I played everquest the 2 summers before this one, to join my brother in some online game playing... And if it were not for the "but I worked so hard to get this far" factor, everyone would stop playing at about level 30. By then, it starts getting extremely hard, and almost impossible to solo monsters, which is ok for some games, but not when areas are "camped" and there are only about 6 areas to camp, because all the other areas are too dangerous to be at for a time. This causes lonely travelers like I was searching for a group in 6 different zones that aren't to dangerous, or else sitting there waiting to get some more money so I can buy equipment that can make it so I can solo 40% of the time, that mangy Drolvarg that gives me 1/1000th of an experience point. The exploring thing was great... If you could run fast enough. If you couldn't, or had a monster on your tail that was too fast (ex: Shadowed Men), then you would certainly almost always die if you tried to explore an area, that in real life you should be able to lose "A Taew Aw Warlord" (a fricken lizard) when you are a long legged wood elf.
MMORPGs I don't associate myself with anymore. The only one I would join would be Dawn if it ever came out (doubt it), and possibly Final Fantasy online if it is good, balanced, and doesn't include losing 3 days worth of experience because you couldn't quite take that monster.
People need to stop crying a river. Its the developers duity to make sure he trys and irons out any bugs he or she may have.
Yeah you ARE right, players will take advantage of the bug. But how much room do you have to critize them on? I know if I found a ATM machine or something that was giving out free money Id take it. And i know many people will say "Thats wrong, I wouldnt do that" and they are damn well ling. I believe developers have no right to be angry at somone for our *new* greedy instinct (I say new, because I dont think we have always had the hord or greedy insicnt in us) They need to catch these things. If anything they need to get some friends together and do private hosting to search for more bugs. And reward honest players who point out new bugs. That will give players a more incentive to help out. And as for the shop keep thing, even the very first day I started working on RPGs for Byond I knew not to: A; Make a NPC a mob, make them an object B; If it HAS to be a mob, dont give it exp or gold vars And I think the only time you should ignor these rules is when it is a free form rpg, like Ultima. I know what I said will prolly get flaming or resentment or something like that. But thats what I believe. | |
Shades wrote:
And as for the shop keep thing, even the very first day I started working on RPGs for Byond I knew not to: Why would you make NPCs objs? If making them mobs interferes with your code, you haven't programmed it correctly. In particular, DON'T make players plain /mob or /mob/fighter or /mob/mage; make them /mob/player. | |
If you make NPCS into objects then you wouldnt even need to worry about the attack command. The only trouble with it is, if the player has a pick up verb instead of the object having it
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Just make NPCs invulnerable to the attack verb, it's easy enough to do. If you've made a conscious design decision to not let the players kill NPCs, then you can't forget to do it either.
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Just to be an ass and defend the game I just cancelled both my accounts to yesterday, I'll comment on this :P I've played the game for 3 years, and im not really defending it (As some might say), but, yeah, I just felt like commenting.
Kunark wrote: I played everquest the 2 summers before this one, to join my brother in some online game playing... And if it were not for the "but I worked so hard to get this far" factor, everyone would stop playing at about level 30. It wasn't for me. I continued playing til 58, and would have continued, were it not for a sudden lack of time due to RL (Exams, now Gymnasium, girlfriend, DJing, coding). I can't name a single person who kept playing because 'it took this long to get this far', out of anyone in the guild I was in, or anyone else I know (People from high end guilds as well as low end). I can name people who stop because they don't have enough time, though. By then, it starts getting extremely hard, and almost impossible to solo monsters, Let me list classes and where they can solo to: Rogue (40, twinked) Warrior (40, twinked) Magician (60) Beastlord (60) Shaman (63) Druid (65) Enchanter (65) ShadowKnight (58) Paladin (57) Wizard (65) Cleric (57) Ranger (65) Necromancer (65) It's more about strategy and knowing your class, than anything else. Only for Warrior, Rogue, Paladin, Cleric, ShadowKnight does it become unpractical to solo. Most classes are more effecient in groups after hitting 50, though, except for a select few (Necromancer, Druid, Ranger, Shaman), and those usually pale out at around 60(Ranger, Shaman). Not to mention the danger associated with soloing post 60 is very high for anyone, except mayby Necromancer. Which is pretty good, for a game thats meant for group play. which is ok for some games, but not when areas are "camped" and there are only about 6 areas to camp, because all the other areas are too dangerous to be at for a time. At level 30: HighHold Keep * WR * RR * BR * MR * Guards (x5 floors of them) * Captains Mines of Nurga * Main Tunnel * Slaves * Pathing Tunnel Dawnshroud Peaks * Cavemen dude camps (3 of them) * Roaming cavemen-dudes (About 3 dozen spawns of roaming) * Shrooms (3 camps) * Zelniaks (All roaming, about 3 dozen spawns or more too) Rathe Mountains * Hill Giants Lizards outside Cazic Thule * 4 Towers, each tower has 5 mobs + entry mobs + roaming Dulak's Harbor * Random mobs, mobs in buildings, etc. There are atleast 15 warehouses. Gulf of Gunthak * Mobs on the beach (Skeletons, flies, zombies, shipwrecked, etc) * Ring Event with Skeleton Fingerbones (Need group) Hate's Fury * Elementals, blackhand legions, etc. (Need group) Torgiran's Mines * Any mob.... The OverThere * Tigers, Cacti, Sarnaks, Rhino's (Need group, unless you are necromancer) The Frontier Mountains * Giants The exploring thing was great... If you could run fast enough. /who druid /tell druid_01 Could I by chance get a SoW? druid_01 tells you, 'Sure. Come to nexus platform' druid_01 begins to cast a spell... You are invoked with the Spirit of Wolf. Presto =) Or Journeyman's Boots, or Traveller's Boots. Or be a shaman / druid / ranger / beastlord. Or buy SoW potions. Or buy Run AA (Req level 51), 3 run AA = SoW speed, permanently. If you couldn't, or had a monster on your tail that was too fast (ex: Shadowed Men), then you would certainly almost always die if you tried to explore an area, Yes, there is a certain risk to exploring dark and mysterious areas inhabited by the minions of the God of Fear (See below). that in real life you should be able to lose "A Taew Aw Warlord" (a fricken lizard) when you are a long legged wood elf. I dont know if a wood elf is supposed to run really fast, but I do know that lizards do run fast. I do also know that Tae Ew's have no speed modifier, and that you can outrun them, even without SoW (Jumping, and using a bit of pathing exploitation). Not to mention, they are minions of Cazic Thule! Not your average garden leezard. Besides, who said MMORPG's had to be realistic? Is a human-size sword-wielding lizard that can cast spells realistic? :P MMORPGs I don't associate myself with anymore. The only one I would join would be Dawn if it ever came out (doubt it), and possibly Final Fantasy online if it is good, balanced, and doesn't include losing 3 days worth of experience because you couldn't quite take that monster. Granted, dying is frustrating. However, you need only lose 4% of the experience you lost by dying (Not of your total, of the exp you lost from dying). And even at level 59, I could get that back in less than an hour. Get a ressurection from a cleric above level 56, and they will be able to cast a 96% ressurection (Or a cleric with a rez stick - colorfull mace). Being social helps! Bah. Your making me want to subscribe again. Bad, Bad Alathon! /Slap self. | |
Well you see I had a big problem with the soloing because I was twinked just enough to solo the weakest monsters that still gave me experience. I was a warrior, and I could only solo the bastage when I was like 75% life. :P That goes into the "unbalanced-ness" of it all. I stopped at level 53, and had only another level 26 Necromancer, which was fine, but I had already wasted my life getting a warrior to 53 :P
I had Jboots, yes, but for one thing, most of the zones you need SoW, you gotta run 3 zones to get it, then by the time you are back, another druid has already gotten there, or else your SoW would run out. People unfortianate enough to not be able to complete the viciously long, long, long, long, hard, long quest to get the Jboots are screwed. I got them by waiting for about 12 hours (lucky so short!) and when he poped, I couldn't out-damage a level 60 mage that killed him... But then he let me have the ring! That is like a 1 in a million thing! Otherwise I don't think I would have ever gotten it until maybe level 55, when they didn't matter as much anymore. Those in fact were the reason I could solo at all. | |
Kunark wrote:
Well you see I had a big problem with the soloing because I was twinked just enough to solo the weakest monsters that still gave me experience. I was a warrior, and I could only solo the bastage when I was like 75% life. :P That goes into the "unbalanced-ness" of it all. I stopped at level 53, and had only another level 26 Necromancer, which was fine, but I had already wasted my life getting a warrior to 53 :P Well there you go :P Warrior's are the most group-central class of all 13-ish classes. Even an ubertwinked warrior has trouble soloing dark blues at 50+. They, however, have absolutely no trouble getting groups. I had Jboots, yes, but for one thing, most of the zones you need SoW, you gotta run 3 zones to get it, Not since Planes of Power. You can get anywhere. And I mean anywhere. Far out places like Temple of Veeshan (3 zones away), Western Wastes (2 zones away), Plane of Fear (2 zones away) aren't so far away any more. If not, then just go to the Nexus and shout for a GG / Translocate. I usually got one within 30-40 seconds. Just for clarification, Planes of Power has a zone where you can click a stone to get to every inhabitable city in the entire game, plus a whole load of other zones. Couple that with Druid GG's, Wizard Translocate's, the Nexus Scion Spires, SoW, Horses, Lizards, Jboots, Tboots and transport isn't troublesome at all =) People unfortianate enough to not be able to complete the viciously long, long, long, long, hard, long quest to get the Jboots are screwed. Nope, they aren't. At level 51 you can purchase an AA skill called 'Run Speed'. Putting 3 points(max) into Run Speed allows you to run, permanently, at 90% of jboot speed. More than enough to outrun monsters. And it works indoors, too! Anyways, the game mechanics of Everquest have naught to do with this, I guess we should stray back on topic :P Blergh, I miss EverQuest | |
Well there you go :P Warrior's are the most group-central class of all 13-ish classes. Even an ubertwinked warrior has trouble soloing dark blues at 50+. They, however, have absolutely no trouble getting groups. Actually, thats no longer the case. Due to poor implementation in the design in mid high-end content, Warriors have been having major problems ^^; They've been loosing a lot of group spots to Paladins and shadowknights because of agro difficulties ^^; (Ish a paladin and is so sick of getting whined at by pissed off warriors when the problem isnt the class, its the content >_<;;;) I had Jboots, yes, but for one thing, most of the zones you need SoW, you gotta run 3 zones to get it, All of those above comments, cept for ports and Jboots, are examples of how EQ has changed since 'The Vision(tm)' was scrapped. It makes it easier to play yes, but I personally think they went a touch too far.. Instead of having the edge-of-your-seat experience when you're exploring, if you die you can always get a port or touch a stone to get a maximum of something like 2 zones from where you died. But then I guess Im just oldschool or something ^^; Elorien | |
Elorien wrote:
All of those above comments, cept for ports and Jboots, are examples of how EQ has changed since 'The Vision(tm)' was scrapped. It makes it easier to play yes, but I personally think they went a touch too far.. Instead of having the edge-of-your-seat experience when you're exploring, if you die you can always get a port or touch a stone to get a maximum of something like 2 zones from where you died. I think it comes down to different kinds of players. I completely understand the desire of a designer to make death difficult, to require a thrilling corpse recovery, etc. Unfortunately, for many this translates into "I have to go to bed now to get to school/work in the morning, but if I don't stay up another 3 hours to get my body out of this very difficult zone I'm screwed", or "I got on to play with my friends but it will take me at least an hour to get to them and I only have 90 minutes to play so I guess I won't bother", etc. Over the months and years, for many this makes the game very unfun to play. I've been playing DAoC again lately, which removes almost all of this. Travel is easy, there is no corpse recovery (though if you go back to where you died you can pray at your tombstone to get experience back), all classes have soloing ability, you don't need a player to bind you...and while it is missing some of those thrilling moments generated in EQ by the hassles, it replaces them with different kind of thrills. In their case, realm-based PvP where you get together with dozens of people in your realm to go battle against other players and secure important relics from them and take over their keeps. I can log into DAoC and play for 10 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever and make progress. If I die and I need to go to bed, I can go to bed -- no worry about losing all my stuff. If I need to travel across the world, I take horses (no need to rely on another player casting a speed spell on me). And DAoC goes out of their way to reward you...now, once you get one level 50 character, you can automatically move any of your other characters up to level 20. In other words, "You know how to play the game, so we won't make you go through the drudgery of early game for all your other characters. We'd rather have you enjoying the end-game". People who want the drudgery can avoid the convenience aspects added into EQ (just don't use the Planes of Power stuff), or find a text MUD or something where this is all still true. What I've learned from DAoC is that you don't have to force unfun stuff on players to make the game work. If your focus is player fun, and if you've designed your end-game properly (unfortunately EQ's end-game is totally screwed and probably unfixable), then you can make your game enjoyable for a greater number of people. | |
Deadron wrote:
Unfortunately, for many this translates into "I have to go to bed now to get to school/work in the morning, but if I don't stay up another 3 hours to get my body out of this very difficult zone I'm screwed", or "I got on to play with my friends but it will take me at least an hour to get to them and I only have 90 minutes to play so I guess I won't bother", etc. Over the months and years, for many this makes the game very unfun to play. Yep. Reminds me of when I was level 51, and I was leading a lot of raids to a certain two dragons (Lord Nagafen and Lady Vox). They are nested in a lair fairly deep in seperate zones, and are impossible to reach by yourself unless you are level 61+ and of the proper class(i.e. monk or necro or sk). On a certain day, having school the next day, I had started a raid at about 8 at night. Usually these raids take about 4 hours, because people tend to take a long time. We finished it extra ordinarily fast (less than 2 hours, no deaths), and then decided to hit Lady Vox as well. This raid not only took 5 hours to set up, but wiped. That means everyone died, basically. Now you have 19 corpses besides a big, bad dragon. You can take advantage of the hate system and lure Vox to a position where somoene can go in and drag corpses out unharmed, but again it still takes about an hour minimum to do, and school was 3 hours away. Ended up coming to school and falling asleep about 10 minutes into class. And DAoC goes out of their way to reward you...now, once you get one level 50 character, you can automatically move any of your other characters up to level 20. In other words, "You know how to play the game, so we won't make you go through the drudgery of early game for all your other characters. We'd rather have you enjoying the end-game". Hmm. Mayby I should give DAoC another chance. I might consider it if I have someone to play with (Although im eagerly awaiting World of Warcraft), but last I tried I couldn't get onto the US servers, and that turned me off severely (I had bought it to play with a bunch of EQ buddies who had quit after SoL was released. How appropriate). (unfortunately EQ's end-game is totally screwed and probably unfixable) Heh. So true that one of the three topend guilds in Everquest has threatened to quit Everquest if they don't fix the ridiculous endgame. They really made a mistake by adding 5 more levels, and while the idea was good enough (Monsters with LOTS of hp that hit VERY hard (3000+ on bosses a hit)), the massive exp bonus, and the class powers screwed things up massively. If I remember correctly, 4 enchanters soloed an entire elemental plane charming mobs (They hasted an unnamed each, and used them to kill events that were said to require raids of 50+ people). Later, an enchanter soloed several named dragons that usually require raids. Just recently, bards kited an entire PoP zone (Thats approximately 150 mobs) by themselves, netting them an AA every 2 minutes. Although I can't complain. Necromancers got the biggest PL boost of all, being able to charm undead mobs up to level 65 with Word of Terris. First Froglok Cleric was powerlevelled from 46 to 65 in approximately 15 hours by his own necro on another account. </ramble> Im not exactly sure why I quit Dark Ages of Camelot. Hrm. I do know I quit EverQuest due to lack of time, though. | |
Alathon wrote:
Im not exactly sure why I quit Dark Ages of Camelot. Hrm. I do know I quit EverQuest due to lack of time, though. DAoC gets better and better...they do a lot to improve it. If you want realistic PvP, then DAoC is definitely the way to go. If you are interested in trade skills and such, Star Wars Galaxies apparently takes an interesting approach. | |
Deadron wrote:
If you want realistic PvP, then DAoC is definitely the way to go. I realize there will always be whiners, but I heard a lot about the one thing I was fearing when I bought it: Top-End players killing Low-end players and such (To borrow a neat term, Laming). How much of that exists? Deadron wrote: If you are interested in trade skills and such, Star Wars Galaxies apparently takes an interesting approach. I heard that and decided to look into it, having been doing a lot of research for my own MUD's tradeskill system. It seems like a neat concept (Everything you need can be 'harvested' from the environment, and a wide variety of tradeskills are used for everything, so players have to trade parts with eachother, etc. And you can get started right off the bat). If I do decide to give DAoC another try, is it possible to somehow change to the US servers? I know in EverQuest, you can change a file to set which servers it lists (Mostly for Emu's, but if they had split it between europe and US, it would help for that too). Does DAoC work in a similar fashion, or am I stuck in Europe-Land? | |
Alathon wrote:
Deadron wrote: Actually, they have several different areas you can go. From 15-20 there is one Battleground, from 20-25 there is another, then there is the high-level frontiers where everyone fights. Fights are usually done in large teams, because the idea is that one realm goes and bashes in the keep of another and steals one of their relics. Large teams often means hundreds. There is NO PvP within your own realm (people on your side can't attack you), and other realms can't come to your realm. So if you never want PvP you never even have to join in it. I haven't engaged in the PvP stuff yet, but I haven't heard any complaints. If I do decide to give DAoC another try, is it possible to somehow change to the US servers? I don't know, but I think you can. | |
Just make NPC's turfs with a density of 1. Then give them their verbs and whatnot. That way not a whole lot in hell can happen to them.
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But then they can't move around, and you can't have NPCs lead people anywhere or fight each other (or players even) without a large amount of unnecessary mucking around.
Of course, if you don't plan to have your NPCs do that then you can make them turfs, but it's always best to be flexible so you can plan ahead. | |
I don't recall ever doing that, no.