Goblin Squad Member
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I wouldn't mind a 'day job' system, as long as I could select it and my character isn't a PvP target when there's no 'P' on my end. Or, if for example the character's day job is being a town guard, there's an alternate set of equipment worn and put at risk for that. Stocking an armoury for such purposes would give the artisans more to do.Sure makes a good argument for NPC worker bees and residents when the player pop is low. Keep some life in town.Or... or... well... you could... maybe... keep characters in-world at all times, even when players are logged off.
I certainly wouldn't complain about that :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not really a fan of the minimap system. I would like something more like a compass system with an arrow pointing north(so when your character is looking south the arrow is pointing at the bottom of the screen) and around that arrow you'd see all stuff you normally see on minimaps(nodes, characters and whatnot) except for the actual map.
Sometimes when moving in the games, you just look at the mini map and use it to navigate because it is possible because of the actual background map. With the compass system players would have to navigate in the actual game world with just quickly referencing the compass. I think people would learn to use it quite easily.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It seems like the minimap and your compass system are the same thing, but your system doesn't show the topography. I personally don't see any reason why navigating with the aide of a minimap is a bad thing; sometimes the minimap even hurts more than helps when it makes it look like I can get somewhere I can't. Why do you think players shouldn't navigate using the minimap?
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Goblin Squad Member
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It seems like the minimap and your compass system are the same thing, but your system doesn't show the topography. I personally don't see any reason why navigating with the aide of a minimap is a bad thing; sometimes the minimap even hurts more than helps when it makes it look like I can get somewhere I can't. Why do you think players shouldn't navigate using the minimap?
The more time looking at the actual game world, the better I think. The difference with a compass and minimap would be the rotating north and "the stuff" would rotate with the north also. Where as the minimap has a fixed north. It's like the character has a map taped to his forearm that he keeps referencing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Very difficult to defend that much length.Well, then, imagine what defending that length will be like without any wall :-).
Point is, Jazz, you only defend the lines it makes sense to defend. No point in extending yourself too much (see recent thoughts on Isandlwana as an example of what happens when you do). If you have a settlement of even 1000, given the numbers likely to be online at any one time, those walls are way too long.
I hope that settlements will be able to start out with much shorter walls and then add more outside and contiguous to them so we end up with what are effectively walled quarters in a city, much like many mediaeval towns. Not a massive priority, but it'd be nice...Of course, this could just be a place holder, or an NPC town, in which case we'll just have to wait and see.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Great video, really has the feel of a sandbox about it.
When I read the blogs with all the details about gameplay and gamesystems, and then see the video and realize that you guys also have to do that part: the graphics, the environments, the avatars and armors, combat-specifics and such I can't help but think the project is almost too huge.
Not only do you guys have to make a MMO from the ground up with all the art, avatars and armors, you have to build in these many new and different game systems and mechanics that have not been done before.
I am glad that GW is keeping it real and are not over-promising stuff like "we will have 8 races" from the start and such.
What a huge undertaking.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hope that settlements will be able to start out with much shorter walls and then add more outside and contiguous to them so we end up with what are effectively walled quarters in a city, much like many mediaeval towns. Not a massive priority, but it'd be nice...
Agree fully. But this is fine for the Minimum Viable Product.
My comment on scale: Those houses look huge and well constructed, perfect for rich and powerful city dwellers. But where do normal people live? I'd love to see smaller thatched-roof cottages, log cabins or other small faster-to-build houses as the first level of housing. (But not in the MVP).
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Goblin Squad Member
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The more time looking at the actual game world, the better I think.
I understand this perspective and am quite sympathetic to it. I've often had the experience where I was using the mini-map as my primary form of navigation and simply ignored what my character was seeing in the game world. My hope is that I can use the mini-map more as a tactical map than as a navigation aid. That is, I'd like it to show nearby allies and enemies with easy to process information about each.
_____________________________________________I hope that settlements will be able to start out with much shorter walls and then add more outside and contiguous to them so we end up with what are effectively walled quarters in a city, much like many mediaeval towns. Not a massive priority, but it'd be nice...
This is my vision of an advanced Settlement site:
Such a thing will evolve from something like this:
And it will probably start with something like this:
Unfortunately, some of those links are dead. Here's Carcassonne.
________________________________________________@Tyncale, I truly love reading posts like yours that show a grounded understanding of the project and an appreciation for the dedication and sheer work of the team that's undertaking it. Bravo :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nihimon
I've seen the links before and unfortunately got the impression that Ryan was talking more about the permanence and structure of the walls rather than their extent - much in the same way a tent evolves into a wooden hut and then a stone building. I would be very happy to be wrong.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hope that settlements will be able to start out with much shorter walls and then add more outside and contiguous to them so we end up with what are effectively walled quarters in a city, much like many mediaeval towns. Not a massive priority, but it'd be nice...Agree fully. But this is fine for the Minimum Viable Product.
My comment on scale: Those houses look huge and well constructed, perfect for rich and powerful city dwellers. But where do normal people live? I'd love to see smaller thatched-roof cottages, log cabins or other small faster-to-build houses as the first level of housing. (But not in the MVP).
This is interesting, had not thought about it. Will there be "setting/context" buildings around our own buildings to add distraction/life/flavour to settlements? I guess this embellishment for settlement's would be crowdforging material.
@Tyncale: Could not agree more. Sums up how much work the devs have put into the game already. Very well said
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nihimon
I've seen the links before and unfortunately got the impression that Ryan was talking more about the permanence and structure of the walls rather than their extent - much in the same way a tent evolves into a wooden hut and then a stone building. I would be very happy to be wrong.
If you read down a bit, you'll see this exchange:
Based on that, advanced settlements would sprawl outside their original walls, and then potentially have larger walls built around the new sprawl. I'm fine with all of that being fixed rather than player-directed, since the payers will not be dictating exactly where every hovel is built.
As I understand it, PCs will say "build us a sawmill", and will be told "We need this much time to complete it, this much material to start, and will need these amounts at these known times to continue, are you sure?" Later on, the PCs might hear "We've encountered a problem, and we need you to [provide additional materials|clear out the cave that we discovered digging the foundation|refine the architectural plans] before we can [finish|continue]."
Exactly.
It's not 100% clear whether Ryan was agreeing with one or the other or both parts of Decius's post, or even if it was to Decius's post at all.
I'd like to think he was agreeing about the concentric rings of walls.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thanks for the update.
The buildings have a nice Tudor / medieval look about them.
Particularly like the scaling of the trees. The clip at the end as the troupe run through the woods towards the goblin encampment, a real sense of scale.
Want more, give more, more more more!!
ooops, sorry, over excited. ;)
My question if combat stance will be tweaked on, sword perpendicular to the ground and arm extended out just doesn't seem right to me. Too rigid I guess if I had to term it.
Otherwise I like what I see and look forward to seeing how things pan out.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Let me place my self on the long list of people loving the music.
Jumps up and down with glee...
My observation I noticed is that even at this early stage the person wearing the cape movement is fluid. The cape does not clip the body when the person starts stops or changes direction. Now if it also does not clip through their quiver of arrow you will find me the happiest ranger in the world.
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Goblin Squad Member
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After downloading the 90Mb file and viewed at half speed (thanks Nightdrifter) I noticed the following:
1) I see that there is a 6 sec bar right below the stamina bar. Watching this while the character attacks gives me a sense of the "round" timing.
2) No sheaths or quivers.
3) Goblin movement distance matches character movement distance but looks odd because of the shorter stride of a small character. Ogre not so much.
4) There are carts but no horses. Maybe they will be character drawn in EE.
5) I think we can get a good idea of watchtower architecture from towers in town.
6) There appears to be a military fort at one end of town and a larger stone structure inside walls that might be the Town Hall, and the target for taking a town.
7) There are thatched roof houses and timbered roof houses. (Possibly to match different economic status, randomwalker?)
8) Very interested in the explanation of the wound symbols next to the target icon in upper left corner.
9) Would also like to know the significance of + and - controls by mini-map.
10) Framerate indicator is interesting. Is this an artifice of god or debug mode?
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Goblin Squad Member
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A few weeks ago we saw portions of this video and there were many character models lined up with their arms out. One of the bruisers in the line up was a handsome Dwarf with a heavy beard, bulging muscles and a belly that looked like he could hold his ale! But all I saw in the action sequences were humans. Humans are a decent lot, but I was hoping to see more of my kin in the footage.
Any update on the non-human races and how they are coming along?
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Goblin Squad Member
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If the base WIP here is anything to go by, the finished product should look amazing.
And the music is a good choice, for the video at least. Will it be the same within the game?
I like the fact you guys are not prescribing to standard female armors in fantasy settings. High heels and underboob does not armor make (distraction, sure, but not armor). I understand aesthetics, but sometimes you need to weigh it against logic :p
Will the armors be mix/match type, where you can keep the look of a certain piece but keep the stats/particulars of a newer/higher level piece (ala Guild Wars2)?
I cant wait to see some of the spell effects and how those work!
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Goblin Squad Member
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The game looks awesome so far... And not a WOW clone by far. Its nice to see characters wearing armor that is more realistic then some elaborate mess.
That's a good thing to point out. What are the characters wearing? Practical looking adventuring gear instead of a modern American football uniform chewed up and vomited out by a rainbow.
It makes me hopeful high level gear will look like this instead of this.
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Goblin Squad Member
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WoW has had some really awesome looking armor and outfits....there was the one priest outfit from the Burning Crusade "Black Temple" that was black with white angel wings. IT was a perfect et of cloth armor for a priest character...suited the class to a tee. Hard to get, required many runs through the temple and got very repetitive. Still one of the most desirable sets of armor the game ever produced.
Others are truly horrible looking...Andius' link is one of the worst, but there are many bad ones. No idea what they were thinking.
SWTOR had some ridiculous looking high end armor sets....I had a 50 sage and the PvP gear was just awful looking.
I will be fine with normal looking gear that has a few frills, or a icon or tabard to show the characters achievement, or a special tab on the sleeve, or a patch. Something subtle but meaningful.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sure makes a good argument for NPC worker bees and residents when the player pop is low. Keep some life in town.Or... or... well... you could... maybe... keep characters in-world at all times, even when players are logged off.
There was an MMO called Atriarch that proposed to leave characters in-game at all times. It seems to have crashed and burned in a 10+ year development cycle, but they had put some thought into this idea.
The developers wanted to incorporate a serious deterrent for killing someone who left their character online running a shop, with a sliding scale down to no deterrent for killing someone whose character was the Atriarch equivalent of a Settlement leader in PFO. The idea was that leaders had to expect assassination attempts or attacks as part of the (prestigious) job, but shopkeepers had less reason to expect to log in to a dead character.
That game was also considering a perma-death system, where logging in to a dead character would basically mean playing the original character's offspring and heir (if the player had left an egg in storage... it was an odd sci-fi system where characters had distinctly non-human biology).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Whenever building fortifications in other games (eg minecraft) it is very important to be able to shoot at enemies standing right next to the wall. There must not be any blind spots.
So can you please allow Machicolation in the walls?
Also, please make sure that the towers stick out far enough from the wall to allow enfilading fire, and are close enough to protect each other.
It would be a nice option to allow scorpions & springalds to be emplaced on these towers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Really impressive, for me at least the art style seems spot on. The lighting looks really good and if GW can launch with a proper day-night cycle, this will do wonders in maintaining the feel of being part of a living and breathing world instead of a static "zone". Now, only the weather effects to go...
Keep up the good work and thank you!
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Goblin Squad Member
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I really love the realism of the environment, with nice points of interest like the statue, the well and especially the building 'signs' (awesome).
Shadowing was very impressive, and the day/night cycle is a really nice touch.
I liked that the town had room to expand, maybe a spot for a park or a graveyard, the building's look basic (but detailed), and hopefully when we build them we can decide on some colour tints (3 or more colours) to add variety to the city.
I liked the simple UI design , it really made me focus on the action, and not overwhelmed by the system -- made me feel closer to the action.
Character models were a little chopped (for movement - and yes, it is early in that design), but the detail work on them is really nice, and realistic.
Overall, a big thank you to the artists that are making the visuals, very, VERY, impressed. Please have a beer on me!
Brax the Sage, Member of The Empyrean Order, of the community of Brighthaven.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I know this is a minor nitpick, but - is it just me or does the extremely large stride of the human characters bother anyone else? I'm a fairly tall dude and would have to be practically jumping to match that long, slow pace in covered ground per step. Look at the female rogue/ranger at ~2:20. Her legs wouldn't be able to move that far in a non-jumping run and still be able to support her torso, in my opinion.
Minor nitpick aside, the game looks very nice for still being in an early stage. It has both very pleasant architecture and appropriate outfits for once. I can't wait for this to come out!
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Goblin Squad Member
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I know this is a minor nitpick, but - is it just me or does the extremely large stride of the human characters bother anyone else? I'm a fairly tall dude and would have to be practically jumping to match that long, slow pace in covered ground per step.
I actually really liked it. Something about it seemed almost soothing to me. Then again, one of my coworkers told me she can always tell when I'm walking down the hall near her office because I take such long strides...
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CEO, Goblinworks
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Animations are going to be a part of this game that will be often raised as a priority for Crowdforging. You can spend a nearly infinite amount of time on animations for a videogame.
Just for the curious, what you are seeing is art, not science. Michael Wallin, our animator, hand crafts all the animations you see. There's some procedural magic done by the system to blend between one animation and another (like between "running" and "standing still"). But most of what you see is his artistic ability.
We don't (and most videogames don't) use kinesthetic models to generate animation. In other words, we're not working with a system that simulates all the bones, muscles and tendons of a body and all the complex interactions between them and with gravity. You may hear the term "rag doll physics" thrown around from time to time. That's a system normally used in place of animations to allow a body to be procedurally animated in scenes where it doesn't need to demonstrate very life-like behavior (like a dead body being blown through the air, or a body sliding down a hill). Most of the time, most of what you see is animation derived from a "rig" of options that allows an animator to place a figure in various positions, and then generate the "tween" positions that blend from one stance to another.
The animator's art is making those stances and the blends between them look natural and "right", and in anticipating how the programmers will manipulate that animation as a figure is altered from a baseline; made slightly larger, or smaller, or faster or slower.
This is time consuming stuff. There are big cost/benefit tradeoffs to spending time & resources on animation. So for Early Enrollment we're focusing on getting a basic suite of serviceable animations completed (not just for one rig, but for a rig for both genders for several races, plus monsters and monstrous creatures). Over time this is absolutely something that we can iterate on to an amazing degree if that is what the Crowdforging process indicates the community would like to see us do.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I know this is a minor nitpick, but - is it just me or does the extremely large stride of the human characters bother anyone else? I'm a fairly tall dude and would have to be practically jumping to match that long, slow pace in covered ground per step.I actually really liked it. Something about it seemed almost soothing to me. Then again, one of my coworkers told me she can always tell when I'm walking down the hall near her office because I take such long strides...
Some 35+ years ago I was on my high school cross country team (if you saw me now....). There were several really excellent runners on our team, and even though I went to a small school we won the state cross country championship several years in a row (from 1973 through 1978, and I contributed very little to those accomplishments).
Some runners have a really fast pace, but an awkward stride, yet they can really move! Our best runner looked like he struggled when he ran, but he won almost every single race during his five years on the team (we had no middle school, grades 8-12). One of our runners had such a smooth stride his head did not move at all while he ran, and his stride was really long...it looked like he could run up 3 or 4 steps easily in that one stride, and he could go on for miles. Finally we had one guy who was persistent as hell but should not have ever gone out for the team. He clopped like a horse and was drooling all over himself at the end of every race. But he ran every race, and finished every race, and came in last in almost every race. But he persisted. I am glad I wasn't his feet, but I sure admired his gumption. Gimli in LotR reminded me of this guy.
I hope we have a variety of strides, movements, pacing, hill climbing techniques, stair navigation animations. These will all necessarily be the same or similar to get the product out the door, but having variety will become more important as all the other tools, graphics and bugs are smoothed out later on.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Don't get me wrong - if it were released as-is, I would still sign up on Day One, and I don't wish at all to belittle how much work Mr. Wallin has put into his craft. My post was meant more as constructive criticism. It was something that stuck out to me on the initial watch; though, after watching it again, it seems slightly less out of place than I remember. Still, I feel like the characters, especially the females, are bounding. I would feel comfortable giving an ogre that gait, but it seems too slow and loping for a medium-sized creature that is running.
All my opinion, of course. Keep up the incredible work, Mr. Dancey!