another Ultima

[Malcolm]

Meanwhile on the PvP continent is a magical land where there are gold nuggets dripping off the walls of the caves and the trees are made of delicious meats.

You going to give the PvP folk insane loot (because they will mine the fuck out of the gold nuggets before the non-PvP folk get there) or have a dual currency system? You're talking two sets of people that are mostly disjoint but occasionally overlap. They need checks and balances.

Why would a set of hardcore PvPers allow some prey into their midst without killing them? Because they serve a purpose of some kind. The most direct one I can think of is crafting. Most gangs don't have a full-time gunsmith, but they all need fucking guns, they all need a weapons dealer or a connection or something. But that connection eventually needs someone up the chain that can get the product right when it becomes a "gun," i.e. right after it stops being "assorted raw materials." Shit, you could even make the best raw materials drop from absolute bad-ass raid bosses. That means the PvP folk will have to farm the ingots while the rest make the swords.

This simply wasn't a feasible solution in UO, but it's a pattern you could apply to the problem in some other MMOG. Trouble there is you're now designing two games for two sets of people: the people who mainly consume items from the in-game economy and the ones who produce the items. But someone can always get around this by paying for two accounts, because no company in their right mind would say, "No, no. You can only pay us so much money. It would throw off the game dynamic."

On the other hand, can you see a guild of asshole PKs gank a newb blacksmith from some merchant consortium only to have the ranking smiths sabotage the equipment they sell the asshole guild ... maybe so they get destroyed next time they rumble with their enemies?

That's one example I can think of, at least. There are others.



Edited By Malcolm on 1365465245

[TPRJones]

You going to give the PvP folk insane loot (because they will mine the fuck out of the gold nuggets before the non-PvP folk get there) or have a dual currency system? ... Why would a set of hardcore PvPers allow some prey into their midst without killing them?

Good point. Part of it would be that resource nodes are player specific, meaning when player X mines some gold, it's gone in his game but player Y can still come and mine it for himself as well. That also gives the PvP people some reason to let newbs in because they can go mine the things that you can't anymore. You still gank them, you just gank them on the way out instead of the way in.

I like the crafting idea, but I'm not sure what to do with it exactly. Another thing I'd expect to see come up would be carebears hiring PvP guilds to act as guards on their resource gathering trips. But that wouldn't happen until the server was a bit more mature.

I'm not sure there's a perfect way to balance carebear and PvP into the same game, but there are things that can be tried that may work. Or may not. Won't know until someone tries it. And I imagine Lord British is the one to try it.

[Malcolm]

Hell, even charging flat out "protection fees" for traveling through kick-ass PvP resource gathering areas would be an improvement. Miners can pay with gold, ingots, whatever, and have it go to the guild vault in exchange for a certain amount of time where they're flagged as temporary allies.

Hmm ... what if you made the best raw materials available through the following means...

Givens:
- player crafted items need to be have the potential to be way, way, way better than anything you can get from NPC merchants
- you make it so that each player account is tailored towards PvP or not PvP (roughly speaking)
- make it so one player can't be logged in with multiple accounts under any circumstances ... as long as it's 1 human being playing 1 account for 1 gaming session, I don't care ... but it can't be like UO where you could have two of your dudes logged in at once on the same machine, just running 2nd UO or some shit

Process for getting "the best" toys:
1) Everyone wants the ultra uber mega rare thingy of awesomeness because it can be used to make the best player crafted items
2) The UUMR thingy is in the UURM bad-ass area ... like an entire UUMR workshop contained in a huge, sprawling area that's a bitch even if you just want to unlock the door
3) The UUMR thingy can only be harvested by a team of skilled resource gatherers working in together while warriors protect them from ... something.

Something can be a raid boss, or perhaps other players. Maybe you make it like a king-of-the-hill type of thing where your warriors have to control the area before your gatherers can harvest the resource.

The real question is this: how do you make it so that each account can't be self-sufficient (no mules) while factoring in that some people genuinely want to change their playstyle every now and again? Let the crafter respec his smith to take out monsters or go PvP, then respec back? That makes it too easy for the PvPers to go temporary crafter and cut out the non-PvPers.



Edited By Malcolm on 1365517858

[GORDON]

I always saw UO as people playing chess on the same floor as people playing basketball... and it all worked, in my opinion. The problem was that the people playing chess just prayed really hard to their gods (the developers) in order to get the rules changed, and to get the basketball players hobbled, and the gods listened. The chess players should have just been smarter about it and hired some football players (anti-pkers) to keep the basketball players in check.

Dumb metaphors aside, in UO '97 there was a reward to be a red, murdering-pk... which was killing and looting. There should have been a reward for being a blue, red-hunting, anti-pk.... some sort of reward system for killing lots of reds. We never really had that second apart, aside from the satisfaction of killing bad guys.

Hell, we eventually got sick of the entire rigged system and became PKs ourselves. We set out to drive as many people out of the game as we could be killing as many people as we could find, all the time.



Edited By GORDON on 1365521468

[Malcolm]

There should have been a reward for being a blue, red-hunting, anti-pk.... some sort of reward system for killing lots of reds.

Multiple characters make it too easy to game. PKs just racked up the bounties, then had their buddies kill them and turn in their head for the reward.

For some people, the game is there to get them away from the others they don't want to play with. Then there's the PvP folk, for whom the game is other people, specifically other people outside their normal circle of contacts, because competing with the same group of people gets boring.

[TPRJones]

you make it so that each player account is tailored towards PvP or not PvP (roughly speaking)

Another approach would be to have something in the game mechanics (supported by the world's story) that means there is a delay of a couple of minutes of game time if you want to switch from gathering mode to crafting mode to fighting mode. So someone on a gathering trip would need to bring along protection even if they were the most bad-ass PvPer in the world, because they can't fight for themselves for a time while they switch over modes.

Or maybe you can switch right away, but all the resources you gathered are lost in the process unless you store them in special storage back in your crafting base. Do it in the wild, and everything you've gathered is lost. Although I like the delay thing better.

[TPRJones]

There should have been a reward for being a blue, red-hunting, anti-pk.... some sort of reward system for killing lots of reds.

Multiple characters make it too easy to game. PKs just racked up the bounties, then had their buddies kill them and turn in their head for the reward.

How about make it where reds can't claim the anti-pk perks, and if you hang out near a red you slowly turn red yourself so any buddies can't tag along and still keep their hands clean.

[Cakedaddy]

I saw it more like Chutes and Ladders where complainers had all the Chutes removed.

We never PK'ed on production servers. There was the short lived guild of bumbling idiot PKers you guys had. But you were never effective enough at killing to drive anyone away. In the 5 or so years of playing, that only lasted a few months.

However, it WAS our goal to drive the PKs/griefers out of the game. If we saw people acting like assholes, we would declare war and hunt them relentlessly until they undeclared (and even then we would grief them), their guild fell apart or they quit the game. But we never hunted innocents.

[Malcolm]

...there is a delay of a couple of minutes of game time if you want to switch from gathering mode to crafting mode to fighting mode...

Then you just go around with your group of PKs, one switches to crafter/gatherer for a few minutes while the others fend off baddies.

Hmm ... if you break up players into 3 groups: (i) warriors, (ii) crafters, (iii) gatherers ... what about this:
You can switch between the three gameplay modes, but in order for you to reach the higher tiers of bad-assery in each, you have to focus and stay that way for a bit. If a crafter wants to go fight, then he's not going to be as good at crafting if he's away too long. Same for a warrior that wants to make his own weapon.

Would have to balance things so that you can grudgingly do whatever you want on your own if you want. The elite of the elite, though, will be the ones that stick to their path and have contacts who are both inside and outside their discipline.



Edited By Malcolm on 1365528834

[TPRJones]

Actually, yes, two economies. If there is some sort of server store or auction house, etc, then there would need to be two, one for the PvP lands and one for the carebear lands. Prices on the carebear versions will inevitably be higher since resources are more scarce. But money can be made by taking the effort and risk to move items between the two, and now we have a trading economy.

Although for that to work there will need to be some risk in both directions, some reason that the serious PvP players have some risk in coming to the carebear lands. Not guaranteed instant death from being KOS with the guards or anything that extreme, but some risk nonetheless. Not sure what exactly.

But, once you have trading caravans, now you have potentially very some interesting PvP going on.



Edited By TPRJones on 1365538833

[Malcolm]

Although for that to work there will need to be some risk in both directions, some reason that the serious PvP players have some risk in coming to the carebear lands.

Let's assume there's some sort of karma/rep/notoriety system like UO had. The more in the red you get and the longer you stay in non-PvP land (let's use the Tram/Fel analogy since we all seem to have a handle on it), the more penalized your skills and abilities become, and in general the easier a target you are. Let's take the situation of PvP folk going into Trammel to make a purchase. Pretend they're part of Guild X and Guild Y wants to kick their ass. Guild X is a red guild, Guild Y is blue.

I'm shooting for a dynamic that will give reds problems directly getting reliable shipments of player-manufactured goods while giving blues easier access to better gear (obviously in exchange for following some rules).

The more reputable PvP folk in Y will then be able to hunt X down in Trammel and engage in combat. Since we're in Trammel, any non-PvP folk are flagged as invulnerable unless they start interfering in combat. This brings a bit of PvP to Trammel but isn't traumatizing the crafters. In addition, you're going to encourage the reds to make some contacts that are a bit more blue than they are, maybe to get better access to equipment.

Out in Felucca now, the blues are going to be better equipped in general. Hopefully, this encourages the reds to organize and escalate. However, over in Felucca, I think the blues and crafters need a carrot to make them come out. As stated previously, put the best raw materials and means to make the best items over in PvP land. Now you'll set up a situation where the crafters and blues have to walk into the bottom level of Murderville dungeon. If they pull it off, they get a cool toy. If the reds find out and stage an attack, they can jack the raw materials (since you can loot who you kill and everyone's fair game) or perhaps the finished item if they're ballsy enough. If you wanted to be really evil, you could say that you can only achieve the highest level of crafting skill by making items in Felucca. This would have the additional bonus of making it so that the absolute best crafters might be able to walk over Felucca without much fear of attack. If Smithy the Grandmaster blacksmith gets killed in Felucca, his skills go down and he can't make the gear for some obscenely important PvP dude, who in turn goes to hunt down the fucker that screwed his order.



Edited By Malcolm on 1365540850

[Malcolm]

Word on the web is that Scott Jennings, aka Lum the Mad, has been added to the Shroud of the Avatar team.

I have (as of this week) joined the merry crew at Portalarium to work on Shroud of the Avatar. Yes, I now work for Richard Garriott. Yes, I am aware of all the irony.

[GORDON]

I remember when he went from Lum the Mad the funny, edgy blogger to Lum the guy on the Dark Age of Camelot development team.

His shit got reigned in pretty damned fast by the corporation compliance officer. That's where I stopped reading him.

[TPRJones]

I never held that against him. Ya gotta have a paycheck from time to time.

[Cakedaddy]

Is he the one that said pking someone in uo was equivalent to rape?

[GORDON]

Is he the one that said pking someone in uo was equivalent to rape?

As I recall, it wasn't him, but someone who followed him.

[GORDON]

Here is an interview with Garriot at E3, with a lot of the game footage. He has a dorky rat-tail... or possibly the padawan braid. Not sure what the proper context is.

From what I could glean from the game footage, I saw mining, woodcutting, animal skinning, ships, houses being placed, furniture for the house being crafted, and PVP. I may have even seen a first-person Corp Por. I wish he had said something about the ability to pvp and loot the corpses.

So.

Interesting development.

http://www.nerdist.com/vepisod....arriott

[Cakedaddy]

This doesn't look promising though:

Looting: We are making some architectural changes to how we create, store, and transmit data in containers (chests, corpses, player houses, inventory, etc.) that should fix some of the looting exploits, like the one where all players could loot the same corpse equally, and corpses could be looted multiple times just by exiting and reentering a scene. We are also going to work on fixing issues related to targeting a corpse.

[Cakedaddy]

Code: Select all

How will combat work in Shroud of the Avatar?

Combat is real time with a shortcut bar that is used to trigger actions. Prior to combat, players will assemble decks. Decks will be an assemblage of spells, combat moves, consumables, etc. During combat the contents of your deck will be shuffled and skills will be randomly dealt out with the exception of skills that have been locked.

What the fuck?[/color]

[Cakedaddy]

Ya. No loot. Sort of. If you die, your killer will be given the option of looting one randomly picked item from your inventory. You can pay a ransom to keep him from looting it.

Why no full loot? Because people will be afraid of losing their good stuff and will never use it. Also, it lowers the value of everything because you could lose it. And it messes with their ability to balance PvE. The PvE only players will never lose their good stuff, so they will fight in it. So, the monsters have to be strong so the player can't just steamroll through them. This will then prevent the PvP player who also PvEs from progressing. The monsters are strong now, and their crap gear they are using so they don't lose their good stuff can't get the job done.

I stopped reading at this point.

The housing seemed cool though. You buy a lot and then can place a house on it. Houses have minimum lot size requirements. There are a finite number of lots in the game. Early players keep their lots when the game goes live. You can own multiple lots. You can own multiple houses. You can switch houses at any time. You can have vendors at your house to sell stuff. Things are taxed. You pay rent for your house and the items you sell on your vendor are taxed. You can buy up to 5 levels of basement to expand the size of your house. Houses can be set to private, shared and public. I doubt you can loot anything there. Did not bother confirming.

Economy ideas seem very strong. Housing, meh. Combat, sucks. It's WoW with a better economy.