Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Insiders at 38S told me Copernicus will revolve around fighting the Catholic church who is trying to squelch the heliocentric theory while being able to travel back in time and have diplomacy style combat with Ptolemy.

But yea, those screens do look pretty. Again though and it needs to be said, what is even prettier than that? Seeing 70fps in WoW while having everything turned on and no hitching. Performance > graphics, hopefully it achieves both.

Sweet, I hope they use Vanguard"s diplo system!

Curt:

As a serious tank since the launch of this game [WoW -Ed] I would never wear that shirt.

You are a dork.

Signed:

Deadhornn

Genjiro said:

Insiders at 38S told me Copernicus will revolve around fighting the Catholic church who is trying to squelch the heliocentric theory while being able to travel back in time and have diplomacy style combat with Ptolemy.

But yea, those screens do look pretty. Again though and it needs to be said, what is even prettier than that? Seeing 70fps in WoW while having everything turned on and no hitching. Performance > graphics, hopefully it achieves both.

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Interesting concept, don"t really see much in the way of expansion potential since once the theory became accepted the premise for the whole game would be over.

Besides trying to convince a bunch of fanatical religious zealots doesn"t really sound all that exciting. I guess you will have to argue with them while they quote their interpretation of the bible? YAWN....

I can also hear some of the bible thumpers raising hell over this, should be interesting to see how it plays out if your info is correct.

Please no VG style diplo. I don"t really see the excitement in playing Diplomacy the Gathering card game in a MMORPG.

From a semantic standpoint you really are just affecting cosmetic changes because the functionality is obviously already in the game as is.

Anyways...

One important thing to remember is that UI elements are there simply to compensate for technical limitations. In an ideal situation if a mob agro"d on a healer, you could stop it from turning to attack him by grabbing the mob by it"s neck or something. Since we don"t have that kind of collision detection let alone avatar-control we"re reduced to threat and threat-meters.

gnomad said:

Please no VG style diplo. I don"t really see the excitement in playing Diplomacy the Gathering card game in a MMORPG.

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It wasn"t fleshed out enough but that is hands down the best way to go about implementing a non-combat system. Look at how terrible EQ2"s tradeskill system is. They tried to make it a whack-a-mole combat system without realizing the reason we enjoy killing shit isn"t because we"re hitting buttons but because we"re killing shit.

Let"s look at the other alternatives presented in games so far. You have oblivions "Wheel of Diplomacy turn turn turn, tell us the lesson we should learn" and various games have dialog path"s but those end up being trite at best. Most other games the only form of diplomacy involved is pre-scripted, involves simply talking to the right people in the right order to trigger events. You have the Birthright, Civilization and various other games where diplomacy is mostly a dieroll based entirely on how big your army"s dick is at the time.

I mean, given how disgustingly addicting card games can be if they had had years instead of weeks to flesh it out, it could have been a game unto itself.

Well Zehn, the thing is that it wasa card game. As interesting as mini-games often are, a card game is a pretty poor metaphor for diplomacy and frankly, is jarring in terms of immersion.

I like the idea in general but I"d rather see something along the lines of the old Star Control system even (dialogue trees with "stances" optionally) than something that just felt tacked on. AoC seems to have wanted to try something in that direction but sadly your responses seem to mean nothing at all; you can just click "1" through almost any conversation and even if you get it wrong, you can try again.

A deep faction/diplomacy system would be pretty interesting of course, I"m just not sure that a card game is the way to get at it. Hell, I"m pretty sure it isn"t.

Nor is hitting "Create item" in a tradeskill window any more or less immersive for that matter.

Let"s be honest, the technology to create really intelligent AI isn"t quite there yet nor could you create a team of people to just sit there and make up dialogue tree"s all day long without them wanting to kill themselves.

It"s definitely not immersive I agree. But is it fun? I would argue that if you fleshed it out more, it definitely could be. And if you really want to, write it into the lore. Make it an actual card game like FF8 did that thousands of people in the game world are addicted to.

I loved the card game from FF9, never really got into 8 tbh, but then that was because I couldn"t stand the game personally.

Now, if an MMO were to implement a lot of mini-games into the world, like tavern games, that"d be pretty fun I think. Just a little added stuff that you can maybe get stuff from, like small items and coin, and make there be a jackpot type deal where you can get more. Kind of like the grobbin game or whatever in EQ2, but with more than just complete random tosses of the dice.

Zehn - Vhex said:

It"s definitely not immersive I agree. But is it fun? I would argue that if you fleshed it out more, it definitely could be. And if you really want to, write it into the lore. Make it an actual card game like FF8 did that thousands of people in the game world are addicted to.

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This would have been more believable. I never stuck around VG long enough to actually see the diplomacy thing in action, but if it played out like, everyone in the world was addicted to this in-world card game, it would be believable. Like how everyone played Sabbac in KOTOR.

I kept my FFXI account for a few months afterwards just to keep playing that Triple Triad side-game.

Just for clarity, I was being sarcastic. Vanguard"s diplo system was interesting in concept form, but pretty horrible in reality. That said, if a quality developer ever took the time to flesh something like that out, it could be pretty cool.

VG"s dip system failed because it had no AI behind it. Once you beat one thing you beat it every time. The only time you could fail was when facing something way out of your league that you just didn"t have the cards for. It was very gimmicky and once you figured out a strat you just used it over and over again without fail... and then it became a grind.

Of course the whole system didn"t make much sense in the first place. It was almost as lame as Oblivion"s wheel of emotions.

Look how insanely popular WoW decks are. Could you imagine how unbelievably fun that shit would be in game? Fuck raiding man.

Are they popular because people play the WoW card game or because people buy them to get the ingame WoW items to use or sell on eBay? No clue, I haven"t been to a "game" store in years, I did get the Turtle card as a xmas gift a few years ago.

spronk said:

Are they popular because people play the WoW card game or because people buy them to get the ingame WoW items to use or sell on eBay? No clue, I haven"t been to a "game" store in years, I did get the Turtle card as a xmas gift a few years ago.

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I"m not positive, but I"m pretty sure they are popular for the game itself. Now, if they weren"t WoW branded, it would probably be another story. I"ve always been surprised that Blizzard didn"t go the route of MTGO or LoN and make the game digitized. I could see people spending atonof money on that shit.

spronk said:

Are they popular because people play the WoW card game or because people buy them to get the ingame WoW items to use or sell on eBay? No clue, I haven"t been to a "game" store in years, I did get the Turtle card as a xmas gift a few years ago.

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The market for loot cards is fucking crazy. I only played the card game during the release event and it seemed fun at the time, not sure if we were following the rules or not. But yeah, fuck going out to play WoW cards with other WoW nerds.

When Blizzard implements an ingame client, i"ll start playing it again.

Lonin said:

Just for clarity, I was being sarcastic. Vanguard"s diplo system was interesting in concept form, but pretty horrible in reality. That said, if a quality developer ever took the time to flesh something like that out, it could be pretty cool.

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It wasn"t interesting in concept. I just saw a card game, and wasn"t interested because I don"t pay for MMOs to play card games. Buts thats me.

Fuck you Zehn, you Pokemon faggot. Go jerk off to Dragonball Z more.

Anyway.

Still <3

Draegan said:

It wasn"t interesting in concept. I just saw a card game, and wasn"t interested because I don"t pay for MMOs to play card games. Buts thats me.

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I didn"t necessarily mean the card game, I meant the "in-depth" encounters for non-fighting. The card thing was probably a poor way to go about it.

I think you"re confused.