Profile: ianonmmorpg
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• • NPD: Americans spend over $1 billion a year on online subscriptions

  • Check out

    http://www.mmogchart.com/analysis-and-conclusions/

    Some data on this site.

  • Posted: 5/09/08 5:59 AM
    General Discussion
• • Player Death v Immortality

  • Sure depending on the content any game system can be repetative and boring, however in order to ensure you have a complex storyline you can either have hundreds of writers or simply turn the bulk of the work over to the players. In my view however the reason for sandbox is not to save cash on writers, instead its to empower the players.

    Ponico seems pleased that EVEs sandbox (I've not played) with 'podding' (not quite PD) is not fun to experience (there is the emotional content) but 'EVE is still King', and this is an opinion shared (at least in part) by its 236,510 subscribers. Not as many as some other games, but thats still a lot of people who play a game together and risk the tremendous loss described by Ponico.

    It seems we agree that a game with interesting, new dare I say dynamic content can survive the death of a char, I am however surprised that you feel that sandbox cannot provide this. I agree that it wont automatically provide the complex storyline, but its possible that a sandbox will be the most dynamic and evolving story... everyone is writing it with each and every footstep.

    As I'm looking at a sandbox model I'd be reluctant to kill everyone off periodically, however with an old age mechanic I suppose we're in agreement again, except you'd need to write a new story and generate all new content else time will simply repeat itself if you dont mind using the linear model.

    As regards the hoarding problem, this is an issue of the economy of the world. If you want to horde timber from your local forest... sure go wild, not sure what your going to do with it all. And how exactly are you going to maintain your control over this pile of wood, it wont fit in any sensible backpack and you're going to need help moving it to the local 'bank' and why would you put wood in a bank? its worthless until you give it to folk who can use it. Just how much furniture do you want? The fact is, sure you can amass a great deal of wealth, but you'd need to employ other PCs in order to collect resources and process them or to control the economics of a city full of PCs. And lets not miss the point here... this will provide some of the dynamic for our stories.

    Oh yeah, Itzcoliuhqui, like it. Hunting down these springs sounds like the basis for a game in itself.

  • Posted: 5/09/08 5:11 AM
    General Discussion
• • Player Death v Immortality

  • Originally posted by UtMoon
    

    ...

    I am more than willing to lose my character if the time spent getting that character was not  (Grinding), and I had the choice to go into the risky area or not. I would never play a game where you could be PDed by a noob while fishing peacefully. If I was going after Jaws... that is another story

    ...

    
    I asume that most folk would agree, "if game life was no fun then why would I play multiple chars possibly one after another, especially if I'm going to lose these chars without any input from me."

    Its about your choices, if you chose to put yourself in danger then expect more risk, by employing the Fate Points (previously stated) players can experience the risk but better manage it... and so educate them to the real risks of the given game world. They can adjust their game play to create the risks they're looking for.

    This is why I'm looking for 'realism' so players can predict the level of risk of certain actions.

    I agree with Itzcoliuhqui as regards the foolishness of being jumped if your someone of standing, but I'd state you should have some chance to survive and so not be an auto-death. The question would be, who is this noob and why are they attacking you? I back Itzcoliuhquis' No-XP for killing, sure for fighting and even simply meeting folk, but not killing them. They can have any gear you drop, and brag about it, but unless this noob has a social problem (quite possible) he'd have little to gain.

    As an aside, I further agree that magic users would be in the main limited in capabilities except for a few who would most likely jealously gaurd their secrets, or trade such knowledge for temporal power, which means only handing out a bit of knowledge and so keeping their powerbase.

  • Posted: 5/08/08 5:21 AM
    General Discussion
• • Player Death v Immortality

  • While I agree with your basic premise Gestalt, I would highlight you're assuming that the game is linear. That is to say that you'd be repeating all those tasks again for your second or subsequent characters. In a sandbox dynamic game with an evolving world its possible that it is the world and the events within it (events that your character(s) may will be deeply involved in) that draw your efforts not just attaining some token level (remember we're not employing 'levels').

    I agree that some will find death and starting a new character very frustrating (indeed many would) but its the attraction of the world and new stories rather than a single storyless grind repeated adinfinitum. Its the attraction of seeing this world from new angles perhaps very new angles as new races etc.

  • Posted: 5/07/08 4:18 PM
    General Discussion
• • Player Death v Immortality

  • Where did the smilies come from? Cool dude?? Honestly who claims that with accuracy???

  • Posted: 5/07/08 9:01 AM
    General Discussion