Looking for sandbox game ideas

[Kaww]

Hi guys,

I’ve been on this forum for a few years now. I’ve seen some great ideas and homebrew content, as well as lots of people knowing a lot of things about various game mechanics. This might be considered shameless promotion on my part and to a certain extent it is, but that's not really why I'm posting this. I’d like to hear what you would like to see in a sandbox RPG game.

The game is still in early stages of development and nothing is set in stone. This is good. People that worked on Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, Plants vs. Zombies, World of Tanks etc. would like to hear and implement your ideas. I always see people writing ‘this could’ve been done better’, well say it here. We’re listening.

Here are some of the ideas we already have:

- The initial setup of realms is always the same. Three neutral cities for trade and arena combat. The rest of the map is a wilderness filled with monsters that change with time and depending on how players explore the world.

- Monster density - the longer an area remains unexplored the more monsters are spawned and those already there grow more powerful. We are hoping to get really cool effects with this if a guild leaves their base empty for a few days.

- We’ve had in mind monsters that evolve depending on abilities used against them. For example if monsters in a certain part of the world were mostly killed by fire they would develop fire resistance and deal some extra fire damage as well as get special abilities we will associate with each type of damage.

- Monsters will grow smarter, or at least will be ‘aware’ of the most obvious tactics players use against them. Unique monsters when uncovered will be controlled by someone on our team. Turning PvE into PvP to some extent.

- Player alliances are a normal thing in most games now that aren’t single player. This leads to guilds. Really today this is a must if you have more than two players that can interact. People like to play fair and together and it’s our job to set some basic rules and make sure everyone plays fair.

- Forts, castles and other bases of operation. We plan on allowing single players and guilds, as well as alliances of guilds to build their own settlements. The only thing required is the resources. If you, as an individual player have more resources than a guild why shouldn’t you have a bigger and better castle? You will need a bit more than just resources you will need the skill to make these buildings. This leads us to...

- Henchmen. Along your travels and exploration of the world you will encounter various people in need of various things. Like food, safety and shelter. Hopefully you will be able to assist them and if you do they will aid you in any way possible. We have in mind several different sorts of henchmen who can be split in two categories – combat and non-combat. Those that aren’t combat oriented can help you build, gather or mine stuff you need. Those that are, well, you get the idea what they do.

- But, why should only henchmen craft beautiful buildings and items. Every player will have access to all manufacturing and harvesting skills and proficiency in them will grow with use. You will only be able to improve them to a certain extent though. To become a master you will have to invest some of your level improvements into your craft. But there is one more cool thing about crafting.

- You will gain experience by crafting, fighting monsters, trading, helping other people and solving quests (no go pick up twenty grapes within my arm’s reach and give them to me, but I think the guys might add it just to spite me) We need help with this part most. Do you think anything else deserves xp rewards?

- We’re also planning to implement mounted combat. I have no idea how this will affect balance. I can imagine having nightmares because I can’t balance archers and casters on horseback, but we’ll see how it works and how to tweak it once we come to it. The cool thing this will allow is jousting tournaments. Can you believe it they wanted mounted combat, but not jousting I had to shout at the Lead developer for half an hour before he said yes to jousting.

- Drop rates. I figure a bat that drops a full plate is something that’s great in Diablo, but I won’t stand for it. Armed opponents will drop all their equipment, while animals will grant meat, skin and bone depending on your craft proficiency level.

- Resources. We have about a dozen in mind, but we would like to hear what you think would be cool resources to have in game.

I believe that this is as much as I can hope to discuss about mechanics with minimal amount of advertisement.

Long story short – what would you like to see in a sandbox game?
As far as I can tell this doesn’t collide with any of the forum rules. Mods, please inform me if I have to change anything about this post.

[Cespenar]

I always see people writing ‘this could’ve been done better’, well say it here. We’re listening.

A lot of your ideas remind me of the only MMORPG I've ever deemed worthy of playing: Ultima Online. Yes, this is a praise.


- Monster density - the longer an area remains unexplored the more monsters are spawned and those already there grow more powerful. We are hoping to get really cool effects with this if a guild leaves their base empty for a few days.

You'll probably think of this anyway, but apply diminishing returns to that effect. Otherwise things would go out of hand easily. Also, logically, after a certain point a place would be too crowded, even for monsters.


- We’ve had in mind monsters that evolve depending on abilities used against them. For example if monsters in a certain part of the world were mostly killed by fire they would develop fire resistance and deal some extra fire damage as well as get special abilities we will associate with each type of damage.

Be sure to make it a slow, over-time effect. Otherwise you'll have players/guilds screwing with the monsters on purpose, just to troll others. Evolution is a slow business, after all. :smalltongue:


- Monsters will grow smarter, or at least will be ‘aware’ of the most obvious tactics players use against them. Unique monsters when uncovered will be controlled by someone on our team. Turning PvE into PvP to some extent.

Be sure to add some (even if very few) purely random decision processes to some of the monsters' AI. Even the smartest static AI is a static AI, whose loopholes will be eventually found and exploited.


- You will gain experience by crafting, fighting monsters, trading, helping other people and solving quests (no go pick up twenty grapes within my arm’s reach and give them to me, but I think the guys might add it just to spite me) We need help with this part most. Do you think anything else deserves xp rewards?

These are just ideas, I won't defend them, but consider:

1) Bonus xp for gaining xp from enough different sources.
2) Xp for discovering some landmarks, towns, etc.
3) Being in a party whose members are currently gaining xp.

[endoperez]

Make sure your big picture has space for feminine players too. Some girl gamers don't play any differently from the guys, but some would prefer to play as a pretty elf in a dress. This game seems like it could also draw in the latter, since there are also lots of social and construction/crafting opportunities. I can imagine the girlfriends of several players getting hooked into the building stuff.


Maybe some sort of trap-building opportunities? Robinson Crusoe-type crude one-shot traps, or Dungeon Keeper-like enchanted, automated magical traps, or even something that allows Minecraft's Rude Goldberg machines. Whatever you enable, players will use.


Perhaps the game could track all sorts of player behaviours that are hidden from the players by default, but that could be revealed in areas under specific rules, perhaps accompanied by visual effects. Players above a certain level entering a "hall of heroes" getting a glowing crown above their heads, stuff like that.
With a system like that, the players/guilds could affect the rules in areas under their control, with some limits in place. Some faction might want to show off how many of them are Dragon-slayers, a different faction might want to show off their high-level Crafters.


Give the players a way to move creatures around (within certain limits). Not too powerful, so that they can't push boss monsters into enemy castles or high-level creatures into starting areas... but enough to have a caged troll on display.

[Kaww]

Cespenar, most of the things you said are true and we've already covered them, I just thought that the wall of text was big enough and that I should only post the core ideas. Thanks for taking the time to think about this, I do appreciate it and you have caught a couple of things:



1) Bonus xp for gaining xp from enough different sources.
2) Xp for discovering some landmarks, towns, etc.
3) Being in a party whose members are currently gaining xp.

I really like #1, #2 was already decided on a while ago, but I forgot to include it. #3 I dislike quite a bit because if your party blacksmith is gaining xp through smiting how are you learning anything. We could put in an option of players sharing xp if they wish. Something akin to teaching the new guys how not to get killed etc. Is this what you had in mind?


Be sure to add some (even if very few) purely random decision processes to some of the monsters' AI. Even the smartest static AI is a static AI, whose loopholes will be eventually found and exploited.

You're absolutely right. We haven't discussed this yet, but I'll make sure to share this with the rest of the team. The decision shouldn't even make sense, otherwise it will be predictable.


Make sure your big picture has space for feminine players too. Some girl gamers don't play any differently from the guys, but some would prefer to play as a pretty elf in a dress. This game seems like it could also draw in the latter, since there are also lots of social and construction/crafting opportunities. I can imagine the girlfriends of several players getting hooked into the building stuff.

Good idea. We've only had in mind tough, dangerous looking models, but several races could have some more feminine female models. Guys might kill me for suggesting this, on account of chain mail bikinis...


Maybe some sort of trap-building opportunities? Robinson Crusoe-type crude one-shot traps, or Dungeon Keeper-like enchanted, automated magical traps, or even something that allows Minecraft's Rude Goldberg machines. Whatever you enable, players will use.

I believe nobody thought of this so far. I like it. It could add to the variety. We thought carpenters, smiths and stonemasons would be important in sieges on account of war machines, but nobody thought of taking that idea and scaling it down. This could make crafters great explorers.


Perhaps the game could track all sorts of player behaviours that are hidden from the players by default, but that could be revealed in areas under specific rules, perhaps accompanied by visual effects. Players above a certain level entering a "hall of heroes" getting a glowing crown above their heads, stuff like that.
With a system like that, the players/guilds could affect the rules in areas under their control, with some limits in place. Some faction might want to show off how many of them are Dragon-slayers, a different faction might want to show off their high-level Crafters.

Would you mind if I PM you?


Give the players a way to move creatures around (within certain limits). Not too powerful, so that they can't push boss monsters into enemy castles or high-level creatures into starting areas... but enough to have a caged troll on display.

Well, traps could do this quite nicely. I don't see any other way aside from monster chasing you.

If you don't mind us stealing some of these we'll put your name in the credits (well, of anyone who's ideas we use). Well, I'll do it, since I have a feeling I'll somehow end up writing those...

[Cespenar]

I really like #1, #2 was already decided on a while ago, but I forgot to include it. #3 I dislike quite a bit because if your party blacksmith is gaining xp through smiting how are you learning anything. We could put in an option of players sharing xp if they wish. Something akin to teaching the new guys how not to get killed etc. Is this what you had in mind?


I was thinking more along the lines of a joint effort being more educative than a solitary situation. Like, say, being in a duel versus being in an actual battle. Or, working on your own versus working in a laboratory with several other assistants to help.

Maybe something like each source of xp giving bonus xp multipliers to the party members for the same sources. Like, if you blacksmith together, you'll learn more; if you fight together, you'll learn more; but if one of you fights while the other crafts: no bonus. You can put a range limit to that effect as well, if you want. Something like being in the same screen, roughly.

[Kaww]

I think I know what you're getting at. But, if you were fighting massive battles all your life dueling would become a new experience. We could make it that each time you gain a new type of experience it gives for example 150% xp, which diminishes by 10% until it hits the regular 100%. How does that sound?

Regarding crafts we thought of having NPC tutors, but we could give this option to PCs as well. We thought that working with a tutor would increase the rate at which your craft proficiency improves, up to a certain threshold, of course.

[Cespenar]

I think I know what you're getting at. But, if you were fighting massive battles all your life dueling would become a new experience. We could make it that each time you gain a new type of experience it gives for example 150% xp, which diminishes by 10% until it hits the regular 100%. How does that sound?

Regarding crafts we thought of having NPC tutors, but we could give this option to PCs as well. We thought that working with a tutor would increase the rate at which your craft proficiency improves, up to a certain threshold, of course.

That sounds good. As I said, they were spur of the moment ideas, so feel free to apply your interpretations or totally ignore them.

[banthesun]

I've had some ideas for a MMO like this bouncing round my head for a while, so here I go.

One thing I thought might be a good idea is having an offline mode for characters. Basically, when a player is offline they spawn a NPC character that performs basic tasks. Looking through the features you listed, this would probably be a henchman character or something similar. Other players could pay the player to fight in their armies, guard their settlements, or build their castles. Alternatively, the player could use their own NPC to craft more items while they're offline, man their shop, or gather resources. The strength and skill of these NPCs could be based on the character's skill, or on a separate levelling system that levels up based on the tasks done while offline. The advantages here would be:

1. it's boring to sit around watching a crafting screen for long periods of time, no matter how cool the end result may be. It lets players do jobs they find boring while they do something else with their lives.

2. it allows players with less play time or a more casual approach to remain (at least economically) competitive to players who spend all day playing the game, in turn making the game less intimidating for these players (and if it's a subscription model, it'd make people feel like they're getting more value for their subscription :smallwink: ).

3. it strengthens player interaction and the player economy. Labour is an important commodity in real world economies and it gives players additional options in what they can trade in game.

Another idea I had is the inclusion of caravans into the game. I'm assuming there's going to be some sort of fast travel system in the game (if not, what are you doing making a social game?), but perhaps this system isn't able to transport large amounts of materials, or has a high price attached to doing so. To transport materials from one place to another NPC caravans can be hired. These caravans move along at real time, and can be attacked by monsters or other players. Henchmen (or the other player's offline NPCs from the previous idea) could be ordered to guard the caravans, or particularly valuable shipments could have online players hired to escort the caravans. The advantages here are:

1. it allows players to form bandit clans and take part in emergent PvP that isn't just ganking.

2. conversely, it encourages players to secure and maintain roads. Hiring adventurers to prevent monsters from accumulating near trading routes, or hunting down bandits known to operate in an area would be a different kind of quest players could send each other on. Perhaps it would also be able to exact a tariff from caravans passing through lands near a guild's settlement (to pay for the cost of maintaining the roads, of course :smallwink: ). Caravans would have to choose between paying the fees, or taking a riskier route.

3. it could enforce a level of resource scarcity in certain regions. Say you can only gather living wood from an elven forest, or that a certain coastal kingdom has the most productive marble quarries in the world. If you wanted to build a fortress in an out of the way mountain range, you'd have to chose from building it out of the local grey stone (perhaps with obsidian trim from a nearby volcano) like everyone else nearby, or paying vast amounts to import the marble and living wood to make your shining white citadel. Areas would become themed by local materials, with imported goods being a symbol of a guild's wealth and power (without necessarily having mechanical effects).

4. it gives merchants something else to do. Instead of simply trading goods within one environment (being a salesman), they can plan trade missions and try to exploit local economic conditions, like a virtual silk road. Particularly adventurous merchants may try to find their own routes to new destinations to undercut their competition, serving more as explorers than traders.

As for ways to gain experience, I'm glad to see that trading is already on your list. Another possible option is to have xp rewards for organising people. Stuff like getting xp for other players completing quests you posted, or maybe a bonus for leading raids (if the other players think you lead well). Unfortunately, I haven't really came up with a way to make this un-exploitable. Perhaps a system where you get a small xp reward for the first quest a player does for you, and then periodic rewards if more quests you've set have been completed compared to how many quests you've completed (basically a system checking how much you're utilising other players).

Hope there's some ideas in there that were helpful, and good luck, it sounds like a massive project.

PS: you might want to recheck the rules about avatar and signature size limits. :smallwink:

[endoperez]

Good idea. We've only had in mind tough, dangerous looking models, but several races could have some more feminine female models. Guys might kill me for suggesting this, on account of chain mail bikinis...

The archetype I envision is more of a "female scholar". Bikinis of any sort would feel rather out of place. A woman in a long dress walking along a hallway and under her arm, rolled into a tight scroll, are the blueprints of the expansion of the northern tower.

Hmm, that gave me another idea. You shouldn't expect the crafters to wear the combat stuff. Perhaps there should be a line of clothes that can be worn instead of armor, which upgrade crafting and non-combat skills.
Fancy clothes could cover bonuses to crafting, resource collecting, give bonuses to crafter-henchmen, increase inventory space, movement speed/travel time, perhaps stealth... hehe, it would be kinda funny if you made poison resistance easier to craft into the "aristocratic" side of the garments.

Maybe the lightest armor types (leather, and silk and linen based armor if you use them) could have the unique ability to get abilities from both the combat and non-combat sides. That could perhaps fit rogue-types very well, or be enough to protect crafters who are going out to hunt for resources in areas of light danger, with just the support of some henchmen.



Would you mind if I PM you?

Not at all, but I'm afraid I'm not very experienced in MMO games or in survival games. :smallsmile:

[Rosstin]

What kind of game are you making? What are you developing it in? How big is your team? Just curious from the perspective of a fellow game dev. :smallsmile:

[endoperez]

What kind of game are you making? What are you developing it in? How big is your team? Just curious from the perspective of a fellow game dev. :smallsmile:

I'm not sure how much he's allowed to talk about the game since that would be advertising, but there is that link in his signature. The game is described (rather curtly) in here:
http://primordials-online.com/about/

They're using Unity for the engine, I think that was mentioned somewhere else.

[Silverbit]

This looks like a very interesting game from what I've seen in this thread in and on that site, and I applaud you for asking the community for advise. More game developers should do that.

I've played a few games in my time, and a couple of MMOs. I strongly agree with the whole "normal civilian clothing or light armour for crafters/rogues". That would be so good in a genre where most high level characters end up looking like humanoid Christmas trees.

To build on that caravan system above, are you going to implement sea travel in a similar way? Just food for thought.

Mounted combat would be very nice. Maybe have it so only characters with levels in a certain class get to ride combat-capable horses, although perhaps everyone aught to have access to basic mounts.

Is this going to be subscription based?

Edit: are the race names set in stone? I've seen Nord used in loads of places (TES and Mount&Blade for example) and maybe it'd be better to think of a new name for the Viking-ish people. Vangarians? Coldlanders?

[Kaww]

PS: you might want to recheck the rules about avatar and signature size limits. :smallwink:

Thanks for this, I read them three years ago and forgot most of the rules... :smallredface:

I'll reply to all of you tomorrow, or on Monday at the latest. One thing I want to say right now. The game will not be subscription based. It will cost a certain amount to purchase, but nothing to play. If people like it we believe that they will support us though in game purchases or by buying our future products. I should add this to the about page, shouldn't I?

Best regards and thank you for all these cool ideas.

[Silverbit]

The game will not be subscription based.

This game just keeps looking better and better. How decent a computer do you think you'll need to run it? If you can run it on a decent laptop I'm sold already :smallsmile:.

[Kaww]

That sounds good. As I said, they were spur of the moment ideas, so feel free to apply your interpretations or totally ignore them.

In the very least you gave me some ideas to present to the rest of the crew. If you come up with anything else feel free to post here or PM me.



One thing I thought might be a good idea is having an offline mode for characters.
Another idea I had is the inclusion of caravans into the game...

As for ways to gain experience, I'm glad to see that trading is already on your list. Another possible option is to have xp rewards for organising people. Stuff like getting xp for other players completing quests you posted, or maybe a bonus for leading raids (if the other players think you lead well). Unfortunately, I haven't really came up with a way to make this un-exploitable. Perhaps a system where you get a small xp reward for the first quest a player does for you, and then periodic rewards if more quests you've set have been completed compared to how many quests you've completed (basically a system checking how much you're utilising other players).

Hope there's some ideas in there that were helpful, and good luck, it sounds like a massive project.


Yes they are, thanks. We've already decided on having caravans (robable on hard-core servers), but we haven't thought about tolls and such as well as road maintenance. I'll see if this is possible. (I think it is and will be implemented, but in the finished product, or late beta)

Offline mod - you're a genius.

The last bit is a tough nut though. It would be rather hard to make a quest system that players can change. I see another two hour shouting session, but I'll let you know how it went in about a week.


Perhaps there should be a line of clothes that can be worn instead of armor, which upgrade crafting and non-combat skills.
Fancy clothes could cover bonuses to crafting, resource collecting, give bonuses to crafter-henchmen, increase inventory space, movement speed/travel time, perhaps stealth... hehe, it would be kinda funny if you made poison resistance easier to craft into the "aristocratic" side of the garments.

Maybe the lightest armor types (leather, and silk and linen based armor if you use them) could have the unique ability to get abilities from both the combat and non-combat sides. That could perhaps fit rogue-types very well, or be enough to protect crafters who are going out to hunt for resources in areas of light danger, with just the support of some henchmen.


I like this very, very much - and it's completely doable. Thanks.


What kind of game are you making? What are you developing it in? How big is your team? Just curious from the perspective of a fellow game dev. :smallsmile:

I believe none of this is against the rules, if it is I apologize and it'll be scrubbed...
MMO RPG Sandbox - personally I'd just call it Sandbox. Because you should be able to play on your own completely ignoring other players and quests if you prefer it that way. Thus the thread title. We're using Unity3D and have a ten man team so far. We're desperately lacking a good animation artist/rigger. I know some guys (one of them animated a part of Golum), but they're all way too busy right now. We plan on using motion capture for player character animations. Personally I think this is an overkill, but I was outvoted regarding this...



To build on that caravan system above, are you going to implement sea travel in a similar way? Just food for thought.

Mounted combat would be very nice. Maybe have it so only characters with levels in a certain class get to ride combat-capable horses, although perhaps everyone aught to have access to basic mounts.

Edit: are the race names set in stone? I've seen Nord used in loads of places (TES and Mount&Blade for example) and maybe it'd be better to think of a new name for the Viking-ish people. Vangarians? Coldlanders?

OMG water - I love it. I'm so dead when I suggest naval battles and shipwrighting. So, while I may be mesmerized with this it will almost definitely be rejected for beta, but I'll try my best to have it for the finished game.

Mounted combat - first thing we're dong right now is making it possible. The programming is identical, regardless of the type of mount. We already thought of having certain special mounts, but NDA. I hope you understand, but I can't divulge certain information.

The names aren't set in stone as far as I'm concerned. But the lead developer and designer was planning this game for years now. He really likes Nords called Nords and I understand him to an extent. We've already changed his original concept quite a bit and he deserves to keep certain elements we have nothing against. I hope you understand and everything so far is based on this: We want to make a game we'll gladly play ourselves. Thus no dlcs, nor subscription, nor pay to win, nor chainmail bikinis and if my friend and colleague wants to call his favorite race a certain way and it makes him happy I'll let him do it without using my right of veto.


This game just keeps looking better and better. How decent a computer do you think you'll need to run it? If you can run it on a decent laptop I'm sold already :smallsmile:.

The video on our blog was made on a laptop (OS Windows 8). I believe this answers your question.

Once again guys - thank you. If you have any more opinions, suggestions, or questions feel free to post them. When we start making the credits (in some eight or nine months) I'll PM you.

[Drakeburn]

A sandbox RPG eh?

A while ago, I had an idea of a Dungeon-Crawl RPG. For this idea, I thought of maybe a skill-tree system that allows the players to give their characters different options for what powers and skills the characters can have. So that way the player isn't limited to one or two classes.

Or maybe even better, a skill tree that players can customize with different skills and abilities to create their own class. (Maybe players should have the option of creating their character's race as well?)
How it works is that if the player chooses to create their own class, they can pick abilities from different classes according to level. If they level up, they have the choice to either gain a new ability or skill, or buff up their current skill or ability.

Now that I think about it, it sounds a bit Elder Scroll-ish.

My second suggestion is an add-on to the NPC idea. Maybe players can interact with NPCs in various ways (insult, taunt, hug, etc). Perhaps PCs can even develop a reputation in an NPC village or town, and maybe even marry NPCs.

Suggestion number three: PC Quests. What I mean by this is that in multi-player worlds, PCs can create their own quests and let other PCs partake in those quests. Maybe there can even be PC dungeons filled with monsters, traps, and chests can generate certain kinds of treasure.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Heh, this looks a lot like Trials Of Ascension. Which is also a lot like Ultima Online.

And please, just say it's an MMO.

[MLai]

1. Monsters should not auto-level based on player level. Nobody likes this Bethesda game "featue".

2. Make sure women gamers get some respect, i.e. sensible armour not just metal bikinis/boob window plates, and athletic/sensible female warrior body builds not just 90's Lara Croft T&A bodies. Notice I said "not just"; which means yes you can have those too just not those exclusively.

3. If you're going to include some sort of "foreign/exotic" culture/race/faction, please please do not default to feudal Japan i.e. samurais. This demographic has had Japan fantasy overload as it is. There are plenty of exotic cultures in the world aside from Japan; just do some research.

4. Would be cool if you allow custom banners/sigils/heraldry on buildings, flags, and armour. I don't know how you'll deal with the inevitable problem of swastikas/genitals/middle-finger banners, though. Probably just put your foot down and ban those characters (but not players) on a zero-tolerance basis?

5. I really like post #8. The poster is taking good elements from Age Of Sail games and Facebook social games. Key themes are:

(A)How do martial cultures make a living IRL? Answer is they do not go hunt random bats and spiders for XP. They act as mercenaries for towns and merchant caravans, or they form raiding bands to go after said towns and caravans. There's a certain epicness to doing sensible IRL warrior things that you read about in history, rather than nonsensical things that you know only happen in video games.

(B)When you're offline and setting your character (and his henchmen) to become an NPC during that time, you can also set up preferences such as discount rates for guilds/players you consider friends/allies, and blacklists for guilds/players who you don't like. If it's your base, or town in which you have high Influence, this extends to the entire town's NPC shops etc. This also acts as an organic disincentive for trolls and griefer players.

6. You mentioned mounts (horses). IRL, the breeding and trade of horses is Big Business, and is one of the few industries martial cultures are important in (they know how to breed them). Horse breeding/trading should be an industry/skill players can engage in.
In fact, if you intend to have combat pets and/or fantasy mounts, that should also be an important industry/skill players can profit in.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Well, I suppose I should give some ideas. Or more specifically, some references.

King of Dragon Pass (http://www.gog.com/game/king_of_dragon_pass) is also a game inspired by Norse mythology, where you play as a clan of Orlanthi, human barbarians with a foreign culture. I don't know if it'll be any help, but it's worth a shot.

Log Horizon (http://www.crunchyroll.com/log-horizon) is a most excellent anime (you can also read the light novels) about people who suddenly find themselves in a world that runs on rules very similar to an MMO they were playing. In fact, it seems like the MMO they were playing was somehow connected to the world. They find themselves in a strange situation that combines the rules of the game with the freedom of real life, and where NPCs have become fully fleshed humans.

Trials of Ascension (http://trialsofascension.com) is the game I mentioned that I thought looked like this. They have some good ideas.

[banthesun]

Yes they are, thanks. We've already decided on having caravans (robable on hard-core servers), but we haven't thought about tolls and such as well as road maintenance. I'll see if this is possible. (I think it is and will be implemented, but in the finished product, or late beta)

Offline mod - you're a genius.

Glad I could help. :smallsmile:

As for the caravans, you could make various levels of hardcoreness (I'm pretty sure that's not a word :smallsigh: ). On the lower levels, robbing a caravan could take a small portion of it's payload, cause it to despawn, and arrive at the next town a bit later. Once you make caravans robbable, certain aspects of road maintenance emerge naturally (though you'd probably have to make some system for what happens to a caravan in a monster infested area if there's no players around).


The last bit is a tough nut though. It would be rather hard to make a quest system that players can change. I see another two hour shouting session, but I'll let you know how it went in about a week.

Well now, I don't really want anyone shouting at anyone, so I've thrown together a quick list of pluses an minuses about how a quest system could potentially work. The system I describe uses a message board placeable object or Adventurers Guild NPC (or anything else you can think of) to let the players place and receive quests from a centralised location. Quests are simple things that can be generated from drop down lists, stuff like 'kill X monsters in a specific area', 'collect X specific items'*, or 'make sure this caravan reaches its destination'.

+ strengthens the player economy.

+ easy to code quest completion/generation. Chances are quests like this are planned for the game already.

+ intrinsic meaning to quests. If a NPC tells you wolves are attacking the village so you need to kill 20 of them, you know no NPCs are going to die if you ignore the quest. If a player is willing to pay you to kill 20 wolves, you know they have a reason to ask, even if they don't describe their reason at all (probably something like wanting to build in the area or send caravans through but the monster density is too high).

+ naturally generated content. There's been a lot of fuss in the past decade about randomly or procedurally generated content giving games potentially infinite play time, but these have generally fallen short. This system lets you include a form of dynamic content generation without having to spend time making it particularly palatable to players.

- multiple players taking the same quest could be troublesome. If the quest is only available to the first player who takes it, then if they decide to ignore the quest the quest giver has wasted their time. If multiple players can take the quest, then when the quest is completed the other players working on the quest have wasted their time. The simplest solution to this would be to show how many people are already on a quest, and how long it has been since they took it (if you take a quest where twenty people have already got half an hour's head start, you can hardly be surprised when it's finished). You could even have the option to make a quest be shared amongst all the people who take it. A "kill 100 trolls in Redrock Pass" quest could split the reward between everyone who took the quest and killed some trolls, or a "I need 200 wolf hides for my crafting project" quest could pay out a portion for every wolf hide returned. Hell, this could even be seen as a benefit in some cases. If someone posts a "1,000,000 gold for the first person who brings me a red dragon hide" quest then players could know they're competing in a race (but could still be disappointed if someone finds the quest with a red dragon hide in their inventory).

- troll quests. This can easily be mitigated by requiring the reward to be made as a down payment, and having a small quest placement fee, but players will always find ways to troll, it's just in their nature.

- exploiting the quest system. If exp rewards are given for player quests I can see players finding ways to exploit this trading quests back and forth with friends. I haven't come up with a way to make this completely unexploitable without being too complicated, but of course you could just not give exp rewards for player quests.


4. Would be cool if you allow custom banners/sigils/heraldry on buildings, flags, and armour. I don't know how you'll deal with the inevitable problem of swastikas/genitals/middle-finger banners, though. Probably just put your foot down and ban those characters (but not players) on a zero-tolerance basis?

If you're running a free to play model, this could actually be a great field for monetisation. Cosmetics (and very occasionally convenience) are generally the only things that should be monetised to maintain a balanced game. One issue is that players can feel like it's a waste of money to spend their real money on virtual goods. If you ask players to pay to have their designs included in the game they may be more understanding that they're paying the team to add these designs to the game. It's more of a commission than a purchase. Of course, if you've set the system up properly it shouldn't take you very much time at all to add them, but the players don't have to think of that. :smalltongue: You could even have a system where players could pay more to have your artists design them some heraldry to be added to the game (if your artists are up for that). The only issue I see with including a system like this is that if the textures are too large to stream to the player during play you could get some rather unpleasant filesize bloat.


(B)When you're offline and setting your character (and his henchmen) to become an NPC during that time, you can also set up preferences such as discount rates for guilds/players you consider friends/allies, and blacklists for guilds/players who you don't like. If it's your base, or town in which you have high Influence, this extends to the entire town's NPC shops etc. This also acts as an organic disincentive for trolls and griefer players.

This has actually reminded me of what my other suggestion was (so thanks MLai :smallredface: ), player controlled legal systems. Basically a guild can chose a set of laws that it aims to enforce from a list. Things like "cannot kill any innocent player", "cannot attack any guild member", "cannot attack caravans", and so on. Police or guard NPCs could be created to watch out for any crimes being committed, and automatically mark any person seen committing these crimes as a criminal against the guild that controls the NPC. How I see it, criminals would be allowed to be attacked and killed by any guild member or NPC belonging to that guild. They wouldn't be able to respawn at respawn points controlled by that guild, but could respawn elsewhere and try to sneak into guild controlled areas. As MLai mentioned, this discourages trolls and griefers. Perhaps there could even be a system where laws could be set to apply to everyone, or not to guild members. For instance a guild could consider non-members that kill each other criminals, but guild members could be free to kill who they like. In my imaginings this could lead to frontier towns with few laws where the controlling guilds are corrupt and powerful. Not a place level one players, but a good place for criminals to hide out. A real Mos Eisley of the game world. :smallamused:

* You might have realised this quest is a lot like going to purchase some items from the player market, but it could be useful for getting items that are in short supply locally, or placing orders at a low price that don't need to be filled immediately. For the players taking these quests, they could actually just find somewhere to buy the goods cheaper than what the quest giver is paying, but in that case you've just created a quest system for merchant players! :smallbiggrin:

[Triaxx]

Cespenar had a good point about monster density, and you mentioned some monsters getting stronger. I should definitely be able to sneak out into the area, and see the bigger monsters fighting and consuming the smaller ones, growing in size and power. While limits are necessary to maintain game balance, it should be fairly high, so leaving a monster out there to get to maximum size and power starts to become something on the order of a major catastrophe. Power levels that run a gambit of 'Velociraptor>T-Rex> Godzilla' for example.

And if you're letting things be constructed, they should also be able to be destroyed, so when Godzilla shows up you're not just hiding behind the walls until he goes away.

Banditry should be a viable occupation. There should be a bandit king with bandit lords, which are positions players can take. You're going to get trolls and griefers anyway, why not give them a place in society? Nothing says it's going to be a nice place, but...

[Kitten Champion]

Just a few suggestions, in no particularly order or framework.

I don't know if you've got a day/night schedule in the works. I've grown fond of the way it was established in Dragon's Dogma, visibility is greatly reduced when the sun is down and monsters become much more active. Without a light source - lamp or torch - and being somewhat over-levelled for the area, there's good odds that you won't see the morning. Going into water exceeding your chest shuts off your light until you re-equip it on dry land. Seeing as you've got a few races, infra-vision/low light vision could be a serious plus for one's racial abilities.

I don't know if active weather is a thing, but you could do something like a warmth mechanic where PCs start to slow down/lose accuracy/gain status effects easier in bad weather. Those from cold environs like the Nords, Half Giants, and Druagr gain natural resistance at varying percentages, whereas the rest need to wear heavier clothing or utilize potions/magic/skills or face gradually being chilled.

In addition, you could have campfires, which serve as healing/light/warmth centres for longer jaunts into the wilderness. Something like the way indie game Don't Starve operates.

Perhaps severe weather conditions could open or close the map, with icing-over of rivers letting you cross, or the melting of particularly thick wall of snow can reveal caves or open quicker passages through the environment. The player can complete quests by waiting for the right conditions.

Inventory management is always an issue in these games, but you've got a solution right there with the horse. Presumably the horse can come equipped with a pack all its own which is substantially larger than the PCs. You can stuff your extra swag into your mount's carry freeing you up for dungeon exploration and whatnot.

An idea Path of Exile developed, which I appreciate, is eliminating the gold economy and in stead using identification scrolls and gems as the prime currency -- the player can keep them to identify better items they find or buy new items from merchants. It deters gold spammers if nothing else. I don't know if you've got a currency system in place, but making a barter economy with hunting trophies/farmed resources would certainly fit the game mechanics outlined and the setting itself. I could see it working easily in the way player trading worked in Diablo II. You've got two boxes on screen, one with merchant's goods and the other to put your loot into, when the value is equivalent they turn green, and your transaction is completed. Nobody collects gold just to collect gold, having an economy which is about getting the gear you need for that level and needful supplies for the road is more important than being Gringotts.

Otherwise, consider putting a captcha mechanic going in, and once every hundred messages or so you've got to prove you're a human being. Perhaps an easy-click blacklist for chat, which should be limited to your area.

Another idea is to have certain monsters/creatures which look unique and particularly cool -- that can be mounted on your hold's wall. You've got a guild, well, have a room in that can be fashioned to show off your most prestigious hunts and look completely badass. Increases investment in the space as more than just a dumping ground for stuff, but a monument to your questing.

An idea for map completion. You're an explorer and presumably your going to be making a map as you go on -- you can either barter for the map ahead of time from a map-making merchant or make the map yourself through exploration and sell it back for xp/goods.

Another idea is promoting experimenting with the skills, after using a new skill so many times in combat gives you a small bit of extra XP.

You could have a tracking skill that lets you keeps a record of which monster lives where and what loot they drop so that you can collect the specific fur/bone you need, as well as listing their stats.

A herbalist skill would have the location of plants you've come across marked down and creates a list of their possible uses for medicine and the like - something similar for miners.

A mercantile skill that reduces the mark-up of goods and gets you a bonus upon quest completion.

A lorekeeper skill which lets you identify rare items and get more experience out of visiting new areas.

A bounty hunter skill that lets you collect more loot from defeating bandits, and lets you see the location of bandit hide-outs on the map.

Other than that, one of my major pet peeves in these games is the size of text. Having adjustable size for font would be appreciated.

[MLai]

Banditry should be a viable occupation. There should be a bandit king with bandit lords, which are positions players can take. You're going to get trolls and griefers anyway, why not give them a place in society? Nothing says it's going to be a nice place, but...
Well, "guilds" is just a nice name for "mobs" after all. :smallwink:

[banthesun]

I took a look at your site, and I see you apparently have centaurs as a player race. That's interesting, but it does concern me a little. Will all buildings need to be centaur accessable? If so, does that mean anyone can ride a horse through my castle's study? How do centaurs take part in jousting? Can they improve their movement speed to match better types of mounts? (can they ride other mounts ayway? :smalleek: )

Kitten Champion has some great ideas, so I'm gonna respond to a few of them.

Just a few suggestions, in no particularly order or framework.

I don't know if you've got a day/night schedule in the works. I've grown fond of the way it was established in Dragon's Dogma, visibility is greatly reduced when the sun is down and monsters become much more active. Without a light source - lamp or torch - and being somewhat over-levelled for the area, there's good odds that you won't see the morning. Going into water exceeding your chest shuts off your light until you re-equip it on dry land. Seeing as you've got a few races, infra-vision/low light vision could be a serious plus for one's racial abilities.

I don't know if active weather is a thing, but you could do something like a warmth mechanic where PCs start to slow down/lose accuracy/gain status effects easier in bad weather. Those from cold environs like the Nords, Half Giants, and Druagr gain natural resistance at varying percentages, whereas the rest need to wear heavier clothing or utilize potions/magic/skills or face gradually being chilled.

In addition, you could have campfires, which serve as healing/light/warmth centres for longer jaunts into the wilderness. Something like the way indie game Don't Starve operates.

Perhaps severe weather conditions could open or close the map, with icing-over of rivers letting you cross, or the melting of particularly thick wall of snow can reveal caves or open quicker passages through the environment. The player can complete quests by waiting for the right conditions.

This is pretty interesting and I definitely love the idea of terrain changing based on season, but it does have some issues in a MMO environment. First of all, you wouldn't want to lock the time of day in game to the time of day out of game (or by anything like "4 in game days per real life day"). If a player can only log on at certain times of day then they'll miss out a large amount of content if it's the same time everytime they log on. Having too much of a distinction in tone between day and night gameplay then you're relying on players enjoying both forms of gameplay equally. This is more of a problem than in single player games, because if a player logs on expecting to do a quest and finds they can't because it's currently too dark and dangerous outside, they're more likely to be frustrated that they can't play how they wanted to. I really do love the idea, but I feel it could be really tricky to implement.


Otherwise, consider putting a captcha mechanic going in, and once every hundred messages or so you've got to prove you're a human being. Perhaps an easy-click blacklist for chat, which should be limited to your area.

This is a great idea. Too many games are spammed with trade messages that make chat channels impossible to read and unpleasant to even look at. A possible alternative to captchas could be preventing players from sending the exact same message twice in a row. This could be circumvented with a rotating message bot, but would make spamming chat significantly harder, and even discourage people from just dumping text in with ctrl+v.

[endoperez]

This is a great idea. Too many games are spammed with trade messages that make chat channels impossible to read and unpleasant to even look at. A possible alternative to captchas could be preventing players from sending the exact same message twice in a row. This could be circumvented with a rotating message bot, but would make spamming chat significantly harder, and even discourage people from just dumping text in with ctrl+v.

Or they could implement a marketplace or auction house that is better at selling your stuff than posting "trading 10 rat tails for 3 wolf pelts!" x1000. I mean, if people need to spam allchat to sell their stuff, that's what they'll do, regardless of how inconvenient that's been made.

[Triaxx]

You could implement Day/Night by having servers on a 12 hour off-set. So you have two servers for each coast. So the East Coast gets one server that runs identical to the current time, and one that's twelve hours ahead. That way if I get home from work at 6, I can log into my preferred server and play at night, or I can log into the alternate server and do daylight things. Or if you've got someone working second or third shift, they still get the ability to do night time events without feeling like they've got to skip work.

[Kaww]

A sandbox RPG eh?

A while ago, I had an idea of a Dungeon-Crawl RPG. For this idea, I thought of maybe a skill-tree system that allows the players to give their characters different options for what powers and skills the characters can have. So that way the player isn't limited to one or two classes.

Or maybe even better, a skill tree that players can customize with different skills and abilities to create their own class...

Take a look at the concept of our talent tree and skills on our blog. The classes should only be a general direction in the game and that is all.



My second suggestion is an add-on to the NPC idea. Maybe players can interact with NPCs in various ways (insult, taunt, hug, etc). Perhaps PCs can even develop a reputation in an NPC village or town, and maybe even marry NPCs.

We've had some ideas regarding this, but if you don't mind explaining your idea in detail feel free to PM me.



Suggestion number three: PC Quests. What I mean by this is that in multi-player worlds, PCs can create their own quests and let other PCs partake in those quests. Maybe there can even be PC dungeons filled with monsters, traps, and chests can generate certain kinds of treasure.

We've already had a suggestion similar to this, but I have to disappoint in one regard. Treasure chests will be literally nonexistent in our game, unless players make them. It's supposed to be a tough stay alive game near, or during the end of the world as envisioned by Nordic mythology (we keep our right of artistic freedom).



And please, just say it's an MMO.

When all's said and done - it's an MMO.


1. Monsters should not auto-level based on player level. Nobody likes this Bethesda game "featue".

2. Make sure women gamers get some respect, i.e. sensible armour not just metal bikinis/boob window plates, and athletic/sensible female warrior body builds not just 90's Lara Croft T&A bodies. Notice I said "not just"; which means yes you can have those too just not those exclusively.

3. If you're going to include some sort of "foreign/exotic" culture/race/faction, please please do not default to feudal Japan i.e. samurais. This demographic has had Japan fantasy overload as it is. There are plenty of exotic cultures in the world aside from Japan; just do some research.

4. Would be cool if you allow custom banners/sigils/heraldry on buildings, flags, and armour. I don't know how you'll deal with the inevitable problem of swastikas/genitals/middle-finger banners, though. Probably just put your foot down and ban those characters (but not players) on a zero-tolerance basis?

5. I really like post #8. The poster is taking good elements from Age Of Sail games and Facebook social games. Key themes are:

(A)How do martial cultures make a living IRL? Answer is they do not go hunt random bats and spiders for XP. They act as mercenaries for towns and merchant caravans, or they form raiding bands to go after said towns and caravans. There's a certain epicness to doing sensible IRL warrior things that you read about in history, rather than nonsensical things that you know only happen in video games.

(B)When you're offline and setting your character (and his henchmen) to become an NPC during that time, you can also set up preferences such as discount rates for guilds/players you consider friends/allies, and blacklists for guilds/players who you don't like. If it's your base, or town in which you have high Influence, this extends to the entire town's NPC shops etc. This also acts as an organic disincentive for trolls and griefer players.

6. You mentioned mounts (horses). IRL, the breeding and trade of horses is Big Business, and is one of the few industries martial cultures are important in (they know how to breed them). Horse breeding/trading should be an industry/skill players can engage in.
In fact, if you intend to have combat pets and/or fantasy mounts, that should also be an important industry/skill players can profit in.

1. Agreed. They will evolve depending on what players do.
2. Read my previous post.
3. We wish that "exotic cultures" are as original as we can make them. All cultures will be exotic to an extent. (Albeit this depends on where you live.)
4. This is one big YES. A good idea, nobody on the team has mentioned it yet, as far as I can remember.
5. I like the post #8 too. Almost all posts here are quite useful.
A) I agree with you and we've already had a plan on allowing guilds or individuals to make alliances.
B) I like this.
6. We'll discus this. I must admit we haven't thought about it, but you're right. But I have to disagree that good mounts are a privilege of warrior cultures. Nomadic ones were very good at this too.


Well, I suppose I should give some ideas. Or more specifically, some references.
*snip*
I'll give this to someone in the team to browse. Please don't feel offended, I work about 14 hours a day.


Cespenar had a good point about monster density, and you mentioned some monsters getting stronger. I should definitely be able to sneak out into the area, and see the bigger monsters fighting and consuming the smaller ones, growing in size and power. While limits are necessary to maintain game balance, it should be fairly high, so leaving a monster out there to get to maximum size and power starts to become something on the order of a major catastrophe. Power levels that run a gambit of 'Velociraptor>T-Rex> Godzilla' for example.

Not only will they fight to grow stronger. Animals will combat undead and certain other monster factions will exist and be very hostile one towards another. We hope this will give certain ideas to players on how to make their lives easier.


And if you're letting things be constructed, they should also be able to be destroyed, so when Godzilla shows up you're not just hiding behind the walls until he goes away.

We've already thought of this, alas NDA. ;)


Banditry should be a viable occupation. There should be a bandit king with bandit lords, which are positions players can take. You're going to get trolls and griefers anyway, why not give them a place in society? Nothing says it's going to be a nice place, but...

We have actually planned for caravans to be robable (I made a word, yay) on hardcore realms.


Or they could implement a marketplace or auction house that is better at selling your stuff than posting "trading 10 rat tails for 3 wolf pelts!" x1000. I mean, if people need to spam allchat to sell their stuff, that's what they'll do, regardless of how inconvenient that's been made.

We have in mind a system for marketplaces. You guys are improving it with every post, but I don't know yet how we'll combat: "trading 10 rat tails for 3 wolf pelts!" in the chat.


Well, "guilds" is just a nice name for "mobs" after all. :smallwink:
:smallwink:

To all I haven't replied yet I will. When I get the time.

Best regards and thank you,
kaww

[Partysan]

Question: how do you plan on handling combat - the old autoattack and activate abilities method or a direct control combat style (preferred)?

Comment: I'm a bit disappointed you're using a class system. I dislike them, at least by now I do. (Although there is a variant I'm intrigued by, the reverse class system. Instead of having a class or classes and them determining your abilities, abilities are generic and gained either through use or bought for xp and every class has prerequisites in abilities. Once you satisfy the prerequisites you can enter the class, gaining access to some small unique abilities that particularly complement the playstyle, also you have the prestige, title and possibly equipment, maybe access to special crafting recipes as well. Best done when entering the class is represented by an actual in-game organization to ordain you and it can be used to present ladders (novice-acolyte-priest etc.).)
By the way, I like your idea of combining abilities into new ones.

Actual advice: I'm one of those guys who enjoys crafting in games, so if you allow I'll ramble about that a bit. I'll be using weaponsmithing as standard example here, but what I say applies generally. Also this ties into items in general.
- Numbers themselves are an uninteresting thing to gain. Instead, different items should provide stats suitable for different playstyles. For example:
-- Weapon types have properties. Balanced weapons like swords are faster and easier to handle (which can translate into attack speed and/or hit rate if there is such a thing) and are well suited for parrying while top-heavy weapons like axes have more power. Spears have more reach.
-- Weapon materials aren't just straight upgrades on each other. Yes, when starting out with bronze, iron and steel are just better in every way, but at mid and high level this gets tedious. Instead, again, interesting choices should be made. Heavy materials give slower, more powerful weapons. Light materials give faster, weaker ones. Which does suit the individual more? Making each hit count or piling on the hits?
Maybe giving a weapon inlays of gold will increase its affinity for magic, giving more power to abilities that channel magic (like your flame strike example). Silver strengthens holy magic instead, and you can only have one. Rubies could strengthen fire magic, and so on. Crafters can tailor the items they make to the specific needs of an individual player, making sacrifices for gains. That's what choice means.
-- Similarly, items can further be customized by a limited amount of special properties. For example a blade can be jagged to possibly cause bleeding, however this isn't compatible with extra sharp blades etc. Grips, points, guards, all can theoretically be modified to specialize the weapon for a specific function.
- Standard recipes can be learned for money, but disassembling item drops can also provide the knowledge of constructing certain weapons or weapon parts, maybe smelting down can also recover resources. This gives a use for unwanted drops.
- Crafting will easily get grindy over time. But while I'm in favour of making the process more interactive in contrast to opening a menu and waiting for completion, keep in mind that any minigame you put in will have to be played 1000s of times. Almost anything will get annoying at that rate.
- When it is necessary to repeatedly craft items just to raise one's skill, make materials readily available. If you want to retain the searching for ore veins etc. then give the next higher level area where this material is now not relevant anymore a permanent mine where the material can be obtained (mined or bought from npcs) in unlimited quantity, but do give an xp reward for finding and mining veins during exploration.
The reason for this is that some people really just want to craft items, not run around the wilds for hours searching for copper ore, being forced to fight all the monsters in the vicinity.
Of course extra rare high level materials that are only available in dangerous areas can and probably should still exist, but those should be special and not commonly used.

Slightly different topic, but: PLEASE for the love of all that's good and pleasant, give your weapons a realistic size (it's easy to find correct measurements on the web) and make some armors, especially female armors, that make sense. Nothing against sexy outfits, in fact I like them (for all genders) but they shouldn't be the only or the mechanically superior choice.

More to come once I have the time.

[Kaww]

Glad I could help. :smallsmile:

As for the caravans, you could make various levels of hardcoreness (I'm pretty sure that's not a word :smallsigh: )...
We can’t implement the idea of various levels of hardcoreness xD. However you did give me an idea of various tiers of wagons with hidden caches and what not that guarantee some of the goods making it to the destination. Unless someone destroys the wagon.

Well now, I don't really want anyone shouting at anyone...*snip*
Shouting is good. It gets the job done. If someone is shouting it means they have something they find important to say. Quiet people in large groups of babbling people tend not to be heard. So raise your voice if you have something important to say. This one however took no shouting. I messaged my partner on Skype and the answer was OMG YES.

If you're running a free to play model, this could actually be a great field for monetisation. Cosmetics (and very occasionally convenience) are generally the only things that should be monetised to maintain a balanced game...
A good idea. I thought I already replied to something like this, but the commission of our artist is definitely new and I like it. By the way, our artist worked for Paizo. He’s up for it.

This has actually reminded me of what my other suggestion was (so thanks MLai :smallredface: ), player controlled legal systems...
We like this very much. (I checked) It might be too tough to implement in the early beta, but late should have a system like this and final version most definitely will have it.


Just a few suggestions, in no particularly order or framework.

I don't know if you've got a day/night schedule in the works...

I don't know if active weather is a thing, but you could do something like a warmth mechanic where PCs start to slow down/lose accuracy/gain status effects easier in bad weather. Those from cold environs like the Nords, Half Giants, and Druagr gain natural resistance at varying percentages, whereas the rest need to wear heavier clothing or utilize potions/magic/skills or face gradually being chilled.

In addition, you could have campfires, which serve as healing/light/warmth centres for longer jaunts into the wilderness. Something like the way indie game Don't Starve operates.

Perhaps severe weather conditions could open or close the map, with icing-over of rivers letting you cross, or the melting of particularly thick wall of snow can reveal caves or open quicker passages through the environment. The player can complete quests by waiting for the right conditions.
These are all good concepts. I’ll just have to check what the rest of the guys think. I should have the answer by Friday.

Inventory management is always an issue in these games, but you've got a solution right there with the horse. Presumably the horse can come equipped with a pack all its own which is substantially larger than the PCs. You can stuff your extra swag into your mount's carry freeing you up for dungeon exploration and whatnot.
We’ve already thought of having container items for horses. Also, horses will be slower depending on total weight they carry.

An idea Path of Exile developed, which I appreciate, is eliminating the gold economy...
We have considered gold to be available to players. But I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t have both systems. Monsters won’t drop gold. You’ll mine it if you need it for specific craft recipe. That or you go and kill a dragon.

Otherwise, consider putting a captcha mechanic going in, and once every hundred messages or so you've got to prove you're a human being. Perhaps an easy-click blacklist for chat, which should be limited to your area.
Something like this is a must, but this won’t help with real spammers. :(

Another idea is to have certain monsters/creatures which look unique and particularly cool -- that can be mounted on your hold's wall. You've got a guild, well, have a room in that can be fashioned to show off your most prestigious hunts and look completely badass. Increases investment in the space as more than just a dumping ground for stuff, but a monument to your questing.
We’ve thought about something similar. You’ll have to have the item you’d like to mount on the wall, but it will also cost real money. (back to the purely cosmetical stuff)

An idea for map completion. You're an explorer and presumably your going to be making a map as you go on -- you can either barter for the map ahead of time from a map-making merchant or make the map yourself through exploration and sell it back for xp/goods.
I like it.

Another idea is promoting experimenting with the skills, after using a new skill so many times in combat gives you a small bit of extra XP.
I’ll let the guys decide on it. It sounds OK.

You could have a tracking skill that lets you keeps a record of which monster lives where and what loot they drop so that you can collect the specific fur/bone you need, as well as listing their stats.
I like, we hadn’t thought about it.

A herbalist skill would have the location of plants you've come across marked down and creates a list of their possible uses for medicine and the like - something similar for miners.
A mercantile skill that reduces the mark-up of goods and gets you a bonus upon quest completion.
We actually came up with these on our own a while ago. xD

A lorekeeper skill which lets you identify rare items and get more experience out of visiting new areas.

A bounty hunter skill that lets you collect more loot from defeating bandits, and lets you see the location of bandit hide-outs on the map.
I actually dislike these two. We plan on having very few items to identify. Pigs and skeletons won’t go around dropping magic items. Magic equipment will be made by blacksmiths and enchanters. Some unique items (one per realm) will be available and their properties will be common knowledge. I believe that a tracker/hunter should be able to find bandits better than most bounty hunters and there’s no way to have players give you extra resources because you have a skill. I think that bounty was/is paid regardless of you being a professional or an amateur.

Other than that, one of my major pet peeves in these games is the size of text. Having adjustable size for font would be appreciated.
I agree with you. It’s something nobody ever thinks about. I’ll see what I can do.

I took a look at your site, and I see you apparently have centaurs as a player race. That's interesting, but it does concern me a little. Will all buildings need to be centaur accessable? If so, does that mean anyone can ride a horse through my castle's study? How do centaurs take part in jousting? Can they improve their movement speed to match better types of mounts? (can they ride other mounts ayway? :smalleek: )
Well this is a question that was bound to be asked at one point... The answers are: Yes, you’ll have centaurs walking around your study. Yes, that does mean anyone can come to your study mounted (except half-giant, they break horses). You might remember a certain scene from a certain movie about a certain Scott, I believe he speaks with an Irish accent btw, played by certain Mel Gibson. How do centaurs partake in jousting – I guess as winners, but we’ll have to balance it. A greater problem will be the fact that half-giants won’t be able to partake on account of always being on foot. Centaurs should move as fast as any horse and have better maneuverability. As for the last question – I sure hope not.

A possible alternative to captchas could be preventing players from sending the exact same message twice in a row. This could be circumvented with a rotating message bot, but would make spamming chat significantly harder, and even discourage people from just dumping text in with ctrl+v.
Good idea.

You could implement Day/Night by having servers on a 12 hour off-set. So you have two servers for each coast. So the East Coast gets one server that runs identical to the current time, and one that's twelve hours ahead. That way if I get home from work at 6, I can log into my preferred server and play at night, or I can log into the alternate server and do daylight things. Or if you've got someone working second or third shift, they still get the ability to do night time events without feeling like they've got to skip work.
We’ll think about it. banthesun is correct that if not properly implemented this would deter most players from the game. But I like the concept, we just have to check if we can make it work well.

Question: how do you plan on handling combat - the old autoattack and activate abilities method or a direct control combat style (preferred)?
Autoattack + abilities. We believe that direct combat style would make ranged combat a tad too difficult.

Comment: I'm a bit disappointed you're using a class system...
By the way, I like your idea of combining abilities into new ones.
Classes are supposed to have minimal impact on your character’s end game build. You basic primary attribute will be higher than you weakest one by a factor of 30% or less. While the one you invest in might be some 500% greater than you original primary attribute. The several class abilities you gain till end game are negligible when compared with hundreds of universal abilities. They make your character stronger in a certain aspect of game, but you are free to ditch it and play the class however you like.


Actual advice: *snip*
I’ll address this in a separate post tomorrow, or later during the day, if I have the time.

Slightly different topic, but: PLEASE for the love of all that's good and pleasant, give your weapons a realistic size (it's easy to find correct measurements on the web) and make some armors, especially female armors, that make sense. Nothing against sexy outfits, in fact I like them (for all genders) but they shouldn't be the only or the mechanically superior choice.
Both my partner and I have wielded various weapons irl. I was planning on asking for suggestions/help from the weapons thread on RPG subforum. I’m reluctant to do so, on account of it possibly considered advertising. I guess it’s time to ask a mod...
I have mentioned this several times now – no chainmail bikini.

More to come once I have the time.
Looking forward to it.

[Partysan]

Autoattack + abilities. We believe that direct combat style would make ranged combat a tad too difficult.
Huh. Well, you'd know best I guess. In this case my interest on the game will largely depend on whether I really can play a pure crafter, since there has never been a game with that system where I wasn't bored to death by combat after a day or two. Not your fault of course, it's just not my thing.

Classes are supposed to have minimal impact on your character’s end game build. You basic primary attribute will be higher than you weakest one by a factor of 30% or less. While the one you invest in might be some 500% greater than you original primary attribute. The several class abilities you gain till end game are negligible when compared with hundreds of universal abilities. They make your character stronger in a certain aspect of game, but you are free to ditch it and play the class however you like.
Ok, please believe that I'm not saying this to antagonize you. But aren't you basically saying that you want to incorporate a system that you will not commit to? What exactly is the reason for classes to exist at all if their impact is supposed to be so small? Is it a style reason, are there abilities that shouldn't be used in conjunction so they're made class exclusives, is there an in-universe reason for them to exist? I'll freely admit I'm biased but I can't really see yet what you are trying to accomplish that requires the classes.

[Silverbit]

Hello again, I've got some more questions/ideas!

(First, sorry if I sounded annoying about naming. It's your game and you can call things what you want, it looks amazing.)

Are there going to be utility magic spells? It'd be cool, once you get fairly high level and powerful, to be able to water walk or something. In fact, if you're using a weather system, introducing some kind of weather control spell would be cool. It might be a bit too easy to abuse for trolls and griefers though.

I'll have some ideas later, but I've got to go. Watch this space.

[Kaww]

Huh. Well, you'd know best I guess. In this case my interest on the game will largely depend on whether I really can play a pure crafter, since there has never been a game with that system where I wasn't bored to death by combat after a day or two. Not your fault of course, it's just not my thing.

How would you make crafting better and more fun? I really, really want to hear you suggestions. As for combat I understood that you meant Diablo2 system where you click on the opponent until it dies. If I misunderstood you please correct me.


Ok, please believe that I'm not saying this to antagonize you. But aren't you basically saying that you want to incorporate a system that you will not commit to? What exactly is the reason for classes to exist at all if their impact is supposed to be so small? Is it a style reason, are there abilities that shouldn't be used in conjunction so they're made class exclusives, is there an in-universe reason for them to exist? I'll freely admit I'm biased but I can't really see yet what you are trying to accomplish that requires the classes.

I believe you. :smallsmile: Why do you think stereotypical class system is the only one? In Warhammer FRP you have dozens of classes, none of which give unique abilities (except spellcasters and you don't want to play those). I also like the class system in NWoD where class only states what's harder/easier for you to learn and that's it.

Even though I knew about these I was against classes and levels at first. I thought that improving your skills with use and buying them with xp is better. But, after listening to my friend for a while I realized he was right about this particular feature. (you may notice that I have sneaked my idea in through craft system that originally wasn't there at all)

We have classes because the talent tree is huge. We can't let players pick talents without any rules because they would just pick the most powerful ones and be done with it. On the other hand, if we allow only single entry point it's most definitely going to have useless talents for most players. So we decided on having seven entry points, all of which branch in three directions (totaling to 21 different lvl 1 setups). And similar to NWoD - if players wish to start there then we should give them some free abilities that complement their choice.

Regarding your previous post. I've asked Mark and he said I should start a new thread and then post a link to it on Weapons thread in Roleplaying games. I'll address it there so more people can tell me what they think.


Hello again, I've got some more questions/ideas!

(First, sorry if I sounded annoying about naming. It's your game and you can call things what you want, it looks amazing.)

Are there going to be utility magic spells? It'd be cool, once you get fairly high level and powerful, to be able to water walk or something. In fact, if you're using a weather system, introducing some kind of weather control spell would be cool. It might be a bit too easy to abuse for trolls and griefers though.

I'll have some ideas later, but I've got to go. Watch this space.

There's nothing to apologize for. I'm asking for ideas and suggestions and you provided one that is valid and with which I agree. I just know that there's a personal reason that won't fly. No hard feelings whatsoever. And you weren't rude, nor annoying, really.

I honestly don't know yet how we're going to implement utility magic. It will definitely become necessary at one point, but we haven't discussed this yet. I believe that this is fourth, maybe fifth week of development. If you come up with anything else feel free to post it, please. That's why I started the thread.



Maybe giving a weapon inlays of gold will increase its affinity for magic, giving more power to abilities that channel magic (like your flame strike example). Silver strengthens holy magic instead, and you can only have one. Rubies could strengthen fire magic, and so on. Crafters can tailor the items they make to the specific needs of an individual player, making sacrifices for gains. That's what choice means.
I agree, we'll try our best to achieve it. It will take time to balance though.

-- Similarly, items can further be customized by a limited amount of special properties. For example a blade can be jagged to possibly cause bleeding, however this isn't compatible with extra sharp blades etc. Grips, points, guards, all can theoretically be modified to specialize the weapon for a specific function.
- Standard recipes can be learned for money, but disassembling item drops can also provide the knowledge of constructing certain weapons or weapon parts, maybe smelting down can also recover resources. This gives a use for unwanted drops.[QUOTE]
I like how you're making the system better and more complicated at the same time. I'll chat with the guys about this and see what they say. We've already thought about smelting items and we're using it.
[QUOTE]- Crafting will easily get grindy over time. But while I'm in favour of making the process more interactive in contrast to opening a menu and waiting for completion, keep in mind that any minigame you put in will have to be played 1000s of times. Almost anything will get annoying at that rate.
How do you suggest we handle this?

- When it is necessary to repeatedly craft items just to raise one's skill, make materials readily available. If you want to retain the searching for ore veins etc. then give the next higher level area where this material is now not relevant anymore a permanent mine where the material can be obtained (mined or bought from npcs) in unlimited quantity, but do give an xp reward for finding and mining veins during exploration.
The reason for this is that some people really just want to craft items, not run around the wilds for hours searching for copper ore, being forced to fight all the monsters in the vicinity.
Of course extra rare high level materials that are only available in dangerous areas can and probably should still exist, but those should be special and not commonly used.

We're not planning on having more difficult areas - that will come naturally. As for mines - they won't be inexhaustible, but will have quite a lot of ore. There shouldn't be any shortages. Crafters in NPC cities will have relatively easy access to materials. In player cities, well, that's up to the players and their choices.

[Triaxx]

My suggestion is crafting NPC's. Essentially you only have to craft it once, then you can have an NPC whom you just give the resources to and get the item back. That way you only have to do it once to unlock the item, so it doesn't become tedious. An idea stolen whole heartedly from Minecraft modding I admit.

[Partysan]

As for combat I understood that you meant Diablo2 system where you click on the opponent until it dies. If I misunderstood you please correct me.
I actually hadn't noticed that the game is played from a top-down perspective when I wrote that. I consider Diablo 2 to still be an indirect control scheme, just a massively inefficient one. I'll see if I can dig up an appropriate example of what I meant, since it's less common in top-down titles.


I believe you. :smallsmile: Why do you think stereotypical class system is the only one? In Warhammer FRP you have dozens of classes, none of which give unique abilities (except spellcasters and you don't want to play those). I also like the class system in NWoD where class only states what's harder/easier for you to learn and that's it.

Even though I knew about these I was against classes and levels at first. I thought that improving your skills with use and buying them with xp is better. But, after listening to my friend for a while I realized he was right about this particular feature. (you may notice that I have sneaked my idea in through craft system that originally wasn't there at all)

We have classes because the talent tree is huge.
(NWoD has classes?! I seriously never noticed that.)
I guess if you're going with the Skilldrassil design, classes as different starting points do kind of make sense. However I will contest this:

We can't let players pick talents without any rules because they would just pick the most powerful ones and be done with it. On the other hand, if we allow only single entry point it's most definitely going to have useless talents for most players. So we decided on having seven entry points, all of which branch in three directions (totaling to 21 different lvl 1 setups). And similar to NWoD - if players wish to start there then we should give them some free abilities that complement their choice.
If that's a problem, your abilities are either unbalanced or not well set up. powerful abilities should still be situation specific and can always be balanced by giving them fitting prerequisites. I like the Skilldrassil design, but it shouldn't be making extra difficulties that you have to compromise your talent system for. Gameplay is ultimately more important than style.
That said, I haven't seen it. Don't forget that I'm arguing from a point of massively less information about the game than you have.


I like how you're making the system better and more complicated at the same time. I'll chat with the guys about this and see what they say. We've already thought about smelting items and we're using it.
I'm just trying to incorporate interesting choices into a system often dominated by repetition and linearly increasing numbers :smallwink:


How do you suggest we handle this?
Give me a moment to think about that in detail.


We're not planning on having more difficult areas - that will come naturally. As for mines - they won't be inexhaustible, but will have quite a lot of ore. There shouldn't be any shortages. Crafters in NPC cities will have relatively easy access to materials. In player cities, well, that's up to the players and their choices.
Sounds reasonable.

[Kaww]

My suggestion is crafting NPC's. Essentially you only have to craft it once, then you can have an NPC whom you just give the resources to and get the item back. That way you only have to do it once to unlock the item, so it doesn't become tedious. An idea stolen whole heartedly from Minecraft modding I admit.

We've already planned on players being able to hire/find/rescue crafter NPCs. I agree that it would make crafting process less tedious, but some people would like to play crafters and we have to figure out a way of making the system have staying power.


I actually hadn't noticed that the game is played from a top-down perspective when I wrote that. I consider Diablo 2 to still be an indirect control scheme, just a massively inefficient one. I'll see if I can dig up an appropriate example of what I meant, since it's less common in top-down titles.

Please do, I'm looking forward to it.


(NWoD has classes?! I seriously never noticed that.)

Yes it does, every vampire covenant and werewolf clan or mage path is technically just a class. Isn't it? They just gave them original names and that's it. I prefer calling our classes paths, as you may have noticed if you snooped around the blog. But that's just my futile rebellion against something I'm forced to agree to.

I guess if you're going with the Skilldrassil design, classes as different starting points do kind of make sense. However I will contest this:

If that's a problem, your abilities are either unbalanced or not well set up. powerful abilities should still be situation specific and can always be balanced by giving them fitting prerequisites. I like the Skilldrassil design, but it shouldn't be making extra difficulties that you have to compromise your talent system for. Gameplay is ultimately more important than style.
That said, I haven't seen it. Don't forget that I'm arguing from a point of massively less information about the game than you have.

We thought that heavy investment into any one field would give better and better rewards to make up for certain aspects you're losing by unbalancing your character (for example giving glass canons better range or maneuverability). If we didn't do this specialised players would would end up dead or useless the moment any encounter began. (if glass cannon is too close or not mobile enough opponent's single dash/blink would be the end of them) I know there's a dozen or more issues with this, but if we truly want all builds to be viable it should be done this way. Unless you have a better idea? (I'm not sarcastic. You've had some interesting ones and I'd like to know what you think.)


I'm just trying to incorporate interesting choices into a system often dominated by repetition and linearly increasing numbers :smallwink:
And I said I applaud you for it. I honestly do, let's just make it work.


Give me a moment to think about that in detail.
Take your time. If you come up with the solution I tip my hat to you.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Autoattack + abilities. We believe that direct combat style would make ranged combat a tad too difficult.


I actually hadn't noticed that the game is played from a top-down perspective when I wrote that.

*sigh* Back to looking forward to Trials of Ascension...

Really, top-down perspective in a game that's main draw is a wide open world just turns me off. Auto-attack with no aiming on top of that makes me think this might've been a good game a decade ago, but not now.

Well, I still have a vested interest in seeing Ultima Online successors made, so let's talk about crafting.

There are really two good ways to go about crafting. Delegation to NPCs like in Neverwinter (although the NPCs you hire in that don't actually seem to exist, you just click on a task, go do stuff, and then you can bring up the menu at any time to collect the results once it's done. It'd be better if settlements attracted NPC workers, and you could also train unskilled people in certain tasks), and minigames, like the kind you see in Cooking Mama. I think a combination of those could make for a good, engaging crafting system.

[Triaxx]

Well, just because you only have to do it once, should be no reason to prevent it from being repeatable, but being able to say yes, you've done it, now this guy can do it for you if you don't want to, is important.

[MLai]

For crafting, I would say let it have IRL applications. If I'm making a steel sword, for instance, I personally would rather have to go on Wikipedia to see what temperature I need in the forge, what metals to use, etc. I do not wish to play a puzzle mini game to make a sword.

For example, I need to set the proper temperature, air mixture, alloy content, etc. Then the RNG gives me a result that is modified by my skill rating, the rating of my forge/cauldron, the ratings of my assistants, the quality of my ingredients, and the (IRL-based) blade-smithing technique that I employed.

[Hiro Protagonest]

For crafting, I would say let it have IRL applications. If I'm making a steel sword, for instance, I personally would rather have to go on Wikipedia to see what temperature I need in the forge, what metals to use, etc. I do not wish to play a puzzle mini game to make a sword.

For example, I need to set the proper temperature, air mixture, alloy content, etc. Then the RNG gives me a result that is modified by my skill rating, the rating of my forge/cauldron, the ratings of my assistants, the quality of my ingredients, and the (IRL-based) blade-smithing technique that I employed.

Well I was thinking there would be stuff like a trial-and-error smelting system (there would be a heat meter since you can't actually feel it, but it wouldn't tell you the optimal temperatures).

[Grinner]

I've been thinking about crafting recently. Here's an excerpt from one of my journals:


-Crafting-focused? The point of making anything, barring art, is to solve a problem or to do something better. (Does your back hurt? Well stop sleeping on the floor!)

In videogames though, crafting typically forms ancillary support to the main attraction: combat. Crafting helps the players be better at combat. So what would crafting do the for the players in this game?

-Another point to consider is the cost-benefit relationship. If crafting doesn't produce anything desirable, then it's pointless to even try. On the other hand, if the results far exceed the cost, then it's the only sensible thing to do. In fact, it becomes a de facto requirement.

In LotRO, it's generally more worthwhile at lower levels to go ahead and use lesser quality equipment, since you'll already have outlevelled that particular tier of equipment by the time you collect enough materials for the higher quality equipment. Therefore, it's not worth the cost.

Then there's also the problem of skill value. Why bother with Blacksmithing when it only benefits you once? Alchemy/Provisioning allows you to produce all of your own healing items. Meanwhile, Blacksmiths can only get one boost out of their own equipment. Moreover, that limited personal utility doesn't necessarily make their products any more valuable, since the nature of most MMO crafting systems typically results in singlehanded mass production of equipment. Both potions and armor take the same amount of effort to create, but one of them is in much higher demand. Ergo, one of them is more valuable.

-Introducing a variety of options in both stages should create some depth. Fundamentally, to introduce variety, there needs to be something that can be varied. There needs to be something the players can dig their hands into and pull on till something breaks.

I think the solution is to introduce attributes. Attributes are things the players could manipulate. Improving an item's attributes would serve as a means of optimization, of personalization.

-There are generally two stages in the production of an item: gathering and manufacturing.

Gathering is fairly straightforward. You go out, find raw materials, and collect them. Repeat till you have enough. I think modifying the materials based on environmental factors might make things a little more interesting. The key is to make these factors publically known, since hidden variables often seem totally arbitrary, making the system less fun to tinker with. (Fun is following a hunch.)

Certain manufacturing processes might also be applicable in the gathering stage. Alchemy, for example, could be used to tweak the properties of an ingredient before using it. I suppose the refinement of ore is also a valid example, though more of a necessary one than an elective one. Let's say there's a third stage, refinement.

Manufacturing is where things get more flexible. By applying certain processes to a material, the material can be converted into an item. Sometimes, the creation process will fail. This is best avoided as it serves no apparent purpose other than to frustrate players.

When the process succeeds, the item produced will have certain properties. My thought is that the properties of the end result should be altered depending on the material used and its properites. Keep in mind that one of many different processes can be used to convert the item into something usable. In fact, several processes could result in the same functional item, but the processes in question would further alter the item's properties. Different forging techniques, for instance, would all result in a usable sword, but the varying methods of construction would produce weapons with varying properties.

It also occurs to me environmental conditions might also affect the manufacturing process. These effects need not even be realistic; they could be the result of some symbolism, some magic. Again, these things need to be clearly detailed in some fashion. (Or maybe obfuscated in riddle...)

-Any specific element of a system can be optimized. This is inherent in the nature of most systems. If nothing could be changed, they'd be staid and boring. I think the trick is to make the system sufficiently complex as to provide things the player can optimize towards, but not so complex as to turn players away or become painfully specific.

-There is some contention in articles I'm reading about the destruction of materials. While I don't think they should be destroyed arbitrarily, it might be interesting if they're destroyed when the player attempts to create something that just doesn't work. Rather, the creation process should always work, but the player may not always receive something desirable. To illustrate the point, attempting to turn herbs into infusions will always produce something, but it may not be anything even moderately useful.

-I think being able to tune the processes involved in crafting might give some freedom, but the tuning must be meaningful. Altering the processes should give consistent, coherent results.

Let's say I decide to bake some bread. The bread recipe calls for soda water, for whatever reason, but I decide to substitute in some kind of flavored sparkling water. This substitution results in the bread not crisping up properly, necessitating that it be baked longer. The problem there is that baking it longer is liable to overcook it. Therefore, the proper response is actually baking it longer at a lower temperature.

In this example, substituting the sparkling water modified the final product's properties, but doing so also introduced complications. The properties of the ingredient required an adjustment to the manufacturing process...Does that mean that ingredients have their own properties which determine not only the properties of the end product, but also their compatibility with various crafting techniques and each other?

Edit: And I've just learned where all of my free time goes....

Edit 2:
Well I was thinking there would be stuff like a trial-and-error smelting system (there would be a heat meter since you can't actually feel it, but it wouldn't tell you the optimal temperatures).

I like this. Something like a firetending minigame, then?

[Kaww]

Well, just because you only have to do it once, should be no reason to prevent it from being repeatable, but being able to say yes, you've done it, now this guy can do it for you if you don't want to, is important.

Our initial idea was that crafter NPCs would learn at their own pace. And their starting point would be higher than the one for players (which would frankly be 0). But we also thought of capping them below what the best players could do. If we want to make a game that seriously involves crafting we can't allow for NPCs to be better at it than the players.


For crafting, I would say let it have IRL applications. If I'm making a steel sword, for instance, I personally would rather have to go on Wikipedia to see what temperature I need in the forge, what metals to use, etc. I do not wish to play a puzzle mini game to make a sword.

For example, I need to set the proper temperature, air mixture, alloy content, etc. Then the RNG gives me a result that is modified by my skill rating, the rating of my forge/cauldron, the ratings of my assistants, the quality of my ingredients, and the (IRL-based) blade-smithing technique that I employed.

We don't have all the details yet, but don't worry, you won't play a puzzle game to make an item, that much we know. I will say that like the underlined bit.


Well I was thinking there would be stuff like a trial-and-error smelting system (there would be a heat meter since you can't actually feel it, but it wouldn't tell you the optimal temperatures).

Yes, I've thought along those lines. Beginner player (0 craft) will have to be very skillful (or lucky) to get their first creation as anything better than low quality version.



So what would crafting do the for the players in this game?


We want to make several play styles viable. Including, but not limited to being a good: warrior, artisan, politician (guild master), mercenary commander. The last two might seem the same, but trust me they won't be.

Also I apologize, but I can't divulge why artisans will play such an important role in the game.


-Another point to consider is the cost-benefit relationship. If crafting doesn't produce anything desirable, then it's pointless to even try. On the other hand, if the results far exceed the cost, then it's the only sensible thing to do. In fact, it becomes a de facto requirement.

In LotRO, it's generally more worthwhile at lower levels to go ahead and use lesser quality equipment, since you'll already have outlevelled that particular tier of equipment by the time you collect enough materials for the higher quality equipment. Therefore, it's not worth the cost.

Then there's also the problem of skill value. Why bother with Blacksmithing when it only benefits you once? Alchemy/Provisioning allows you to produce all of your own healing items. Meanwhile, Blacksmiths can only get one boost out of their own equipment. Moreover, that limited personal utility doesn't necessarily make their products any more valuable, since the nature of most MMO crafting systems typically results in singlehanded mass production of equipment. Both potions and armor take the same amount of effort to create, but one of them is in much higher demand. Ergo, one of them is more valuable.


Cost/benefit will be handled by the players, not us. Goods bought from NPC stores will be ridiculously expensive. The players themselves should make the economy and set the bar wherever they like it.

We'll try to balance out the skills, but we believe that the ratio of availability/demand will also sort itself out quite fast.


-Introducing a variety of options in both stages should create some depth. Fundamentally, to introduce variety, there needs to be something that can be varied. There needs to be something the players can dig their hands into and pull on till something breaks.

I think the solution is to introduce attributes. Attributes are things the players could manipulate. Improving an item's attributes would serve as a means of optimization, of personalization.

I'm not sure I follow. If by attributes you mean weapon statistics yes players will be able to control these by how they forge them.


-There are generally two stages in the production of an item: gathering and manufacturing.

Gathering is fairly straightforward. You go out, find raw materials, and collect them. Repeat till you have enough. I think modifying the materials based on environmental factors might make things a little more interesting. The key is to make these factors publically known, since hidden variables often seem totally arbitrary, making the system less fun to tinker with. (Fun is following a hunch.)

Certain manufacturing processes might also be applicable in the gathering stage. Alchemy, for example, could be used to tweak the properties of an ingredient before using it. I suppose the refinement of ore is also a valid example, though more of a necessary one than an elective one. Let's say there's a third stage, refinement.

Manufacturing is where things get more flexible. By applying certain processes to a material, the material can be converted into an item. Sometimes, the creation process will fail. This is best avoided as it serves no apparent purpose other than to frustrate players.

When the process succeeds, the item produced will have certain properties. My thought is that the properties of the end result should be altered depending on the material used and its properites. Keep in mind that one of many different processes can be used to convert the item into something usable. In fact, several processes could result in the same functional item, but the processes in question would further alter the item's properties. Different forging techniques, for instance, would all result in a usable sword, but the varying methods of construction would produce weapons with varying properties.

It also occurs to me environmental conditions might also affect the manufacturing process. These effects need not even be realistic; they could be the result of some symbolism, some magic. Again, these things need to be clearly detailed in some fashion. (Or maybe obfuscated in riddle...)

I like the idea of treating raw materials before use to change the properties of resulting item.


-Any specific element of a system can be optimized. This is inherent in the nature of most systems. If nothing could be changed, they'd be staid and boring. I think the trick is to make the system sufficiently complex as to provide things the player can optimize towards, but not so complex as to turn players away or become painfully specific.

This is tough to balance out, but we've thought of it and we'll try to tweak it once we go into alpha phase.


-There is some contention in articles I'm reading about the destruction of materials. While I don't think they should be destroyed arbitrarily, it might be interesting if they're destroyed when the player attempts to create something that just doesn't work. Rather, the creation process should always work, but the player may not always receive something desirable. To illustrate the point, attempting to turn herbs into infusions will always produce something, but it may not be anything even moderately useful.

Honestly we've thought that sometimes players will utterly fail at creating something. In some cases this will result in loss of materials in some it won't.


-I think being able to tune the processes involved in crafting might give some freedom, but the tuning must be meaningful. Altering the processes should give consistent, coherent results.

Let's say I decide to bake some bread. The bread recipe calls for soda water, for whatever reason, but I decide to substitute in some kind of flavored sparkling water. This substitution results in the bread not crisping up properly, necessitating that it be baked longer. The problem there is that baking it longer is liable to overcook it. Therefore, the proper response is actually baking it longer at a lower temperature.

In this example, substituting the sparkling water modified the final product's properties, but doing so also introduced complications. The properties of the ingredient required an adjustment to the manufacturing process...Does that mean that ingredients have their own properties which determine not only the properties of the end product, but also their compatibility with various crafting techniques and each other?

If I understood you correctly the answer is yes. Same recipe will generate the same result and that recipe can be tweaked to get different results. For example adding two extra pounds of iron to an axe head would result in the following:
- The axe would be heavier
- Your damage will increase and attack speed will decrease
- It will be less durable than the same axe with a lighter head
(These may or may not be the actual changes to any item in axe categry of weapons. It is used as an example and a gedankenexperiment.)

[Triaxx]

Better, no. But if I can learn to do it, and so can another player, there's no reason an NPC can't be taught, unless it specifically involves some knowledge only attained in a place the NPC can't visit.

[Grinner]

I'm not sure I follow. If by attributes you mean weapon statistics yes players will be able to control these by how they forge them.

I think you've got the idea, but I should note that anything with a mechanical effect could be considered an attribute: the amount of health a potion restores, the rapidity with which it restores health, etc.

[endoperez]

Then there's also the problem of skill value. Why bother with Blacksmithing when it only benefits you once? Alchemy/Provisioning allows you to produce all of your own healing items. Meanwhile, Blacksmiths can only get one boost out of their own equipment. Moreover, that limited personal utility doesn't necessarily make their products any more valuable, since the nature of most MMO crafting systems typically results in singlehanded mass production of equipment. Both potions and armor take the same amount of effort to create, but one of them is in much higher demand. Ergo, one of them is more valuable.

Blacksmiths are important for making buildings too. Nails, hinges, locks, bolts...

An alchemist needs a pair of tongs. A blacksmith makes them.

An alchemist needs a series of glass bottles. Since molten glass has to be handled with metal tools, the glass blower needs the help of a blacksmith who can craft the necessary tools for him.

A woodcarver needs his chisels and axes and adzes. Blacksmith!

Weapons and armor might need resharpening or cleanup or perhaps some touch-up for their magical enchantments. Blacksmith!

A tailor needs scissors and needles (a common knife and bone needles just won't be as good and precise...). Blacksmith!

A guild leader needs a signet ring, made by a blacksmith or a specialist jeweler... who, again, needs metal tools (blacksmith!).

A blacksmith is asked to do some weird tool for a wizard and needs a set of specialist tools to make the weird thing. He does it himself, because he's a blacksmith.

A blacksmith might even be the guy who takes the raw ore and transforms it into the metal. Iron ore can become pot iron, brittle iron, soft iron, brittle steel, good steel, stainless steel, damascus steel etc depending on the minute amounts of other materials added into it, which depends on the creation process.

Smiths are seriously super awesome. The NPC blacksmiths, or the very basics of blacksmithing skill, will be enough to do many of these tasks, and especially the simple ones... but a master blacksmith can do it faster, better, from better raw materials. It could be an extremely powerful position, if metal items are in high demand and there's a sink somewhere in there that makes sure they will stay in high demand.

[MLai]

The sink mentioned above should be that weapons and armor break down with use. This keeps the blacksmith in constant demand rather than just once to forge that one set of awesome armour and then that's it until the next smithing skill level becomes unlocked.

Break down as in, the stats gradually decrease (a sword gradually does less and less damage). Not stays brand spankin' new until an arbitrary limit is reached and suddenly it disintegrates. This makes it the players' decision when they want to visit the blacksmith to get their degrading sword sharpened/fixed/etc.

[Triaxx]

Of course, high end 'super weapons' should have a chance to shatter in boss fights. Because no one talks about the resharpening of Narsil.

That would actually be an awesome method of customization. Everyone wants a named sword, but you don't want to hand them out willy-nilly. Perhaps having the highest tier weapons be shatterable once against a boss-tagged mob, with the player gaining the shards of the weapon. Then when they take it to a black smith capable of repairing it, they can also name it. So after my sword broke, I could take it to Master Blacksmith Endoperez and have him reforge it into Triaxx2's Balrog Buster. Or something like that. That way you feel more attached to that weapon. And at the same time, making it a top tier weapon means you're not going to feel forced to hang onto a less powerful weapon just because you named it.

[Grinner]

Blacksmiths are important for making buildings too. Nails, hinges, locks, bolts...

An alchemist needs a pair of tongs. A blacksmith makes them.

An alchemist needs a series of glass bottles. Since molten glass has to be handled with metal tools, the glass blower needs the help of a blacksmith who can craft the necessary tools for him.

*etc*

Because when I sign into LotRO, the first I think is "You know what would make my day? A pair of tongs. You know what? Imma gonna make some tongs."


A blacksmith might even be the guy who takes the raw ore and transforms it into the metal. Iron ore can become pot iron, brittle iron, soft iron, brittle steel, good steel, stainless steel, damascus steel etc depending on the minute amounts of other materials added into it, which depends on the creation process.


The sink mentioned above should be that weapons and armor break down with use. This keeps the blacksmith in constant demand rather than just once to forge that one set of awesome armour and then that's it until the next smithing skill level becomes unlocked.

Break down as in, the stats gradually decrease (a sword gradually does less and less damage). Not stays brand spankin' new until an arbitrary limit is reached and suddenly it disintegrates. This makes it the players' decision when they want to visit the blacksmith to get their degrading sword sharpened/fixed/etc.

I like the way you two think.


That would actually be an awesome method of customization. Everyone wants a named sword, but you don't want to hand them out willy-nilly. Perhaps having the highest tier weapons be shatterable once against a boss-tagged mob, with the player gaining the shards of the weapon. Then when they take it to a black smith capable of repairing it, they can also name it. So after my sword broke, I could take it to Master Blacksmith Endoperez and have him reforge it into Triaxx2's Balrog Buster. Or something like that. That way you feel more attached to that weapon. And at the same time, making it a top tier weapon means you're not going to feel forced to hang onto a less powerful weapon just because you named it.

I actually read an article in a d20 gaming magazine about this sort of thing. It would be hard to work into an MMO, but it would really encourage players to make their equipment special. Particularly if there were some kind of dynamic quest system involved, along with automated documentation of the weapons' histories.

Wishful thinking, I know, but still...

[Hiro Protagonest]

Because when I sign into LotRO, the first I think is "You know what would make my day? A pair of tongs. You know what? Imma gonna make some tongs."

You gotta think differently. That's what makes these types of MMOs so great, as opposed to just making a toon on WoW on an always-on PvP server.

[Grinner]

You gotta think differently. That's what makes these types of MMOs so great, as opposed to just making a toon on WoW on an always-on PvP server.

I've admittedly never played EVE, so my opinion lacks experience in these matters. Still, I fail to see how the ability to make a pair of tongs would garner any interest. What's different about these tongs compared to other tongs? What can I do with these tongs?

[Hiro Protagonest]

I've admittedly never played EVE, so my opinion lacks experience in these matters. Still, I fail to see how the ability to make a pair of tongs would garner any interest. What's different about these tongs compared to other tongs? What can I do with these tongs?

Well, there doesn't have to be anything different about them. But you need a blacksmith to make them.

[MLai]

I've admittedly never played EVE, so my opinion lacks experience in these matters. Still, I fail to see how the ability to make a pair of tongs would garner any interest. What's different about these tongs compared to other tongs? What can I do with these tongs?
It sounds boring until you play something which does fantastic things with it.

Specifically, have you ever played the PC game Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale? It's a cutesy little action-RPG where you're an item shop owner. You sell all manner of stuff, from RPG staples like weapons, to "boring stuff" like clothes and snacks. It's fun as all ****, and that's just an indie single-player game with a simple programmed economy. Imagine the fun with 1000's of actual breathing customers and an actual emergent economy in the game world.

The OP says the NPC shops will intentionally be overpriced. So as a player, you will be visiting the player-owned shops constantly. If tongs have an in-game use, you will be buying tongs from competing player-owned shops.

[Triaxx]

If that's the case, I demand the ability to burglarize or otherwise artificially force price hikes in other players shops. Possibly via a slander system. Possibly through criers ala AC2, except I could pay them to badmouth others, instead of just stop bad mouthing.

[Kaww]

Better, no. But if I can learn to do it, and so can another player, there's no reason an NPC can't be taught, unless it specifically involves some knowledge only attained in a place the NPC can't visit.

You've pressed me against the wall here. I'm not at liberty to say why PC crafters will have a wider selection of items.


I think you've got the idea, but I should note that anything with a mechanical effect could be considered an attribute: the amount of health a potion restores, the rapidity with which it restores health, etc.

I agree. Weaponsmithing was just used as an example here.


Blacksmiths are important for making buildings too. Nails, hinges, locks, bolts...

*snip*

Smiths are seriously super awesome. The NPC blacksmiths, or the very basics of blacksmithing skill, will be enough to do many of these tasks, and especially the simple ones... but a master blacksmith can do it faster, better, from better raw materials. It could be an extremely powerful position, if metal items are in high demand and there's a sink somewhere in there that makes sure they will stay in high demand.

Crafters won't just produce weapons and combat items. But, while you are correct that blacksmiths will do all sorts of things, so will everyone else. Someone has to refine his ore, build his forge and house etc. We'll keep the crafters as balanced as we can, but trust me players will do a much better job than us. If there's one hundred blacksmiths and only one alchemist in town guess who's going to make more.


The sink mentioned above should be that weapons and armor break down with use. This keeps the blacksmith in constant demand rather than just once to forge that one set of awesome armour and then that's it until the next smithing skill level becomes unlocked.

Break down as in, the stats gradually decrease (a sword gradually does less and less damage). Not stays brand spankin' new until an arbitrary limit is reached and suddenly it disintegrates. This makes it the players' decision when they want to visit the blacksmith to get their degrading sword sharpened/fixed/etc.

NDA, but I guess that says it all.


Of course, high end 'super weapons' should have a chance to shatter in boss fights. Because no one talks about the resharpening of Narsil.

That would actually be an awesome method of customization. Everyone wants a named sword, but you don't want to hand them out willy-nilly. Perhaps having the highest tier weapons be shatterable once against a boss-tagged mob, with the player gaining the shards of the weapon. Then when they take it to a black smith capable of repairing it, they can also name it. So after my sword broke, I could take it to Master Blacksmith Endoperez and have him reforge it into Triaxx2's Balrog Buster. Or something like that. That way you feel more attached to that weapon. And at the same time, making it a top tier weapon means you're not going to feel forced to hang onto a less powerful weapon just because you named it.

Combination of enchantment and blacksmithing will exist to produce similar results. If you want more info read my reply to MLai's post just above this paragraph.


Because when I sign into LotRO, the first I think is "You know what would make my day? A pair of tongs. You know what? Imma gonna make some tongs."

I actually read an article in a d20 gaming magazine about this sort of thing. It would be hard to work into an MMO, but it would really encourage players to make their equipment special. Particularly if there were some kind of dynamic quest system involved, along with automated documentation of the weapons' histories.

Wishful thinking, I know, but still...

Why do you think it's just wishful thinking? Why do you think I started this thread in the first place? Tell me what you want and I'll tell you if it's possible once I get a straight answer from the rest of the team.

In another discussion I started elsewhere someone asked if we could make a server with "Game Master" players to build stuff and have their friends go through adventures they control there. This is possible by the way, if we have the funding for something like this. But if you don't tell me what you want I can't talk with the development team and tell them what I'd like them to do. This is certainly a lose situation for you and could be one for me.


It sounds boring until you play something which does fantastic things with it.

Specifically, have you ever played the PC game Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale? It's a cutesy little action-RPG where you're an item shop owner. You sell all manner of stuff, from RPG staples like weapons, to "boring stuff" like clothes and snacks. It's fun as all ****, and that's just an indie single-player game with a simple programmed economy. Imagine the fun with 1000's of actual breathing customers and an actual emergent economy in the game world.

The OP says the NPC shops will intentionally be overpriced. So as a player, you will be visiting the player-owned shops constantly. If tongs have an in-game use, you will be buying tongs from competing player-owned shops.

I'll play the game actually. You've managed to interest me enough to play it and trust me, I'm going to do it by sleeping even less. But I'd like to see what kind of mechanics are implemented here.


If that's the case, I demand the ability to burglarize or otherwise artificially force price hikes in other players shops. Possibly via a slander system. Possibly through criers ala AC2, except I could pay them to badmouth others, instead of just stop bad mouthing.

Well, this could work in a single player system. When customers are real players there's really nothing you can do with slander. But, you could for example hire someone to torch down their store, or break inside and steal stuff. Also the shop owner will be able to hire a guard etc. Like in real life one can expect to be robbed and plan what to do if this kind of thing happens. :smallwink:

I haven't replied to Jade's posts because I'd categorize them as common sense and I believe they didn't need reply.

[Grinner]

Why do you think it's just wishful thinking? Why do you think I started this thread in the first place? Tell me what you want and I'll tell you if it's possible once I get a straight answer from the rest of the team.

I say it's wishful thinking because I understand what the mechanic would entail from a technical perspective. I also understand that it may not pan out perfectly in a massively multiplayer context.

This is not to say it's impossible, but if I were the lead dev, I'd place that pretty far down on the priority list.

[Partysan]

Now the biggest problem in crafting is essentially how to keep the player occupied. There's different ways of doing it, but I don't really think anyone has found the perfect route yet.
The reason for this is, obviously, that crafting is for the most part a tedious and repetitive kind of work in the real world. That's not to say it cannot be interesting, but it will not be in the same way as the combat or story parts of the game. Games generally fall into the same few categories on how they solve the issue and we need to find out what kind of system serves your game best.

The vast majority of MMORPGs have crafting that is essentially menu-based. You open the menu, select the appropriate item you want to make, the game checks whether or not you have the neccessary materials and has you wait for a few seconds before announcing the result. This method is quite functional but it suffers from two problems, one more difficult than the other.
The first, easier problem is, that the system is simplistic and thus often boring. Having a linearly progressing list of items, unlocking the ones farther down the line by repeatedly grinding the skill through making the earlier items some hundreds or thousands of times is, obviously, not just an insult to our intelligence but a task that is centered more on the aquisition of raw materials than the actual crafting.
This problem can be solved by giving the system more depth and both others and myself have made several suggestions as to how to do this, a few of which I'll reiterate.
- Instead of learning how to craft specific items, have the character learn how to make general forms of parts, such as different blades, hilts, guards etc. of a weapon, that are the same for all materials (although the material will influence that stats and often be more suited to certain forms). The player can then combine those parts into one item with forseeable properties. The better the synergy of the parts, the more useful the item will be (not in stats but in actual play).
- Give the player several possibilities of influencing the end results of crafting, maybe by giving direct control of aspects like heat in forging and hardening, which liquid at which temperature to use in quenching, material composition of metal alloys and so on, creating a system the player has to explore and experiment with to arrive at good results. This works best when there isn't one clear "best" result but multiple different but equivalent results each more suited to one specific approach.
- Let the player create items that do not just have slightly different base stats but that can be tailored to certain playstyles, such as weapons that enhance specific attack skills (a fire affine sword which will deal extra fire damage when used with the fire strike skill is especially useful for a character specializing in melee combat and fire magic).
The exact number and kinds of mechanisms to give depth and coice to the system is a matter of brainstorming and playtesting, but it's not the true problem.

The second, much harder to solve problem is how a crafting-focused player is supposed to spend their time. Even with a greater amount of sliders to tinker with, choosing an item and its parameters and clicking the craft button is, in the end, a matter of few minutes. Many games occupy the player with harvesting materials instead, but since this involves a lot of running around and fighting monsters, it's not what a crafting-focused player actually wants to do. On the flipside, few players will be willing to spend three days or weeks to make a single sword with the same repetetive motions. So how to fill the void?
We already mentioned the possibility of using crafting minigames to more actively involve the player in the crafting process. I stated that this was a bad idea, because any game will become a nuisance when it has to be played for hundreds of times, a statement I stand by. It might however be an option to give the player a choice between crafting the item at a standard value of quality or play a minigame that determines the success of the crafting process, for better or worse. Whether or not this would be a good idea I cannot yet fully decide, but in case anything like this makes it into a game, the minigame has to be similar to rythm games or bullet hells in that it needs to be playable for a significant amount of time without the player being bored or sidetracked which is usually done by sucking the player into a steadily climbing rythm, culminating in a state of trance or "flow". Considering how hard flow is to design for though, I would advise against this. In the same vein, games like the Papa's [type of food court] series by Flipline studios will annoy many players after a while, even though the style would be a thematic fit. Still, as an optional thing it might be appreciated by some and ignored by others.
This does also depend on whether or not you will integrate wait times into the crafting. If an items requires a certain amount of time to be completed, suddenly playing a minigame in the time you have to wait anyway doesn't seem a bad idea anymore. If doing well at the game will improve your results, even better!
This can however not be an encompassing solution to the problem.

A second option is to leave a greater amount of discovery to the players by only providing very basic recipes and leave the rest to experimentation. The crafters would have to carefully adjust the parameters when creating items and the game would have to record the results of each combination. Players yould then figure out how what kind of items is best made and keep or trade the knowledge. Of course, crafting secrets, either in recipe form or as parameter configurations, can still be hidden in the world as well. Unfortunately this approach will require great efforts to implement, since the developers would have to research the effects of all the parameters implemented on the crafting process, program them in and also implement a record function into the crafting progress so players could easily compare results and save the superior recipes for later use. Considering this will be different for each process and each material and several parameters will be interdependent this might be too much to expect from a game that is not actually focused on a crafting simulation.

A third method that won't solve but can greatly alleviate the problem is to set crafting before a greater purpose and integrate it more closely into the world:
- Durability for items will make players seek out crafters for repair, providing a constant need and appreciation for the profession, especially if this isn't something that every NPC trader in the world offers for a few coppers. This does however also annoy the combat-focused players to a degree, since they need to interrupt their play for it. Similarly, stuff like polishing, engraving and other kinds of item buffs, be it permanent or temporary, will require players to interact with crafters on a regular basis.
- Own questlines for crafters that do not require combat but the clever use of the craft will provide a narrative framework for crafters who can become epic in their own regard. Arming a militia, mixing a rare and great cure for a deadly illness, building the tomb of a king, forging the only weapon capable of defeating a certain boss, these things do not have to be done by NPCs or added as sidenotes in combat quests but can be a parallel line of no less epic adventure to be played by the more domestic fraction of players.
- Especially when player controlled cities and environments are a thing, crafters could have a big influence on how those look, contributing better armed NPC guards, better buildings, stringer economy etc, making them a good addition to any guild.
- Depending on how you will treat loot drops and NPC vendors, crafters might also become a neccessary part of the ingame economy if they're crucial to the obtaining of the best and/or more useful or very specific equipment. Many games will unfortunately have crafted equipment that is almost always inferior to the simple drops of the mobs around. Crafting junk is no fun.
- Finally, maybe you want to encourage your players to not specialize in crafting and only sitting around in their shops, giving crafters unique in-the-field abilities. When players band to gether for great adventures, especially those that take a while to complete, it is a great idea to take someone who can repair and strengthen your equipment, who can cook food that will improve your combat stats and who might be able to alleviate environmental conditions, for example by modifying clothing and armor to be more resistant to cold when in a mountain environment that imposes penalties. Maybe a fighting crafter could also have better chances at destroying enemy equipment or generally be better at using their own depending on their crafting skills, making it easier for dedicated crafters to go on combat adventures.

Wait, there's something I need to show you.
Actually, there's a Korean light novel that's being translated by fans for free. It's one of those Virtual Reality MMO scenarios and the main character is someone who has an artistic profession but still excels in combat. It's not great literature by any means, but if any of you is interested in possible ideas, it can be read here (http://royalroadweed.blogspot.de/p/toc.html)among other places.
By the way, there's a lot of talk about delegating things to NPC crafters, such as having them produce in bulk the recipes you have created/found. This is a good idea for making crafting less tedious, but it will also give the players less to do which means more work creating alternatives. I am of two minds on this issue right now.

Furthermore, I will leave out my thought about non menu-based crafting since they don't make sense in a game played from a top-down perspective.

Also, I need to leave and I'm out of ideas. I'm sure an hour after posting I'll have a new list of stuff to say, but I need to post this eventually, so I'll just do it now.

[Grinner]

Partysan, I have loved your contributions to this thread.


The second, much harder to solve problem is how a crafting-focused player is supposed to spend their time. Even with a greater amount of sliders to tinker with, choosing an item and its parameters and clicking the craft button is, in the end, a matter of few minutes. Many games occupy the player with harvesting materials instead, but since this involves a lot of running around and fighting monsters, it's not what a crafting-focused player actually wants to do. On the flipside, few players will be willing to spend three days or weeks to make a single sword with the same repetetive motions. So how to fill the void?

What about...a harvesting minigame?

Some like minesweeper?


We already mentioned the possibility of using crafting minigames to more actively involve the player in the crafting process. I stated that this was a bad idea, because any game will become a nuisance when it has to be played for hundreds of times, a statement I stand by. It might however be an option to give the player a choice between crafting the item at a standard value of quality or play a minigame that determines the success of the crafting process, for better or worse.

That probably won't work, except for grinding skills. When a player makes a weapon, they want the best weapon possible. Unless they don't intend to actually use or sell the weapon, you're basically giving them a Hobson's choice.


Whether or not this would be a good idea I cannot yet fully decide, but in case anything like this makes it into a game, the minigame has to be similar to rythm games or bullet hells in that it needs to be playable for a significant amount of time without the player being bored or sidetracked which is usually done by sucking the player into a steadily climbing rythm, culminating in a state of trance or "flow". Considering how hard flow is to design for though, I would advise against this. In the same vein, games like the Papa's [type of food court] series by Flipline studios will annoy many players after a while, even though the style would be a thematic fit. Still, as an optional thing it might be appreciated by some and ignored by others.

I like the idea of a rhythm minigame, but any sort of lag will quickly turn the tedium into outrage.


A second option is to leave a greater amount of discovery to the players by only providing very basic recipes and leave the rest to experimentation. The crafters would have to carefully adjust the parameters when creating items and the game would have to record the results of each combination. Players yould then figure out how what kind of items is best made and keep or trade the knowledge. Of course, crafting secrets, either in recipe form or as parameter configurations, can still be hidden in the world as well. Unfortunately this approach will require great efforts to implement, since the developers would have to research the effects of all the parameters implemented on the crafting process, program them in and also implement a record function into the crafting progress so players could easily compare results and save the superior recipes for later use. Considering this will be different for each process and each material and several parameters will be interdependent this might be too much to expect from a game that is not actually focused on a crafting simulation.

In the research I did for that journal excerpt, I found that a Star Wars MMO had done something similar, and the players loved it.


- Durability for items will make players seek out crafters for repair, providing a constant need and appreciation for the profession, especially if this isn't something that every NPC trader in the world offers for a few coppers. This does however also annoy the combat-focused players to a degree, since they need to interrupt their play for it. Similarly, stuff like polishing, engraving and other kinds of item buffs, be it permanent or temporary, will require players to interact with crafters on a regular basis.

I'm a bit torn about this now. While I previously voiced support for it, it now seems like an idea that sounds great on paper but doesn't work out in practice, for reasons you mentioned.


- Own questlines for crafters that do not require combat but the clever use of the craft will provide a narrative framework for crafters who can become epic in their own regard. Arming a militia, mixing a rare and great cure for a deadly illness, building the tomb of a king, forging the only weapon capable of defeating a certain boss, these things do not have to be done by NPCs or added as sidenotes in combat quests but can be a parallel line of no less epic adventure to be played by the more domestic fraction of players.

Runescape does these sort of things well. The trick, I think, is to turn them more into puzzle-solving affairs. In fact, that makes a nice analogue to combat. If combat quests are all about defeating enemies, perhaps crafting should be about puzzle-solving?


- Especially when player controlled cities and environments are a thing, crafters could have a big influence on how those look, contributing better armed NPC guards, better buildings, stringer economy etc, making them a good addition to any guild.

This sounds cool, especially if those things could be put towards some kind of overarching guild conflict, but I'm not sure it's right for an action RPG.


- Finally, maybe you want to encourage your players to not specialize in crafting and only sitting around in their shops, giving crafters unique in-the-field abilities. When players band to gether for great adventures, especially those that take a while to complete, it is a great idea to take someone who can repair and strengthen your equipment, who can cook food that will improve your combat stats and who might be able to alleviate environmental conditions, for example by modifying clothing and armor to be more resistant to cold when in a mountain environment that imposes penalties. Maybe a fighting crafter could also have better chances at destroying enemy equipment or generally be better at using their own depending on their crafting skills, making it easier for dedicated crafters to go on combat adventures.

Instance questing? Send the party to some forgotten nook of the world to do something. Since they're so far away from home, support would be necessary.

Still, that makes them little better than healbots...


Furthermore, I will leave out my thought about non menu-based crafting since they don't make sense in a game played from a top-down perspective.

I'd love to hear your idea. I'm working on a game myself, and input is always appreciated.

[endoperez]

Because when I sign into LotRO, the first I think is "You know what would make my day? A pair of tongs. You know what? Imma gonna make some tongs."

He doesn't have to. He's going to think "I'm gonna make some money".

Then he checks if there's anyone who's got an excess of money and a need of equipment. Sometimes that need is in the form of a weapon capable of withstanding a dragon's flame... sometimes it's a pair of tongs, or a rod of purified alchemitite.


edit: Partysan, that's an awesome post. I think I might have some rudimentary answers to your question. Not perfect ones, but hopefully helpful.

First, what the player wants are choices. Grinding low-level items for hours doesn't force you to make any meaningful choices, or to see a meaningful difference in anything. The player should feel good about what he did, if at all possible, instead of just feeling good about having a better spreadsheet.

Perhaps the choise is in reusing metal in specific ways, or shaving off a fraction of the metal costs by crafting a specific combination of items. If there's enough customization and a few variables in the system, hopefully the wiki will read "here are some guidelines, these 4 patterns are used by the top 10 smiths, you can vary them by using ingredients in table C" instead of "use pattern X as soon as you can, pattern Y until then".

"I need to make a good sword for that one guy, and I need 3 pieces of steel and need to use up some dragon blood for the tempering. I should make a few more since I'm at it any way. I have the materials for 8 pieces of twist-folded steel (rank 3). Crafting 3 items at once allows me to recover 10% of it. If I use it right away, it's bumped to 15%, and 3 swords at 3 pieces would be enough to get 1 piece of normal steel. So if I get one more piece of twist-folded steel first, and use this normal steel here, I can use that to craft a fourth one at a lower tier, and get to temper them all at once".



Some sort of building/design option can take a lot of time. It's important that they can view the plans in realtime, before they're completed, and then work towards that goal in small increments. A blacksmith clicking the menu item for nails x 10, and then bringing them to a builder-NPC isn't interesting. A blacksmith spending iron to get from 24% to 28% in her design for the coolest house on the block, though, that can be.

Or maybe a blacksmith can craft consumable tools for his henchmen, but henchmen only have limited slots for them, so he might have to decide what he wants to do with the henchmen for now.


It's kinda hard trying to think up things that are interesting can be used by both casual and dedicated crafters, and won't become repetitive. When in doubt, copy learn from existing games!

http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/vajuras/062008/1796_Crafting-in-EVE-Online
EVE items require low-tier item to craft a high-tier item. Tier 1 crappy sword into tier 2 basic sword into tier 3 cool sword etc. These could represent ever more complicated phases in here. Every tier improves on all of these, and each represents mastering of one specific subset in an item. It'd all be governed by a single skill, but the visuals of the weapons could update with these as a guideline.
Tier 1 - the basic weapon, nothing fancy
Tier 2 - improved edge geometry and sharpness and adding a slight sheen to the edges
Tier 3 - improved fitting and balance, e.g. the handle, handguard and pommel of a sword, adding a fancy handguard
tier 4 - improved tempering/heat-treatment, giving the edge a slight sheen, glow or coloration
tier 5 - engraving of magical runes

Not quite as logical as making improvements on technological products, but still just about doable.

[MLai]

In the same vein, games like the Papa's [type of food court] series by Flipline studios will annoy many players after a while, even though the style would be a thematic fit. Still, as an optional thing it might be appreciated by some and ignored by others.
Mini-games are annoying because they take up time. How about if the mini-game is just a golf swing like in a golf game? That is, a precision event where you press the button with the right timing while also keeping a target centered, or something.
For example, maybe the golf-swing power meter is replaced by the forge temperature meter, whose temperature range you may even be able to adjust for different degrees of difficulty in the timing task.
Basically, the majority of the crafting process would still be menu-based decision-making and tech exploration, which TBH is the fun of crafting, not to play Dance Dance Revolution. The final skill-based task, after all the decisions have been made, should only last a few seconds.

- Own questlines for crafters that do not require combat but the clever use of the craft will provide a narrative framework for crafters who can become epic in their own regard. Arming a militia, mixing a rare and great cure for a deadly illness, building the tomb of a king, forging the only weapon capable of defeating a certain boss, these things do not have to be done by NPCs
This is actually a good general point. Whenever you're writing down a plotpoint, any plotpoint... First think, "Is this a plot point that I the author has to make, or is it one I can let/make the players do for me?"

- Depending on how you will treat loot drops and NPC vendors, crafters might also become a neccessary part of the ingame economy if they're crucial to the obtaining of the best and/or more useful or very specific equipment. Many games will unfortunately have crafted equipment that is almost always inferior to the simple drops of the mobs around.
No armour/weapon dropped by an enemy on the battlefield should be particularly useable or high-quality, actually.
This makes sense because in order to have killed him, you had probably first had to split his shiny helmet in half or dented his big sword. IMO all drops should be either raw materials or damaged goods, both of which needs crafters (either back in town or your "battle-smith" in your party) to fix.
And gameplay wise, useable loot everywhere makes crafters obsolete.
Combat players should not be hoarding money in order to save up for that one expensive magical sword, which seems to be the way most "economies" work in RPGs. Like IRL, players should be constantly leaking money paying for small but necessary things. Such as having armor/weapons/loot repaired. Money needs to flow every which way and constantly, if there is to be an emergent economy.
Treasure chests can hold mint-condition items.

What about...a harvesting minigame? Some like minesweeper?
God no. NO PUZZZLES.

When a player makes a weapon, they want the best weapon possible. Unless they don't intend to actually use or sell the weapon, you're basically giving them a Hobson's choice.
That's why the actual task should be quick, like a single golf swing or baseball pitch.

I'm a bit torn about this now. While I previously voiced support for it, it now seems like an idea that sounds great on paper but doesn't work out in practice, for reasons you mentioned.
I think that just depends on how fast tools degrade. Ofc they shouldn't degrade before a single quest/raid is even finished (unless they're low-quality cheap items to begin with). An average item's useful life should coincide with the natural time intervals between a player's expected town visits.
In fact, when crafting items, durability can be a compromise variable. You want a light rapid-attack weapon? It's going to be less durable. Lighter armour so you're more nimble? Less durable.

[Triaxx]

First, I'm going to do everyone a favor and not get started on NDA's and second I'm going to ask, is the economy player centric, or player run? If it's player-centric, then slander is useless, but so is playing a pure crafter, because if you can make it, so can anyone else. If it's player-run, where NPC's can choose to buy from you over NPC's, then it's useful, because you're not slandering another shop to PC's, you're slandering it to NPC's.

Besides, unless you're allowing NPC's to sell player-made goods, the shop is closed unless the player is there to make sales, in which case you end up setting prices that don't change quickly, so another player could simply undercut you. But if you can give your NPC a range, and pay for slander, you'll force a competing NPC to lower their prices to try and hold the business.

[endoperez]

is the economy player centric, or player run? If it's player-centric, then slander is useless, but so is playing a pure crafter, because if you can make it, so can anyone else.

This is an interesting question. Are there ways to make a player-centric economy where anyone can't make the same things? Not just a "you need a crafting level of X" sort of limit, but something where different pure crafters with the same numbers in their skills actually spend their time differently.

Can crafters have their own houses and workshops, where they actually build new buildings and tools, which enable them to do new stuff? If a single workshop's space is limited, and demolishing old stuff and building new tools takes some time, then the crafters would be limited not only by their spreadsheets, but also by their workshops.

For example, a blacksmith needs a container for a liquid that the hot sword or other craft is quenched in, during the tempering process. There seem to be several different quenches (http://www.anvilfire.com/FAQs/quenchants.htm)available even in the real world, used for different applications (harder but brittle / softer but flexible) .

So if a blacksmith has only space for two quenching barrels, and one is filled with some concoction that gives armors tempered in it fire resistance,but because it's expensive he doesn't want to empty that one, he will only have one type of quenching liquid for weapons...

The common craft-houses and smithies etc. would only have the more common tools and equipment. They'd have to degrade in some ways, of course, and the amount of degradation should be affected by the amount of use they're getting. A single smith's personal tools wouldn't degrade as fast as the ones in the common rooms, and if he can make more of them when necessary and it's mostly automated, it wouldn't be much of a chore to keep his own workshop in tip-top shape... but trying to have a common room furnished would take some effort, so it would be expensive for guilds without many crafters.

[Triaxx]

Exactly and more, different specialties require different sets of tools. A blacksmith and silversmith both have a forge, but even that is different shapes and sizes between them.

[Partysan]

Partysan, I have loved your contributions to this thread.
Thank you.


That probably won't work, except for grinding skills. When a player makes a weapon, they want the best weapon possible. Unless they don't intend to actually use or sell the weapon, you're basically giving them a Hobson's choice.
True. Thing is though, the minigames are included to pass more of the player's time, so player's being mechanically encouraged to use them wouldn't necessarily be bad. Well it would, for the players, but there's balance to be stricken between player's fun and designer's intention.


I like the idea of a rhythm minigame, but any sort of lag will quickly turn the tedium into outrage.
Very true, and something I hadn't considered. The game would have to be loaded and then work independently from the server or something. I'm not an expert in actual programming or hardware, my field is more the design of game mechanics.


I'm a bit torn about this now. While I previously voiced support for it, it now seems like an idea that sounds great on paper but doesn't work out in practice, for reasons you mentioned.
It's a balance. I guess MLai is right in that as long as the decay isn't too fast the gain for crafters might outweigh the annoyance to fighters.


Runescape does these sort of things well. The trick, I think, is to turn them more into puzzle-solving affairs. In fact, that makes a nice analogue to combat. If combat quests are all about defeating enemies, perhaps crafting should be about puzzle-solving?
Puzzle-solving in a very wide sense I agree, but not in the sense of solving an actual puzzle, more like a more gamist way of saying problem-solving.


This sounds cool, especially if those things could be put towards some kind of overarching guild conflict, but I'm not sure it's right for an action RPG.
We don't know that much about the game yet, so I just put it out there for the developers to think about. By far not everything of what we say will be applicable for this specific game.


Instance questing? Send the party to some forgotten nook of the world to do something. Since they're so far away from home, support would be necessary.

Still, that makes them little better than healbots...
Crafting is by it's very nature a supportive role and I don't think this can really be changed or even that it should be. Items are tools. Item-makers are toolmakers. We shouldn't change that, we just should make it feel awesome.


I'd love to hear your idea. I'm working on a game myself, and input is always appreciated.
I'll write something up for you, but these posts are work and take time.


edit: Partysan, that's an awesome post.
Thank you.


Perhaps the choise is in reusing metal in specific ways, or shaving off a fraction of the metal costs by crafting a specific combination of items. If there's enough customization and a few variables in the system, hopefully the wiki will read "here are some guidelines, these 4 patterns are used by the top 10 smiths, you can vary them by using ingredients in table C" instead of "use pattern X as soon as you can, pattern Y until then".

"I need to make a good sword for that one guy, and I need 3 pieces of steel and need to use up some dragon blood for the tempering. I should make a few more since I'm at it any way. I have the materials for 8 pieces of twist-folded steel (rank 3). Crafting 3 items at once allows me to recover 10% of it. If I use it right away, it's bumped to 15%, and 3 swords at 3 pieces would be enough to get 1 piece of normal steel. So if I get one more piece of twist-folded steel first, and use this normal steel here, I can use that to craft a fourth one at a lower tier, and get to temper them all at once".



Some sort of building/design option can take a lot of time. It's important that they can view the plans in realtime, before they're completed, and then work towards that goal in small increments. A blacksmith clicking the menu item for nails x 10, and then bringing them to a builder-NPC isn't interesting. A blacksmith spending iron to get from 24% to 28% in her design for the coolest house on the block, though, that can be.

Or maybe a blacksmith can craft consumable tools for his henchmen, but henchmen only have limited slots for them, so he might have to decide what he wants to do with the henchmen for now.


It's kinda hard trying to think up things that are interesting can be used by both casual and dedicated crafters, and won't become repetitive. When in doubt, copy learn from existing games!

http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/vajuras/062008/1796_Crafting-in-EVE-Online
EVE items require low-tier item to craft a high-tier item. Tier 1 crappy sword into tier 2 basic sword into tier 3 cool sword etc. These could represent ever more complicated phases in here. Every tier improves on all of these, and each represents mastering of one specific subset in an item. It'd all be governed by a single skill, but the visuals of the weapons could update with these as a guideline.

(...)

Not quite as logical as making improvements on technological products, but still just about doable.
This sounds all very good, it's nicely specific in contrast to my abstract ramblings. The EVE method sounds very good for involving low-level crafters in the market, but it will make it a large hassle to craft high-level items. I'm not yet sure what to think about it from a player's perspective, although from a design perspective it'S really smart.


Mini-games are annoying because they take up time. How about if the mini-game is just a golf swing like in a golf game? That is, a precision event where you press the button with the right timing while also keeping a target centered, or something.
For example, maybe the golf-swing power meter is replaced by the forge temperature meter, whose temperature range you may even be able to adjust for different degrees of difficulty in the timing task.
Basically, the majority of the crafting process would still be menu-based decision-making and tech exploration, which TBH is the fun of crafting, not to play Dance Dance Revolution. The final skill-based task, after all the decisions have been made, should only last a few seconds.
To be quite honest here, taking up time is the whole point. Minigames aren'T so much there to improve the experience but to pad it out without making it worse. And honestly, a one-click event would add a lot of frustration potential without achieving that goal, so I'd rather leave it out completely then.


This is actually a good general point. Whenever you're writing down a plotpoint, any plotpoint... First think, "Is this a plot point that I the author has to make, or is it one I can let/make the players do for me?"Very well put, I couldn't agree more. Well, in a certain type of game at least. Players can ruin their own experiences at times.


No armour/weapon dropped by an enemy on the battlefield should be particularly useable or high-quality, actually.
This makes sense because in order to have killed him, you had probably first had to split his shiny helmet in half or dented his big sword. IMO all drops should be either raw materials or damaged goods, both of which needs crafters (either back in town or your "battle-smith" in your party) to fix.
And gameplay wise, useable loot everywhere makes crafters obsolete.
Combat players should not be hoarding money in order to save up for that one expensive magical sword, which seems to be the way most "economies" work in RPGs. Like IRL, players should be constantly leaking money paying for small but necessary things. Such as having armor/weapons/loot repaired. Money needs to flow every which way and constantly, if there is to be an emergent economy.
Treasure chests can hold mint-condition items.
Yes, that's very good and I have nothing to add to it. Well one thing: player's will need to get use to it, since it totally defies genre conventions. But I like it a lot.

By the way, the thread had been very quite the last few days. Is Kaww still here?

[Kaww]

Hi guys,

I apologize for taking so long to reply. It’s been a turbulent week. First of we’ll be posting the first version of the crafting system in a week or so on our blog. So I convinced my partner that this means there’s no need for strict NDA regarding crafting and items.

I’ve already mentioned that enemies will only drop what they are carrying. This means no magic item drops unless you kill something akin to dragons. The only source of magical equipment and essentially any high quality gear will be the crafters.

The vast majority of MMORPGs have crafting that is essentially menu-based.
The first, easier problem is, that the system is simplistic and thus often boring.
This problem can be solved by giving the system more depth and both others and myself have made several suggestions as to how to do this, a few of which I'll reiterate.
- Instead of learning how to craft specific items, have the character learn how to make general forms of parts, such as different blades, hilts, guards etc. of a weapon, that are the same for all materials (although the material will influence that stats and often be more suited to certain forms). The player can then combine those parts into one item with forseeable properties. The better the synergy of the parts, the more useful the item will be (not in stats but in actual play).
- Give the player several possibilities of influencing the end results of crafting, maybe by giving direct control of aspects like heat in forging and hardening, which liquid at which temperature to use in quenching, material composition of metal alloys and so on, creating a system the player has to explore and experiment with to arrive at good results. This works best when there isn't one clear "best" result but multiple different but equivalent results each more suited to one specific approach.
- Let the player create items that do not just have slightly different base stats but that can be tailored to certain playstyles, such as weapons that enhance specific attack skills (a fire affine sword which will deal extra fire damage when used with the fire strike skill is especially useful for a character specializing in melee combat and fire magic).
The exact number and kinds of mechanisms to give depth and coice to the system is a matter of brainstorming and playtesting, but it's not the true problem.
The general idea is that you’ll be able to advance your craft in three separate ways: quality, versatility and greater control of the process. Making new things is versatility. When you advance it you’re able to make something. But without the recipe you won’t know how (you may experiment though).

We’re still discussing whether weapons should be crafted as a whole or in parts. I’m personally for weapons made out of two or three components. I’m in minority, but the battle continues.

Players will be able to influence the end result in two ways: the tools they use to make an item and through the craft skill (more precisely the ability to control the proces).

We’ve got the third paragraph covered too.

The second, much harder to solve problem is how a crafting-focused player is supposed to spend their time. So how to fill the void?
We already mentioned the possibility of using crafting minigames to more actively involve the player in the crafting process
This does also depend on whether or not you will integrate wait times into the crafting. If an items requires a certain amount of time to be completed, suddenly playing a minigame in the time you have to wait anyway doesn't seem a bad idea anymore. If doing well at the game will improve your results, even better!
This can however not be an encompassing solution to the problem.

My original thought was that the crafter player will also run the shop, post quests, shop for materials etc. I believe this would fill a lot of free time the player has while the item is in the making. The other option was as you said optional minigames that influence the end result.

Papa’s xyz was the first thing I thought of, but I’m not sure it’s what the players will want to play. Again it’s optional and you’ll still have to select in the menu what you’re trying to make. I don’t know. This is a tough nut.

A second option is to leave a greater amount of discovery to the players by only providing very basic recipes and leave the rest to experimentation.

Unfortunately this approach will require great efforts to implement, since the developers would have to research the effects of all the parameters implemented on the crafting process, program them in and also implement a record function into the crafting progress so players could easily compare results and save the superior recipes for later use. Considering this will be different for each process and each material and several parameters will be interdependent this might be too much to expect from a game that is not actually focused on a crafting simulation.
We are allowed a certain level of abstraction you know and don’t have to follow the real world physics. Especially with troll blood quenching and such things. If I tell you we’ll be making a PDF called ‘The Crafter’s Cookbook’ would you believe me?

A third method that won't solve but can greatly alleviate the problem is to set crafting before a greater purpose and integrate it more closely into the world:
- Durability for items...
- Own questlines for crafters that do not require combat but the clever use of the craft will provide a narrative framework for crafters who can become epic in their own regard...
- Especially when player controlled cities and environments are a thing, crafters could have a big influence on how those look, contributing better armed NPC guards, better buildings, stringer economy etc, making them a good addition to any guild.
- Depending on how you will treat loot drops and NPC vendors, crafters might also become a neccessary part of the ingame economy...
- Finally, maybe you want to encourage your players to not specialize in crafting and only sitting around in their shops, giving crafters unique in-the-field abilities.

Items will degrade with use. Including crafting tools. There will be two questlines for all races – a crafter’s and an adventurer’s one. We’ve planned that crafters will be very valuable and highly skilled crafters will be important guild members even in adventuring guilds.

If crafters aren’t necessary and make junk it’s better not to implement them at all. Don’t you agree?

I love the final paragraph. Someone already suggested traps and snares and I was in awe. It was like ‘Why in the world couldn’t have I thought of that.’


Wait, there's something I need to show you.
Actually, there's a Korean light novel that's being translated by fans for free. It's one of those Virtual Reality MMO scenarios and the main character is someone who has an artistic profession but still excels in combat. It's not great literature by any means, but if any of you is interested in possible ideas, it can be read here (http://royalroadweed.blogspot.de/p/toc.html)among other places.
By the way, there's a lot of talk about delegating things to NPC crafters, such as having them produce in bulk the recipes you have created/found. This is a good idea for making crafting less tedious, but it will also give the players less to do which means more work creating alternatives. I am of two minds on this issue right now.

Thanks for the suggestion. But I really, really don’t have the time for it. I’ve watched Log Horizon. (Thank you Jade it was quite useful, but I stayed up till 2am and got up at five hours later - it was worth it)

I still can’t discuss the NPC problem. Yes, they will be able to make whatever they know how to make in bulk, so will you when you’re offline.

Furthermore, I will leave out my thought about non menu-based crafting since they don't make sense in a game played from a top-down perspective.

Also, I need to leave and I'm out of ideas. I'm sure an hour after posting I'll have a new list of stuff to say, but I need to post this eventually, so I'll just do it now.
Please enlighten me. Please. Ignore the top down view for a second. Watch the today’s update on our site and you’ll understand why the top down isn’t such a big thing. (you’ll most likely be able to see it around midnight though...)

First, what the player wants are choices. Grinding low-level items for hours doesn't force you to make any meaningful choices, or to see a meaningful difference in anything. The player should feel good about what he did, if at all possible, instead of just feeling good about having a better spreadsheet.
Perhaps the choise is in reusing metal in specific ways, or shaving off a fraction of the metal costs by crafting a specific combination of items. If there's enough customization and a few variables in the system, hopefully the wiki will read "here are some guidelines, these 4 patterns are used by the top 10 smiths, you can vary them by using ingredients in table C" instead of "use pattern X as soon as you can, pattern Y until then".
I believe you won’t be grinding low level items that long. Most people know how the learning curve goes in games. Besides you’ll have a variety of things you can make/repair even at the beginning.

I like the idea about combos. I don’t know why it would make sense in the real world, but I like for game purposes. We plan to make player choices influence the end result. If one item is in higher demand that’s not up to us. I can say that I don’t think an assassin and a slayer will be looking for the same properties in an item.


"I need to make a good sword for that one guy, and I need 3 pieces of steel and need to use up some dragon blood for the tempering. I should make a few more since I'm at it any way. I have the materials for 8 pieces of twist-folded steel (rank 3). Crafting 3 items at once allows me to recover 10% of it. If I use it right away, it's bumped to 15%, and 3 swords at 3 pieces would be enough to get 1 piece of normal steel. So if I get one more piece of twist-folded steel first, and use this normal steel here, I can use that to craft a fourth one at a lower tier, and get to temper them all at once".

Some sort of building/design option can take a lot of time. It's important that they can view the plans in realtime, before they're completed, and then work towards that goal in small increments. A blacksmith clicking the menu item for nails x 10, and then bringing them to a builder-NPC isn't interesting. A blacksmith spending iron to get from 24% to 28% in her design for the coolest house on the block, though, that can be.

Or maybe a blacksmith can craft consumable tools for his henchmen, but henchmen only have limited slots for them, so he might have to decide what he wants to do with the henchmen for now.
It's kinda hard trying to think up things that are interesting can be used by both casual and dedicated crafters, and won't become repetitive. When in doubt, copy learn from existing games!
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/vajuras/062008/1796_Crafting-in-EVE-Online
EVE items require low-tier item to craft a high-tier item. Tier 1 crappy sword into tier 2 basic sword into tier 3 cool sword etc. These could represent ever more complicated phases in here. Every tier improves on all of these, and each represents mastering of one specific subset in an item. It'd all be governed by a single skill, but the visuals of the weapons could update with these as a guideline.
Tier 1 - the basic weapon, nothing fancy
Tier 2 - improved edge geometry and sharpness and adding a slight sheen to the edges
Tier 3 - improved fitting and balance, e.g. the handle, handguard and pommel of a sword, adding a fancy handguard
tier 4 - improved tempering/heat-treatment, giving the edge a slight sheen, glow or coloration
tier 5 - engraving of magical runes

Not quite as logical as making improvements on technological products, but still just about doable.

We’ve thought that the items will be improved by magic, not by blacksmiths. Once enchanted a superior base item will be better than an inferior one with the same enchantments.


Mini-games are annoying because they take up time. How about if the mini-game is just a golf swing like in a golf game? That is, a precision event where you press the button with the right timing while also keeping a target centered, or something.
For example, maybe the golf-swing power meter is replaced by the forge temperature meter, whose temperature range you may even be able to adjust for different degrees of difficulty in the timing task.
Basically, the majority of the crafting process would still be menu-based decision-making and tech exploration, which TBH is the fun of crafting, not to play Dance Dance Revolution. The final skill-based task, after all the decisions have been made, should only last a few seconds.

This is actually a good general point. Whenever you're writing down a plotpoint, any plotpoint... First think, "Is this a plot point that I the author has to make, or is it one I can let/make the players do for me?"

My thought was actually a choice of alloys, tempering techniques and temperatures, quenching fluids, the forging temperature etc. there should be quite a number of gauges. These would be optional and you could always produce the default item which is always the same (more or less). While the more careful, minigame, manipulation could yield better result. Partysan mentioned this as well.

No armour/weapon dropped by an enemy on the battlefield should be particularly useable or high-quality, actually.
This makes sense because in order to have killed him, you had probably first had to split his shiny helmet in half or dented his big sword. IMO all drops should be either raw materials or damaged goods, both of which needs crafters (either back in town or your "battle-smith" in your party) to fix.
And gameplay wise, useable loot everywhere makes crafters obsolete.
Combat players should not be hoarding money in order to save up for that one expensive magical sword, which seems to be the way most "economies" work in RPGs. Like IRL, players should be constantly leaking money paying for small but necessary things. Such as having armor/weapons/loot repaired. Money needs to flow every which way and constantly, if there is to be an emergent economy.
Treasure chests can hold mint-condition items.

God no. NO PUZZZLES.
In fact, when crafting items, durability can be a compromise variable. You want a light rapid-attack weapon? It's going to be less durable. Lighter armour so you're more nimble? Less durable.

I think that just depends on how fast tools degrade. Ofc they shouldn't degrade before a single quest/raid is even finished (unless they're low-quality cheap items to begin with). An average item's useful life should coincide with the natural time intervals between a player's expected town visits.
Sir, you hit on every shot. Most of these are already meant to work as you say, but I believe that that random chest that's encountered once a month could be the adventurer’s greatest joy.


First, I'm going to do everyone a favor and not get started on NDA's and second I'm going to ask, is the economy player centric, or player run? If it's player-centric, then slander is useless, but so is playing a pure crafter, because if you can make it, so can anyone else. If it's player-run, where NPC's can choose to buy from you over NPC's, then it's useful, because you're not slandering another shop to PC's, you're slandering it to NPC's.

Besides, unless you're allowing NPC's to sell player-made goods, the shop is closed unless the player is there to make sales, in which case you end up setting prices that don't change quickly, so another player could simply undercut you. But if you can give your NPC a range, and pay for slander, you'll force a competing NPC to lower their prices to try and hold the business.
Economy will be player run, not player centric. NPCs will purchase goods as well and now I understand what you meant by advertisement and slander. It would make a great mechanic. We’ve had an offline mod for the store owners. Once I can mention is a fellow guild member helping out. The NPC one I can’t yet.


Can crafters have their own houses and workshops, where they actually build new buildings and tools, which enable them to do new stuff? If a single workshop's space is limited, and demolishing old stuff and building new tools takes some time, then the crafters would be limited not only by their spreadsheets, but also by their workshops.
The common craft-houses and smithies etc. would only have the more common tools and equipment. They'd have to degrade in some ways, of course, and the amount of degradation should be affected by the amount of use they're getting. A single smith's personal tools wouldn't degrade as fast as the ones in the common rooms, and if he can make more of them when necessary and it's mostly automated, it wouldn't be much of a chore to keep his own workshop in tip-top shape... but trying to have a common room furnished would take some effort, so it would be expensive for guilds without many crafters.
Players will and should own at least their workshops. They will be able to purchase neighboring plots and expand as well. The space will matter for a variety of reasons. Building of roads and buildings will not take place in a workshop, unless you’re making a dollhouse.

Exactly and more, different specialties require different sets of tools. A blacksmith and silversmith both have a forge, but even that is different shapes and sizes between them.
We are planning for different sets of expendable tools and every profession will have various quality of tools.

If anyone’s interested this post is over 3k words long and took quite a while to write. Thank you for your time and contribution. If you have more ideas and suggestions please post them. I care and read them and I will reply when I have the time.

Best regards,
Kaww

P.S. Jade check out today's update on our blog and tell me what you think of the view.

EDIT: Partysan, I saw your post when I finished this. I'll address it in my next one. Please don't be offended.

[Hiro Protagonest]

You mean the picture at the top of the blog post, with the mountains? Is that rendered with the game engine? That does look really good, better than Neverwinter's graphics.

Even with a top-down view, I'll probably play it anyway to see how it is.

Also, more ideas from Neverwinter: Disable Visuals option on certain items. Neverwinter only has it for the helmet, amulet, and belt, but many people request it for shirts. Neverwinter shirts for classes that have actual armor are made out of chainmail, so when there's armor on it looks like you have chain in the gaps. Without a shirt on women, you get cleavage windows. Bam, both options for fem armor covered with a single feature.

[Triaxx]

The other upside of a built in system of advertisement, is that it encourages players to keep it out of chat. Even the multiplayer of some single player games seems to be filled with 'trading x for y' comments.

I agree with the idea of not getting magic treasure unless you're defeating a dragon, but I'd really like to see a few 'lost' weapons. Something with a backstory, that will just randomly show up in any dungeon final chest. Not unlike Meridia's Beacon in Skyrim, which can pop-up in any of the boss chests.

[Kaww]

You mean the picture at the top of the blog post, with the mountains? Is that rendered with the game engine? That does look really good, better than Neverwinter's graphics.

Even with a top-down view, I'll probably play it anyway to see how it is.

Also, more ideas from Neverwinter: Disable Visuals option on certain items. Neverwinter only has it for the helmet, amulet, and belt, but many people request it for shirts. Neverwinter shirts for classes that have actual armor are made out of chainmail, so when there's armor on it looks like you have chain in the gaps. Without a shirt on women, you get cleavage windows. Bam, both options for fem armor covered with a single feature.

I was thinking about the YouTube clip. Here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC2OYwOwIZs). It's early early alpha, but you get to see the quality of terrain. I have no idea about the image in the header. I can ask the web dev.

I didn't tell you to see it because I want you to play the game. I want you to tell me does the view come close to what you'd like to see.

I like the idea with disabling armor visuals.


The other upside of a built in system of advertisement, is that it encourages players to keep it out of chat. Even the multiplayer of some single player games seems to be filled with 'trading x for y' comments.

I agree with the idea of not getting magic treasure unless you're defeating a dragon, but I'd really like to see a few 'lost' weapons. Something with a backstory, that will just randomly show up in any dungeon final chest. Not unlike Meridia's Beacon in Skyrim, which can pop-up in any of the boss chests.

There will be named items. One of them is the legendary axe Biter. All named items will be unique on all servers (one per server, one on all servers) and will have a story behind it.

[MLai]

I like the idea with disabling armor visuals..
Ah yes, so we can play this. Mandatory, I agree.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6081/6093899298_b4757acb6c_o.gif

BTW, that's nice terrain graphics. Seems wasted on a top-down view. I hope what you mean is top-down-at-an-angle (so more of the setting is visible and can be appreciated), rather than straight down on top of the player's skull like some 8-bit game.

[endoperez]

Ah yes, so we can play this. Mandatory, I agree.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6081/6093899298_b4757acb6c_o.gif

BTW, that's nice terrain graphics. Seems wasted on a top-down view. I hope what you mean is top-down-at-an-angle (so more of the setting is visible and can be appreciated), rather than straight down on top of the player's skull like some 8-bit game.

The terrain graphics seem to look better from low angles at the moment, yes. Those can probably be adjusted, though. Angling the tops of the grasses so they're angled towards a high camera, and perhaps adding global wind-cast waves through the grass... I think that's doable through vertex shader trickery, given a suitable algorithm.



The hiding of armors can be used to do that... or, you know, to play any of these (spoilered for massive images):

http://www.talismancoins.com/catalog/Knight_in_Plate_Armor_Suit.jpg

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h292/Monkwarrior/M2TW/infanteria_francesa.jpg

http://heroineimages.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/knight2.jpg

http://www.botaddict.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/diablo3-barbarian.jpg

Otherwise, games tend to end up like this:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/photos/prodimg9/product_image_full_98344.jpg

[Kaww]

BTW, that's nice terrain graphics. Seems wasted on a top-down view. I hope what you mean is top-down-at-an-angle (so more of the setting is visible and can be appreciated), rather than straight down on top of the player's skull like some 8-bit game.

The change of view is a game feature. We weren't sure it would look good, so we didn't want to mention this feature. You know - if we say we'll have it and it's not good we have two bad options - breaking our word or making a crappy product.


The terrain graphics seem to look better from low angles at the moment, yes. Those can probably be adjusted, though. Angling the tops of the grasses so they're angled towards a high camera, and perhaps adding global wind-cast waves through the grass... I think that's doable through vertex shader trickery, given a suitable algorithm.
Again, this is all very, very early development and should improve quite a bit.

The hiding of armors can be used to do that... or, you know, to play any of these (spoilered for massive images)
I agree that the hiding of any or all pieces of equipment would add a lot to the variety and customization of characters. The bad thing is I know it will lead to chainmail bikinis... The fact that it's the players choice justifies it to an extent, but still...

What do you think about an enchantment that makes a weapon invisible?

[Hiro Protagonest]

Ah yes, so we can play this. Mandatory, I agree.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6081/6093899298_b4757acb6c_o.gif

Not really. The piece that takes up the armor slot itself isn't going to be that skimpy. Plus I don't know if we should have a "disable pants visuals" option.

Anyway, this is my Neverwinter Guardian Fighter with and without a shirt.
http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/3332964116055094413/2CB8C80D2E67B107E1E01AD872FFE7A94459EDA5/
http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/3332964116055113740/2C3246E61C7CE89AD2084EE32E832F97FA10D86D/
That's hardly comprehensive of all the armor styles in the game (some have plates over the breasts that show only a little bit of cleavage, some have wider windows so you can see even more, some have asymmetrical protection on the shoulders, waist, and hips), and there's also a style of shirt that doesn't have the turtleneck, but that gives a pretty good idea of what low-mid level armor looks like. Higher level armor is fancier and generally covers more (the high level armor in the character creation screen, which is by default without a shirt, is fully protective except for the built-in low-cut metal bra).

[Kitten Champion]

I like the disable clothing visual for helmets personally, like in Mass Effect. If you've gone through the effort of creating a customized appearance for your PC but find yourself looking like everyone else because you need the stats a helmet provides, it's all rendered pointless.

A lot of MMOs have a clothing slot/tab so you don't have to choose between wearing statistically optimized armour and the armour you find aesthetically pleasing. I usually don't care, but people do get invested in what their character looks like.

It depends on how much verisimilitude is significant to the game's experience, I suppose.



What do you think about an enchantment that makes a weapon invisible?

That's an option for armour, but weapons? It'd just look like a visual bug.

[MLai]

I like the disable clothing visual for helmets personally, like in Mass Effect. If you've gone through the effort of creating a customized appearance for your PC but find yourself looking like everyone else because you need the stats a helmet provides, it's all rendered pointless.
Oh that's right! I remember that as being something I sorely wished for Dragon Age.*
The partially good thing about DA is that at least the characters take their helmets off for the story cutscenes.

*The other thing was for a walk animation for your companions. The game curiously did not allow walking for your companions (at all), only running. So whenever I'm walking and hoping my party would walk behind me, they instead do stumbling little sprints... completely ruins the potential Reservoir Dogs pan shot.

[Triaxx]

For all the great things I hear about Dragon Age, I occasionally get the feeling it was hand-crafted by Typewriter Monkeys.

[endoperez]

For all the great things I hear about Dragon Age, I occasionally get the feeling it was hand-crafted by Typewriter Monkeys.

Whoa there! :smalleek:
Everyone makes mistakes, including game developers, but you're basically saying if someone doesn't do a perfect job, it didn't take any effort at all... That's ridiculously condescending, and you're in a thread that's about making games.

[Passive Pete]

First of all, I read the blog post, and all I can say is that I for one, am sold. :smallbiggrin: Please excuse any repeated ideas, as I don't remember everything everyone posted.

My first idea is to fix overpowered horseriders. This might get kinda out of hand in the game, but maybe something like this: Whenever you're riding a horse, and either you or the horse gets attacked, there is a chance (based on what kind of horse you're riding) that it will get frightened, and run off in a random direction. However, the chance of the horse getting frightened will lower, based on how strong you are in the "ride" skill.

Also, who doesn't like merging two items for a better mix of the two? :smallsmile:

My last idea is thus: Half-giants are gonna be too big for horses, right? Give them some awesome giant boars or dinosaur mounts (bonus points for a mix of the two). And for more benefits with the "ride" skill, you can train you mounts to do special attacks, like trample, or bite-and-throw, for half-giant mounts.

Thanks! This game sounds awesome!

[Hiro Protagonest]

Well, horse archers were very powerful in real life. But yeah, for a realistic idea, you should have to take an aim penalty until you put enough points into a "ride", or even an extra "horse archer" skill.

Of course, in a game with a Diablo-like or PoE-like combat system, "realistic" isn't a word I'd use to describe combat.

[Triaxx]

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that it's a great game, marred by a few flaws that just pop up at you. The idea is that monkeys on typewriters could eventually produce shakespeare, but chances are it'd not be a perfect example. That's what I mean. A game good enough that the few flaws are disproportionately magnified because they stand outso much.

[endoperez]

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that it's a great game, marred by a few flaws that just pop up at you. The idea is that monkeys on typewriters could eventually produce shakespeare, but chances are it'd not be a perfect example. That's what I mean. A game good enough that the few flaws are disproportionately magnified because they stand outso much.

The way I've heard it is that enough random noise will result in a perfect copy of anything. I have never heard about the copy the monkeys create being imperfect, that seems to be against the spirit of the mathematical metaphor.

It seems you were talking about the quality of the end product, not making a statement about how it was reached or about the people who worked on it. Much more understandable.

[Triaxx]

Yeah, should have made myself clear to start with.

[MLai]

Whenever you're riding a horse, and either you or the horse gets attacked, there is a chance (based on what kind of horse you're riding) that it will get frightened, and run off in a random direction. However, the chance of the horse getting frightened will lower, based on how strong you are in the "ride" skill.
To the OP:
1. Ever played Shadow Of The Colossus? I consider that the best mounted-adventure simulation ever, for your type of 3rd-person POV game.
2. So have you tried Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale by now? It's not a long game to appreciate the mechanics of.

[Kaww]

That's an option for armour, but weapons? It'd just look like a visual bug.

I guess you're right. I thought of Sabre in Fate. But as a gamer, yup, that's a bug, not a feature.


For all the great things I hear about Dragon Age, I occasionally get the feeling it was hand-crafted by Typewriter Monkeys.

Does anyone know if anyone before Swift (in Gulliver's travels) used this?


First of all, I read the blog post, and all I can say is that I for one, am sold. :smallbiggrin: Please excuse any repeated ideas, as I don't remember everything everyone posted.

My first idea is to fix overpowered horseriders. This might get kinda out of hand in the game, but maybe something like this: Whenever you're riding a horse, and either you or the horse gets attacked, there is a chance (based on what kind of horse you're riding) that it will get frightened, and run off in a random direction. However, the chance of the horse getting frightened will lower, based on how strong you are in the "ride" skill.

We've came up with following ways to counter mounted combat so far:
- The rider can be unmounted by certain combat manoeuvres.
- The most powerful ranged weapons will not be available on horse, and you won't be able to shoot on the run at all with them.
- Limited manoeuvrability when turning (can be improved with talent investment)
- Manoeuvrability will depend on the weapon you wield. (can be improved with talent investment)
- Two more I can't discuss yet.

I like the fear idea and training mounts for special attacks. It really goes well with the different types of mounts we have in plan. Thanks.


Also, who doesn't like merging two items for a better mix of the two? :smallsmile:

My last idea is thus: Half-giants are gonna be too big for horses, right? Give them some awesome giant boars or dinosaur mounts (bonus points for a mix of the two). And for more benefits with the "ride" skill, you can train you mounts to do special attacks, like trample, or bite-and-throw, for half-giant mounts.

Thanks! This game sounds awesome!

Merging of items might be done magically, but I believe it doesn't complement the system. I'll mention it and see what happens.

Half-giants won't ride horses. We might have some giant things for them to ride, but that most likely won't be implemented in the beta version. I like the idea of a half-giant riding something badass, but I believe we'll post it as a poll on our forum when the time comes.


Well, horse archers were very powerful in real life. But yeah, for a realistic idea, you should have to take an aim penalty until you put enough points into a "ride", or even an extra "horse archer" skill.

Of course, in a game with a Diablo-like or PoE-like combat system, "realistic" isn't a word I'd use to describe combat.

The accuracy is very easy to fix really. Dodge % vs. mounted opponents. With more riding talents you reduce the dodge chance.


To the OP:
1. Ever played Shadow Of The Colossus? I consider that the best mounted-adventure simulation ever, for your type of 3rd-person POV game.
2. So have you tried Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale by now? It's not a long game to appreciate the mechanics of.

1. Haven't played it, but I've seen the game play. Most of the development team has played and have its features in mind to an extent. Do you have anything specific you'd like to mention?

2. I've played it. It has a great merchant system that works really well with NPCs. It's very addictive too. I expected more from the crafting system, since 2d games like that can make it a great thing and they totally missed it. Thanks for the recommendation - it gave me an idea or two.

I'm just sorry I played it till the end since you can see the mechanics after an hour of play.

Thanks guys. Don't hold back on account of being afraid to repeat what others have already mentioned.

Best regards,
kaww

P.S. The first batch of weapon models should be finished in a week or so.

[Kitten Champion]

1. Haven't played it, but I've seen the game play. Most of the development team has played and have its features in mind to an extent. Do you have anything specific you'd like to mention?


There are two I would mention.

The first is a feature where you whistle for the horse and it comes trotting to you, it's easy to lose track of it and it really sort of sets a sense of bonding between you and your steed when it comes towards you.

The other is that it doesn't feel like a robotic super-horse that can run forever and not get tired, it goes from a slow trot to a canter to a gallop and has a real sense of momentum being lost when you try to make sharp movements or sudden breaks. If you try to force it, it will whiny in displeasure and fight you.

Here's a video. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aACu8TOYJZk)

Seriously, that horse was the most horsey horse I've seen in video games, the fact that its your only living friend in that world -- when it goes plummeting off a cliff I was damned near inconsolable.

As far as suggestions go, outside of the one I've already made, (that the horse can act as a second inventory slot for long journeys) doing something like feeding the horse or leaving it out to graze would go a long way to making it feel like more of a living being rather than a convenient game mechanic.

[Triaxx]

On the vein of inventory, how about a wagon? Even the horse can only carry so much, but being able to hitch up a wagon, or cart would net your more space. Gives you something else to craft as well, since you can get basic two-wheeled carts from NPC's but players can later craft four wheeled cargo wagons and covered camping wagons, with each having different improvements. The cargo wagon has a much larger inventory, possibly even a second page. The camping wagon on the other hand lets you camp anywhere and do some simple crafting. Perhaps the ability to partially repair your weapon for example.

[Lamech]

Okay, I have a few ideas, probably mostly already mentioned but here we go:
1) Procedurally generated, or automatically generated stuff, if, its good, is amazing. You certainly got the right idea with the evolution of monsters. You might be able to do something similar with skills. Who knows?
2) IMO, Eve has a good system for crafting: It takes real time, but you don't need to be there. Crafting should add value. The problem is if it takes huge amounts of in game time, it gets boring. If it doesn't it won't add much value. Hell, I've seen games where crafting lowers the value since it gives xp.
3) Crafting should be important. If you can craft a +5 sword at max skill, but the Lich Queen drops a +7 sword... the +5 one is gonna look pretty lack luster.
4) Player run dynamics are great. Like point one it generates content without you needing to work. Make people fight over tech moons, farms! Then you get guilds fighting over said farms and suddenly raids never get boring since you are dealing with other people.
4a) This also goes for the market. If everyone goes into one area, the prices get depressed and stuff is worthless.
5) Do one super massive server! That way everyone makes a difference!
6) Avoid "top tier" gear. Otherwise everything will just revolve around that. Blarg.
7) Player designs. Like minecraft. Let me explain, if you give players enough modularity, they will come up with epic designs of various types. It doesn't need to be buildings.

Disclaimer: I'm an Eve player (well when I had time), so this may flavour my responses.

[Kaww]

Hi guys,

I thought I'll have the time for bi-daily reports. Man was I wrong... In my defense there's a new video with some features and we have a bear too. :smallbiggrin:


The terrain graphics seem to look better from low angles at the moment, yes. Those can probably be adjusted, though. Angling the tops of the grasses so they're angled towards a high camera, and perhaps adding global wind-cast waves through the grass... I think that's doable through vertex shader trickery, given a suitable algorithm.

If you have any specific idea on how to do this and what do to PM me please.


There are two I would mention.

The first is a feature where you whistle for the horse and it comes trotting to you, it's easy to lose track of it and it really sort of sets a sense of bonding between you and your steed when it comes towards you.

The other is that it doesn't feel like a robotic super-horse that can run forever and not get tired, it goes from a slow trot to a canter to a gallop and has a real sense of momentum being lost when you try to make sharp movements or sudden breaks. If you try to force it, it will whiny in displeasure and fight you.

Seriously, that horse was the most horsey horse I've seen in video games, the fact that its your only living friend in that world -- when it goes plummeting off a cliff I was damned near inconsolable.

As far as suggestions go, outside of the one I've already made, (that the horse can act as a second inventory slot for long journeys) doing something like feeding the horse or leaving it out to graze would go a long way to making it feel like more of a living being rather than a convenient game mechanic.

We've planned that the mounts would come after the summon, not just pop up from thin air.

Kitten, I'd love our horse to be the horsiest horse ever. The budget might be a problem. First priority in terms of realistic appearance are the character models, then the weapons, then the mounts. The weapons are a relatively small part of it, but the players will be looking at them a good deal of time and they have to be top notch (pardon the pun).

I believe I've mentioned we'll have food and hunger system. This will apply to mounts as well.


On the vein of inventory, how about a wagon? Even the horse can only carry so much, but being able to hitch up a wagon, or cart would net your more space. Gives you something else to craft as well, since you can get basic two-wheeled carts from NPC's but players can later craft four wheeled cargo wagons and covered camping wagons, with each having different improvements. The cargo wagon has a much larger inventory, possibly even a second page. The camping wagon on the other hand lets you camp anywhere and do some simple crafting. Perhaps the ability to partially repair your weapon for example.

There was a wagon in the video I showed last week. But, I didn't think of carts. They could add a lot to the game feel and how desperate the people are. Crafting/camping wagons with portable crafting stations are also better than what I originally had in mind.


Okay, I have a few ideas, probably mostly already mentioned but here we go:
1) Procedurally generated, or automatically generated stuff, if, its good, is amazing. You certainly got the right idea with the evolution of monsters. You might be able to do something similar with skills. Who knows?
2) IMO, Eve has a good system for crafting: It takes real time, but you don't need to be there. Crafting should add value. The problem is if it takes huge amounts of in game time, it gets boring. If it doesn't it won't add much value. Hell, I've seen games where crafting lowers the value since it gives xp.
3) Crafting should be important. If you can craft a +5 sword at max skill, but the Lich Queen drops a +7 sword... the +5 one is gonna look pretty lack luster.
4) Player run dynamics are great. Like point one it generates content without you needing to work. Make people fight over tech moons, farms! Then you get guilds fighting over said farms and suddenly raids never get boring since you are dealing with other people.
4a) This also goes for the market. If everyone goes into one area, the prices get depressed and stuff is worthless.
5) Do one super massive server! That way everyone makes a difference!
6) Avoid "top tier" gear. Otherwise everything will just revolve around that. Blarg.
7) Player designs. Like minecraft. Let me explain, if you give players enough modularity, they will come up with epic designs of various types. It doesn't need to be buildings.

Disclaimer: I'm an Eve player (well when I had time), so this may flavour my responses.

1) How would you go about doing that? If I understood correctly the skill tree should be randomized?

2) We've though about approaching it that way too, but I'm not sure I can reveal the details of the exact way the mechanic will function.

3) It will be. But, dammit, if you kill the Lich Queen that's unique in the realm you should and will get that +7 sword (with which she was trying to split your head open).

4) and 4a) were already covered a while ago.

5) Is not possible with this game model. We will have several types of servers depending on player preferences. The world will be massive though (900 square kilometers, WoW world is 1000 square kilometers)

6) You have to be more precise about this. There will be different qualities of gear (which will depend on the quality of the smith) but we will try making a lot of different gear of each tier.

7) Detailed explanation please.

Partysan - you mentioned alternate ways of performing attacks would you mind explaining them or posting any examples? They don't have to be for top down view.

[MLai]

It will be. But, dammit, if you kill the Lich Queen that's unique in the realm you should and will get that +7 sword (with which she was trying to split your head open)..
(1) "Unique" in a MMO world isn't unique. It is "everyone gets to kill it once." Which means there would be hundreds of that +7 sword floating about.

(2) What should happen is you kill the Lich Queen and you retrieve her Damaged Sword +7. Now you need a master smith to repair this sword +7 so you can use it. Or melt it down in a magic-reinforced forge and made into a battle-axe +7 or something. It's rare resource, not finished product.

(3) And damn wouldn't you know it, there are very few advanced smithing players who can handle the task of repairing a +7 item. So you go to one of these power gamers. Guy's stinkin' rich, cuz everybody goes to him. He says he'll buy it off of you. You don't wanna sell; you want it fixed. Okay then, he demands something done for him in return. Player-generated content!

[Kaww]

But, we actually plan on making unique bosses never appear in that realm once they are killed. They will be next to impossible to kill even for entire guilds. The BBGs will be big, bad and tough to beat.

I've already discussed with someone the use of unique items as craft materials. Which will require several people with very high craft skills (or one person with several very high crafting skills).

[Triaxx]

Another thought on crafting. If you have player workshops, then there should be bonuses for having other players with different skills. So if you're a blacksmith forging a broadsword, having a silversmith on hand could give it additional decorations, or potentially a damage bonus against lycanthropes for example. That way you get more bonuses for working together with other players. Maybe give up two slots, one for pure decoration and one for an enhancement, and one smith could work on one or the other. So you could have a gold damage bonus, and silver decoration or silver damage bonus and gold decoration or two silver/gold smiths for dual damage/decoration.

[Kaww]

I like the idea. The problem is how visible the sword's decorations would be while you wield it? In first person games it would be clearly visible. I'm not so sure with our view point.

One question though. Would you pay extra five pounds of iron to buy the same sword only prettier? I still believe that it would be a good option for the jeweler to make any weapon look better, if the weapon is visible enough.

[Kitten Champion]

Kitten, I'd love our horse to be the horsiest horse ever. The budget might be a problem. First priority in terms of realistic appearance are the character models, then the weapons, then the mounts. The weapons are a relatively small part of it, but the players will be looking at them a good deal of time and they have to be top notch (pardon the pun).

I believe I've mentioned we'll have food and hunger system. This will apply to mounts as well.

Oh, I wasn't expecting Shadow of Colossus-levels of detail. That game had a very minimalist approach which damn-near perfected the few mechanics it used.

The issue is that in most MMO's mounts are not realistic in the slightest. Their primary purpose is to appear, get you slightly faster where you need to go, and then vanish in a puff of smoke. That's fine as far as the PC's convenience is concerned, especially considering how slow the average movement speed of characters is and the increasing scope of in-game environments, it just doesn't lend itself to roleplaying.

Feeding the mounts, and having to consider them as.. alive, would go a long way to giving the player a sense of ownership and responsibility over them which otherwise would be largely in the player's imagination. So I'm glad you're considering how to make them more organic, even if this isn't going to be Horse Grooming Simulator 2014.



One question though. Would you pay extra five pounds of iron to buy the same sword only prettier? I still believe that it would be a good option for the jeweler to make any weapon look better, if the weapon is visible enough.

I think if it produced an interesting silhouette or a visible colour change I might, but really I'd rather gussy-up my armour. Weapons are either going to be moving or sheathed for most of the time, unless your game adopts this style:

http://th07.deviantart.net/fs51/PRE/f/2009/288/6/1/Haseo__hack_GU_Render_Enlarged_by_ZeroUploads.png

I doubt I'd care so much.

[Triaxx]

Decoration wouldn't actually do anything other than alter the value, but I presume at some point you'd have to look at the weapon in your inventory to equip it.

That value question is hard to answer, because not everyone is going to have the same answer. I personally don't care about decorations. Plain or ornate as long as stabbing the bad guys in the face kills them, I'm happy with my sword. If the bonus is only on the weapon with decoration, fine, but I'm not going to go out of my way to find one with decoration. However, if you're making a special sword, perhaps to celebrate a victory over one of these superbosses, you're going to want that bad boy to be as unique as you can manage, so being able to do something like this is going to make the weapon all the more special.

[MLai]

Decoration wouldn't actually do anything other than alter the value, but I presume at some point you'd have to look at the weapon in your inventory to equip it..
Practical effects of making your weapon (and armor) more ornate are:

(1) They rise in monetary value.
(2) They influence NPC's Perception towards you.
(3) Maybe if you don't look the part, you aren't even qualified for certain leadership positions, or certain lucrative NPC quests won't let you even in the door because you look like a bum. Kind of like IRL.

[Kaww]

Decoration wouldn't actually do anything other than alter the value, but I presume at some point you'd have to look at the weapon in your inventory to equip it.

That's actually the first thing that came to mind about an hour after I posted the question. Also the ornate armor mentioned is much cooler.


Practical effects of making your weapon (and armor) more ornate are:

(1) They rise in monetary value.
(2) They influence NPC's Perception towards you.
(3) Maybe if you don't look the part, you aren't even qualified for certain leadership positions, or certain lucrative NPC quests won't let you even in the door because you look like a bum. Kind of like IRL.

I like the (2) and (3) quite a bit. (1) is sort of a circular definition - you made it more expensive to be more expensive.

Also I don't know if I have thanked everyone for their contribution to this thread. I usually tell people in person when they are doing a great job and I don't have the habit of putting it in writing. So I might have forgotten to do so earlier.

Thanks guys!

[endoperez]

I don't think MLai's suggestion nr 3 will work. If you drop your sword, will you stop being the guild leader? If you don't, what if you drop the sword so that someone else can pick it up and use it in a raid? What if someone makes a crappy sword that looks really cool?


Perhaps decorations give buffs to the NPC underlings? A guild leader would have lots of underlings, so a guild leader with lots of bling would benefit his whole guild, so the whole guild would have a reason to be interested in his bling.
The problem of "what happens when he uses a different sword" still persists, though - if a guild leader can't unequip the pretty equipment because it'd harm all of his guild, it'd kinda suck to be in that position. The guy making the decisions might tell someone else to get the official role just so he can wear his own equipment, and that'd be counter-intuitive and silly.

Perhaps there should be some sort of "checking the troops" ritual or ceremony that only people high in the guild's chain of command can do, that gives bonuses to the underlings based on the equipment's style. More than one such ritual could be active at a time, but only the best one is in effect, so that a 2nd-in-command can do the ritual before the leader's ceremony runs out without replacing the leader's better one until the first runs out naturally.

[Triaxx]

I think it'd have to be more like ceremonial gear. I mean, barring extenuating circumstances, a soldier isn't going to wear a dress uniform out onto the field. But that doesn't stop them from being a commanding officer. I might be the high muckity-muck because I've got the 'Armor of the High Muckity-Muck', but just because I'm wearing my ugly, battered armor of 'Not getting dead', doesn't mean that I'm no longer the High Muckity-Muck. It just means I'm not wearing the armor.

[MLai]

I don't think MLai's suggestion nr 3 will work. If you drop your sword, will you stop being the guild leader? If you don't, what if you drop the sword so that someone else can pick it up and use it in a raid? What if someone makes a crappy sword that looks really cool?
1. Maybe the sword has your account name on it.
2. Any "requirements/tests" you had to pass using the sword's added positive Influence/Charisma is already done. You don't have to wear it all the time now.
3. You wouldn't use your expensive bling sword in an actual raid. Swords break down with use.
4. The point of the sword is to look really cool, not to be good at killing. You could make a really cool sword that's also good at killing, but it'd usually be optional for the tests in question.

Perhaps decorations give buffs to the NPC underlings?
I would imagine an impressive-looking leader gives positive morale to AI minions. The "check the troops" test sounds appropriate.

I like the (2) and (3) quite a bit. (1) is sort of a circular definition - you made it more expensive to be more expensive.
LOL yes, also like IRL.

[Kaww]

We've had a something...

Our videos caught attention of an industry veteran and he asked us for a meeting. The meeting lasted till eleven PM and our world was turned upside down, well the game was at any rate.

The more interesting lines were the following:

Him: "You can't make an MMO in two years with that budget."
Me: "We made what you saw in less than two months with no budget."
Him: "You might pull it off in two years, but you'll most likely go broke."
Me: :smallfrown:

In the end in the five and something hours we spent talking he made us reconsider MMO aspect and first launch a single player Sandbox ARPG, or co-op version, if we have enough cash. Later we will upgrade the game into an MMO if we see that there's enough interest.

He said he'll send our demo to Jesse Cox, Angry Joe and TB once it's done in a month or so and that they should give us professional feedback as well as friendly advice regarding our project's future. At least for me this is amazing news and I felt like sharing it with you guys.

You are an amazing help and what I have said about crediting your contribution still stands. Some of your ideas will have to be modified to fit a non MMO game mechanics, but I still wanted to thank you and say how awesome it feels to receive such an acknowledgement from such a man.

Thank you and have a great weekend,
kaww

[Grinner]

In the end in the five and something hours we spent talking he made us reconsider MMO aspect and first launch a single player Sandbox ARPG, or co-op version, if we have enough cash. Later we will upgrade the game into an MMO if we see that there's enough interest.

As a person with limited time and money, you've now caught my interest.

This, I think, is the most profitable option. There's tons of MMOs out there, and each of them seems to demand all of the player's free time. Massively multiplayer games sound nice, but they simply require so much from both the developers and the players. A singleplayer game is far more manageable.

Best of luck.

[Hiro Protagonest]

There's tons of MMOs out there, and each of them seems to demand all of the player's free time.

Name them.

I think the keyword here is "seems to".

[Grinner]

Name them.

I think the keyword here is "seems to".

Almost every MMO I've ever played and a few I know only by reputation. They're explicitly designed to suck up your time. How else do they turn a profit?

If you truly require a list, I'll give an incomplete one:

Runescape
EVE Online
Lord of the Rings Online
Maplestory
Everquest II


I'd add World of Warcraft, but I don't think I ever gave it enough of a chance for the tedium to set in.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Almost every MMO I've ever played and a few I know only by reputation. They're explicitly designed to suck up your time. How else do they turn a profit?

If you truly require a list, I'll give an incomplete one:

Runescape
EVE Online
Lord of the Rings Online
Maplestory
Everquest II


I'd add World of Warcraft, but I don't think I ever gave it enough of a chance for the tedium to set in.

Runescape, yes but that's old, EVE is a complete enigma and is successful because it's not just more of the same, Maplestory, that was years ago, EQII, haven't played, can't comment, WoW, maybe a couple expansions ago, but I tried the free trial and it was about as casual-friendly as you can get without being made just for casuals.

You seem to be behind the times. Neverwinter, WoW (which is majorly different from a decade ago), GW2, STO, those are the MMOs that are played nowadays. I'd love to be able to play an MMO in the style of older games (that isn't EVE Online because I hate the combat system and the only other thing to do is manage spreadsheets dammit).

[Grinner]

Runescape, yes but that's old, EVE is a complete enigma and is successful because it's not just more of the same, Maplestory, that was years ago, EQII, haven't played, can't comment, WoW, maybe a couple expansions ago, but I tried the free trial and it was about as casual-friendly as you can get without being made just for casuals.

You seem to be behind the times. Neverwinter, WoW (which is majorly different from a decade ago), GW2, STO, those are the MMOs that are played nowadays. I'd love to be able to play an MMO in the style of older games (that isn't EVE Online because I hate the combat system and the only other thing to do is manage spreadsheets dammit).

I'm...behind the times? See, there's the problem. If each MMO is just a passing trend, then they're just tedious timesinks. You could make the same argument for any other RPG, but unlike any MMO, I can definitely finish a singleplayer RPG.

You might argue that I'm missing the point, that it's not about finishing the game. You might even say that there is no game to finish. However, I've found that MMOs never live up to their promises for aspects other than the grind. Adventuring with friends? I've never met anyone I've particularly cared for online and any communities I've ever joined were only as ephemeral as the worlds they existed in. As for the adventures, well, they never struck me as being particularly adventuresome. In fact, they were only ever tenuous alliances between strangers, each hoping to claim the boss's drop for himself.

[Triaxx]

Fah. There's always someone naysaying your idea, trying to shoot you down. You want to make an MMO, make an MMO. You need more money, that's what Kickstarter is for. Don't get discouraged by one 'veteran'. Just because he failed, doesn't mean you can't succeed.

[MLai]

Yeah, I agree that I'd actually pay more attention (as an employed gamer with disposable income) to a single-player RPG than to an MMO. A single-purchase game is more accessible to a wider audience and requires less financial and psychosocial investment. Not even an avid gamer may wish to commit to an MMO, or to an *additional* MMO.

And the previous discussions on Recettear and Shadow Of Colossus now become viable. They are realistic goals if you're making a single-player game.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Technically, all games are pointless time sinks. That's what games are designed to be. An ending in a game is just an illusion to convince you that you actually accomplished something.

And yeah, if you need money, run a Kickstarter. The strengths of this game are not going to be the strengths of a good single-player game, unless you just scrap most of your (or at least our :smalltongue:) ideas and maybe even the demo and start over again.

[Kaww]

Fah. There's always someone naysaying your idea, trying to shoot you down. You want to make an MMO, make an MMO. You need more money, that's what Kickstarter is for. Don't get discouraged by one 'veteran'. Just because he failed, doesn't mean you can't succeed.

He didn't fail. He succeeded time and time again I was honestly surprised someone like him would spend time with us. When such a person tells you here's a thought you should at least listen. His advice was to make a single player with MMO in mind where it influences the mechanics and the engine. Then simply upgrade. He gave us a list why this would work well. Some of his points were:

- it will be several times cheaper
- there's more room for balancing errors (which will be easily fixed with much less rage from the community)
- we will have a working engine for a greater diversity of game genres
- players will have an existing history with the setting and its happenings
- the world will be familiar
- better player immersion
and about a quarter of an hour more...

At the end he said that we have something good. That we shouldn't screw it up and that we should have fun while making it. In my book he's right on all of these.


Technically, all games are pointless time sinks. That's what games are designed to be. An ending in a game is just an illusion to convince you that you actually accomplished something.

So many things I disagree with in one post. First about the time sink, I don't play many computer games. I read books and play tabletop. I have read around two thousand books including philosophy, psychology and what is generally considered work of minds much greater than me.

I could argue that Remarque, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Fromm, Dostoyevsky and all others were as much a time sink as playing a game of D&D. What you enjoy doing should not be considered a time sink, at least by my standard. Waiting in line for two hours to see Mona Lisa is, if you don't have something else to do (like read a book, or something).

As a game designer I have to tell you that my job is not to make you waste time. It's not even to give you a sense of achievement. My job is to make something that is fun for you and something you will consider worth paying. Sense of achievement is something that makes people feel good.

However I have to make the game enjoyable for people that don't want to go and kill the dragon and get the princess. There are people that just want to run a shop and make a medieval superstore. Here's a trade secret - you, the player, are making the achievement, not me. This is a common delusion designers have.

Would an FRP be fun if the game told you do THIS to have a sense of achievement? I believe it wouldn't. That's why guys like me work on making as many options and making a game as open as possible. That's it - you are the ones making a game good. Not me. Same is true with GMing - a good GM is there to provide a setting, options and set the rules. After that he should be having fun in the story players create.

I also don't have a problem with playing/making games in which the player may lose. That sure doesn't grant a sense of achievement, but it does add to a game.


And yeah, if you need money, run a Kickstarter. The strengths of this game are not going to be the strengths of a good single-player game, unless you just scrap most of your (or at least our :smalltongue:) ideas and maybe even the demo and start over again.

I don't know if you have a programming background, if you do I apologize for stating the obvious.

You should know what the next upgrade is. If you know it you will write the code so that you can easily incorporate the new features. For example: player quests. This may sound dumb in single player, but think about it. You as the main character don't have time to do every little thing. Why not take a parchment write down what you need and nail it on the tavern door, like a certain halfling did?

This may seem like a totally different thing, but it's actually only one method away from becoming player quest for players. Player run economy we talked about will become player centric, but it will be made in such a way to only need a tweak to become player run. Just about everything that was mentioned here will be useful for a smaller version. The elements might need a small alteration and they are usable, as I said in my previous post.

This is a wall of text, sorry about that. Jade, don't get me wrong. I'm not angry, or anything. I'm defending my profession from the accusation of robbing people of time and money.

P.S. What leisure activity would you say is not a time sink? For me leisure is just that - me relaxing and not doing anything practical. Mind you playing FRP games and reading books does come in handy now, but so would have playing lots of video games I have to play (or watch being played on YouTube) now to catch up.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Alright, if you want to make a single-player game, that's fine. But the problem is, this type of MMO doesn't really exist any more. Granted, Shroud of the Avatar's got about three million in crowdfunding and is definitely going to bring back some of the old-school stuff, but beyond a good crafting system and some hidden stats that affect how NPCs interact with you, I don't know what it'll have to make it more old-school than EQNext, or even WoW and its Garrisons. So mostly, it's just me really wanting an old-school MMO. Although considering there's Shroud of the Avatar, it's probably stupid of me to want to see another UO-style MMO get made at around the same time, since they would both compete for your free time as similar games.

[Kitten Champion]

To be honest, I was skeptical of your goals given the size of your operation and level of complexity inherent in your more ambitious ideas. That you don't have to balance it for countless users is a potential boon for something like your dynamic setting concept.

Couple a points.

Your website has font issues. The titles are next to invisible against the background now.

You could still do the hardcore realm concept, but as a single player difficulty level... and another big benefit is that modders can start playing with your game and come up with ideas you never dreamed of.

You've got a Druid class now? Does this mean you'll have pets/companions? Like maybe that bear could be tamable... or some kind of cat. It would be a cool reason to play that class.

Another thing is animal traps. You could collect the meat/herb that a particular animal likes to bait them, build/buy traps, and leave them out for a night and hope for the best. It could be a way to get those rarer or hard-to-catch creatures for quests or crafting purposes. It could also be something to routinely develop your blacksmithing abilities with, with better designed traps catching prey more successfully. It would be the intersection of harvesting and crafting.

Even if it's not an MMO, if you've got some co-op functionality you could do something like upload your friend's fortification into your world (or vice versa) and have it staffed with NPCS that share his/her insignia or guild name. So they will have a presence in your world of some sort. Or if they have a business of some sort they could suddenly appear in your world, with the stuff they crafted for trade.

Oh, an insignia/heraldic crest would be neat too. I like pre-gen ones personally because mine always look... off.

You've got a tide function now. That's an awesome way to have a hidden dungeon suddenly exposed.

I like hidden dungeons.

[MLai]

Here's an out-there general idea I'd like to float, now that you're doing a single-player game.

You know how all action RPGs are basically about picking up a melee weapon and mouse-clicking on something until it dies, and then collecting some trinket as a reward? Or hey, maybe the game system is a little more advanced, and you have AI party members armed with other weapons/abilities/spells to fight alongside you, and together you mouse-click on something until it dies.

It's kind of boring. How many games do we need where you mouse-click on something until it dies?

You said you're creating some sort of Norse myth world. How about just making a "simulator" of living in said world? You're going to make mounts important, because you know in ancient times they were important. Just like cars are important in GTA. So make sure you make the horsiest horses you can. And make that philosophy extend to everything else about living in a Norse myth world.

You know how DayZ is just a game where griefers hunt newbie players all day long, with zombies which just happen to be there? That's how I feel about action RPGs: it's just games where you mouse-click stuff until they die, with some fantasy setting coincidentally being there as background noise. It's idiotic.

On another forum, someone started a Let's Play of DayZ with the condition that he'll never pick up a weapon. Everything about the game instantly changed. Suddenly, it became a game about surviving a zombie apocalypse. There's a lesson in that somewhere.

[Grinner]

You said you're creating some sort of Norse myth world. How about just making a "simulator" of living in said world? You're going to make mounts important, because you know in ancient times they were important. Just like cars are important in GTA. So make sure you make the horsiest horses you can. And make that philosophy extend to everything else about living in a Norse myth world.

I'm thinking Mount & Blade might make a fair model for this sort of game.

I had been browsing the Internet the other day when I ran across an MMO about breeding horses. I couldn't understand the appeal, personally, but I think if you applied that sort of gameplay to a game like Mount & Blade, you might come up with something interesting.

On the other hand, that might range too far afield from the game's core concept...

[GungHo]

In the end in the five and something hours we spent talking he made us reconsider MMO aspect and first launch a single player Sandbox ARPG, or co-op version, if we have enough cash. Later we will upgrade the game into an MMO if we see that there's enough interest.

Hmmm... you're not a baseball player by any chance?

[Gbrngfol]

I haven't read everything in this thread yet so I don't know if the following suggestions have already been said.
The initial setup of realms is always the same. Three neutral cities for trade and arena combat. The rest of the map is a wilderness filled with monsters that change with time and depending on how players explore the world.


What about making the city layout semi-randomized? IE: Always three cities with the same stuff in them but arranged in a line rather than a triangle sometimes.

Also, maybe add smaller maps with only one or two cities. This will add extra variety and could serve as a tutorial or testing realm. Adding the ability to host your own realm with this as a toggle-able option would also be cool.


- You will gain experience by crafting, fighting monsters, trading, helping other people and solving quests (no go pick up twenty grapes within my arm’s reach and give them to me, but I think the guys might add it just to spite me) We need help with this part most. Do you think anything else deserves xp rewards?

What about exploration XP? XP would be awarded for going to new places with bonus XP for places that no one has found yet.

A Mapmaking skill could also be introduced that allows custom maps to be made that have icons showing spawn locations, treasure chests and dungeons, along with any random note that the craftsman in question wants to add.

[Lamech]

One question though. Would you pay extra five pounds of iron to buy the same sword only prettier? I still believe that it would be a good option for the jeweler to make any weapon look better, if the weapon is visible enough.
People will pay real money to make something prettier. See: LoLs entire business model.

[endoperez]

People will pay real money to make something prettier. See: LoLs entire business model.

A big part of that is bragging rights, which might not apply in a single-player game. DLCs still sell, but visual-only DLCs aren't received that well in my experience, especially if they're day-1 releases.

[Triaxx]

*cough* Horse Armor *cough*

[MLai]

*cough* Horse Armor *cough*
You know what this (read: every) fantasy game needs? Mastodon mounts with these things on their backs.
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/schools/primaryhistory/images/romans/technology/r_ballista.jpg

[Gbrngfol]

- it will be several times cheaper
- there's more room for balancing errors (which will be easily fixed with much less rage from the community)
- we will have a working engine for a greater diversity of game genres
- players will have an existing history with the setting and its happenings
- the world will be familiar
- better player immersion
and about a quarter of an hour more...


I can find fixes/reasons to ignore most of these.


- the world will be familiar
- better player immersion

The world is randomly generated, same with the monsters and seeing as your team wants most things left to the players to build and customize, it's going to feel like a different game every other week. Both familiarity and immersion will be very server dependent.


- there's more room for balancing errors (which will be easily fixed with much less rage from the community)
- we will have a working engine for a greater diversity of game genres

I'm not very familiar with programming so I don't know if my fixes for these are even possible. As a result of this, I think it would be best to talk about them via PM. Are you up for that?

[Kaww]

Sorry for another long wait. We're currently making a game prototype which will have between half an hour and two hours of game play, depending on player choices. It should be finished in some three to four weeks along with our first official press release.


Your website has font issues. The titles are next to invisible against the background now.

Website or forum? I know we still have many issues with both, but we're all currently working on a game prototype to send to reviewers. If you can point out the error I'll have someone fix it.


You've got a Druid class now? Does this mean you'll have pets/companions? Like maybe that bear could be tamable... or some kind of cat. It would be a cool reason to play that class.

Druid is in the initial concept and you can see that he is first mentioned in December (or maybe early January) forum posts. That said. I finally convinced my partner that, since we're not going to have an MMO at first, we can scrap the class system and use paths instead. I'll make a separate post with changes coming in single player/co-op version.


Another thing is animal traps. You could collect the meat/herb that a particular animal likes to bait them, build/buy traps, and leave them out for a night and hope for the best. It could be a way to get those rarer or hard-to-catch creatures for quests or crafting purposes. It could also be something to routinely develop your blacksmithing abilities with, with better designed traps catching prey more successfully. It would be the intersection of harvesting and crafting.

Something similar to this was already mentioned, but not in detail. I like the idea with using real bait instead of taunting animals.


Even if it's not an MMO, if you've got some co-op functionality you could do something like upload your friend's fortification into your world (or vice versa) and have it staffed with NPCS that share his/her insignia or guild name. So they will have a presence in your world of some sort. Or if they have a business of some sort they could suddenly appear in your world, with the stuff they crafted for trade.

Oh, an insignia/heraldic crest would be neat too. I like pre-gen ones personally because mine always look... off.

This could work in co-op. It's not that big of a problem to implement even in single player, but it seems sort of counter-intuitive to me. I agree that crests are neat, if designed by a pro, or someone with a good artistic sense.


You've got a tide function now. That's an awesome way to have a hidden dungeon suddenly exposed.

I like hidden dungeons.

I like this idea.


Here's an out-there general idea I'd like to float, now that you're doing a single-player game.
*SNIP*

Any suggestions? We already want to have hunger and cold as real problems in the game. Horses will also need to eat and Kitten has made some great suggestions regarding mounts.


I'm thinking Mount & Blade might make a fair model for this sort of game.
*snip*

Mount and blade was the first thing that came up when we spoke with the developer we spoke with. He told us to check it out and make as many upgrades as we can. Btw what's the name of that horse game?


Hmmm... you're not a baseball player by any chance?

No, why? Was I using some game specific terms?


People will pay real money to make something prettier. See: LoLs entire business model.


A big part of that is bragging rights, which might not apply in a single-player game. DLCs still sell, but visual-only DLCs aren't received that well in my experience, especially if they're day-1 releases.

endoperez is right. Single player games can't live of visual only DLCs. I personally dislike DLCs that add features that should be in the original game, so we'll try not to have DLCs that aren't some genuinely new features and options.


*cough* Horse Armor *cough*

Great idea!


You know what this (read: every) fantasy game needs? Mastodon mounts with these things on their backs.


:smallconfused: Rly, or are you joking?



The world is randomly generated, same with the monsters and seeing as your team wants most things left to the players to build and customize, it's going to feel like a different game every other week. Both familiarity and immersion will be very server dependent.

Yes, I agree. This is why we will first launch a single player game and then the MMO using the same engine and assets giving a sense of continuity. The events of MMO will chronologically follow those of the single player game. This, we hope, will give the world more depth.


I'm not very familiar with programming so I don't know if my fixes for these are even possible. As a result of this, I think it would be best to talk about them via PM. Are you up for that?

Feel free to PM me. This goes for everyone that has any suggestions.

Jade, the game is almost certainly going to become an MMO, it will just take some two years more to make it that way.

[Triaxx]

The only one I can think of that fits the description of breeding horses is Horse Island. Unfortunately, it's one of the pay to win types. IE you can play cheap, but you've got to pay for the ability to do things like groom the horses, so you stand a chance of winning, and you're limited in stalls, and number of times you can breed.

[Grinner]

I don't know...I know it had the word "Online" in it. I found it after browsing through some wikis the other day, but I can't seem to pull it up...

This (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1395136511/horse-world-online-a-horse-breeding-game) looks like it. It's currently on Kickstarter but has a demo available.

[Kitten Champion]

Website or forum? I know we still have many issues with both, but we're all currently working on a game prototype to send to reviewers. If you can point out the error I'll have someone fix it.

It's just in your About section on your main site, the main bullet points are now next to invisible. It's not really a problem since you'll clearly be editing the material in the near future anyways.



Druid is in the initial concept and you can see that he is first mentioned in December (or maybe early January) forum posts. That said. I finally convinced my partner that, since we're not going to have an MMO at first, we can scrap the class system and use paths instead. I'll make a separate post with changes coming in single player/co-op version.

I like classless approaches... I guess I was suggesting some kind of animal companion. Well, you've got a horse there, and horses are awesome, particularly after people start modding them to look like My Little Pony characters... but not every race can ride a horse, can they? Well, maybe they (centaurs and giants) could have a "totemic animal spirit" or "kindred soul" which is some other kind of animal companion that does some of the fun stuff horses do but serve more as battle-pets than mounts. They could have hunger mechanics and you'll need to tend to some of their needs, in turn they'll provide you with a bit of an inventory and support you in battle, but they'll carry less than a horse and you can't ride them. If they die you'll need to wait a certain amount of in-game time and then you can call another from the wilds.

Although, you could have non-combat pets that exists just in your shop/house/guild areas. A dog or a cat that stops vermin from eating your perishable supplies and just sort of lounges around the place. You are in a medieval environment, and you're going around collecting valuable meat/herbs, pests like rats are going to be an issue.

Actually, a spoil/rot mechanic would make the player more proactive in the economy, and keep them from just hording supplies or staying too long outside when they've got particularly lucrative meat to barter or potent herbs to utilize in alchemy. Not an especially punishing mechanic, more like a gentle reminder that you might consider heading for civilization now -- or cook it yourself if you don't think you'll make it back in time. The meat/herbs could rot faster in the summer than in winter.



This could work in co-op. It's not that big of a problem to implement even in single player, but it seems sort of counter-intuitive to me. I agree that crests are neat, if designed by a pro, or someone with a good artistic sense.

Perhaps you could take it further, if it's not that hard. You can design shops/fortresses/compounds? Well, could you use that mechanic to make your own dungeon? Users could upload their own to share with the game community. Something which would be plopped down in specific user-content zones somewhere, and marked on your map -- with maybe some lore description and a difficulty rating.

Good dungeons could be up-voted, and when you get around to making it a true MMO you could implement some of the best as official.

Or if you want a more centralized approach to stop the field from being cluttered, there could be portal somewhere in the world like in the Arcane Sanctuary in Diablo II act II which is the generic entry into all your downloaded dungeons.

[GungHo]

No, why? Was I using some game specific terms?
Your pitch (lol) is what Curt Schilling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curt_Schilling) used for 38 Studios (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_Studios) creating Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdoms_of_Amalur:_Reckoning) followed by an eventual Amalur MMO called Copernicus. Amalur, while not a bad game, struck out and, along with Schilling's business practices, led to the dissolution of the studio and fraud investigations by the FBI and the state of Rhode Island.

[Kaww]

Sorry guys, I promised I'll be posting a state of the game update and I will when I have the time.



I like classless approaches... I guess I was suggesting some kind of animal companion. Well, you've got a horse there, and horses are awesome, particularly after people start modding them to look like My Little Pony characters... but not every race can ride a horse, can they? Well, maybe they (centaurs and giants) could have a "totemic animal spirit" or "kindred soul" which is some other kind of animal companion that does some of the fun stuff horses do but serve more as battle-pets than mounts. They could have hunger mechanics and you'll need to tend to some of their needs, in turn they'll provide you with a bit of an inventory and support you in battle, but they'll carry less than a horse and you can't ride them. If they die you'll need to wait a certain amount of in-game time and then you can call another from the wilds.

Although, you could have non-combat pets that exists just in your shop/house/guild areas. A dog or a cat that stops vermin from eating your perishable supplies and just sort of lounges around the place. You are in a medieval environment, and you're going around collecting valuable meat/herbs, pests like rats are going to be an issue.

I like the utility pets idea. As well as the concept of pests. The only problem I see is the first player that posts a level 1 quests "Kill the rats in my inn basement". I'm not sure if I would laugh or face palm. Probably both.


Actually, a spoil/rot mechanic *SNIP*

I really like this. It could be a bit harsh on the players though.


Perhaps you could take it further, if it's not that hard. You can design shops/fortresses/compounds? Well, could you use that mechanic to make your own dungeon? Users could upload their own to share with the game community. Something which would be plopped down in specific user-content zones somewhere, and marked on your map -- with maybe some lore description and a difficulty rating.

Good dungeons could be up-voted, and when you get around to making it a true MMO you could implement some of the best as official.

Or if you want a more centralized approach to stop the field from being cluttered, there could be portal somewhere in the world like in the Arcane Sanctuary in Diablo II act II which is the generic entry into all your downloaded dungeons.

Honestly this is one of the most difficult bits and one of the main reasons we're delaying the MMO until we have a working engine. I can't reveal all the details, but I believe this will be possible in co-op up to a point. However there are many issues with this specific mechanic.


Your pitch (lol) is what Curt Schilling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curt_Schilling) used for 38 Studios (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_Studios) creating Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdoms_of_Amalur:_Reckoning) followed by an eventual Amalur MMO called Copernicus. Amalur, while not a bad game, struck out and, along with Schilling's business practices, led to the dissolution of the studio and fraud investigations by the FBI and the state of Rhode Island.

Fortunately none of us played baseball, I checked. Thanks for the articles, they were enlightening and a good example of what not to do.

[Kitten Champion]

I really like this. It could be a bit harsh on the players though.

Well, I'd consider it something like armour/weapons. In many games you're expected to repair/maintain them, and we don't consider that too draconian because they don't degrade quickly enough that it becomes onerous. Meat/herbs rot, sure, but not phenomenally quickly, and while I'm not terribly familiar with food preservation methods, I recall dried, smoked, and salted meats were common in medieval periods for travellers/merchants. Stocking up on some salt and finding a reasonably quiet place to do some preparation and you could greatly extend the value of your meat products -- indefinitely as far as the game goes -- at minor expense. Some herbs gain potency or different tastes when dried and their oils removed and fruits/vegetables can ripen over time, waiting X amount of time might actually increase the market/property value for some products.

Anyways, another idea.

If you've ever been seriously camping, you know to thoroughly store your food supply from the searching noses of predators at night. So, maybe that could be a thing? Too much meat or sugary foods and the aggro range from the surrounding animals/monster increases. It could be a boon for those looking for things to kill, but if you're just trying to get from point A to point B, consuming or throwing out any pungent items from your inventory would be a reasonable precaution. I'm assuming medieval woodsmen didn't have access to vacuum-sealed containers.

[Chen]

Not sure if this has been mentioned before, but free for all player housing can end up being a cluster****. I remember when they opened the new non-PVP area in UO for housing, back in the day. You had to camp the area and hope you placed your house footprint before someone else there. And in the old world? Forget it. If you joined a year into the game there was pretty much no hope of putting down a house anywhere.

Also I like the idea of evolving monsters, though if switching skills is difficult it could make certain builds pretty weak (say a fire mage). That said this comes down to tuning. You probably want to balance between making a creature have 90% fire resist after evolving and 5% fire resist. The former is just tedious, whereas the latter is negligible.