All Posts by AnlaShok

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Originally posted by Mitara
Sounds like a very dull and empty world to me and completetly missing the point of meeting new poeple in the game. SOE tried this with SWG, and the artists hated it.
On the other hand, when you look at the otherwise beutiful terrain of games like WoW and AoC, the terrain is really crappy and unrealistic, because it was controlled by an artist. hmmmm, maybe you got something. Just has to be really really really sophisticated coding, or the variation will not be great.
The best world I have ever seen in an mmo, is present in Entropia. Very varied and beutiful (well... it is an old game). Unfortunately that game didnt have really that much else to offer. The word moneymachine springs into mind somehow...

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Big doesn't have to mean "too big". If you want a world to have many people (for example like EVE) it's not really an option to make it manually. Also generating it procedurally doesn't have to mean dull and empty world, though nicer environment means you need better programmers.

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Originally posted by BrotherLaz 

Does 'unlimited size' mean you can put a brick on the up arrow key and keep spawning new content? If the world is not instanced, won't this cause the size of the landmass to grow at a rapid rate with a lot of new content that will never get used again?
Perhaps if areas with no players could get rerolled and respawned, and the world map would mark these areas, then this would encourage picking up a variety of quests and moving between areas in an ever-changing order instead of just grinding the monsters/quests with the most exp and ignoring the rest.

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My guess is that the engine destroys any zone that hasn't had players in it or in vicinity for some time, but stores the generation parameters/random number seeds somewhere. It wouldn't be very logical if the terrain changed, for example from a hill to a lake.

I really like this idea and would like to see it in (sandbox) MMO's.

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Originally posted by CactusmanX
To make this work would require a couple things in my opinion.
Lack of visual ques, like distinctive highlevel armor or newbie armor because they would defeat the purpose.
No clear level zones, if zones are grouped by content level, like lower level stuff over here higher level stuff over there, then it would stand to reason that a player grinding in that area would most likely be around that skill/character level.
Smaller power differences, if being level 5 vs level 1 or 30 combat skill compared to 20 combat skill means a lot like automatically winning then you are potentially setting players up to die often, merely by being lower level/skilled, not just from players but also from mobs.
 

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That's very true. I'd approach it like this:

-Your progress isn't based on loot. While some armors are more expensive (full plate is more expensive than leather), they can in theory be acquired by a total newbie who has a wealthy patron. Heavy armors need more training than light ones to be used effectively, but it's not dependent on anything but how much you have practiced it and the time needed is relatively short.

So identically looking (and in fact identical) plate mail and sword is viable option for most of heavy soldiers in game, no matter how experienced they are. Of course there might be rarer metals making the stuff look different, but they might not be better than steel for the basic purpose, instead they might for example make equipment lighter and sacrifice only very little toughness, which would be appealing to people using very weight-limited flying mounts.

-I would like to eliminate monster-grinding like it's currently implemented completely. Warriors, especially those engaging in melee, are loosely split into two groups: fighters, who specialize in _fighting_ humanoids who usually use weapons, and hunters who _hunt_ animals and other monsters that fight only with their natural weapons.

Fighters train by fighting with other fighters. They don't have to be deadly duels (though they work too, if you survive), but training with wooden weapons improves you too, at least in beginning. There is thus no need to go out and find a suitable zone, you can train with your friends in your backyard, or with soldiers in city barracks, or whatever. Note that you can improve even if you don't win the combat.

Hunters are more difficult to implement in this way. The main point should be that your improvement isn't decided by the "level" of the monster but the difficulty of your actions. So hitting a running rabbit 200 meters away with a bow is much more difficult than hitting a still grizzly 20 meters away, even though the latter could be considered more dangerous as a situation (and so would normally yield more experience). Ideally the hunters should before going to hunt know what they are going to kill, based on what they need and not on animal's "level". If rabbit ears are a new fashion item and so very expensive, even world's best hunter might want to hunt rabbits. Of course those going for really bad monsters are (almost) always very experienced, but I see that as no problem.

-Your combat performance is largely based on your skill as a player. It is also possible to escape by running and hiding or getting near the guards, for example. Again, to get better you don't need to kill your opponent, and actually killing a helpless opponent is of no challenge and so doesn't improve you in any way, but of course the griefers don't kill low level people to progress.

For ffa pvp with real death penalties to work the game needs to be quite different from the current wow-mould-type games and have several mechanisms to make random player killing harder. In cities and towns you could have EVE-style approach: they are safe zones, anyone seen attacking randomly is considered a criminal. If you are attacked and there are no guards in your immediate vicinity, yell for help. If the potential attacker has more to lose (good equipment, good character, etc) than he has to win (some mental satisfaction from own1ng n00bs) and a real risk of suffering those penalties, he will probably not commit the bad act. Assassinations are a different story, and I would like to see them as a possible way of interacting with the world.

Ok, so (most) settlements are relatively safe places. The space between them is the problem, as it could make people fear exploring. Official roads could be protected by patrolling guards, but without making them ridiculously frequent I'm not sure how well that would work. Of course you could have some magical all-seeing-guards who see any criminal acts so that the whole universe knows the face of the bad guy, but I really don't like that. And the real problem is the actual wilderness without any guards. Ideal (and realistic) solution would be that the people wouldn't wander into wild areas alone but with a group and/or avoid the places known to be dangerous, but I doubt that won't work very well for various reasons. Another thing that might help would be that the officials could reward adventures who bring them the heads of bandits, but this isn't a very good solution either.

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Yeah, as has been mentioned most games who have open pvp as more than an afterthought hide levels. I think even if pvp isn't that important, that levels should be hidden anyway. Levels to me act as a divider of the playerbase, and don't seem to accomplish much, except to inflate the egos of higher level characters.

Gear-wise, you OBVIOUSLY should be able to tell that someone who is wearing a backwards dragon helmet with a perpetual flame, giant angel wings, the neon armor from TRON, and has a big club with a skull on the end of it is probably someone you don't want to mess with. But there should also be high level assassin characters who don't stand out, yet can take you out with a couple of jabs in important places.

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Totally agree.

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The downside of course, is that some people might want to display their level, which begs the question, maybe it should be up to the players? With the option, I could see two potentially bad things happening. One, hiding level is deemed "cheap" so pretty much anyone hiding their level is assumed to be a newb and promptly ganked. Two, hiding is considered the way to go, and people who walk around with their level are easily picked on. Two isn't that bad, but one would suck.

If it's always hidden, you can still announce what level you are, although people might not believe you.

What about LFG? Level is pretty important when looking for people to group with. If you hide levels you might not know what you are getting. And greifers could pretend to want to group, find out what level someone is, and then know whether to attack or not. So hiding does have some flaws. I've never seen it happen in games that do it, but I haven't played a lot of open pvp games either.

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Character level is a status symbol to many people, that's why they want to display it. I think that if they have other ways of showing their status, like good equipment, powerful mount, a retinue of bodyguards, etc, they are satisfied.

ironore is on the right track. As there is no direct way of telling anyone other's power level (I want to get rid of levels as stupid abstractions of power, but I'm using the term here because it's short and easy to understand), there should be none for telling your own. Obviously there must be a way to determine how good you are, both for you and for potential companions/employers. Some are straightforward: lift a stone weighing 200 kilograms and you know you can (dead)lift at least 200 kg and so you have a strong back. Run two miles in 12 minutes and you have a good (though not excellent) aerobic capacity. Some, like skill with a longsword, are more complicated, but still testable: if you can hold your own against a trained city guard (who are known to be better than bandits), you might be considered okay. If you are a top student of nation's top school, or a champion of arena, you know you are good.

These, however, are mainly for your knowledge only. It's cumbersome to start looking for that 200kg stone when a someone is in hurry. One idea is certificates/diplomas/whatever. They don't have to be hardcoded into the game (though it's simpler if they are). What I mean that you could go to city barracks and ask the captain of the guard to assess your skills (for a price of course). He and you do some sparring and he writes a note saying you are at least as good as his guards. After that he signatures or stamps it (ingame, so that the item shows that it was signatured or stamped by whoever really did it). Then when you meet a potential employer, you can show the certificate to him. If he trusts whoever wrote it, he may recruit you. Or he might require you to spar with his personal bodyguard, or something else. Of course some status symbols might automatically show your competence. For example if you had a blood-red cloak with gold lining, one that only king's personal guards are allowed to use, you probably don't need to prove anything. Either you got it by being good, or you killed it's previous owner guard, in both cases you are well worth having. Simpler thinks like strength could be displayed as muscle mass of your character model.

This kind of hidind stats, combined with increased emphasis on player skill, should really make leveling and grinding less appealing and useful.

The idea is still far from being ready, so I hope to get more good discussion (and promise to answer sooner next time). I believe the certificate system has problems and needs assistance, but it would definitely help if someone outlined them for me, in case I miss some.

This should be quite trivial to do. I'm also quite positive it wouldn't add any global lag, since it's completely client-side process. It might slow one's client a bit, but probably not.

But, if you want to compress the video, it would probably slow the game too much. If you don't want to compress, the videos end up taking ridiculous amount of hard disk space, given the framerates and resolutions of a typical game nowadays.

Swat 4 has a system which is in my opinion superior to CS's. When flashbanged, your screen goes white like in CS, but the fading is different, because what you'll see at first is the image that you saw before flashbang, "burned" on your eyes for few seconds, gradually fading away, which is very cool, in addition to being distracting.

You can get an idea by looking at career-sections of various companies. Short answer is that C++ is the number one language in industry. However, after learning languages of various types (paradigms), you can fairly quickly learn new ones. C and C++ are always safe choices, but I've heard Python might be surprisingly useful (for big projects that is, for small ones it's superb) too.

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Originally posted by CactusmanX
No I really don't think you can trust players not to tell.
You may have to rely on random puzzles, meaning puzzles that have a different starting point everytime but with the same conclusion, that way no one can write a step by step guide on how to do it.
For example players may know the seceret formula to such and such a potion is these 5 ingredients, just make the ingredients very rare and spawn randomly.
Or to get in a door the player has to line up these five different colored gems, only the starting order of the gems and the order needed to unlock the door are different everytime.
So you would probably have to build in systems to randomize the puzzles, otherwise risk a guide being written up on the internet.

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Random puzzles are the other way, and probably the only way. They have one problem, though. For a puzzle to be good, it has to have some logic in it. Who cares if the starting conditions are random, just publish the logic and it's almost same as writing a guide, maybe it requires players to do bit more thinking, but in any case it's not a puzzle anymore.

Another way is to generate lots of puzzles, so that it doesn't matter you know what to do, you'll have to think how to do it. Like some "mate in one move"-games for chess.

However, I'm sure there is some way of making people tell each other. Humans are "slaves" of biology, and thus psychology, and selfishness is one of the key features of a human. However, in virtual games, most of costs and benefits are not really significant, so the psychology really doesn't help us very much. Unless the players could make "free play time"-potions with a secret formula :)

Sometimes the secrets might unfold even though no one knowing it wanted that, for example by some mistake of telling wrong guy. I think it might be wise for developers trying this to prepare other alike secret systems too, so after one spreads and everyone loses the benefit, people know to guard their secret formulas better. This is really optimistic thinking, and probably not good enough solution. But hey, people (at least in my country) guard the _growing spot of cheap food mushrooms_ very closely. So the mechanism really is there, the question is how to trigger it.

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Originally posted by Kvothe

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Originally posted by Ravanos
nah you're just playing the wrong genre, MMOs have always been built on the adventure and "killing that spider". if you want the fircken sims or second life go play that and get a job and make money and get a house and decorate till your hearts content.

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I like the combat aspect as much as the next guy, more so than crafting. I said that earlier in my previous post. I just think a good crafting system makes for more of a well-polished MMO, if it can be done right.
Probably the reason I like crafting the most is because it creates professions that adds to a more diverse in-game player base. I personally do not find MMOs immersive if everyone walking around looks like the terminator.

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This discussion here shows one very good reason to have nice crafting system, maybe even mandatory to economics (swords had to be made by dedicated smiths, they wouldn't just randomly spawn to some dungeon): It would attract players alike one of the people above, while repelling players alike the other one. Twofold victory.

I hate spoiler sites. They do lot of bad to the game, if it wishes for example to use meaningful puzzles (so that you get no reward if you can't solve it) that actually reward smart people, not everyone.

I was wondering if game developers could trust players NOT to share their secrets, if it would mean the secret-holders themselves got less benefit if they shared the information (so that the total amount of benefit was constant, it would be divided with all who have solved that puzzle). The reward would never be obsolete, it would stack with every other similar reward. The question is, will this be enough? It's really delicate system, because once it is printed ANYWHERE, the secret is gone forever because it will soon spread to every player who's able to use google. I understand some +0.00001% more damage will not make people lie to their spouses they haven't got it, but what about something like potion of invulnerability: drinker would be unable to die (in instant permadeath game) for 24 hours. As long the formula is known to very few people, they will get very very rich by selling that to wealthy players who fear the death of their precious character, but if the formula spreads, no one will buy it anymore and the masses of gold are gone (gold would need to have a real meaning for this to provide motivation, of course). So, it's for their own good not to tell it to anyone. Will that prevent it from spreading? I fear not, though I actually don't know why, it's just a hunch.

Didn't AC have something like that? Spells were more effective when less people were using them, IIRC. I don't know how long the system lasted, but when my uber-melee got item magic (can't remember the level), the formulas were already on web. Of course in that game it was impossible to hide the fact you know the secret and still benefit from it (as people saw what spells you were casting, though I can't remember if they saw what spells you or your equipment had on you), but I don't think that's the reason, at least not the only one. Maybe the benefit you got increased when you shared the secrets with your friends so he could buff himself, saving time, and he told the secrets to his friends, etc. Or maybe the benefit you got wasn't big enough so that the spoiler site staff thought it's better to publish (and get respect) what they know than get marginal benefit from not sharing the information.

Edit: Didn't (pre-CU?) SWG have something like this also, for becoming a jedi?

I wish to know your opinions. I'm especially interested in games which have or had some secret system like that, how it's implemented and has it worked, and if not, why. Thanks :)

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Originally posted by saluk
That's... kinda funny :) I don't really like seeing floating names at all, although I don't mind seeing peoples names in the chat to follow the conversation. I think you lose out on the making friends aspect (randomly chatting someone nearby and becoming friends), but only slightly. After all, you can always group someone and then you'll know their name, or they can introduce themselves like in RL. Actually I have previously thought about a system where no names are known until players introduce themselves, and then you will be able to keep track of who you have talked to and who is new.

For grouping/guilds I think it would be nice to keep more statistics of players, like your fame points, so that you have more to go on then level+name. There could be more titles etc gained after certain quests and when grouping you could see a list of them.

Fame points could also unlock other cool things, such as city guards letting you in without patting you down, the ability to speak with higher ranking npcs, having some say in certain cities of where to put new buildings/expansions, or having a statue made in your honor. Unfortunately, eventually everyone will max their fame and it will be like no one is famous :)

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Weird...those are almost exactly my thoughts on this subject :)

I think a solution to max fame points would be to have some subjective scale, so that your score is not absolute, but it's more like "x belove/above the average (or maybe rather median)". So, if you don't do anything, you are "forgotten", just like in RL. This might be a bad way to do things if fame was something you needed for example to do quests, but if it was some kind of measure of your "value" and it would be required so that you could enter some elite-only cities, then it might work.

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Originally posted by saluk

Your english is fine :) It might take you longer to type, I don't know, but I never would have guessed you aren't a native speaker (typer).

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I like to think that, with the success of games like counter-strike etc, that a game with higher level of thought required (player skill, but not necesarily twitch) would pull in more players who don't currently play mmo's. Also, WoW level success is not required to be "financially successful". A game with good ai might not need as many ai's, if they are harder to kill. You could reward bonus xp for multiple players fighting rather than dividing the xp, and not require grouping for those bonuses, so people in the field would always cooperate to take down the tougher mobs. You could have more interesting cooperation of players where one player waits somewhere down the road to catch the mob when he tries to flee.

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That idea is actually very interesting. You could give bonus xp (or some other commodity) for every person who damaged the enemy in the last two minutes (or something like that) and/or based on how fast it is killed, and give everyone that sum (maybe with some modifications based on level of player in question to prevent abuse).

I'm not sure if you can do it yourself. Try using "Report"-link in that post to inform the administration of the situation.

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Originally posted by Inf666
 
- Most MMO players have zero skill and do not want to get better. A lot of players would fail if the hostile NPC's where just a bit more intelligent. Most players do not want to think or adapt, they just want their interactive, static, linear story on easy mode with phat loot. Imagine the frustration of a player knowing that in this game a boar uses better strategy than him himself. Non PvP MMOs should not frustrate you they should make you feel happy even if you are a monkey with an IQ of 5 and the speed of a sedated turtle. Thats if you want the game to be financially successful.
- Using intelligent and powerful NPC's would be like forcing the player to pvp. We all know how well that goes.

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I find it very sad that this is indeed the situation. However I think the players should be forced to think and adapt. I am saddened by the current state of mmo scene, and because of that I'd really love to see something different, like making players think. I want to believe it's mostly fault of games, not players as humans that makes them like simple games. They start playing a simple game for some reason, then start to like it, and subconsciously associate "simple = fun", after which it needs a lot of effort to "convert" them back to objective thinking. One (and best, maybe also only) way of doing it would be by creating an enjoyable game, which would become even more enjoyable more you would think as a player.

There really are lots of games requiring thinking. Essentially all real-time strategies, DOTA, CRPG's and real RPG's, strategy computer games (both offline and online), board games, competitive FPS's, tabletop war games, etc, so I truly believe game which would reward thinking more than mindless pressing of buttons could succeed. However, more complex a game is, more it will repel younger players. That is financially a bad thing for a game, but that thing itself might invite more mature players to join, as many of them value quality of players very high. Not enough to compensate for loss of billions of 12-year olds, of course, but enough to save game from being a disaster. Of course that is by itself not enough, the game has to be really good to even get them to log off from Azeroth to try.

I can't remember the last time I had the true joy of succeeding in some difficult task in a computer game. Probably was in HOMM 3 or SE III when, after careful planning, I usually totally owned my opponents, AI or human, or after a ferocious war I had my enemy's hydralisks kneel before my mighty carriers. This means too many years without any frigging mental satisfaction from computer games (as I don't play those games anymore, even though it is possible). And I wasn't alone in my enjoyment. As the biology of homo sapiens hasn't changed in few years, I have to blame environmental variables (current games) for preferences of most gamers. I think few _good_ MMORPG's would do a good job, after which people knew they can be made and wouldn't play bad ones anymore. I find it really absurd that in MMORPG's we have to choose least bad, when in every other field we can choose the best.

I apologize for this offtopic-rant.
(And I also apologize for my poor English skills which makes writing good text difficult)

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Originally posted by StanLee2

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Originally posted by AnlaShok
I'm a big fan of Mount&Blade also, but unfortunately that kind of system is not possible for MMO, at least not with present networking technology.
 
However, I think that M&B system is far from perfect. Mounted combat is interesting because you have to manage your horse who does not turn instantly (the whole point of M&B's greatness), but the actual fighting is boring. Fighting without a horse against other non-mounted people is too simple, you just wait until he's not blocking and try to hit him. To summarize, it's the tactical aspect of battles which makes M&B great, not the actual hitting system (which of course is the best I've seen, but would not be enough by itself).

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That's not true at all. I've spoken with several top-tier MMO bandwidth and hosting companies at the AGC in Austin on multiple occasions and they all agree that the bandwidth is there for such a game.
 

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