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« Last post by Malkav on Today at 05:17:05 AM »
Werner,
I found some problems with the base patch. After you return from the warrens, Bertrams email about the cd quest appears for non-Nossies, but when you visit him, you can't talk about it. And on the poster quest, the order of items to put into the mailbox isn't consistent in the emails and vamputil. The second item asked for is the photo, but the python checks for item_g_garys_cd.
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« Last post by Valamyr on Today at 12:08:42 AM »
Oh cool, he's going to show the...wait. Uh...damn. 
 I know, it could and should have been the full thing. But given we get info once per year or something? Id take this over a minute of gameplay stuff. I care more about the nuts and bolts and the dev philosophy than how good an more-than-unfinished product looks. Also when they the tools, you can see interesting things, like a character model, in game effects of glass reflections and such. On the bright side, this is just about the last year in the existence of mankind where someone can say "no cellphones plz". Sure, Chris, no cellphones. *wink* Glass, record a video. Highlights from the Q&A - "We try to be true to the IP, but, uhh, sometimes we need to bend the rules a little bit." - To a question about being able to PvP anywhere, Chris answers there's the Masquerade to worry about, and then points out to an earlier screenie of an Elysium. (which was a very nice Church) - Cities as landscape; they're focusing on the vertical possibilities of cities, such as jumping from roof to roof and the tactical aspects this can provide. A more 3D world than Bloodlines for sure. From a later question "The city is pretty large so you want means to fast travel but the tactical dynamics are more similar to Assassins Creed" (And nobody in the press reported this, wtf?) - Still in pre-production and in 'tool phase', as we knew. (Anyone expecting this before Q4 2016 are fooling themselves IMO) - They refuse to commit to a business model, 'want to be flexible'. Ugh. - Planned for PC, "well just have to see" about PS4. - They refuse to comment on Generations mechanics. - Probably some more stuff in the last few minutes but I dont have time to relisten to it all.
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« Last post by _username on Today at 12:02:42 AM »
Oh cool, he's going to show the...wait. Uh...damn.
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« Last post by Valamyr on May 23, 2013, 11:16:42 PM »
I was expecting this to tell us nothing new given all the coverage we read after the event, but I was wrong. This is worth listening to closely for fans. I wouldn't have been NEARLY as disappointed at the event and what we got out of it if this had been live streamed. There's some neat art and also solid signs they're a bit more serious about providing decent themepark content than I thought as of late. There's nice bits on crafting, including a solid hint that the destruction of others' stuff is an important part of the economy just like in EVE. And there's a bit on combat mechanics that reveals alot; Chris essentially told us that typical MMO combat is in @ 9:20, mentioning the system behind their combat mechanics, which includes cooldowns, interrupts, and cast times. Its pretty clear to me they're doing it right so far there. Still, they cut out the small gameplay preview the audience had, so they're still bastards.
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« Last post by Rick Gentle on May 23, 2013, 09:14:26 PM »
You have different classes (called clans). Each class has three talent trees (called disciplines). You pick your stats manually rather than picking them by the gear you equip, but the effect is pretty much the same (and there is no 'gear' to speak of, so it balances out).
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« Last post by mouser9169 on May 23, 2013, 09:05:16 PM »
It really depends what you mean by camping, all of you are so invested with the current MMORPGs and their way of designing gameplay that you can't seem to imagine anything else so you say its going to do badly. WoDMMO shouldn't have WoW's combat system, that much is obvious for start.
And you seem to have blind faith in the devs creating some system (which we've gotten exactly ZERO real details about) that is going to change the face of gaming, or some such thing. Example: dev's talking about how sitting in a bar 'shows off' your power. Yeah, great, congrats. Now how does that turn into an actual mechanical advantage for your character? Because if it doesn't, it's a waste of time, unless you just want to stroke your own ego. Ditto penthouse havens. Unless they come with larger broker access, or more servants, or something else tangible, they're an afterthought to the players at best (unless they're decorators). If I sound cynical, it's because I've seen and heard all this before: Age of Conan was going to have all sorts of cool features and gritty, 'mature' content. Stuff no other MMO would have. Barroom brawls was one much touted feature I remember of the top of my head. Major fail. Vanguard - different game, yet the song remained the same (they at least did put in 'conversational' combat). Games that did manage to go off the beaten path - SWG for one (though Lucas Arts bears most of the blame on that one IMHO), a few others here and there, get beaten back onto it by the players pretty quickly. You keep saying "WoW's combat system", as if Blizzard invented it. How about mentioning EQ II's combat system? Or Everquest's, or Rift's, or The Witcher, Dragon Age, or any other MMO or cRPG out there? All you're doing by harping on 'WoW, WoW, WoW' is showing how much you hate the most successful MMO of all time. Here's a clue: they wouldn't be that successful after all these years if they didn't do a lot of things right. Having a feature in WoDMMO that exists in WoW does not instantly turn the game into a 'WoW clone'. Combat is combat - there's only so much you can do to it - two people start fighting each other until one person dies. How they handle 'social' combat is anybody's guess. Vanguard did it through a trading card game. I don't know any other MMO that's seriously tried it. How many people are actually going to be able to participate in the 'political' game? I'd love to see an answer on this one: if you have 250k active players, how many thousands get to be princes and primogens? Will they keep 'spawning' new cities based on player pop to keep that option feasible for new players? They do it in EVE, so there's a good chance they can bring that over here. They'll need something to prevent one guild from having a 'lock' on every position in a city, preventing anyone from kicking them out (and whether or not guild mechanics are in the game, guilds will be). Any 'electoral' system will already give the large guilds a huge advantage from the start. Maybe 'killing' the prince removes him and all his primogen from office, forcing a new power struggle. You're also limited by the reality that players have to be in control of their own characters (I'm not talking about short term effects like fear or something). If you can 'block' off one area from them ("My hunting ground - keep out!"), there's got to be other places for them to go. If a player feels like they can't log on and play - guess what? They quit. On the flip side, how can you possibly enforce something like a 'private hunting ground'? You can't call a bloodhunt on the dozens of players that will be feeding there every day - and that's just while you're logged on. Mental disciplines will be tricky. This is an area I think they can get a lot of interesting stuff in - stuff that other MMO's don't have so much of. In a scenario where you have potential masquerade violations it becomes even more tricky. How they handle the masquerade will obviously matter - do you lose one violation every real life day? Clean slate after death? Clear slate every server reset (assuming weekly resets)? I'm thinking more of one player 'forcing' another to violate the masquerade here - whether via frenzy, or possession/domination, whatever. TBH, the combat in Bloodlines isn't all that different from WoW. You have different classes (called clans). Each class has three talent trees (called disciplines). You pick your stats manually rather than picking them by the gear you equip, but the effect is pretty much the same (and there is no 'gear' to speak of, so it balances out).
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I wasn't referring to kidnapping, just that camping in masquerade areas will be more hazardous to the griefer's health than the victim. Of course they will do it anyways, because they likely won't give a fuck about the rules. I'm just hoping they'll make it tedious and annoying for a griefer to effectively camp someone. Like stat and social penalties, obviously criminal and masquerade violations (depending on the actions). As well as locking out people from re-rolling a character if they die by bloodhunt (1hr first time, and the time doubles per each bloodhunt permadeath), if they quickly eat through their masquerade tallies like chalk on a buzzsaw.
Heck, if my ideas of Dementation go about (flipping enemy view, fake reversal of HP, BP, and cooldowns, make speech and tooltips illegible, and more) there will be more legitimate means of griefing.
Dementation/Potenece synergy power Abandoned Verisimilitude: Doubles Potence effect at cost of health 5% every 3 seconds until unactivated or death.
Dementation/Presence synergy power Contagious Vibes: After a regular presence effect ends, there is a chance that the effect will reactivate on anyone within radius of a target at half duration and effectiveness. Cannot be done on anyone recently under the influence of presence or the caster. Great for public speeches.
Dementation/Celerity synergy power Deja Vu: Affects caster and target, after a set time both will return to the spots they were at when the power was casted. Good counter against runners and other celerity users.
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« Last post by Rick Gentle on May 23, 2013, 01:42:01 PM »
Having to sit there and camp somebody's logoff point isn't that different from real kidnapping - don't you always have to have somebody immediately near the kidnapped victim to make sure they don't escape? I think the premise of a "kidnapping" scenario in this game would be to remove their influence from the game for a necessary amount of time. Perhaps if you have a large antagonistic group, they can split their forces - 2/3s go to attack the Prince, while the other 1/3 attacks the Sheriff, depriving the Prince of the Sheriff's personal aid and ability to contact reinforcements. Logged off, in torpor, shut inside his haven... in any case, the Sheriff is out of that particular battle. Though this is starting to sound more like feudal siege warfare than it does modern kidnapping scenarios (which actually works better!).
I don't think the combat mechanics much matter... "camping" is a strategic/tactical option, and has been used since just about forever. You put a significant force in a given location to 1) act as a deterrent (put a force of archers across the fording of a river to deter crossing) or 2) stall or destroy any enemy approaching. Modern militaries employ garrisons (strategic camping), snipers (tactical camping), and even satellites in orbit (high-flyin' camping!). In a game on the scale of the WODMMO, where you MIGHT have a fight a couple DOZEN people large*, I don't think the developers are going to manage to weed out camping tactics.
To me, griefing is based on the premise that the griefer has nothing to lose - they choose targets that are of no threat to them, and in most games you lose nothing for entering combat or dying. In a few games, moving up from Star Wars Galaxies through Day Z, the developers can easily make it so there's a risk to combat and dying (social penalties for being a combative person, mechanical penalties for dying), and the more you have, the more you have to lose. Hopefully - HOPEFULLY - if you've gotten so much power that you could go around griefing people, that means you have a lot of power to lose.. and if you enter a tough situation, the developers could make it so that you'd be more afraid of losing that power than adding one more tiny little notch to your belt. I think this is the fundamental principle of the inter-generational Jyhad.
Do I expect this attitude or mechanics to stop griefing? Of course not. Even if they made it as impossible as they could to engage in combat, griefers would find a way. But even if you have a group of six powerful people ganging up on one so-so person, there might still be a risk that that so-so person could take out ONE more powerful person... and I think human psychology has proven that humans never like to take the risk of being that one. If they keep mechanics even vaguely like we see in tabletop, there's much less of a discrepancy between a powerful elder (stats in the 4-5 range) and a so-so person (stats in the 2-3 range). This just might be enough of a change to put a threat back into beating up somebody "of no threat" to the griefer.
As I final note, I would like to remind you all that I have not specified "physical" combat. Social and mental combat are probably going to be in the game in some form as well. I think a lot of us are focusing too much on physical combat, when there are soooooo many more ways of destroying somebody in the World of Darkness. "Griefing" and ganging up on people works at least as well in the economic or political worlds.
*that is, if it's anything like tabletop
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« Last post by Radical21 on May 23, 2013, 09:54:44 AM »
Logging off doesn't solve it if they camp you, or your haven.
The game isn't going to do so well if someone is actually able to camp you in your own haven.
It really depends what you mean by camping, all of you are so invested with the current MMORPGs and their way of designing gameplay that you can't seem to imagine anything else so you say its going to do badly. WoDMMO shouldn't have WoW's combat system, that much is obvious for start.
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« Last post by mouser9169 on May 23, 2013, 08:49:28 AM »
Well either way, that shit won't fly. You can only do that so many times before you draw attention to yourself (player-wise or game-wise), which you don't want on this kind of game and the game will be very shallow if there is no emphasis on discouraging this sort of action.
Not sure what you're referring to, but if it was to my post, I was speaking specifically to a 'kidnapping' scenario Frothy put forth. The problem is it can't happen in game. A player tells me to go with him 'or else'. I tell him to go to hell. Now he can either ignore me, in which case I go about my unlife, or he can try to kill me, in which case I still go about my unlife, though potentially after a quick respawn. If I'm even a little bit clever about it I can probably bait him into either a masquerade or at least a criminal violation as a bonus.
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