MMO Blog posts
Game Design / MMORPG / PC

More on SWTOR’s Length

Good morning all.  Weekends suck.  Catching up on some gaming news this morning and thought I'd quickly point out something that impressed me.  We've heard that the SWTOR gameplay per…

32 Comments
August 15, 2011
Game Design / MMORPG / PC

Prime Stream #5 Summary and a little taste of Base info

DAoC Kill Spam. See PvP section for comments.

I pushed hard this week, and was glad to see others pushing as well, to get an answer about bases and how they will play into server politics.  My main question(s) has been who owns them, who gets to benefit from them, and how all of that will play out.  Obviously the worry here is that one guild will get to claim a base and have complete control over its benefits, thus locking out the smaller guilds or less “hardcore” from being able to benefit from a fairly substantial end-all-be-all part of the game.  Veterans of MMO’s like this will know how it feels when a zerg guild can just claim everything and spam mass recruitment messages all the while getting to experience the game to its fullest and everyone else being left out in the cold to just watch.  This leads to in-fighting amongst the realm (Faction *wink*) and people saying “well I’m not going to help that guild defend their keep”.

Obviously this question is almost pointed in such a way that the devs want to avoid it and Sanya cringes just seeing it, but it’s important enough that they at least gave me and the other viewers a nod… sorta.  I’ll lead with the answers they gave to the base stuff followed by the rest of my notes and comments to myself while I watched.  Once a youtube video is up, I’ll add that in the ‘more’ section of the post.

Bases
– Guilds can claim 1 base.  This is fine by me.  It establishes guild pride which inflates faction pride.
– Benefits of owning a base are sorta/kind/mostly faction-wide but for now we’ll have to be satisfied with “more info forthcoming”.  It’s huge and I think or hope they know how it made a difference in Warhammer Online’s feel vs. Dark Age of Camelot (or “that other 3 faction game”).  I phrased the question like six different ways to them during the stream and got an answer when I added a “‘not ready to answer that‘ is an acceptable answer”.   Took some coaxing and I’m satisfied with the info for now.

Beta Testing
– Still testing combat.  Not ready to be shown in video. Major bummer, but it is what it is and hopefully the beta testers that they are selecting, despite being avid forum-goers, are versed in the open-world faction vs faction vs faction (3 factions) pvp combat.  I’ll have to set my worries aside for now and just trust that a small group gets the job done.

PvP
– Learned schematics can be stolen off of players.  This would make well-skilled crafters huge targets.  I like this idea.  Time to go crafter hunting (or in my case hide since I’ll be crafting a great deal.)
– Kill spam is in.  Warren, Kill Spam from “That other 3 faction game” (COUGH DAOC COUGH) was a message to the zone saying “Keen killed Warren in Base X” so that you would know who you were interacting with on the other side.  DAoC had no names above player heads in the frontier.  It said “Albion Invader” when you were from Albion in say the Hibernian lands.  It helped create a sense of server-wide community.  It also let you know where people were being killed at so that you could find the action.

Healers
– Healing shouldn’t make people unkillable.  This is a huge, huge problem in games like “that one with arenas and battlegrounds” (see what I did there?).
– To keep up with combat responsiveness, healing will be equally responsive.  Obviously there’s only conjecture at this point, but a faster pace healing mechanic would be neater than having it be ‘sit back and cast’ mechanic.

A shorter stream this week but I get the feeling they’re finally settling into the thick of testing.  Doesn’t bother me at all and I hope they get lots of feedback from those testers.

(more…)

13 Comments
August 12, 2011
Game Design / MMORPG / PC

Prime Live Dev Stream #4: My notes and thoughts

Another Friday and another Prime: Battle for Dominus live Q&A/Info dump.  Unfortunately, no gameplay video yet again this week but still some good information from the Pitch Black Games team.  I was able to attend the stream as it was live this time (instead of missing it by one hour) and I really like the connection it creates with the community and a small dev team; it personalizes the development experience and lets people feel included.    I wrote down my notes while watching and pasted them in for you all below.

Beta
Only about 30 people got online in the beta and due to some issue with servers being at an old location the connections were not stable. They’re working on bandwidth issues on their end.  Pings from as far as the UK were ~200 or lower.  The “gear” they’re using is “world class” now in the new location and they seem quite confident in how things will perform going on.  The beta itself appears to be, in my opinion, more of an alpha testing experience as they still get their hardware set up and test minutia.  No complaints from me since I think it’s impossible to over-test a MMO.
– Guild Pages and Signups should be done early next week.

Bases
– Set locations.  Can’t just build anywhere.  Can choose what is built at them, though.
– No Siege Engines
– Can’t claim a base without destroying it.  Each faction’s bases look different.  “Not just one type of base”.
– Only takes one person to claim a base and build it up.  Good luck defending it, though.
– Bases do not have shields or domes protecting them, so a fleet of jet packers *can* jump into them. Turrets are mean, though.
– 7 Kinds of things that can be built in bases. Not ready to reveal these just yet.
– No Vendors or NPC guards protecting bases.  Just turrets.  (Subject to change.)

Crafting/minerals
– Profession made items are the best items in the game.
– All items are homogenous together.  There is no “PvP gear” seperate from “PvE gear”.  Crafted gear, bottom line, is best.
– 50-70 types of minerals being tested.
– Abundance of minerals changes and won’t always be the same.  This detail was a little fuzzyily explained.  I assume they move around the planets, perhaps weekly.

Random Mechanics/Features
– Open world, go anywhere, do anything. Standard “see a mountain and go there” stuff.
– Lava = instant kill
– World bosses can be static (in one place) or patrolling.
– Line of sight is fixed at a “pretty far” distance for everyone.

My question(s) that did not get answered: Do guilds, alliances, individuals, or factions claim bases? Who has control over what is built?  Like in DAoC a guild claimed a keep.  Can I claim a base and not let anyone build or harvest in it?  Bottom line, who manages the base once it is claimed?

If anyone knows and can give me the info, that would be great.  I feel it’s an important enough detail.  I’m hoping that a base is claimed for the entire faction to use.  I’m skeptical that this is the case because of the ability to add various things to the base.  Someone has to have control of what is added, unless each base can have ALL of those things and it’s up to the entire faction to work together to build it up.

I’m adding “PvP/Combat Video” to my list of want-to-see’s for next week.  Once they iron out the tech issues it would be great to see even a 20 second clip of players fighting each other. More nitty-gritty details on how server community politics play out, like those alluded to in my question above, would also be welcomed.

Watch the video of the live stream by reading on. (more…)

17 Comments
August 5, 2011
MMORPG / Random things

New is great

Today's post is more of a random thought I had.  I really like playing new games.  Specifically, I love playing new MMORPG's.  Regardless of how good or a bad a…

17 Comments
August 2, 2011
Game Design / MMORPG / PC

Thoughts on Prime:BFD’s Info Drop #3

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. (more…)

17 Comments
July 29, 2011