The only reason that I know it’s Friday is that the Pitch Black Games crew sat down and streamed another Q/A and info dump session. I was totally planning to watch this one live but I spaced and took a lunch break. I’ve gone back and watched the entire video, which comes in at an hour, and taken summation notes on what I found interesting or did not know and sprinkled in some of my own thoughts while I watched. I’ll just get right to it. Like the stream, there really isn’t any structure to the information given during Q/A so it’s all over the place. I emphasized some buzz words to grab your attention in some of them.
First off, thanks for the shout out! You guys deserve the attention. Prime is shaping up, at least on paper, to be a game I had started to give up hope of ever seeing made again. You’re mixing DAoC, SWG, using a Scifi theme, and have been very open with your community in a way that comes off real and honest instead of a cheesy production.
Testing coming up next Thursday. They think they have the patcher ready to go. There are some betas that I really hope to get into and some I ultimately do not care either way. This is one I want in on because the game is hitting upon some design choices that are near and dear to my heart. They’re mixing some of my favorite games into one. Heck yes, I want to help shape that.
Gear Degradation – Mention of quality; lower quality degrades faster. I’m getting a DAOC vibe. Superior grade or better degrades slower, but it will not be permanent and you will have to replace. Not in a few days to a week, but if you’re an avid player you will have to get new ones made.
Does Quality matter for gear? Yes. There are multiple grades of resources and these will be factored into crafting. Once again, I’m a huge fan. You can read my thoughts on durability all over the blog, but most recently in my entry about Prime’s profession system.
How big are the PvP zones? There isn’t a lot of zoning and they are “pretty big”. “10-12 LARGE base areas”. “They’re pretty big”. I’m hoping for DAOC frontier size. Big enough to care about where you move your forces. It would be a real let down to see Warhammer Online’s zone system again where everything is choke pointed, cramped, and not at all “big”. Here’s hoping the PBG team understands the importance of zone size!
Melee heavy classes have a means of closing distance with targets. I was talking on ventrilo about the classes the other night with a buddy of mine and we were wondering how jet packs would work with combat. In particular, how would a melee class catch anyone jetting around? I’m seeing (via my awesome imagination) some kind of rocket burst with a stun or some kind of EMP net to stun/disable rocket packs. Obviously there are lots of ways they would implement this and keep it realistic to the setting.
Expected System requirements: 2 gigs ram, 512mb video card memory, multiple cores = Should run smooth. Seems standard. It’s interesting to look at these since it is using the Hero Engine which is also used by SWTOR.
There are crowd control abilities and ways to break them. You’ll have to manage who you crowd control or not, likely due to some classes having abilities to break CC more regularly. Should be interesting to see what kinds of CC there will be in a game with much more freedom of motion than a standard MMO. People zipping around on jet packs up in the air getting stunned, for example, would be interesting to watch.
Cross-Server zones = No current plans. Thank you. We’ll see how Guild Wars 2 pulls this off, but I’m not holding my breath.
How many instances at launch? 5 or 6 guaranteed. Some of them are more “adventuresome” and take longer and you’ll want to get more people to complete them.  World bosses are designed in cross-faction zones, so you will need “a lot” of people to take them down, especially if other factions are messing with you. There was mention of a zone that sounds to me like Darkness Falls. This is the second time they’ve mentioned it and I’d love more details on the place if anyone has them. Is it unlocked by holding the most bases game-wide or just a particular pvp zone?
There will be a way to gauge your enemy’s skills to yours a la some sort of conning system.
PvP zones, like areas with Bases, will have very little (if any) PvE monsters. No complaints here, but I do remember the excitement of finding those great places to hunt monsters in the DAoC frontiers. I would always have to watch my back and contend with others. As mentioned above, World Bosses are in PvP zones so maybe that will cover the bases.
No dungeon finder feature. They want players to go out into the world and not just sit in one place. I see this as a very good thing for the game and not in any way a missing feature.
What will be required to maintain bases in PvP areas? “Don’t let the enemy break them.” I would be interesting in knowing if there will be ways to upgrade them or bolster their defenses. In DAOC you could bring wood and have crafters repair doors. Perhaps something similar?
I’m setting my alarm this time so that I can make the next stream, shoot you guys some questions, and participate. Hopefully there will be some beta PvP combat to show us.
To watch the video on youtube (if the ustream bugs out a lot for you like it does for me), read on.
Good summary and I agree with your view about how PB is progressing with the community.
Can’t wait for the the beta either, it definitely appears to be something worthy of the ground floor treatment as they seem to be very open to feedback.
From what I understand all the classes will get a break CC ability which is called “Override.” However, some classes may get more, and the strength of these abilities also depend on how many skill points are put into them. Overall I agree, this game is shaping up to be a hit. Can’t wait to see how it really goes though. On paper and in video chats is an entirely different thing than a live game.
I really wish CC, which is always game breaking unless treated properly, will be highly visual and affect the CC’er in some way. As in the stronger the CC used, the less affective your abilities are until CC is broken. Maybe a % off your healing/damage dealing abilities. And also there needs to be a vulnerability period or drop-off in effectiveness for a time after being a victim of CC.
Interestingly TOR has a new take on CC in PvP. You have a bar (like a health bar) that slowly fills up after you’ve been CC’d, that represents how effective CC will be on you. Beta testers have raved about how well this balances CC use in PvP. Hopefully Prime’s devs don’t take the cheap/easy route when it comes to CC in their game (timed CC breaks, chain CCing).
I agree with you Keen. Hearing lots of good things from these folks.
However, I am disappointed to hear about no PvE mobs in PvP zones…that was one of the great things from DAoC that I found myself really missing w/ WAR.
I think you’ve got to find ways to get people out and about and doing things in PvP areas other than just to look for other players to kill to keep the PvP zones more spontaneous and fun. If people have a reason to go to the PvP zones even for something other than PvP, it will keep them more populated overall and make them more interesting places to adventure/PvP/PvE in.
I hope they rethink this.
Please, please, please let it be very similar to DAoC CC. Mezz, Roots, Stuns – Done.
I already participated in the early early alpha. I hope i can continue into the next wave and help them mold this game since really its about the only thing on my radar im remotely excited about.
This is one of those I would eagerly want to help test. Great ideas on paper. Now lets help them put them into action.
@Balthazar
While they don’t plan to have mobs in the PvP zones, there are some enticing reasons to be in there other than fighting other players. It’s been said that crafting will be integral to the PvP system. Crafters create the best gear in-game and that gear degrades with both use and time. If you want to keep up with your profession, you’re going to have to risk your butt.
Also, and this has been speculated on before and somewhat talked about by the devs, hold bases in the open pvp zones, while not giving direct stat buffs to your faction, give bonuses of some sort. And then, of course there’s Prime itself, the main conflict between the factions, that we’ll have to hunt down. We’re not exactly sure what it does yet, but we know we want it and we don’t want others to get it!
Thanks for the right-up, Keen! I saw the stream, but it’s good to see Prime here getting some exposure. Also, All three live streams so far have been put up on youtube (thanks to SoMuchMass), for those who have trouble watching the recorded streams on ustream.
The Prime itself is an interesting reason to hold the bases. I’m curious as to how the faction obtains it. I think it makes the best stuff in the game. Do all players get it equally? Does it require you showing up to that base and placing a harvester? Does only the owner of the base (like a guild) get it? That’s my primary question right now.
Having mobs in PvP zones would make a lot of difference in the amount of consistent population there.
I think we all remember WAR’s PvP zones. Barren wastelands that were home to the occasional castle siege or zerg stand off.
They need to be places where people want to go spend time in, aside from going to find other players. If there isn’t anything else to do in them other than sit at a base or walk around aimlessly looking for fights, it’s going to be pretty lack luster.
@Keen
I agree, this is a definite hot issue of contemplation/speculation. I personally hope for some sort of “mini-relic” type system effected by Prime acquisition. I.E. having Prime or holding bases will give you small bonuses to a variety of things (healing, damage, crafting speed, etc). So, rather than having a Relic that gives a large bonus to your realm, there is a lot of give-and-take with smaller bonuses.
I’d like to see a system in place where Salents are attacking my Rodon base in another zone, and if we lose that base we’ll lose -x% damage bonus from holding it, but in order to defend we’d have to abandon our siege on a human base that will give us +y% harvesting yield of Prime.
Again, this is all speculation, but it’s something fun to think about until we get the juicy details from PitchBlack Games. Hopefully, if nothing else, Prime will be something that we WANT to fight for.
From:
http://www.primeonline.com/game/
“Strategic Base System
Establish a foothold for your faction and take control of valuable resources in the game by calling in any one of 7 different base structures. Each structure has a different function in strengthening your factions position. Be ever wary, each of the other factions will take every opportunity to destroy your bases and deploy their own.”
I think they’re going for a RTS building system in an MMO. Sounds cool and something worth fighting for.
Keen/Jostle:
From my understanding, Prime is harvested just like any other resource. Bases can increase harvester speed and “other stuff”
Makes bases seem even more important than DAoC relics were.
Indeed. That’s good news in my opinion.
The game looks extremely intriguing. I also like the fact that it’s no bought IP like with SWTOR. I think except for LOTRO, I can’t think of a single game that I enjoyed and that had bought its IP.
I’m just worried about the PvP factor. I’m a carebear at heart, and never had much interest in PvP in any games. I guess I’ll watch the game to find out whether it’s possible to play it sensibly without doing PvP. There’s a chance I might find out by getting into the beta, but I never was drafted for any beta before, so I”m not holding my breath on this one either.
It’s still a tiny community, your odds of getting in if you’re active on their forums would be pretty good.
Ultimately the death penalty doesn’t look all that severe for PVP deaths, you just lose harvested items. It’s not like there’s a full loot death system in place where you’re risking everything on a whim.
I strictly don’t play sci fi MMOs, yet I can’t wait to play this, based solely on it’s similarities to DAoC