Posts made by Roccandil

For anyone who's joined my town for the next Alpha test and is not in the TSE discord already, let me know and I'll send you an invite!

Looking forward to playing with you all.

@Prometheus said in Bummer for me: "Hello Governor! A few city-claiming tips for you...":

The land claims in the wilderness you've seen so far are going to be used only by those who really want to live by themselves, we expect most players to claim a private land parcel in a city and build their home in it.

Hmm. Based on what I saw in Wurm Online, I wonder if the opposite will be true. There, a player-run city was basically a place for new players to get started.

Once they were on their feet, however, they usually struck out on their own to build their own place.

@GamerSeuss said in New World by Amazon - Anyone interested?:

You play MMOs to have a huge open, ever changing world.

Agree! And solo content does not have to be isolated content: the kind of MMO I enjoy provides solo content with significant downstream effects on the entire world.

@Kriptini said in New World Sucks + Fractured Makes a Guest Appearance!:

... in a sandbox style game it might start out as "cool" but quickly devolve into a "nuisance" or "chore."

Hmm. Maybe it would help to consider the concept economically: if the Corruption is valuable to kill, then players will compete to kill it.

Too little Corruption will result in disappointed players who can't find any to kill, and too much Corruption will result in devalued rewards, and that sense you describe of killing Corruption being a chore.

So, I don't think it has to be a chore, even in a simplistic "king of the hill" system, and long-term, that system provides a foundation that could be developed further.

@Kriptini said in New World Sucks + Fractured Makes a Guest Appearance!:

@Roccandil said in New World Sucks + Fractured Makes a Guest Appearance!:

The Corruption could be strong enough, for instance, to unite everyone against it, making PvP more of a sideshow.

Rift tried to do this back in 2011, in ended up not working out because invasions would take over low level quest hubs that nobody was really interested in cleaning up. New players wouldn't be able to find their quest NPC and quit.

Sounds like the map design split the playerbase too much. While making tutorial areas exempt from Corruption would be a quick and obvious fix, I'd prefer to see zones useful to both higher and lower level players.

New World currently has two fundamental mechanics I'm looking forward to seeing develop:

• Opt-in PvP (PvP will be more mission-oriented)
• A dynamic PvE world (the Corruption will keep spreading if everyone ignores it)

I'm also interested in seeing how those two mechanics are balanced against each other. The Corruption could be strong enough, for instance, to unite everyone against it, making PvP more of a sideshow.

@Zori said in Bartle's Taxonomy and this game.:

"credentialism is bullying" is an interesting perspective, but I think you'd find it really interesting how this 'credentialism' unfolded if you back read through this thread. I'm sure you'll find that people randomly dropping their many years of 'breathing' in this world out of context, in order to deny people or to shut down conversation to be quite 'interesting'.

How long someone has lived seems a valid argument if simply used to bolster what they've learned about what they themselves enjoy. After 50+ years, I'd think someone would know what they like!

Using credentials to say their point of view of what they enjoy is incomplete, imprecise, or ignorant seems clumsy at best (if not outright arrogant).

Oh, and I agree with the axiomatic assertion that games should be fun.

Some people may indeed enjoy analyzing why, and I'm not going to knock that (I do it myself), but some people may find that dissecting the fun spoils the fun, while still others may see the danger that analyses and models and marketing can obscure the fundamental concept of fun.

And at least in games, fun should never be forgotten.

@Zori said in Bartle's Taxonomy and this game.:

@Stacy555

You might want to put a context on your response next time, but I suppose articulation doesn't come naturally for all of us, hence why education is highly encouraged.

You can feel insulted as much as you'd like, doesn't change the fact that things are more than just... "I'm only here to have fun" after 50 years? of gaming.

and if your only credential is your age, then hell you must be an expert at stone tools.

Games -are- about fun. Developers who forget or ignore that are either incompetent or exploitative.

Incidentally, credentialism is bullying. I respect vocational individuals who earn their living in reality far more than those who have learned through an insulated environment to parrot knowledge they did not discover, and use their credentials as a club against the non-credentialed.

One test of a truly learned individual is the ability to recognize and provide the next step of knowledge to someone else, and more importantly, the humility to accept the blame if they cannot transfer that knowledge.

It also helps to understand that we live in a universe so diversity dense it takes an army of specialists to begin to describe it. We may therefore assume everyone we meet has direct experiential knowledge of something we do not.

I've found that that point of view makes meeting new people interesting, especially since people in general like to talk about themselves.

Hmm: I'm surprised "escapism" isn't on the lists of reasons to game. That could be important to designers, because realism doesn't necessarily appeal to those wanting to take a break from reality.

For example, I've already got a real life job where things decay and break, and I have to maintain them, and I haven't liked that mechanic in games!

In that sense, the counter of escapism would probably be "simulation".

I agree with the OP, in that I've never found a crafting system that felt like the one I really wanted to play.

These are things I don't like in crafting systems:

• RNG (for me, equals gambling)
• repetition (I feel like the game is wasting my time)
• recipes (this one is harder to explain: I like recipes I discover, not as item drops, but through research)

Things I do like:

• Deep exploration to discover recipes (for instance, through trial-and-error combination of raw ingredients, rather like Might and Magic 6+)
• Tech/recipe refinements (Master of Orion II's tech tree was awesome: once you finished researching a tech tree, you could then research refinements of that tech class, and thus be able to design even better Doom Stars! )
• Massive engineering (like Minecraft or Wurm Online): which I suppose could also be called dynamic crafting (you're not just building a pre-fab, you're designing something with trade-offs)
• Automation of repetitive tasks
• Tool upgrades (crafting the best stuff is dependent on tool level as well as skill level and ingredient level)
• Skill advances dependent on unique actions (Project Gorgon, for instance, gives an exp bounty for the first time you complete any recipe, so it encourages you to build everything to level up, instead of focusing on something easy to repeat)

I think Fractured has some of both the good and the bad for me, so we'll see.

@Specter said in May 2020 Open Playtest:

@Althalus From what I've heard it's a possibility but it very much depends on what the Beastmen players want. It's something I've discussed in private with Prometheus.

I'd much prefer a unique PvE content option for the Beastmen. Maybe a dangerous "corruption hunt", or something else in character. (The evil influences of Tartaros must be continually kept at bay!)

And I could see some kind of super-PvP option for Tartaros, just to keep the theme going.

As it stands now, the game asks new players to decide their attributes before they can have any first-hand knowledge of the long-term ramifications of their choice.

That design inherently diminishes the meaning of that choice to a new player. How can they be expected to make an informed decision? Sure, they can read about attributes, and follow, safe, popular cookie-cutter guides, but until a player experiences the game for themselves, how can they really know what they're going to like best?

As to limitations preventing a single character from doing everything, I think that's better implemented via racial design. Even as it stands now, if players could freely reroll attributes at a campfire, they still couldn't go beyond the limitations of their race.

The more I play Alpha, the more the attribute system feels out of place (for reasons already described here). I'd consider the following:

• Use Albion's "you are what you wear" system, such that all gear innately provides attributes.
• Varying races get an innate multiplier to certain attributes, or just flat bonuses or penalties.
• Merge attributes into the talent tree system. Maybe even have unique racial talent trees (my favorite option! ).

Can sieges occur across sea lanes?

@FallenW1ng said in Would love to see mob loot drops tied to knowledge:

Realistically, even the world's best animal skinner will have a bad day...

I play games to escape a bad day.

@Tuoni

The only reason I pre-ordered was because they dropped unrestricted open-world PvP. So, while they may have lost some players, they gained some as well (and I suspect they gained more than they lost).

EDIT: I missed the no more than 2/3 questions bit! I suppose I could cluster these according to general subject.

Expansion/growth/permissions (what I'm most interested in):

• Will a city be one giant plot (basically, an oversized claim), will it be split into a grid of plots, or have a different mechanic entirely?
• How will that relate to expansion? For instance, if walls are a defensive structure, and the city expands beyond existing walls, how will that be handled? Will the walls move to the new perimeter, or will they stay in place, allowing us to have cities with layers of walls?
• Can we physically divide the interior of larger cities with walls and gates into quarters (a trade quarter, military quarter, temple quarter, etc.)?
• Can we logically divide the interior of cities with permissions? For instance, I'd love to be able to appoint administrators over city quarters (not just houses).

Defense:

• What defensive structures will be available for cities, such as walls, towers, or siege emplacements? Can NPC guards be hired?

Cosmetic/customization:

• Will there be cosmetic variations on the same structures, based on building materials (a marble palace versus a granite palace)?
• Will Beastman, Human, and Demon cities have different graphics and build options?
• Will everything buildable be modular or based on blueprints? How much possible customization can we expect?

Destruction/decay:

• What happens if a large city falls a level? Will structures on the outskirts decay?
• What will be involved in replacing a structure? Will we be able to salvage building materials?

Random:

• Will farms within cities work like the ones in the current starter town, or will there be a much longer growing period? (assuming farms within cities is possible)
• Will there be any instanced housing within cities?

@Tuoni

Hopefully they invite me to closed beta!

Yep, I pre-ordered it. I'm very interesting in seeing how their goal of integrating PvE with opt-in PvP works, as well as their system of Corruption being an ever-present PvE pressure.

@PeachMcD

I could certainly see anatomical knowledge (based on studying the creature dead) and behavioral knowledge (based on studying the creature alive) being very different things, providing different benefits.

Also, if the world ecosystem was robust enough that predators could hunt other animals independently of the players, you might be able to find carcasses to study (if you can scare away the predators).

Maybe all that could be part of taming.