While an interesting concept, I do despise the "items define character class" approach. Coupled with full loot PvPm this creates a problem for new players:
1. They don't have the game mechanics knowledge yet
2. They don't have suitable items yet
3. They don't have the means to get suitable items yet
4. They don't have a stash of items to fall back to (yet :-))
This is just the begining however. You are implenting death as a forced character reset. I do understand where you are aiming with this, however it will not work for most of the playerbase. The advantage of a hybrid skill/item system is that there is a lasting achievement part from the skills and/or stats and a constant goal set with items attainable. Getting the right mix is the problem.
Another word of warning: If your resource system is static, then the whole territory control goal will break down once a strong enough guild achieves possesion of the most lucrative resources (see Eve Online for a taste on how do things work in this kind of system).
Anyway I'll be watching the game as it offers a Linux client. Those are few and far between :-)))
Originally posted by Bastian_Star What's up with the "get more gold" button in the upper right corner of the second picture??
That's the free to play part I guess :-))
In-game there's silver and there's gold, both functionally identical in my experience with the game but gold is a payable currency while silver you get from doing stuff in game. What's it useful for? well past a certain tier buildings and items require silver/gold to craft/build so it's a means to a shortcut if one so chooses though that only one resource out of a great number of them.
This of course from my experience with the alpha which was back in march or april so they may not be the same anymore.
While an interesting concept, I do despise the "items define character class" approach. Coupled with full loot PvPm this creates a problem for new players:
1. They don't have the game mechanics knowledge yet
2. They don't have suitable items yet
3. They don't have the means to get suitable items yet
4. They don't have a stash of items to fall back to (yet :-))
This is the reason why we did go for a linear progression and not an exponential one. Two T3 players can kill one T5 player. If I build the counter towards my opponent he can be 1 tier above me I still kill him.
In addition you easily obtain Tier 1 equipment as a starter setup
And of course the world concept is designed, so that new players are not facing the high tier players directly. Actually the high tier resources are very far away from the starting areas. And there is no porting like in WoW (only partially at some key locations).
Actually you can reach Tier 4 in the beginner areas.
In the starting capital is a stash free for every starter
I hope that softens a few of your concerns. Eventually just have a look once we go live.
Kind regards,
Stefan
PS.: The whole "items define character class" is actually pretty cool I think. It offers lots of possibilities and potential combinations. It also increases the value of crafters and the economy as a whole.
Originally posted by Bastian_Star What's up with the "get more gold" button in the upper right corner of the second picture??
That's the free to play part I guess :-))
Our currency system will be a bit similar (not equal) to EVE Online, just without the subscription. We as a company will not sell any items to players. You can only buy items or resources or anything else from other players who have crafted them before! Despite vanity items (which have no influence on stats or spells, they just look good) which you can buy for euros there will be the possibility for a premium account which will give you some indirect advantages like (carry 10% more, harvest 10% faster ...).
Overall these are just current assumptions we so far have not made any experience with the premium currency in our game. So nothing is set in stone yet. I can just say that we pretty much like the EVE system a lot.
I have to applaud the devs for trying something different here and I cant believe people are actually taking shots at them for it. I love that you can access your account via a tablet (mobile) as a SECONDARY way to engage with the game. Obviously 99% pvp will take place on a computer but I think the mobile access is brilliant. Also, I think full loot is no big deal as long as the game is designed around that concept from day 1…. Ala Eve Online and it's worked out very well for CCP with around 500k subs and growing.
While an interesting concept, I do despise the "items define character class" approach. Coupled with full loot PvPm this creates a problem for new players:
1. They don't have the game mechanics knowledge yet
2. They don't have suitable items yet
3. They don't have the means to get suitable items yet
4. They don't have a stash of items to fall back to (yet :-))
This is the reason why we did go for a linear progression and not an exponential one. Two T3 players can kill one T5 player. If I build the counter towards my opponent he can be 1 tier above me I still kill him.
In addition you easily obtain Tier 1 equipment as a starter setup
And of course the world concept is designed, so that new players are not facing the high tier players directly. Actually the high tier resources are very far away from the starting areas. And there is no porting like in WoW (only partially at some key locations).
Actually you can reach Tier 4 in the beginner areas.
In the starting capital is a stash free for every starter
I hope that softens a few of your concerns. Eventually just have a look once we go live.
Kind regards,
Stefan
PS.: The whole "items define character class" is actually pretty cool I think. It offers lots of possibilities and potential combinations. It also increases the value of crafters and the economy as a whole.
Thanks for the response. It does address a few issues. Are there restrictions on tiers or equalizing mechanics to enter higher/lower tier zones ? If not, then the bulk of your response is irrelevant. Once I am looted down to starter items and out of stash, I have no way of competing outside newbie zones. That means that people can reliably remove me from the game by simply seeking me out and killing and looting repeatadly (have you ever been poded to starter clone in Eve ? It's not pretty.).
The main problem with "items as character class" is this: unless there's a good graphics engine implemented that allows visual inspection of the opponent and/or item swap while engaged in combat is a disadvatntage of some kind, there is not way of reliably telling what I am against in terms of enemy ability. Carrying capacity becomes the defining factor here (unless item swap is prohibited or disadvantaged while engaged).
The secondary problem is world/lore consistency. Unless all the items are somehow magical, it is against common sense that equiping a bow will make a skilled archer from a previously skilled mage or thief. Class identification is part of role playing as such. In your case, role players are disadvantaged against min-maxers as they will not break their class image even if it means a handicap.
The last part is, you'll have a hell of a job balancing.
I'm happy to see something like this come out. Maybe it will satisfy the rabid pvp fans so they won't constantly invade every upcoming MMO board with demands for owpvp and full loot.
Originally posted by haplo602While an interesting concept, I do despise the "items define character class" approach. Coupled with full loot PvPm this creates a problem for new players:
Thanks for the response. It does address a few issues. Are there restrictions on tiers or equalizing mechanics to enter higher/lower tier zones ? If not, then the bulk of your response is irrelevant. Once I am looted down to starter items and out of stash, I have no way of competing outside newbie zones. That means that people can reliably remove me from the game by simply seeking me out and killing and looting repeatadly (have you ever been poded to starter clone in Eve ? It's not pretty.).
Hi haplo,
first of all let me say that the whole world concept and in particular the new players journey is not yet defined by 100% and there maybe changes. However as it stands right now it is as the following
There is a newbie safe zone and a newbie pvp zone
The PvP zone has a tier limit to enter
Tier 1 is a very common resource. You can easily obtain a Tier 1 set all the time in the game, it is like the recruit ship in EVE you always can get
The limit for the PvP zone as it stands right now is probably Tier 4 Two Tier1 players can beat one Tier4 player if played smart enough Three Tier1 players also beat the lone Tier4 player if played stupid So showing up with high level gear in the newbie zone also makes you No1 target
Regarding: Visibility of what threat you are facing
We did put a huge emphasis on readability, eventually you can get a glimps of it from the screenshots. In addition the items all have some sort of "character". So a sword is a sword and by that will not have healing spells for instance. However a Paladin Hammer can have healing spells but you will see the difference between both. In case you do not we also added a color code to the game (red = dmg spells; green = healing spells, blue = buffs, yellow = cc ...). This is shown when targeting a player. So if you see only red in combination with the opponent having a staff in his hand you can easily get to the conclusion: "Lots of Magic Damage".
Originally posted by Vorthanion I'm happy to see something like this come out. Maybe it will satisfy the rabid pvp fans so they won't constantly invade every upcoming MMO board with demands for owpvp and full loot.
Isn't cross platform kind of a 4 letter word when it comes to MMO's? So far every MMO that has gone or tried to go cross platform has some painfully butchered UI to make it playable on consoles.
Regarding: Visibility of what threat you are facing
We did put a huge emphasis on readability, eventually you can get a glimps of it from the screenshots. In addition the items all have some sort of "character". So a sword is a sword and by that will not have healing spells for instance. However a Paladin Hammer can have healing spells but you will see the difference between both. In case you do not we also added a color code to the game (red = dmg spells; green = healing spells, blue = buffs, yellow = cc ...). This is shown when targeting a player. So if you see only red in combination with the opponent having a staff in his hand you can easily get to the conclusion: "Lots of Magic Damage".
Kind regards,
Stefan
So that takes out one part of the problem, seems to be nicely implemented. I hope there'll be spying spells that target a whole area :-) that makes things interesting. What about gear swap or carrying capacity limits ?
The tier system you are advocating in the starter/pvp zones breaks down once a few (2-3) high tier characters enter the newb zone. Anyway one more favourite analogy from Eve, did you think about suicide ganking ? I.e. lots of tier 1 player swarming a high tier player and basicaly strip him ?
So that takes out one part of the problem, seems to be nicely implemented. I hope there'll be spying spells that target a whole area :-) that makes things interesting. What about gear swap or carrying capacity limits ?
The tier system you are advocating in the starter/pvp zones breaks down once a few (2-3) high tier characters enter the newb zone. Anyway one more favourite analogy from Eve, did you think about suicide ganking ? I.e. lots of tier 1 player swarming a high tier player and basicaly strip him ?
Sorry forget about these questions.
So when you change one piece of your gear, and by that only changing one spell still all cooldowns are triggered. Important is that we are testing exactly these kind of things. So in case we find out it is not enough we will increase the cooldown so that item swapping according to whom you are facing is not an option.
And regarding the Newbie Zone issue, remember that maximum is Tier 4 and due to the linear progression it is not as bad as in other MMOs even when 3 T4 players will show up. The key is that T4 has already a very high value in terms of ingame curreny. In recent tests we saw that even the hardcore DF guilds were cautious with which items the equipped while running in the open territories.
Awesome, thanks for the reply, Bercilak. Hats off to a developer who stays up round the clock answering community posts on a 3rd party forum at 5am in the morning! haha
Reading your posts gives me a good idea of what the game has to offer, sounds sick.
I'm interested to know the pace of the gameplay, will it be fast-paced like Legend of Mir (my #1 MMO of all time which I still play private servers of to this very day along with thousands of others actually) and Diablo? And will certain directional spells etc have to be aimed? Or is it a target game, or will I just have to wait and see? :P
I love the idea of a premium currency which can be used to purchase microtransactions, and can also be placed in the trade window and used to trade items with players. This is the EVE model (which is awesome) but more direct. This eliminates RMT and allows players to choose how they progress.
One thing though, are you not worried that in a gear-based progression game such as this players will be able to purchase £500 of this currency and get "on top" like that? Personally, that doesn't bother me at all (I played Rohan for a long time when it was good, and you could trade characters gold and items for cash shop currency), but I know there's a lot of gamers who might be put off by this, even though they can steal everything that someone has purchased.
In a game that's purely gear based progression, this payment model is going to be absolutely amazing (IMO)! I look forward to crushing Pay2Winners
_________ Currently playing: Black Desert Korea (Waiting for EU)
Always hating on instances in MMOs! Open worlds, open PvP, territory control and housing please. More persistence, more fun.
Looks interesting. Probably out of my limited playtime reach, but will still try it. I loved UO, anyway and I like your art style.
Couple questions:
1. What kind of roleplaying/social support you will have? Obviously your core is the territorial control, but will we have some cool toys for roleplayers like UO did? Can we build taverns, place items ib the buildings? Will there be books? Chat bubbles?
2. Any plans for encouraging consensual GvG? Can peaceful guilds declare wars mutually without losing their peaceful defensive bonuses against non-mutual guilds? This would further encourage the roleplaying and social aspect of the game.
I have to ask. What's the point of cross platform for such a niche style of gaming? Honestly, this just looks like a shameless cash-grab to take advantage of those so desperate for a good sandbox.
Originally posted by achesoma I have to ask. What's the point of cross platform for such a niche style of gaming? Honestly, this just looks like a shameless cash-grab to take advantage of those so desperate for a good sandbox.
If the technology exists to do it, what's the point in not doing it? Platforms like Unity allow developers to develop cross platform games with very little extra effort.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Originally posted by achesoma I have to ask. What's the point of cross platform for such a niche style of gaming? Honestly, this just looks like a shameless cash-grab to take advantage of those so desperate for a good sandbox.
Hi achesoma,
although I consider myself as a hardcore gamer I started loving tablets and I wish there would be just "real" games for it. When talking about tablets I in particular love the mobility, the mobility at my home. Taking it into the bathroom , surfing easily while lying in the bed or sitting on the couch. Or having it next to me in the morning when having breakfest with the family.
I also noticed a similar behavior amongst my friends. We all still prefer playing games in front of our 30" desktop monitor at home but it should not be either or! Despite this if you follow the market, the future for mobile/tablets is immense. And at least in our crazy minds AO will still be there in 20 years but to make that happen we wanted to develop it on a "future-safe" platform.
Which brings me to another reason why we did go for cross platform. We are only a small team compared to the big companys, but we are extremely tech heavy team with some really good developers. And we are always looking for challenges. Therefore we took on the challenge to develop one of the first real cross platform PvP games on a very high quality (meaning having all the necessary features a sandbox MMO deserves).
Looks interesting. Probably out of my limited playtime reach, but will still try it. I loved UO, anyway and I like your art style.
Couple questions:
1. What kind of roleplaying/social support you will have? Obviously your core is the territorial control, but will we have some cool toys for roleplayers like UO did? Can we build taverns, place items ib the buildings? Will there be books? Chat bubbles?
2. Any plans for encouraging consensual GvG? Can peaceful guilds declare wars mutually without losing their peaceful defensive bonuses against non-mutual guilds? This would further encourage the roleplaying and social aspect of the game.
I have to admit that the roleplaying part is not yet fully implemented. The plan is (somewhere after relaese, which unfortunately can mean a lot), allow extreme customization of your player houses. Chat bubbles are something I do not like from a UX perspective.
Consensual GvG is not planned yet. However there will be two different GvG sieges: Conquer and Raid. A conquer really hurts and is aiming towards takeing the territory away from your opponent, while a Raid is "only" about taking some of their silver.
Comments
While an interesting concept, I do despise the "items define character class" approach. Coupled with full loot PvPm this creates a problem for new players:
1. They don't have the game mechanics knowledge yet
2. They don't have suitable items yet
3. They don't have the means to get suitable items yet
4. They don't have a stash of items to fall back to (yet :-))
This is just the begining however. You are implenting death as a forced character reset. I do understand where you are aiming with this, however it will not work for most of the playerbase. The advantage of a hybrid skill/item system is that there is a lasting achievement part from the skills and/or stats and a constant goal set with items attainable. Getting the right mix is the problem.
Another word of warning: If your resource system is static, then the whole territory control goal will break down once a strong enough guild achieves possesion of the most lucrative resources (see Eve Online for a taste on how do things work in this kind of system).
Anyway I'll be watching the game as it offers a Linux client. Those are few and far between :-)))
That's the free to play part I guess :-))
In-game there's silver and there's gold, both functionally identical in my experience with the game but gold is a payable currency while silver you get from doing stuff in game. What's it useful for? well past a certain tier buildings and items require silver/gold to craft/build so it's a means to a shortcut if one so chooses though that only one resource out of a great number of them.
This of course from my experience with the alpha which was back in march or april so they may not be the same anymore.
I became excited when i got to that point and made me read it all.
A medieval sandbox MMO
http://www.facebook.com/albiononline/
this ^^
and on a side note, falling back to a 20 year old isometric to archive cross-plattforming sounds just plain wrong to me.
Windows, Linux, Mac are "Plattforms".
Mobiles are just "smarter" telephones.
Tablet Computers are .. wtf are tablet computers anyways ..?
Our currency system will be a bit similar (not equal) to EVE Online, just without the subscription. We as a company will not sell any items to players. You can only buy items or resources or anything else from other players who have crafted them before! Despite vanity items (which have no influence on stats or spells, they just look good) which you can buy for euros there will be the possibility for a premium account which will give you some indirect advantages like (carry 10% more, harvest 10% faster ...).
Overall these are just current assumptions we so far have not made any experience with the premium currency in our game. So nothing is set in stone yet. I can just say that we pretty much like the EVE system a lot.
Kind regards,
Stefan
A medieval sandbox MMO
http://www.facebook.com/albiononline/
Thanks for the response. It does address a few issues. Are there restrictions on tiers or equalizing mechanics to enter higher/lower tier zones ? If not, then the bulk of your response is irrelevant. Once I am looted down to starter items and out of stash, I have no way of competing outside newbie zones. That means that people can reliably remove me from the game by simply seeking me out and killing and looting repeatadly (have you ever been poded to starter clone in Eve ? It's not pretty.).
The main problem with "items as character class" is this: unless there's a good graphics engine implemented that allows visual inspection of the opponent and/or item swap while engaged in combat is a disadvatntage of some kind, there is not way of reliably telling what I am against in terms of enemy ability. Carrying capacity becomes the defining factor here (unless item swap is prohibited or disadvantaged while engaged).
The secondary problem is world/lore consistency. Unless all the items are somehow magical, it is against common sense that equiping a bow will make a skilled archer from a previously skilled mage or thief. Class identification is part of role playing as such. In your case, role players are disadvantaged against min-maxers as they will not break their class image even if it means a handicap.
The last part is, you'll have a hell of a job balancing.
P.S: where can I get in on Linux testing ? :-)))
Hi haplo,
first of all let me say that the whole world concept and in particular the new players journey is not yet defined by 100% and there maybe changes. However as it stands right now it is as the following
Regarding: Visibility of what threat you are facing
We did put a huge emphasis on readability, eventually you can get a glimps of it from the screenshots. In addition the items all have some sort of "character". So a sword is a sword and by that will not have healing spells for instance. However a Paladin Hammer can have healing spells but you will see the difference between both. In case you do not we also added a color code to the game (red = dmg spells; green = healing spells, blue = buffs, yellow = cc ...). This is shown when targeting a player. So if you see only red in combination with the opponent having a staff in his hand you can easily get to the conclusion: "Lots of Magic Damage".
Kind regards,
Stefan
A medieval sandbox MMO
http://www.facebook.com/albiononline/
Keep dreaming, OWPVP is the future
.
So that takes out one part of the problem, seems to be nicely implemented. I hope there'll be spying spells that target a whole area :-) that makes things interesting. What about gear swap or carrying capacity limits ?
The tier system you are advocating in the starter/pvp zones breaks down once a few (2-3) high tier characters enter the newb zone. Anyway one more favourite analogy from Eve, did you think about suicide ganking ? I.e. lots of tier 1 player swarming a high tier player and basicaly strip him ?
Sorry forget about these questions.
So when you change one piece of your gear, and by that only changing one spell still all cooldowns are triggered. Important is that we are testing exactly these kind of things. So in case we find out it is not enough we will increase the cooldown so that item swapping according to whom you are facing is not an option.
And regarding the Newbie Zone issue, remember that maximum is Tier 4 and due to the linear progression it is not as bad as in other MMOs even when 3 T4 players will show up. The key is that T4 has already a very high value in terms of ingame curreny. In recent tests we saw that even the hardcore DF guilds were cautious with which items the equipped while running in the open territories.
A medieval sandbox MMO
http://www.facebook.com/albiononline/
Awesome, thanks for the reply, Bercilak. Hats off to a developer who stays up round the clock answering community posts on a 3rd party forum at 5am in the morning! haha
Reading your posts gives me a good idea of what the game has to offer, sounds sick.
I'm interested to know the pace of the gameplay, will it be fast-paced like Legend of Mir (my #1 MMO of all time which I still play private servers of to this very day along with thousands of others actually) and Diablo? And will certain directional spells etc have to be aimed? Or is it a target game, or will I just have to wait and see? :P
I love the idea of a premium currency which can be used to purchase microtransactions, and can also be placed in the trade window and used to trade items with players. This is the EVE model (which is awesome) but more direct. This eliminates RMT and allows players to choose how they progress.
One thing though, are you not worried that in a gear-based progression game such as this players will be able to purchase £500 of this currency and get "on top" like that? Personally, that doesn't bother me at all (I played Rohan for a long time when it was good, and you could trade characters gold and items for cash shop currency), but I know there's a lot of gamers who might be put off by this, even though they can steal everything that someone has purchased.
In a game that's purely gear based progression, this payment model is going to be absolutely amazing (IMO)! I look forward to crushing Pay2Winners
_________
Currently playing: Black Desert Korea (Waiting for EU)
Always hating on instances in MMOs! Open worlds, open PvP, territory control and housing please. More persistence, more fun.
Looks interesting. Probably out of my limited playtime reach, but will still try it. I loved UO, anyway and I like your art style.
Couple questions:
1. What kind of roleplaying/social support you will have? Obviously your core is the territorial control, but will we have some cool toys for roleplayers like UO did? Can we build taverns, place items ib the buildings? Will there be books? Chat bubbles?
2. Any plans for encouraging consensual GvG? Can peaceful guilds declare wars mutually without losing their peaceful defensive bonuses against non-mutual guilds? This would further encourage the roleplaying and social aspect of the game.
3. Any gameplay videos available yet?
If the technology exists to do it, what's the point in not doing it? Platforms like Unity allow developers to develop cross platform games with very little extra effort.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Hi achesoma,
although I consider myself as a hardcore gamer I started loving tablets and I wish there would be just "real" games for it. When talking about tablets I in particular love the mobility, the mobility at my home. Taking it into the bathroom
, surfing easily while lying in the bed or sitting on the couch. Or having it next to me in the morning when having breakfest with the family.
I also noticed a similar behavior amongst my friends. We all still prefer playing games in front of our 30" desktop monitor at home but it should not be either or! Despite this if you follow the market, the future for mobile/tablets is immense. And at least in our crazy minds AO will still be there in 20 years but to make that happen we wanted to develop it on a "future-safe" platform.
Which brings me to another reason why we did go for cross platform. We are only a small team compared to the big companys, but we are extremely tech heavy team with some really good developers. And we are always looking for challenges. Therefore we took on the challenge to develop one of the first real cross platform PvP games on a very high quality (meaning having all the necessary features a sandbox MMO deserves).
Kind regards,
Stefan
A medieval sandbox MMO
http://www.facebook.com/albiononline/
Heya Tom,
#1
I have to admit that the roleplaying part is not yet fully implemented. The plan is (somewhere after relaese, which unfortunately can mean a lot), allow extreme customization of your player houses. Chat bubbles are something I do not like from a UX perspective.
#2
Consensual GvG is not planned yet. However there will be two different GvG sieges: Conquer and Raid. A conquer really hurts and is aiming towards takeing the territory away from your opponent, while a Raid is "only" about taking some of their silver.
#3
Nothing official yet
Kind regards,
Stefan
A medieval sandbox MMO
http://www.facebook.com/albiononline/
What? Graphical limitations? If you play video games for fancy graphics I feel sad for you.
STOOPID
When someone does something so utterly moronic that it kills your brain cells at the very thought of it.