Posts made by Bardikens

@Gothix said in What challenges should guild alliances face?:

We heard speculations about friendly fire being included. Perhaps members of the same guild will be immune to friendly fire, but members of alliance will not, so 2 (or more) different guilds playing together will have to coordinate their attack well to not shoot on each other.

The only concern is good aligned folks being immune to friendly fire all together, gaining huge advantage over evil aligned characters.

I myself (if friendly fire is included) would turn it on, on Syndesia and Tartaros for EVERYONE, including good aligned folks, and on Arboreus it could be turned off for everyone, including evil aligned folks.

This way alignment balance could be achieved, and Arboreus can be preserved as a "PvE planet".

Also zergs on Syndesia and Arboreus could have hard time due to friendly fire, regardless of which alignment is zerging.

I agree with your sentiment and would go on to say zergs SHOULD have a hard time because it SHOULD have them think about how they should utilize their numbers and terrain, rather than following one guy in a charge and dropping aoe bombs everywhere. I'm all for Alliances having to position, skirmish, and only all out brawl when absolutely necessary.

@Jetah said in Writing books?:

while intentions are good about writing in game, it'll be used for anything to bypass filters parents may have setup. it's a liability for DS even if they're in another part of the world.

This has already been implemented in numerous games since the late 90s and I have YET to see a report about such things. While times have changed, we should encourage people to be better, not use game mechanics to force them to be better (though I concede there may be times when a hand is forced). You could always remove it later if necessary.

if you give the players a creative way to express themselves some will use it wrong and it'll get removed.

By this logic, anything that promotes creativity should be preemptively removed. Want to design the crest you paid for? Nah, promotes creativity. Want to chat to your guild? Nah, you may wax poetic; Better to just make everyone mute and pass the buck to a third-party program like Discord. That will keep people playing and immersed.

Are there people out there who may abuse these things? Sure. There always are. However, the proper way to deal with these events is to foster an environment of productivity and help and don't glorify the "git gud scrub" crowd who tends to build on these sentiments.

And THEN if people want to abuse the system, you can revisit it as a concept.

@Alexian said in What challenges should guild alliances face?:

Alliances will exist in Fractured and apparently feature in-game UI options.

Nothing necessarily wrong with that, of course, but I wonder what challenges and obstacles the devs will put in place for guild alliances?

I'll disagree here with one exception: I think it is fine for the UI to list whomever you have written into your Alliance. For a truly hardcore game, however, that should mean about diddly squat when it comes to invisible advantages/forced mechanics.

For example, alliances in AO lack friendly fire, so invasion day battles often become giant zerg fests for territory, since there's no challenge or difficulty in just throwing bodies at the enemy and spamming AOE attacks.

This is why magic doesn't necessarily lend itself very well to hardcore games, and why skills and abilities that are TOO high fantasy become boring in them.

Additionally, though AO advertises itself as a hardcore game of subterfuge and diplomacy, there's no effective way to betray alliances - no Red Wedding style assassinations can occur, since in order to pull it off you'd have to drop out of the alliance UI in the first place and telegraph your attack.

I agree here. Alliances should be in name only. I should be able to show up to the battlefield, yawn as you charge, then walk through your flank like a knife through butter. The political consequences of alliances should be left to the player, and the in game consequences, in this case, should be created by the players not left to mechanics that force a certain mechanic into the game.

@Alexian said in Guild UI/management:

Exactly. Some people may obsessively tinker with them!

But there's no way we would do that... Never... -cough-

The customization of ranks and titles, even if it has no bearing on the game, is paramount for immersion imo.