Hey, let's get the usual qustions done!

Full loot FFA PvP?

Target based combat?

Instance based PvE?

Crafting, secondary profession or main skills?

First person view?

Originally posted by Raptre

Also keep in mind that if you make the AH too complicated players just won't use it.  I've played a game that has a fully functional AH, but it was a little too complicated to use so no one did.  All sales were done in player shops.

I don't see the problem with that at all. Player run shops are a lot more fun than auction houses.

Might I suggest that there will be signs you can put outside your shops so we can see what kind of shop it is outside (and possibly see the shop name as well)?

Weapon stands and manequins so you can see how the goods look in game (at least the expensive stuff) also helps to make it feels like a real shop.

How is your view on jewelry? Can you see it in game? Will guys have ear rings like girls or will they have slightly more masculin jewelry (I could see myself playing a warrior with a huge golden nose ring)? 

Jewelry is one of those weird MMO things that never really work, I just don't see my male barbarian in AoC wearing girly jewelry. Clothes and armor are gender specific so why not jewelry?

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Raptre

Also keep in mind that if you make the AH too complicated players just won't use it.  I've played a game that has a fully functional AH, but it was a little too complicated to use so no one did.  All sales were done in player shops.

I don't see the problem with that at all. Player run shops are a lot more fun than auction houses.

Might I suggest that there will be signs you can put outside your shops so we can see what kind of shop it is outside (and possibly see the shop name as well)?

Weapon stands and manequins so you can see how the goods look in game (at least the expensive stuff) also helps to make it feels like a real shop.

How is your view on jewelry? Can you see it in game? Will guys have ear rings like girls or will they have slightly more masculin jewelry (I could see myself playing a warrior with a huge golden nose ring)? 

Jewelry is one of those weird MMO things that never really work, I just don't see my male barbarian in AoC wearing girly jewelry. Clothes and armor are gender specific so why not jewelry?

The problem would be that they spent all the time developing the AH, and it falls to disuse, what is the point of having it? Wasted development time standpoint.

Now back to the OP.

You want the game to be enjoyable and successful, excellent. Now, is your team open minded towards this goal or are there specific things that MUST be in the game for the team to stay together?

The view of the game you are trying to portray is very important. What camera angle and world layout do you intend to aim for? There is a HUGE difference between using a fixed camera view third person like UO or allowing First/Third person like WoW. This single question determines the scope and scale of the game and whether it lends itself towards a large open world or a zoned world. Using a pre-existing game world as the example if you would like, which world would it most resemble in layout/scale/scope?

Originally posted by EBlackblade

Actually we are looking at Game Design. And Having an established company publish the game. As for cost well we arnt there yet I do know we are talking making it free if you download it so no initial cost. And if you buy it the cost would literally be the Sub cost if there was one or S/h for the Box if there wasnt.

 I know Id like to see some sort of F2P model for the game hell Id make it completely free if I could but the staff must be paid. If we did go free to play I wouldnt expect to see anything in our item store that is unatainable by work in the game and their wouldnt be anything in there that would give a leg up to anyone just for dumping money in. Possibly some cosmetics, house decorations, character resets, instant travel from city to city something along those lines.

 

But honestly we are not looking at the income side we are looking at the design side.

As for getting the game to market; Very few people design and publish a game the cost is obnoxious. However getting it published and ran by someone else after design is not overhwleming. I will flat out say that SOE is not even being considered.

I was onboard up until this post.  Without a clear business plan, including pricing, operating costs, etc., it will be extremely difficult to sell this.  Even if the game is 100% complete, without a very detailed estimation of how much money it will cost and the revenues it will bring, you will have difficulty convincing another company to buy this game.

I'd recommend that you take a step back and build a solid business plan as if you were going to build and run this entirely on your own.  This way, you can proceed with the creation of your game, and if an outside buyer doesn't appear, you have some plan to operate the game beyond the build stage.  The operational revenue model is something you can't afford to overlook.

The biggest problem I see with your plan is that you are planning to own the development cycle, and sell the operational cycle to someone else.  The problem with that is that, for the most part, all of the income happens in the operational cycle.  A substantial amount of the costs occur in the development phase.  In order to break even, let alone make a profit, the sales price will necessitate being rather high.  You will need to foot the costs of the entire development cycle before you will ever have an opportunity to see any income.  How are your friends/employees going to be paid for this time?  Where is the money going to come from?  Are you planning to seek traditional financing to fund your development cycle?  What happens if you can't sell the resulting product?  What happens with the proceeds when the product does make money?  These are questions you need to ask yourself.

Ultimately, these questions caused me to abandon my own efforts at MMORPG development in 2003.  I had modelled the financial side of my attempted project, and there was no way I could have financed the development phase.

Good luck with whatever you choose to do with this.  The game ideas sound pretty good.

@ OP

And I bet we still end up with a WoW clone.  :P

Originally posted by Toferio

Hey, let's get the usual qustions done!

Full loot FFA PvP?

Target based combat?

Instance based PvE?

Crafting, secondary profession or main skills?

First person view?

Most of this was covered in my original post.

Full Loot PVP - Ascended PVP ys in a sense they loose the currency they use ot get the stats they need on their equipment and risk getting reincarnated if they die to many times.

Target Based Combat? As in non- action RPG yes.

Instance Based PVE - No.

Crafting - So far we have 16 Crafting Skills and 9 Gathering Skills

POV - Third Person 3d enviroment. Standard for an mmo.

Originally posted by Caldenfor

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Raptre

Also keep in mind that if you make the AH too complicated players just won't use it.  I've played a game that has a fully functional AH, but it was a little too complicated to use so no one did.  All sales were done in player shops.

I don't see the problem with that at all. Player run shops are a lot more fun than auction houses.

Might I suggest that there will be signs you can put outside your shops so we can see what kind of shop it is outside (and possibly see the shop name as well)?

Weapon stands and manequins so you can see how the goods look in game (at least the expensive stuff) also helps to make it feels like a real shop.

How is your view on jewelry? Can you see it in game? Will guys have ear rings like girls or will they have slightly more masculin jewelry (I could see myself playing a warrior with a huge golden nose ring)? 

Jewelry is one of those weird MMO things that never really work, I just don't see my male barbarian in AoC wearing girly jewelry. Clothes and armor are gender specific so why not jewelry?

The problem would be that they spent all the time developing the AH, and it falls to disuse, what is the point of having it? Wasted development time standpoint.

 

 

Now back to the OP.

You want the game to be enjoyable and successful, excellent. Now, is your team open minded towards this goal or are there specific things that MUST be in the game for the team to stay together?

 

 

The view of the game you are trying to portray is very important. What camera angle and world layout do you intend to aim for? There is a HUGE difference between using a fixed camera view third person like UO or allowing First/Third person like WoW. This single question determines the scope and scale of the game and whether it lends itself towards a large open world or a zoned world. Using a pre-existing game world as the example if you would like, which world would it most resemble in layout/scale/scope?

Those 11 things in my original post will be in this game or it wont launch. We all agreed we were going to do this right or not at all. I think the problem people have when they look at what we are doing is they are thinking of us as these guys who are expecting to make money while making this game. We all have good jobs, we dont need to make money while we make this off the project we have other income. Our investors gave us a solid budget and a good time plan. This game will launch with what its supposed to have or we will delete the entire code structure and start over. Will it launch with bugs? Every game has some bugs when it launches, but it will be playable stable and enjoyable.

Third Person game world. As far as layout and scope. Well layout will be Continental divided by water but will be crossed by Player owned as well as NPC boats.

Sacle... This is a little harder to define in context. Just have to take my word when I say - Larger than anything Ive seen save maybe SWG and thats because they had several planets.

As for the AH and it being complicated? Eve Online has a very complex system and people seem to do just fine using it every day.

Originally posted by Mendel

Originally posted by EBlackblade

Actually we are looking at Game Design. And Having an established company publish the game. As for cost well we arnt there yet I do know we are talking making it free if you download it so no initial cost. And if you buy it the cost would literally be the Sub cost if there was one or S/h for the Box if there wasnt.

 I know Id like to see some sort of F2P model for the game hell Id make it completely free if I could but the staff must be paid. If we did go free to play I wouldnt expect to see anything in our item store that is unatainable by work in the game and their wouldnt be anything in there that would give a leg up to anyone just for dumping money in. Possibly some cosmetics, house decorations, character resets, instant travel from city to city something along those lines.

 

But honestly we are not looking at the income side we are looking at the design side.

As for getting the game to market; Very few people design and publish a game the cost is obnoxious. However getting it published and ran by someone else after design is not overhwleming. I will flat out say that SOE is not even being considered.

I was onboard up until this post.  Without a clear business plan, including pricing, operating costs, etc., it will be extremely difficult to sell this.  Even if the game is 100% complete, without a very detailed estimation of how much money it will cost and the revenues it will bring, you will have difficulty convincing another company to buy this game.

I'd recommend that you take a step back and build a solid business plan as if you were going to build and run this entirely on your own.  This way, you can proceed with the creation of your game, and if an outside buyer doesn't appear, you have some plan to operate the game beyond the build stage.  The operational revenue model is something you can't afford to overlook.

The biggest problem I see with your plan is that you are planning to own the development cycle, and sell the operational cycle to someone else.  The problem with that is that, for the most part, all of the income happens in the operational cycle.  A substantial amount of the costs occur in the development phase.  In order to break even, let alone make a profit, the sales price will necessitate being rather high.  You will need to foot the costs of the entire development cycle before you will ever have an opportunity to see any income.  How are your friends/employees going to be paid for this time?  Where is the money going to come from?  Are you planning to seek traditional financing to fund your development cycle?  What happens if you can't sell the resulting product?  What happens with the proceeds when the product does make money?  These are questions you need to ask yourself.

Ultimately, these questions caused me to abandon my own efforts at MMORPG development in 2003.  I had modelled the financial side of my attempted project, and there was no way I could have financed the development phase.

Good luck with whatever you choose to do with this.  The game ideas sound pretty good.

As stated previously I appreciate everyone's concerns about the financial side but really we have it covered. We had to pitch our model for cost to all four investors and all four of them gave us the green light. This is not our only form of employment so it isnt costing us anything to work on this. We will have to pay our artist and anyone else we bring on but its in the budget.

As for our business model. We are thinking a hybrid between Fully Free to Play and a Subscription. The reason we havnt nailed it down yet bis because we think it a much better idea to get something more solid than Vaporware to take to the table before we start talking about cost to the consumer. Our plan from the start is - We want this game accessible to people but also be Fiscaly responsible.

Honestly, we really do have the financial side covered.

Originally posted by EBlackblade

Instance Based PVE - No.

I would take a moment to reconsider this.

We know what the knee-jerk response to instances is (from most of the players on this board), but the simple fact is that instances work better with certain kinds of PVE design (particularly raids).  There are a number of things design-wise you can do in a closed environment that you can NOT do in an open world.

Instancing also touches on a lot of social issues (kill stealing, camping, griefing etc.) that a fledgling game company may not wish to deal with on a continuous Customer Service basis.

Well I think we have gathered about all the positive feedback we can from this forum. It is easy to tell when the positive and conducive feedback ends and the trolling begins.

I appreciate everyones time and interest. Look for future updates. We have a meeting with two different Publishers this week to discuss publishing the game through them due to the NDA on those meetings I cannot say which ones but it looks promising.

As always anyone can PM me with specific inquiries. As for people who have sent me messages wanting to help out as soon as we check with the people we have pegged for positions we have worked with in the past we will start looking to fill roles and you will get messages back on where to email Resume's and what the job would entail.

Thank you all

Blackblade

I am kind of lost here on how you intend to make two planets and what engine you have that can support this. In my studies of game engines only one comes to mind so if you answer that I will know you have studied something of game engine terrain technology. Although the engine itself can support unlimited terrain there is a.. well, kind of.. a limitation to making anything greater then 512K pixel height map and that it about as large as any newer 1 Terra-byte raid hard drive can support because the partition table has reached it limits beings this engine breaks the terrain into very small chunks at 49K bytes a chunk.

Although 512 K pixel is very vast considering that the usual representation of this is, at the lowest LOD, 1 pixel per 4 meters or approximately 2,097,152 meters or 2,097 Kilometers which is 4,398,046,511,104 square meters , given the earth is 6000 kilometers in diameter which is 2 -pi Radius square for surface area, which is 142,122,3033,756,869 square meters.  Another big issue is that just the height map itself is in this engine 648,518,346,341,351,424 bytes of data.Then for every unique texture you double that.

But. That’s not all ,getting this data into the engine will require someone to import the data and even a 64 bit computer can only handle 8192x8192 pixels at a time which takes approximately 2 hours to import this height map the total time to import a 512k pixel terrain is (512K/8K) squared which is 4096 maps at 2 hours a map or yep 8192 hours per layer.

Sorry folks but everything on paper looks great.

Even on paper you flush..

Originally posted by GOITolderion

Originally posted by jvxmtg

Originally posted by EBlackblade

~snip~

Ideas are good, but they need to be really well thought out, else it's just one of those ideas that looked good on paper.

Hi my name is Tolderion and I am one of the designers working on the project. I was reading over these and wanted to address all of your bullet points for you.

 Thank you for the time. :)

game balance in a skill based model may seem overly complicated but it only seems that way. If the creatures your fighting are based on the same skill models as the players it balances quite nicely. We have structured a pretty interesting model as far as what we think combat in essence will flow like. But the skill based model we will all admit is nothing new its been done we just like it. Skill based means more of a challenge.

I know that you cannot share anymore information than that so I won't even ask for more details. But can you at least define what you mean when you say "skill based" because it seems that we have difference in definition.

When Blackblade lands I think he is planning on just making an entire post of our economics model since it is such a conversation topic. He admitted to me on the phone before his plane left he thought his first post may have made that system seem a little too simplified. You have to remember we have to strike a balance between dicussing ideas and releasing potential propritery information. However, I assure you if the model launches as we have it I welcome you to horde all you want and wehn you bump it all on the market you have made a lot of gold. But now everyone who needs resources just benefited because the price just plummeted. The system is not broken that is by design...

I respectfully disagree. When one hoard the supply it creates a massive demand, contrary to your conclusion, it will jack up the price, not lower it. And since I'm the only source of that supply, I can easily monopolize the market. Economics taught us that a surplus of supply lowers the price, not the other way around.

As for our own market being closed on the weekends yes it is and our economy is complete trash too. So to be honest we are not basing our model off of Real World Economics we looked at what had been done what we thought was wrong with the model and we started working with what could work.

I think you miss my point. Having the market close every day and on weekends allow the market to benefit from the closing price. If you think that is the the cause of our economy being trashed...well then, that's your opinion of it. But as far as in-game economy works, which runs 24/7, your model is really nothing different from the Real World model. And I respect if you cannot go into details about the difference, but as it stands, there's no difference to me. And if the RW model is trashed, in your opinion, so is the in game economy - just my observation.

This is all speculation at this point we havnt started coding it (Well I started on the UI today for the devs) thats why we came here was to get input. So by all means say it doesnt work but spit out an idea of what could work otherwise your not helping your just cluttering the page :)

I am giving input by stating on how an in game economy based on your model can be abused. I've seen it and now I'm sharing it so that you won't fall into the same pitfall. So rather than overlooking this possible flaw, you might want to run it on your internal tests and see if it's possible and add any necessary modifications rather than simply discarding it. And with all due respect, if you want ideas on what could work, you'd have to pay me or others for that. ;)

Player Housing - Yes Everyone. He meant it and I back him up. Everyone has a chance to get their own home.

I was addressing the assumption that everyone "likes" it - which is different from what you're saying. I also address the cost of such house based on the economy you provided, that's why I called it unsustainable. Unless you'll also introduce tax brackets, casual players will end up losing their house when they run out of money.

As for the part about Tolkien Im not sure I understand. Blackblade meant he was the father of modern fantasy so he set the Elf,Dwarf,Human model. We have 11 variations of Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and some surprises. I will let one of the surprises out because he menetioned it and that is CYOR or Create Your Own Race. Again not a new idea its been done in STO but to great affect.

 Orcs are playable race in many MMO but Tolkien have them as a disposable race, created to hate and wage war.

As for your choice in endgame Id like to point out not many games give you a choice and we use the term Endgame loosly. This is a game where you tell the story of your character and his/her ambitions goals and life. How you choose to play them is up to you we just want to give people something they have never seen before. A game made for gamers not for Capitalism.

Forgive me for being skeptic since that line has been said so many times before and developers always end up pressured by stock holders. But I will give you the benefit of a doubt since hope is not yet lost. ;)

Tolderion

Thank you for your time.

Originally posted by EBlackblade

The Economics Model -

Tolderion said Id have something more fleshed out to explain that model and I do. I do apologize I reread what I posted and I see now I made that sound horribly simplistic.

The Market in towns will work on a variable market price index established with a baseline internally.

How are you going to stablish this base line on a player-to-player transaction? Are you going to dictate the price I am willing to sell my goods? What if I give them away for free?

This model will be used for trade commodities. It will reset every 7 days (We are spitballig Loke666's 30 day random day idea). DOes that mean people will be able to use the market to make currency in large sums? Sure if they know how. We dont think they spent six weeks farming for materials to sell them for nothing.

It's a little naive to say or think that. Many players farm to support their own, their friends, and their guildmates. Even more so in games that includes Guidl halls, castles, and intergallactic network. So yes, many spends their time farming for nothing in return.

As for selling in chat feel free but as the price changes in seconds good luck finding a stable price people will pay.

Again, this is a simplistic approach. There is no such thing as stable price since the price is dictated by supply and demand, not by willingness to pay. If a player demands/needs/wants it, they will pay the price, willing or not.

Now non Commodities like crafted goods work on a different model. There will be a somewhat traditional Auction House where you take your stuff in and auction it. The Auction house gets a commision for selling it for you. (Why? You will see its a dont be lazy motivator)

um...it's an AH so I guess.

Now if you want to pay the Auction House no problem just go to a Player Run Store or set one up yourself and sell it through a vendor no costs involved. Market your store get people to come shop there. If you dont want to do it yourself I promise there will be people doing it a suprising number of people loved running their own Item Mall's and shops in UO and SWG.

There might be people who love doing it, but there are more people do not love doing it. If you ever play the game SilkRoad, you will understand why this approach is simply insane.

A question came up how are we going to fight gold buying? Well some of it I will say and some of it I wont.

What I can say is we will know how much money is in the game every second of every day. Who has it and where it came from every single Stemp (Think Copper or Pennies). So if someone decides to buy gold its going to come from someone we will know who gave them gold how much and it will be flagged. We have some other systems that we are talking about implementing. (Keep in mind in our system that means we can remove the currency within seconds after its bought if we know its a gold transaction.)

Gold seller no loger trade gold in bulk. Rather they have multiple account with gold. Example, if I purchased 1mil gold, the goldseller requires me to trade them something, usually trash item. Then in that trade, I will only get 100k gold. Then the next character comes around and give me another 100k for the trade,  over and over until i get all my 1mil gold. Or even lower amount of gold per transaction to not trigger your flags.

I've seen it and you should learn from it.

Why do I think our commodities model is a good idea? And why do I think it isnt trashing a plyer run economy?

Because the game economy needs to do two things. Provide goods and allow the movement of goods and currency.

Will someone be able to find cheaper stuff? Of course if the market is running 191gpu for Amber Wood go hit the player markets I bet you will find it a lot cheaper. And in a few days that price will reset to the standard price pay out.

Again, it goes back to the first issue of your post. How are you going to apply this in a player-to-player trasaction?

We have some other ideas going into it including hitting up a friend who an Economics Professor and seeing his take on it and his ideas.

That would be really wise, but I would suggest that you also get input from a real stock trader to get the inside on the behavior of the market that I doubt an Econ Prof can provide insight to, unless of course, the Prof is also an active trader. ;)

Nice post and more power to you guys. :)

Originally posted by EBlackblade

Originally posted by Caldenfor

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Raptre

Also keep in mind that if you make the AH too complicated players just won't use it.  I've played a game that has a fully functional AH, but it was a little too complicated to use so no one did.  All sales were done in player shops.

I don't see the problem with that at all. Player run shops are a lot more fun than auction houses.

Might I suggest that there will be signs you can put outside your shops so we can see what kind of shop it is outside (and possibly see the shop name as well)?

Weapon stands and manequins so you can see how the goods look in game (at least the expensive stuff) also helps to make it feels like a real shop.

How is your view on jewelry? Can you see it in game? Will guys have ear rings like girls or will they have slightly more masculin jewelry (I could see myself playing a warrior with a huge golden nose ring)? 

Jewelry is one of those weird MMO things that never really work, I just don't see my male barbarian in AoC wearing girly jewelry. Clothes and armor are gender specific so why not jewelry?

The problem would be that they spent all the time developing the AH, and it falls to disuse, what is the point of having it? Wasted development time standpoint.

 

 

Now back to the OP.

You want the game to be enjoyable and successful, excellent. Now, is your team open minded towards this goal or are there specific things that MUST be in the game for the team to stay together?

 

 

The view of the game you are trying to portray is very important. What camera angle and world layout do you intend to aim for? There is a HUGE difference between using a fixed camera view third person like UO or allowing First/Third person like WoW. This single question determines the scope and scale of the game and whether it lends itself towards a large open world or a zoned world. Using a pre-existing game world as the example if you would like, which world would it most resemble in layout/scale/scope?

Those 11 things in my original post will be in this game or it wont launch. We all agreed we were going to do this right or not at all. I think the problem people have when they look at what we are doing is they are thinking of us as these guys who are expecting to make money while making this game. We all have good jobs, we dont need to make money while we make this off the project we have other income. Our investors gave us a solid budget and a good time plan. This game will launch with what its supposed to have or we will delete the entire code structure and start over. Will it launch with bugs? Every game has some bugs when it launches, but it will be playable stable and enjoyable.

 

 

Third Person game world. As far as layout and scope. Well layout will be Continental divided by water but will be crossed by Player owned as well as NPC boats.

Sacle... This is a little harder to define in context. Just have to take my word when I say - Larger than anything Ive seen save maybe SWG and thats because they had several planets.

 

As for the AH and it being complicated? Eve Online has a very complex system and people seem to do just fine using it every day.

I see nothing wrong with your 11 stipulations at the start of the thread. I will be sending you a PM when I have more time, hopefully this evening. There are a few things in regards to general design I would like to bounce off of you and, as of your last post, I will let the thread be.

Hi OP,

good stuff and if it can help ya:

http://www.mmoz.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=67

http://www.onrpg.com/boards/game-development/

Now if you want a good start with a design document template: http://www.runawaystudios.com/articles/chris_taylor_gdd.asp

A good study on players profile : A Long-Term Study of a Popular MMORPG

Originally posted by Icewhite

I would take a moment to reconsider this.

We know what the knee-jerk response to instances is (from most of the players on this board), but the simple fact is that instances work better with certain kinds of PVE design (particularly raids).  There are a number of things design-wise you can do in a closed environment that you can NOT do in an open world.

Instancing also touches on a lot of social issues (kill stealing, camping, griefing etc.) that a fledgling game company may not wish to deal with on a continuous Customer Service basis.

It really depends on how you handle the story aspect of the game.

If you want the player to be the greatest hero that saves the world, then you must have plenty of instances.

If you on the other hand want a world with many heroes or one where you can influence the entire world instances get kinda counter productive.

Not that I am saying that using or not using instances is wrong or anything, it really depends on the game but both works for different games. Non instanced dungeons needs hoever to be a lot larger than instanced ones and you need spawn time and possibly place holders. I recommend you to play some EQ2 that have both instanced and open dungeons for comparisions.

Kill stealing, camping and griefing are issues that games needs to deal with some way or another. Here is how I probably would do it:

Kill stealing: This one is a hard one, GW2 have solved it by giving XP to all players involved in their events. EQ2 locks an encounter or gives the XP to the person/group that gets in the first hit depending on your setting. I say giving the XP to the person/group that gets in the first hit on a mob at least works in cases like this.

Camping: Easy, only give XP for killing bosses like DDO and have a timer on a few hours in which you wont get more XP and loot. Or if you want trash mobs to give XP give out slightly fewer XP for every same mob and reset that counter every day. It makes no sense anyways to gain the same experience for your hundred goblin warrior as the first. Encourage the player to not stand in the same point for hours. Also have random spawn time for bosses.

Griefing: First of all, let the player spawn in different places when they die, either randomly or by letting them choose a spawn point. And give them 20 seconds they can't be hurt. Secondly, since the game uses a lot of factions, how about having a few knight orders that get huge bonuses for killing flagged PKs and gets rather badly punsihed for murdering. Not something everyone would play but it would encourage the players to keep the order instead of some NPCs.

Sending NPCs after murderers and banning them from vendors is neither fun nor effective. Having actual players that keep the order is a lot more interesting. :)

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Icewhite

I would take a moment to reconsider this.

We know what the knee-jerk response to instances is (from most of the players on this board), but the simple fact is that instances work better with certain kinds of PVE design (particularly raids).  There are a number of things design-wise you can do in a closed environment that you can NOT do in an open world.

Instancing also touches on a lot of social issues (kill stealing, camping, griefing etc.) that a fledgling game company may not wish to deal with on a continuous Customer Service basis.

It really depends on how you handle the story aspect of the game.

If you want the player to be the greatest hero that saves the world, then you must have plenty of instances.

If you on the other hand want a world with many heroes or one where you can influence the entire world instances get kinda counter productive.

Not that I am saying that using or not using instances is wrong or anything, it really depends on the game but both works for different games. Non instanced dungeons needs hoever to be a lot larger than instanced ones and you need spawn time and possibly place holders. I recommend you to play some EQ2 that have both instanced and open dungeons for comparisions.

Kill stealing, camping and griefing are issues that games needs to deal with some way or another. Here is how I probably would do it:

Kill stealing: This one is a hard one, GW2 have solved it by giving XP to all players involved in their events. EQ2 locks an encounter or gives the XP to the person/group that gets in the first hit depending on your setting. I say giving the XP to the person/group that gets in the first hit on a mob at least works in cases like this.

Camping: Easy, only give XP for killing bosses like DDO and have a timer on a few hours in which you wont get more XP and loot. Or if you want trash mobs to give XP give out slightly fewer XP for every same mob and reset that counter every day. It makes no sense anyways to gain the same experience for your hundred goblin warrior as the first. Encourage the player to not stand in the same point for hours. Also have random spawn time for bosses.

Griefing: First of all, let the player spawn in different places when they die, either randomly or by letting them choose a spawn point. And give them 20 seconds they can't be hurt. Secondly, since the game uses a lot of factions, how about having a few knight orders that get huge bonuses for killing flagged PKs and gets rather badly punsihed for murdering. Not something everyone would play but it would encourage the players to keep the order instead of some NPCs.

Sending NPCs after murderers and banning them from vendors is neither fun nor effective. Having actual players that keep the order is a lot more interesting. :)

while i like some of your responses to the Grief,camp,and Kill stealing problems i do have to say that those answers don't full take into account the motives behind some of those things

i like your answer on kill stealing either give xp to everyone involved which encourages others to randomly jump in and help you on either easy or hard enemies (i see this alot on Champions Online and have even done it a few time myself) or give exclusive xp to the first person to damage it, though i wouldn't suggest that since there are some people who will spawn camp a boss and will hit it first just so others can't get the kill (spawn camping griefers)

now you can do either of those things for spawn camping but then you have to remember they plan on having exstensive crafting and you have to go out and kill mobs for materials so staggering the xp or allowing only bosses to give out xp is both unfair on their hard work by forceing them to work hard just for mats and not giving them some bump to their level plus it won't stop the hardcore crafters from spawn camping anyways, i suggest following Champions Online with how they deal with this aswell, they have it where everyone involved in the kill has the same chance to get items and xp as they would if they solo killed the mob so spawn camping doesn't effect weither or not you can kill the enemy all you need to do is get 1 good hit and you get credit for it

and as for your answer for griefing i like your answer a lot, i like the flagging someone for P/K and having people hunt them down for it but theres so much more to griefing then P/K like for instance spawn camping, on EQ for ps2 there was this max level character standing there killing a level 10 boss that was a focal point for lowbies, i think all lowbies had to kill this one boss to continue no matter which class or race you were  so he just stood there hitting it and force us lowbies to either log off or find a way to get in the most damage so we would get the kill (i think EQ was set up as most damage gets the kill but i'm not sure) so a bunch of us decided to team up and strike with our one chance together on one of the bosses spawns,  thankfully it only took an hour for us to finally get the kill from the griefer, but then again it took us about an hour just to think about the whole team up so that our combined attacks would do just enough damage to out weigh him, and thats more time then most people would care to spend on a single boss if they didn't have to,

so i think the whole griefing thing needs more looking into just to figure out all of the ways griefers get to people so that there can be some worked out stratagy to safe guard against each thing

Good luck.