Goblin Squad Member
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Doesn't that put far to much emphasis on the game being about gear?Well considering the majority of the opinion is more about encoraging saving the good gear for emergency situations. I think where I disagree with kit is the 2-3 months for gear to wear out, I was thinking more along the lines of 2-3 days of use for the best gear (which you should not be intending to use more then once a week, short of a long drawn out war, as it should be too expensive to go that route for everyday usage IMO).
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1. It rarely being a good idea to use your best gear
2. The difference in the best and worse gear being at the absolute strongest, double the damage (compared to your theme park where they are 1200% or larger), Also if you see my post earlier on this page about the possible limited spawning resources, Having a short lifespan on weapons, could allow players to prevent a kingdom from being able to produce, as a cutting off supplies tactic. with permanant weapons, that causes nothing to change, but with the best weapons being fragile and remade on a daily basis durring a heavy war, that could be a huge hit. Forcing sides to have to both protect their resource nodes, as well as their main cities.
I agree with all your points...and could probably be convinced of the logic of a shorter lifetime for items.
But...I just thought of something interesting, repairing a sword normally means you fix burrs or notches in the blade, what does fixing a mace entail? I would like to see weapons degrade at different rates...this at first sounds nitpicky but swords are much more popular in MMOs, whereas maces are rarely used unless forced by some class mechanic. Weapons types should have different degrade rates...and the fact a mace degrades a quarter as fast as swords might increase their popularity (as was the case IRL).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Doesn't that put far to much emphasis on the game being about gear?Well considering the majority of the opinion is more about encoraging saving the good gear for emergency situations. I think where I disagree with kit is the 2-3 months for gear to wear out, I was thinking more along the lines of 2-3 days of use for the best gear (which you should not be intending to use more then once a week, short of a long drawn out war, as it should be too expensive to go that route for everyday usage IMO).
By
1. It rarely being a good idea to use your best gear
2. The difference in the best and worse gear being at the absolute strongest, double the damage (compared to your theme park where they are 1200% or larger), Also if you see my post earlier on this page about the possible limited spawning resources, Having a short lifespan on weapons, could allow players to prevent a kingdom from being able to produce, as a cutting off supplies tactic. with permanant weapons, that causes nothing to change, but with the best weapons being fragile and remade on a daily basis durring a heavy war, that could be a huge hit. Forcing sides to have to both protect their resource nodes, as well as their main cities.I agree with all your points...and could probably be convinced of the logic of a shorter lifetime for items.
But...I just thought of something interesting, repairing a sword normally means you fix burrs or notches in the blade, what does fixing a mace entail? I would like to see weapons degrade at different rates...this at first sounds nitpicky but swords are much more popular in MMOs, whereas maces are rarely used unless forced by some class mechanic. Weapons types should have different degrade rates...and the fact a mace degrades a quarter as fast as swords might increase their popularity (as was the case IRL).
Actually not a bad idea, Actually having a damage/durrability trade off etc could add an extra dimension to the entire weapon selection option. Giving the mace say the same damage, but a significantly lower critical chance in exchange for a higher durability, could make weapon choices more situational and encorage more varied choices. While more arbitrary, the same can be done with wands/staffs whatever items wizards use, staffs that say boost the less popular schools, could have higher durability etc...
the players, whether they are "Hero's" or "Kings" or "Rogue's" or "Crafters" are SUPPOSED to have an effect upon the game environmentI agree completely, I just don't agree that the effect upon the game should be "increased the price of the wineskin from 1 gp to 57 gp". Seems a funny measure of influence to me. Now if you were to say "Claimed a block of land from a dragon and settled a village and yet the price of a wineskin stayed at 1 gp" I would be more inclined to think I was involved in a non-static game with a point to playing.
Meaning the price of the object, in this case a wineskin, is immaterial to the overall game of kingdom building and adventuring.
There's a cartoon in the 1e AD&D DMG which covers the type of game WoW became...
S.
Honestly, if I am playing a merchant and I can't affect the economy of an object, like your wineskin, I do not want to play the game. The whole point of being a merchant is to be able to manipulate the economy of the game. Price fixing and undercutting are 2 ways of doing this. Price fixing only works when either A. you have more money than you care about or B. you control the supply of the item. WoW had issues with crafting materials because A. people had infinite disposable income with nothing to invest in and B. many of the crafting materials were not worth the time investment to gather.
In a game focused on the crafting, where the materials are in much higher supply and anyone can craft, price fixing just results in the fixer being undercut on the market by someone else. In the end, prices will stabalize based on the time required to gather the raw materials to craft it or the item's drop rate. Low demand and lack of decay can cause some items to sell for less than crafting, which means you probably want to include a mechanic for breaking apart objects into components (a sword is still steel.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Honestly, if I am playing a merchant and I can't affect the economy of an object, like your wineskin, I do not want to play the game. The whole point of being a merchant is to be able to manipulate the economy of the game. Price fixing and undercutting are 2 ways of doing this. Price fixing only works when either A. you have more money than you care about or B. you control the supply of the item. WoW had issues with crafting materials because A. people had infinite disposable income with nothing to invest in and B. many of the crafting materials were not worth the time investment to gather.
In a game focused on the crafting, where the materials are in much higher supply and anyone can craft, price fixing just results in the fixer being undercut on the market by someone else. In the end, prices will stabalize based on the time required to gather the raw materials to craft it or the item's drop rate. Low demand and lack of decay can cause some items to sell for less than crafting, which means you probably want to include a mechanic for breaking apart objects into components (a sword is still steel.)
Agreed, also the other thing to note, is there will likely be a good number of merchants and a good number of seperate towns with completely different economies. If the merchants in kingdom X work together to a pricefixing scam to raise the price of Y. You can walk a half hour to kingdom Z, and purchase it for it's fair price, now if it is slightly raised then it is probably not worth a half hour trip, and merchants who are citizen to town X, probably shouldn't have the goal of screwing over their own town for short term profit.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My ideal system....
Gear has both a hardness factor and a durability factor. Hardness determines how likely it is to sustain damage in combat, durability determines how much damage it can sustain before becoming unusable.
Each piece of gear can have different values for the above depending upon materials used and quality of construction (better crafted gear = better values).
During combat gear will be expected to sustain damage to it's durability. It's also possible (rarely) for gear to fail catastrophicaly during combat destroying that item (i.e. sword goes **snap** when blocking that Hill Giants axe). This means a wise combatant tries to bring some sort of backup weapon along. The game has encumbarance values..so a character has to make some intelligent choices about what he takes out with him (i.e. no bringing an armory full of claymore's and pikes with you).
Gear can also be lost upon the death of the character if there is no one around to recover it in a certain amount of time.
This means gear does get attrited from the game economy. Magical/High End gear SHOULD have better hardness/durability factors then regular gear (Just wouldn't make sense for the genre/campaign setting or internal world logic for such gear to be weaker) but also VASTLY more expensive to replace/repair. That means people would still by shy about using thier top end gear for fear of losing it but it's not like it would almost NEVER get used.
Damage to gear should be repairable. Repairing gear should have a CHANCE to permanently reduce the durability of the item depending upon the difficulty of the item to craft and the skill of the crafter repairing it (essentialy it's a skill roll to repair). If NPC vendors are allowed to repair then they ALWAYS (no roll) reduce durability.
The cost of the gear should be dependant upon the base cost of the item plus the extent of damage sustained. Maybe something near 0 durability might cost 1/4th to 1/3rd of what it cost to obtain new in order to repair.
very basic gear (i.e. iron sword) should be availble from NPC vendors (although they might have limited stocks that replenish over time) and be dirt cheap to buy and repair. More powerfull items are obtained through PC crafters or as treasure.
Most adventurers once they gain a decent number of levels will probably end up using some middling gear for regular use (say perhaps the D&D equivalent of a non-magical +1 masterwork sword). Something that has a small bonus in combat but has reasonable repair costs.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My ideal system....
Gear has both a hardness factor and a durability factor. Hardness determines how likely it is to sustain damage in combat, durability determines how much damage it can sustain before becoming unusable.
Each piece of gear can have different values for the above depending upon materials used and quality of construction (better crafted gear = better values).During combat gear will be expected to sustain damage to it's durability. It's also possible (rarely) for gear to fail catastrophicaly during combat destroying that item (i.e. sword goes **snap** when blocking that Hill Giants axe). This means a wise combatant tries to bring some sort of backup weapon along. The game has encumbarance values..so a character has to make some intelligent choices about what he takes out with him (i.e. no bringing an armory full of claymore's and pikes with you).
Gear can also be lost upon the death of the character if there is no one around to recover it in a certain amount of time.
This means gear does get attrited from the game economy. Magical/High End gear SHOULD have better hardness/durability factors then regular gear (Just wouldn't make sense for the genre/campaign setting or internal world logic for such gear to be weaker) but also VASTLY more expensive to replace/repair. That means people would still by shy about using thier top end gear for fear of losing it but it's not like it would almost NEVER get used.
Damage to gear should be repairable. Repairing gear should have a CHANCE to permanently reduce the durability of the item depending upon the difficulty of the item to craft and the skill of the crafter repairing it (essentialy it's a skill roll to repair). If NPC vendors are allowed to repair then they ALWAYS (no roll) reduce durability.
The cost of the gear should be dependant upon the base cost of the item plus the extent of damage sustained. Maybe something near 0 durability might cost 1/4th to 1/3rd of what it cost to obtain new in order to repair.
very basic gear (i.e. iron...
I like the idea largely, just 1 thing I would consider tweaking. What if weapon break chance was also partially based on your skill in said weapon (there still should be a cap as to how much you can reduce it), Personally I hate the meta concept of level X, or skill x is needed to equip this weapon, but balance does need to be in place to prevent massive rapid power leveling, instead of preventing players from equipping the weapon at all, you could have an increased chance of it breaking if their skill in said weapon isn't high enough.
Say a beginner has the normal chance of breaking a dagger, but if you give him the nicest most expensive dagger, his chance of seriously damaging it increases drastically until his dagger skill reaches a certain level.
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I can still see an economy based on item creation rather than repair, however, this would require that all gear being 'bound' and that only venders buy unwanted 'used' items (for 50% creation value adjusted for haggling skill).
Alternatively I would like to see a mechanic where someone can buy a sharpening stone and be able to repair their sword themselves - unless it reaches some critical level (broken condition?). So the markets now would be in New Stuff (tm), Repair Broken Stuff (tm), and Repair Kits (tm).
Always having to return to town after every few days doesn't appeal.
I 'personally' would prefer to avoid the WoW/Diablo-like cycle of Adventure-Repair-Sell <repeat> given that the Repair part is just an annoyance and rarely removes enough money from characters to justify it's use.
S.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I can still see an economy based on item creation rather than repair, however, this would require that all gear being 'bound' and that only venders buy unwanted 'used' items (for 50% creation value adjusted for haggling skill).
Alternatively I would like to see a mechanic where someone can buy a sharpening stone and be able to repair their sword themselves - unless it reaches some critical level (broken condition?). So the markets now would be in New Stuff (tm), Repair Broken Stuff (tm), and Repair Kits (tm).
Always having to return to town after every few days doesn't appeal.
I 'personally' would prefer to avoid the WoW/Diablo-like cycle of Adventure-Repair-Sell <repeat> given that the Repair part is just an annoyance and rarely removes enough money from characters to justify it's use.
S.
I've never heard of an MMO of any genre that you don't wind up in town once at least once a day no matter what, and it just plain makes sense, MMO's no matter what you are generally working with other people on a regular basis, to get people to join you and do something with them... well the middle of the woods is not the best place to do that, assuming you are always working with the same group of 4 people, odds of you logging back in at the same time are rather low, so you hang out in town while you wait for them to arrive. Second this game is focusing highly on kingdom building, meaning your main focus is assisting your town, something that rarely takes the form of, set out on your own, check back in in a few weeks.
I also don't think "vendors" buying items based on a haggling skill is going to be an application. I'm pretty sure the NPCs are intended as a kick off point, and not a longterm portion of the game. I'm still more in favor of the gear actually completely being destroyed in many situations, but repairing for a noteable cost of resources also makes sense, as long as it does not turn into a direct gold for quick fix system (note the players who are doing the repairs are more then welcome to stock up on the resources, as long as someone is always gathering them, thus keeping a steady finite flow of resources competing with the demand).
Also if the options for an economy to be based on creation, if the only way for that to be done, I say total destruction of items is far more appropriate then binding. For binding to be effective, you have to have a regular upgrade chain, meaning a continuous steady growth of power for the equipment. Meaning the difference between players power level between a new player, a medium player, and a top player, is a continuously expanding gap. This means low and mid players more or less hit the benches during wars, and all world pvp events. It works for a theme park where battles are tiered out (IE low level always fights low level, high level always fights high level), but when you are trying to mesh them onto the same side and meet them on the same battle field, you want high level players to be better then low level players, but not in a completely different league.
A veteran vs a mid level player should be, NBA player vs college basketball player, not NBA vs the kindergarten team.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...My ideal system....
Gear has both a hardness factor and a durability factor. Hardness determines how likely it is to sustain damage in combat, durability determines how much damage it can sustain before becoming unusable.
Each piece of gear can have different values for the above depending upon materials used and quality of construction (better crafted gear = better values).During combat gear will be expected to sustain damage to it's durability. It's also possible (rarely) for gear to fail catastrophicaly during combat destroying that item (i.e. sword goes **snap** when blocking that Hill Giants axe). This means a wise combatant tries to bring some sort of backup weapon along. The game has encumbarance values..so a character has to make some intelligent choices about what he takes out with him (i.e. no bringing an armory full of claymore's and pikes with you).
Gear can also be lost upon the death of the character if there is no one around to recover it in a certain amount of time.
This means gear does get attrited from the game economy. Magical/High End gear SHOULD have better hardness/durability factors then regular gear (Just wouldn't make sense for the genre/campaign setting or internal world logic for such gear to be weaker) but also VASTLY more expensive to replace/repair. That means people would still by shy about using thier top end gear for fear of losing it but it's not like it would almost NEVER get used.
Damage to gear should be repairable. Repairing gear should have a CHANCE to permanently reduce the durability of the item depending upon the difficulty of the item to craft and the skill of the crafter repairing it (essentialy it's a skill roll to repair). If NPC vendors are allowed to repair then they ALWAYS (no roll) reduce durability.
The cost of the gear should be dependant upon the base cost of the item plus the extent of damage sustained. Maybe something near 0 durability might cost 1/4th to 1/3rd of what it cost to obtain new in order to repair.
very
I agree with both of you Onishi and Mel. Further tweaking I would have to argue with:
Magical/High End gear SHOULD have better hardness/durability factors then regular gear (Just wouldn't make sense for the genre/campaign setting or internal world logic for such gear to be weaker) but also VASTLY more expensive to replace/repair.
Silver laced weapons could do more damage to some creatures, but would be structurally weaker. Magical weapons start out as non-magical weapons. If you construct them of shoddy materials, then you end up with a magical item with shoddy durability. This durability does not limit the power of the enchant(s)...and one could even place enchants upon it that do increase the durability, but nothing in my keen enchant automatically increases the durability. I agree with what you say that it makes sense that these magical/high end gear have better properties, but that is usually because they are made by crafters who care...counterfeits could be made for much cheaper...
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I've never heard of an MMO of any genre that you don't...
I was hoping that PF Online would refine what we consider an MMO to be - if not then I think it'll go the way of Warhammer Online.
The only novel thing I have read that PF Online will have is the kingdom building aspect - other than that 'rumors' make PF Online sound like the same-old same-old we have had for the last decade.
I don't have the answers, but I hope they are reevaluating the way things are done in all the MMO about now and asking themselves "why is this done this way?" and then in the context of the game they wish to make implement the best system - which may replicate the current status quo or something novel. What I would hate to see is all the current MMO ways of doing things blindly tacked on to a RTS engine (e.g. what you would get if you combined Warcraft III with World of Warcraft).
I can see now why it seems like using the PF PnP ruleset as a basis for this game is a bad idea (and I need now eat my words from another thread).
S.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I've never heard of an MMO of any genre that you don't...I was hoping that PF Online would refine what we consider an MMO to be - if not then I think it'll go the way of Warhammer Online.
Agreed, there are many aspects that need to be changed. However the idea that you will be dropping by town quite often is not one that makes any sense to be one of them. The very heart and core of anything MMO, is getting people together, which involves many people going to the same place. Now actual expiditions where you don't go to town (say you are camping, traveling as a group), it may make sense to bring even a pure crafter with you, and protect him. But yeah, no matter how revolutionary you go, if going where people are is not something to encourage, then it should be an offline game.