Goblin Squad Member
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There has been complaints that the landscape is a bit boring and lacks strategic choke points. Both these would IMO be adressed by the addition of water, IF the water is meningful, so I wonder: what have been said about the water?
Is there plans for when it arrives? Will there be drowning?
Will there be currents?
Will there be dangerous aquatic predatos?
I would prefere that the water is hard to swim rather than dangerous due to aggressive fishes.
Then bridges would be important and actual points to collect tolls....
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Goblin Squad Member
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"Currents" in the rivers?
Asking questions like these when the game is struggling to even get 30 people to *be* simultaneously in the same area is just....
I wouldn't worry too much about how many people are on for Alpha. ALOT of us have played, enjoyed it, then stopped playing for alpha, because putting alot of time into something then reset and restarting can be draining. Once EE starts, many people will come back and flood the river kingdoms.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I wouldn't worry too much about how many people are on for Alpha. ALOT of us have played, enjoyed it, then stopped playing for alpha, because putting alot of time into something then reset and restarting can be draining. Once EE starts, many people will come back and flood the river kingdoms."Currents" in the rivers?
Asking questions like these when the game is struggling to even get 30 people to *be* simultaneously in the same area is just....
Tyncale wasn't complaining about the late-Alpha decline in the server population. He was specifically referring to the events in Brighthaven on Thursday, December 4, as described in this thread. Apparently, the server became very unstable (lots and lots of desynchs) when a couple of dozen players tried to meet up in Brighthaven.
As mentioned above, Ryan thinks that the problem might be related to the presence of Thornguards in the city, so he's asked us try bringing a large group together in Rotter's Hole.
Schedim: Last I heard, the code for swimming isn't present in the game yet. The easiest way to avoid the need for swimming is to keep the water shallow, so our heads stay above it. The rivers around Thornkeep were the first to have any water in them. Apparently, the water has spread since then, but I still find a whole lot of dry rivers in the northwest.
I don't know whether we'll have drowning, like Everquest 1 and 2, or surface-only swimming, like Lord of the Rings Online. I strongly doubt that we'll have free infinite-duration rebreathers, like Guild Wars 2.
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Goblin Squad Member
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One of the reasons for asking is that I play Argonian routinely in Skyrim and have used water as an tactical advantage several times.
I dont want to avoid drowning/swimming, as shallow water would remove the waters usefulness as a tactical/strategical object. Water should be a PvE element, a hinderance and potential death trap, not only a window dressing.
If swiming is penalised by armour (as it should) it would also give light armour an advantage to raiders that can flee from heavy armoured defenders by jumping into the river (classical trope) .... Unless they carry to much loot that is....
Nice to hear about the water spreading, I have only seen it in Thornguard and in the swamps in the south (finding those was a treat).
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Goblin Squad Member
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One of the reasons for asking is that I play Argonian routinely in Skyrim and have used water as an tactical advantage several times.
I dont want to avoid drowning/swimming, as shallow water would remove the waters usefulness as a tactical/strategical object. Water should be a PvE element, a hinderance and potential death trap, not only a window dressing.
If swiming is penalised by armour (as it should) it would also give light armour an advantage to raiders that can flee from heavy armoured defenders by jumping into the river (classical trope) .... Unless they carry to much loot that is....
Nice to hear about the water spreading, I have only seen it in Thornguard and in the swamps in the south (finding those was a treat).
I indeed put the word currents in quotes because I felt PvE elements like that are unrealistic to ask for even in purely PvE MMO's that have huge budgets.
Let alone in a game that is struggling to get the most basic of MMO features right, which is allowing multiple players to be in the same area in a shared gameworld. We are talking stuff that was frontiered in '96 and '97 when games like Meridian 59 were developed and Everquest was in alpha. I guess the "one-world with a lot of hexes" concept constitutes an entire new frontier in MMO-land.
It is not just that: I have always been very sceptic about posts where people are asking for the PvE-sky with features like you just described, Schedim. Skryim, being a gazillion-dollar single player game franchise that is entirely revolvolving around a rich PvE experience, may have "currents", however, there isn't a single MMO that I can think off, that has such a feature.
Actually, most MMO's do not even bother with real waterbodies, where you can submerge: at most your avatar can move on the surface. Only recently do we see a few games that have bothered to make an underwaterworld again(EQ had it too), like Arche Age, and GW2: both projects with HUGE pockets.
Still no complicated current-system though, that requires new game-systems, more network overhead and also sounds like a balancing nightmare. Imagine an entire army trying to cross a stream, and the server having to calculated who sinks and who does not, and has to move this mob of avatars down the river in a somewhat credable way.
While they are still trying to have 30 people *standing around* in the same area.
I guess, after frantically following the development and release of dozens of MMO's in the past 15 years, and see the disconnect to what people want, what devs promise and what eventually is delivered, I can not keep down the scepticism when people are asking for elaborate Horsebreeding, flowerpicking and "current" systems. Especially when sometimes the answer of the devs is "we would love such a feature ourselves but it has no priority right now".
Because I have seen that happen here on these forums in the past 2 years, and I just *never* see most of that happen. In this regard I also feel that there sometimes is a disconnect between devs that design game-features and the actual coders.
Not spreading doom, not leaning to the Dark Side, just a spark of realism when I see someone asking for a feature that would probably require an entire game-budget on its own.....
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Goblin Squad Member
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Its worth pointing out that fantasy games tend to get the whole armor thing wrong. For example:
Robes and Cloth armors become waterlogged very quickly and are highly dangerous in water. The defeat of the British at Bannockburn has been partly attributed to this.
Chain worn by itself as often depicted in games is far more vulnerable to arrows and spears than cloth.
Heavier armors if the weight is well distributed around the body are not as limiting on mobility as most games might suggest.
As for the rivers - they all had water for a week or so about 4 or 5 weeks ago and then it was turned off again.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In Arche Age, rivers actually do carry you with them. While that may not constitute as "currents" in the way Schedim would like, I found that a nice touch.
I do agree with Tyncale that investing time heavily towards creating an aquatic experience might not be a priority for a while (year+). But I do second the sentiment of having bodies of water to serve as functional part of the game world, rather than just as reflective landscape. :)
I believe DDO also has currents in some of their waters too... just saying.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Oki, I write this as Tyncale wants to read posts here:
WHY THE FRAKK HAZ NONE FRAKKING FRAKERS DONE ANY FRAKKYNING FRAKKK DESYNC, FRAKK CANDY FRAKKING CRUSH HAZ BETTER FRAKKING CODE FRAKKING FRAKK,
Then everyone else who want to dream, speculate and muse about things that would be nifty, useful or good to have, read below.
I belive currents can't be that difficult and intesive to add.drift or currents in the water, it is just a mandatory movement vector, much like falling. I have no claim to now a thing about Unity or modern game engines at all, but I do know a lot about coding physics and stuff in environmental simulations. (Of course falling could be hardcoded to the walking mesh (or what unity uses) but is would be a very limiting way of doing it.
I do not expect it anytime soon, but I think it would add something important to the tactical environment as well as to immersion and aesthetics.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I believe DDO also has currents in some of their waters too... just saying.
It does. When I played it years back in the 1st year of DDO, there were several quest that required swimming long distance and I distinctly remember one that had a very strong current.
It would be cool if swimming and strong water currents entered into PFO. But we are far from that at the moment. Too many things that would be more important to implement.
But we are far from that at the moment. Too many things that would be more important to implement.
Agreed, I was merely pointing out another mmorpg that did have currents implemented into it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As I'm pretty noobish in this area of gaming I like to know things like that, Bendian, there is all to many defeatists here that put down their concrete boots on dreams and ideas (I glare at you, Tyncale).
I guess it is due to alpha fatigue, I would understand the boot coming down on stuff like in my second post above, but stoping on reasoning about future developments.... just comes down as .... Smallminded or something.
If people want to get a little idea of what it take to program, research MUDS. Both clients and servers, the servers generally have a source code that you can download. It will show you the amount of code it take to write a program that handles networking, produce words to a screen, keep inventory, skills and spells.
Also, to change/add a spell/skill, you have to do so in a few different locations and files.
Just FYI, its not the easiest, especially since muds are not very well documented in terms to the coding.
@schedim Your right it is a level or two above that, but it still takes time and effort. Think of all the skills/feats/equipment we already have.
Thats all I was trying to point out.
As I'm pretty noobish in this area of gaming I like to know things like that, Bendian, there is all to many defeatists here that put down their concrete boots on dreams and ideas (I glare at you, Tyncale).
I guess it is due to alpha fatigue, I would understand the boot coming down on stuff like in my second post above, but stoping on reasoning about future developments.... just comes down as .... Smallminded or something.
dude, they are struggling to fix the basic stuff.
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Goblin Squad Member
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dude, they are struggling to fix the basic stuff.As I'm pretty noobish in this area of gaming I like to know things like that, Bendian, there is all to many defeatists here that put down their concrete boots on dreams and ideas (I glare at you, Tyncale).
I guess it is due to alpha fatigue, I would understand the boot coming down on stuff like in my second post above, but stoping on reasoning about future developments.... just comes down as .... Smallminded or something.
I've come to appreciate Schedim's point of view. Just because things are a low priority doesn't mean we should stop talking about them, as long as we are aware that we're talking about a distant point.
Part of the excitement is imagining where PFO could be in five years, not limiting ourselves to talking about what can be fixed by EE.