Off hand without hunting it down, they've said that the AI is going to react not to just individual, but the group as a whole, which is different than a normal threat meter; the example they gave IIRC was a boss reacting to most of damage is coming from ranged/spellcasters, that it'd use different tactics then it would if most of it's damage was from melee.
They've been pretty silent on combat, which makes me think they're still in the testing stages of how it's supposed to work.
So basically instead of people being able to plan out "Okay this boss does these attacks, this one does this" so you can bring all ranged/melee to make it a cakewalk. A dude could suddenly start chucking shit at your ranged while also doing horrible things to your melee.
Hopefully they can also still make the fights strategic; the more unpredictable the fights are the higher the chance they'll just be a chaos of people dodging red circles and DPSing with little regard for group synergy. There's also the danger of people going "the easiest way to kill this boss is with an all-melee group, everyone switch builds".
So basically instead of people being able to plan out "Okay this boss does these attacks, this one does this" so you can bring all ranged/melee to make it a cakewalk. A dude could suddenly start chucking shit at your ranged while also doing horrible things to your melee.
I like it.
I don't understand this concept. It presumes "Okay so people can understand this set of cause-effect relationships, but OH MAN IF YOU THROW IN ONE MORE PEOPLE ARE GONNA BE SO CONFUSED."
Nope. You'll get a guide that looks like:
Abilities:
1) Does shit
2) Shits on melee (only used against melee-heavy groups)
3) Shits on ranged (only used against ranged-heavy groups)
If you want to be particularly pessimistic, you might expect every fight to go roughly the same way because now every single boss is required to have a "fuck you melee" attack and a "fuck you ranged" attack, and there won't be much variety in those. If the stated goal is to encourage a diverse party, and at any point one is easier to deal with than the other, then you'll just have everybody stack up on that one and avoid it.
If you want to be slightly less pessimistic, this whole thing will completely devolve into random noise as it's revealed that it just occurs as a proportion (so if you have 75% melee he'll fuck melee 75% of the time), and nobody will actually care. Or hell, it'll just be the same as a number of WoW boss encounters that have abilities that trigger on anybody outside melee range and therefore are avoided by just having everybody stack up in melee range.
The ability for this game, ANY game, to have interesting and challenging enemy encounters without using the "holy trinity" as the backbone of it's combat system is the one thing I'm most skeptical about. Nobody has pulled it off yet, and to be honest I can't even imagine how it can be done. I hope I'm wrong of course, but we'll see.
I wonder if they could have a pool of abilities that can be somewhat randomly assigned to each boss and that each boss can only be killed once (a new different boss would appear in the world sometime afterward). It would make them so that you don't know what the boss does until you engage it and work out a strategy on the fly.
You'd just get guides listing all their possible tricks. I'd rather they have 5 unique bosses over a single boss with 5x as many tricks; the latter gets old far, far quicker.
+1
SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
Not sure I like the idea of the highest, 100 dollar tier of alpha access getting not one but two items that will allow them an undue amount of dominance over the rest of the playerbase, even at such an early stage. The vault thing may or may not be a big deal and apparently you can earn that after a long enough stint playing anyways, but that crafting bracer makes the players who possess it automatically more sought out in the economy for the best gear simply because they have it and can create better stuff more frequently.
This all seems rather more disconnected from what should be the real purpose of the alpha and beta of the game which is to create a good game. Opening up the alpha and beta and creative tools to, in essence, crowdsource this MMO to the masses to a degree greater then has ever been done is a novel idea and one that I want to see happen and see how it goes. But this seems more like a money grab where it's basically "Pay us a non-trivial amount for the privilege of testing and developing our very unfinished and content incomplete game for us and we'll give you shiny clothes, titles and, if your really generous, potentially imbalanced items".
Having said all that, I will now be debating whether or not I wanna go for a founder pack of some kind or not. The game itself still looks very much like something I want to play in the future. It's only a matter of seeing if they can reconcile this with their desire to make money ASAP off of the hype and end up potentially shooting themselves in the foot later.
+2
CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
I went and checked their site as well; alpha is slated to start sometime before February 28th next year. So we have until then to let this 3 tier founder pack scheme stew in our brain boxes and weigh the possibilities.
The real question is how do these items and this access effect the actual game. It's weird to me they're offering this type of system for just the world building subset of the game. . .
I don't get it.
Seidkona on
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
I can't agree with this statement, because landmark is a asset creation tool, not EQN itself. It seems like they're giving you MMO type stuff to do. Which I guess is a way to keep people playing, if they have goals. However its not a huge bother to me, I am just going to go in, make my druid temple and go from there. I am not sure what they're 'winning'.
The real question is how do these items and this access effect the actual game. It's weird to me their offering this type of system for just the world building subset of the game. . .
I don't get it.
They said previously they're adding some MMO aspects to Landmark, so I guess gear/equipment in this case that allows you to do different/more things O.o. I am curious how they've done it myself.
Miniwolf on
League Of Legends: Ulven
0
CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
My impression of Landmark has been MMO Minecraft with more complexity and an eye towards turning the best assets and creative direction into the bulk of the actual EQN game itself. Landmark will remain as a permanent fixture of EQN content creation and might even be integrated directly into it as the game nears launch, where you can log into the content creation one day on the login screen and the open world of EQN the next.
They wanna leverage this to it's fullest extent to both maintain the hype for the full game in a real way and get as much content out of the masses as possible.
The only suspect thing, which is somewhat hallmarked by this announcement of the Founder packs, is the question of how exactly they will handle their F2P model and how much pay to win will be present or even be able to impact the kind of ever changing, evolving, community created content leveraged world they are attempting to build. The Settler pack seemed fine to me, even with the weird pickaxe axe thing, because that seems more like a head start and not a more permanent advantage. Explorer pack was the same way. The Trailblazer thing was the thing that caught my attention, especially because it's gated behind a C note.
The "Void Vault" seems like an even more profound head start on bank access? We don't know enough about that to critique it right now, but it seems iffy. But the crafting bracer thing is definitely a permanent advantage in the crafting scene and subsequent market presence. As far as we know, it creates better stuff more often and is only available to those who shell out 100 bucks. Depending on how the economy will pan out in EQN or even work in Landmark, that could become a big advantage in a more subtle way that could have a lot of unintended consequences.
Not sure I like the idea of the highest, 100 dollar tier of alpha access getting not one but two items that will allow them an undue amount of dominance over the rest of the playerbase, even at such an early stage. The vault thing may or may not be a big deal and apparently you can earn that after a long enough stint playing anyways, but that crafting bracer makes the players who possess it automatically more sought out in the economy for the best gear simply because they have it and can create better stuff more frequently.
This all seems rather more disconnected from what should be the real purpose of the alpha and beta of the game which is to create a good game. Opening up the alpha and beta and creative tools to, in essence, crowdsource this MMO to the masses to a degree greater then has ever been done is a novel idea and one that I want to see happen and see how it goes. But this seems more like a money grab where it's basically "Pay us a non-trivial amount for the privilege of testing and developing our very unfinished and content incomplete game for us and we'll give you shiny clothes, titles and, if your really generous, potentially imbalanced items".
Having said all that, I will now be debating whether or not I wanna go for a founder pack of some kind or not. The game itself still looks very much like something I want to play in the future. It's only a matter of seeing if they can reconcile this with their desire to make money ASAP off of the hype and end up potentially shooting themselves in the foot later.
I have to say, that isn't entirely correct. After Uru: Ages Beyond Myst failed commercially for the second (or was it third? hrm) time, Cyan Worlds just said fuck it and handed out the dev kit and software for making new content and said that they were just going to crowdsource everything if the fanbase cared about it that much.
That being said, MOULAgain (the Uru crowdsourcing effort) was a muuuuuch more technical beast, requiring actual programming knowledge to even make the simplest objects, and hasn't really gone anywhere that I can see, at least outside of the super super SUPER fannish boards (Which is to say: I think there's some fan-made stuff that you CAN load into the engine, but FINDING that shit and actually making it work is a pain in the ass involving going down horrible rabbit holes of websites whose design hasn't been changed since 2003)
Further, MOULAgain was 100% free, none of this... not so much pay-to-win as pay-to-dev, I guess?
*e* and all this aside almost no one gave a shit about Uru.
As long as this stuff doesn't affect the main game I guess it'll be fine. It seems like it'll basically just let you look cooler and build stuff faster, the usual cash shop stuff.
As long as this stuff doesn't affect the main game I guess it'll be fine. It seems like it'll basically just let you look cooler and build stuff faster, the usual cash shop stuff.
That's the part that I have a problem with. This is not a good sign for the main game.
Steam: Spawnbroker
0
CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
Not sure I like the idea of the highest, 100 dollar tier of alpha access getting not one but two items that will allow them an undue amount of dominance over the rest of the playerbase, even at such an early stage. The vault thing may or may not be a big deal and apparently you can earn that after a long enough stint playing anyways, but that crafting bracer makes the players who possess it automatically more sought out in the economy for the best gear simply because they have it and can create better stuff more frequently.
This all seems rather more disconnected from what should be the real purpose of the alpha and beta of the game which is to create a good game. Opening up the alpha and beta and creative tools to, in essence, crowdsource this MMO to the masses to a degree greater then has ever been done is a novel idea and one that I want to see happen and see how it goes. But this seems more like a money grab where it's basically "Pay us a non-trivial amount for the privilege of testing and developing our very unfinished and content incomplete game for us and we'll give you shiny clothes, titles and, if your really generous, potentially imbalanced items".
Having said all that, I will now be debating whether or not I wanna go for a founder pack of some kind or not. The game itself still looks very much like something I want to play in the future. It's only a matter of seeing if they can reconcile this with their desire to make money ASAP off of the hype and end up potentially shooting themselves in the foot later.
I have to say, that isn't entirely correct. After Uru: Ages Beyond Myst failed commercially for the second (or was it third? hrm) time, Cyan Worlds just said fuck it and handed out the dev kit and software for making new content and said that they were just going to crowdsource everything if the fanbase cared about it that much.
That being said, MOULAgain (the Uru crowdsourcing effort) was a muuuuuch more technical beast, requiring actual programming knowledge to even make the simplest objects, and hasn't really gone anywhere that I can see, at least outside of the super super SUPER fannish boards (Which is to say: I think there's some fan-made stuff that you CAN load into the engine, but FINDING that shit and actually making it work is a pain in the ass involving going down horrible rabbit holes of websites whose design hasn't been changed since 2003)
Further, MOULAgain was 100% free, none of this... not so much pay-to-win as pay-to-dev, I guess?
*e* and all this aside almost no one gave a shit about Uru.
My impression is that they will be doing the heavy lifting of the programming/design side and mandating some content requests or content creation contests in the community side to do a lot of the easier stuff, or to augment the overall content load. They will most likely have programmers in the community who might want to go the extra mile on things like UI mods in the storied tradition of WoW as well.
Uru was always a more niche MMO product and was from start to Cyan finish the purview of Cyan only, with community stuff only coming along after they gave up on making money from it. SOE is leveraging Landmark from the start to try and get even the most program adverse layperson into the creative process; even if they don't actually contribute content that makes it into the game like a tower or a item, they are still enjoying this game within a game and becoming involved in a more direct way, and it's getting the ball rolling for those that will manage to succeed in creating commercially viable stuff on the top end.
I for one am learning game design and programming right now and am eager to try out the tools that SOE is putting down in front of me. For fun, but also for the chance to actually create something that might one day adorn a living world that everyone will see. What better way is there for retaining players after they literally drop down a piece of themselves in the world?
Corehealer on
0
CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
But the crafting bracer thing is definitely a permanent advantage in the crafting scene and subsequent market presence. As far as we know, it creates better stuff more often and is only available to those who shell out 100 bucks. Depending on how the economy will pan out in EQN or even work in Landmark, that could become a big advantage in a more subtle way that could have a lot of unintended consequences.
It's only a big advantage if there is no other item/mechanism that establishes parity. meaning, if i can craft a bracer with the same bonus but it takes me resource gathering and/or trading/whatever, then it's only an advantage of time, not permanency.
CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
edited November 2013
When I say, pay us to dev the game for us, I don't mean they expect the whole game, it more means that they are having us pay for the chance to develop a significant, somewhat less technical aspect of the game design. And that's not bad, until you start getting into places like crafting bracers of win and getting away from the important experimentation that is crowdsourcing an MMO's development for the sake of short term gain.
No one has ever tried this before and I am excited to see what comes of it. I will be disappointed if that gets lost beneath or screwed up by some desire to make all the money now for less effort.
Corehealer on
0
CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
But the crafting bracer thing is definitely a permanent advantage in the crafting scene and subsequent market presence. As far as we know, it creates better stuff more often and is only available to those who shell out 100 bucks. Depending on how the economy will pan out in EQN or even work in Landmark, that could become a big advantage in a more subtle way that could have a lot of unintended consequences.
It's only a big advantage if there is no other item/mechanism that establishes parity. meaning, if i can craft a bracer with the same bonus but it takes me resource gathering and/or trading/whatever, then it's only an advantage of time, not permanency.
True. So they should put it out there that yes, this bracer is, like the pickaxe axe and the void vault access, a head start on those bonuses rather then a hard advantage, and that there are in fact items like other bracers or whatever that, when acquired or crafted, can give you the same bonus and parity with the time investment rather then the money investment. That would be fine.
Mostly I just want them to combat the inevitable pay to win nonsense that is probably already being spewed on their boards and clarify things. Because on the face of it, it looks iffy but not overtly bad.
Guys. Relax. It's ok. These packs aren't going to ruin everything.
0
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
THESE PACKS ARE GOING TO RUIN EVERYTHING!!! RIVERS OF BLOOD, CATS AND DOGS LIVING TOGETHER, CHEERIOS SPELLING OUT WORDS!!! IT'S ALL OVER!!! RUN FOR THE VOXEL HILLS!!!
+5
CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
These packs aren't going to ruin everything. Just the crafting. Maybe.
I can't agree with this statement, because landmark is a asset creation tool, not EQN itself. It seems like they're giving you MMO type stuff to do. Which I guess is a way to keep people playing, if they have goals. However its not a huge bother to me, I am just going to go in, make my druid temple and go from there. I am not sure what they're 'winning'.
Buying your way into early access (48 hours advanced access to "claim all the best land"), a bracelet that increases your chances of making the good stuff, and a portal allowing you to access a vault that would otherwise take "weeks" of effort to make? For people who wish to create assets, that is "paying to win". You pay more, you get better stuff, you get significant, measurable advantage over the plebes who only pay the $50 or whatever.
Isn't this like Minecraft were you're just making bullshit structures that your friends only feign interest in long enough for you to shut up about it and then let them go back to their own works that you don't get two shits about?
Except that there's the illusion that your shit structures might actually be good enough to make it into the real game. Which they aren't.
0
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
SOMEONE BUILT A PAY WALL AROUND THE VOXEL HILL!!! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!
The founder pack things just save you time by giving you a bit more resources and giving you a higher chance of getting more out of those resources. That is hardly pay2win. They don't let you do anything you can't do for free.
To be honest, for Landmark in particular, it makes sense to offer early access and better efficiency for paying because people who are willing to pay are more likely to actually care about enhancing the game and not just random people who want to screw around in the next shiny F2P thing.
To be honest, for Landmark in particular, it makes sense to offer early access and better efficiency for paying because people who are willing to pay are more likely to actually care about enhancing the game and not just random people who want to screw around in the next shiny F2P thing.
Posts
They've been pretty silent on combat, which makes me think they're still in the testing stages of how it's supposed to work.
I like it.
I don't understand this concept. It presumes "Okay so people can understand this set of cause-effect relationships, but OH MAN IF YOU THROW IN ONE MORE PEOPLE ARE GONNA BE SO CONFUSED."
Nope. You'll get a guide that looks like:
Abilities:
1) Does shit
2) Shits on melee (only used against melee-heavy groups)
3) Shits on ranged (only used against ranged-heavy groups)
If you want to be particularly pessimistic, you might expect every fight to go roughly the same way because now every single boss is required to have a "fuck you melee" attack and a "fuck you ranged" attack, and there won't be much variety in those. If the stated goal is to encourage a diverse party, and at any point one is easier to deal with than the other, then you'll just have everybody stack up on that one and avoid it.
If you want to be slightly less pessimistic, this whole thing will completely devolve into random noise as it's revealed that it just occurs as a proportion (so if you have 75% melee he'll fuck melee 75% of the time), and nobody will actually care. Or hell, it'll just be the same as a number of WoW boss encounters that have abilities that trigger on anybody outside melee range and therefore are avoided by just having everybody stack up in melee range.
https://www.eqnlandmark.com/founders-pack
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
This all seems rather more disconnected from what should be the real purpose of the alpha and beta of the game which is to create a good game. Opening up the alpha and beta and creative tools to, in essence, crowdsource this MMO to the masses to a degree greater then has ever been done is a novel idea and one that I want to see happen and see how it goes. But this seems more like a money grab where it's basically "Pay us a non-trivial amount for the privilege of testing and developing our very unfinished and content incomplete game for us and we'll give you shiny clothes, titles and, if your really generous, potentially imbalanced items".
Having said all that, I will now be debating whether or not I wanna go for a founder pack of some kind or not. The game itself still looks very much like something I want to play in the future. It's only a matter of seeing if they can reconcile this with their desire to make money ASAP off of the hype and end up potentially shooting themselves in the foot later.
I don't get it.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
I can't agree with this statement, because landmark is a asset creation tool, not EQN itself. It seems like they're giving you MMO type stuff to do. Which I guess is a way to keep people playing, if they have goals. However its not a huge bother to me, I am just going to go in, make my druid temple and go from there. I am not sure what they're 'winning'.
They said previously they're adding some MMO aspects to Landmark, so I guess gear/equipment in this case that allows you to do different/more things O.o. I am curious how they've done it myself.
They wanna leverage this to it's fullest extent to both maintain the hype for the full game in a real way and get as much content out of the masses as possible.
The only suspect thing, which is somewhat hallmarked by this announcement of the Founder packs, is the question of how exactly they will handle their F2P model and how much pay to win will be present or even be able to impact the kind of ever changing, evolving, community created content leveraged world they are attempting to build. The Settler pack seemed fine to me, even with the weird pickaxe axe thing, because that seems more like a head start and not a more permanent advantage. Explorer pack was the same way. The Trailblazer thing was the thing that caught my attention, especially because it's gated behind a C note.
The "Void Vault" seems like an even more profound head start on bank access? We don't know enough about that to critique it right now, but it seems iffy. But the crafting bracer thing is definitely a permanent advantage in the crafting scene and subsequent market presence. As far as we know, it creates better stuff more often and is only available to those who shell out 100 bucks. Depending on how the economy will pan out in EQN or even work in Landmark, that could become a big advantage in a more subtle way that could have a lot of unintended consequences.
It lowered all of the hype I had for this game to basically nothing. So that's good.
I missed you Basil.
I have to say, that isn't entirely correct. After Uru: Ages Beyond Myst failed commercially for the second (or was it third? hrm) time, Cyan Worlds just said fuck it and handed out the dev kit and software for making new content and said that they were just going to crowdsource everything if the fanbase cared about it that much.
That being said, MOULAgain (the Uru crowdsourcing effort) was a muuuuuch more technical beast, requiring actual programming knowledge to even make the simplest objects, and hasn't really gone anywhere that I can see, at least outside of the super super SUPER fannish boards (Which is to say: I think there's some fan-made stuff that you CAN load into the engine, but FINDING that shit and actually making it work is a pain in the ass involving going down horrible rabbit holes of websites whose design hasn't been changed since 2003)
Further, MOULAgain was 100% free, none of this... not so much pay-to-win as pay-to-dev, I guess?
*e* and all this aside almost no one gave a shit about Uru.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
And then Basil blew up.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
That's the part that I have a problem with. This is not a good sign for the main game.
My impression is that they will be doing the heavy lifting of the programming/design side and mandating some content requests or content creation contests in the community side to do a lot of the easier stuff, or to augment the overall content load. They will most likely have programmers in the community who might want to go the extra mile on things like UI mods in the storied tradition of WoW as well.
Uru was always a more niche MMO product and was from start to Cyan finish the purview of Cyan only, with community stuff only coming along after they gave up on making money from it. SOE is leveraging Landmark from the start to try and get even the most program adverse layperson into the creative process; even if they don't actually contribute content that makes it into the game like a tower or a item, they are still enjoying this game within a game and becoming involved in a more direct way, and it's getting the ball rolling for those that will manage to succeed in creating commercially viable stuff on the top end.
I for one am learning game design and programming right now and am eager to try out the tools that SOE is putting down in front of me. For fun, but also for the chance to actually create something that might one day adorn a living world that everyone will see. What better way is there for retaining players after they literally drop down a piece of themselves in the world?
As it should be.
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
No one has ever tried this before and I am excited to see what comes of it. I will be disappointed if that gets lost beneath or screwed up by some desire to make all the money now for less effort.
True. So they should put it out there that yes, this bracer is, like the pickaxe axe and the void vault access, a head start on those bonuses rather then a hard advantage, and that there are in fact items like other bracers or whatever that, when acquired or crafted, can give you the same bonus and parity with the time investment rather then the money investment. That would be fine.
Mostly I just want them to combat the inevitable pay to win nonsense that is probably already being spewed on their boards and clarify things. Because on the face of it, it looks iffy but not overtly bad.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Isn't this like Minecraft were you're just making bullshit structures that your friends only feign interest in long enough for you to shut up about it and then let them go back to their own works that you don't get two shits about?
Except that there's the illusion that your shit structures might actually be good enough to make it into the real game. Which they aren't.
To be honest, for Landmark in particular, it makes sense to offer early access and better efficiency for paying because people who are willing to pay are more likely to actually care about enhancing the game and not just random people who want to screw around in the next shiny F2P thing.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
@Eniq Stop being reasonable!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to get back to this Pay 2 Win discussion:
Which is to say, we care enough to begin the conspiracy game. While we wait for the preamble game to the actual game.
Gameception.