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One way to incorporate PvE and avoid boring collecting professions
Hokibukisa
Member Posts: 185
Alright, so this game has community as one of it's pillars. It also wants to have a rich economy as one of it's pillars, and RvR is the foundation.
I've been thinking a lot about how crafting supplies are going to be entering the economy, besides maybe raiding an enemy keep's strongbox, or ambushing a caravan.
Also I've been pondering, if the zones are sufficiently large enough to free-roam with a guild group, wtf will be done with all the empty space? Probably some way to access crafting supplies right?
Here is what I'm afraid of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNdNxb1iEV4
If you don't want to watch it, its a video of wow mining collection profession. This is as boring as resource collecting gets.
Actually, Eve Online's mining is actually more boring, but at least there you can join a mining corp and hang out with a mining fleet and chat. At least Eve's mining encourages community.
I have a better idea. (I think..) How about instead of a bunch of empty space or playing whachamole with a bunch of random ore viens, instead populate the frontiers with monster camps like is already done in daoc. The difference is, daoc monster camps drop nothing you need, and in CU they drop crafting stuff.
I know this game isn't supposed to be about PvE, but theres got to be some kind of PvE. Something you can do when theres no RvR action. You can't think there will always be RvR action or you just haven't enough experience with DAoC.
I believe this way of getting resources into the game would benefit it in a few different ways:
- Encourage grouping of complementing classes, helping to build that community we keep talking about.
- Encourage taking and defending keeps. There is no motivation to defend something quite like losing access to a valuable resource, and in this case the monster camps are those resources.
- Give each class an opportunity to feel awesome about their niche. A tank holding, while a caster pbaoe bbq's them, and the healer heals, and the bard stands by on RvR lookout duty or tells a story if its 2:00am.
- Right clicking on ore viens and flowers is boring as shit and is a solo activity.
Comments
One reason CSE was going away from PvE in CU was budget I believe. More resources could then be devoted to RvR. Though honestly I'm not 100% sure what no PvE means exactly, as I've read there will be RvR-PvE elements I believe, guards etc. So maybe they'll be implementing something like you say, idk.
i'll say that I find farming monster camps about as boring as clicking on a mineral vein though, and hopefully CSE is developing a system a bit more advanced than nodes
Personally, I rarely touched PvE in SWG. There were a lot of things to do to keep busy between crafting, PvP, creating fireplaces out of bookshelves and torches in a house. If CU succeeds at creating good systems for crafting, housing, and reasons to be social to support RvR, then I don't see why there needs to be a large PvE world? What you're looking for is down time, which doesn't have to be fighting a computer?
I find nothing wrong with gathering in that maner. It's just another part of the economy and there should be that type of stuff in the game because some people enjoy doing such things for relaxation. I can recal MANY times that I didn't wanna do much but wanted something to do while watching movie reruns and gathering was a fantastic way to pass the time as well as a great way to level up other professions and/or make money.
I like these types of things in the game because they add to the economy in different ways and if there is one thing that MMOs have completely abandoned over the last 10 years is crafting and economy - which I believe to be a huge detriment to the game and decreases staying power.
so instead of gathering from nodes that spawn in certain areas, we'll be gathering from mobs that spawn in certain areas. i fail to see the difference.
you need to mine 200 iron to make a sword.
or
you need to kill 200 mobs to make a sword.
mining rock elementals....
you would be better off with the free realms mining minigame....
kinda like bejeweled...infact i kinda feel like mining right about now...
SKYeXile
TRF - GM - GW2, PS2, WAR, AION, Rift, WoW, WOT....etc...
Future Crew - High Council. Planetside 1 & 2.
I really liked UO's harvesting: you had to explore a lot, and on Felluca it was dangerous as heck.
I dislike visible nodes in some ways. I like the idea of coming across any tree, whacking it with an axe and getting some wood out of it. Perhaps each tree type could give you a different type of wood and you have to learn the trees by their visuals what kind of wood you get out of them. The wood would have different properties and therefore better at making some items rather than others.
I like how in VG groups of harvesters can make harvesting go faster.
I like how in SWG mobs dropped skins, bones, milk, meat, etc. for scouts, even though it sounds like that would not be possible in this game.
SWG really had a great system with its harvesters and survey system. Perhaps it could work in this game if it were altered for a fantasy universe.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
well, I'd be happy if the only PvE in the game was NPC guards and wildlife that players can hunt for materials. I hope the craftting/gathering/construction scope of the game is so large that it offsets the need to combat 'dumb' PvE mobs to level up and get materials.
On a sidenote, I really hope they implement a nice farming system (as in, cultivating and harvesting crops) that could be tied into the RR system (the King has granted you a field ofland in the remote place X to build your manor and work the land). That would be both immersing and give content in the gameplay.
To farm mobs for resources equals 1 to 1 farm nodes for resources. As you said, its even less boring and community promoting than asteroid mining in EVE.
Why exactly were keeps and castles built for? Just to hang around and keep warm during the winter? No. They were built to oversee traderoutes or protect material sources either at the very location, or at the borders of conquered reqions.
You can categorize all materials on this earth to 3 silos. Those underground or extracted from earth, those grown or are cultivated and those that reproduce. That would directly give you 4 types of keeps. 3 for protecting 3 kinds of materials, 1 for protecting routes or borders.
Extraction castle would naturally be built on top or directly near a quarry. Its characteristics is direct or fast access to the mines, small warehouse space, area for continous loading for goods and flowlike exportation. Its towers are not necessarily connected to the keep, and keep may even not have 4 solid walls as the goods and equipment moved need more space than mere vagon gate. These keeps did not need to be afraid of small gangs raiding, as small gang had no means to pick pocket and joist away with a vagonload of boulders. They are built to allow temporary hideout for miners and to withstand sige only until reinforcements arrive, while being able to project bow or artilleryfire to all yards / entrance of the mines.
Cultivation was hardly ever protected with walls, but more by towers that alarmed the workers on fields to retract to the keep and hold siege. Unlike the keep for a quarry, the towers were way further out from the keep, and the keep is much more tightly build. Usually the population was also higher, or atleast grew higher as it was the source of food and thus fun and ... surviving, so these keeps were larger. This kind of keeps became castles for royals and keeps that held for years of siege.
While herding livestock was naturally combined with the cultivation areas and their keeps, hunting foraging and what ever roaming activites still built their own type of defensive structures. These were often similar or with the border keeps, for they were built location with good view over the landspace or to block a bottleneck, they were also natural waypoints for traders. The ones inside a conqured region (but not close to large cities) became trade waypoints and hubs and inns for hunters - thus more like little villages. Not likely covered fully by walls, or buildings outside the walls. Closer they got to the center of an emprie they became barracks and training areas of armies and locations for heavier industry and core economic activities. More towards the borders they became watch towers and border keeps that had natural defences built "towards" some direction, with no inclination of becoming villages.
Connecting keep type with its relative economic activity, you get depth and immersion to the world, you get natural flow of goods, purpose to own and defend these keeps. It also quite simply tells how the keep should look and how to connect resource gathering with it. Players then decide where to place the economic activity, close to the source of the material, or in the security of the larger keeps. Unlike real life, all produceable materials should be in highest demand at RvR, so the flow of goods is not only from source to the Capital, but to the raging war.
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Your guilty pleasures of doing something peacefully in a silo like crafting in your own house, or discretely collecting tigerlillies in some obscure forest, they aren't with the intention of being a recluse, but thats what ends up happening.
Its just a fact that given the option most MMO players will do something alone. Its not even that they prefer it, its just less effort. But community takes effort.
At least if they are mob camps, you can solo along side or within close proximity of another soloer. And if the grouping bonuses are good enough, there'd be no reason for those two soloers not to join forces. And then another comes along and before you know it you have a proper group collecting resources instead of off soloing those ghost-ore viens.