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I think the only way to do that kind of "living world" stuff in a sensible way is with PoE-style seasons to avoid the unfortunately inevitable result of early economic accumulation leading to exponential economic accumulation and subsequent control. It "works" in real life because people have to live in the real world and must regrettably play ball with monarchies and oligarchs, but a video game trying to survive on those same standards is gonna be down to early adopters and niche diehards in no time flat.
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Dec 14, 2021 18:24
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Vermain posted:I think the only way to do that kind of "living world" stuff in a sensible way is with PoE-style seasons to avoid the unfortunately inevitable result of early economic accumulation leading to exponential economic accumulation and subsequent control. It "works" in real life because people have to live in the real world and must regrettably play ball with monarchies and oligarchs, but a video game trying to survive on those same standards is gonna be down to early adopters and niche diehards in no time flat. Yeah Crowfall does this and actually checks some of those boxes. It’s a better game than it gets credit for.
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Dec 14, 2021 18:26
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maybe allow existing companies or guilds to recruit new players from the start with an incentivized system for coordination and a high risk for griefers with a cumulative bounty system
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Dec 14, 2021 18:36
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this question of "how do you keep persistent worlds from devolving into who can poopsock the most" can only be answered by copying some of eve's structures. but which ones are the key ones? i don't think anyone really knows why eve works as well as it does in preventing permanent domination by the people who can play constantly. my take on it is that tying skill development and industry jobs to timers instead of playing is a big part of the secret sauce but it can't be the whole picture
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Dec 14, 2021 18:37
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Endorph posted:cool conceptually, impossible in execution, itd just be 'hey everyone who regged within the first week and played 20 hours a day wins' Unless your server supports maps that are stupidly big, or "unlimited". or resources respawn in such a way that unpopulated areas become richer over time, while populated areas do not respawn.
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Dec 14, 2021 19:18
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Jazerus posted:this question of "how do you keep persistent worlds from devolving into who can poopsock the most" can only be answered by copying some of eve's structures. but which ones are the key ones? i don't think anyone really knows why eve works as well as it does in preventing permanent domination by the people who can play constantly. my take on it is that tying skill development and industry jobs to timers instead of playing is a big part of the secret sauce but it can't be the whole picture EvE "Works" for lots of reasons: Geographic Isolation - There are natural bottlenecks around the sectors, you dont have to guard everything, just up to your boarder NPC Safety - High Sec plays a huge role in trade between the empires. Players ship stuff in and out of there empires It takes Numbers - Each system has a base number of players it takes to "hold" said system. Time based skills - After a few months you cap out of any real advantage your training gives, The LONG skills (30 + days) give very small benifit vs the cost over the short ones which have huge impact for the time involved. Timers - Your always given timers so that a big battle has to be at least half in your prime time. EvE also fails because of a lot of reasons: Insane Micromanagement: Fuel pellet's for towers was not implemented for years alone, up till that point you had to put exact ratios of goods in towers to power them Trying to be to big: Numbers win fights. Numbers are only risky in a few small situations where the other side is dropping bombs. Real wars require holding land, with people spread over many combat fronts, EvE you almost always run, "Big fleet, staying together" because nothing in the game causes problems (the real world, things like friendly fire, big guns, and non combat soft targets require guards (24/7). You cant reasonably put all your manpower in a single spot and be effective.
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Dec 14, 2021 19:35
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gently caress Man posted:like how cool would it be for a guild to strip mine a mountain for stone and iron to build a castle and armaments as they set up shop near some lair or dungeons, but they have to fortify themselves and their keep before doing so, but you could come by in six months and no ones out there anymore because they scouted something of interest out in a nearby desert and moved camp [looks at archage] yeah how cool
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Dec 15, 2021 00:11
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Groovelord Neato posted:edit: isn't WoW pretty big on its plot? I only played classic but I thought it was pretty important to the game.  Blizzard's main plot, such as it is, is written by the lead devs coming up with what they think are going to be Epic Moments, coming up with the vaguest possible excuse for them to happen, and only then dropping the resultant... "story" over to the writers who are told to make it work. There's a reason that side-quests and minor characters tend to be better-written in WoW: they just get handed over to the writers and quest design teams with "We need some filler here" as instructions so they can actually be creative rather than trying to polish someone else's turd. Itzena fucked around with this message at 10:55 on Dec 15, 2021 |
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Dec 15, 2021 10:51
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You can pretty much just skip playing wow and imagine any two character saying ominous things.... paused... with an ever rising orchestral choir in the background, then it ends with either an one-liner or something that sounds cool but doesn't make any sense.
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Dec 15, 2021 10:56
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Itzena posted:
Sylvanas: Blizzard's main plot, such as it is... written by lead devs coming up with what they think are going to be... [sarcastically] Epic Moments Elune in a deep voice: THERE'S A REASON... the minor characters... Sylvanas dismissively: The minor characters just get handed over to the quest design teams. Elune: NO... ... ... it is so they can... actually BE CREATIVE.... rather than polish... - Elune raises her low-poly machinima hand, camera zooms in on what she's holding - someone else's... tuuurd. Background choir: Oooooohhhh.
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Dec 15, 2021 11:00
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Itzena posted:
They're also big on interrupting conversations right before they
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Dec 15, 2021 14:40
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The worst part would be their tendency to just write out content. Like if you do 9.1 there is just a solid chunk of the 9.0 story you don't even do anymore. It's like taking out the middle 2/5ths of a book to get to get to the end faster, they really don't give a single gently caress about the narrative arc of their characters or anything. Just get to end game and raid. Do your dailies. Nothing matters. e: Like it's straight up just cutting massive amounts of the context of why you are there, when the entire thing already lacked a lot of context due to their leveling process, and further lacks context because of how much character material they put in side content like books. Mulva fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 15, 2021 15:02
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WOW's story never needed to be this finely tuned narrative thread woven expertly through the years - it only ever needed to cover the broad strokes, give an overall idea of what's up, who you're after (or who's after you) and set up those "big dumb heroes" moments set to dramatic music. And for years that's exactly what it was, and it worked fine. I have no idea where it fell apart, but I'd say Legion was the last time the narrative was simple - burning legion coming, they bad, must kill. Which, again, is perfect for the kind of game it is. BFA went all over the place, and SL is a narrative disaster akin to the 1919 Great Molasses Flood - slow-moving yet utterly predictable destruction of everything good about the simplistic narrative. It's not even a shift from simple to complex - it's a shift from simple to stupid. Almost better to have no story at all.
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Dec 15, 2021 15:24
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If you want proof of how little they give a poo poo about their narrative and lore: They released a lorebook a couple years ago to explain the origins of the setting and early days of the various races and stuff. It was well received and people actually liked it (I know I did!) Then they released volume 2 a while later, which contradicted tons of stuff in volume 1 and when this was brought up Blizzard just responded with "oh uhh the first one was written by an unreliable narrator who didn't know the full story  " Even though it was marketed and sold as a definitive lore book.
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Dec 15, 2021 15:30
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Scruffpuff posted:WOW's story never needed to be this finely tuned narrative thread woven expertly through the years - it only ever needed to cover the broad strokes, give an overall idea of what's up, who you're after (or who's after you) and set up those "big dumb heroes" moments set to dramatic music. And for years that's exactly what it was, and it worked fine. I have no idea where it fell apart, but I'd say Legion was the last time the narrative was simple - burning legion coming, they bad, must kill. Which, again, is perfect for the kind of game it is. BFA went all over the place, and SL is a narrative disaster akin to the 1919 Great Molasses Flood - slow-moving yet utterly predictable destruction of everything good about the simplistic narrative. It's not even a shift from simple to complex - it's a shift from simple to stupid. Almost better to have no story at all. Yeah the Burning Legion coming back again was just kind of dumb, but it was the perfect kind of dumb that suited WoW. It gave us a big bad enemy to kill. I mean the game basically started out as Orcs vs Humans right, let's not try to pretend that an expansion in 2021 is the culmination of a story whose seeds were planted many years ago. Just point me at bad dudes and let me murder them.
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Dec 15, 2021 16:51
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WoW's writing team just never talks to each other and is overwritten by the project leads at any opportunity. Like I'm sure on FF14 Yoshi-P shoots stuff down if he doesn't like it but he does that at planning meetings, not after the content has already been put into the game. Again, refer back to the scene in Cataclysm where Garrosh throws a guy off a mountain for hurting civilians... and then in Mists he's going around killing civilians and yucking it up about it. And not in a 'he's fallen further' way there's no comment on this contradiction. Even if you dislike FF14's story or storytelling methods you have to admit it passes the low bar of 'coherent' and 'feels like stuff was planned out and people worked together to make sure it makes sense' Endorph fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Dec 15, 2021 |
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Dec 15, 2021 16:53
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Ibram Gaunt posted:If you want proof of how little they give a poo poo about their narrative and lore: They released a lorebook a couple years ago to explain the origins of the setting and early days of the various races and stuff. It was well received and people actually liked it (I know I did!) I'd long left the game but when I heard they were adding draenei as a playable race I thought cool I love those ugly little buggers and I've always hated how MMOs (and really games in general) mostly focus on normal or pretty looking characters. Then I found out they retconned it so the true draenei looked like eredar or something. Not sure I've come across a company that enjoys retcons as much as Blizzard and it made a lot of sense when I found out Metzen is a huge comic book nerd. Groovelord Neato fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Dec 15, 2021 |
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Dec 15, 2021 17:01
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now that even STALKER 2 has it for some stupid reason, whats the first mainstream MMO thats is gonna have NFT bullshit
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Dec 15, 2021 17:30
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Groovelord Neato posted:I'd long left the game but when I heard they were adding draenei as a playable race I thought cool I love those ugly little buggers and I've always hated how MMOs (and really games in general) mostly focus on normal or pretty looking characters. Then I found out they retconned it so the true draenei looked like eredar or something. Not sure I've come across a company that enjoys retcons as much as Blizzard and it made a lot of sense when I found out Metzen is a huge comic book nerd. and instead of making the broken draenai playable, they literally just added lightforged, which are draenai but shinier.
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Dec 15, 2021 17:34
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Groovelord Neato posted:I'd long left the game but when I heard they were adding draenei as a playable race I thought cool I love those ugly little buggers and I've always hated how MMOs (and really games in general) mostly focus on normal or pretty looking characters. Then I found out they retconned it so the true draenei looked like eredar or something. Not sure I've come across a company that enjoys retcons as much as Blizzard and it made a lot of sense when I found out Metzen is a huge comic book nerd. Those dudes were so cool in Warcraft 3. Just some weird creepy things that the orc homeworld was named after, that you'd occasionally see running around in WoW zones near the portal. And then, yeah, true Draenei were good Eredar on the run and the orcs named their planet after them anyways.
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Dec 15, 2021 17:36
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Endorph posted:my favorite moment with that is when they added allied races, which are like, variations on previouslyexisting races being made playable. like making dark iron dwarves playable. I didn't know this was a thing and makes the retconning even funnier.
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Dec 15, 2021 20:37
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eonwe posted:man I want a single non garbage multiplayer focused mmo There will never be a good MMO again.
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Dec 15, 2021 22:24
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frajaq posted:now that even STALKER 2 has it for some stupid reason, whats the first mainstream MMO thats is gonna have NFT bullshit i love ffxiv but tbh wouldn't surprise me if FFXIV was the first to get into it  https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/square-enix-looks-to-be-going-all-in-on-nft-based-games-3090877
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Dec 15, 2021 23:33
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Stalins Moustache posted:i love ffxiv but tbh wouldn't surprise me if FFXIV was the first to get into it ruh roh
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Dec 15, 2021 23:48
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That seems like the kind of thing Square Enix is less likely to add to existing games and more likely to make a feature of its mobile games going forward. Square Enix has a shitload of gacha games and certainly more on the way, and NFT poo poo is pretty easy to shoehorn into something like that.
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Dec 15, 2021 23:59
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Yeah gacha games and NFTs seems like they’ll go hand in hand.
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Dec 16, 2021 00:13
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Stalins Moustache posted:i love ffxiv but tbh wouldn't surprise me if FFXIV was the first to get into it Eh as others say I suspect this will be focused on the mobile gacha games. Still dumb as gently caress tho.
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Dec 16, 2021 00:44
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An MMO with an asymmetrical power sync mechanic that scaled with the number of enemies nearby would be cool. So there's ten dudes ganking my level 15 rear end while I'm hunting for bear buttes in the woods? Level sync me and increase my stats to that equal to ten dudes, then let me at 'em. You'd basically auto-generate mini-boss or raid encounters on the fly for roaming parties of pvp crazies because each poor schlub just trying to mine suddenly becomes Very Dangerous. e: Everything I've heard about NFTs makes them seem like the dumbest thing in the world, so I'm not surprised they're worming their way in.
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Dec 16, 2021 02:44
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kedo posted:An MMO with an asymmetrical power sync mechanic that scaled with the number of enemies nearby would be cool. So there's ten dudes ganking my level 15 rear end while I'm hunting for bear buttes in the woods? Level sync me and increase my stats to that equal to ten dudes, then let me at 'em. You'd basically auto-generate mini-boss or raid encounters on the fly for roaming parties of pvp crazies because each poor schlub just trying to mine suddenly becomes Very Dangerous. WoW briefly flirted with this in Wintergrasp to even out the faction imbalance, it was not well received. Or well tuned, but still.
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Dec 16, 2021 02:46
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wintergrasp actually owned and the way it was nearly ignored by the community was weird as hell imo. even at the height of wrath the pvp part of it rarely attracted a big crowd
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Dec 16, 2021 04:09
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Wintergrasp is hard to solo carry. It was a large thing in scope that sort of gave this impression that you were not really in control of anything. Also the big world pvp people intuitively chose places where the design allowed them both to have the big open fights they wanted as well as places to hide/run away to (sometimes one-sided, but using this factor to push against the enemy faction), and Wintergrasp was in an odd place... I don't think the designers ever figured out the formula for making pvp level design interesting for the masses in wow and whenever it happened it was by accident.
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Dec 16, 2021 04:42
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I think the big issue in Wintergrasp was that the WoW playerbase did not, does not, and probably never will like vehicle combat. Especially back in Wrath, when Blizzard's big vehicle push was at its strongest.
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Dec 16, 2021 06:14
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Jazerus posted:wintergrasp actually owned and the way it was nearly ignored by the community was weird as hell imo. even at the height of wrath the pvp part of it rarely attracted a big crowd Our server had a 95-5 Horde/Alliance ratio, so Wintergrasp meant a couple of very bored guys just sorta shot at walls for a while.
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Dec 16, 2021 09:27
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Anno posted:Getting from point A to be B should be fraught with danger, and when you get to B you should ideally have a store of supplies because you're going to be camping there for the next few weeks while you get a couple levels, because going back home is just as dangerous and takes quite some time. They tried this in the first expansion for guild wars 2 The players absolutely hated it
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Dec 16, 2021 14:15
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Alpheratz posted:They tried this in the first expansion for guild wars 2 I don't remember who said it or if it was even in this thread but someone smarter than me pointed out that if you asked 10 people what the most irritating monster was in gw2 heart of thorns you'd get 10 different answers and they'd all be correct, that entire expansion is just frustrating to deal with
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Dec 16, 2021 15:25
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The vertically combined with the need to grind achievements to actually progress and get more mobility made those zones really rough the first time.
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Dec 16, 2021 15:43
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Hellioning posted:WoW vehicle combat I'm sorry, wow had loving whatt?!
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Dec 16, 2021 15:50
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Alpheratz posted:The players absolutely hated it I loved it! Heart of Thorns is awesome. Barely any games, let alone MMOs, ever have any friction to speak of. Getting lost and frustrated in HoTs huge, too-dense maps then dying to pocket raptors was fantastic.
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Dec 16, 2021 16:11
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Anno posted:I loved it! Heart of Thorns is awesome. Barely any games, let alone MMOs, ever have any friction to speak of. Getting lost and frustrated in HoTs huge, too-dense maps then dying to pocket raptors was fantastic. I wouldnt say fantastic, but I will say I'm looking back on it fondly. The gulf of knowledge in traversal from the the first time you do the garden path story line, to the last time you grind a map meta for your viper gear ~felt~ like progression. Filling up the xp bars feels good for that first bit. You really do feel lost and powerless and like you just got dumped from an airship wreck from moment one. Highly distressing expansion, 100% better than doing Orr bullshit.
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Dec 16, 2021 16:19
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hazardousmouse posted:I'm sorry, wow had loving whatt?! Have you never seen the first boss of Ulduar?? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP2lwcOh1-w
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