Baldrick said:I feel like the simplicity of it all was a positive. I never wanted to see all of the stuff Brad mentions in his post as far as leveling, loot etc, and I don't see why we would need it.
I just enjoyed logging in and messing around with people in a way that didn't really destroy their fun. We were restricted to playing pretty wimpy mobs anyway, and honestly couldn't do much to really mess up other peoples playing experience.
Would it have had any longevity without all the extra stuff we could have had such as loot and progression? I don't know for sure, but did it need it? It was a simpple feature that was easy to introduce and easy to play. I kinda liked it that way.
I hear you, but that sort of thing is really difficult to plan and implement. If the plan is to implement an interesting but shallow system you have to ask yourself a bunch of questions. Will most people partake in this? Will most people enjoy it? How long will they enjoy it for? How long would it take us to implement and how many people on the team?
That all gets weighed together and, quite often, if it's not a system that has legs... has enough depth that people will be enjoying it for a long time and that it will appeal to most of your players, then it's just not worth doing. Time is better and more wisely and effectively spent elsewhere. That's why I was emphasizing how important the depth and longevity of new systems are.
I just wanted to vote up this feature.
I found it absolutely fantastic playing a trash mobs just for the fun of it. I think you guys should considder keeping it simple, and make it something to do while waiting. Just like gems in EQ. In other words, allow quickly switching to an NPC, and changing back again, perhaps even while still being logged in as your own character.
I recognice that it may not bring value for the money spent implementing it, but it sure would be a fun addition to the game.
Aradune said:Baldrick said:I feel like the simplicity of it all was a positive. I never wanted to see all of the stuff Brad mentions in his post as far as leveling, loot etc, and I don't see why we would need it.
I just enjoyed logging in and messing around with people in a way that didn't really destroy their fun. We were restricted to playing pretty wimpy mobs anyway, and honestly couldn't do much to really mess up other peoples playing experience.
Would it have had any longevity without all the extra stuff we could have had such as loot and progression? I don't know for sure, but did it need it? It was a simpple feature that was easy to introduce and easy to play. I kinda liked it that way.
I hear you, but that sort of thing is really difficult to plan and implement. If the plan is to implement an interesting but shallow system you have to ask yourself a bunch of questions. Will most people partake in this? Will most people enjoy it? How long will they enjoy it for? How long would it take us to implement and how many people on the team?
That all gets weighed together and, quite often, if it's not a system that has legs... has enough depth that people will be enjoying it for a long time and that it will appeal to most of your players, then it's just not worth doing. Time is better and more wisely and effectively spent elsewhere. That's why I was emphasizing how important the depth and longevity of new systems are.
I think all you have to do is push that top secret Project M button under your desk and the magic happens. So simple! Not sure who put it there though....
Nephretiti said:Part of me wants teh full-blown fully developed play as a mob...
...but another part of me wants it to stay as simple as possible....
I think the simple solution is best as well. Then as Brad talked about the system being modular, and getting the base of the system down. They could start (down the road post launch) with the simple solution that was in EQ...and then build on it (or not) from there as needed.
The ONLY reason I could see even having the base of this system in pre launch would be so people KNEW going in that even the PVE servers would have small amounts of PVP-like experience (Low Level Player MOBS = PVE+) . I'm only concerned that after launch, those that joined a PVE server would be against this coming to their server "that they joined for PVE" for fear of it being a slaughter fest or something. And it may as well be when it's now.. but it will taper off to what some belive nobody would play.
I would guess (based on the overall acceptance in this thread) If at beta they offered 3 server types now PVE---- PVE+ -----PVP there would be an overwhelming amount of players going to the PVP+ server and they could do away with pure PVE servers.
I would hate to see them need yet an additional server type to maintain.
I would hate to be playing on a PVE server and find out this system was being added and it WON'T be added to the PVE servers.
Telling them up front =good
Changing it on them later =bad
Z
Nephretiti said:Ugh - I did forget one thing - what do we do in regards to flying mounts/mobs that fly?
lassoes, drones, webbing (if a spider) hehe. In Lotro if we had a level 50 character we could create a level 50 "creep" (free peoples were freeps, creature characters were creeps) Thing was as a creep we were basically limited to the Ettenmoores area, kind of like a large corral where we could be farmed by much better equipped freeps. That might have changed over time, think I heard that eventually the creeps were allowed a little more territory. Reason for the "corral" was to contain the pvp to a certain area of the world map. I played a spider in those days, could web a player, trap them, spitball poison...etc in order to bring them down if they ventured into creep territory. We used to farm the gold bots and keep them cleaned out ..for free pvp points. (pretty much think that if the player base was involved in that way could keep the game clean of botters..)
Can we change it from 'Project M' to 'Project KGF' ?
... aka 'Kill Gold Farmers'.
Automated statistical systems in Pentheon identify zones where unusually large ammounts of loot is being farmed...
... Project M clients all preferentially targetted to this zone
... 'Human AI' mobs feed on the carcases of these Gold Farmer Bots
... Gold Farmers stop being efficient
... Gold Farmers go back to WoW
... Yay !
NB - All credit to CanadinaXegony, awesome idea!
The time I logged in as a Kolandiil fish was fun - but it was kinda hard to actually /roleplay as one. I had to go on dry land and hunt noobs down. I never actually killed a noob - I just bit em and ran... I seem to recall my max damage was 4. And that was on just-spawned-noobs. I could imagine what would have happened had I nibbled on some dude with a full set of Rubicite...
Nephretiti said:The time I logged in as a Kolandiil fish was fun - but it was kinda hard to actually /roleplay as one. I had to go on dry land and hunt noobs down. I never actually killed a noob - I just bit em and ran... I seem to recall my max damage was 4. And that was on just-spawned-noobs. I could imagine what would have happened had I nibbled on some dude with a full set of Rubicite...
Still sounds like good fun to me. I would do that..maybe not on just spawned newbies, but "older" (say level tenish newbies) why don't we poll on this...see if Aradune and team would make it some sort of small achievement system or something like that? Nobody gets hurt..maybe nipped or say webbed by a spider but not hurt. Just would add a little more I think and promote some fun. :)
Well I would vote to have this in game at some point, obviously after launch. Make it random level, random mob, random zone. See what feedback you get from both players who play the mobs and their "victims," and gauge interest from there. Lots of good ideas here on how to do it in a good way. :)
This was a lot of fun to mess around with and it was in a way reminiscent of the GM events EQ had to offer. It would be really neat to see "NPCs" organize and "PCs" have to counter that threat, much similar to team PVP servers were in EverQuest to some extent (kithicor event comes to mind, or the 'zek' battle that took place in east freeport). There are just some things MMO NPC AI can't extend beyond which is their predictability (repetitive pathing, scripted events). As others said though this would be more of a 'nice to have', something that could be considered year(s) after the release (much like it was in EQ).
Oh! I just had another thought! Suppose you log in as a vendor in a city - and when you log in you are tasked with raising a specific amount of gold in a limited amount of time....
You couldn't just give your stuff away = because then you wouldn't achieve your goal. Charge too much and no one would buy your product. Still though, I think I could see some points of consideration regarding exploitation. I mean you could just give your products away to friends etc. We would need to work out something regarding that. Maybe only sell to NPCs etc. You can BUY from players though...
Love this idea. Adds another dynamic to the game because player controlled characters will always (ok, MOST cases ... shoutout to Leeeeroy) be smarter than AI. Obviously plenty of rules would need to be implemented to make this a satisfying and rewarding experience for the player controlling the mob, while also preventing exploitation and potential griefing. 1 or 2 of these going after our clerics is fine but if they band up and start blocking a group from progressing through a zone ... maybe not so much. It's tough to say because if the death penalty in this game is going to be severe, I imagine a lot of players getting really upset when their wipe was caused by another player on a non-pvp server. Maybe allow this only in certain zones so that when entering, the adventurers are aware of the extra risk.
I agree. I have to admit I fear what could happen if Project M spawned you within a dungeon. I think we would need to test it in OverLand ONLY at first.. then work a few low-level dungeons to test. Maybe even instance a dungeon or two for folks to partake - thus not forcing anyone to do it. At first anyways. Let's see what we get ourselves into...
I think the take away is that its a fun system and people liked it, Brad has ideas to flesh it out even further, but lets be honest MMO's are huge undertakings and he has to focus his resources on what is important as you said, building the core game. As far as a system like this, its simplicity in EQ didn't offer many long term benefits so I can see hesitation to focus on a feature like this.
Truth is just look at PVP for an example a smaller group of people enjoy it and typically these server types die off faster than PVE servers. It is very possible the same could happen in a monster server.
Excellent post on page 3 by Brad! Really addresses all we'd want to hear about this system and reiterates the badass core philosophies guiding VR.