Chronicles of Elyria - new mmo
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Rangoth
Blackwing Lair Raider
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I think it depends on the game and the mechanics. If compared to D3 or EQ/WoW of course perma-death will be niche....but we all remember planescape torment, right? Dying was sometimes worth it in that game. Maybe when you die in this game you take over as your son or something and the cycle continues.
As a term it will scare off people, and that's clearly a sign of their inexperience and bad marketing, but the actual mechanic can be woven in.
Reht
Molten Core Raider
- 1,115
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If i understand the mechanics correctly, that's kind of what happens. When you die, you need get a spark of life (this is how they are going to fund the game once it's live). Then your character is reincarnated as a family member or some shit and is little stronger than you last character was when it started, so i guess you get some skill carry over or your skills go up faster. It's not entirely permadeath, but as close as you can get to it.
That makes much more sense. Otherwise how would counteract all the wolves? You wouldn't want to die after playing for months only to lose everything and have to start from scratch.
Malakriss
Golden Baronet of the Realm
- 12,342
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Permadeath with zero support for server issues, bugs, exploits, or god forbid void zone/one-shot mechanics is stupid no matter what game it is in. Can call it niche but it's basically for masochists and technically it isn't even entertainment for them, it's life.
Maric
N00b
- 98
- 15
Exactly right. You reincarnate bringing much of what was learned in the prior life with you. Also, this will be far from FFA PVP as there will be many mechanics that work against that breed of player. This won't be Darkfall. Not even close. You will still have gankers, but their life won't be so easy.
Their vision of Permadeath/Sparks/Families is actually the only thing that I found interesting and kinda innovative in their featureset, even though I am usually a big opponent of anything permadeath. It's the rest of their bloated and irrealistic featurelist, including their vague and dreamy blogs about it, that made me stay far away from this KS.
On a sidenote, DDO has reincarnation too, where you can start over with your max character numerous times and take a small perk with you everytime in your next life. It's pretty popular and adding a lot of longevity to the game. Not sure how hardcore the DDO fanbase is, but it's an interesting mechanic.
The big difference is off course that starting over in DDO is entirely your own decision.
On a sidenote, DDO has reincarnation too, where you can start over with your max character numerous times and take a small perk with you everytime in your next life. It's pretty popular and adding a lot of longevity to the game. Not sure how hardcore the DDO fanbase is, but it's an interesting mechanic.
The big difference is off course that starting over in DDO is entirely your own decision.
Reht
Molten Core Raider
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I really like some of the concepts, but I am still kind of curious as to what exactly players are going to do to stay busy in game. It seems like it's technically a pvp game, but there are proposed mechanics (as stated above) that make it rough on you if you do pvp so i don't think most people will be out actively pvping all of the time because of the bounties and the aging. Will crafting be enough? Is there going to be enough internal community politics to keep people enticed, ala EVE without the structure to back it up? It's not being sold as a PVE game, but will have some open world events - so there are some things for PVErs to do but yet again will it be enough to keep them busy and will it promote gameplay where most difficult content (if it even exists) is avoided due to fear of aging from dying? I hope i am missing something with my understanding of their direction, if not i see some major changes to their concepts in order to keep people playing past their first or second death.
Bain
Bronze Knight of the Realm
- 399
- 2
It is more than one death per character. Many more. A character lives for approximately 12 months and a single death subtracts 2 days from your life.
I'm very interested in seeing how this comes along.
Cinge
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 7,011
- 2,078
That still seems a bit brutal. Granted a lot depends on the game, but losing "playtime" every time you die, which in pvp can be quite a lot per day, is crazy. And then you have to "buy" another life? Guess will have to see how it all comes together, but man I can just forsee all kinds of complaints, issues etc. Will they refund lost playtime for things like DCs, lag, ddos attacks, bugs, glitches etc.
It's a very interesting concept, whether it attracts gamers today though is a whole different story. And given what I see people complain about losing these days, can't imagine the "Well I got killed 15 times today from pvp and lost a month of playtime for it", goes over well. Unless there is a way to earn more life in-game?
Unfortunately the MMO market atm is pretty much flat, so not a whole lot to compete with.
It's a very interesting concept, whether it attracts gamers today though is a whole different story. And given what I see people complain about losing these days, can't imagine the "Well I got killed 15 times today from pvp and lost a month of playtime for it", goes over well. Unless there is a way to earn more life in-game?
Unfortunately the MMO market atm is pretty much flat, so not a whole lot to compete with.
Rafterman
Molten Core Raider
- 740
- 684
Either that or the content will have to be snoozefest easy so that people don't die much.Seems like a system that will succeed at making horrible players total social pariahs, since the group-wipes they cause will actually cost folks money
Lethality
Lord Nagafen Raider
- 78
- 0
Who do some players only look at games with WoW lenses on?
It's possible to have an MMO that plays *nothing like WoW* and all of the conventions that you throw at it go out the window.
It's not made for randoms and they aren't creating PvE content that has to be tuned.
Cinge
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 7,011
- 2,078
I miss something? You sure made some sub-conscious connection that "Easy = WoW" and got upset fast.
Big Flex
Fitness Fascist
- 4,314
- 3,166
Just discovered this title today after watching this video series on youtube.
Chronicles of Elyria Dev Journal Ep1: The Engine that could change everything - YouTube
very interested and aroused at the idea of PKing someone out of $50
Chronicles of Elyria Dev Journal Ep1: The Engine that could change everything - YouTube
very interested and aroused at the idea of PKing someone out of $50
Cinge
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 7,011
- 2,078
I mean I can see it initially doing great, there are a lot of other cool concepts and the game looks gorgeous. But I just fear that whole "Every death cost you playtime" and you then have to pay $ for another life, just not going over well once it actually starts hitting people. Not taking into account the aspect of you will eventually have to start over a entire new character in an MMO even if you never died once. I fear people will just shrug and move on, so many other things to do these days.
Dandai
<WoW Guild Officer>
- 5,907
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This kind of got away from me, so I'm gonna spoiler instead of doing a tl;dr. It's a writeup of this idea my buddy and I were fleshing out to make "Every death cost you playtime" work in the least pay-to-win way possible.
Setting:
A couple years ago my buddy and I were kicking around some ideas to prototype for a sci-fi MMO. You would collect currency by doing game things - killing mobs, questing, exploring, collectibles, boss treasure, etc. Pretty standard stuff. You could spend the currency on the usual things like equipment, weapons, possibly upgrading items; again, pretty standard stuff. You wouldalsouse the currency to level your skills and stats (cost increasing with each subsequent investment); a lot of games have a leveling system like this, so it wasn't exactly unique, but I don't know of an MMO that works like this.
What made our game unique (to my knowledge) was that the currency was basically a physical manifestation of time. Every 60 seconds, X number of currency would be removed from your character. If the amount of currency on your character hit 0, game over. You could create a new character (starting currency would be non-transferable to prevent exploitation), or pay some amount of real money to restore a few hours of play time (enough to let you play and gain more currency through gameplay).
When you died, you would lose half the currency you had on your character when you died (you could store a relatively low maximum number of currency at a bank in a city). However, if you managed to reach the spot where you died, you could regain all the currency you dropped when you died.
The setting was a planet that was colonized long ago by a mining company from Earth. Genetic therapy and Designer DNA was made reliable and possible thanks to an extremely rare mineral that was thought to have arrived on Earth via asteroids (ie, not native). The mining companies knew that they would need to find another source of the mineral off-planet, so they partnered with the space industry and started probing the nearest star systems. One probe returned very interesting readings suggesting that a planet had the mineral in abundance. Not only that, but it appeared to be completely habitable with the perfect conditions for a human to live on the surface without the assistance of a suit.
Since the planet was abundant with the most valuable mineral in the universe, it was a closely guarded secret, and many of the people involved in the discovery mysteriously disappeared. The mining company that learned of the planet worked in secret and sent several vessels with thousands of fertilized embryos and a handful of supervisors. The supervisors were put into cryo sleep, and the embryos were scheduled to develop in 20 year waves (with the first wave starting approximately 20 years prior to arrival). The embryos were genetic clones of the work-horse human slaves from Earth. They were genetically modified to be completely obedient to the mining company's supervisors.
To summarize the rest since this is getting into way more detail than anyone could possibly care about, some of the ships landed where they were supposed to, but a lot had problems. Earth got a few mineral shipments, but comms eventually went dark. The overseers didn't know what to make of it, but kept mining assuming the day would come when comms would be restored.
The continuous exposure to the mineral caused subtle mutations in the slaves, and they gained new traits; for the purpose of our story, the two most important traits were immortality and free will. There was a slave rebellion when they gained free will. As they liberated slaves set up colonies away from the mines, their health deteriorated, and they started dying. They figured out that exposure to the mineral is what was granting them immortality, and the mineral became a currency.
All of this backstory would be learned as the game progressed. As far as the player knew, they were playing a sci-fi game and a human-ish character, in a Planet of the Apes type setting. The game is set many generations later, hundreds or maybe thousands of years has passed. The player characters are the descendants of the slaves that were brought to the planet.
Since the planet was abundant with the most valuable mineral in the universe, it was a closely guarded secret, and many of the people involved in the discovery mysteriously disappeared. The mining company that learned of the planet worked in secret and sent several vessels with thousands of fertilized embryos and a handful of supervisors. The supervisors were put into cryo sleep, and the embryos were scheduled to develop in 20 year waves (with the first wave starting approximately 20 years prior to arrival). The embryos were genetic clones of the work-horse human slaves from Earth. They were genetically modified to be completely obedient to the mining company's supervisors.
To summarize the rest since this is getting into way more detail than anyone could possibly care about, some of the ships landed where they were supposed to, but a lot had problems. Earth got a few mineral shipments, but comms eventually went dark. The overseers didn't know what to make of it, but kept mining assuming the day would come when comms would be restored.
The continuous exposure to the mineral caused subtle mutations in the slaves, and they gained new traits; for the purpose of our story, the two most important traits were immortality and free will. There was a slave rebellion when they gained free will. As they liberated slaves set up colonies away from the mines, their health deteriorated, and they started dying. They figured out that exposure to the mineral is what was granting them immortality, and the mineral became a currency.
All of this backstory would be learned as the game progressed. As far as the player knew, they were playing a sci-fi game and a human-ish character, in a Planet of the Apes type setting. The game is set many generations later, hundreds or maybe thousands of years has passed. The player characters are the descendants of the slaves that were brought to the planet.
A couple years ago my buddy and I were kicking around some ideas to prototype for a sci-fi MMO. You would collect currency by doing game things - killing mobs, questing, exploring, collectibles, boss treasure, etc. Pretty standard stuff. You could spend the currency on the usual things like equipment, weapons, possibly upgrading items; again, pretty standard stuff. You wouldalsouse the currency to level your skills and stats (cost increasing with each subsequent investment); a lot of games have a leveling system like this, so it wasn't exactly unique, but I don't know of an MMO that works like this.
What made our game unique (to my knowledge) was that the currency was basically a physical manifestation of time. Every 60 seconds, X number of currency would be removed from your character. If the amount of currency on your character hit 0, game over. You could create a new character (starting currency would be non-transferable to prevent exploitation), or pay some amount of real money to restore a few hours of play time (enough to let you play and gain more currency through gameplay).
When you died, you would lose half the currency you had on your character when you died (you could store a relatively low maximum number of currency at a bank in a city). However, if you managed to reach the spot where you died, you could regain all the currency you dropped when you died.
Name of the game was going to be Borrowed Time.
kaid
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 4,647
- 1,187
Every time I read stuff on this game I just hear some leeroy jenkins guy in my mind yelling HAAARRRDDCOORRREE. I seriously doubt there is actually a market for this if they actually put stuff like this in. Maybe for the first month and then realize its BS and quit and never look back.
Big Flex
Fitness Fascist
- 4,314
- 3,166
You guys know me. I'm a hardcore PK and enormous douchebag. I get errect at the prospect of a punishing permadeath game reminiscent of UO, with that said I have a fair bit of skepticism of how this system will pan out.
IMHO they will make actual death so difficult to accomplish, either initially or through later "fixes" that you won't actually die until you die of old age 365 days after purchasing your last life. That or they need to make "lives" significantly cheaper than the $40+ mark I've heard on a few youtube videos covering the series. As much as I like the idea, and even the business model, I can see an enormous potential for player base atrophy if an established clan of kickstarter backers who spawn on launch day as Dukes and Counts with warhorses and shit.. just facerolling Gogojira and Flex the dirt farmers and "coup de grace" us into a $40 death within the first few hours.
Because thats what I would do were I in their position.
Now, watch the electric bears videos I linked in my last post about their death and souls systems..
Those videos gave me the same initial excitement I had when around 2000, 2001(?) I saw the website for a game called Horizons (later launched as Istaria) which made some serious claims. Playable dragons with a complex life cycle which would take over a year to sprout wings etc.. you could be an angel or demon and fight over the souls of players who died in the afterlife, a ton of exotic playable races.
I. was. stoked.
Almost none of the features launched with the game, or have been added since, and it was a dumpster fire.
Having said that, I'm not going to poopoo Elyria the way I did Everquest next, I have guarded optimism, there is just a part of me feels that this just might be like Mortal Online all over again.