Ruse's page

Ruse wrote:

From what I've read they're already planning a lot of ways to make Chaotic Evil less appealing, though. Higher town upkeep, which leads to higher training costs, people being able to attack YOU without alignment loss, etc.

I agree it should definitely have its downsides ... but I don't think in a battle of good vs. evil (assuming relatively equal numbers/skill), good should win just because evil can't have healers. Or worse yet, if the same thing happened in good vs. neutral.

That depends entirely on how powerful healing is. It could be a make or break thing, but it could be just a minor advantage. I know healing is pretty much a requirement in most games but that may not be the case here. Also is 100% of healing alignment dependent? Can bards or druids heal if they are neutral or evil? I would almost bank on the fact druids can or else the only druid healers would be neutral-good.

Anyway equal numbers isn't what I had in mind. I am hoping most companies will be good or neutral. Just because you are good doesn't mean you can have a difference of opinion that leads to war with another good faction.

True. Still, imo people who enjoy a healing role might be sad if they couldn't play the medic in their group of bandits or whatever because, well, you couldn't be a healer with a bandit's lifestyle or whatever.

As for making healers not overpowered, you could always do what games like Age of Conan where your own heals healed you less than they healed other people. So to get "full" healing, you had to have another priest class heal you.

But in a lot of other mmorpgs, avatars appearance develops into brighter, bigger cartoons at max. level to show the power increase reflected in the avatar eg a 50ft sword and shoulderpads from hell. It's natural to feedback the power and development in any game.

To explain my position a bit better, I hate it when MMOs do that. I hate it when I have to use a certain look if I don't want to horribly gimp my stats, lol. Maybe that's not particularly surprising given my stance on stats/skills having an impact on looks. My GW2 ele looks like >>this<< at max level (she didn't usually use a staff, but whatever). Except for said staff, all of this look is from a mix of lower-level sets that I overwrote the high-level skins with -- because I plain liked the low-level looks better.

I realize gear in PFO isn't likely to be as ... um ... permanent as in other MMOs, and that's OK, that's not really my point. My point is when you're forced into a function = looks system, then eventually everyone who wants to function remotely the same is going to look alike. And that, imo, is boring.

But this is also something I know they (Goblin works) have to live with is finite memory,

meaning they can not ever provided the widest range of options because
each piece of content comes with a specific amount of memory it needs

I find it a bit funny that you keep pushing this angle then asking for evolving characters -- which would add to the number of options once we get into scars etc. territory. :) I get the concept of too many options causing too much stress/lag in big gatherings of characters. You don't have to keep repeating.

That said ... modern MMOs have evolved past the sprites we saw in Neverwinter Nights (which actually can work better sometimes, I think, because they're so simplistic that you can project whatever you want onto them). I realize there's a finite limit to what a game engine can handle. I'm hoping some conservative-to-edgy hairstyles, a few different body builds and a range of hair, skin and eye colours isn't out of the question. I don't think that's asking for crazy pie-in-the-sky customization.

EDIT: That said I'd love the option to, as I said, add scars to your character or whatever. I agree that could add immersion and I'd probably even take advantage of it. I just want it to be my choice.

EDIT EDIT: (Sorry, lol) I hope you consider the idea that you can be attacked when you're talking about turning off too much of the HUD. If you don't mind the disadvantages then awesome, just something to keep in mind.

Nihimon is right in that no system you use out of the box will ever allow anyone to build and play the character they want,

They have to live with the limits imposed by that system.

Lol I kinda feel like I'm being lectured here and I'm not sure why.

I don't expect to make a small race as tall as the tallest race in the game. I would expect a reasonable range of bodytypes, hairstyles and hair, skin and eyecolours. Even better if I can manipulate eyebrows to change expression, or choose from some base faces with differing expressions.

Alongside that, I would be sad if that selection were further limited by stats, class or whatever the deciding thing is. Considering the game is nowhere near being launched, I don't see how giving feedback on my druthers is somehow out of line. Of course I don't expect devs to give every one of us exactly what we want; I WOULD expect them to give us a range of options wide enough that we should all be able to find something that at least doesn't stomp all over our idea of our characters.

Ruse wrote:

For Pathfinder specifically, I'd prefer several classes be able to heal reasonably well, even if they do it in different ways. The only healers shouldn't have to be lawful good clerics or whatever. With a heavy reliance on alignments, I'm a little afraid that anyone who doesn't toe the line will be at so much of a disadvantage that it ultimately won't be worth it to be anything but good ... and when that happens is when things get boring for everyone. :)

There will have to be some adjustments but being Lawful-Good NEEDS to be a clearly better option than Chaotic Evil.

There is a reason 99% of veteran players in Open World PVP MMOs like Darkfall and Mortal are always evil aligned. It's because there is no real mechanical downside to being so.

You're giving up mechanical benefit for not having to follow restrictions. Those benefits need to be meaningful.

From what I've read they're already planning a lot of ways to make Chaotic Evil less appealing, though. Higher town upkeep, which leads to higher training costs, people being able to attack YOU without alignment loss, etc.

I agree it should definitely have its downsides ... but I don't think in a battle of good vs. evil (assuming relatively equal numbers/skill), good should win just because evil can't have healers. Or worse yet, if the same thing happened in good vs. neutral.

I still lean towards the holy trinity, I didn't like the way it was done in GW2 for PvP that everyone was able to heal and you were a bit of a hybrid. The option for people to play full dedicated healers for PvP (and they are good at it) will be good for me. Have someone who is well armored soak up the hits and then the damage dealers.

Heh, I loved Guild Wars 2's system, especially for PvP. I played a melee support ele -- I could keep regeneration on my teammates pretty much constantly, with high protection uptime (reduced incoming damage by 1/3 for those not familiar) while also being able to grant swiftness and might -- all of this happened while I swapped attunements to players near me. I also had lots of easy, frequent condition removal for my fellow meleers, and plenty of CC. I could also grant buffs to all of us using blast finishers well.

...and I could still survive on the frontline, or solo kill multiple other level 80s. This isn't an "I'm awesome" thing, this is a, "with enough micromanagement, it was dynamic and awesome and I never felt like an anything-bot" explanation. And that's why I loved it. I wasn't necessary, but I sure made things a hell of a lot smoother for all involved while being a threat in my own right.

For Pathfinder specifically, I'd prefer several classes be able to heal reasonably well, even if they do it in different ways. The only healers shouldn't have to be lawful good clerics or whatever. With a heavy reliance on alignments, I'm a little afraid that anyone who doesn't toe the line will be at so much of a disadvantage that it ultimately won't be worth it to be anything but good ... and when that happens is when things get boring for everyone. :)

I'm curious, though, if you would have the same resistance to it if it were only constrained in the other direction. Assume the game allows you to have your super-scrawny Barbarian whose Rage abilities allowed them to break down doors. But if you wanted to create a character with large and well-defined muscles, you would have to have Attributes and/or Abilities that accounted for that. Would that be more acceptable?

I'm not even saying I'd definitely want to play a skinny barbarian or paladin or whatever -- my 2-handed hammer gal in both Age of Conan and Guild Wars 2 was a beefy lady that looked like she could realistically bash skulls in with it. If I remade her, she'd likely have high strength, too. But if I DO want to make a beefy, pink-haired gal with low strength and charisma, or a skinny, mousy-looking paladin with high strength and charisma, I want to be able to do that out of the box without having to enjoy my early gameplay less to get there.

I have a question- if such a thing were ability based, does that mean you couldn't have a hulking, thickly muscled wizard?

Does it mean I would need to do some combat abilities first and, if I want to get the capstone or something not get wizardry (the point of the character) for years just so I could get the large appearance?

Yeah, see, this is where I DON'T want to have to go. If we want the option for characters to evolve their looks, put in a barber/tattoo/scar shop and be done with it, so that players can choose.

I realize that abilities/stats affecting appearance is just being spitballed. I'm just saying why I personally wouldn't like it in any form.

Ruse wrote:

I'd really hate to feel like I had to adjust my stats to get my character to look the way I wanted...

I don't think that's really on the table.

The idea as I understand it is that your Abilities (and possibly your Attributes) would define the acceptable range of certain sliders. I would expect that range to be fairly wide in all cases. I think they key goal is to ensure that someone who has the Ability to break down thick wooden doors - with their body, not with magic - doesn't look like a gust of wind might blow them away.

But that's exactly what you're describing does. If I want to make a super scrawny character, I can't have high strength. What if my very scrawny cleric draws her great strength from her faith, for instance? Or a slim barbarian whose rage is just THAT potent?

Choosing between looks and stats would be a massive turnoff for me.

More dextrous people should move more smoothly, make less sound when they move. Their gestures should be more graceful. They might do interesting things while idle like juggling, flipping daggers or using butterfly knives in interesting patterns, or rolling coins across their fingers.

People with good constitutions should have brighter eyes, more bounce in their steps, longer and/or more lustrous hair, straighter backs, etc.

Of course all of this has counter points for lower scores. And some of it could be hidden or suppressed by character abilities.

And much of it might not be possible given the size limitations of the avatars, the animation time required to achieve it, and the rendering capabilities of the engine.

RyanD

I'd really hate to feel like I had to adjust my stats to get my character to look the way I wanted -- rather than build a character to play the way I wanted, and tweak appearance to my whim.

All the people going, "BUT MY IMMERSION" are kinda being busybodies imo. Names I can see because they'll be floating over people's heads (I presume) and it's hard NOT to see them. But why do you care if I want my mage to be built like a refrigerator, or my paladin to be a skinny, flat-chested androgynous lady? Are you really going to be obsessively checking my stats to see if they match my appearance? lol

This is supposed to be fantasy. I can't fathom trying to enforce how others' characters look as long as it's not a truly grotesque creation that looks like it's from another planet entirely, a la Aion.

As for female clothing/armor options which was mentioned in the OP, I always advocate for a variety. I happen to enjoy some of the skimpy options for some of my recurring characters -- but others are very conservative dressers. I notice a lot of caster classes seem to get way cooler options in online games in general, which is kind of a bummer. More diversity for all armor types is good.

Imo the "full plate armor" crowd and the "chainmail bikini" crowd should both be able to find something they want to wear.

I thought that too about GW2 at first, but once you really get into builds their combat is actually pretty darn complex. Elementalists especially, with the right traits. You're juggling attunements for the skills they give AND buffs they give and trying to anticipate, during your long channels, if you expect your opponent to try to CC you or burst you down. Using proper attunement switches to combo to stack might. Swapping attunements and popping the right auras if you screwed up and end up flat of your back about to eat a huge burst. Not to mention swapping attunements at the last second of long channels to get that fury + extra might buff and and and ...

Yeah. I loved the game's combat. Just not the devs' flipflopping. Still waiting on a game company to have the cojones to stick with their design philosophy ... and I'm really hoping GW is that company, because I think their goals have a ton of potential! :)

For example, on average I get a ping of 300ms to us servers. No amount of skill will compensate for the difference between a player who has a 20ms ping who knows what they're doing and a 300 ms ping who knows what he's doing.

On a side note, I started to really lose interest in many mmos when they became so role orientated, you know "tank, dps, healer" that it became a game of statistics alone and all that mattered were "are your stats what we demand to make this encounter predictable"? Totally ruins the game for me. Give me variety! XD

Ah, yeah, I admit I didn't think of ping -- probably because I've always been lucky enough to have good ping.

I got pretty bored of encounters being designed to be impossible unless you'd played the RNG lottery of the previous encounter "tier" too. I actually thought GW2 did a pretty good job of NOT doing this originally, but their new vertical progression can only end one way, unfortunately. Balance for top gear and make it unplayable for the undergeared; or balance for modest gear and make it a snooze for the fully geared.

That flipflop of Arenanet's really, really disappointed me. I could have lived with World vs. World being largely anonymous (though I disliked it) but I couldn't handle being put on a treadmill, too. /offtopic

My original comment wasn't about what content is or is not available to what playstyles. I just said that virtually no one is good at anything without practice, and no one, perhaps barring extreme physical limitations, is incapable of learning to be at least an above-average PvPer. They just have to want to work at it.

If they don't, fine. But people use it as an excuse for why they can't participate in PvP, as though there's nothing they could do to change that.

I'm not big on raiding, either. It was just a PvE example I could think of. :B

Ruse wrote:

If it actually mattered to you, you would improve. :) All about priorities.

And I think here we have the problem. What if to pvp you had to grind killing living stones that did nothing, gained you nothing, but took a long time to kill and about six months to complete before you could actually do the piping you wanted? There's nothing fun about it and it would ruin your enjoyment.

"If it actually mattered to you, you would grind for six months"

That's the point though, it is NOT what she wants to do, she has no interest in it, yet this says she should divert time away from things she enjoys to do something she doesn't to get better at a system she doesn't want to take part in in the first place.

And that's why it's an issue.

Sorry, no, that's not what I'm saying at all. :)

There are completely safe zones planned for Pathfinder, and there are almost totally safe zones planned. There are areas to function in if the idea is that abhorrent (which I know Chiassa is keeping a more open mind, so this bit isn't aimed at her). I would not enter a typical MMO's raid and expect to get to roll on loot if I don't know my class and I'm not prepared for the encounter. "Oh, I'm just bad at PvE" would not fly there for a second.

If I wanted to raid, and more importantly if I wanted the goodies that come from raiding, I would look at builds, I would talk to good raiders, I would practice rotations etc. If I cared, I would improve. If I did not improve, I would not expect to get very far in that content.

The vast majority of us will never be good at something the second we pick it up to try it. I hope I made myself a bit clearer. :)

EDIT: And most games DO make you do a lot of mundane grinding for gear to be competitive in PvP, lol. Your analogy isn't the best one. It also wouldn't take that amount of time to improve yourself in PvP via practice.

I should note here that I've played MMORPGs since 1995 (AOL's Neverwinter Nights), and given PvP an honest try in all of them. I am simply BAD at it, so I'm not sure how much good a survival course would be.

At the risk of coming across as aggressive (which I don't mean to be), I always thought this was a copout. Sure, some people will be better at it than others, but anyone who actually puts in a little reading and lots of practice, and seeks advice from people who ARE good at it, can improve to the point of being at least better than average.

If it actually mattered to you, you would improve. :) All about priorities.

I keep seeing "Meaningful player interaction" mentioned here.

Meaningful player interaction does not inherently involve a sword.

Meaningful player interaction does not mean Player VS Player.
(NOTE: it's called 'role playing game,' not 'kill other characters game')

I'd argue there can't really be much meaning to interaction if there cannot also be conflict. In PvE games your "conflict" ends up in the form of kill and node-stealing and leaves you little recourse. You can do nothing to these people, so there's nothing to discourage them.

However add bounties, add alignment restrictions, add PvP and add player looting, and suddenly, "to kill or not to kill" decision lasts longer than it takes to say "Meh, why not?"

Transporting my mined goodies from the camp site to the city is a chore if I have no chance of losing it. It's exciting as hell if I do. Nobody remembers all the easy, uneventful things in games. They remember having someone betray you and open your keep gates for your enemies, and STILL beating them back.

Making things a little personal ishow you make it meaningful and memorable, imo.

I had a friend turn me onto this recently. Been pretty bored with most MMO offerings -- had hope for GW2 but they really disappointed me when they backed out of their "no gear grind" stance.

Anyways, just wanted to add my name to the "thrilled with the idea of meaningful PvP" list. If you guys can make it work the way you've laid out here... YAY. Go go consequences and players having to rely on one another (for something other than grinding gear) again.