could go, what was around, that sort of thing, and unlike a lot of games that claim to be a bit sandboxy, I didn't feel like I HAD to go out and do anything in particular, but could just try things. I cam across a few quests... a few brigand camps with markers and descriptions over them on the map that explained the scenario, and I really love that feature. To go out into the world and just DO stuff without it having to be a particular thing if you want to get anywhere.

If this is the way the game is going to continue developing, then, for me at least, it's a winner!

Dropping stuff on the ground added all kinds of things in uo. You could put out tables and chairs, throw out food and have a player event. You could drop a book on the ground. You could have a treasure hunt with books and clues. You could throw up a barricade, or candles. It adds a lot. Not bring able to put things on the ground removes so much sandboxy stuff.

One at a time unless you have... Destiny's twin I think it's called, in which one will train whenever the other trains.

I believe you are able to purchase extra training time for other characters to run them simultaneously if you do not have destiny's twin. That is, as far as I am aware, the plan.

It would just be wrong to have players with Paladin skills in PFO who plays like brigands, thieves and outright murderers.

If you commit evil acts, you will lose access to paladin abilities as your alignment drops.

ravenlute wrote:

Is this going to be one of those games where everyone trains for healing spells because there's no reason not to?

Doubtful. Magic itself is the purview of only a few classes, and cross training can mean you lose your capstone ability.

Not anymore. Now you only don't have it active if you choose multiclass abilities at that time.

But training takes a LONG time. So if you want to get healing abilities, and be good at it... you'll be spending a lot of time working your healing up. And then there's whatever alignment restrictions etc are in play.

You'll also probably have to equip certain things, which means some of your weapon slots will probably need to be taken up just for that, limiting your other abilities.

That's the impression I'm getting so far.

personally, I;d like it to be similar to Darkfall in that respect, but with more skills that rather than making you invisible, lower your chances of detection and actuallymake it more difficult to see you when you're in cover/shadow etc (which takes it further than darkfall) I think someone popping out in the middle of the road to attack you is a bit silly.

I wouldn't say any of those outfits are skimpy, and they all fall within what I would consider a tolerable level of practical in the context of class, is say it's reasonably equal in terms of skin shown gender wise, I don't think there's anything wrong with a female breastplate having breasts, while not shown on pf art, there are plenty of men's breastplates with nipples if they're being ornate.

I also think it depends on AI, I'd like to see a larger aggro range for forward facing, and a much smaller one for sides and back, someone might hear you coming up behind them, but they're much less likely to be ready for you than if they actually see you coming.

Ambient noise/environment might be useful too if it could be factored in too: darkness, a noisy waterfall, an echoey cave increasing alertness but not giving you an accurate indication of where they are, different alertness trigger AI for different creatures, blind cave creatures relying on sound and vibration more than sight for example.

I know none of that is directly related to solo aggro, but it could work in with the "more people are noisier, smellier and more disturbing"

Could even have ones attracted to magic etc.

One thing I loved about Darkfall was that heavy armor was noisier, shinier and those things mattered, it would reflect light and make you more noticeable. Mining made noise and could draw the attention of monsters, taking cover meant things would not notice you, so as a solo player, relying on these things for stealth and surprise were exciting and useful.

I hate watching monsters just stand their whole you pull the guy he's talking to.

As I do with many things, I fall back to UO's system or something similar as my preference.

The use of items, weapons, armor, tools etc causes them to take durability damage, and the more they lose, the less effective they become. They can be repaired, but they lose maximum durability in the process. Only a grandmaster blacksmith can repair it to full durability, but even then it may lose some, so over time your equipment becomes less effective and breaks. I remember early on I picked up a little blacksmithy to repair my equipment, and was horrified when my shield shattered in one blow from a harpy because I had repaired it with my mediocre skill so many times.

Jameow wrote:

I'd live to play an old, hobbling character with frizzy, wild hair. I often feel a little disappointment when I can't make an older looking character, or even when I can, they stride around like a 20 year old

Yeah, that's likely to happen most of the time, anyway. It's one thing to alter the appearance of a character at creation, and another to completely customize movements, gait, or alter limitations. Especially in a massively multiplayer setting. Not that it wouldn't be awesome.

But some MMOs these days DO offer multiple gaits, stances- Champions Online/Star Trek Online (same engine, so I'm counting them as one) come to mind.

I'd live to play an old, hobbling character with frizzy, wild hair. I often feel a little disappointment when I can't make an older looking character, or even when I can, they stride around like a 20 year old

I take no offense and fully support such an idea :p

Perhaps if items are crafted from modular parts eg hilt, cross guard, blade, with diffuse rent styles that are unlocked different ways and by different people this could work

That would be cool, but how would you do it without creating thousands of armor pieces for the same piece?

Jameow wrote:

I think there can be plenty of sexy items that don't need to be skimpy too.

male and female.

Yes. Both.

And I still think heavy armor should come with penalties anyway, so all armor is a compromise between defence, speed and endurance. So skimpy has its place as much as full platemail.

I think there can be plenty of sexy items that don't need to be skimpy too.

I'd say it's closer to 30-40% these days, but who knows for this particular game. I know that my guild in TERA had several women playing with their partners/ family members, but then it might have been skewed by the nature of the guild. Or maybe TERA just appealed to more women, don't know.

I'm genuinely confused why would want to limit gender to RL gender. Unless youre intending some sort of romantic encounter with them, their gender should be utterly irrelevant to you.

Even then I've had a character in a romance with a male character played by a female. She was more comfortable playing males. Why would you take that away from her?

My personal preference for stealth (and it has nothing to do with any ruleset, it's just my preference) is that hiding is a case of not being invisible, but easy to miss because you're wearing shadowy colours in a shadowy corner, or are moving without sound so you are not noticed.

I prefer things not to see things behind them (but can hear them) so something walking away from you or past you while you stand still in shadow doesn't notice you, if you're dancing and hopping, they might see you, if you're walking along, they might see you. If you're crouched behind a pillar, they might not.

I dislike the disappear and pop out of nowhere style stealth/hiding... Except where it is magic like melding with shadow or invisibility. But it's not an issue I have a particularly strong stake in.

I'm fine with less defense for less armor myself, but I also think heavy armor should have penalties too. One does not sprint around, rolling, dodging and swinging blades rapidly in full plate.

That's the other thing, given the special nature of it (a boss encounter at the end) they'd be relatively rare, after all it would kind of sick if every time you went to a dungeon it was spawning more than any reasonable sized group could take on.

I want all the options, the more variety the better.

I think there is significant value in the idea of causing a bigger problem by attacking a smaller problem, and the 'Hornet's Nest' title describes nicely an interesting encounter concept.

Yes I wanted it to be something so it's not obvious, you don't know that the encounter is going to go the opposite way to what you'd expect, but it becomes an epic event when it does.

That's just one scenario, but you get the general idea. I called it "hornet's nest" to evoke the meaning that by attacking them, you've agitated them into action, whatever the action is, trying to finish the ritual, trying to free something, maybe it's a war council of orc leaders, or lizardman leaders, maybe a group of goblins are torturing a prominent elf emissary and plan to use him for nefarious ends and the guards all attack you to stop you from discovering their little captive.

Maybe it's an elf necromancer concealing his identitity and sending waves of undead out to stop you from interfering with his plans... you get the idea... they have a reason for being there.

As for the using it to grief, I'd say it would have to be pushed passed a certain high point, these aren't meant to be brief little encounters where you fight for 5 mins before the boss comes out, doing it to grief would take a lot of time and be sort of pointless, because you've just done the majority of the work for someone else to take all the rewards.

Wow, I didn't find either of those systems particularly impressive lol. Neither was BADm they both gave you some decent choice, but I was underwhelmed with both.

Like so many systems they end up giving you a bunch of choices that look almost identical to their other choices, or only a few that you like, so you end up choosing the same ones.

I do find it interesting how much tastes can vary when t comes to customisation. A veritable minefield.

I think they've been very clever, designed it so that they design a framework for everything, but the actual content is for the most part player generated, so it's huge in scale without being massive in development cost.

Ambitious, yes, but seems like a very reasonable project.

My first idea is inspired by the UO Champion Spawns. I'll call it for this "Hornet's Nest"

The idea is that some dungeon place spawns, such as a temple or altar or something, and instead of just killing everything and reducing it, by attacking it, it pushes it into activity.

So here's an example: A lizardman temple (because I like lizardmen)spawns deep in a forest, and they are performing a ritual to summon a god/demon/spirit/whatever it is this group is summoning.There are a few guards around the base of the temple, nothing much, they're just lookouts to make sure the ceremony isn't interrupted.

So along comes our band of heroes to investigate this temple they found. They kill the guards. And more come pouring out of the temple. The more they kill, the more and stronger their foes are, so it gets tougher and tougher, until eventually they have to fight the priest (a boss monster) or, if they've successfully completed the ritual, whatever was summoned.

Big epic fight, fun all round. But here's the catch:
If the heroes fail, there's now a very angry lizard cult, and the high priest will take his temple guards and followers and go on a rampage attacking everything in site for interrupting his ritual and hoping that will keep people away the next time. Or if they finish the ritual uninterrupted, there's now a big creature loose in the world.

So in short the idea is this: A dungeon type environment that increases in spawn rate and difficulty the more it is attacked ( probably a tier system) and eventually the big boss is spawned at the end to fight, big rewards for looting the temple and defeating the villain.

Second idea:
In dungeons, have a chance to spawn rare magical crafting apparatuses such as magical forges and looms that can create special rare magical items with unique and powerful abilities. They can't be moved, so you'd need to find it and use it before the dungeon despawns and get as much out of it as you can before it loses its power from use, despawns, or someone else captures it from you. Could have different types that give different types of bonuses and means sometimes you'll want to bring your crafters on an adventure (and if they're a specialised crafter without too much in the way of combat it gives you something to defend)

Proxima Sin wrote:

We all have to wear that armor

I hope this is not true. Armor should not always be better than no armor. Wearing armor should always provide bonuses and penalties.

This! A thousand times THIS!

I think one of the things that has also changed is that wearing heavy armor had penalties,in UO you actually were slower and regen'd mana slower... and in modern MMOs you don't see that so much.

So someone wearing lighter armor, or skimpier armor wasn't necessarily gimping themselves, just compromising defence for speed.

I think UO hit a happy medium with this, they had skimpy armor options (only for women), but those options did provide a little less protection than their more covered counterparts (until later updates anyway), and they also, to me, seemed reasonably practical, and armor looked the same on a male or female character, just more fitted to them.

I like there to be skimpy options(for both genders), but I don't think they should ever be forced. Sometimes style is more important than practicality to a character or player anyway. I'm fine with there being logic to it though, more revealing and less practical armors offering less protection.

What about discoveries? Perhaps players could find rare new species through exploring and the finders get to name them by registering with the Pathfinder Society?

It has possibilities... there was some game I played.. I forget which... maybe it was Vanguard... that had discoveries and recorded who was the first to discover each creature and item.

Collector's items don't have to be useful, if you can display them, eventually they will be VERY valuable. In uo, rare one off items were insanely valuable to collectors.

If I knew where they were heading, and had a force of my own, I'd be sending raiding parties and ambushes all along the route to use up TEO's carried resources and abilities and equipment on the way :p

The raiders would probably die often, but wouldn't be carrying anything irreplaceable.

In a world where no modern technology was available upstream travel was a seriously difficult task only engaged in because the downstream travel more than made up for the extra effort.

They also didn't have magic :p

Even in Australia, Melbourne is built at the mouth of the Yarra river, and the city of parramatta (now part of Sydney) is on the parramatta river, flowing to Sydney and Sydney harbour.

It is no coincidence London is on the Thames and Paris on the Seine either. It's not just a case of ease, it's a case of quantity. It is far far easier to float a large number of goods than drag them in a cart up and down hills.

I grew up with river transportation. The only reasons goods were transported upstream were because you need to get the barge back where it is useful, you could manage a mule team dragging a barge with fewer people than a wagon caravan, and sometimes you actually had a river that was easier to travel than the surrounding terrain, though this is pretty rare. When possible goods were transported on roads that followed the river.

in a world of diesel freight, cargo ships the size of small towns, roads that are always opened and reasonably well maintained, this is true.

Well there is the question of player housing. It isn't clear that PFO will sequester player housing in its own seperate, out of the way neighborhood like they did in LotRO or out in the open like UO. UO's system seemed pretty haphazard and eventually became something like urban blight, but LotRO's system of isolating them made them irrelevant ghosttowns once the new wore off. A nice try, but they weren't integral to a their owner's social life.

A hybrid should be possible where once the building site in a hex is upgraded sufficiently and the player population located there reaches a set threshhold the sub-areas adjascent to the actual settlement central building area and any roadways nearby might evolve into player housing plots. If the population reaches another threshold then more plots might pop. If two adjascent hexes do this enough they could in fact become contiguous, rather like two growing communities retain their seprate identities but in fact are parts of a sprawling city.

That said I'd like a perk for characters who reach the equivalent of level 20 allowing them to build a residence in an otherwise unpopulated hex on the settlement site of their own. That way the Wizard of appropriate power and wealth could build his arcane tower, or the druid his grove.

Doesn't seem viable to me, as you need to destroy a settlement to build a new one. So populations will be fluctuating rapidly and in drastic numbers.

The world doesn't seem too big. Didn't they say an hour end to end? It'll take longer because that's a straight line, as the map gets bigger we'll need some sort of fast travel- alternatively an offline travel method such as vanguard's aborted caravan method.

Not ideal, given the nature of PFO, but perhaps some system could be devised.

I still say they don't have to follow the lore too closely. If we are not the storytellers, is it not a theme park after all? We can't invade a neighboring kingdom?

If they don't want to add some areas, could they not just add a strip of it? A mountain pass here, a valley there, a river there on the way to a more appropriate area.

I don't know for sure, but couldn't the timing just be in an uncovered period? At least for the area?

I really don't see why there has to even be a lore problem.

IronVanguard wrote:

You prefer to have a robot who plays the banjo or writes love poems?

isn't that Britney Spears? ;D (I actually think she doesn't record anymore, they just auto tune stuff she said)

I think mounts would benefit from the pet stuff being in first. I want uo/swg style mounts that you can get off and they will still be there and fight with you, not mounts that appear or disappear or are summoned and come running. Therefore pets needed first.
In my opinion.

I don't think that "summing up what they can do" is going ot be a problem though, by the time there's any serious abilities and diversification, all the core races will be in anyway.

Jameow wrote:

Southraven wrote:

The simplest thing would be to allow the option of a single free 'race change' when a new race is released. (*cough*Tengu*cough*)

That of course opens up the "Is a Race change a free service?" question, although I would like to think the small reward for our ongoing patronage would be a one-off chance to change when it first debuts.

I'm not really satisfied with a "free race change" option. I want to be a half elf. I know there are half elves being added. Let me be one from day one, models or not. The basic characteristics should be able to be included straight away, that shouldn't be anything technically difficult, then those races can be tested and tweaked as needed along with all the others.

Fair enough but I think the "I look like a human but I'm actually a half-elf" is a) immersion-breaking and b) problematic for PVP when trying to accurately sum up exactly who your opponent is and what they can do.

and having a midlife race change isn't?

I have an ecology degree myself... so I notice these sorts of things haha

The simplest thing would be to allow the option of a single free 'race change' when a new race is released. (*cough*Tengu*cough*)

That of course opens up the "Is a Race change a free service?" question, although I would like to think the small reward for our ongoing patronage would be a one-off chance to change when it first debuts.

I'm not really satisfied with a "free race change" option. I want to be a half elf. I know there are half elves being added. Let me be one from day one, models or not. The basic characteristics should be able to be included straight away, that shouldn't be anything technically difficult, then those races can be tested and tweaked as needed along with all the others.