I think ESO has its work cut out for it come April. Along with launching on the two new consoles *after* those systems get their first big games (inFamous and Titanfall), in the PC space it has to compete with an increasingly *not* shitty selection of MMOs that are 100% free to play. My current feeling is that the game has a few really cool things going for it on the positive side, a few goofy design choices that won't change on the negative side, and a whole lot of stuff that is in dire need of improvement but could easily get there in the grand scheme of things (be it at launch or after).
The problem is, are the good things enough to justify the price over similar, and much cheaper experiences? If I'm being completely honest, it's *really* hard for me to justify spending money on MMOs on an on-going basis when I can play say, TERA, or Rift, or several others and have a full, robust experience, explore the world, hit max level, and never feel like I missed out on much. That's the biggest hurdle for me. At $60 + monthly fee, this game doesn't, IMO, do enough right to justify it. At $60 w/ no fee, I'd almost definitely bite at launch. F2P, I'd jump in without hesitation. But as-is, it still feels like there needs to be more.
That said, even as I typed this post, I'm kinda daydreaming about wandering the massive world, and those hooks are often hard to remove.
While I'm, on balance, slightly more positive about ESO than negative, I can't agree its a lot like an online version of Skyrim (unmodded). Differences/opinions in a quick-ish breakdown:
* Crafting
Definitely better than any single player ES game, tho crafting in those was pretty barebones. ESO crafting is simple, yet modular so it provides a broad range of appearances (per race, per base material tier) and upgrades. Also, for once, I felt like I could keep myself fully geared (like reforge my stuff every 2 levels) with no reliance on loot or quest rewards - but even those were useful for salvaging and research. Alchemy is most similar to ES single player - but would greatly benefit from a list of recipes your character has discovered.
* Skills/Combat
Mixed bag. I hate that there are skills linked to classes and the classes don't feel very ES to me (mainly Dragonknight and Paladin, er, Sentinel). The skill ability unlocks I like and that some of these are abilities to add to the skill bar make the combat more interesting. Its better than Skyrim's perk system and doesn't have odd things like your perk tree conforming to a weird constellation (which was cool lore wise, but bad game mechanic wise). Also, I'd have preferred magic to be in the traditional schools as skill lines and not lumped into staff skill lines and somewhat scattered into the classes.
* Open Game World
Technically there are no traditional quest hubs, but they are still very themepark like in their structure and availability. To some extent you can pick a direction and just go, but not really. Zones are very linear in design, even after the starter island and slightly larger second zone. Stonefalls is very linear even as the third Ebonheart zone. Looking at the zone maps for the rest of the areas, you get a similar sense - they are usually longer along one axis and walled in on all sides.
* Dialog/Lore
Obviously, very similar to Skyrim - seems like a lot of Nord voice actors reused from Skyrim (which is a good thing). And it has a level of professionalism that other voiced games don't. Everyone in GW2 is like they are in a teenager targeted super hero cartoon. Yeah, and some of the quest decisions are great. I tried out the alternate choices from the ones I tested previous beta and its cool to see the differences (and phasing makes the differences stick around).
* Play experience
The worst part of ESO, other than the technical bugs. Doesn't matter if you prefer single player lone hero exploring an ancient crypt or like being part of a small army of players tackling enemies, ESO doesn't deliver. They make all these small caves/tombs/mini-dungeons like they are in a single player ES game, but make them open. Its just no fun for any type of player to go into the tomb and find all the enemies dead and the mini-boss dead or near dead and the only thing left to do is interact with the Quest Objective. All these need to be solo/party instanced - because they are not designed for many players. There's just enough mobs for 1 player, but there's 10 in there.
I did one fighter's guild quest and was surprised to find the dungeon instanced. It was great, I finally got to sneak and got some use out of my bow. I snipped all the scamps. Btw, shooting from hidden did seem to do 70-80% total health in damage, whereas a normal shot was like 30-40% of their total health in damage.
However, it is an MMO - so you do want multiplayer content. And a few areas are good for this. Crow's Wood (I'm guessing the other alliances have a similar side quest to this Oblivion plane) is a great example of an area designed for lots of players. Enemies in groups of 3-5, fairly quick respawns, and some more-than-usual-trash-mob abilities.
This last thing is what's mainly dragging the game down IMO. A very poor mix of trying to make it seem like Skyrim content while shoving into a massive multiplayer setting. The devs really need to do a serious pass over what to instance and revamp the open world content to account for the MM part of MMO. And you'd think the fact there's a massive three way war going on would provide for that on the PvE. I assume the other two alliances also have a storyline which is follows an invasion of one of the other factions. Seeing lots of other players in a PvE battle against NPCs of the other faction should provide plenty of material for the non-instanced caves/tombs.
No. Pickpocketing players would be hella bad outside of PvP and would result in people avoiding each other like the plague for fear of losing all their hard earned goods. It would be cool to see it be a limited thing you could do in PvP though, against enemies.
Pickpocketing hostile NPCs would be neat but redundant. Pickpocketing friendly NPCs would be neat but would require some kind of get caught go to jail mechanic. That seems like it would be tricky.
I just want to point out that the great grand-daddy, UO, had unrestricted pickpocketing.
It did not cause people to avoid each other. It caused people to be more aware.
Mostly because of how it worked.
Thus: Pickpocketing players/NPC's can be a thing. They just have to build an appropriate system for it. I think they should go for it here, ES has a storied history of thieves and pickpocketing. Seems like a bummer to just not do it.
Anon the Felon on
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
They have the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood planned for the game down the line as well, so that's also going to factor into it.
So some people think it improved greatly and some people still think is dookie. interesting.
Still wont event think about it till the monthly is gone.
Is RvR loot going to your mail really a fuck you to gw2? They added a huge aoe loot. If you forget to loot is that the games fault? Should the game also wipe and powder your behind?
Is there an inkling of how ESO will handle coverage? IE when you server is asleep the other server is active?
And the top end meta in gw2 'rvr' is and will always be giant zergs-> They over balanced defense to the point where a tower is not take able in a reasonable amount of time (even when held by like 1 person) without 70 people to handle the reinforcements. Its so bad at the top end that on reset night when its new top end fighting theres a couple of hours where there isnt that much fighting as the three sides fortify everything.
Looting has nothing to do with forgetting to loot, it means you can focus on the actual PVP then go fuck with your loot bags later. This is just for objectives and what not... the NPCs in the RvR zone are still normal looting.
And yes it feels like a direct "fuck you" since GW2 made that kinda odd.
Coverage? There are no servers, its a mega server. You join a RvR campaign that has a duration, technically the map will be covered 24/7 and off-hours wont be a thing. Its going to be more competative, period. Your guild keeps a history of what they do in RvR. There is a leaderboard in each campaign. Someone can become emperor even within their campaign. These things are going to spawn much more competition. Its also a single map with a lattice sysem like Planetside 2. Building siege is way different in this, so defense will most likely play out differently. From my intial thoughts, if you try to turtle up in a tower... you are gonna fucking lose. You have to come out and actually fight. Repairing things takes repair kits, which you have to buy with the PVP currency. So if you don't leave the safety of tower walls you wont have that currency to buy kits and those walls are gonna go down. Walls also stay down until repaired, no instaflip upon capture. You have to take something and hold it. Defending will take a ton more work and having your guild history of holding a keep will mean more. Again, competative feeling. GW2 had that in only the forums, in game it just felt like a fun PVP grind with no real impactful results.
To each their own on subscription fees. After all the PVP time I got this weekend I can't wait to throw my money at this game. If the monthly fee is that big of an issue to you, I would just forget about the game.
Don't get my hate on GW2 wrong... amazing game. And RvR in it is fucking fantastic. Just the long term meta and design was kinda boring. Who knows, after 3-4 months ESO might not be as fun... I'm basing most of this off the things I saw that I wish were directly implemented into GW2. Hell if GW2 just copied their format, I would be on that in a heartbeat.
You also fight over actual Elder Scrolls, which we only saw a tiny bit of this weekend. Think of orbs in GW2. There are no walls however between where the scroll starts and where your faction holds it. Still a lot of mechanics we didn't figure out yet. But the green dudes did grab one when we were trying to assault blue for theirs and it was a fucking epic fight.
Oh and if you wanna take away one thing in my rambling.... mobile rams and mobile camps (spawn points). They have wheels and you can take down the first gate, then bash in the second one with the same ram. Hell the siege equipment's design and controls is undeniably better than anything I've seen.
You are starting to make me want to play this game. A lot.
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
I'm interested to see how they handle the Dark Brotherhood.
There's a chance to do radiant pvp bounty missions, which players can take to actually simulate being an assassin.
I sincerely hope they realize and act on that.
It's golden opportunities like this that, if utilized, would be enough to make a lot of people swoon over something that only a few months ago people were correctly deriding as being dead on arrival. It would also justify a sub in my book. The thrill of the hunt delivered in such a manner would be a big selling point.
But what is the actual likelihood that they would do that and risk terrifying more casual players who would rather not be hunted down and gutted? It took them this long just to get to a good, functional equilibrium going with the more sandbox oriented stuff they have brought over from the ES games. The more they go in that direction, the more of a risk they take.
And then it all boils down to the usual argument of go after the casuals who leave after a few months versus go after the harder to please but more loyal hardcore crowd who'd jump at the chance for radiant PvP bounties, and who would stick with you unless you go totally pants on head sometime down the line. If they are dedicated to the sub fee, they should probably go with the latter and follow even more closely the ES sandbox style, but with MMO sandbox innovations.
Oh man, that would be cool as shit if done well. But typically, killing a player in a PvP setting in an MMO is much, much more trivial than planning routes and sneaking around to do DB missions in ES games.
@Badwrong goes out to the RvR/WvW zone and just wrecks some folks. They were alive, then he came by, and they ceased to be. When they snap back to consciousness after the vicious beating they received, they report to an NPC in their keep/spawn... A Dark Brotherhood representative who hangs out in the shadowy dungeon of the home castle. The player goes: "Badwrong fucked my shit up! I want him dead. I'll pay a hundred gold to have him murdered." Badwrong doesn't know this has happened, he's just merrily killing folks. Several of them also talking to this Dark Brotherhood representative and placing small bounties on Badwrong for ruining their play time.
Later, Badwrong (needing to get a new hammer, for his current one is covered in viscera and gore) goes to a city. He plans to meet up with @Corehealer who is with a few others, and they're all going to do a dungeon.
As Badwrong is sitting near the bank, looking over his loot and sorting his shinies, a fellow name @Ironzerg comes along and just fucking guts him. Stem to stern. Entrails all over the floor, other players are standing in the bank with jaws agape.
Ironzerg drops a little note, takes the few coins Badwrong had on him, and whistles as he walks away, a little skip in his step. The note says: "Courtesy of the Dark Brotherhood."
You see, Ironzerg was a member of the guild. The bounties on Badwrong had gotten to a point where they attracted the talented attention of Ironzerg. He had used his other friends in the guild to track down Badwrong, set up the kill, and made his move. As soon as he had revealed himself to Badwrong he was flagged hostile and the two could have had it out. Only the person on the bounty could have even attacked Badwrong in a non-pvp zone, and that was because Badwrong had entreated the threat by going out and PvPing.
When all was said and done, Ironzerg checked his mailbox and had a nice little package of gold. With a note, which said: "Courtesy of the Dark Brotherhood."
Of course, Badwrong can now find a representative, and place a bounty on Ironzerg.
Fantasy, I know. But... What an opportunity.
Anon the Felon on
+1
CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
I would totes kill Ironzerg for Badwrong. First kill's on the house.
Hell Age of Wushu had a system similar to that. Bounties and jail were a thing. Could even break out of jail, thought I don't know the details.
SWG had a bounty system too with the "bounty hunters", though I dont know the details.
Would be awesome if they could make it optional to turn that on in this though. Give it an exp incentive like C9 invasions... if you have it on you can open world pvp, but are also open to having bounties or some shit on you, plus you get bonus exp from kills or something if its on.
SWG had a bounty system too with the "bounty hunters", though I dont know the details.
There was an earlier bounty system, but the later one a while after the NGE had to do with the Galatic Civil War updates. Basically, if you entered the new PvP zones or just flagged up for PvP, you could incur a bounty. There were two parts, every GCW kill automatically got you 1000 credits added to your bounty (from the system) and optionally a dead player could add to the bounty (a window popped up when you died) up to an extra 1 million. Bounty hunter (class) terminals would should a random selection of 10 (5?) bounties above some threshold.
I felt it actually depressed PvP a bit. It really catered to the most grief-tastic of players.
SWG had two bounty systems as the game changed over time. The first, the Jedi Bounty system, is competlely irrelevent for the purposes of the Dark Brotherhood. The second system, the PvP Bounty System, could be very relevent.
Look up to the post above Anon made. That is almost identicle to the SWG PVP bounty system. You get killed in PvP, you have the option to put a bounty on who killed you, eventually the bounty gets high enough for the bounty hunters, or in this case the Dark Brotherhood, to take notice and decide to bring home a paycheck in blood. Only difference is that you couldn't put a bounty on someone who killed you collecting a bounty, to prevent an endless cycle of bounty hunters chasing each other. It worked before in an MMO, it could work again. Don't want a Dark Botherhood assassin killing you ever? Simple, never PvP, never worry about it. Want a little more open world in your pvp? Throw out enough trash talk in PvP to make people hate you, and beware the assassin behind ever corner.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
It's an online game, players will do what yields the most reward for the least amount of effort. And I imagine the vast majority of players don't actually want to suffer the consequences of being dicks, they just want to grief people and get away scott free, so unless there's a more longer-lasting penalty than "oh, you go back to the respawn point" they're likely being inconvenienced far less than their victims; after all, they killed far more than 1 person to earn their bounty, yet paid it back with 1 death.
So, what's to stop you from simply sticking everything in a bank and waiting for someone to kill you, erasing your bounty with no loss to yourself?
Absolutely nothing, except the time you spend standing around waiting for people to kill you. Heck, you could even make friends with an assassin and offer him some cash to come and kill you right now to even remove that.
The thing is, putting in a system like this wouldn't be designed to punish players. It's purpose would be to reward players who want to play assassins. Its additional content, not a punative system. Player based punishment systems never work, as the players drawn to populate them would the be the griefers most deserving of punishment, such systems should always be in the hands of developers.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
It's an online game, players will do what yields the most reward for the least amount of effort. And I imagine the vast majority of players don't actually want to suffer the consequences of being dicks, they just want to grief people and get away scott free, so unless there's a more longer-lasting penalty than "oh, you go back to the respawn point" they're likely being inconvenienced far less than their victims; after all, they killed far more than 1 person to earn their bounty, yet paid it back with 1 death.
Perhaps an escalation system where factions/guilds can start adding funds to a bounty to increase the incentive for killing this individual and making an EvE style security status but with the addition of every time you kill this person you get a reward of gold or whatever, perpetually, as long as they have a security degradation past a certain level. The player in question, if they go far enough down the hole so to speak, would have to do something with that guild/faction to make amends beyond just getting murdered over and over.
If this wasn't a 200 million dollar budget game that is by nature of that budget going to have to try to go for mass appeal, I think you would have a better chance of getting some of these cool sandboxy ideas this thread is discussing. But since it is, IMO you're going to get sandbox-lite elements but nothing approaching what true sandbox MMO people would want.
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited January 2014
Hell, what if there was no way to know you were the target of a bounty? What if the "bounty" list (as it were) was only available to assassins. You as a target would have no way to tell that you are being hunted until some dude attacks you.
To take it up another notch, what if the game just randomly generated a "bounty" list each day.
edit- What if the bounty list was randomized for each member of the Brotherhood?
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
So, what's to stop you from simply sticking everything in a bank and waiting for someone to kill you, erasing your bounty with no loss to yourself?
Absolutely nothing, except the time you spend standing around waiting for people to kill you. Heck, you could even make friends with an assassin and offer him some cash to come and kill you right now to even remove that.
The thing is, putting in a system like this wouldn't be designed to punish players. It's purpose would be to reward players who want to play assassins. Its additional content, not a punative system. Player based punishment systems never work, as the players drawn to populate them would the be the griefers most deserving of punishment, such systems should always be in the hands of developers.
It is, however, a punitive system for the players getting bounty hunted. RvR or the Galactic Civil War in SWG was voluntary PvP. Both killing other players and being killed in turn is expected, but to be hunted afterwards was annoying. Unless its an opt-in only thing for bounties like Badwrong suggests, it bad for PvP.
And yeah, the second bounty collection system in SWG did degenerate into everyone having a friend with bounty hunter character, and having them "clear" your bounty and split the reward.
I only tried sword and board combat, but loved it. You have block or shield bash based on visual queues that leads to a dizzy, which leads to a knockdown on a vanilla hard swing. Felt very kentic. Dragonknight firechain stuff to you, stab it to lower it's armor and steal some for yourself (evolving actions? yay!) chop it to lower weapon damage and snare it, sidestep a swing, block a power attack, dizzying it, hard sl;ash it to the ground, slash slash, shield bash the wind up on an ability, bash it to the ground again..
You get the idea. Like I said, this may not be a game for the ages, but I am confident I will enjoy the ride to max level at least once for each faction, which gives me a chance to at least try 3 or the 4 main archetypes. And since any class can use any weapon... and you 100% control your own stat growth, possibilities, yo!
There's an outrage over every single new ES game regardless. People will always cry how the ES game they started with was the best design there ever was and oh my god these new ones are so terrible did you see how boring the main questline is Dark Brotherhood is the only redeeming one my god they took spears away the sky is falling.
Basically, the ES fandom is made of babies and you'll never make a game that'll fit more than 5 people's idea of what The True Elder Scrolls is.
TESO, for me? Yeah. It ticks all of the same boxes Skyrim and Oblivion and Morrowing and Daggerfall did. I can appreciate it doesn't for others, people play games for different reasons, but there's a hilarious amount of false-consensus bias going on in this thread.
Man what
I guess I completely missed the outrage around Skyrim, because I only saw peeps who thought it looked cool upon announcement, especially with the dragons thrown in, and upon playing it also found the game to be cool.
Some people still prefer Morrowind maybe, but... there was no outrage? You are completely making this up
Or is it like the perceived outrage about ESO, which in reality is just people saying "eh, not super impressed"?
I think each new game in the ES series improved on the one before.
They've changed things. and removed stuff (the removal of levitate and fly still burns) but generally it's been onwards and upwards.
I loved Arena (bugs and all), Morrowind, same for Oblivion, and for Skyrim - I must have sunk 200 hours into Skyrim, easy, on PC and Xbox.
ESO isn't bad, at all, but that's a long way from being an automatic pre-order, which the next single player game will be.
I may actually end up getting ESO, a month or so after it comes out, to avoid the teething problems.
I actually only just realized it's out on the consoles, too - my PS4 is sitting idle at the moment, and for the near future, so it's actually a more tempting proposition on that.
So, what's to stop you from simply sticking everything in a bank and waiting for someone to kill you, erasing your bounty with no loss to yourself?
Absolutely nothing, except the time you spend standing around waiting for people to kill you. Heck, you could even make friends with an assassin and offer him some cash to come and kill you right now to even remove that.
The thing is, putting in a system like this wouldn't be designed to punish players. It's purpose would be to reward players who want to play assassins. Its additional content, not a punative system. Player based punishment systems never work, as the players drawn to populate them would the be the griefers most deserving of punishment, such systems should always be in the hands of developers.
It is, however, a punitive system for the players getting bounty hunted. RvR or the Galactic Civil War in SWG was voluntary PvP. Both killing other players and being killed in turn is expected, but to be hunted afterwards was annoying. Unless its an opt-in only thing for bounties like Badwrong suggests, it bad for PvP.
And yeah, the second bounty collection system in SWG did degenerate into everyone having a friend with bounty hunter character, and having them "clear" your bounty and split the reward.
And why wouldn't it be opt-in?
Personally? I think it should be a system available to those who want to do the RvR style combat. Earning a reputation for yourself in PvP should carry risks.
Like more PvP where you are not always on even footing with your opponent.
The system would be predicated on the fact that only player A can put a bounty on player B because player B killed player A. Then player C can earn the bounty by killing player B in any area of the game. The system could not be griefed, because it requires the hunted player to knowingly opt into being hunted, by killing another player.
Not every bounty will be placed, and not every bounty will be taken. Remember, for a bounty to happen, player A needs to permanently give away some money in the hopes that player B will eventually "Get his".
A casual player who only RvR's for a few hours each night isn't going to have enough money placed on his head (if any) to earn the attention of those who want to be bounty hunters. A hardcore "fuck you I'm taking your land" style RvR commander would probably need armed escort.
Your actions should echo through the game if you want any kind of agency.
There would also be many other avenues of PvP which wouldn't be integrated into this system. Only those who did the open world style pvp would have to watch their backs from would be assassins.
Plus there is an advantage of a player bassed assassination system that no one can truely appreciate until they experience it: the stories of assassins interupting cyber-sex. My own sudden deaths out of nowhere on multiple occassions under such systems were well worth it for the 'killing him with his pants down' tales swapped by the hunters.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
If the definition is "if you RvR, you've opted in implicitly", I completely disagree with that. It will depress PvP participation. The whole point of having an RvR zone and not just open world PvP is to allow players to do one or the other of PvP or PvE.
If, however, when you join RvR there's an option to allow bounties on yourself, that's fine. Players who opt in can maybe receive a bonus to RvR xp or some other bonus.
In SWG, you had no choice. If you wanted to PvP, you had to accept this wildly unbalanced bounty system.
While TSW did have quest hubs, I think some people are forgetting that you could only have one major quest at a time. Running back to the quest hub after completion was certainly one of the possibilities, but as was mentioned already, every quest seemed to terminate at a spot that would offer up something else. The end result is that you wound up running all over and exploring each zone *very* thoroughly all while working on quests continuously.
The quest hubs serve a great dual purpose though, since everything is repeatable if you wanted to run back through stuff you already did for extra skill points you had a bunch of stuff all in one place. But the organic way you quested through a zone the first time is unmatched by most other mmos.
Like Core, I also got bogged down with a boring stretch in Egypt and lost interest in the game, but there's a lot of things that they did really really well. I'm glad that some of those ideas are now filtering down to improve future games.
If there was a bounty system like that, I'd go around griefing with one character as much as possible, then get a buddy to make an assassin and let him know where to meet me to get the kill.
EVE has a bounty system, I think. I never used it myself but I saw a lot of guys with ridiculous bounties next to their name a lot of the time. Obviously many of them were pirates
Bounty pools are paid out over time, so an entity with a high bounty can be killed numerous times before the pool depletes.
Bounties placed on corporations and alliances will pay out any time a kill report is generated. This means that destroying buildings in their territory for example will result in bounty prizes.
Note: Bounties have no effect on who can be attacked legally. Attacking a character with a bounty in high security space that is not a war target and does not have a suspect or criminal flag will result in NPC intervention.
Claiming Bounties:
Bounties are public, and any bounty in the game can be claimed by anyone. Claiming a bounty is based on who has the Final Blow. If you’re in a fleet and get bounty, the bounty is shared between the fleet members. The bounty payout is roughly 20% of the value of all destroyed objects (ships, modules, cargo, implants), otherwise known as "Pend Insurance Estimate" on kill reports.
Example: If you have a 150 million bounty on you and the loss value of the kill report is 100 million, then 20 million will be paid out, leaving your remaining bounty at 130 million. If the bounty pool had been 15 million instead, then the entire 15 million would have been paid out on the kill.
Note: If you’re fighting a character that has bounty on him and he self-destructs or is killed by NPC's, you still get the bounty. The bounty then goes to the player with the highest damage contribution.
Bounty refunds:
Inactive characters: When a character goes inactive for a long time, or if a bounty is placed on a character that has already been inactive for an extended period of time, whatever bounty that has been placed on that character will be removed and 50% will be refunded to the characters who placed the bounties.
Disbanded corps/alliances: In cases where bounties have been placed on corps or alliances, and those corps or alliances disband, 80% of the bounties placed will be refunded.
EVE EVE EVE... If only you were not so dull, you would be the greatest of all
Players: Ruining fun ideas in video games since the beginning of video games. =P You're definitely right though, anything with rewards will always be exploited in the easiest manner to do so.
EVE has a bounty system, I think. I never used it myself but I saw a lot of guys with ridiculous bounties next to their name a lot of the time. Obviously many of them were pirates
Bounty pools are paid out over time, so an entity with a high bounty can be killed numerous times before the pool depletes.
Bounties placed on corporations and alliances will pay out any time a kill report is generated. This means that destroying buildings in their territory for example will result in bounty prizes.
Note: Bounties have no effect on who can be attacked legally. Attacking a character with a bounty in high security space that is not a war target and does not have a suspect or criminal flag will result in NPC intervention.
Claiming Bounties:
Bounties are public, and any bounty in the game can be claimed by anyone. Claiming a bounty is based on who has the Final Blow. If you’re in a fleet and get bounty, the bounty is shared between the fleet members. The bounty payout is roughly 20% of the value of all destroyed objects (ships, modules, cargo, implants), otherwise known as "Pend Insurance Estimate" on kill reports.
Example: If you have a 150 million bounty on you and the loss value of the kill report is 100 million, then 20 million will be paid out, leaving your remaining bounty at 130 million. If the bounty pool had been 15 million instead, then the entire 15 million would have been paid out on the kill.
Note: If you’re fighting a character that has bounty on him and he self-destructs or is killed by NPC's, you still get the bounty. The bounty then goes to the player with the highest damage contribution.
Bounty refunds:
Inactive characters: When a character goes inactive for a long time, or if a bounty is placed on a character that has already been inactive for an extended period of time, whatever bounty that has been placed on that character will be removed and 50% will be refunded to the characters who placed the bounties.
Disbanded corps/alliances: In cases where bounties have been placed on corps or alliances, and those corps or alliances disband, 80% of the bounties placed will be refunded.
EVE EVE EVE... If only you were not so dull, you would be the greatest of all
The absolute only reason that it works in EVE is that the bounty payout is significantly less than the value of the objects permanently removed from the game in the course of achieving the bounty. It's net negative exchange, which works nicely.
I don't see it ever working in any game that isn't EVE-like in terms of soul-crushingly hardcore death penalties.
I never considered EVE to have hard death penalties. You choose yourself how much valuable stuffs you carry on you. Personally I just flew stock standard battleships into fleet combat and I was never short on cash. Never saw a reason to get the super expensive stuff. Sure looted a lot of it off of other guys though
Man I really wish player item looting was a thing games would dare to try out more. You see some of it in games like Day Z and stuff but it's still fairly rare. It seems like it got a really bad rep by people who never tried it out
I never considered EVE to have hard death penalties. You choose yourself how much valuable stuffs you carry on you. Personally I just flew stock standard battleships into fleet combat and I was never short on cash. Never saw a reason to get the super expensive stuff. Sure looted a lot of it off of other guys though
Man I really wish player item looting was a thing games would dare to try out more. You see some of it in games like Day Z and stuff but it's still fairly rare. It seems like it got a really bad rep by people who never tried it out
It only works in games where loot itself isn't the carrot. In a theme park mmo you are asked to do a lot of build up for some sort of dungeon and then run it XXX number of times before you finally get the +1 sword of badassness.
If xxXXSephiroth1!XXxx could gank you and take the sword off your corpse, the entire structure of the game would collapse in on itself in 3 seconds.
It works in games like EVE and Day Z because there is no +1 sword of badassness which you must win from the dungeon of dangerously overfull bladders. In EVE you just buy new shit. Worst case scenario you go run missions to get some money to buy new shit.
In Day Z the entire game revolves around being a survivor who starts with nothing and scrapes himself up to scrounge enough crap to survive another day. Without the occasional hard reset of being killed, rolled, looted, and put back to the beginning the game would rapidly lose its purpose.
I never considered EVE to have hard death penalties. You choose yourself how much valuable stuffs you carry on you. Personally I just flew stock standard battleships into fleet combat and I was never short on cash. Never saw a reason to get the super expensive stuff. Sure looted a lot of it off of other guys though
Man I really wish player item looting was a thing games would dare to try out more. You see some of it in games like Day Z and stuff but it's still fairly rare. It seems like it got a really bad rep by people who never tried it out
Losing a battleship is still losing something that took you days or weeks to acquire/accomplish.
@Badwrong I'm curious, did you only use third-person in PvP? While it kinda makes sense that you'd prefer to use it, I almost wish that when PvPing you were stuck in a first person view.
I think a better use of the dark brotherhood system would be like a versus instance.
See you get a contract for a merchant. Well now you want to kill him.
But wait, the merchant hired a fighters guild bodyguard.
Now you go to the merchants place of business, and a timer starts. Using various environmental things and distractions the assassin has to finish the job.
The fighters job is to keep the merchant alive.
To keep the fighter from just turtling, the assassin can light the place on fire or poison gas etc where the fighter has to stop these environmental threats.
Or the assassin buys some thugs to keep his attention.
You can use different environments like putting the merchant on a path through a crowded street, or in a meeting where the assassin can take someone elses spot.
Just make sure the fighter get buffs so the assassin can't just beat him up easily and win
If you can trivialize the death penalty, it's not much of a death penalty, now is it?
Isn't that what being part of a large corp pretty much is? Oh no, you lost a small ship, have another one because it represents such a tiny portion of our wealth?
@Badwrong I'm curious, did you only use third-person in PvP? While it kinda makes sense that you'd prefer to use it, I almost wish that when PvPing you were stuck in a first person view.
Ya I used 3rd person. It would have to force everyone into first person for it to be fair, because 3rd person has a huge advantage.
Yeah, I mentioned wanting to play in first person to a buddy of mine who works at ZOS and he looked at me like a crazy person and said the game was definitely engineered with 3rd person being the intended way to play.
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The problem is, are the good things enough to justify the price over similar, and much cheaper experiences? If I'm being completely honest, it's *really* hard for me to justify spending money on MMOs on an on-going basis when I can play say, TERA, or Rift, or several others and have a full, robust experience, explore the world, hit max level, and never feel like I missed out on much. That's the biggest hurdle for me. At $60 + monthly fee, this game doesn't, IMO, do enough right to justify it. At $60 w/ no fee, I'd almost definitely bite at launch. F2P, I'd jump in without hesitation. But as-is, it still feels like there needs to be more.
That said, even as I typed this post, I'm kinda daydreaming about wandering the massive world, and those hooks are often hard to remove.
* Crafting
Definitely better than any single player ES game, tho crafting in those was pretty barebones. ESO crafting is simple, yet modular so it provides a broad range of appearances (per race, per base material tier) and upgrades. Also, for once, I felt like I could keep myself fully geared (like reforge my stuff every 2 levels) with no reliance on loot or quest rewards - but even those were useful for salvaging and research. Alchemy is most similar to ES single player - but would greatly benefit from a list of recipes your character has discovered.
* Skills/Combat
Mixed bag. I hate that there are skills linked to classes and the classes don't feel very ES to me (mainly Dragonknight and Paladin, er, Sentinel). The skill ability unlocks I like and that some of these are abilities to add to the skill bar make the combat more interesting. Its better than Skyrim's perk system and doesn't have odd things like your perk tree conforming to a weird constellation (which was cool lore wise, but bad game mechanic wise). Also, I'd have preferred magic to be in the traditional schools as skill lines and not lumped into staff skill lines and somewhat scattered into the classes.
* Open Game World
Technically there are no traditional quest hubs, but they are still very themepark like in their structure and availability. To some extent you can pick a direction and just go, but not really. Zones are very linear in design, even after the starter island and slightly larger second zone. Stonefalls is very linear even as the third Ebonheart zone. Looking at the zone maps for the rest of the areas, you get a similar sense - they are usually longer along one axis and walled in on all sides.
* Dialog/Lore
Obviously, very similar to Skyrim - seems like a lot of Nord voice actors reused from Skyrim (which is a good thing). And it has a level of professionalism that other voiced games don't. Everyone in GW2 is like they are in a teenager targeted super hero cartoon. Yeah, and some of the quest decisions are great. I tried out the alternate choices from the ones I tested previous beta and its cool to see the differences (and phasing makes the differences stick around).
* Play experience
The worst part of ESO, other than the technical bugs. Doesn't matter if you prefer single player lone hero exploring an ancient crypt or like being part of a small army of players tackling enemies, ESO doesn't deliver. They make all these small caves/tombs/mini-dungeons like they are in a single player ES game, but make them open. Its just no fun for any type of player to go into the tomb and find all the enemies dead and the mini-boss dead or near dead and the only thing left to do is interact with the Quest Objective. All these need to be solo/party instanced - because they are not designed for many players. There's just enough mobs for 1 player, but there's 10 in there.
I did one fighter's guild quest and was surprised to find the dungeon instanced. It was great, I finally got to sneak and got some use out of my bow. I snipped all the scamps. Btw, shooting from hidden did seem to do 70-80% total health in damage, whereas a normal shot was like 30-40% of their total health in damage.
However, it is an MMO - so you do want multiplayer content. And a few areas are good for this. Crow's Wood (I'm guessing the other alliances have a similar side quest to this Oblivion plane) is a great example of an area designed for lots of players. Enemies in groups of 3-5, fairly quick respawns, and some more-than-usual-trash-mob abilities.
This last thing is what's mainly dragging the game down IMO. A very poor mix of trying to make it seem like Skyrim content while shoving into a massive multiplayer setting. The devs really need to do a serious pass over what to instance and revamp the open world content to account for the MM part of MMO. And you'd think the fact there's a massive three way war going on would provide for that on the PvE. I assume the other two alliances also have a storyline which is follows an invasion of one of the other factions. Seeing lots of other players in a PvE battle against NPCs of the other faction should provide plenty of material for the non-instanced caves/tombs.
I just want to point out that the great grand-daddy, UO, had unrestricted pickpocketing.
It did not cause people to avoid each other. It caused people to be more aware.
Mostly because of how it worked.
Thus: Pickpocketing players/NPC's can be a thing. They just have to build an appropriate system for it. I think they should go for it here, ES has a storied history of thieves and pickpocketing. Seems like a bummer to just not do it.
There's a chance to do radiant pvp bounty missions, which players can take to actually simulate being an assassin.
I sincerely hope they realize and act on that.
You are starting to make me want to play this game. A lot.
It's golden opportunities like this that, if utilized, would be enough to make a lot of people swoon over something that only a few months ago people were correctly deriding as being dead on arrival. It would also justify a sub in my book. The thrill of the hunt delivered in such a manner would be a big selling point.
But what is the actual likelihood that they would do that and risk terrifying more casual players who would rather not be hunted down and gutted? It took them this long just to get to a good, functional equilibrium going with the more sandbox oriented stuff they have brought over from the ES games. The more they go in that direction, the more of a risk they take.
And then it all boils down to the usual argument of go after the casuals who leave after a few months versus go after the harder to please but more loyal hardcore crowd who'd jump at the chance for radiant PvP bounties, and who would stick with you unless you go totally pants on head sometime down the line. If they are dedicated to the sub fee, they should probably go with the latter and follow even more closely the ES sandbox style, but with MMO sandbox innovations.
@Badwrong goes out to the RvR/WvW zone and just wrecks some folks. They were alive, then he came by, and they ceased to be. When they snap back to consciousness after the vicious beating they received, they report to an NPC in their keep/spawn... A Dark Brotherhood representative who hangs out in the shadowy dungeon of the home castle. The player goes: "Badwrong fucked my shit up! I want him dead. I'll pay a hundred gold to have him murdered." Badwrong doesn't know this has happened, he's just merrily killing folks. Several of them also talking to this Dark Brotherhood representative and placing small bounties on Badwrong for ruining their play time.
Later, Badwrong (needing to get a new hammer, for his current one is covered in viscera and gore) goes to a city. He plans to meet up with @Corehealer who is with a few others, and they're all going to do a dungeon.
As Badwrong is sitting near the bank, looking over his loot and sorting his shinies, a fellow name @Ironzerg comes along and just fucking guts him. Stem to stern. Entrails all over the floor, other players are standing in the bank with jaws agape.
Ironzerg drops a little note, takes the few coins Badwrong had on him, and whistles as he walks away, a little skip in his step. The note says: "Courtesy of the Dark Brotherhood."
You see, Ironzerg was a member of the guild. The bounties on Badwrong had gotten to a point where they attracted the talented attention of Ironzerg. He had used his other friends in the guild to track down Badwrong, set up the kill, and made his move. As soon as he had revealed himself to Badwrong he was flagged hostile and the two could have had it out. Only the person on the bounty could have even attacked Badwrong in a non-pvp zone, and that was because Badwrong had entreated the threat by going out and PvPing.
When all was said and done, Ironzerg checked his mailbox and had a nice little package of gold. With a note, which said: "Courtesy of the Dark Brotherhood."
Of course, Badwrong can now find a representative, and place a bounty on Ironzerg.
Fantasy, I know. But... What an opportunity.
Hell Age of Wushu had a system similar to that. Bounties and jail were a thing. Could even break out of jail, thought I don't know the details.
SWG had a bounty system too with the "bounty hunters", though I dont know the details.
Would be awesome if they could make it optional to turn that on in this though. Give it an exp incentive like C9 invasions... if you have it on you can open world pvp, but are also open to having bounties or some shit on you, plus you get bonus exp from kills or something if its on.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There was an earlier bounty system, but the later one a while after the NGE had to do with the Galatic Civil War updates. Basically, if you entered the new PvP zones or just flagged up for PvP, you could incur a bounty. There were two parts, every GCW kill automatically got you 1000 credits added to your bounty (from the system) and optionally a dead player could add to the bounty (a window popped up when you died) up to an extra 1 million. Bounty hunter (class) terminals would should a random selection of 10 (5?) bounties above some threshold.
I felt it actually depressed PvP a bit. It really catered to the most grief-tastic of players.
Look up to the post above Anon made. That is almost identicle to the SWG PVP bounty system. You get killed in PvP, you have the option to put a bounty on who killed you, eventually the bounty gets high enough for the bounty hunters, or in this case the Dark Brotherhood, to take notice and decide to bring home a paycheck in blood. Only difference is that you couldn't put a bounty on someone who killed you collecting a bounty, to prevent an endless cycle of bounty hunters chasing each other. It worked before in an MMO, it could work again. Don't want a Dark Botherhood assassin killing you ever? Simple, never PvP, never worry about it. Want a little more open world in your pvp? Throw out enough trash talk in PvP to make people hate you, and beware the assassin behind ever corner.
That sounds boring as hell and a waste of a subscription. And wouldn't you want to slaughter your would be murderer?
Absolutely nothing, except the time you spend standing around waiting for people to kill you. Heck, you could even make friends with an assassin and offer him some cash to come and kill you right now to even remove that.
The thing is, putting in a system like this wouldn't be designed to punish players. It's purpose would be to reward players who want to play assassins. Its additional content, not a punative system. Player based punishment systems never work, as the players drawn to populate them would the be the griefers most deserving of punishment, such systems should always be in the hands of developers.
Perhaps an escalation system where factions/guilds can start adding funds to a bounty to increase the incentive for killing this individual and making an EvE style security status but with the addition of every time you kill this person you get a reward of gold or whatever, perpetually, as long as they have a security degradation past a certain level. The player in question, if they go far enough down the hole so to speak, would have to do something with that guild/faction to make amends beyond just getting murdered over and over.
To take it up another notch, what if the game just randomly generated a "bounty" list each day.
edit- What if the bounty list was randomized for each member of the Brotherhood?
It is, however, a punitive system for the players getting bounty hunted. RvR or the Galactic Civil War in SWG was voluntary PvP. Both killing other players and being killed in turn is expected, but to be hunted afterwards was annoying. Unless its an opt-in only thing for bounties like Badwrong suggests, it bad for PvP.
And yeah, the second bounty collection system in SWG did degenerate into everyone having a friend with bounty hunter character, and having them "clear" your bounty and split the reward.
You get the idea. Like I said, this may not be a game for the ages, but I am confident I will enjoy the ride to max level at least once for each faction, which gives me a chance to at least try 3 or the 4 main archetypes. And since any class can use any weapon... and you 100% control your own stat growth, possibilities, yo!
I think each new game in the ES series improved on the one before.
They've changed things. and removed stuff (the removal of levitate and fly still burns) but generally it's been onwards and upwards.
I loved Arena (bugs and all), Morrowind, same for Oblivion, and for Skyrim - I must have sunk 200 hours into Skyrim, easy, on PC and Xbox.
ESO isn't bad, at all, but that's a long way from being an automatic pre-order, which the next single player game will be.
I may actually end up getting ESO, a month or so after it comes out, to avoid the teething problems.
I actually only just realized it's out on the consoles, too - my PS4 is sitting idle at the moment, and for the near future, so it's actually a more tempting proposition on that.
And why wouldn't it be opt-in?
Personally? I think it should be a system available to those who want to do the RvR style combat. Earning a reputation for yourself in PvP should carry risks.
Like more PvP where you are not always on even footing with your opponent.
The system would be predicated on the fact that only player A can put a bounty on player B because player B killed player A. Then player C can earn the bounty by killing player B in any area of the game. The system could not be griefed, because it requires the hunted player to knowingly opt into being hunted, by killing another player.
Not every bounty will be placed, and not every bounty will be taken. Remember, for a bounty to happen, player A needs to permanently give away some money in the hopes that player B will eventually "Get his".
A casual player who only RvR's for a few hours each night isn't going to have enough money placed on his head (if any) to earn the attention of those who want to be bounty hunters. A hardcore "fuck you I'm taking your land" style RvR commander would probably need armed escort.
Your actions should echo through the game if you want any kind of agency.
There would also be many other avenues of PvP which wouldn't be integrated into this system. Only those who did the open world style pvp would have to watch their backs from would be assassins.
If the definition is "if you RvR, you've opted in implicitly", I completely disagree with that. It will depress PvP participation. The whole point of having an RvR zone and not just open world PvP is to allow players to do one or the other of PvP or PvE.
If, however, when you join RvR there's an option to allow bounties on yourself, that's fine. Players who opt in can maybe receive a bonus to RvR xp or some other bonus.
In SWG, you had no choice. If you wanted to PvP, you had to accept this wildly unbalanced bounty system.
The quest hubs serve a great dual purpose though, since everything is repeatable if you wanted to run back through stuff you already did for extra skill points you had a bunch of stuff all in one place. But the organic way you quested through a zone the first time is unmatched by most other mmos.
Like Core, I also got bogged down with a boring stretch in Egypt and lost interest in the game, but there's a lot of things that they did really really well. I'm glad that some of those ideas are now filtering down to improve future games.
EVE EVE EVE... If only you were not so dull, you would be the greatest of all
The absolute only reason that it works in EVE is that the bounty payout is significantly less than the value of the objects permanently removed from the game in the course of achieving the bounty. It's net negative exchange, which works nicely.
I don't see it ever working in any game that isn't EVE-like in terms of soul-crushingly hardcore death penalties.
Man I really wish player item looting was a thing games would dare to try out more. You see some of it in games like Day Z and stuff but it's still fairly rare. It seems like it got a really bad rep by people who never tried it out
It only works in games where loot itself isn't the carrot. In a theme park mmo you are asked to do a lot of build up for some sort of dungeon and then run it XXX number of times before you finally get the +1 sword of badassness.
If xxXXSephiroth1!XXxx could gank you and take the sword off your corpse, the entire structure of the game would collapse in on itself in 3 seconds.
It works in games like EVE and Day Z because there is no +1 sword of badassness which you must win from the dungeon of dangerously overfull bladders. In EVE you just buy new shit. Worst case scenario you go run missions to get some money to buy new shit.
In Day Z the entire game revolves around being a survivor who starts with nothing and scrapes himself up to scrounge enough crap to survive another day. Without the occasional hard reset of being killed, rolled, looted, and put back to the beginning the game would rapidly lose its purpose.
Losing a battleship is still losing something that took you days or weeks to acquire/accomplish.
One where losing a Battleship is nothing. The trouble is not buying a new one, it's having enough of them in stock.
If you can trivialize the death penalty, it's not much of a death penalty, now is it?
See you get a contract for a merchant. Well now you want to kill him.
But wait, the merchant hired a fighters guild bodyguard.
Now you go to the merchants place of business, and a timer starts. Using various environmental things and distractions the assassin has to finish the job.
The fighters job is to keep the merchant alive.
To keep the fighter from just turtling, the assassin can light the place on fire or poison gas etc where the fighter has to stop these environmental threats.
Or the assassin buys some thugs to keep his attention.
You can use different environments like putting the merchant on a path through a crowded street, or in a meeting where the assassin can take someone elses spot.
Just make sure the fighter get buffs so the assassin can't just beat him up easily and win
Ya I used 3rd person. It would have to force everyone into first person for it to be fair, because 3rd person has a huge advantage.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯