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I seriously doubt we'll see player character enslavement mechanics. Taking away a player's control over their character really doesn't go over very well generally, especially on the whim of another player. Being killed is often favorable to being subjected to some jerk's crap for more than five minutes.

That being said, I would expect it to happen in RP scenarios, and I could see "labor at gunpoint (swordpoint)" as something that would happen to skilled crafters from time to time.

Temporary enslaving of humanoid NPCs for labor could be amazing. How crazy would it be for some evil settlements to completely forego keeping commoners happy in favor of enslaving local goblins?!

I also think that trying to piggyback off the popularity of MOBAs is a poor choice.

If you look at MOBAs, their history is not entirely unlike the history of MMORPGs. For reference, I was there for the whole thing: 80% of my gaming from 1999 to 2006 was Starcraft and Warcraft 3 custom maps, I preordered demigod, played the HoN closed beta, played LoL upon release. The original Aeon of Strife could be compared to the original MUD. WC3 AoS style games could be compared to pre-EQ MMOs. The original DotA is much like Everquest: It had a much higher profile than anything seen before it. HoN/Demigod aren't unlike the MMOs between EQ and WoW. League of Legends is the WoW of MOBAs, and the name's parallel is hilariously similar. It's hard to pinpoint exactly which game Dota 2 parallels, but it's landed like a post-WoW mmo for sure.

Trying to snag League's playerbase is going to be about as hard as it was to snag WoW's. There is room in the industry for other games, and even successful ones, but I think a LoL-killer is as unlikely as a WoW-killer was.

Now imagine it's 2006 and some modestly sized game company decided to shoehorn a WoW clone into an existing game idea.

What if the spot on the scale PFO occupies is too far toward WoW and actually very little you do leaves a mark on the world? I can't carve my face into the cliff/moon, surely. I can't dig a hole just any ole place. I can't build a house/dungeon/stronghold/metalworking facility just any old place either. I suppose in this respect, it's a matter of freedom. If you're gonna have such open 24/7 PvP, it seems a little arbitrary to worry about how to best implement a nannybot to restrict players' options.

First, the 'nannybot' systems are being put in place to keep open pvp from becoming OPEN 24/7 FFA KILL EVERYONE PVP. It's possible to attack players at any given point but often it's a bad idea. Open PVP in this case is more about the danger and the possibility (and preparing for that) than 'we're all going to kill each other now'. For example, the KvK servers in Wurm were kind of like this - the danger of raiders from outside always exists, and players from your own kingdom can attack you whenever, but they generally don't because you've got common enemies. The option being there enormously improves the game.

Second... I see what you mean about the lack of mark. However, I think I know why things are being done as they are: Limitations due to limited development resources, and scale. By scale, I mean that it's a game for tens or hundreds of thousands of players that is supposed to last for years. Imagine a minecraft server that is five years old with tens of thousands of players... you'd end up with areas completely cluttered with crap. To adjust for the scale of an MMO, in order to make a mark more significant than a bandit camp, an inn, or a watchtower, it will take the concentrated efforts of a substantial number of people over a significant time period (I'm guessing listed structures will either take moderate effort from several people or great effort from one).

I share the yearning for a more open and lofty experience, though in the interests of "this sure is a step in the right direction" it doesn't bug me too much. Widening systems and adding more and more meaningful sand is something that most of us are confident that GW will do over time.

Hobs, well said. I feel the same way, even if that niche market ends up to not include me (I'm hoping it will =D).

-snip- My point being that a single number doesn't tell you much about the health of the game, the happiness of the playerbase, or the demographics of that playerbase -snip-

That's a really great point, and thank you for isolating it, I genuinely hadn't grasped that from your prior statements. I agree. I think the health of an MMO for the players and for the investors are different but intertwined, and using one to gauge the other is hazardous though correlation exists.

-this thread-

The things you have suggested lately have been ridiculous, though they have not been ridiculed.

All-in-all, I think you're confusing 'make this the game I'm looking for' with 'make this a great game'. There have been multiple times where I've seen things that I don't know that I like or things missing that I want, and thought about trying to sway the game in that direction, thought about it a little more (or read counterarguments for when other suggested similar things) and realized it just wouldn't be the right fit.

Shoehorning a MOBA into PFO just isn't the right fit.

[Opening Post]

This is a list of things of what you would like the game to be, some of which are already in the works (1-3), and some of which are incompatible with or work against the stated design of the game.

With all due respect, Dungeons and Raid content should be instanced so it doesn't affect the server. If too many players want to play then keep adding hexes which are instanced anyways I think.

Just adding extra land and growing a one-world game isn't as simple as 'land proportionate to players and life is good'. Infrastructure is largely player built, and so the game can largely support a quantity of players proportionate to how many were playing a few months prior. This is much of the reason for the very gradual release.

The vast majority of the content will be player interaction. I want to see great PvE as well, though that won't come from instanced, separate from the world, repeatable-ad-nauseum dungeon and raid content as seen in theme parks. I don't think anybody is actually happy with the occasional trickling down of new end-game content, and that really doesn't look like GW's plan.

I know some people don't want to be a billionaire....

While you said this sarcastically, it's true: The goal isn't to make as much money as possible as fast as possible. The goal is to make an enjoyable, profitable (doesn't need to be wildly profitable) game to a market that isn't already being served.

[...] when Blizzard brags about millions (they're counting every expired trial account and Chinese farmer ever) [...]

Those millions are concurrent subscribers, meaning 'how many people payed us to play last month' (could be averaged over a few months). WoW bashing has gotten really boring, even when it's accurate...

***Fantastic points wonderfully stated***

For players who are able to accurately gauge the strength of their opponents, their own strength, and are prepared, the results of battles will be largely known ahead of time. This is not a bad thing.

I have a feeling that in my first year of PFO i'm going to read a dozen analyses of the art of war, but to start early: “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”.

It's worth noting that the partial miss stuff in some ways adds a huge unpredictability that isn't being taken into account by 'its too predictable' advocates: Duration of secondary effects due to partial misses. Anyone who has played MOBAs can immediately identify how massively different ~25% duration reduction of stuns and other CC are in application. When you KNOW something has hit but don't know how effectively, that adds a huge element of instability to a battle. Imagine if you have some plan of attack, and that 15 second root only lasts 8 seconds. That could turn into a catastrophe.

I do also trust that GW is willing to tweak formulas to make more sense should they turn out to be unsatisfactory once applied. The only really difficult thing about adjusting formulas is how mad the playerbase tends to get when you do it.

@AvenaOats: I agree completely. While I really like Tera's action combat, it isn't necessarily the right fit for PFO. The real importance is that the combat be strong, as opposed to run of the mill. They can do it however they want as long as it's good =D.

Now to answer Arbalester's concerns, most of which the information is already in the blog.

The attack resolution sequence goes in order.

Steps 1-6: Determines partial hits
Step 7: Base Damage versus Resistance
Step 8: (Modified damage * damage factor) * incomplete hit multiplier
Step 9: Final creature damage multiplier

So the damage goes:
dmg1 = (Base Damage - Resistance)
dmg2 = dmg1 * damage factor
dmg3 = dmg2 * incomplete hit multiplier
final damage = dmg3 * creature specific multiplier

I think you're overthinking things. The question didn't come up because to us there wasn't a question =D. The three modifiers are multiplicative, so the only thing in the order that actually matters is that base damage isn't multiplied by anything before comparing it to resistance.

Regarding creatures with additional damage multipliers: There are three basic formulas that GW could be using in the event this happens, and a only a very outside chance of them using something else:

// csm means creature specific multiplier
1) final damage = dmg3 * csm1 * csm2 * csm3
2) final damage = dmg3 * [ 1 - ( csm1 + csm2 + csm3 )
3) final damage = dmg3 / ( 1 + csm1 + csm2 + csm3 )

Now to analyze these.

1) Each csm makes the monster take X% less damage, multiplicative. if the csms are all equal to .8 for example, then one through three strengths make the monster more durable by a factor of 1.25x / 1.56x / 1.95x. There is some possibility GW will use this method if monsters with multiple strengths are to be extra tough.

2) Each csm makes the monster take X% less damage, additive. if the csms are all equal to .2 [equivalent to above], then one through three strengths make the monster more durable by a factor of 1.25x / 1.66x / 2.5x. GW will almost certainly not be using this method, because it is bad practice and things can get really out of hand really easily - if the CSMs were .5, then players would do half/zero/negative half damage.

3) Each csm makes the monster X% more durable, additive. if the csms are all equal to .25 [equivalent to above, again], then one through three strengths will make the monster more durable by a factor of 1.25x / 1.5x / 1.75x. GW will most likely use this method, because it is the most conservative and reasonable one. It is possible they will opt for 1) in favor of making multi-strength monsters really tough.

@ Arbalester. If you want that to be useful, you need to round those numbers: 17 digits of precision is way too much, it turns the whole thing into an eye-bleeding experience. I would recommend no more than four digits of precision, and get rid of the x.xxxxxxxxE-5 stuff, present it as decimals.

I think a crew of bandits where everyone but the leader would synchronize the macarena while he went through Stand and Deliver procedures would be the most hilarious kind of stupid. Especially if the traders with well armed guards waiting in ambush did the Run Devil Run dance while their negotiator told him to suck an egg.

It's not good design, but one time in ten thousand its use would be the most hilarious thing in the history of time.

...Setting appropriate dancing would be a really nice feature. Otherwise it straddles the line between gratuitous and gratuitously stupid.

Hello!

Of those who supported the tech demo at the founder+ level, there was at least 1 person who complained that they were unable to afford EE on the second kickstarter. Are those people getting comped Early Enrollment? It seems really unappreciative not to, especially considering it is a subset of the mere 171 people who contributed $250 or more (I'd argue that every one of those should get an extra EE pass).

I asked something like this in a less noticable way (thread response rather than new thread) right around the time it happened, didn't get a satisfactory response, and a couple days later I did what most people do on the internet when they don't like something: Get mad and storm off muttering obscenities under their breath and look for something better. Well, I didn't find anything better, and I still really want to know what the deal is here.

The element of chance works better as a function of gameplay that is slow-paced and deliberate than it does of gameplay that is quick and frenzied. In slower medium you can have individual game changing elements of chance because they happen rarely enough that they can't be relied upon and slowly enough that you can react to them in a meaningful way. With faster medium they tend to end up being fairly reliable, and as such cannot be game changing without breaking everything.

Tabletop Crits: "Hell yeah took that bastard down!" or "OH SWEET JESUS I GOT CRIT GOTTA RUN OH SHIT" - Meaningful difference based on something actually unpredictable.

Video Game Crits: "Oh well I could do 400 damage a hit or I could do 350 damage a hit with a 20% chance for a +110% damage crit... with the crits I have 7% higher DPS! I'll do that!" - Pointless difference based on RNG that works itself out easily over time.

Edit: It's worth noting that I think PFO is handling crits in a much more meaningful way. Giving them a randomized side-effect that lasts for some period of time is a great way to deal with frequency and to make them both unreliable and game-changing without breaking everything. (15% Crit chance? Oh great I just wounded the shield arm of the caster with nothing in his offhand. Woo."

You know what, I'm gonna just say it: Bravo GW!

As soon as I read the 3d200 choose low/mid/high I started calculating... spent two hours on a spreadsheet before I spent 6 more reading the whole thread.

This is really interesting stuff. Also a note: The weapon/armor 3-tier system actually is very coarse instead of granular - and this could be easily made granular by having, for example, tier 1.02, which would be 98% of the low plus 2% of the mid, 1.04 etc etc (not really tiers at all =P how sandboxy).

The power curve between tiers of equipment is also not quite as flat as brutus suggested. Assuming defense and attack modifiers end up equal, with identical everything except T1 vs T3 gear, the better geared player will on average hit 95% harder, have +95% the effectiveness of secondary attacks, and have the 98% crit potential instead of 2%. This difference becomes more drastic when defense modifiers are higher than attack modifers.

Lets now look at the numerically reasonable example of AverageGuy versus ToughDude: AverageGuy is a pretty beefy adventurer (~3month char? /guess) and Toughdude is a really strong and well geared fighter (1yr char /guess). AverageGuy has T2 gear, +20 attack/defense/secondary resists, 1000 HP and 100 DamageOutput. Toughdude has T3 gear, +30 attack/defense/secondary resists, 1400 HP and 140 DamageOutput.

AverageGuy has a 11% chance to do full damage and roll to crit. On average he hits for 65% of full damage, and secondary effects have 55% duration (Two-thirds are under 70%). He can kill ToughDude in ~22 Time.
ToughDude has a 91% chance to do full damage and roll to crit. On average he hits for 98% of full damage, and secondary effects have 96% duration (Over 90% are undiminished). He can kill AverageGuy in ~7 Time.

ToughDude is 3:1 stronger than AverageGuy. Chances are AverageGuy will get spanked, but if he and AverageGirl work together, the battle is a toss-up and entirely dependent on player skill. Schmucko the 3 week old Bandit is there hiding in the bushes, but he is 10:1 weaker than Toughdude - Still, he knows if the battle is close enough he can "help" the losing side, kill them, loot all three, and disappear into the shadows a newly rich man. If Schmucko brought along his 3 friends he'd be an even match for either side.

Looks to me like the difference between a fresh character, a T1, a T2, a T3, and a max character is that 2 against 1 makes a fair fight. Which is approximately the difference in most MMOs of characters about 5 levels apart. Think the difference between level 3/6/10/14/18 characters in LoL. I don't think the system as illustrated is quite as flat as GW has been communicating, however it's still pretty darn flat (except for crit rates!).

Note: My numbers are slightly inaccurate because I simulated the system with 3d100, so please forgive the stray 1 or 2 percentage points (These assume that generally attack modifiers = defense modifiers and that resists are 0):

T1 Wep vs Armors:
T1 Armor: 42% Chance for Max Damage/Crit Roll, 86% of max damage/secondary effect average.
T2 Armor: 12% Chance for Max Damage/Crit Roll, 68% of dmg/2nd average.
T3 Armor: 2% Chance for Max Damage/Crit Roll, 52% of dmg/2nd average.
T3 Armor and target defense 30 higher: 1/800 chance for max damage/crit roll, 44% of dmg/2nd average.

T2 Wep vs Armors:
T1: 84% Max/Crit, 97% Dmg/2nd
T2: 50% Max/Crit, 86% Dmg/2nd
T3: 16% Max/Crit, 69% Dmg/2nd

T3 Wep vs Armors:
T1: 98% Max/Crit, 99.8% Dmg/2nd
T2: 88% Max/Crit, 97% Dmg/2nd
T3: 58% Max/Crit, 88% Dmg/2nd

Hi there Samping, welcome!

This is all great thinking, and a lot of it I'm fairly sure is already incorporated into the design principles.

Regarding dungeons, I agree completely: Modularly designed, procedurally generated dungeons are the way to go! After setting up a framework, they provide much more content for less work (albeit at the cost of design quality, less so with better framework/pieces).

However, it seems like you're thinking a little more in 'theme park' mentality as far as the quests go. How it looks like PFO intends to work is much like how you described, but you cut out the NPC and a lot of the scriptwriting. Here's the kind of thing that I expect to happen:

Lets say Chartered Company (player organization) Money-Grubbing Merchants has found a potential profit in the Wolf Fang Necklace market over in Westville. There aren't any wolves near Westville (which is why the price is so high there!). So they send Merchie to Eastville, which is right by the Wolfy Woods. Merchie sets up some quests for the locals: Bring wolf fangs, and make wolf fang necklaces. In the meantime, some unfavorable characters notice this, and set up to ambush Merchie when he leaves town. Knowing this likelihood, Merchie hires Somedude to move the goods, and Somedude hires some guards. One of Somedude's guards turns out to be a bandit, and arranges for the party to get jumped and the goods to be stolen. Then Merchie talks to his CC to hire a hit squad to get the goods back and take revenge. This potentially turns into a war between a bandit organization and the Money-Grubbing Merchants.

Thats a lot of player-generated content that didn't require a single line of developer script-writing. Now you could add the occasional big-picture quest, which would require (and generate!) interaction with a number of other players, and that way turn one developer-made-quest into dozens of quest-like missions!

Edit: And this is why sandboxes with simulated economies are really cool!

I would love for there also to be a phone app integrated into this: Some way for other characters or organizations (approved ones!) to send your character a text message, essentially, when you're not online or looking at the game. Have some various settings so that you can decide who can send you messages, time frames that you can receive them (so you can say 'don't tell me about stuff while i'm sleeping or at work'), and what priority messages you want to receive.

Something like this would be FANTASTIC for 'our CC/settlement needs people, right now, there's an attack underway' or 'hey buddy, awesome dungeon, need some people to help with it'. Guilds in theme parks sometimes like to get RL contact information just so they can get to a person outside the game. It'd be nice to streamline and compartmentalize this so characters can be accessible if and when they want to be, without giving out real contact information.

It's strange that in MMORPGs, success is measured by becoming McDonalds, not by being profitable. There are some sandwich shops that do great and become chains and within a decade or two have fifty stores spanning a number of cities - this strikes me more as what GW is trying to do. Not everybody needs to like the sandwiches, just enough people. Not everybody needs to enjoy PFO, just enough do.

I myself am somewhat concerned at the danger of losing stuff because another human wanted to take it from me. I also really enjoy PvE content. I'd most want something with plenty of interaction and cooperation and competition between players without a ton of conflict, and most, but not all, of the conflict coming from the environment.

I really wish Wurm had a little more exposure, growth, and development. If I'd have known it existed, I'd have been playing it and referring friends for years.

I like the idea of the food types that GrumpyMel brought up plus the one that Nihimon has. I think fresh meals which give buffs (more substantial ones than rations - after all it's fresh food) is a FANTASTIC way to encourage players to hang around at Inns. Food that lasts for 15 minutes/only within that building (or something) doesn't have the issues that general food decay does.

I love this system so much I want to provisionally name this fresh/ration/feed/bulk (abbreviated FRBR or Furbur!). Some foods could cross boundaries as well - if fresh food gets cold it turns into rations (some would go bad and just be inedible), rations could sometimes be fed to animals/commoners, some bulk (commoner) food could be eaten by animals, and some feed could be fed to commoners (though they probably wouldn't like it).

I vehemently agree with Andius and McDuff here.

"Play It Or Lose It:

This is the real dick move. Why reward the hamster for pressing the lever? Why not simply set it up so that when he fails to press it, we punish him?
Behaviorists call this "avoidance." They set the cage up so that it gives the animal an electric shock every 30 seconds unless it hits the lever. It learns very very fast to stay on the lever, all the time, hitting it over and over. Forever.

Why is your mom obsessively harvesting her crops in Farmville? Because they wither and rot if she doesn't. In Ultima Online, your house or castle would start to decay if you didn't return to it regularly. In Animal Crossing, the town grows over with weeds and your virtual house becomes infested with cockroaches if you don't log in often enough. It's the crown jewel of game programming douchebaggery--keep the player clicking and clicking and clicking just to avoid losing the stuff they worked so hard to get."

I'm pretty sure GW is planning on AVOIDING these situations. Nobody should encourage this kind of design decision, ever.

Alexander_Damocles wrote:

No one knew what it tasted like, and probably couldn't guess at the flavor, until *after* the term was invented.

The reason it is brilliant is that you intuitively know what it will taste like even though you have never tasted it before, and there is no such thing as pumpkin spice.

That's real marketing brilliance.

Not to be a douche, but pumpkin spice is another name for pumpkin pie spice, which is a standard mix of spices that you can buy pre-mixed at a grocery store. You might not know that, but 'pumpkin spice' will stil make you think of pumpkin pie, so you know what a pumpkin spice latte will taste like - pumpkin pie and a latte. Which is exactly the ingredients that they add to a latte to make it.

It's still great marketing, but all they did was change it from "Pumpkin Pie Latte" to "Pumpkin Spice Latte". Its the little changes that makes phrases catchier that works. It wasn't a stroke of genius though. Brute force would give anyone that name in about 4 tries. "pumpkin pie latte? no. pumpkin latte? no. pumpkin pie spice latte? no. pumpkin spice latte, there we go, perfect." Retina display is similar, though brute forcing the name might have taken 10 attempts and a little creativity. Maybe.

The key to both examples given were that they took the description and they shortened it and spun it just right. They didn't pull genius out of thin air.