Originally posted by legendmaker08
Ok, for all of you anti-Permadeath people, let me just say one thing. From what I've seen, all of you are against the idea because you view it as a timesink, where you work on something for X amount of time and when it ends you view it as a waste. I have to tell you that is not the mindset you should have when you look at ToA. All of you are viewing the 100 deaths as too small, too insignificant. You act as though the devs are only giving you 3 lives like your standard arcade game. So, count to 100 verbally. It may not take you an hour, but it will still take you a decent amount of time. 100 isn't THAT small a number. So, yeah, when you first start out on your very first character, you're probably going to lose a couple lives. Hell, if you're really bad, you might lose 10 or even 20. But eventually, you're going to get the hang of things, and then you still have over 50 lives left. You don't lose techniques on death, so you still have character progression. It's not like each death sets you back all the way to square one. And even when your character finally loses all 100 lives, you can just make another character. And now that you have gotten the hang of things, you won't lose those lives that you did on your first character where you made stupid mistakes. The mindset you need for ToA is not "I'm gonna die so fast, this is stupid, nothing is going to be accomplished." You should go into the game fully expecting to die several times. But you should expect the time in between those characters death to exponentially increase as you get better at the game. Learn from your mistakes, and be a better player the next char around. That's what perma-death is offering you. It's removing min-max elitists you see in normal MMOs today and instead gives you another reason to play: the experience, and the journey. :)

 

Right On Legendmaker  :) ! 

Originally posted by GimiZigi

Originally posted by tom_gore

Sounds like another FFA PvP full loot (and permadeath too!) "sandbox" MMO made by a small dev team. I don't know why should I believe they are able to do anything better than AV or SV are doing.

Besides, FFA PvP attracts too many dickheads.

 

I think before you roll out the 'jump to conclusions' mat, I recommend reading the more in-depth features about the game and also reading up the transcripts for the podcasts. Read up about the game and understand what is involved because when you do, you'll realize that this notion you have of this gaming being "Just another FFA PvP full loot" mmo will be far behind you!

I've already taken the time to read the book in question. It provides no indication that they have learned from those who came before them.  I've seen nothing in that book that hasn't been tried in various combinations and games before. It always leads to an arms race between the Dev's and the Goonie types.   That chews up time/talent/resources that could be better spent. It also auto niches a game in the western markets.  If the Dev's and their players are ok with that, then more power to them.

Originally posted by Dihoru

Originally posted by Dracondis

This game has been in development for over a decade now.  I expected it to be vaporware for its entire life, but apparently they're actually bothering to try and make it.  Honestly, I don';t see this is working, as they haven't thought things through far enough.  100 lives?  PvP doesn't require flagging?  I see people rushing to get high levels in their skills, and then sitting in the lowbie areas griefing the new players who can't compete with them until they perma-kill them, then sitting on the forums, laughing at the QQ about how no one can join the game because of the griefing in the starting areas.  Recipe for commercial failure.

*grabs popcorn*

So, let's get on with this disaster flick.

Originally posted by Dihoru

Originally posted by Smintar
As I understand it and my thinking is that this one would be a good one for Gankers!

Have you ever played a game where your actions had impact on the world? If yes name one.

Read my above.

 

Noob systems in EVE are protected from ganks, everywhere else is free game, I'd imagine they'd have some way of protecting noob players from such things, I mean they are sandbox devs after all.

No. Concord is about RETRIBUTION, not protection.  I spent almost six years in the game, and I watched as Concord and the high sec ROE evolved.  CCP did NOT want to evolve Concord and change the high sec ROE. But to protect their business model, they had to.   Just as any such game has to take the Goonie factor into account.

Suicide ganking in even sec 1.0 systems is still possible to this day.  Its another example of the endless arms race between the Dev's and the Goonie types, that I've spoken of before.

And they say the MMORPG genre is not getting innovative.

Well now we have the next thing called Pre Kickstarter hyperbola. When are we getting pre conceived ideas for pre Kickstarter campaigns?

Originally posted by Maguire
Some of you folks serious might want to try taking off your judgmental blinders and doing some research before you open your mouth about ToA and condemn it to ultimate failure. There are over 966 pages worth of discussion and information available on their forums to look at and somehow some of you have already drawn up some of the most outlandish conclusions about how *you* think it's going to turn out. How in the **** does that happen? Oh, I know what it is. If something isn't specifically configured to meet *your* specifications, it's automatically doomed. That somehow the developers are just another team living in some fantasy world concluding they're not going to change anything based on what you know about other games and what you THINK you know about ToA. I've been on their forums for almost 2 weeks now, haven't even scraped the surface of all the information on this game, and I'm still learning. But you folks.. Oh my god.. you just know it all in less than two pages. Newsflash: You don't know crap.. Get out of your spoon-fed self-entitled bubble and get the facts before you shovel your dribble at other people.

I've said nothing about "failure". I suspect it will attract a small hard core of players, who care about such things. In other words, a narrow niche game. There is nothing inherently wrong with such games, if both the Dev's and the players are doing it for the sake of the game, then more power to them.

But if the Dev's think they are going to be more than a narrow niche game, with that rule set, I suspect they will find they are badly mistaken.   In all too many cases, there is a difference between what a group of people say, and what they do. 

These types of games take not only technical experience and knowledge to create, but also experience and knowledge of market demographics to apply properly.  Thats just in the creation part.

Once the game is live, dealing with the real time actions of players requires even more experience and knowledge of basic human nature.  That is where many games of this type have problems.  How those problems are dealt with, determines not just the business side, but the enjoyment of the players as well.  Any way, as I've said, I wish them all the best. If they can make it work, then more power to them.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Like I said earlier, the game looks very promising until you get to the permadeath decision.

Let's look at permadeath with their so called 99 lives.  The fun of a MMO is developing your character.  Eventually you will lose that character if you like the game it will be just a matter of time.  So what happens then?  You start over?  No one knows you, of course that could be good if you were a bit of a nasty player.  When you get down to it, 100 deaths is nothing when you play a game you like.  Makes playing the game as risk adverse and that does not sound like much fun to me.

The basic fact of the matter, the internet is not all that stable.  Disconnect and there goes one of your lives...run into a cheater, there goes another one.  The problem with small companies like this one, cheaters take great advantage of them because they know that they do not have the resources to control them.  Just take as an example WARZ, the game is a cheatfest and the developers seem clueless to fix the problem, granted that is an extreme situation, but still, it is pertinent.

It is a shame that cheating is so rampant.  Perhaps this developer has solutions to control them, but experience says that it really takes a large support staff to handle them, which this game won't have.

So while the idea of permadeath might not sound that bad, in reality it is.

A game like this just separates the cheaters from the rest of the population, little to do with how skilled you are.

 

 The problem here is..You don't know how this developer wil handle the things with permadeath, the only thing you do know is that 100 deaths is the final blow.

Let me list some things that  may change your reasoning..

Most of these points all boils down to design, when reading your post you do the same mistake as 90% of all players that complain about PD, they compare it with some other existing MMO, but how many PD MMO's do you know ? I know of one ..and thet games design around PD is not in the least very brutal, and If yet if the unlikely would happen, you will still inherit your souls for the other characthers.

1 Combat complexety and characther complexety, How hard is it to "REALLYy" die, does NPC opponents use a killing blow each time they beat you, or do they simply leave you knocked out.?..

2 When PvP happen are the winning side offered a "knocked out" blow, or do they choose to serve the killing blow with the risk of becoming wanted for murder or some other negative status?

3 . If you .."really die" does the game offer any bonus to your "next" characthers ,,ea skillbonuses legacy perks etc etc increased level speed or start at a set level of , let's say half way there,,?

4. Do you inherit bank accounts,  Items , houses and/or farms ?

It all boils down to game design, but if you refuse to see beyond what you have written , well, It's up to you, even this developer wrote that there is "lots" of players that reacts the way you do, but obviously they wanted to design this game this way anyhow because they think it's important for the overall goal and points to the game and gameworld.

Originally posted by Wraithone

I've said nothing about "failure". I suspect it will attract a small hard core of players, who care about such things. In other words, a narrow niche game. There is nothing inherently wrong with such games, if both the Dev's and the players are doing it for the sake of the game, then more power to them.

But if the Dev's think they are going to be more than a narrow niche game, with that rule set, I suspect they will find they are badly mistaken.   In all too many cases, there is a difference between what a group of people say, and what they do. 

These types of games take not only technical experience and knowledge to create, but also experience and knowledge of market demographics to apply properly.  Thats just in the creation part.

Once the game is live, dealing with the real time actions of players requires even more experience and knowledge of basic human nature.  That is where many games of this type have problems.  How those problems are dealt with, determines not just the business side, but the enjoyment of the players as well.  Any way, as I've said, I wish them all the best. If they can make it work, then more power to them.

I never named you as one who did. But since you felt the need to implicate yourself - if you want to figure out where the developers of ToA land in your spectrum of "differences" based on all these various cases you vaguely mention, then maybe you should visit the forums, stick around for a while and figure it out for yourself when it finally comes time for them to deliver their product to the masses.

Originally posted by Butch808
permadeath in any shape or form seperates the boys from the men. xD

Yeah, it means that boys with no lives will play and men will go about their lives, doing work, supporting their families and not waste time on a game that will eventually negate all your 'work' put into it.

Originally posted by Fusion

Originally posted by Butch808
permadeath in any shape or form seperates the boys from the men. xD

Yeah, it means that boys with no lives will play and men will go about their lives, doing work, supporting their families and not waste time on a game that will eventually negate all your 'work' put into it.

 Do you know for a fact It will negate ALL your work..?

Originally posted by Fusion

Originally posted by Butch808
permadeath in any shape or form seperates the boys from the men. xD

Yeah, it means that boys with no lives will play and men will go about their lives, doing work, supporting their families and not waste time on a game that will eventually negate all your 'work' put into it.

Why do you see it as work in the first place? Is a game not meant to be about the experience of the journey? I suppose some games can certainly be seen as work. Which is why change is welcome as far as I'm concerned. There's a theme to this particular game that compliments having permadeath. For example, a typical MMO would not work well with permadeath and i would not consider playing it. To think that permadeath is a concept seperate from all dependance to everything else is wrong and frankly stupid. ToA doesn't function the same as everything else. No one is trying to sell "mainstream MMO with permadeath" here. 

Griefing only ever had an effect on the casuals that were unwiling to even put up the slightest of effort to get better or learn how to survive, go through their daily routine without being affected by griefers.

They think that time constraints define this... Bullshit. You are not a casual because you are above a certain age... or because you have a full time job.... or a wife.... or kids.

Casual is a mentality. The "I want but ain't gonna give what is needed" mentality. People that think that the only reason someone else is better than them is because of time investment. Time investment just differentiates the top 2% of the playerbase from the rest of the "good players".

You want to be a Casual? fine! Nobody ever has a right to tell you how to play but blaming your failures to evolve in any game because you got griefed is just hiding behind your own finger.

I am 33 years old, married and have a full time job. I've been playing competitive games, and open PvP games (some including permadeath) since the days of MUDs. If you think there is no market for such games you are as mistaken as the big publishers losing tons of money on so called "AAA" Themeparks. The only reason you don't see any more EVE's is because most other companies that tried this were incompetent or ill-funded or both (Aventurine, Star Vault, Masthead).

Originally posted by PeskeyPixie

Show me a game where this doesn't happen. Most games out on the market have nothing to offer the players to keep them from experiencing high end level stagnancy so the players resort to ganking and griefing to relieve their boredom while they wait for the next expansion so they... /snip

You clearly do not understand the griefer/ troll mindset. It dosen't happen because they are 'bored'.

I wish i could put into words what is in my head. I will try.

Let's see... first of all, forget all you know about MMOs from 2002 to today. Just forget it. For a while.

Ok, now, lets go back to Everquest in year 2000.

Ok, now, lets go to a RED server in Everquest at that time. That was a PVP server where you could attack absolutely anyone, your faction, their faction, your race, NPCs, everyone.

Granted, it was not permadeath, but dying was really a pain in the ass.

Was there PKng, griefing, assholes, ruining your game time? Yes there was.

But there was something else, what we might call a "code". That code was, for many people, not to kill without a reason.

See an asshole is an asshole, even, a normal guy can be an asshole sometimes, i have been an asshole sometimes, but most of the time, normal people won't be assholes, or not all the time. These normal people, won't do anything to you that's too bad for no reason. This is built in our brains, we are not so bad deep down. Ask yourselves, are you going to gank a guy that is in his 99th life (ok, we migth not know it in the game, but imagine you can). Most of you won't, unless there is a good reason to.

I could tell you several experiences in EQ red serves where a powerful guy would not kill someone lower level, even in a heated discussion. That code, that respect for the other, prevented it. This is what happens when something "serious" (i know a game is not serious strictly speaking) might happen. See, what i mean is, you can't compare how people behave in a random modern MMO to how people will behave in ToA. The consequences are different, people behave differently.

Yes there will be the assholes that will have a lol out of killing people, just because it's important, but normal people will be able to protect against them. For instance. Have you tried to get people to help you when someone ganks and corpse camps you in WOW? It could be possible some years ago, but now normally nobody cares, unless you have really good friends. That's because the consequences, the damage done to you, it' not too big. But in ToA, the damage is big, people will react, because they will want to be helped too when they are in trouble.

This is what happened in EQ, it was based in the solidarity between players. You help me, i help you. This builds a community. Of course it wasn't only a selfish interest, it feels good to help someone that's really in need.

well at the end of the day if you do not like sandbox games with open pvp and perma death... dont play them :)

The people who like this kind of game will paly it and yes its a niche game and will never pull big numbers but i would hope the dev has already planned for this.

Well it had my interest until we got to the perma death part.  So you get  100 lives or not, or maybe.   Well that already turned me off.

Once question I did not see asked was about the engine.  That screen shot looked a lot like fallen earth, and well that engine sucked. 

I don't mind PD, it sounds cool in many ways.  However, I don't like open PVP. 

PVP 1v1 and not being able to look at somebody stats would be challeging.  PVP 5v1, die 100 times and get really POed.  Ganking is a norm in sandbox.

I like how you have to EARN magic skills and develope combat skills.