They want to make a full universe where you can fly ships and then board them and shoot em up. I can see the appeal for that. Whether it works or not, who knows; but I can see why people think that would be a fun thing. Didn't EVE try to do it, but ended up just making DUST?
Star Citizen Online - The search for more money
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Vitality
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Eve barely got the station avatars off the ground. *They were advertising like a station zone you could walk around in and do face to face business and stuff, not sure what happened to that*
Dust is Playstation only with minor supplemental isk interactions with the actual Eve community.
I'd be playing eve right now if dust was actually modularized into the main game and available on PC (via planetary interaction or something)
As it stands, unfortunately, eve is just a spreadsheet management game, even ship fights are spreadsheets. It's just a spreadsheet with pixels and a chat room.
Dust is just a shell of what it was originally pitched to be.
Dust is Playstation only with minor supplemental isk interactions with the actual Eve community.
I'd be playing eve right now if dust was actually modularized into the main game and available on PC (via planetary interaction or something)
As it stands, unfortunately, eve is just a spreadsheet management game, even ship fights are spreadsheets. It's just a spreadsheet with pixels and a chat room.
Dust is just a shell of what it was originally pitched to be.
Tuco
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Sorry if I posted this opinion in this thread already, but my preferred station interaction is to be able to do all my interaction while I'm ~5km or less away from the station. Close second would be to drive full speed into the station port and let autopilot handle the last 10 meters of travel.
The slow docking from certain games is complete garbage and boring after the second time. Walking around like a jerk to NPCs would be even worse.
The slow docking from certain games is complete garbage and boring after the second time. Walking around like a jerk to NPCs would be even worse.
bytes
Molten Core Raider
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Interacting directly on board a station has its own appeal. For power traders it could be kinda cool, think the guys hanging around Jita in Eve all day long. They could actually look shady while scamming people in some shitty bar.
If it's a forced necessity then I agree, it just becomes cumbersome and drags you down. I believe X:Rebirth initially forced you to dock and then walk up to a person so you could initiate a trade/request their services which is just ridiculous.
But we don't have to worry about that happening in Star Citizen, won't be released within our lifetime anyays.
If it's a forced necessity then I agree, it just becomes cumbersome and drags you down. I believe X:Rebirth initially forced you to dock and then walk up to a person so you could initiate a trade/request their services which is just ridiculous.
But we don't have to worry about that happening in Star Citizen, won't be released within our lifetime anyays.
Vitality
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I don't think I ever left my couch in Jita, had more interest in spreadsheet tycoon than spreadsheet spaceships.
Would've been sweet to walk to a player owned courier desk and place an order for pickup/delivery or whatever. The contracting mechanic is pretty weird and wasn't really my style.
Would've been sweet to walk to a player owned courier desk and place an order for pickup/delivery or whatever. The contracting mechanic is pretty weird and wasn't really my style.
Mr Creed
Too old for this shit
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I'm sure most players will come to dislike the simulation aspects of the game but it's actually the thing I'm looking forward to. I'm hoping they manage to create a very immersive experience, instead of making more and more concessions to make it more game-y.
What happened was monocles and CCP realizing that their EVE cash cow is going to die if they keep starving it on minimal life support while pushing all their money into vaporware projects (WoD and Dust both, even though the latter released I'd bet it's a money drain).
Variise
N00b
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You will be allowed to do various store/NPC/PC interactions via your MobiGlas attached to your forearm. The rough idea atm is to let you do the more grindy aspects quickly via MobiGlas but force you to physically interact with people and things for more special things.
An example would be something like Planet A has a specialty of producing high quality medical gel. You would be able to purchase that in quantity or if you were coming in from someplace with the ingredients for the medical gel you could also sell it quickly. NPCs still have to physically show up to your ship and unload/load cargo but you can basically kick back and relax watching them work. There are many reasons why this is important for immersion.
On more scummy planets NPCs hanging around the landing pad might actually attack you out of the blue trying to jack your shit. It would depend on various variables such as... are you UEE/Advocacy (military/police) affiliated (high rep) and you landed on a pirate world? Might as well pull your pants down and get the lube ready...
But lets say you are on that nice sunny quiet planet waiting for the NPCs to show up and load the cargo you just purchased on your MobiGlas. You check the MobiGlas for NPC missions. Nothing catches your fancy. You decide to head to the bar and talk to the bartender about what's going on. Maybe he tells you about a rumor going around about some crazy alien sightings just past a nearby jump point that nobody has had the balls to check out because you are near the UEE border with "null" space. You decide to accept the NPC mission and go back to your ship. NPCs are done loading the cargo and you are ready to be on your way.
That's one example. It could also be that the planet has a specialty clothing and weapons dealer. You will have to head over to the store and use your MobiGlas within close distance to the items to check their price and purchase them. Things like that store, the bar (which will have both live and pre-recorded events on the monitors like a sports bar) etc are designed to help facilitate player interaction. They give you a reason to go someplace where you can get unique things only available there and nowhere else while the more common crap is kept directly on the MobiGlas with no requirement to interact with anyone apart from maybe local security if you try to smuggle things in. In which case please see previous note about lube. Expect them to show up personally.
So yeah that's a rough snapshot of what they want to do. Personally I think it's great. Things might change as it enters testing but don't expect gamey elements. They want to keep things in-fiction. It's why they built the MobiGlas. It will even have various apps to do various things that aren't standard on it. Not sure what that might be atm. We will find out next year I think.
An example would be something like Planet A has a specialty of producing high quality medical gel. You would be able to purchase that in quantity or if you were coming in from someplace with the ingredients for the medical gel you could also sell it quickly. NPCs still have to physically show up to your ship and unload/load cargo but you can basically kick back and relax watching them work. There are many reasons why this is important for immersion.
On more scummy planets NPCs hanging around the landing pad might actually attack you out of the blue trying to jack your shit. It would depend on various variables such as... are you UEE/Advocacy (military/police) affiliated (high rep) and you landed on a pirate world? Might as well pull your pants down and get the lube ready...
But lets say you are on that nice sunny quiet planet waiting for the NPCs to show up and load the cargo you just purchased on your MobiGlas. You check the MobiGlas for NPC missions. Nothing catches your fancy. You decide to head to the bar and talk to the bartender about what's going on. Maybe he tells you about a rumor going around about some crazy alien sightings just past a nearby jump point that nobody has had the balls to check out because you are near the UEE border with "null" space. You decide to accept the NPC mission and go back to your ship. NPCs are done loading the cargo and you are ready to be on your way.
That's one example. It could also be that the planet has a specialty clothing and weapons dealer. You will have to head over to the store and use your MobiGlas within close distance to the items to check their price and purchase them. Things like that store, the bar (which will have both live and pre-recorded events on the monitors like a sports bar) etc are designed to help facilitate player interaction. They give you a reason to go someplace where you can get unique things only available there and nowhere else while the more common crap is kept directly on the MobiGlas with no requirement to interact with anyone apart from maybe local security if you try to smuggle things in. In which case please see previous note about lube. Expect them to show up personally.
So yeah that's a rough snapshot of what they want to do. Personally I think it's great. Things might change as it enters testing but don't expect gamey elements. They want to keep things in-fiction. It's why they built the MobiGlas. It will even have various apps to do various things that aren't standard on it. Not sure what that might be atm. We will find out next year I think.
This doesn't happen in video games. I wouldn't expect that sort of dynamic stuff. I have yet to see a game create a world where you have to hunt down "rumors".
Eidal
Molten Core Raider
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But itdoeshappen when people who like video games talk about what kind of video game they'd like to make!
This stuff is completely doable, and not just by GMs. The problem is everyone follows the Blizzard MMO model of plop down a static server/game and make money off mudflation, instead of advancing the genre.
The flip side is whether or not there's a market for this sort of dynamic game. I'd like it, but honestly I'm not sure.
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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It's doable, it just sounds better and deeper on paper than ingame. The reality is that you'd enter the docks and cycle through all the quest givers looking for the quests you'd do. You'd spam click through the bartender's bullcrap until you see the quest about going to visit an alien wreckage somewhere.
shabushabu
Molten Core Raider
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Seriously ? This is how quests were built in the early 2000's and prior. Its in some MMOs today and this is basically how dynamic / daily quests got started. It is in Skyrim. SWG did it from Computer terminals, Baldurs gate had this as well as any D&D game.
Its a bit Old school but its been around forever.
What you and Tuco are talking about is cycling among already predetermined scripted content. So essentially you would go to a planet, and spam a bartender NPC until you find the derelict quest node. And if you can't find it, you ask in guild chat if anyones saw today's derelict alien spaceship daily and head there to do it.
What Variise is talking about is some romantic notion that you want to "go to the bar" in a video game and organically strike up a conversation to find a "rumor". Meh. For that to really work you need to be able to generate original content every single time. GW2 thought they could kinda do it, they didn't. Or you need to make so many scripts with a shit ton of skins so you never really see them repeating by the time you end up quitting the game.
What Variise is talking about is some romantic notion that you want to "go to the bar" in a video game and organically strike up a conversation to find a "rumor". Meh. For that to really work you need to be able to generate original content every single time. GW2 thought they could kinda do it, they didn't. Or you need to make so many scripts with a shit ton of skins so you never really see them repeating by the time you end up quitting the game.
Maybe something like this could work, if you want to make the Station/Streets/Bars a gathering place where you can pick up rumors:
The game produces something interesting randomly in some sector, for instance an asteroid that is rich in a rare Ore. The location of this asteroid can only be detected by a player nearby: only when a player comes nearby, will the server start to send packets about this asteroid to the client. The player can decide to mine the asteroid himself, and hope nobody bumps into it too, or he can go to a Barkeeper (or any NPC) on some Station and sell it to the NPC for some serious Gold by giving the Loc coordinates. The moment the location has been shared with the NPC, other players who may bump into the Asteroid can not sell it to an NPC anymore.
Now this Barkeeper/NPC has a fresh rumor. This rumor will stay a few hours on this NPC. Any player who checks this Barkeeper will learn about it, and can decide wether to hunt it down, or decide that it may already be old news. Some people will check in the chat channel, but this could be unwise if its actually a freshly sold rumor. The Asteroid also has a limited lifetime.
Problem I see is that players most likely will sell it directly to the highest bidding player. This is probably a more interesting mechanic anyway. I guess you could find some contrived way where the NPC is needed as an intermediate, for instance by having the Asteroid disappear directly after discovery, only to return into existence once the loc has been shared with an NPC (maybe we could call this "claiming the find") but I could see people auction the find in chat anyway, and then agree to meet up with the highest bidder near some obscure NPC and quickly do the transfer of info, using the NPC. Kinda cheesy that way.
Any suggestions?
The game produces something interesting randomly in some sector, for instance an asteroid that is rich in a rare Ore. The location of this asteroid can only be detected by a player nearby: only when a player comes nearby, will the server start to send packets about this asteroid to the client. The player can decide to mine the asteroid himself, and hope nobody bumps into it too, or he can go to a Barkeeper (or any NPC) on some Station and sell it to the NPC for some serious Gold by giving the Loc coordinates. The moment the location has been shared with the NPC, other players who may bump into the Asteroid can not sell it to an NPC anymore.
Now this Barkeeper/NPC has a fresh rumor. This rumor will stay a few hours on this NPC. Any player who checks this Barkeeper will learn about it, and can decide wether to hunt it down, or decide that it may already be old news. Some people will check in the chat channel, but this could be unwise if its actually a freshly sold rumor. The Asteroid also has a limited lifetime.
Problem I see is that players most likely will sell it directly to the highest bidding player. This is probably a more interesting mechanic anyway. I guess you could find some contrived way where the NPC is needed as an intermediate, for instance by having the Asteroid disappear directly after discovery, only to return into existence once the loc has been shared with an NPC (maybe we could call this "claiming the find") but I could see people auction the find in chat anyway, and then agree to meet up with the highest bidder near some obscure NPC and quickly do the transfer of info, using the NPC. Kinda cheesy that way.
Any suggestions?
It's not quite the same thing but the wall of text at:
Elite: Dangerous - Background Simulation
... has something along those lines, where "entities" create missions (or goods) depending upon the state of the entity and the surroundings.
Now assuming something like this is in the game already I can tell you the beta testers have a love / hate response to it, especially finding those rare items. There are people who enjoy the fact that a particular shield generator is not only hard to find, but also unpredictable as to when and where it might be. And there are those who don't see why they shouldn't be able to go and get one off the shelf when they have the cash for it. Likewise, sometimes you get missions offering high rewards, and sometimes the list is paltry. If you turn up at a sparse time, it can be frustrating, especially if your in-game playtime is limited.
Another downside is that it can be hard for the player to know when something is working as intended, but just not there, when it is working and it will never be there, and when it is broken and therefore missing.
Tuco
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Only way to have good organic and random content is from players.
Some of the best organic / discovery content in any game ever is the secret farms in ArcheAge. In AA there is a ton of unimplemented and barren land between the proper zones that players can easily traverse to (though many are difficult to get to). Players can reap huge rewards if they buy and plant hundreds or thousands of trees in these barren areas and then chop them down after the day or two it takes for them to mature. However if another player discovers their farm they can also chop it down (or destroy it prematurely if they want to be a real jerk) and reap the rewards without the investment.
One of the best parts about minecraft is being on a server and looking at the constantly updated structures players have built. Even if as a whole these structures are pretty basic compared to the art generated by professionals in 3dsmax it's still fun and new.
The fishing system in ArcheAge offers a player-made resource (fishermen with fish on them you can kill and steal their fish) for pirates to go after, and that gives a sense of risk vs reward for the fishermen.
Some of the best organic / discovery content in any game ever is the secret farms in ArcheAge. In AA there is a ton of unimplemented and barren land between the proper zones that players can easily traverse to (though many are difficult to get to). Players can reap huge rewards if they buy and plant hundreds or thousands of trees in these barren areas and then chop them down after the day or two it takes for them to mature. However if another player discovers their farm they can also chop it down (or destroy it prematurely if they want to be a real jerk) and reap the rewards without the investment.
One of the best parts about minecraft is being on a server and looking at the constantly updated structures players have built. Even if as a whole these structures are pretty basic compared to the art generated by professionals in 3dsmax it's still fun and new.
The fishing system in ArcheAge offers a player-made resource (fishermen with fish on them you can kill and steal their fish) for pirates to go after, and that gives a sense of risk vs reward for the fishermen.
that's a part of it. But it's not the only way. aa is a pretty meh game and most of their sandbox elements are half assed.
Vitality
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Yeah Idk if organic and random content can ONLY be brought by PVP. In fact plenty of PVP settings are pretty run of the mill. Especially if it's limited by flagging systems and what not.
Rogue-like games bring pretty organic random content to the table, sure there's elements of static content with preferred item builds and limited inventories and what not.
If there's one thing *I think* we can all agree on it's that procedurally generated multiplayer content on larger scales(randomized world layouts/mob type/attributes/loot) is probably the next step for the online game genre.
I feel like random is organic in my opinionated sense of the term.
Rogue-like games bring pretty organic random content to the table, sure there's elements of static content with preferred item builds and limited inventories and what not.
If there's one thing *I think* we can all agree on it's that procedurally generated multiplayer content on larger scales(randomized world layouts/mob type/attributes/loot) is probably the next step for the online game genre.
I feel like random is organic in my opinionated sense of the term.
Mr Creed
Too old for this shit
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One issue with organic and random content is fairness. A game always being fair and not imposing impossible situations on the player is a major limitation for design. If you look at current games you notice that most of them try to avoid designs that the target audience might perceive as unfair (be that true or not). It's difficult to avoid unfairness in PvP but the studios do have full control over the PvE design and it's been trending towards homogenized, boring, always-the-same all in the pursuit of fairness. Hell Diablo 3 is working on making their game actively less interesting on the level design side of things to make sure everyone can get the same trophy from greater rifts.
As an example for Star Citizen, when it comes to npc pirate attacks on my lightly armed merchant vessel, or encounters in general, I dont only want to experience encounters that are tailored for my ship type to fight through and live (unless I suck). I also want some where I go "fuck get the hell out of here" the moment the pirates warp in, with no thought given to trying to fight. Think of Star Wars, when did Han actually go looking for a space fight? The Falcon was running away in almost every scene it was in. Too much fairness makes for a bland and boring experience.
As an example for Star Citizen, when it comes to npc pirate attacks on my lightly armed merchant vessel, or encounters in general, I dont only want to experience encounters that are tailored for my ship type to fight through and live (unless I suck). I also want some where I go "fuck get the hell out of here" the moment the pirates warp in, with no thought given to trying to fight. Think of Star Wars, when did Han actually go looking for a space fight? The Falcon was running away in almost every scene it was in. Too much fairness makes for a bland and boring experience.