All Posts by paulscott

Even aliens won't leave the US election be...

We've gotta be a fricking important country to get alien vistors for 4/8 year term of being able to control the executive branch buracracy to some amount.

and

Enough with this AAA MMOs are the only ones that exsist

If you invest a lot of time,  and are willing to diversify your code more than it normally would be.   Just introduce an attunement mechanic to different skill branches.

So if you want to maintain heavenly skills that would let you play a palidin or priest you'd have to perform different services (like: holding mass minigame, destroying abominations, actually using your skills)

While for warlocke type abilities you'd have to play a few minigames (corrupt your soul, form demon contracts, capture someone's soul before they die).

For mage elemental-ish you'd have to go through a few tribes for each element have and have minigames that each tribe does for training(dive through a thunder cloud and other stuff).

for mage wizardish a few minigames centered around the library(holding class, timmed games of sorting books, and games for finding them).

For hand to hand martial arts you'd have to maintain your body, and hone your reflexes.

and of course a pretty massive common pool that have no maintainance.

_____

Basically make it so even if you don't roleplay at all you're still doing some actions you should be doing.   If you don't your skills act as if they're a lower level than they actually are.

The main downside is that you're introducing a mechanic that someone somewhere will call a grind mechanic, instead of the RP tool that it's meant to be.

Wurmonline alots 256 Sq KM.  to 500 to 1,500 something active people(big guess and per server).   Most the people on the safe map live in a 1 fourth of the map leaving a very decent amount for people that want to wander forests or live far away(there's atleast 1,000 active people on home/safe map maybe even a lot more).   While on the RvR/wild map has quite a bit less has allies building close enough so they can aid allies but far enough so enemies have to travel.

EDIT:

JK HOME/safe sever:  useage logs, and  map

since you can see almost 176 people on at peaks you could easily say that there's 1,000 active people who play that sever since not everyone is logged in at the same time,  for that reason it's also possible that a little over 2,000 people are playing as well.

EDIT 2:

WILD/RvR server:  useage logs, and map

The maps are few months old though.  Buildings aren't show since it's a terrain dump.   though it's good at showing where people are though and the clustering mechanics.

Ryzom is up now.

Though I did catch some vanguard...  vanguard working that is, my fan-hatism does not allow this...  The whole world is falling apart now.

If that were printed out it'd be a little under 2 pages...  And to start the topic you have a half formed opinion with no support outside of a sentance and a link.

Fable is one of those games where it works because it doesn't need to be balanced.  You'd have to use so much surgery on the skill, combat, and story system that it wouldn't resemble fable much.

Originally posted by Aelfinn

Meh, most of that kid's generation will probably never play the older Final Fantasies, so he should miss out on the worst of the teasing.

By the time he gets into the workforce anyone who has played FFVII probably won't realize it till a month later why the name sounded familar

The chat you had up last night is borked.

Keep your eye on TCoS then.   While it is pretty linear, instanced content, and a few other things.   It won't be bad at all and it'd be hard to not enjoy it if you like action based games (if you try to take down starter area mobs standing still, not dodging hits, and/or not aimming well you will die) especially since you can end up and survive in areas people considerably stronger than you die in because you're decent.   TCoS while it's not the sandbox game people are looking for it does bring combat that puts a lot of games to shame (enemies can interecept your healing spells, your attacks can hit allies, including your magic ones).   and will have the PvP action people are craving for (assuming they aren't "I don't care about mechanics, I need loots and shinies"*).

Really don't worry if a game is sandbox or not.   It's just a shiny word that can be hooked onto a few games because they're designed to respond to players more than a normal game.   Doesn't remotely exclude fun in a lot of cases.

*identical mind set to PvE players by the way

Spellborn is not a sandbox.  As quest based and closed ended as it gets.   They're focusing on real combat, combat specializations, tweaking combat stats, and taking it a lot further than most MMOs do.   It won't be bad, it'll actually be pretty good;  but not a sand box.

If you want to see the simulation extreme of sandboxes you could glance at WurmOnline if you don't mind heavy indiness(not buggy though).   Full world control; build a house anywhere, 100% uninstanced, 99.99999% of items crafted by players,  towns(except starting) made by players, terraforming(control tree populations to your liking, control animal populations to a much lesser extent, form the land to your liking(remove the hills, flatten areas for towns/farms), tunnel through mountains).  Wild/PvP server is premium only but if you don't mind skill caps you can play as long as you want on home.

Some implementations of skill base systems do just that.

Spend a week or less getting to the maxium 'power tier'*.   In most games this would mean you're stuck going through end game content to be micro-fractionally more powerful.   but in this skill system implementation you've only mastered 5 or 6 skills and have another 100 you could unlock and master if you wanted to.

Balance also requires limiting what people can use at any one time like only being able to a use certain number of skills in a build.

*DPS, HPS, Utility, or whatever.   Just the maxium usefullness.   basically the requirement for the high content.

Actually a lot of people appreciate runescape for what it is.   Just have no intention of ever wanting to play it.

Even with all it's faults and failures it's questing system, skill system, and Misc. Content beats out a lot of other games.   The developer methodolgies are also somewhat interesting to look at as a model.

In proper and non-excessive amounts video games do help different mindsets develop.

whether it's organized and methodical thinking from a collection platforming game or rapid strategy and information processing from a puzzle game like collapse.  Sure it's not hard stuff but you're still using those path ways and getting your brain to form more connects to optimize them.

A lot more is going on 'up there' than what the person would get from watching Ed, Edd and Eddy. 

Actually if you take all the polls in about a day you could probably get to elite member with 5 posts.  Then there's posting in subfourms which sometimes seem to be worth more shinies.

Basically there are a lot of things that earn shinies on the website.

No matter what you do to relieve the stress of repeatable content there will always be some group that makes it not so. 

No matter what you do to try and take away grind + make it so people don't need alts.   There will always be a large group that turn the game into grind then complain about having to level alts.

___

Basically unless it's one of the 3 core features of the game don't bother sweating what people will think or how similar you are to everyone else.

Obviously the link(s) wasn't very interesting or otherwise you'd have something more to say about it than a single sentance.

:throws in a GURPS derailment:

You just described GURPs how some houses extend it anyways.

edit:  link

Coming up in an interview that from here where the EA CEO John Riccitiello discusses a few things. 

To start with Riccitello is convinced that half of all the people complaining about the DRM were actually pirates, you can also read it as him considering that a sucess.   Then goes about mentioning what he thinks is most sucessful type of DRM and that he thinks we'll see more of subscription plans. The former is the only stupid/bad thing in the article for those that just need to flame.   Also news on updating the DRM to allow you to unregister the game from a PC.

Then it goes about discussing that/why they cancelled tiberium wars(C&C shooter).  and goes on about EA being a kitchen and that quality is their number one concern(watching hells kitchen, I see).   Even Blizzard cancels games and in bussiness projects get cancelled all the time. 

Lastly they ask the guy about EA aquiring(or rather lak of aquiring) take two.  Riccitiello said that take two no longer offered what EA was looking for.  This is ofcourse very good news for gamers because EA and Riccitiello were convinced they could do yearly or semi-yearly release of take two's games and sell them for more.  It also extensivly covers how Riccitiello invests ego into all the games that are released, and how that ego had nothing to do with no longer being interested in take two