Its hilarious that their article on Archeage blatant p2w progression is still getting people rustled. I commend them on it, some things just have to be bashed if this genre is going to improve.
Originally posted by Dullahan Its hilarious that their article on Archeage blatant p2w progression is still getting people rustled. I commend them on it, some things just have to be bashed if this genre is going to improve.
Originally posted by Axehilt Looks like a fun, unusual combat style. Shame that it's attached to a game trying to have open world PVP rather than simply being a new incarnation of Subspace/Infantry/CosmicRift. The nature of open world PVP also automatically invalidates the idea of skill-based PVP, since it implies population is going to have a strong influence, at which point it's not really about skill but a casual PVP game about teaming up with more teammates.
That's not really a "nope" though. Playing solo you're completely vulnerable to the barest amount of population advantage ("bring one friend'). You can eek out a little success solo in open world PVP games, but at the end of the day you're never going to achieve anything big or meaningful alone, like you can by leveraging other players.
There are just too many games out there offering pure skill competitions to bother wasting time on non-skill open world PVP. But hey, there's a niche audience who wants casual PVP games (like open world PVP) so more power to the companies who make money off that audience. But non-casual PVP -- PVP purely focused on skillful competition -- is actually where the majority of interest (and money) is. It's a bit strange, since typically casual things result in a broader appeal than things which are more hardcore, but not in the case of PVP design apparently.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
If only MMO development was as affordable as posting in MMO forums. 22k posts, ever said anything relevant? Just curious.
relevant is subjective.
However, who cares about being relevant .. it is not like minds will change here. It is all about having fun.
Minds can and do change here, but admittedly, that probably doesn't happen as much as it used to. You see this is one of the by-products of healthy discussion. This is likely news to you however, as you would rather irritate members on this site by derailing threads with the same schtick for years on end. Or as you would call it: fun.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
That's not really a "nope" though. Playing solo you're completely vulnerable to the barest amount of population advantage ("bring one friend'). You can eek out a little success solo in open world PVP games, but at the end of the day you're never going to achieve anything big or meaningful alone, like you can by leveraging other players.
There are just too many games out there offering pure skill competitions to bother wasting time on non-skill open world PVP. But hey, there's a niche audience who wants casual PVP games (like open world PVP) so more power to the companies who make money off that audience. But non-casual PVP -- PVP purely focused on skillful competition -- is actually where the majority of interest (and money) is. It's a bit strange, since typically casual things result in a broader appeal than things which are more hardcore, but not in the case of PVP design apparently.
The niche here is Full loot PvP; it could happen in a 5squaremeter arena for all I care XD. Open world is a hoax imo.
This is why I favour solo/multi zones in full loot PvP; This means you can't be attacked by multiple people whilst you reside in a solo zone but it also:
Allows to set up traps for teams, luring from solo -> multi
Allows solo players to 1v1 or teams to 1v1
It's amazing when they shittalk and you do a triple kill and get out with all their stuff.
It would be even more amazing if the zones kept evolving/changing biweekly so people don't figure it out too easy and it stays fresh.
Please name these skillfull MMO's, I want in. They have to be full loot though, I don't care about Safety/Carebears
Tbh for Full loot PvP to work it should be PvE/crafting/PvP intertwined
Looks like if you're careful enough in Das Tal, you can just hide in tall grass or bushes until a solo player comes along. With some patience, a solo ganker could have a lot of fun there.
That's not really a "nope" though. Playing solo you're completely vulnerable to the barest amount of population advantage ("bring one friend'). You can eek out a little success solo in open world PVP games, but at the end of the day you're never going to achieve anything big or meaningful alone, like you can by leveraging other players.
There are just too many games out there offering pure skill competitions to bother wasting time on non-skill open world PVP. But hey, there's a niche audience who wants casual PVP games (like open world PVP) so more power to the companies who make money off that audience. But non-casual PVP -- PVP purely focused on skillful competition -- is actually where the majority of interest (and money) is. It's a bit strange, since typically casual things result in a broader appeal than things which are more hardcore, but not in the case of PVP design apparently.
TBH you just sound like you either a) never played a game with open world PvP or b) were just terrible at it and think that because YOU need to rely on others to get anything done that everyone else is just as bad.
Games like Darkfall have had numerous players who were good enough that they could go reroll a brand new character, throw on a newbie robe and weapon, then go roll groups of people for high end gear by themselves within a few hours of starting that new character. Oh but you're right. No skill whatsoever involved simply because its in the open world....
Hell even in non-twitch open RvR games such as DAOC and WAR you constantly had solo players and small organized groups who could roam around taking down much larger groups of equal level players and defend objectives from zergs simply because they were that much better at playing than others.
Are you going to control a bunch of territories and stuff as a solo player? No. But if youre going it solo, thats not your goal anyway. "Meaningful" is relative. Clan leaders may care about the political and territory metagame, solo players have very different objectives.
A full loot PvP game, and they're begging for KS support?
Well, good luck with that. Considering how niche full loot is, I doubt they'll do well.
Btw, KS beggers is a huge turn off for me. I pay for released games, I don't pay for devloping something that may or not may become what I hope for, and what may not even be released at all.
Have fun playing themeparks games then. Until some of these indie games take off and become successful, you won't see much variety in MMOs from the mainstream. No one wants to take the risk.
Originally posted by Dullahan Have fun playing themeparks games then. Until some of these indie games take off and become successful, you won't see much variety in MMOs from the mainstream. No one wants to take the risk.
Sure, when the alternatives are crappy niche games, I will.
Originally posted by Kajidourden I didn't realize an almost exact copy of albion was considered newsworthy.
Honestly the "Crowfall copy" talk has more accuracy Other than perspective, Albion and Das Tal are very different games. I can see the connection, top down fantasy vibe, but on the whole very different.
"Das Tal is the world’s first Open World Battle Arena. It is the love-child of a Sandbox MMORPG and a fast-paced PvP Arena. Our goal is to make MMOs fun again for PvP fans. No more grind. No more pay-to-win. No more tab-targeting. We are creating a game designed to be compatible with the busy life of an adult gamer." - All bold emphasis is theirs.
Such buzzwordy. Very trend. Wow.
A skill-based, non-grind, non-p2w, open world PvP battle arena sandbox MMORPG for busy adult gamers.
Hey guys, just dropping in with some info/responses, feel free to shoot questions my way if you have any.
In regard to buzz words, I can see what you mean but unfortunately it is kind of necessary. The section you quoted is designed as a chunk of text that someone can read in about 10 seconds and get at least a basic understanding of what the game is about. If in stead we had just the larger sections describing each individual feature, people might get bored reading through our section talking about wanting to reduce grind and leave the page, whereas they would have been interested if they saw that we had action combat.
It is also kind of necessary to have a 'formal' tone like this on something like a Kickstarter, otherwise you come off as plain unprofessional. We can't kick off our Kickstarter page with "Hi guys, we want to make a really cool MMO " Sure it may sound less buzz wordy, but we do need to communicate on some level that we are not children.
Originally posted by DMKano
Originally posted by Rusque
"Das Tal is the world’s first Open World Battle Arena. It is the love-child of a Sandbox MMORPG and a fast-paced PvP Arena. Our goal is to make MMOs fun again for PvP fans. No more grind. No more pay-to-win. No more tab-targeting. We are creating a game designed to be compatible with the busy life of an adult gamer." - All bold emphasis is theirs.
Such buzzwordy. Very trend. Wow.
A skill-based, non-grind, non-p2w, open world PvP battle arena sandbox MMORPG for busy adult gamers.
Reminder that this is the same team of devs that openly bashed ArcheAge on their own blog and are claiming how Das Tal will do it better - only for $55,000 goal.
That's pretty impressive!
Good luck to them!
I wrote that article/blog, and it honestly still confuses me that so many people cite it as some sort of PR blunder. I wrote an opinion piece on a game that I played extensively. It was honest, and nowhere near as scathing as some people seem to enjoy making it out to be. I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of the time I spent in AA, but left because of shortfalls that I personally saw in the game. If you have read it in its entirety I would be interested to hear both what points you disagree with me on, and any points where you feel I crossed the line.
Aside from that, I realise that some people feel like it is not the place of developers to even speak a single word about their opinion on other developers' games. All I can really say to that is: Why? Along with games journalists and critics, who better to look objectively at the industry than people working in it? As some people have mentioned in this thread (I think possibly yourself DMKano), AA is not a game that I would say we are competing with in any real way. I highly doubt anyone can say I was trying to bad mouth AA to try to 'discourage their userbase and gain them for myself.' My motivations for writing the article were a combination of AA being a hot topic at the time, and the fact that I felt I had a perspective that some people might find interesting.
Although I appreciate the effort in making 64 possible class combinations, there will in all likelihood end up being 10-12 that actually get played. ESO and Archeage are good examples of not having tight enough reigns on classes. I wish the best of luck to you, but it just has never worked the way it's intended to historically.
Originally posted by Kajidourden I didn't realize an almost exact copy of albion was considered newsworthy.
Honestly the "Crowfall copy" talk has more accuracy Other than perspective, Albion and Das Tal are very different games. I can see the connection, top down fantasy vibe, but on the whole very different.
True. Made that comment in ignorance/haste after looking at screenshots, etc. Does share some similarities of course, but not a carbon-copy either.
The niche here is Full loot PvP; it could happen in a 5squaremeter arena for all I care XD. Open world is a hoax imo.
This is why I favour solo/multi zones in full loot PvP; This means you can't be attacked by multiple people whilst you reside in a solo zone but it also:
Allows to set up traps for teams, luring from solo -> multi
Allows solo players to 1v1 or teams to 1v1
It's amazing when they shittalk and you do a triple kill and get out with all their stuff.
It would be even more amazing if the zones kept evolving/changing biweekly so people don't figure it out too easy and it stays fresh.
Please name these skillfull MMO's, I want in. They have to be full loot though, I don't care about Safety/Carebears
Tbh for Full loot PvP to work it should be PvE/crafting/PvP intertwined
successtory:
Runescape 2001-2007
Well if solo full loot PVP was somehow policed and two players couldn't simply damage you til you died, then sure that would be more of a skill-centric system. But that sounds unlikely to be true unless you're prevented from being attacked while being attacked by 1 other player, and prevented from being attacked for a period after that initial attack too (however long it takes to loot and heal back up to full, which might be quite quick.)
I don't know of any games with full loot PVP which weren't dominated by the major non-skill factors of population and progression advantages. But in terms of skill-focused PVP, the list is extremely long (nearly every FPS, RTS, fighting game, MOBA, etc) and notably devoid of any MMORPG offering.
So yeah, you basically have to choose between skill mattering or full loot. Of the games I've seen or played, you won't ever have both (in part because "full loot" implies the loot matters which implies the loot is a form of vertical progression which implies the game has progression advantages which are non-skill advantages that cause a game not to be as skill-centric as other PVP games.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Although I appreciate the effort in making 64 possible class combinations, there will in all likelihood end up being 10-12 that actually get played. ESO and Archeage are good examples of not having tight enough reigns on classes. I wish the best of luck to you, but it just has never worked the way it's intended to historically.
Definitely a valid point. I think one of the things that made so many class options in AA so obsolete though was that it was obvious that certain skill trees had been designed to pair together. Sure you could mix 3 random skill trees, and there would be a cool name for it. But beyond that there had been no functional meshing of abilities.
While I can see us running into the same issues, I think our combat system works in a different enough way that it might be more viable for us. ArcheAge for example relied at least partially on combo systems. For the best effect you had to know those combos and use them. This ties in with what I was saying earlier - there were class combos that were very well thought out and very powerful for some sets of skill trees. In Das Tal everything is just a matter of landing the ability and using the correct ability in the right situation. So while I don't doubt there will be combinations that are less practical, we won't have the same issue of it being as straight up as numbers on a page. I could ramble on trying to explain hopefully I am communicating that at least partially
Originally posted by Kajidourden
Originally posted by Emissary
Originally posted by Kajidourden I didn't realize an almost exact copy of albion was considered newsworthy.
Honestly the "Crowfall copy" talk has more accuracy Other than perspective, Albion and Das Tal are very different games. I can see the connection, top down fantasy vibe, but on the whole very different.
True. Made that comment in ignorance/haste after looking at screenshots, etc. Does share some similarities of course, but not a carbon-copy either.
Don't sweat it! I gathered it was just a passing comment, and to some people it might as well be the same, as the top down style doesn't suit their tastes.
The niche here is Full loot PvP; it could happen in a 5squaremeter arena for all I care XD. Open world is a hoax imo.
This is why I favour solo/multi zones in full loot PvP; This means you can't be attacked by multiple people whilst you reside in a solo zone but it also:
Allows to set up traps for teams, luring from solo -> multi
Allows solo players to 1v1 or teams to 1v1
It's amazing when they shittalk and you do a triple kill and get out with all their stuff.
It would be even more amazing if the zones kept evolving/changing biweekly so people don't figure it out too easy and it stays fresh.
Please name these skillfull MMO's, I want in. They have to be full loot though, I don't care about Safety/Carebears
Tbh for Full loot PvP to work it should be PvE/crafting/PvP intertwined
successtory:
Runescape 2001-2007
Well if solo full loot PVP was somehow policed and two players couldn't simply damage you til you died, then sure that would be more of a skill-centric system. But that sounds unlikely to be true unless you're prevented from being attacked while being attacked by 1 other player, and prevented from being attacked for a period after that initial attack too (however long it takes to loot and heal back up to full, which might be quite quick.)
I don't know of any games with full loot PVP which weren't dominated by the major non-skill factors of population and progression advantages. But in terms of skill-focused PVP, the list is extremely long (nearly every FPS, RTS, fighting game, MOBA, etc) and notably devoid of any MMORPG offering.
So yeah, you basically have to choose between skill mattering or full loot. Of the games I've seen or played, you won't ever have both (in part because "full loot" implies the loot matters which implies the loot is a form of vertical progression which implies the game has progression advantages which are non-skill advantages that cause a game not to be as skill-centric as other PVP games.)
Just to give our (Das Tal's) perspective on what we mean by skill based combat, I actually very conveniently made a video a couple of days ago.
When we talk about skill based combat, we aren't just talking about aiming and dodging (although that is certainly part of it). Skill in combat can arguably be determined by who is dead. Your point that zergs will just use the open world to run around stomping everyone they come across is valid, but we are making a point of employing game design that allows for intelligent play and different approaches. If a particular clan just rolls around in this way, join up with another clan and take them on with fairer numbers. If you are determined to play solo, avoid them via stealth mechanics and have your fun elsewhere against smaller groups. I can tell you now that I have personally been thrashed by one of the guys who tests with us, who also cleaned up 2 allies that were with me.
Yet another Kickstarter claiming to bring back old school gaming and pretending they are the only ones with the balls to do it. These are a dime a dozen now.
TBH you just sound like you either a) never played a game with open world PvP or b) were just terrible at it and think that because YOU need to rely on others to get anything done that everyone else is just as bad.
Games like Darkfall have had numerous players who were good enough that they could go reroll a brand new character, throw on a newbie robe and weapon, then go roll groups of people for high end gear by themselves within a few hours of starting that new character. Oh but you're right. No skill whatsoever involved simply because its in the open world....
Hell even in non-twitch open RvR games such as DAOC and WAR you constantly had solo players and small organized groups who could roam around taking down much larger groups of equal level players and defend objectives from zergs simply because they were that much better at playing than others.
Are you going to control a bunch of territories and stuff as a solo player? No. But if youre going it solo, thats not your goal anyway. "Meaningful" is relative. Clan leaders may care about the political and territory metagame, solo players have very different objectives.
In Darkfall I was ambushed by 2 players. I landed ~21 hits on my opponent in the time it took them to land the ~3 hits that killed me. So no, unless something has drastically changed Darkfall is a textbook example of the casual nature of open world PVP.
If you take a balanced fight with even population and even progression, 100% of fights will be decided by player skill. If you then change that game to allow population or progression advantages, fewer than 100% of fights will be decided by player skill (relative to the magnitude of importance of the non-skill factors.)
So citing "sometimes players beat the odds" is a fallacy in these discussions. It fails to address the reasons world PVP games are less skill centric (and therefore more casual and shallow.)
Beyond it failing to address the argument, any intrinsic value to the excitement of beating the odds already exists in balanced games, so what you're citing certainly isn't unique to open world games. My PS2 chars had solid K/D and (more importantly) insane SPM, and these led to all sorts of beat the odds victories.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Originally posted by Ikonis Yet another Kickstarter claiming to bring back old school gaming and pretending they are the only ones with the balls to do it. These are a dime a dozen now.
TBH you just sound like you either a) never played a game with open world PvP or b) were just terrible at it and think that because YOU need to rely on others to get anything done that everyone else is just as bad.
Games like Darkfall have had numerous players who were good enough that they could go reroll a brand new character, throw on a newbie robe and weapon, then go roll groups of people for high end gear by themselves within a few hours of starting that new character. Oh but you're right. No skill whatsoever involved simply because its in the open world....
Hell even in non-twitch open RvR games such as DAOC and WAR you constantly had solo players and small organized groups who could roam around taking down much larger groups of equal level players and defend objectives from zergs simply because they were that much better at playing than others.
Are you going to control a bunch of territories and stuff as a solo player? No. But if youre going it solo, thats not your goal anyway. "Meaningful" is relative. Clan leaders may care about the political and territory metagame, solo players have very different objectives.
In Darkfall I was ambushed by 2 players. I landed ~21 hits on my opponent in the time it took them to land the ~3 hits that killed me. So no, unless something has drastically changed Darkfall is a textbook example of the casual nature of open world PVP.
If you take a balanced fight with even population and even progression, 100% of fights will be decided by player skill. If you then change that game to allow population or progression advantages, fewer than 100% of fights will be decided by player skill (relative to the magnitude of importance of the non-skill factors.)
So citing "sometimes players beat the odds" is a fallacy in these discussions. It fails to address the reasons world PVP games are less skill centric (and therefore more casual and shallow.)
Beyond it failing to address the argument, any intrinsic value to the excitement of beating the odds already exists in balanced games, so what you're citing certainly isn't unique to open world games. My PS2 chars had solid K/D and (more importantly) insane SPM, and these led to all sorts of beat the odds victories.
Unless something changed in PS2, I don't think it's a very strong argument for highly-structured PvP. As far as PvP goes, it offers pretty open areas, as well. You'd be much better served citing MOBA statistics, for instance.
EDIT- I should add that I would consider PS2 open more than structured. Also, MOBAs serve as a good example of the way "structured PvP," specifically in games with RPG elements (abilities with cooldowns, resistances, damage types, etc.), does in fact diminish the cap on the player skill effect. The mechanic caps your DPS as well as defenses and, as such, your ability to "beat the odds" by simply being of superior skill to your opponents. I would add, though, that RPG elements do more to take away from player skill than does the argument of "structured/open world."
Comments
Keep an eye on their forums.I'm betting there will be an alpha test even this month at some point.
I'll keep an eye on it. Would love to give a try so I can choose whether or not to give more money
http://www.das-tal-game.com/post/113879778176/how-to-make-money-off-your-game-and-not-ruin
How to Make Money Off Your Game, and Not Ruin Everything
Is a great blog entry aswell.
Tackling monetization is nice. UE4 and CSGO are F2P models I can support and I believe they'll render a lot of others invalid.
Sway all day, butterfly flaps all the way!
Nope, I play solo
More loots for me
Sway all day, butterfly flaps all the way!
relevant is subjective.
However, who cares about being relevant .. it is not like minds will change here. It is all about having fun.
That's not really a "nope" though. Playing solo you're completely vulnerable to the barest amount of population advantage ("bring one friend'). You can eek out a little success solo in open world PVP games, but at the end of the day you're never going to achieve anything big or meaningful alone, like you can by leveraging other players.
There are just too many games out there offering pure skill competitions to bother wasting time on non-skill open world PVP. But hey, there's a niche audience who wants casual PVP games (like open world PVP) so more power to the companies who make money off that audience. But non-casual PVP -- PVP purely focused on skillful competition -- is actually where the majority of interest (and money) is. It's a bit strange, since typically casual things result in a broader appeal than things which are more hardcore, but not in the case of PVP design apparently.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Minds can and do change here, but admittedly, that probably doesn't happen as much as it used to. You see this is one of the by-products of healthy discussion. This is likely news to you however, as you would rather irritate members on this site by derailing threads with the same schtick for years on end. Or as you would call it: fun.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
The niche here is Full loot PvP; it could happen in a 5squaremeter arena for all I care XD. Open world is a hoax imo.
This is why I favour solo/multi zones in full loot PvP; This means you can't be attacked by multiple people whilst you reside in a solo zone but it also:
Allows to set up traps for teams, luring from solo -> multi
Allows solo players to 1v1 or teams to 1v1
It's amazing when they shittalk and you do a triple kill and get out with all their stuff.
It would be even more amazing if the zones kept evolving/changing biweekly so people don't figure it out too easy and it stays fresh.
Please name these skillfull MMO's, I want in. They have to be full loot though, I don't care about Safety/Carebears
Tbh for Full loot PvP to work it should be PvE/crafting/PvP intertwined
successtory:
Runescape 2001-2007
Sway all day, butterfly flaps all the way!
TBH you just sound like you either a) never played a game with open world PvP or b) were just terrible at it and think that because YOU need to rely on others to get anything done that everyone else is just as bad.
Games like Darkfall have had numerous players who were good enough that they could go reroll a brand new character, throw on a newbie robe and weapon, then go roll groups of people for high end gear by themselves within a few hours of starting that new character. Oh but you're right. No skill whatsoever involved simply because its in the open world....
Hell even in non-twitch open RvR games such as DAOC and WAR you constantly had solo players and small organized groups who could roam around taking down much larger groups of equal level players and defend objectives from zergs simply because they were that much better at playing than others.
Are you going to control a bunch of territories and stuff as a solo player? No. But if youre going it solo, thats not your goal anyway. "Meaningful" is relative. Clan leaders may care about the political and territory metagame, solo players have very different objectives.
Let me see if I got this right:
A full loot PvP game, and they're begging for KS support?
Well, good luck with that. Considering how niche full loot is, I doubt they'll do well.
Btw, KS beggers is a huge turn off for me. I pay for released games, I don't pay for devloping something that may or not may become what I hope for, and what may not even be released at all.
Sure, when the alternatives are crappy niche games, I will.
Honestly the "Crowfall copy" talk has more accuracy
Other than perspective, Albion and Das Tal are very different games. I can see the connection, top down fantasy vibe, but on the whole very different.
Hey guys, just dropping in with some info/responses, feel free to shoot questions my way if you have any.
In regard to buzz words, I can see what you mean but unfortunately it is kind of necessary. The section you quoted is designed as a chunk of text that someone can read in about 10 seconds and get at least a basic understanding of what the game is about. If in stead we had just the larger sections describing each individual feature, people might get bored reading through our section talking about wanting to reduce grind and leave the page, whereas they would have been interested if they saw that we had action combat.
It is also kind of necessary to have a 'formal' tone like this on something like a Kickstarter, otherwise you come off as plain unprofessional. We can't kick off our Kickstarter page with "Hi guys, we want to make a really cool MMO
" Sure it may sound less buzz wordy, but we do need to communicate on some level that we are not children.
I wrote that article/blog, and it honestly still confuses me that so many people cite it as some sort of PR blunder. I wrote an opinion piece on a game that I played extensively. It was honest, and nowhere near as scathing as some people seem to enjoy making it out to be. I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of the time I spent in AA, but left because of shortfalls that I personally saw in the game. If you have read it in its entirety I would be interested to hear both what points you disagree with me on, and any points where you feel I crossed the line.
Aside from that, I realise that some people feel like it is not the place of developers to even speak a single word about their opinion on other developers' games. All I can really say to that is: Why? Along with games journalists and critics, who better to look objectively at the industry than people working in it? As some people have mentioned in this thread (I think possibly yourself DMKano), AA is not a game that I would say we are competing with in any real way. I highly doubt anyone can say I was trying to bad mouth AA to try to 'discourage their userbase and gain them for myself.' My motivations for writing the article were a combination of AA being a hot topic at the time, and the fact that I felt I had a perspective that some people might find interesting.
Although I appreciate the effort in making 64 possible class combinations, there will in all likelihood end up being 10-12 that actually get played. ESO and Archeage are good examples of not having tight enough reigns on classes. I wish the best of luck to you, but it just has never worked the way it's intended to historically.
True. Made that comment in ignorance/haste after looking at screenshots, etc. Does share some similarities of course, but not a carbon-copy either.
Well if solo full loot PVP was somehow policed and two players couldn't simply damage you til you died, then sure that would be more of a skill-centric system. But that sounds unlikely to be true unless you're prevented from being attacked while being attacked by 1 other player, and prevented from being attacked for a period after that initial attack too (however long it takes to loot and heal back up to full, which might be quite quick.)
I don't know of any games with full loot PVP which weren't dominated by the major non-skill factors of population and progression advantages. But in terms of skill-focused PVP, the list is extremely long (nearly every FPS, RTS, fighting game, MOBA, etc) and notably devoid of any MMORPG offering.
So yeah, you basically have to choose between skill mattering or full loot. Of the games I've seen or played, you won't ever have both (in part because "full loot" implies the loot matters which implies the loot is a form of vertical progression which implies the game has progression advantages which are non-skill advantages that cause a game not to be as skill-centric as other PVP games.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Definitely a valid point. I think one of the things that made so many class options in AA so obsolete though was that it was obvious that certain skill trees had been designed to pair together. Sure you could mix 3 random skill trees, and there would be a cool name for it. But beyond that there had been no functional meshing of abilities.
While I can see us running into the same issues, I think our combat system works in a different enough way that it might be more viable for us. ArcheAge for example relied at least partially on combo systems. For the best effect you had to know those combos and use them. This ties in with what I was saying earlier - there were class combos that were very well thought out and very powerful for some sets of skill trees. In Das Tal everything is just a matter of landing the ability and using the correct ability in the right situation. So while I don't doubt there will be combinations that are less practical, we won't have the same issue of it being as straight up as numbers on a page. I could ramble on trying to explain hopefully I am communicating that at least partially
Don't sweat it! I gathered it was just a passing comment, and to some people it might as well be the same, as the top down style doesn't suit their tastes.
Just to give our (Das Tal's) perspective on what we mean by skill based combat, I actually very conveniently made a video a couple of days ago.
When we talk about skill based combat, we aren't just talking about aiming and dodging (although that is certainly part of it). Skill in combat can arguably be determined by who is dead. Your point that zergs will just use the open world to run around stomping everyone they come across is valid, but we are making a point of employing game design that allows for intelligent play and different approaches. If a particular clan just rolls around in this way, join up with another clan and take them on with fairer numbers. If you are determined to play solo, avoid them via stealth mechanics and have your fun elsewhere against smaller groups. I can tell you now that I have personally been thrashed by one of the guys who tests with us, who also cleaned up 2 allies that were with me.
In Darkfall I was ambushed by 2 players. I landed ~21 hits on my opponent in the time it took them to land the ~3 hits that killed me. So no, unless something has drastically changed Darkfall is a textbook example of the casual nature of open world PVP.
If you take a balanced fight with even population and even progression, 100% of fights will be decided by player skill. If you then change that game to allow population or progression advantages, fewer than 100% of fights will be decided by player skill (relative to the magnitude of importance of the non-skill factors.)
So citing "sometimes players beat the odds" is a fallacy in these discussions. It fails to address the reasons world PVP games are less skill centric (and therefore more casual and shallow.)
Beyond it failing to address the argument, any intrinsic value to the excitement of beating the odds already exists in balanced games, so what you're citing certainly isn't unique to open world games. My PS2 chars had solid K/D and (more importantly) insane SPM, and these led to all sorts of beat the odds victories.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Name these full loot PvP games you speak of
So I can go kill some noobs
Sway all day, butterfly flaps all the way!
Unless something changed in PS2, I don't think it's a very strong argument for highly-structured PvP. As far as PvP goes, it offers pretty open areas, as well. You'd be much better served citing MOBA statistics, for instance.
EDIT- I should add that I would consider PS2 open more than structured. Also, MOBAs serve as a good example of the way "structured PvP," specifically in games with RPG elements (abilities with cooldowns, resistances, damage types, etc.), does in fact diminish the cap on the player skill effect. The mechanic caps your DPS as well as defenses and, as such, your ability to "beat the odds" by simply being of superior skill to your opponents. I would add, though, that RPG elements do more to take away from player skill than does the argument of "structured/open world."