Originally posted by eyeswideopen Sorry, too much power to be giving one player in a game.
Presumably, the Prince isn't indestructible, either. I can't imagine a Prince that calls erroneous Blood Hunts being in power long. The idea should be for both parties to fear each other, really.
Plus, when the kinslay-happy despot is removed from power, you can imagine the next Prince calling a Blood Hunt of their own, if you want retribution...
If as people are saying, the price calls the blood hunt for a particular transgression of the lore then it can't be done on a whim. The prince may show mercy to allies and call the bloodhunt on rivals, but it will need the player to transgress the lore rules first. As it is a sandbox it also gives the rivals a reason to topple the prince from power.
If as people are saying, the price calls the blood hunt for a particular transgression of the lore then it can't be done on a whim. The prince may show mercy to allies and call the bloodhunt on rivals, but it will need the player to transgress the lore rules first. As it is a sandbox it also gives the rivals a reason to topple the prince from power.
Right, and I'm actually betting that the action of calling a blood hunt will not be as simple as clicking a button on just anyone's name and waiting for the news. Under my backseat designer hat, I suspect that it will differ from EVE's bounty system, in which you can place a bounty on anyone for any reason, in that a blood hunt will be an option offered to a Prince only when the game recognizes that they've performed kin-slaying, diablerie, or wide-scale breaches of the Masquerade—probably though something analagous to a security rating. Such that it should be less like the bounty system and more like a player's right to fire on another in hisec. That, but with the Prince as an arbiter as to whether the game's accusation is justified.
TL;DR: the Prince can't call a blood hunt off-the-cuff, but can either authorize it when the game suggests it, or pardon the offender.
Just my suspicion, though.
Favorites: EQ, EVE | Playing: None. Mostly VR and strategy | Anticipating: CU, Pantheon
There was a question about death which was answered by confirming there will be permadeath unless I misunderstood. I'm really interested in how this will work in the end and how much of an impact it will really have on the game. It's about 30 min into the video, I tried to link best I could to the exact moment of the question.
Just watched again and I believe the answer to permadeath was "You can be permanently killed and your character removed to the game" Inderesting indeed and I'm looking forward to more info on this in the future.
i think ccp have something exciting up their sleeve. if you follow white wolf's games, you can see with their card game version of VtM, that you don't play a vampire as such. you play an uber vampire who's pretty much controlling vampires as though they're puppets. i think that's how ccp will play it which is why, in the end, permadeath won't matter as much because as they said, you AS A PLAYER don't die. i think though you will be playing a vampire, you'll probably be encouraged to have alts and these alts will be your powerbase. lose one and it's pretty meh if you've built it up.
there's a moment in the big presentation where they're talking about permadeath and you can almost see them trying to say that, but they don't want to let the cat out of the proverbial bag too early.
i reckon your vampires won't be as meaningful but will work similar to ships in eve. you simply pilot the vampires. which also explains why they're avoiding generations and levelling of characters as such.
if that's the way they go - i think this will be very very fun.
While this sounds too good to be true, I consider all games to be smoke and mirrors until I can actually see the combat. If it's another hotkey fest, I think I'll have to pass, regardless of how good the other features are.
Perma Death = no subs, no income, unempolyment line for Devs.
Actually while things like FFA PVP tend to have a negative affect on overall population, those that enjoy it will be pretty loyal as long as the devs dont let things get real crazy, and keep the game working/balanced.
I imagine we will see the same thing with perma-death thrown in the mix. It will carve its notch, on the MMO world tree, and those folks will stick ala EVE.
Call CCP what ya want, but they must be doing something right when it comes to sandboxes. They have shot themselves in the foot majorly a couple times now(BPOs scammed by dev, cash shop email etc). Yet folks keep coming back for more. Like I said, must be doing something right.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
with a game like this i really dont think there will be alot of dying and most of the fighting will most-likely be in your favor against npc's, dont knock it till youve even seen the perma death system yet maybe you keep your progress but make a new character or maybe items wont be very important anyway
Its pretty cut and dry really. If your a person who doesnt like the whole perma-death thing then dont play it. The fact they were straight up with "we are including perma-death" shows what they want their target market to be. Since thats a obvious deciion on CCP part , target game is about a mature game with nudity, gore, polotics pluss perma-death. Having that line up tells me flat out that kids wont want to "work on the curve" and bleeding hearts wont play it, cause they can die. I always belived playing VtM p&p break down on polotics was mobsters that were monsters. Clans were familys the primogen were the respected "godfathers" and the prince well was the head of the syndicate. If someone needs a reference point check out lucky luciano cause he made the syndicate by sitting all the godfathers down and making them agree to certain "rules."
Now as far as WoDMMO i am pretty sure the polotics with adding real players in the mix are going to reflect the whole mobster monster concept. I admit i could be wrong on how will people act, but hey tried and true methods of dominating a city works better then guess work. Two quick points as the mob would tell you. Only stupid people get bullets put in the back of their heads and last but not least, to some who would say perma-death as no place in rpg iI have this to say. DnD, Shadowrun and VtM all had it in the original editions. Lets face it if it wasn't for the p&p games doing well and getting the bad press to create a rpg market, then rpg video games may not of even been invented.
On a personal note I like the idea that a prince can call a bloodhunt and set rules of the city. As for me I am definatly wondering how they are going to pull this off and hope the general chat only appears in Elsysium.
The Love: It can be a great plot device for story. It adds excitement, and the risk of permadeath offers a sense of accomplishment (i.e. if the dragon had a chance of offering permadeath to players, then anyone with the balls to fight it would no doubt get a lot of notoriety).
The Hate: Permadeath favors the PvP community over role-players.
I realize PvP and roleplaying are not mutually exclusive, but you know what I'm referring to. The PvP community is mostly people who enjoy the challenge of PvP without much storyline behind it. Their priority is the challenge of PvP, while the roleplayers priority is story-telling and character development.
I'm not saying one play-style is better than the other. They're both fine. The problem only comes when PvPers are given a vector with which to strongly affect the roleplayers storylines (such as allowing PvPers to roam about and kill roleplayers, who are typically under-skilled and under-experienced by comparison). The best defense against this is the fact that nothing the PvPers do is permenant, and I can respawn and get back to my story relatively easily. So when Bob the Brujah runs around spamming "roleplayerz r so lamerz" as he PvPs everything in sight, I can pretty much ignore him and just about my day. He has some influence on me (i.e. PvP), but as a whole I just respawn and move along, and Bob's influence on me is limited and avoidable.
This is where permadeath gives an issue--when Bob the Brujah has the ability to kill me permanantly, regardless of how stupid his reasons are, then my personal story means nothing.
Furthermore, character-death for a roleplayer means a lot more than a PvPer. Hours upon hours of role-playing and character-development will be lost for the roleplayer. But Bob? He eventually gets killed, then just re-rolls Bob2, and goes along as he always was--he's not a role-player, he doesn't care about story, and is just there for the PvP. Re-rolling a new character is a mild nuisance to him, but to a role-player it's a travesty.
Even if we adopt the presumption that character-death is equally as irritating to both parties, permadeath still favors the PvPers. Roleplayers will be forced to do more PvP, direct their character's skills to PvPing and direct more of their own play-time to PvP practice. If they don't do this, they might as well paint a target on their back. PvPers get more of what they want, role-players get less of it.
If they include permadeath (which despite what they said, I'm not so sure it'll see the light of day, when the game is released 2-3 years from now), then they better keep a very tight leash on it.
I'm not really sure why they would go perma-death. Its really just like saying...
Without Perma-Death
We have this amazing IP and its exactly whats currently hot right now in the entertainment market, if we make it as gruesome as we can and as action packed as we can, no one will care because vampires/werewolvesf is the shit and we can expect a few million customers. if there ever was an MMO with the chance to rule them all, this would be the one. Vampires are so hot right now any writer can shit a bestseller if they mention vampires.
With Perma-Death
We decided that we only wanted a limited, albeit loyal, following. We decided we prefer to moderate forums with whiny posts because their max level character after two years was killed, we decided this whine is better than carebear whine. Instead of threatening to unsub, we'll have people threatening lawsuits because their invested time was taken away from them.
Really its their call, do they like money or not? Do they want 50k subs that sticks around forever or do they want to see just how big this damn thing will get?
Ok for the pvp part of it its sabbath vrs cami and in the case of perma-death yea that would bring a edge to the mix of performing raids and trying to hold down sectors or city blocks. Awsome if you ask me, planning raids not hut hut hut hike kill die respawn.
For the last post about money vrs a dedicated player base I see better luck with a strong dedicated player base then cattering to the "cash cows" of everyone can play mentality. To get the bigger demographics you have to catter to kids and easy no brain content like farming and grinds. Look at eve player base demographics subs pluss the average age of the player base a huge adult population. Since its going to be a adult themed game it just makes better sence they catter to adults. Its a very interesting mechanic of players can perma-death another player from the same faction. I can see this being interesting and chat trolls being killed off rather quickly. Oh anda they already said their wont be a level system. I m assuming its some type of point total but how they do the exp for skills or attributes who knows
I'm not really sure why they would go perma-death. Its really just like saying...
Without Perma-Death
We have this amazing IP and its exactly whats currently hot right now in the entertainment market, if we make it as gruesome as we can and as action packed as we can, no one will care because vampires/werewolvesf is the shit and we can expect a few million customers. if there ever was an MMO with the chance to rule them all, this would be the one. Vampires are so hot right now any writer can shit a bestseller if they mention vampires.
With Perma-Death
We decided that we only wanted a limited, albeit loyal, following. We decided we prefer to moderate forums with whiny posts because their max level character after two years was killed, we decided this whine is better than carebear whine. Instead of threatening to unsub, we'll have people threatening lawsuits because their invested time was taken away from them.
Really its their call, do they like money or not? Do they want 50k subs that sticks around forever or do they want to see just how big this damn thing will get?
50k subs that stick around is far better than 200k+ that play the game for the free 30-days only to realize it's like every other bland, cookie cutter MMO out there and cancel their subs. There are plenty of cash cows flooding the market already with little new content to offer the genre, it is nice to see some companies trying to break away from the standard formula.
Kudos to CCP for trying to push the envelope, though whether the idea of permadeath actually makes it to release... My money is on probably not.
Oh and also i think its going to be more sandbox style so the story is what you make really. Since its a political game odds are its going to be about holding dowm areas to gain power. This would be worth permadeath and a clear cut reason to get involved in holding your areas down with fellows from the same sect or clan mates.
CCP knows what they are doing. They also know that you don't succeed by copying competitors, you succeed by innovating. The permadeath thing sounds to be fairly rare and only for doing something that RP wise you should never ever ever ever do. (Masquerade Violations would mean exposing the secret world of vampires to humans) I wouldn't worry about permadeath, it works when a game is designed to take it into account. It means that an old character gets to go out with a bang rather than fade away and never logging in. EQ, WoW and the clones have really conditioned a lot of people to expect and fear certain things. Before the MMORPG generation, a lot of people played MUDs, and permadeath was a feature of some of them. It wasn't really that bad. It usually wasn't the case of "get ganked you're dead". More along the lines of die a certain number of times and you're dead, or die during a major gamewide event and you're dead. I'm sure I will buy and sub to WoD, just like I sub to EVE, even when I am not actively playing EVE. CCP games are just too good.
Are you a Pavlovian Fish Biscuit Addict? Get Help Now! I will play no more MMORPGs until somethign good comes out!
I'm up for permadeath.....Well not for myself quiet yet but in the context of this game I think it's a great idea. It makes everything you do seem so much more important and emotionaly investing. I just hope the game is good enough to make it worth rolling again with features that don't include having to level through the same old zones all the time. I have been playing a game called A Valley Without Wind recently that also has a kind of permadeath. When your avatar dies you have to pick a new one but you keep all the skills and items your last toon died with. The only thing you loose is your stats that can be upgraded through an item called an upgrade stone. This idea, though not what purists would want does take the sting away somewhat from loosing your progress in the world. Maybe some kind of system could be intoduced like this. Or indeed something like the clone system from Eve. Personaly it's not what I would want but may help with keeping subs. A lot of people from the generations after my own will not be used to the full on ball breaking kick in the nads that the full permadeath of a character you have worked so hard on can give you. Very good way of loosing subs I think and will attract only a cettain type of gamer. As we have seen in the past games with communities full of "those people" don't seem to do very well. Eve beeing the acception of course, even though I do not think Eve could ever bring in the intrest that this I.P will.
The devs said the game will have diablerie then it has to have perma-death. Diablerie for those who dont know is sucking the soul out a vampire to take his power. As I said before its not going to be a game for everyone. I am sure if you knock off a person with out the princes ok its, probally a safe bet your gonna be marked for possible bloodhunt. As far as the pvpers go if there isnt a way to figure out how strong your opponent is because A. hes not showing what type of weapon hes got and B. the clothes are just that clothes it makes it scary to pick a fight. Obviously in said case the gakers might pack up and again not saying you will live but you could take one out before you died and or run kill one and then keep running pretty sure the pack you out ran would be able to have a bloodhunt put on them so again its not going to be pow pow bang bang hit loot button.
I hope they make it so off the bat you point build your vamp and gain exp points like every month or something so the "older vamps" have the power over neonites. Again their is always diablerie to gain some points but again knowing a hunt could go out it may or may not be worth it. Would be a cool idea you had to skill up say for example firearms skill you had to have say 400/400 points to place a 4th dot into it. That way you are skilling up in areas befor you can drop a dot into it.
I hoping its perma-death with one main and or maybe one alt, per account if you get permadeath you automaticly get chucked to a different city. If you died in chicago and then reroll it puts you in bostons politic areana then it cant get boring. Hell by the time you made it back to chicago the political sitcho wasnt exactly the way you last recall, so now you are at a pass, the devil you know in boston or stay in chicago? I cant see this game working with politics if each account has a bunch of slots to make alts.
I am also wondering if we are going to have day and night or if its pro night. If they have daylight in game then I would think we would play our ghouls. On the other hand, if we can walk around in the daylight they might aswell add sparkless to the game too . Its very interesting they have so many options on how the game mechanics could go.
I am also wondering if we are going to have day and night or if its pro night. If they have daylight in game then I would think we would play our ghouls. On the other hand, if we can walk around in the daylight they might aswell add sparkless to the game too . Its very interesting they have so many options on how the game mechanics could go.
I'm fairly certain that they said it'll be dark all the time. I don't recall anything being said about ghouls.
It's not about fighting, it's about balance. It's not about enlightenment, it's about balance. It's not about balance.
To answer your comment. Because they are making the game for a targeted audience. Its something new and develops challenging play experience. The learning curve on the game in my mind isn't going to be that difficult. So vamps start off with what 3 disiplines or less depending on how you wish to run your stats. So 3 special powers and spend a blood point for a physical boost or a heal. I would imagine a bite, a brawl, jump and a grapple button so far thats 9 buttons. As far as guns and armor again its not that complicated a gun does X dam and armor soaks X amount of damage. As long as they keep the inventory slots to a reasonable amount not some insane wow slot bags ratio, then its not that complicated.
Heath bar and a blood bar pretty simple concept blood is like a mana bar. Look out for aggravated damage on your health bar that probally will have a wait timer on it regenerating back because you cant heal that. Pretty much fire and sunlight if they have sunlight causes aggravated damage. So far pretty simple learning curve on a game. I have no idea on how they are going to do the politics mechanic, social abilitys like dominate or presence. Again tho, as far as walk, jump, use abilitys, and all that not so complicated. I am sure some of it will have VtM bloodlines ideas in it but how much of that game probally just a little bit something a person whos played it would notice.
For some people with the whole iam not going to play a game where i can perma-die iam laughing because Mario, pac-man contra and a whole list of other games including phone apps i could write out had 3 lives thats it start over. Hours and hours were spend on those games, and who knows on the hours on phone apps or flash games. I 'll say it befor someone else does mario is not a rpg. I'd argue do you save a princess at the end? But seriously we are talking WoD a MMO they want a new mechanic of blood hunts and diablerie. Let CCP do something new in a MMO it was in the p&p games so why not. I think the only real concern people have is perma-death. Again it was in all the original p&p rpg's VtM ,Shaddowrun to name two that had guns, cars, and city life, they had perma-death. Only recently did the newer editions say "Dont kill your players and fudge the rolls."
CCP wants to bring the game back to its roots, slap a 3d environment on it and give it the survival horror feel its supposed to have. I say BRILLIANT and how awesome. If you cant handle Perma-death then dont play it. Someone else will make a friendly no perma-death vampire game, iam sure their out there right now. Why post about a game you wont play?
...For some people with the whole iam not going to play a game where i can perma-die iam laughing because Mario, pac-man contra and a whole list of other games including phone apps i could write out had 3 lives thats it start over. ... I 'll say it befor someone else does mario is not a rpg...
If you cant handle Perma-death then dont play it.
My main concern with perma-death is how easily it can be done.
In pen-and-paper RPGs, you're playing with a small group of friends, who likely all share a concept on storyline design and roleplaying mechanics. Should a character die in such an environment, it's driven by storyline, and more importantly has meaning and purpose.
In an MMO, you're playing with thousands upon thousands of other players, most of which don't give a damn about your storyline, nor do they share your concept on storyline or roleplaying mechanic. Let's face it: the majority are immature adolescents who get a kick out of ganking people; ganking is their modus operandi, and purpose of playing the game. Many of them ENJOY making you feel bad, and ruining your play experience. If these people can perma-kill you, it will ruin roleplay for most people.
They say they focus on politics and social intrigue, but I strongly suspect that the perma-death possibility will have everyone focusing on combat skills so they can survive the next ganking. After all, no matter how much fun you have playing that Ventrue mastermind, the first time you're randomly ganked and killed, I guarantee your next character will be some Brujah/Gangrel bad-ass motherlover.
If perma-death is extremely difficult, and requires the character to screw up royally in order to get it, than it'll be fine. Anything else would spell disaster.
Ok for the comment 2 posts ago about the little kids ganking and perma-deathing you to.. well death. Take poker ok now when we are sitting playing for matchsticks or jellybeans. People dont have anything invested and play hands that way. Now you play poker for money and the whole stress level changes. The hands and the pot matter, you have something to lose. The game becomes serious. Now lets take ganking in other MMO's most i would rate matchstick poker. You try to gank and die no big deal. Minor set back you still have all your stuff. Now if the ganker could lose his character, its poker for money style. There is a risk of loseing everything. If you dont believe me well look at this thread like a poll. Soon as perma-death was on the table look how many said "Nope iam not playing that." I bet a few were gankers aswell doing a quick ratio.
Correct me if i am wrong they said no levels and clothes are cosmetic. So again how are you going to judge that that person is going to be able to take you or not? How are you going to tell the rpers from a pvp person in that type of enviorment? Lets use your ventrue example they have fortitude, dominate and presence. Soak aggervated damage and the other powers mess with peoples mind, which i could see useful in a fight depending on how they work it out the mechanics. Pluss a shotgun you have something that can hold its own.
So a brujah and a gangrel, ok ill hit the ball back. Brujah are easy to frenzy with mind tricks that would suck if it makes you lose control of your character like someone just hit the random button for 10 sec or how ever they are going to work that mechanic out. Alot could happen while the brujah is in random fun zone, break the masquerade comes to mind, and a slew of unpleasent things. But how bout escaping if your not speced for combat. Gangrels have problems with surfing the frenzy aswell they lose social dots and start to look less human think nosferatu with out obfuscate. Now i dont know about you but ill pretty much bet who ever plays the happy fun no one dies tabletop less its interesting to the story, will min/ max a character out. Most likely wont play this game due to perma-death is like hot sauce, scary.
In the all out hells bells let dice fall where they may sandbox style of survival horror games. The people who play those try to take a city over or hold areas of influence. They tend to stat more rounded having more options, survivability, and also use their brain more. We played the dice fall where they may sandbox style p&p why do you think am all "HELL YA!" doing backflips and cartwheels just thinking about how exciting and challanging the game will be?
Comments
Presumably, the Prince isn't indestructible, either. I can't imagine a Prince that calls erroneous Blood Hunts being in power long. The idea should be for both parties to fear each other, really.
Plus, when the kinslay-happy despot is removed from power, you can imagine the next Prince calling a Blood Hunt of their own, if you want retribution...
If as people are saying, the price calls the blood hunt for a particular transgression of the lore then it can't be done on a whim. The prince may show mercy to allies and call the bloodhunt on rivals, but it will need the player to transgress the lore rules first. As it is a sandbox it also gives the rivals a reason to topple the prince from power.Right, and I'm actually betting that the action of calling a blood hunt will not be as simple as clicking a button on just anyone's name and waiting for the news. Under my backseat designer hat, I suspect that it will differ from EVE's bounty system, in which you can place a bounty on anyone for any reason, in that a blood hunt will be an option offered to a Prince only when the game recognizes that they've performed kin-slaying, diablerie, or wide-scale breaches of the Masquerade—probably though something analagous to a security rating. Such that it should be less like the bounty system and more like a player's right to fire on another in hisec. That, but with the Prince as an arbiter as to whether the game's accusation is justified.
TL;DR: the Prince can't call a blood hunt off-the-cuff, but can either authorize it when the game suggests it, or pardon the offender.
Just my suspicion, though.
i think ccp have something exciting up their sleeve. if you follow white wolf's games, you can see with their card game version of VtM, that you don't play a vampire as such. you play an uber vampire who's pretty much controlling vampires as though they're puppets. i think that's how ccp will play it which is why, in the end, permadeath won't matter as much because as they said, you AS A PLAYER don't die. i think though you will be playing a vampire, you'll probably be encouraged to have alts and these alts will be your powerbase. lose one and it's pretty meh if you've built it up.
there's a moment in the big presentation where they're talking about permadeath and you can almost see them trying to say that, but they don't want to let the cat out of the proverbial bag too early.
i reckon your vampires won't be as meaningful but will work similar to ships in eve. you simply pilot the vampires. which also explains why they're avoiding generations and levelling of characters as such.
if that's the way they go - i think this will be very very fun.
While this sounds too good to be true, I consider all games to be smoke and mirrors until I can actually see the combat.
If it's another hotkey fest, I think I'll have to pass, regardless of how good the other features are.
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
Press 1 for bite
RepeatActually while things like FFA PVP tend to have a negative affect on overall population, those that enjoy it will be pretty loyal as long as the devs dont let things get real crazy, and keep the game working/balanced.
I imagine we will see the same thing with perma-death thrown in the mix. It will carve its notch, on the MMO world tree, and those folks will stick ala EVE.
Call CCP what ya want, but they must be doing something right when it comes to sandboxes. They have shot themselves in the foot majorly a couple times now(BPOs scammed by dev, cash shop email etc). Yet folks keep coming back for more. Like I said, must be doing something right.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
nope vampires are considered undead (living in a dead or once dead body)
I have no interest in a game which I spend time building character only to lose everything I had achieved with a Perma Death.
My time is way too valuable to be restarting over and over. This is not an idea of fun for me.
Its pretty cut and dry really. If your a person who doesnt like the whole perma-death thing then dont play it. The fact they were straight up with "we are including perma-death" shows what they want their target market to be. Since thats a obvious deciion on CCP part , target game is about a mature game with nudity, gore, polotics pluss perma-death. Having that line up tells me flat out that kids wont want to "work on the curve" and bleeding hearts wont play it, cause they can die. I always belived playing VtM p&p break down on polotics was mobsters that were monsters. Clans were familys the primogen were the respected "godfathers" and the prince well was the head of the syndicate. If someone needs a reference point check out lucky luciano cause he made the syndicate by sitting all the godfathers down and making them agree to certain "rules."
Now as far as WoDMMO i am pretty sure the polotics with adding real players in the mix are going to reflect the whole mobster monster concept. I admit i could be wrong on how will people act, but hey tried and true methods of dominating a city works better then guess work. Two quick points as the mob would tell you. Only stupid people get bullets put in the back of their heads and last but not least, to some who would say perma-death as no place in rpg iI have this to say. DnD, Shadowrun and VtM all had it in the original editions. Lets face it if it wasn't for the p&p games doing well and getting the bad press to create a rpg market, then rpg video games may not of even been invented.
On a personal note I like the idea that a prince can call a bloodhunt and set rules of the city. As for me I am definatly wondering how they are going to pull this off and hope the general chat only appears in Elsysium.
I have a love-hate relationship with permadeath.
The Love: It can be a great plot device for story. It adds excitement, and the risk of permadeath offers a sense of accomplishment (i.e. if the dragon had a chance of offering permadeath to players, then anyone with the balls to fight it would no doubt get a lot of notoriety).
The Hate: Permadeath favors the PvP community over role-players.
I realize PvP and roleplaying are not mutually exclusive, but you know what I'm referring to. The PvP community is mostly people who enjoy the challenge of PvP without much storyline behind it. Their priority is the challenge of PvP, while the roleplayers priority is story-telling and character development.
I'm not saying one play-style is better than the other. They're both fine. The problem only comes when PvPers are given a vector with which to strongly affect the roleplayers storylines (such as allowing PvPers to roam about and kill roleplayers, who are typically under-skilled and under-experienced by comparison). The best defense against this is the fact that nothing the PvPers do is permenant, and I can respawn and get back to my story relatively easily. So when Bob the Brujah runs around spamming "roleplayerz r so lamerz" as he PvPs everything in sight, I can pretty much ignore him and just about my day. He has some influence on me (i.e. PvP), but as a whole I just respawn and move along, and Bob's influence on me is limited and avoidable.
This is where permadeath gives an issue--when Bob the Brujah has the ability to kill me permanantly, regardless of how stupid his reasons are, then my personal story means nothing.
Furthermore, character-death for a roleplayer means a lot more than a PvPer. Hours upon hours of role-playing and character-development will be lost for the roleplayer. But Bob? He eventually gets killed, then just re-rolls Bob2, and goes along as he always was--he's not a role-player, he doesn't care about story, and is just there for the PvP. Re-rolling a new character is a mild nuisance to him, but to a role-player it's a travesty.
Even if we adopt the presumption that character-death is equally as irritating to both parties, permadeath still favors the PvPers. Roleplayers will be forced to do more PvP, direct their character's skills to PvPing and direct more of their own play-time to PvP practice. If they don't do this, they might as well paint a target on their back. PvPers get more of what they want, role-players get less of it.
If they include permadeath (which despite what they said, I'm not so sure it'll see the light of day, when the game is released 2-3 years from now), then they better keep a very tight leash on it.
I'm not really sure why they would go perma-death. Its really just like saying...
Without Perma-Death
We have this amazing IP and its exactly whats currently hot right now in the entertainment market, if we make it as gruesome as we can and as action packed as we can, no one will care because vampires/werewolvesf is the shit and we can expect a few million customers. if there ever was an MMO with the chance to rule them all, this would be the one. Vampires are so hot right now any writer can shit a bestseller if they mention vampires.
With Perma-Death
We decided that we only wanted a limited, albeit loyal, following. We decided we prefer to moderate forums with whiny posts because their max level character after two years was killed, we decided this whine is better than carebear whine. Instead of threatening to unsub, we'll have people threatening lawsuits because their invested time was taken away from them.
Really its their call, do they like money or not? Do they want 50k subs that sticks around forever or do they want to see just how big this damn thing will get?
Ok for the pvp part of it its sabbath vrs cami and in the case of perma-death yea that would bring a edge to the mix of performing raids and trying to hold down sectors or city blocks. Awsome if you ask me, planning raids not hut hut hut hike kill die respawn.
For the last post about money vrs a dedicated player base I see better luck with a strong dedicated player base then cattering to the "cash cows" of everyone can play mentality. To get the bigger demographics you have to catter to kids and easy no brain content like farming and grinds. Look at eve player base demographics subs pluss the average age of the player base a huge adult population. Since its going to be a adult themed game it just makes better sence they catter to adults. Its a very interesting mechanic of players can perma-death another player from the same faction. I can see this being interesting and chat trolls being killed off rather quickly. Oh anda they already said their wont be a level system. I m assuming its some type of point total but how they do the exp for skills or attributes who knows
50k subs that stick around is far better than 200k+ that play the game for the free 30-days only to realize it's like every other bland, cookie cutter MMO out there and cancel their subs. There are plenty of cash cows flooding the market already with little new content to offer the genre, it is nice to see some companies trying to break away from the standard formula.
Kudos to CCP for trying to push the envelope, though whether the idea of permadeath actually makes it to release... My money is on probably not.
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I will play no more MMORPGs until somethign good comes out!
The devs said the game will have diablerie then it has to have perma-death. Diablerie for those who dont know is sucking the soul out a vampire to take his power. As I said before its not going to be a game for everyone. I am sure if you knock off a person with out the princes ok its, probally a safe bet your gonna be marked for possible bloodhunt. As far as the pvpers go if there isnt a way to figure out how strong your opponent is because A. hes not showing what type of weapon hes got and B. the clothes are just that clothes it makes it scary to pick a fight. Obviously in said case the gakers might pack up and again not saying you will live but you could take one out before you died and or run kill one and then keep running pretty sure the pack you out ran would be able to have a bloodhunt put on them so again its not going to be pow pow bang bang hit loot button.
I hope they make it so off the bat you point build your vamp and gain exp points like every month or something so the "older vamps" have the power over neonites. Again their is always diablerie to gain some points but again knowing a hunt could go out it may or may not be worth it. Would be a cool idea you had to skill up say for example firearms skill you had to have say 400/400 points to place a 4th dot into it. That way you are skilling up in areas befor you can drop a dot into it.
I hoping its perma-death with one main and or maybe one alt, per account if you get permadeath you automaticly get chucked to a different city. If you died in chicago and then reroll it puts you in bostons politic areana then it cant get boring. Hell by the time you made it back to chicago the political sitcho wasnt exactly the way you last recall, so now you are at a pass, the devil you know in boston or stay in chicago? I cant see this game working with politics if each account has a bunch of slots to make alts.
I am also wondering if we are going to have day and night or if its pro night. If they have daylight in game then I would think we would play our ghouls. On the other hand, if we can walk around in the daylight they might aswell add sparkless to the game too . Its very interesting they have so many options on how the game mechanics could go.
I am also wondering if we are going to have day and night or if its pro night. If they have daylight in game then I would think we would play our ghouls. On the other hand, if we can walk around in the daylight they might aswell add sparkless to the game too . Its very interesting they have so many options on how the game mechanics could go.
I'm fairly certain that they said it'll be dark all the time. I don't recall anything being said about ghouls.
It's not about fighting, it's about balance. It's not about enlightenment, it's about balance. It's not about balance.
To answer your comment. Because they are making the game for a targeted audience. Its something new and develops challenging play experience. The learning curve on the game in my mind isn't going to be that difficult. So vamps start off with what 3 disiplines or less depending on how you wish to run your stats. So 3 special powers and spend a blood point for a physical boost or a heal. I would imagine a bite, a brawl, jump and a grapple button so far thats 9 buttons. As far as guns and armor again its not that complicated a gun does X dam and armor soaks X amount of damage. As long as they keep the inventory slots to a reasonable amount not some insane wow slot bags ratio, then its not that complicated.
Heath bar and a blood bar pretty simple concept blood is like a mana bar. Look out for aggravated damage on your health bar that probally will have a wait timer on it regenerating back because you cant heal that. Pretty much fire and sunlight if they have sunlight causes aggravated damage. So far pretty simple learning curve on a game. I have no idea on how they are going to do the politics mechanic, social abilitys like dominate or presence. Again tho, as far as walk, jump, use abilitys, and all that not so complicated. I am sure some of it will have VtM bloodlines ideas in it but how much of that game probally just a little bit something a person whos played it would notice.
For some people with the whole iam not going to play a game where i can perma-die iam laughing because Mario, pac-man contra and a whole list of other games including phone apps i could write out had 3 lives thats it start over. Hours and hours were spend on those games, and who knows on the hours on phone apps or flash games. I 'll say it befor someone else does mario is not a rpg. I'd argue do you save a princess at the end? But seriously we are talking WoD a MMO they want a new mechanic of blood hunts and diablerie. Let CCP do something new in a MMO it was in the p&p games so why not. I think the only real concern people have is perma-death. Again it was in all the original p&p rpg's VtM ,Shaddowrun to name two that had guns, cars, and city life, they had perma-death. Only recently did the newer editions say "Dont kill your players and fudge the rolls."
CCP wants to bring the game back to its roots, slap a 3d environment on it and give it the survival horror feel its supposed to have. I say BRILLIANT and how awesome. If you cant handle Perma-death then dont play it. Someone else will make a friendly no perma-death vampire game, iam sure their out there right now. Why post about a game you wont play?
My main concern with perma-death is how easily it can be done.
In pen-and-paper RPGs, you're playing with a small group of friends, who likely all share a concept on storyline design and roleplaying mechanics. Should a character die in such an environment, it's driven by storyline, and more importantly has meaning and purpose.
In an MMO, you're playing with thousands upon thousands of other players, most of which don't give a damn about your storyline, nor do they share your concept on storyline or roleplaying mechanic. Let's face it: the majority are immature adolescents who get a kick out of ganking people; ganking is their modus operandi, and purpose of playing the game. Many of them ENJOY making you feel bad, and ruining your play experience. If these people can perma-kill you, it will ruin roleplay for most people.
They say they focus on politics and social intrigue, but I strongly suspect that the perma-death possibility will have everyone focusing on combat skills so they can survive the next ganking. After all, no matter how much fun you have playing that Ventrue mastermind, the first time you're randomly ganked and killed, I guarantee your next character will be some Brujah/Gangrel bad-ass motherlover.
If perma-death is extremely difficult, and requires the character to screw up royally in order to get it, than it'll be fine. Anything else would spell disaster.
Ok for the comment 2 posts ago about the little kids ganking and perma-deathing you to.. well death. Take poker ok now when we are sitting playing for matchsticks or jellybeans. People dont have anything invested and play hands that way. Now you play poker for money and the whole stress level changes. The hands and the pot matter, you have something to lose. The game becomes serious. Now lets take ganking in other MMO's most i would rate matchstick poker. You try to gank and die no big deal. Minor set back you still have all your stuff. Now if the ganker could lose his character, its poker for money style. There is a risk of loseing everything. If you dont believe me well look at this thread like a poll. Soon as perma-death was on the table look how many said "Nope iam not playing that." I bet a few were gankers aswell doing a quick ratio.
Correct me if i am wrong they said no levels and clothes are cosmetic. So again how are you going to judge that that person is going to be able to take you or not? How are you going to tell the rpers from a pvp person in that type of enviorment? Lets use your ventrue example they have fortitude, dominate and presence. Soak aggervated damage and the other powers mess with peoples mind, which i could see useful in a fight depending on how they work it out the mechanics. Pluss a shotgun you have something that can hold its own.
So a brujah and a gangrel, ok ill hit the ball back. Brujah are easy to frenzy with mind tricks that would suck if it makes you lose control of your character like someone just hit the random button for 10 sec or how ever they are going to work that mechanic out. Alot could happen while the brujah is in random fun zone, break the masquerade comes to mind, and a slew of unpleasent things. But how bout escaping if your not speced for combat. Gangrels have problems with surfing the frenzy aswell they lose social dots and start to look less human think nosferatu with out obfuscate. Now i dont know about you but ill pretty much bet who ever plays the happy fun no one dies tabletop less its interesting to the story, will min/ max a character out. Most likely wont play this game due to perma-death is like hot sauce, scary.
In the all out hells bells let dice fall where they may sandbox style of survival horror games. The people who play those try to take a city over or hold areas of influence. They tend to stat more rounded having more options, survivability, and also use their brain more. We played the dice fall where they may sandbox style p&p why do you think am all "HELL YA!" doing backflips and cartwheels just thinking about how exciting and challanging the game will be?