Think if your armor was made out of usable weapons. So instead of chain mail you had lattice network frame and metal weapons built into it to serve as protection. You could easily peel off the weapons if your weapon breaks. Have a bunch of small daggers interlaced over the long bones and such.
MIND BLOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!
Catch me streaming at twitch.tv/cryomatrix You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
I would have a lot of gear slots Head, Neck, Shoulders, Chest, cloak, left arm, right arm, left glove, right glove, pants, right foot, left foot. In addition: shirt, underwear, 2 rings, 2 earrings, necklace, 2 pocket items
The first group would have lot of 'materia' slots. The main gear drops would be something you might go years/expansions without replacing. the second group would be more ability based and swapped out for different builds.
In Everquest getting a new piece of gear was a big deal. in every MMO since its much, much less noteworthy because it will be replaced next patch cycle. By having a large number of slots you can balance long times between gear slot upgrades with periodic gear replacements. And materia act as mini drops to keep that carrot out in front.
You can't really strap 10 swords on you and move even outside combat, you would move incredible slow and get stuck in trees, doors and every other obstacle around you even if you try to strap them as good as you can.
A regular sword is not really that heavy, about 1.8Kg (in fact almost all regular swords made the last 1000 years is around that) but it is bulky. It does not help to wear armor either. Armor is generally not as restricted as people think but after running around in one for a day is rather tough anyways.
But even with PvP full loot (which I am sceptical to, you should probably go for just looting the weapon the player is carrying unless you want to make a really small niche game like Mortal online) most people will not bother with using trash weapons. Not to mention how annoying the looting will be if every player drop a whole bunch of trash items.
Now, carrying capacity restrictions like you talk about does mean people wont be carrying many weapons but neither will they bother picking up trash unless all their weapons already have broken since they have a very limited number of things they can carry.
If the difference between trash and good items is small on the other hand people wont bother with good gear instead. Everyone will be walking trashpiles and crafting will not really be a big thing.
I see what you are going for here but I don't think it will work. More then a few games have tried similar things in the past, Darkfall is one of the more successful but even it have done rather poorly. You do have plenty of good ideas but this is the weakest thing about them.
I would have a lot of gear slots Head, Neck, Shoulders, Chest, cloak, left arm, right arm, left glove, right glove, pants, right foot, left foot. In addition: shirt, underwear, 2 rings, 2 earrings, necklace, 2 pocket items
The first group would have lot of 'materia' slots. The main gear drops would be something you might go years/expansions without replacing. the second group would be more ability based and swapped out for different builds.
In Everquest getting a new piece of gear was a big deal. in every MMO since its much, much less noteworthy because it will be replaced next patch cycle. By having a large number of slots you can balance long times between gear slot upgrades with periodic gear replacements. And materia act as mini drops to keep that carrot out in front.
You want to wear 2 different kind of boots? that seems rather unpractical. Wouldn't something like this seem more logical instead:
If a game has full loot. I want the ability to screw the looter.
If someone is an epic quest grinder, there should be tons of NPCs wondering where this solver of problems and epic hero went and why their heirlooms ended up at auction. If the NPCs are properly nudged to finding out who the looter is, they should lose rights to even enter town and forfeit anything they have stored in it.
If a crafter makes an interesting weapon and then the looter tries to auction or pawn it off in the wrong town. That looter should have the guards called on them, which leads to an investigation that leads to the seizure of most of their ill gotten gains.
If someone kills someone allied to greater forces (dark or light). They should have to suffer through bad luck, karma catching up to them, and increased death penalties if the person they killed decides to call on their allied greater forces.
If I know I'm going to get killed and looted I should be able to load my character up with cursed monkey totems, curses that activate when an item is equiped to someone else, and similar.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
If a game has full loot. I want the ability to screw the looter.
If someone is an epic quest grinder, there should be tons of NPCs wondering where this solver of problems and epic hero went and why their heirlooms ended up at auction. If the NPCs are properly nudged to finding out who the looter is, they should lose rights to even enter town and forfeit anything they have stored in it.
If a crafter makes an interesting weapon and then the looter tries to auction or pawn it off in the wrong town. That looter should have the guards called on them, which leads to an investigation that leads to the seizure of most of their ill gotten gains.
If someone kills someone allied to greater forces (dark or light). They should have to suffer through bad luck, karma catching up to them, and increased death penalties if the person they killed decides to call on their allied greater forces.
If I know I'm going to get killed and looted I should be able to load my character up with cursed monkey totems, curses that activate when an item is equiped to someone else, and similar.
Actually, having cursed items crafted in a full loot game would be rather interesting. There are some questions around that that needs to be solved, like if it can be detected and how expensive that would be to make (having all players always having them would take away the nast surprise).
I am not sure about having the cops raiding the auction house though, if that would be possible all good crafted gear would be forged with marks or sigils making selling them hard and wearing stolen gear (even if you bought it legally) would mean any guard you run into would arrest you on the spot, it would just get too complicated.
If you take real life and making it like we are in an MMO. Some big exec guy in google, who wrote a book called, "Solve for happy" said life is the biggest video game.
Nonetheless, let's look at myself as an MMO character.
Weapon: Main hand = Generic pen (+20 to getting my hands dirty) Other hand = Red Bull can (+10 energy and wakefulness)
Equipment: (clothes) Blue Jeans of Polo (+1 comfort and +5 durability) A sweatshirt (+1 warmth and +1 comfort) Undershirt (+1 comfort) briefs (+1 support) Sneakers (+1 speed, +1 grip, + 1 comfort) Generic Leather belt (+1 comfort and enhances Blue Jeans comfort by 20%)
Accessories: I wrote them down but deleted it on second thought.
Mount: I wrote it down but deleted it on second thought.
House: Ranch style no land plots
Companions: 2 year-old boy (+20 cute, +20 annoying, + 10 to money expenditure, + 100 to happiness)
Wife: (+10 cute . . .decreases with age, +10-100 annoying . . . completely random, +50 to money expenditure, +20 to - 20 to happiness . . . completely random but inversely proportional to annoying)
Skills: Will pickup archery this friday - will meet NPC's for my beginner class Beginner golfer - But I suck Adept Video Gamer
Profession: (non-combatant) I wrote it down but deleted it on second thought.
Cryomatrix
Catch me streaming at twitch.tv/cryomatrix You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
If you take real life and making it like we are in an MMO. Some big exec guy in google, who wrote a book called, "Solve for happy" said life is the biggest video game.
Nonetheless, let's look at myself as an MMO character.
Weapon: Main hand = Generic pen (+20 to getting my hands dirty) Other hand = Red Bull can (+10 energy and wakefulness)
Equipment: (clothes) Blue Jeans of Polo (+1 comfort and +5 durability) A sweatshirt (+1 warmth and +1 comfort) Undershirt (+1 comfort) briefs (+1 support) Sneakers (+1 speed, +1 grip, + 1 comfort) Generic Leather belt (+1 comfort and enhances Blue Jeans comfort by 20%)
Accessories: I wrote them down but deleted it on second thought.
Mount: I wrote it down but deleted it on second thought.
House: Ranch style no land plots
Companions: 2 year-old boy (+20 cute, +20 annoying, + 10 to money expenditure, + 100 to happiness)
Wife: (+10 cute . . .decreases with age, +10-100 annoying . . . completely random, +50 to money expenditure, +20 to - 20 to happiness . . . completely random but inversely proportional to annoying)
Skills: Will pickup archery this friday - will meet NPC's for my beginner class Beginner golfer - But I suck Adept Video Gamer
Profession: (non-combatant) I wrote it down but deleted it on second thought.
Cryomatrix
Nah, typical pay2win game with a boring story and not enough combat.
Of course there is an exception: There is a pen and paper RPG called "Cthulhu now" with the basic story that you and your friends go over to a friends house to play Call of Cthulhu. For some reason does the GM not show up and instead some weird things happen...
You basically play yourself in Lovecrafts IP and survival possibilities is about as expected there. That could be a fun MMORPG.
So essentially to use an item in combat you would need to have it actually equipped to your character. Once it's equipped you can use a hotkey to activate it, which will also bring up the skillbar for that weapon's abilities.
Given that I'm undecided if I would go with standard medieval high-fantasy or emergent firearms lets talk in emergent firearms ruleset to make things more comparable to real life experiences. You have a standard fighter who's carrying spare weapons but nothing unreasonable. Rifle, pistol, and tomahawk. When the enemy is at a range he has the rifle out, but the enemy is moving in toward melee so he hit's the hotkey to swap to pistol/tomahawk for a more close range combat style. This is a quick swap. Putting the rifle away (instead of just throwing it down) probably costs some extra time but overall we are talking 1-3 seconds per change in combat style because all the weapons are equipped.
However say the fighter is on their way back from combat and has looted a ton of weapons. In order to carry those with as few penalties as possible they would either be in inventory or on a cart. Inventory means it's packed away in a backpack, and if you've ever been camping you know that your pack generally isn't too easy to dig through. Getting into either of these would require a timered action that would be interrupted by any combat damage. So he could potentially use this to pack extra weapons but it won't be at all useful in the heat of combat.
______
As for the solution for your inventory I mentioned it earlier.
If the user chooses they could break looted gear into materials during the looting process. They can even automate this so that they break down any item other than guns as they loot them by going to salvage options, saying "salvage all" and then unchecking guns. And then if they get guns they don't need they can just manually salvage them after looting them.
The big thing is I care a lot about immersion. The idea you could be down a weapon or piece of armor, loot an enemy who had those things, and then not be able to acquire it because I've left out all lootable weapons, armor and tools doesn't sit well with me. That's about as bad as looting coin purses from wolves.
So essentially to use an item in combat you would need to have it actually equipped to your character. Once it's equipped you can use a hotkey to activate it, which will also bring up the skillbar for that weapon's abilities.
Given that I'm undecided if I would go with standard medieval high-fantasy or emergent firearms lets talk in emergent firearms ruleset to make things more comparable to real life experiences. You have a standard fighter who's carrying spare weapons but nothing unreasonable. Rifle, pistol, and tomahawk. When the enemy is at a range he has the rifle out, but the enemy is moving in toward melee so he hit's the hotkey to swap to pistol/tomahawk for a more close range combat style. This is a quick swap. Putting the rifle away (instead of just throwing it down) probably costs some extra time but overall we are talking 1-3 seconds per change in combat style because all the weapons are equipped.
However say the fighter is on their way back from combat and has looted a ton of weapons. In order to carry those with as few penalties as possible they would either be in inventory or on a cart. Inventory means it's packed away in a backpack, and if you've ever been camping you know that your pack generally isn't too easy to dig through. Getting into either of these would require a timered action that would be interrupted by any combat damage. So he could potentially use this to pack extra weapons but it won't be at all useful in the heat of combat.
______
As for the solution for your inventory I mentioned it earlier.
If the user chooses they could break looted gear into materials during the looting process. They can even automate this so that they break down any item other than guns as they loot them by going to salvage options, saying "salvage all" and then unchecking guns. And then if they get guns they don't need they can just manually salvage them after looting them.
The big thing is I care a lot about immersion. The idea you could be down a weapon or piece of armor, loot an enemy who had those things, and then not be able to acquire it because I've left out all lootable weapons, armor and tools doesn't sit well with me. That's about as bad as looting coin purses from wolves.
That sounds good.
I would avoid high fantasy though since it has been done. Something like low fantasy with musketeers have far higher potential to stand out and your mechanics seems fitting for something a bit more realistic then high fanatsy.
I guess field salvaging would work, particularly if you can set that on automatic so I wont have to bother sorting through the crap every 5th mob or so. Even then the mats will fill up an backpack rather quick.
Having someone drop 100% of what they carry all the time seems a bit annoying though. Realistic but annoying. You would have to have a realistic carrying capacity for that but even then I would have to filter through a lot of crap.
I see it as the mob just drop the useable stuff, while you could in theory loot a goblins clothes and all their gear most of it would be smelly and rather not useful. I am not sure what I would do with goblin underwear besides burning them.
I think a lot of that is due to the issue people feel the need to loot everything, and a lot of that is due to the fact that "loot everything" is one click while selective dragging is a multistep process. Some form of system for filtering results based certain criteria could help a lot with that as well. I mean it's not like if you were living in the post apocalyptic world and had to kill someone in self defense you're going to take their underwear most likely. But you could. If you wanted to.
I think a lot of that is due to the issue people feel the need to loot everything, and a lot of that is due to the fact that "loot everything" is one click while selective dragging is a multistep process. Some form of system for filtering results based certain criteria could help a lot with that as well. I mean it's not like if you were living in the post apocalyptic world and had to kill someone in self defense you're going to take their underwear most likely. But you could. If you wanted to.
That makes sense. With some limitations on how much crap you could carry people would have to pick the stuff they need or earn most on instead of everything anyways.
I am not sure how "adventurer friendly" a wagon really is either. A dungeon would hardly have a well maintained road to it after all and taking a historical wagon is work enough on a road, they aren't exactlt a landrover or dirtbike not to mention that leaving animals outside a dungeon without guards seems risky at best. Highway men and hungry monsters would most likely mean you loose it often.
To keep things somewhat realistic. If there was a high fantasy setting world, then the likelihood that the villains would be living in a nasty dungeon is remote.
Most likely, they would be in the middle of a city in a majestic palace of some sort. (Think GoT).
In the real world, there are evil people everywhere and I'm sure the most evil are living in luxury in some palace. It is difficult to influence the world when you're in a dungeon . Those that influence the world the most are those with money . . . and they don't live in dungeons .
Just a thought.
Also, funny on life being Pay2win, it actually isn't pay2win even though it helps. Once you're above a certain number of income, your happiness doesn't really change. So it's more like, pay2reach-a-certain-point and then whatever.
This talk of full-loot PvP makes me want to see about getting back into Mortal Online. I honestly thought that was one of the better games I've played in terms of depth and "challenge". Too bad not enough people play it.
It would be nice if a AAA studio built something like it with wonderful graphics and it had a good population. I remember playing about 1.5 years ago and you'd see the same 30-50 people in the main town and that was it.
Cryomatrix
Catch me streaming at twitch.tv/cryomatrix You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
One thing I do like is level restrictions on gear, and 5 level divisions are fine, as long as you make sure the player can't zoom through the first 10 levels. It's important, though, that recipes for gear be available from monsters about 10 levels below the gear's level; that's to give the player or group of players time to gather up resources to craft it/them.
I want to help design and develop a PvE-focused, solo-friendly, sandpark MMO which combines crafting, monster hunting, and story. So PM me if you are starting one.
I think a lot of that is due to the issue people feel the need to loot everything, and a lot of that is due to the fact that "loot everything" is one click while selective dragging is a multistep process. Some form of system for filtering results based certain criteria could help a lot with that as well. I mean it's not like if you were living in the post apocalyptic world and had to kill someone in self defense you're going to take their underwear most likely. But you could. If you wanted to.
That makes sense. With some limitations on how much crap you could carry people would have to pick the stuff they need or earn most on instead of everything anyways.
I am not sure how "adventurer friendly" a wagon really is either. A dungeon would hardly have a well maintained road to it after all and taking a historical wagon is work enough on a road, they aren't exactlt a landrover or dirtbike not to mention that leaving animals outside a dungeon without guards seems risky at best. Highway men and hungry monsters would most likely mean you loose it often.
The wagon/cart/mule thing is because NPC henchman are actually a huge part of the focus of my MMO. You can kind of see that when I talk about resource extraction. It's a fairly common and intended mechanic that you would hire NPCs to carry loot for you. The terrain would certainly play a factor but it wouldn't preclude all forms. Pack animals could go through terrain most carts could not, and hirelings with backpacks could navigate almost anything. And there would likely be specialized pack animals eventually that might actually assist in getting through rough terrain (Camals, llamas, etc.).
Of course porter hirelings would fare very poorly in combat so they could still be a liability in some ways, especially in dangerous territory, but that's intended.
The wagon/cart/mule thing is because NPC henchman are actually a huge part of the focus of my MMO. You can kind of see that when I talk about resource extraction. It's a fairly common and intended mechanic that you would hire NPCs to carry loot for you. The terrain would certainly play a factor but it wouldn't preclude all forms. Pack animals could go through terrain most carts could not, and hirelings with backpacks could navigate almost anything. And there would likely be specialized pack animals eventually that might actually assist in getting through rough terrain (Camals, llamas, etc.).
Of course porter hirelings would fare very poorly in combat so they could still be a liability in some ways, especially in dangerous territory, but that's intended.
A donkey or a Nodwick would certainly work fine except maybe in certain places in really terrible terrain where a sensible adventurer would park their donkey or henchmen at the nearest village or farm (peasants loves taking care of adventurers stuff, those people pay in gold instead of copper or chickens).
I was just interesting on what would happen if a group enter a dungeon in a PvP zone, could anyone just loot their stuff outside the dungeon? Cryomatrix said:
To keep things somewhat realistic. If there was a high fantasy setting world, then the likelihood that the villains would be living in a nasty dungeon is remote.
Most likely, they would be in the middle of a city in a majestic palace of some sort. (Think GoT).
In the real world, there are evil people everywhere and I'm sure the most evil are living in luxury in some palace. It is difficult to influence the world when you're in a dungeon . Those that influence the world the most are those with money . . . and they don't live in dungeons .
Just a thought.
Also, funny on life being Pay2win, it actually isn't pay2win even though it helps. Once you're above a certain number of income, your happiness doesn't really change. So it's more like, pay2reach-a-certain-point and then whatever.
This talk of full-loot PvP makes me want to see about getting back into Mortal Online. I honestly thought that was one of the better games I've played in terms of depth and "challenge". Too bad not enough people play it.
It would be nice if a AAA studio built something like it with wonderful graphics and it had a good population. I remember playing about 1.5 years ago and you'd see the same 30-50 people in the main town and that was it.
Cryomatrix
Does the Bora Bora caves tell you anything? More then a few wanted IRL men have actually lived in caves at some points. Ask a Vietnam vet about tunnels filled with traps and hostiles (note that I don't call anyone in those caves for "evil", no politics here, Mod).
There are certainlly more bad guys today living in fancy houses then in dungeons but what else would you call Saddams bunker complex?
If you pay a certain amount in any pay2win game you wont get better at least until they release new content so it is the same.
There is a reason Mortal online have so few players, FFA full loot PvP games get that problem. Faction based games where you only can loot a limited number of things from people can be different (Lineage proved that if nothing all and it even have FFA on PvP servers while faction based PvP on "PvE" servers),
There will never (well, never is a long time, in the foreseeable future at least) be a AAA game like Mortal online, UO is the closest and it wouldn't work today either. There is just too few players interested in that kind of gameplay.
Kylerans ideas about limitations have more potential then that but I think he still will have to put some limiters on it to get enough players, like PvE servers or a Lineage like lock on looting gear from other players.
I meet the devs from Mortal online, lived in the same place as them for a long time and some of their ideas were good but low budget together with what I mentioned earlier made the game a small niche game. Lack of good programmers didn't help either, people like that is hard to get and in Malmö almost all of them work for Massive.
Too much unnecessary realistic kill the game fast . And I rather prefer less slots to equip things instead of over 10 equip slot like most game . Thing are easy to balance when there are less work to do .
The wagon/cart/mule thing is because NPC henchman are actually a huge part of the focus of my MMO. You can kind of see that when I talk about resource extraction. It's a fairly common and intended mechanic that you would hire NPCs to carry loot for you. The terrain would certainly play a factor but it wouldn't preclude all forms. Pack animals could go through terrain most carts could not, and hirelings with backpacks could navigate almost anything. And there would likely be specialized pack animals eventually that might actually assist in getting through rough terrain (Camals, llamas, etc.).
Of course porter hirelings would fare very poorly in combat so they could still be a liability in some ways, especially in dangerous territory, but that's intended.
A donkey or a Nodwick would certainly work fine except maybe in certain places in really terrible terrain where a sensible adventurer would park their donkey or henchmen at the nearest village or farm (peasants loves taking care of adventurers stuff, those people pay in gold instead of copper or chickens).
I was just interesting on what would happen if a group enter a dungeon in a PvP zone, could anyone just loot their stuff outside the dungeon?
This is one of the issues where I think fun and realism clash. Realism would dictate that your little wagon train is always attackable. Fun would dictate that having people come kill all your pack animals while you are running a dungeon is not fun, and having to leave them at the nearest town is a pain in the butt when you need them to haul your loot home.
I would probably have a mechanic where you "help them hide in a nearby cave". AKA, they disappear and can't be touched by anyone until you come back to retrieve them. This would also mean if you were running from PvP you could stash your crap in a dungeon. But hey, if you make it to the dungeon alive and have time to pull this off while being pursued in PvP... I'm ok with that.
The real drawback is if you have a hauler terrain it slows you down and make you stick out. If you dungeon in a PvP area your loot will be exposed as you haul it home. So that's your real drawback. People crashing your empty haulers while you are in the dungeon just to be jerks is a bit excessive to allow.
Too much unnecessary realistic kill the game fast . And I rather prefer less slots to equip things instead of over 10 equip slot like most game . Thing are easy to balance when there are less work to do .
It is a matter of how often you need to replace that gear.
I rather have 50 gear slots then a single one I have to replace every 3 minutes.
I also rather have more armor slots and get rid of the silly earring/trinkets slot. No barbarian (particularly male) with self-estem would go around with enough jewelrt to shock Dame Edna. Well, Mr T would but he is so awesome I let him get away with it.
Having a zillion armor pieces you constantly needs to replace is a bother. However with more pieces you can make the gear last longer until you need to replace it without annoying those people who want gear as quests rewards and common drops.
And that is not about realism as such, it is just more logical to have your slots after actual armor. Otherwise it would be smarter to just have a single slot for armor, the Gods know that if you use D&Ds equipped magical item slots they are more then enough and far more then any MMO have, even D&DD 5.0 (not that there you can only have 3 powerful items though but many less so).
Too much unnecessary realistic kill the game fast . And I rather prefer less slots to equip things instead of over 10 equip slot like most game . Thing are easy to balance when there are less work to do .
It is a matter of how often you need to replace that gear.
I rather have 50 gear slots then a single one I have to replace every 3 minutes.
I also rather have more armor slots and get rid of the silly earring/trinkets slot. No barbarian (particularly male) with self-estem would go around with enough jewelrt to shock Dame Edna. Well, Mr T would but he is so awesome I let him get away with it.
Having a zillion armor pieces you constantly needs to replace is a bother. However with more pieces you can make the gear last longer until you need to replace it without annoying those people who want gear as quests rewards and common drops.
And that is not about realism as such, it is just more logical to have your slots after actual armor. Otherwise it would be smarter to just have a single slot for armor, the Gods know that if you use D&Ds equipped magical item slots they are more then enough and far more then any MMO have, even D&DD 5.0 (not that there you can only have 3 powerful items though but many less so).
If something has a chance of keeping me alive, and has almost no risk. I'm going to wear it.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
Comments
MIND BLOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
Head, Neck, Shoulders, Chest, cloak, left arm, right arm, left glove, right glove, pants, right foot, left foot.
In addition: shirt, underwear, 2 rings, 2 earrings, necklace, 2 pocket items
The first group would have lot of 'materia' slots. The main gear drops would be something you might go years/expansions without replacing. the second group would be more ability based and swapped out for different builds.
In Everquest getting a new piece of gear was a big deal. in every MMO since its much, much less noteworthy because it will be replaced next patch cycle. By having a large number of slots you can balance long times between gear slot upgrades with periodic gear replacements. And materia act as mini drops to keep that carrot out in front.
+1 To testicular fortitude
Have to get those unique underwear. You should make a game and make it the most powerful slot.
Cryomatrix
p.s. we are just fooling aroudn Teak2112, welcome to the site.
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
A regular sword is not really that heavy, about 1.8Kg (in fact almost all regular swords made the last 1000 years is around that) but it is bulky. It does not help to wear armor either. Armor is generally not as restricted as people think but after running around in one for a day is rather tough anyways.
But even with PvP full loot (which I am sceptical to, you should probably go for just looting the weapon the player is carrying unless you want to make a really small niche game like Mortal online) most people will not bother with using trash weapons. Not to mention how annoying the looting will be if every player drop a whole bunch of trash items.
Now, carrying capacity restrictions like you talk about does mean people wont be carrying many weapons but neither will they bother picking up trash unless all their weapons already have broken since they have a very limited number of things they can carry.
If the difference between trash and good items is small on the other hand people wont bother with good gear instead. Everyone will be walking trashpiles and crafting will not really be a big thing.
I see what you are going for here but I don't think it will work. More then a few games have tried similar things in the past, Darkfall is one of the more successful but even it have done rather poorly. You do have plenty of good ideas but this is the weakest thing about them.
If someone is an epic quest grinder, there should be tons of NPCs wondering where this solver of problems and epic hero went and why their heirlooms ended up at auction. If the NPCs are properly nudged to finding out who the looter is, they should lose rights to even enter town and forfeit anything they have stored in it.
If a crafter makes an interesting weapon and then the looter tries to auction or pawn it off in the wrong town. That looter should have the guards called on them, which leads to an investigation that leads to the seizure of most of their ill gotten gains.
If someone kills someone allied to greater forces (dark or light). They should have to suffer through bad luck, karma catching up to them, and increased death penalties if the person they killed decides to call on their allied greater forces.
If I know I'm going to get killed and looted I should be able to load my character up with cursed monkey totems, curses that activate when an item is equiped to someone else, and similar.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
I am not sure about having the cops raiding the auction house though, if that would be possible all good crafted gear would be forged with marks or sigils making selling them hard and wearing stolen gear (even if you bought it legally) would mean any guard you run into would arrest you on the spot, it would just get too complicated.
If you take real life and making it like we are in an MMO. Some big exec guy in google, who wrote a book called, "Solve for happy" said life is the biggest video game.
Nonetheless, let's look at myself as an MMO character.
Weapon:
Main hand = Generic pen (+20 to getting my hands dirty)
Other hand = Red Bull can (+10 energy and wakefulness)
Equipment: (clothes)
Blue Jeans of Polo (+1 comfort and +5 durability)
A sweatshirt (+1 warmth and +1 comfort)
Undershirt (+1 comfort)
briefs (+1 support)
Sneakers (+1 speed, +1 grip, + 1 comfort)
Generic Leather belt (+1 comfort and enhances Blue Jeans comfort by 20%)
Accessories:
I wrote them down but deleted it on second thought.
Mount:
I wrote it down but deleted it on second thought.
House:
Ranch style
no land plots
Companions:
2 year-old boy (+20 cute, +20 annoying, + 10 to money expenditure, + 100 to happiness)
Wife: (+10 cute . . .decreases with age, +10-100 annoying . . . completely random, +50 to money expenditure, +20 to - 20 to happiness . . . completely random but inversely proportional to annoying)
Skills:
Will pickup archery this friday - will meet NPC's for my beginner class
Beginner golfer - But I suck
Adept Video Gamer
Profession: (non-combatant)
I wrote it down but deleted it on second thought.
Cryomatrix
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
Of course there is an exception: There is a pen and paper RPG called "Cthulhu now" with the basic story that you and your friends go over to a friends house to play Call of Cthulhu. For some reason does the GM not show up and instead some weird things happen...
You basically play yourself in Lovecrafts IP and survival possibilities is about as expected there. That could be a fun MMORPG.
So essentially to use an item in combat you would need to have it actually equipped to your character. Once it's equipped you can use a hotkey to activate it, which will also bring up the skillbar for that weapon's abilities.
Given that I'm undecided if I would go with standard medieval high-fantasy or emergent firearms lets talk in emergent firearms ruleset to make things more comparable to real life experiences. You have a standard fighter who's carrying spare weapons but nothing unreasonable. Rifle, pistol, and tomahawk. When the enemy is at a range he has the rifle out, but the enemy is moving in toward melee so he hit's the hotkey to swap to pistol/tomahawk for a more close range combat style. This is a quick swap. Putting the rifle away (instead of just throwing it down) probably costs some extra time but overall we are talking 1-3 seconds per change in combat style because all the weapons are equipped.
However say the fighter is on their way back from combat and has looted a ton of weapons. In order to carry those with as few penalties as possible they would either be in inventory or on a cart. Inventory means it's packed away in a backpack, and if you've ever been camping you know that your pack generally isn't too easy to dig through. Getting into either of these would require a timered action that would be interrupted by any combat damage. So he could potentially use this to pack extra weapons but it won't be at all useful in the heat of combat.
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As for the solution for your inventory I mentioned it earlier.
If the user chooses they could break looted gear into materials during the looting process. They can even automate this so that they break down any item other than guns as they loot them by going to salvage options, saying "salvage all" and then unchecking guns. And then if they get guns they don't need they can just manually salvage them after looting them.
The big thing is I care a lot about immersion. The idea you could be down a weapon or piece of armor, loot an enemy who had those things, and then not be able to acquire it because I've left out all lootable weapons, armor and tools doesn't sit well with me. That's about as bad as looting coin purses from wolves.
I would avoid high fantasy though since it has been done. Something like low fantasy with musketeers have far higher potential to stand out and your mechanics seems fitting for something a bit more realistic then high fanatsy.
I guess field salvaging would work, particularly if you can set that on automatic so I wont have to bother sorting through the crap every 5th mob or so. Even then the mats will fill up an backpack rather quick.
Having someone drop 100% of what they carry all the time seems a bit annoying though. Realistic but annoying. You would have to have a realistic carrying capacity for that but even then I would have to filter through a lot of crap.
I see it as the mob just drop the useable stuff, while you could in theory loot a goblins clothes and all their gear most of it would be smelly and rather not useful. I am not sure what I would do with goblin underwear besides burning them.
I am not sure how "adventurer friendly" a wagon really is either. A dungeon would hardly have a well maintained road to it after all and taking a historical wagon is work enough on a road, they aren't exactlt a landrover or dirtbike not to mention that leaving animals outside a dungeon without guards seems risky at best. Highway men and hungry monsters would most likely mean you loose it often.
Most likely, they would be in the middle of a city in a majestic palace of some sort. (Think GoT).
In the real world, there are evil people everywhere and I'm sure the most evil are living in luxury in some palace. It is difficult to influence the world when you're in a dungeon
Just a thought.
Also, funny on life being Pay2win, it actually isn't pay2win even though it helps. Once you're above a certain number of income, your happiness doesn't really change. So it's more like, pay2reach-a-certain-point and then whatever.
This talk of full-loot PvP makes me want to see about getting back into Mortal Online. I honestly thought that was one of the better games I've played in terms of depth and "challenge". Too bad not enough people play it.
It would be nice if a AAA studio built something like it with wonderful graphics and it had a good population. I remember playing about 1.5 years ago and you'd see the same 30-50 people in the main town and that was it.
Cryomatrix
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
Of course porter hirelings would fare very poorly in combat so they could still be a liability in some ways, especially in dangerous territory, but that's intended.
I was just interesting on what would happen if a group enter a dungeon in a PvP zone, could anyone just loot their stuff outside the dungeon?
Cryomatrix said: Does the Bora Bora caves tell you anything? More then a few wanted IRL men have actually lived in caves at some points. Ask a Vietnam vet about tunnels filled with traps and hostiles (note that I don't call anyone in those caves for "evil", no politics here, Mod).
There are certainlly more bad guys today living in fancy houses then in dungeons but what else would you call Saddams bunker complex?
If you pay a certain amount in any pay2win game you wont get better at least until they release new content so it is the same.
There is a reason Mortal online have so few players, FFA full loot PvP games get that problem. Faction based games where you only can loot a limited number of things from people can be different (Lineage proved that if nothing all and it even have FFA on PvP servers while faction based PvP on "PvE" servers),
There will never (well, never is a long time, in the foreseeable future at least) be a AAA game like Mortal online, UO is the closest and it wouldn't work today either. There is just too few players interested in that kind of gameplay.
Kylerans ideas about limitations have more potential then that but I think he still will have to put some limiters on it to get enough players, like PvE servers or a Lineage like lock on looting gear from other players.
I meet the devs from Mortal online, lived in the same place as them for a long time and some of their ideas were good but low budget together with what I mentioned earlier made the game a small niche game. Lack of good programmers didn't help either, people like that is hard to get and in Malmö almost all of them work for Massive.
And I rather prefer less slots to equip things instead of over 10 equip slot like most game . Thing are easy to balance when there are less work to do .
I would probably have a mechanic where you "help them hide in a nearby cave". AKA, they disappear and can't be touched by anyone until you come back to retrieve them. This would also mean if you were running from PvP you could stash your crap in a dungeon. But hey, if you make it to the dungeon alive and have time to pull this off while being pursued in PvP... I'm ok with that.
The real drawback is if you have a hauler terrain it slows you down and make you stick out. If you dungeon in a PvP area your loot will be exposed as you haul it home. So that's your real drawback. People crashing your empty haulers while you are in the dungeon just to be jerks is a bit excessive to allow.
I rather have 50 gear slots then a single one I have to replace every 3 minutes.
I also rather have more armor slots and get rid of the silly earring/trinkets slot. No barbarian (particularly male) with self-estem would go around with enough jewelrt to shock Dame Edna. Well, Mr T would but he is so awesome I let him get away with it.
Having a zillion armor pieces you constantly needs to replace is a bother. However with more pieces you can make the gear last longer until you need to replace it without annoying those people who want gear as quests rewards and common drops.
And that is not about realism as such, it is just more logical to have your slots after actual armor. Otherwise it would be smarter to just have a single slot for armor, the Gods know that if you use D&Ds equipped magical item slots they are more then enough and far more then any MMO have, even D&DD 5.0 (not that there you can only have 3 powerful items though but many less so).
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
chasing gear for 000000.0000001% increase in power is crap.